undertaken either to propagate, or to suppress any one form of religion." The Roman empire, in the days of her pagan princes, became drunk with the blood of Christendom. Before the close of the first century, the power of the gospel was felt throughout that vast empire. But its successes only roused the dormant hostility of its foes. After the demolition of the Jewish State by Vespasian, a series of persecutions against Chris tianity was commenced, beginning under Nero, in the thirty-first year of the Christian era, and extending to the reign of Dioclesian, including about three centuries of as bitter suffering and cruelty as men were ever called to endure. The Christian religion was deemed a "detestable superstition," and the Christian name contemptible to a proverb. Under the reign of Nero, no class of men were considered more the enemies of mankind than the Christians; and notwithstanding the purity and benevolence of their character, they incurred the hatred of the pagan world, were obnoxious to its fury, torn by wild beasts, consumed by fire, and in such multitudes that the streets of Rome, night after night, were illuminated by the fearful conflagrations. In the latter part of the reign of Domitian, who succeeded to the empire in the year: eighty-one, all the horrors of Nero's persecution were renewed. Under Trajan, the persevering profession of Christianity was by law a capital offence. It was by his order, that Ignatius the bishop of Antioch was carried a prisoner from that

city to Rome, and thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. After Trajan, Marcus Antoninus, though a prince so universally popular that the gratitude of Rome at his death enrolled him among the gods, became the implacable enemy of Christianity, subjected its disciples to torture, and put to death whole churches. It was under his reign that Justin Martyr, Polycarp, the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, became victims of the ghastly tortures and bloody animosity of the pagans. After him, torrents of blood were shed by Severus, in Africa and Egypt; and many a Christian female, like, those noble women Felicitas and Perpetua, was stripped, scourged and thrown to the wild beasts, exclaiming, as the latter did to her weeping friends, "Continue firm in the faith, love one another, and be not offended at our sufferings!" After him, the spirit of persecution broke out in all its horrors under Decius, whose cruel and terrible edicts were executed with a variety and intenseness of newly in vented suffering. The successor of Decius was Gallus, whose short reign was distinguished by such severity of persecutions and such a collection of human miseries, that Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, himself a martyr to the Christian faith, thought that the reign of Antichrist was come, and the final judgment near at hand. During the early part of the reign of Valerian, the church found in him a friend and protector; but after a short truce of three years, as one of the most memorable instances of the instability of the human character,

he commenced a deadly persecution. After Valerian, a general persecution, instigated by the pagan priests, broke out under the reign of Dioclesian, who demolished the temples of the Christians, burned their sacred books, deprived them of all civil rights and honours, and consigned them to torture and flames. This persecution raged against all sorts of men who bore the Christian name; and with the exception of France, pervaded the whole Roman world. As evidence of the severity of this persecution, a coin was struck under the reign of this detestable persecutor, with this inscription, "Nomine Christianorum deleto"-The Christian name extinguished.* Thus was this vast pagan empire, this colossal power, extending itself from the straits of Gibraltar to the Caspian sea, covering all Europe, and having its territories even in Africa and the south of Britain, combined almost as with the counsels and heart of one man, against the gospel of Christ. All ranks and conditions of men seemed bent on its destruction-emperors trembling for their crowns, priests for their gold, philosophers for their systems, and the common people, the more terrible for their ignorance and superstitions. It was indeed a dark day to the church. One universal cry of persecution and death might have been heard from Jerusalem to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Rome, from Rome to the provinces of Gaul.

* Vide Mosheim, Milnor and Lardner.

It were devoutly to be wished that we could say with truth, that the Christian Church were herself pure from the spirit of intolerance, and the blood of persecution. It is a most melancholy retrospect to look back upon the slow progress of religious liberty, even in the visible Church of God. The world has no where seen greater evidences of the imperfection of men, of the blindness of the human heart, of the dangers of an excited state of mind in religious controversies, and of the influence of the spirit of the age and times in which men live, than in the tardy growth of religious liberty even under the light of Christian truth. It is indeed a melancholy retrospect to look back upon the very slow progress of religious toleration in our world. The principles of religious liberty seem to have been understood by few of any religious denomination, until a very late period. The human mind seems to have been enveloped in an unaccountable hallucination on this plain subject; and ages and men, otherwise distinguished for discretion, for piety, and even for moral grandeur, have been scarcely less distinguished for an intolerance and bigotry utterly at war with the spirit of Christianity, and a lasting reproach to the Christian name. Not a little watchfulness is necessary, even on the part of the best of men, before they will cultivate a kind spirit toward those who dissent from them on subjects so important as the various topics of their religious faith. No man, and no set of men, know what they will do,

till they have power. The pride of power, and power too over the conscience-a pride which, while it seems to be associated with the love of the truth, is at heart associated with that subtle self-complacency which says, "Stand by thyself for I am holier than thou;" a pride which, while it conceals its true motives under the pretence of contending earnestly for the faith, cannot suppress the ostentatious claim of Jehu, "Come see my zeal for the Lord,"-this is the height, the giddy height from which intolerance and persecution have in every age pronounced the doom of the humble followers of the crucified Saviour. Different departments of the visible Church have differed widely in their views and conduct in relation to this subject. The Romish Church ever has been the great enemy of religious liberty. Witness her assumption of the civil power, when princes bowed at her feet, and received their crowns at her hands; when nations trembled before her, and were anathematized at her pleasure. Witness her slaying of the witnesses for the truth throughout Germany, France and Britain. Witness her persecutions in the valleys of Piedmont and the rocky Alps. Witness the decisions of her councils, the developement of her secret plots and conspiracies,

her

open invasions and blood. Witness the history of that dark and sanguinary tribunal, the Inquisition. Think of the blood which deluged Bohemia for thirty years. Think of the massacre in the reign of Charles IX. of France, when that