I will not call Diocletian a persecutor, for he protected the Christians for eighteen years; and if, during his latter days, he did not save them from the resentment of Galerius, he only furnished the example of a prince seduced, like many others, by intrigue and cabal, into a conduct unworthy of his character. I will still less give the name of persecutor to Trajan or Antonius. I should regard myself as uttering blasphemy.

What is a persecutor? He whose wounded pride and fanaticism irritate princes and magistrates into fury against innocent men, whose only crime is that of being of a different opinion. Impudent man! you have worshipped God; you have preached and practised virtue; you have served and assisted man; you have protected the orphan, have succored the poor; you have changed deserts, in which slaves dragged on a miserable existence, into fertile districts peopled with happy families; but I have discovered that you despise me, and have never read my controversial work. I will, therefore, seek the confessor of the prime minister, or the magistrate; I will show them, with outstretched neck and twisted mouth, that you hold an erroneous opinion in relation to the cells in which the Septuagint was studied; that you have even spoken disrespectfully for these ten years past of Tobit’s dog, which you assert to have been a spaniel, whilst I maintain that it was a greyhound. I will den............