By Mandell Creighton

From the introduction: ‘The existence of persecution in the Christian Church is a fact which is more frequently commented on than explained. Greater attention has been paid to the methods and extent of persecution than to the causes which produced it, or the causes which brought it to an end. It is indeed dificult to approach the subject in an impartial spirit. Those who write the history of any period of persecution tend either to exag- gerate or to apologise. On the one side, there is a desire to represent persecution as especially inherent in all religious systems, or it may be, as especially inherent in Christianity. On the other side, there is a tendency to plead the generally beneficent action of a particular form of religious organisation in relation to the world's progress as an extenuation of its particular misdoings. The history of persecution is a large subject…”

London. Longmans Green. 1906. 152p. Read-Me.Org classic reprint.