years, delivers nearly the same account:  “In every part of the world,” says he, “throughout all Greece, and in all other nations, there are innumerable and immense multitudes, who, having left the laws of their country, and those whom they esteemed gods, have given themselves up to the law of Moses, and the religion of Christ:  and this not without the bitterest resentment from the idolaters, by whom they were frequently put to torture, and sometimes to death:  and it is wonderful to observe how, in so short a time, the religion has increased, amidst punishment and death, and every kind of torture.”  (Orig. in Cels. lib. i.) In another passage, Origen draws the following candid comparison between the state of Christianity in his time and the condition of its more primitive ages:  “By the good providence of God, the Christian religion has so flourished and increased continually that it is now preached freely without molestation, although there were a thousand obstacles to the spreading of the doctrine of Jesus in the world.  But as it was the will of God that the Gentiles should have the benefit of it, all the counsels of men against the Christians were defeated:  and by how much the more emperors and governors of provinces, and the people everywhere strove to depress them, so much the more have they increased and prevailed exceedingly.” (Orig. cont.  Cels. lib vii.)

It is well known that, within less than eighty years after this, the Roman empire became Christian under Constantine:  and it is probable that Constantine declared himself on the side of the Christians because they were the powerful party:  for Arnobius, who wrote immediately before Constantine’s accession, speaks of “the whole world as filled with Christ’s doctrine, of its diffusion throughout all countries, of an innumerable body of Christians in distant provinces, of the strange revolution of opinion of men of the greatest genius,—­orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians having come over to the institution, and that also in the face of threats, executions and tortures.” (Arnob. in Genres, 1. i. pp. 27, 9, 24, 42, 41. edit.  Lug.  Bat. 1650.)

And not more than twenty years after Constantine’s entire possession of the empire, Julius Firmiens Maternus calls upon the emperors Constantius and Constans to extirpate the relics of the ancient religion; the reduced and fallen condition of which is described by our author in the following words:  “Licet adhue in quibusdam regionibus idololatriae morientia palpitont membra; tamen in eo res est, ut a Christianis omnibus terris pestiferum hoc malum funditus amputetur:”  and in another place, “Modicum tautum superest, ut legibus vestris—­extincta idololatriae pereat funesta contagio.” (De Error.  Profan.  Relig. c. xxi. p. 172, quoted by Lardner, vol. viii. p. 262.) It will not be thought that we quote this writer in order to recommend his temper or his judgment, but to show the comparative state of Christianity and