MAXIMIN.

In the year 235 A. D., Maximin became emperor by the murder of the emperor Alexander Severus. Of him and the persecution of the Christians inflicted by him, the ecclesiastical historian says:—TTR 127.3

“The emperor Alexander being carried off after a reign of thirteen years, was succeeded by Maximinus, who, inflamed with hatred against the house of Alexander, consisting of many believers, raised a persecution, and commanded at first only the heads of the churches to be slain, as the abettors and agents of evangelical truth.’—Eusebius. ^{13[Page 127] “Ecclesiastical History,” book vi, chap. xxviii.}TTR 127.4

Alexander Severus had not only been a friend to the Christians, but had gone so far as to place an image of Christ among his household gods. The church in Rome had appropriated a piece of land in that city which was claimed by the Cooks’ Union. A dispute arose about it, and the case was brought to the emperor for settlement. He decided in favor of the church, saying that it was better that God should be worshiped on that ground than that it should be given up to the cooks. Through such pronounced favor of the emperor, many Christians became connected with the imperial household, and bishops were received at court. When Maximin murdered the emperor Alexander, the Christians and the bishops to whom Eusebius refers were involved in the massacre. And this is the extent of Maximin’s persecution of the Christians.TTR 128.1

Maximin was a barbarian who had risen from the condition of a Thracian peasant to the highest military command. When he was in humble circumstances, he had been slighted by the Roman nobles, and treated with insolence by their slaves; others had befriended him in his poverty, and had encouraged him in adversity. When he became emperor, he took vengeance on all alike, for all “were guilty of the same crime—the knowledge of his original obscurity. For this crime many were put to death; and by the execution of several of his benefactors, Maximin published, in characters of blood, the indelible history of his baseness and ingratitude.”—Gibbon. ^{14[Page 128] “Decline and Fall,” chap. vii, par. 8.} Maximin was but little less than a wild beast in the shape of a man. Knowing full well his own shameful inferiority, he was supremely suspicious of everybody else. Being so treacherous and so cruel himself, he was ready to believe that every distinguished person was guilty of treason. “Italy and the whole empire were infested with innumerable spies and informers.” Magnus, a principal senator, was accused of conspiracy. “Without a witness, without a trial, and without an opportunity of defense, Magnus with four thousand of his supposed accomplices, was put to death.... Confiscation, exile, or simple death were esteemed uncommon instances of his lenity. Some of the unfortunate sufferers he ordered to be sewed up in the hides of slaughtered animals, others to be exposed to wild beasts, others again to be beaten to death with clubs.”—Gibbon. ^{15[Page 129] Id., par. 9, 10.}TTR 128.2

Such was the conduct of Maximin toward the Roman nobles. He next, at one single stroke, confiscated all the treasure and all the revenue of all the cities of the empire, and turned them to his own use. The temples everywhere were robbed of all the gold and silver offerings; “and the statues of gods, heroes, and emperors were melted down, and coined into money.” In many places these robberies and exactions were resisted, the people defending the rights of their cities and the sacredness of their temples. In such cases massacres accompanied the robbery of the temples and the confiscation of the cities’ treasures.TTR 129.1

Of Maximin’s treatment of the Christians, as of that of Domitian and Septimius Severus, it is but proper to remark that to separate this from all the other evidences of his cruelty, which were so wide-spread and continuous, magnifying this while ignoring all the rest—in order to bestow upon it the distinction of a “persecution”—bears too much evidence of an effort to make out a case, to be worthy of endorsement in any sober or exact history.TTR 129.2

The next one in the list of the “Ten Persecutions” is that by the emperor—TTR 129.3