Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

2 24 STOICISM.of the Christian soldiers whose prayers brought rainfrom heaven in the dire strait of his campaignagainst the Quadi, and on the edict in which thegrateful emperor proclaimed the entire freedom ofthe Church. But the document is hopelessly at variancewith undoubted facts, and even with the passageof Tertullian just referred to, though the language ofboth attests that the Christians of the next generationthought that the emperor had borne them no ill-will,whatever might have been the sentiment and actionof officials far away. Church history tells us of themartyrs on whom the sentence was pronounced byhis vice-regents, or whose cases were carried even byappeal before the bar of Csesar. The Christians arespoken of as obstinate fanatics in his " Meditations" ;the obstinate profession of their faith was still treatedas a crime, though the civilpower made no attemptto hunt them down. A fact so strange may naturallyseem to call for comment. Rome had, indeed,its national religion as by law established, and theemperorswere defenders of the faith. But itspolytheism was many-sided and elastic, and found aniche in its Pantheon for every new form of Easternworship. The Stoic system, on its side, had alwaystreated the popular religion with forbearance and withlittle of the caustic tones of earlier free-thought.There was no tradition of intolerance, therefore,borrowed from the temple or the philosophic school,and the character of the ruler on the throne seemedwholly alien to such a temper. He was not the manto look with jealousy at a religious creed whose moral