ORIGEN AND CELSUS. 
higher ground, yet as saving trouble to the rolice- 
man. Why did a government, usually so tolerant, 
make an exception of the best deserving of its 
subjects? Why, as was certainly the fact, was 
enmity to Christianity a characteristic of the best 
amperors, not of the worst? Why do we find the 
darkest persecution in the reign, not of a Domitian 
or a Commodus, but under the mild, just rule of a 
Trajan, a Marcus Aurelius, a Severus, or a Diocletian? 
No more valuable addition could be made to 
theological history than an account of the impression 
made by Christianity on the minds of cultivated 
Romans of the highest order of ability, while its 
message was still new, before long acceptance had 
made its strangest features familiar, and before the 
powers which it eventually exerted commanded at- 
tention and respect. Few such men, unfortunately, 
condescended to:examine its nature with serious care, 
Tacitus, Pliny, Lucian, glanced at the Christians with 
contemptuous pity, as victims of one more of the 
unaccountable illusions to which mankind were sub- 
ject. They were confounded at first with the Jews; 
and the Jews, as the Romans had found to their 
cost, were troublesome fanatics whom it was equally 
difficult to govern or destroy. When the political 
constitution of a nation is abolished, its lands taken