governors of the provinces under M. Antoninus might have found enough even in Trajan’s rescript to warrant them in punishing Christians, and the fanaticism of the people would drive them to persecution, even if they were unwilling.  But besides the fact of the Christians rejecting all the heathen ceremonies, we must not forget that they plainly maintain that all the heathen religions were false.  The Christians thus declared war against the heathen rites, and it is hardly necessary to observe that this was a declaration of hostility against the Roman government, which tolerated all the various forms of superstition that existed in the empire, and could not consistently tolerate another religion, which declared that all the rest were false and all the splendid ceremonies of the empire only a worship of devils.

[A] Eusebius, iv. 26; and Routh’s Reliquiae Sacrae, vol.  I, and the notes.  The interpretation of this Fragment is not easy.  Mosheim misunderstood one passage so far as to affirm that Marcus promised rewards to those who denounced the Christians; an interpretation which is entirely false.  Melito calls the Christian religion “our philosophy,” which began among barbarians (the Jews), and flourished among the Roman subjects in the time of Augustus, to the great advantage of the empire, for from that time the power of the Romans grew great and glorious.  He says that the emperor has and will have as the successor to Augustus’ power the good wishes of men, if he will protect that philosophy which grew up with the empire and began with Augustus, which philosophy the predecessors of Antoninus honored in addition to the other religions.  He further says that the Christian religion had suffered no harm since the time of Augustus, but on the contrary had enjoyed all honor and respect that any man could desire.  Nero and Domitian, he says, were alone persuaded by some malicious men to calumniate the Christian religion, and this was the origin of the false charges against the Christians.  But this was corrected by the emperors who immediately preceded Antoninus, who often by their rescripts reproved those who attempted to trouble the Christians.  Hadrian, Antoninus’ grandfather, wrote to many, and among them to Fundanus, the governor of Asia.  Antoninus Pius, when Marcus was associated with him in the empire, wrote to the cities that they must not trouble the Christians; among others, to the people of Larissa, Thessalonica, the Athenians, and all the Greeks.  Melito concluded thus:  “We are persuaded that thou who hast about these things the same mind that they had, nay rather one much more humane and philosophical, wilt do all that we ask thee.”—­This Apology was written after A.D. 169, the year in which Verus died, for it speaks of Marcus only and his son Commodus.  According to Melito’s testimony, Christians had only been punished for their religion in the time of Nero and Domitian, and the persecutions began again in the time of M. Antoninus, and were