But as it was the will of God that the Gentiles should have the
benefit of it, all the counsels of men against the Christians were
defeated: and by how much the more emperors and governors of provinces,
and the people everywhere strove to depress them, so much the more have
they increased and prevailed exceedingly." (Orig. cont. Cels. lib vii.)
It is well known that, within less than eighty years after this, the
Roman empire became Christian under Constantine: and it is probable that
Constantine declared himself on the side of the Christians because they
were the powerful party: for Arnobius, who wrote immediately before
Constantine's accession, speaks of "the whole world as filled with
Christ's doctrine, of its diffusion throughout all countries, of an
innumerable body of Christians in distant provinces, of the strange
revolution of opinion of men of the greatest genius,--orators,
grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians having come over to the
institution, and that also in the face of threats, executions and
tortures." (Arnob. in Genres, 1. i. pp. 27, 9, 24, 42, 41.
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