Note 9 — Chapter XIII · INTEGRITY OF THE GOSPELS.

Vol. VII. of McClintock and Strong, p. 966; Neander’s Church History, Vol. I., p. 148. Neander says that Feb. 22, A.D. 303, on one of the great pagan festivals, at the first dawn of day, the magnificent church of Nicomedia (then the imperial residence) was broken open, the copies of the Bible found in it were burned, and the whole church abandoned to plunder and then to destruction. The next day was published an edict that all assembling of Christians for the purpose of religious worship was forbidden; churches were to be demolished to their foundations; all manuscripts of the Bible should be burned; those who held places of honor and rank must renounce their faith, or be degraded; those belonging to the lower walks of private life to be divested of their rights as citizens and freemen; slaves were to be incapable of receiving their freedom so long as they remained Christians; and in judicial proceedings the torture might be used against all Christians of whatsoever rank. “It is quite evident,” says Neander, “that the plan now was to extirpate Christianity from the root.” But it was the darkness which preceded the dawn, for this was the last of the Pagan persecutions.