any association among its subjects; and that the privileges of
private corporations, though formed for the most harmless or
beneficial purposes, were bestowed with a very sparing hand. ^14
The religious assemblies of the Christians who had separated
themselves from the public worship, appeared of a much less
innocent nature; they were illegal in their principle, and in
their consequences might become dangerous; nor were the emperors
conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when, for the
peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes
nocturnal meetings. ^15 The pious disobedience of the Christians
made their conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much
more serious and criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might
perhaps have suffered themselves to be disarmed by a ready
submission, deeming their honor concerned in the execution of
their commands, sometimes attempted, by rigorous punishments, to
subdue this independent spirit, which boldly acknowledged an
authority superior to that of the magistrate. The extent and
duration of this spiritual conspiracy seemed to render it
everyday more deserving of his animadversion. We have already
seen that the active and successful zeal of the Christians had
insensibly diffused them through every province and almost every
city of the empire. The new converts seemed to renounce their
family and country, that they might connect themselves in an
indissoluble band of union with a peculiar society, which every
where assumed a different character from the rest of mankind.
Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the common
business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions of
impending calamities, ^16 inspired the Pagans with the
apprehension of some danger, which would arise from the new sect,
the more alarming as it was the more obscure. "Whatever," says