character and extending to the whole body of Christians, was published.  In accordance with this decree proclamation was made throughout the streets of the cities, and men, women, and children, were enjoined to repair to the heathen temples.  The city gates were guarded that none might escape; and, from lists previously prepared, every individual was summoned by name to present himself, and join in the performance of the rites of paganism. [305:1] At a subsequent period all provisions sold in the markets, in some parts of the empire, were sprinkled with the water or the wine employed in idolatrous worship, that the Christians might either be compelled to abstinence, or led to defile themselves by the use of polluted viands. [305:2]

Throughout almost the whole Church the latter part of the third century was a period of spiritual decay; and many returned to heathenism during the sifting time which now followed.  Not a few incurred the reproach of their more consistent and courageous brethren by surrendering the Scriptures in their possession; and those who thus purchased their safety were stigmatised with the odious name of traditors.  Had the persecutors succeeded in burning all the copies of the Word of God, they would, without the intervention of a miracle, have effectually secured the ruin of the Church; but their efforts to destroy the sacred volume proved abortive; for the faithful seized the earliest opportunity of replacing the consumed manuscripts.  The holy book was prized by them more highly than ever, and Bible burning only gave a stimulus to Bible transcription.  Still, however, sacred literature sustained a loss of no ordinary magnitude in this wholesale destruction of the inspired writings, and there is not at present in existence a single codex of the New Testament of higher antiquity than the Diocletian persecution. [305:3]

It has been computed that a greater number of Christians perished under Decius than in all the attacks which had previously been made upon them; but their sufferings under Diocletian were still more formidable and disastrous.  Paganism felt that it was now engaged in a death struggle; and this, its last effort to maintain its ascendency, was its most protracted and desperate conflict.  It has been frequently stated that the Diocletian persecution was of ten years’ duration; and, reckoning from the first indications of hostility to the promulgation of an edict of toleration, it may certainly be thus estimated; but all this time the whole Church was not groaning under the pressure of the infliction.  The Christians of the west of Europe suffered comparatively little; as there the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, and afterwards his son Constantine, to a great extent, preserved them from molestation.  In the East they passed through terrific scenes of suffering; for Galerius and Maximin, the two stern tyrants who governed that part of the empire on the abdication of Diocletian, endeavoured