Early Christianity and Paganism - A. D. 64 to the Peace of the Church in the Fourth Century; A Narration Mainly Based Upon Contemporary Records and Remains #255784

Following a practice very different from that usual among professors of any of the persecuted forms of religion before their time, or even among professors of a persecuted religion after their time, the Christians throughout these years, although conscious of their numbers, their organisation and their power, never took up arms against their persecutors; these hated, despised, outlawed men continued to be the most loyal and peaceful subjects of the great world-wide Empire. It is this strange power of passive resistance, to which we have alluded above, and of which we shall speak again, which is one of the principal evidences of a special super natural assistance being vouchsafed to them.