The reproach was urged in his lifetime, and even in his presence, at the council of Tyre.

See Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques, tom.viii.part i.p.

67.] [Footnote 178a: Historical criticism does not consist in rejecting indiscriminately all the facts which do not agree with a particular system, as Gibbon does in this chapter, in which, except at the last extremity, he will not consent to believe a martyrdom.

Authorities are to be weighed, not excluded from examination.

Now, the Pagan historians justify in many places the detail which have been transmitted to us by the historians of the church, concerning the tortures endured by the Christians.