See passages to this purpose collected from
their works by Dr. Clarke, Nat. and Rev. Rel. p. 180. ed. v--Except
Socrates, they all thought it wiser to comply with the laws than to
contend.
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Thirdly, it ought also to be considered, that this danger proceeded not
merely from solemn acts and public resolutions of the state, but from
sudden bursts of violence at particular places, from the licence of the
populace, the rashness of some magistrates and negligence of others;
from the influence and instigation of interested adversaries, and, in
general, from the variety and warmth of opinion which an errand so novel
and extraordinary could not fail of exciting. I can conceive that the
teachers of Christianity might both fear and suffer much from these
causes, without any general persecution being denounced against them by
imperial authority. Some length of time, I should suppose, might pass,
before the vast machine of the Roman empire would be put in motion, or
its attention be obtained to religious controversy: but, during that
time, a great deal of ill usage might be endured, by a set of
friendless, unprotected travellers, telling men, wherever they came,
that the religion of their ancestors, the religion in which they had
been brought up, the religion of the state, and of the magistrate, the
rites which they frequented, the pomp which they admired, was throughout
a system of folly and delusion.
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