[A] The Martyrium Ignatii, first published in Latin by
    Archbishop Usher, is the chief evidence for the circumstances
    of Ignatius’ death.

In the time of Hadrian it was no longer possible for the Roman government to overlook the great increase of the Christians and the hostility of the common sort to them.  If the governors in the provinces were willing to let them alone, they could not resist the fanaticism of the heathen community, who looked on the Christians as atheists.  The Jews too, who were settled all over the Roman Empire, were as hostile to the Christians as the Gentiles were.[A] With the time of Hadrian begin the Christian Apologies, which show plainly what the popular feeling towards the Christians then was.  A rescript of Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus, the Proconsul of Asia, which stands at the end of Justin’s first Apology,[B] instructs the governor that innocent people must not be troubled, and false accusers must not be allowed to extort money from them; the charges against the Christians must be made in due form, and no attention must be paid to popular clamors; when Christians were regularly prosecuted and convicted of illegal acts, they must be punished according to their deserts; and false accusers also must be punished.  Antoninus Pius is said to have published rescripts to the same effect.  The terms of Hadrian’s rescript seem very favorable to the Christians; but if we understand it in this sense, that they were only to be punished like other people for illegal acts, it would have had no meaning, for that could have been done without asking the emperor’s advice.  The real purpose of the rescript is that Christians must be punished if they persisted in their belief, and would not prove their renunciation of it by acknowledging the heathen religion.  This was Trajan’s rule, and we have no reason for supposing that Hadrian granted more to the Christians than Trajan did.  There is also printed at the end of Justin’s first Apology a rescript of Antoninus Pius to the Commune of ([Greek:  to koinon tes Asias]), and it is also in Eusebius (E.H. iv. 13).  The date of the rescript is the third consulship of Antoninus Pius.[C] The rescript declares that the Christians—­for they are meant, though the name Christians does not occur in the rescript—­were not to be disturbed unless they were attempting something against the Roman rule; and no man was to be punished simply for being a Christian.  But this rescript is spurious.  Any man moderately acquainted with Roman history will see by the style and tenor that it is a clumsy forgery.

[A] We have the evidence of Justinus (ad Diognetum, c. 5) to this effect:  “The Christians are attacked by the Jews as if they were men of a different race, and are persecuted by the Greeks; and those who hate them cannot give the reason of their enmity.”

[B] And in Eusebius (E.H. iv. 8, 9).  Orosius (vii. 13) says that Hadrian sent this