Thomas E Kresal

Admin · 2 hrsMay 22, 2020Baptist History, Heritage & DistinctivesRoman Emperors Seek to Exterminate Christians – 302 ADThese two Emperors (namely, Diocletian and Maximian) jointly governed the empire, in harmony and constancy, and remained undivided. However, when they had reigned about ten years, they took counsel together, and resolved to exterminate the Christians, because the discord of religion caused great dissensions, both in the households and in the Roman Empire.”The apostate Christians played the part of instigators and firebrands in the rising of this persecution, holding out to the Emperors the hope, that the Christians could be exterminated. The persecution which ensued thereupon, is considered the most grievous.”Then he writes: “But the enemies of the truth took the occasion to incite the Emperor Diocletian against the Christians, from a certain conflagration in the city of Nicomedia-at that time the place where the Emperors were wont to reside-by which the palace of the Emperor was totally destroyed. With this calamity they charged the Christians. The Emperor, enraged beyond measure on this account, easily believed the slanderers, thinking he had sufficient reason for it. He accordingly, in the nineteenth year of his reign, which coincides with A. D. 302, issued a public decree (as was done in the days of Antiochus), that everyone, in every place, should sacrifice to the gods of the Emperors; and that he who should refuse to do so, should be punished with death; also, that the churches or meeting places, and the books of the Christians should be utterly destroyed. Yea, there was scarcely a large city in the empire, in which not daily a hundred Christians, or thereabouts, were slain. It is also recorded that in one month seventeen thousand Christians were put to death in different parts of the empire, so that the blood which was shed colored red many rivers. Some were hanged, others beheaded, some burned, and some sunk by whole shiploads in the depths of the sea.”

Thomas E. Kresal from: Excerpts from Martyrs Mirror by Thieleman J Van Braght