The
members of the society cannot without violating their consciences and
incurring damnation abandon their exclusive doctrine. The principle of
freedom of conscience is asserted as superior to all obligations to the
State, and the State, confronted
[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.
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