Martyrdom under the Several Roman Emperors (2)

Having passed in review the history of this martyrdom, let us now attend to the "why" of it and to its significance. To begin and to end with this hostility of the heathen world toward the primitive church in the men of this world, in their wickedness, more particular, in their native hatred of the truth or of God's gospel, or in the various other motives by which they were driven in troubling God's people, is to be at a loss how to explain the reception of the gospel on the part of the others...