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97. Nihil aliud inveni, quam
superstitionem pravam et immodicara. Tacit. Annal. 15. c.
44. Exitiabilis superstitio.

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superstition. By which name also Nero triumphed over it in his trophies
which he set up at Rome, when he had harassed the Christians with a
most severe persecution. He gloried that he had purged the country of
robbers, and those that obtruded and inculcated the new superstition*
upon mankind. By this, there can be no doubt he meant the Christians,
whose religion is called the superstition in other inscriptions of the
like nature. See that of Diocletian cited in Baronius, Ann. 304. from
Occo.
"Superstitione Christianorum ubique deleta," &c.

Not much unlike this was that other name which Porphyry** and some
others give it, when they call it the barbarous, new, and strange
religion. In the acts of the famous martyrs of Lyons, who suffered under
Antoninus Pius, the heathens scornfully insult it with this character.
For having burnt the martyrs to ashes, and scattered their remains into
the river Rhone, they said, they did it 'to cut off their hopes of a
resurrection, upon the

* Inscript. Antiq. ad Calcem Sueton. Oxon. NERONI. CLAUD.
CAIS. AUG. PONT. MAX. OB. PROVING. LATRONIB.