to overcome their steadfastness by all the expedients which despotic cruelty could suggest.  A contemporary, who had access to the best sources of information, has given a faithful account of the torments they endured.  Vinegar mixed with salt was poured on the lacerated bodies of the dying; some were roasted on huge gridirons; some, suspended aloft by one hand, were then left to perish in excruciating agony; and some, bound to parts of different trees which had been brought together by machinery, were torn limb from limb by the sudden revulsion of the liberated branches. [306:1] But, even in the East, this attempt to overwhelm Christianity was not prosecuted from its commencement to its close with unabated severity.  Sometimes the sufferers obtained a respite; and again, the work of blood was resumed with fresh vigour.  Though many were tempted for a season to make a hollow profession of paganism, multitudes met every effort to seduce them in a spirit of indomitable resolution.  At length tyranny became weary of its barren office, and the Church obtained peace.  In A.D. 311, Galerius, languishing under a loathsome disease, and perhaps hoping that he might be relieved by the God of the Christians, granted them toleration.  Maximin subsequently renewed the attacks upon them; but at his death, which occurred in A.D. 313, the edict in favour of the Church, which Constantine and his colleague Licinius had already published, became law throughout the empire.

It is often alleged that the Church, before the conversion of Constantine, passed through ten persecutions; but the statement gives a very incorrect idea of its actual suffering.  It would be more accurate to say that, for between two and three hundred years, the faithful were under the ban of imperial proscription.  During all this period they were liable to be pounced upon at any moment by bigoted, domineering, or greedy magistrates.  There were not, indeed, ten persecutions conducted with the systematic and sanguinary violence exhibited in the times of Diocletian or of Decius; but there were perhaps provinces of the empire where almost every year for upwards of two centuries some Christians suffered for the faith. [307:1] The friends of the confessors and the martyrs were not slow to acknowledge the hand of Providence, as they traced the history of the emperors by whom the Church was favoured or oppressed.  It was remarked that the disciples were not worn out by the barbarities of a continuous line of persecutors; for an unscrupulous tyrant was often succeeded on the throne by an equitable or an indulgent sovereign.  Thus, the Christians had every now and then a breathing-time during which their hopes were revived and their numbers recruited.  It was observed, too, that the princes, of whose cruelty they had reason to complain, generally ended their career under very distressing circumstances.  An ecclesiastical writer who is supposed to have flourished towards the commencement of the fourth century has