Licinius Begins a Secret Persecution

In this way the man we have been speaking of kept rushing headlong toward the destruction that awaits the enemies of God. He had seen with his own eyes how the men before him were ruined as the result of their wickedness. Yet once again, in a fatal urge to copy their example, he rekindled the persecution of the Christians like a fire long put out, and fanned its unholy flame higher than any of those who had gone before him. [a]

At first, it is true, he did not dare to attack the churches of God under his rule openly, for fear of Constantine, though he was breathing fury and threats against God like some savage beast of prey, or some twisting, wriggling serpent. Instead he hid the venom of his malice, and tried by secret and limited measures to bring about the death of the bishops. The most eminent of them he found ways to remove through charges brought against them by the governors of the various provinces. The way they suffered had something strange about it, something never heard of before. At any rate, the barbarities committed at Amasia in Pontus went beyond every known extreme of cruelty. [b]