Identifier: constantinegreat00firt (find matches)
Title: Constantine the Great; the reorganisation of the empire and the triumph of the church
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Firth, John B. (John Benjamin), 1868-1943
Subjects: Constantine I, Emperor of Rome, d. 337 Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600
Publisher: New York, London, G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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d theanti-Christian edicts. Manichaeanism took its risein Persia, its principal characteristic being the prac-tice of thaumaturgy, and it spread fast throughoutthe East. Diocletian ordered the chiefs of the sectto be burned to death ; their followers were to havetheir goods confiscated and to suffer capital punish-ment unless they recanted ; while persons of rankwho had disgraced themselves by joining such ashameful and infamous set of men were to lose theirpatrimony and be sent to the mines. These weresavage enactments, and it is important to see howthe Emperor justified them. Fortunately his lan-guage is most explicit. The gods, he says, havedetermined what is just and true; the wisest ofmankind, by counsel and by deed, have proved andfirmly established their principles. It is not, there-fore, lawful to oppose their divine and human wis-dom, or to pretend that a new religion can correctthe old one. To wish to change the institutions ofour ancestors is the greatest of crimes. Nothing
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BUST OF DIOCLETIAN. The Persecution of the Church 23 could be clearer. It is the old official defence of theState religion, that men are not wiser than theirfathers, and that innovation in worship is likely tobring down the wrath of the gods. Moreover, asthe edict points out, this Manichaeanism came fromPersia, the traditional enemy of Rome, and threat-ened to corrupt the modest and tranquil Romanpeople with the detestable manners and infamouslaws of the Orient. Modest and tranquil are notthe epithets which posterity has chosen to apply tothe Roman people of the Empire, but Diocletianspoint is obvious. Manichaeanism was a device ofthe enemy ; it must be poison, therefore, to the goodRoman. Such an argument was born of prejudicerather than of reason ; we shall see it applied yetagain to the Christians, and applied even by theChristian Church to its own schismatics and heretics.It was during the winter of 302 that the questionwas carefully debated by Diocletian and Galerius—the latter

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