Note 35 — PART IV
Reading edition
No scholar is more definite here than Renan, who certainly cannot be regarded as one who would be likely to dwell with emphasis on testimony which makes for the ardent faith of the Christians of the first days. And yet this great scholar brushes aside all the theories which maintain that the Christian martyrs of this period were few and insignificant in number; no modern writer is more positive on the awful character of the persecutions between A.D. 135 and A.D. 180.