[48] by this new claim, is unable to admit it.  Persecution is the result.

Even from the standpoint of an orthodox and loyal pagan the persecution of the Christians is indefensible, because blood was shed uselessly.  In other words, it was a great mistake because it was unsuccessful.  For persecution is a choice between two evils.  The alternatives are violence (which no reasonable defender of persecution would deny to be an evil in itself) and the spread of dangerous opinions.  The first is chosen simply to avoid the second, on the ground that the second is the greater evil.  But if the persecution is not so devised and carried out as to accomplish its end, then you have two evils instead of one, and nothing can justify this.  From their point of view, the Emperors had good reasons for regarding Christianity as dangerous and anti-social, but they should either have let it alone or taken systematic measures to destroy it.  If at an early stage they had established a drastic and systematic inquisition, they might possibly have exterminated it.  This at least would have been statesmanlike.  But they had no conception of extreme measures, and they did not understand —­they had no experience to guide them —­the sort of problem they had to deal with.  They hoped to succeed by intimidation.

[49] Their attempts at suppression were vacillating, fitful, and ridiculously ineffectual.  The later persecutions (of A.D. 250 and 303) had no prospect of success.  It is particularly to be observed that no effort was made to suppress Christian literature.

The higher problem whether persecution, even if it attains the desired end, is justifiable, was not considered.  The struggle hinged on antagonism between the conscience of the individual and the authority and supposed interests of the State.  It was the question which had been raised by Socrates, raised now on a wider platform in a more pressing and formidable shape:  what is to happen when obedience to the law is inconsistent with obedience to an invisible master?  Is it incumbent on the State to respect the conscience of the individual at all costs, or within what limits?  The Christians did not attempt a solution, the general problem did not interest them.  They claimed the right of freedom exclusively for themselves from a non-Christian government; and it is hardly going too far to suspect that they would have applauded the government if it had suppressed the Gnostic sects whom they hated and calumniated.  In any case, when a Christian State was established, they would completely forget the principle which they

[50] had invoked.  The martyrs died for conscience, but not for liberty.  To-day the greatest of the Churches demands freedom of conscience in the modern States which she does not control, but refuses to admit that, where she had the power, it would be incumbent on her to concede it.