A long period of civil confusion, in which the Empire seemed to be tottering to its fall, had been terminated by the Emperor Diocletian, who, by his radical administrative reforms, helped to preserve the Roman power in its integrity for another century.  He desired to support his work of political consolidation by reviving the Roman spirit, and he attempted to infuse new life into the official religion.  To this end he determined to suppress the growing influence of the Christians, who, though a minority, were very numerous, and he organized a persecution.  It was long, cruel and bloody; it was the most whole-hearted, general and systematic effort to crush the forbidden faith.  It was a

[46] failure, the Christians were now too numerous to be crushed.  After the abdication of Diocletian, the Emperors who reigned in different parts of the realm did not agree as to the expediency of his policy, and the persecution ended by edicts of toleration (A.D. 311 and 313).  These documents have an interest for the history of religious liberty.

The first, issued in the eastern provinces, ran as follows:—­

“We were particularly desirous of reclaiming into the way of reason and nature the deluded Christians, who had renounced the religion and ceremonies instituted by their fathers and, presumptuously despising the practice of antiquity, had invented extravagant laws and opinions according to the dictates of their fancy, and had collected a various society from the different provinces of our Empire.  The edicts which we have published to enforce the worship of the gods, having exposed many of the Christians to danger and distress, many having suffered death and many more, who still persist in their impious folly, being left destitute of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extend to those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency.  We permit them, therefore, freely to profess their private opinions, and to assemble in their conventicles

[47] without fear or molestation, provided always that they preserve a due respect to the established laws and government.” [5]

The second, of which Constantine was the author, known as the Edict of Milan, was to a similar effect, and based toleration on the Emperor’s care for the peace and happiness of his subjects and on the hope of appeasing the Deity whose seat is in heaven.

The relations between the Roman government and the Christians raised the general question of persecution and freedom of conscience.  A State, with an official religion, but perfectly tolerant of all creeds and cults, finds that a society had arisen in its midst which is uncompromisingly hostile to all creeds but its own and which, if it had the power, would suppress all but its own.  The government, in self-defence, decides to check the dissemination of these subversive ideas and makes the profession of that creed a crime, not on account of its particular tenets, but on account of the social consequences of those tenets.  The members of the society cannot without violating their consciences and incurring damnation abandon their exclusive doctrine.  The principle of freedom of conscience is asserted as superior to all obligations to the State, and the State, confronted