[67] Whenever they were invested with a discretionary power, [68] they used it much less for the oppression, than for the relief and benefit of the afflicted church.

They were far from condemning all the Christians who were accused before their tribunal, and very far from punishing with death all those who were convicted of an obstinate adherence to the new superstition.

Contenting themselves, for the most part, with the milder chastisements of imprisonment, exile, or slavery in the mines, [69] they left the unhappy victims of their justice some reason to hope, that a prosperous event, the accession, the marriage, or the triumph of an emperor, might speedily restore them, by a general pardon, to their former state.

The martyrs, devoted to immediate execution by the Roman magistrates, appear to have been selected from the most opposite extremes.

They were either bishops and presbyters, the persons the most distinguished among the Christians by their rank and influence, and whose example might strike terror into the whole sect; [70] or else they were the meanest and most abject among them, particularly those of the servile condition, whose lives were esteemed of little value, and whose sufferings were viewed by the ancients with too careless an indifference.