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The bishop of Milan, Ambrose, mentions pagans who converted to raise their stock with Christian women with whom they had a love interest.

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

he claimed, some twenty years later, that he had watched Diocletian come to his fateful decision to persecute only when he himself was “still a boy.” 1 He was no mere boy. This was in 303 CE. Constantine was born in 272 or 273. He was a thirty- year- old holding an important position in the emperor’s administration.

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

Before the Enlightenment almost no one argued that the state should stay out of the business of religion. The most notable exceptions were the early Christian apologists.

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

The pagan author Celsus points out that Christians will sometimes stand next to a statue of a god and shout, “See here: I blaspheme it and strike it but it is powerless against me for I am a Christian.”

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

Also during the persecution came one of the quickest judicial trials on record, set forth in a book called the Acts of Fructuosus. A bishop was brought up on charges, and his trial before the magistrate required four words: “Episcopus es?” “Sum.” “Fuisti.” Literally: “Are you a bishop?” “I am.” “You were.”

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

The notoriety of the stories told of the initiation of new recruits is matched by their ghastly horror. A young babe is covered over with flour, the object being to deceive the unwary. It is then served before the person to be admitted into their rites. The recruit is urged to inflict blows onto it— they appear to be harmless because of the covering of flour. Thus the baby is killed with wounds that remain unseen and concealed. It is the blood of this infant— I shudder to mention it— it is this blood that they lick with thirsty lips; these are the limbs they distribute eagerly; this is the victim by which they seal their covenant; it is by complicity in this crime that they are pledged to mutual silence; these are their rites, more foul than all sacrileges combined.

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

On a special day they gather for a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers— all sexes and ages. There, flushed with the banquet after such feasting and drinking, they begin to burn with incestuous passions. They provoke a dog tied to the lampstand to leap and bound towards a scrap of food which they have tossed outside the reach of his chain. By this means the light is overturned and extinguished, and with it common knowledge of their actions; in the shameless dark with unspeakable lust they copulate in random unions, all equally being guilty of incest, some by deed, but everyone by complicity.

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

They recognize each other by secret marks and signs; hardly have they met when they love each other, throughout the world uniting in the practice of a veritable religion of lusts. Indiscriminately they call each other brother and sister, thus turning even ordinary fornication into incest. (Octavius 9)

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

“Monsters of wickedness, we are accused of observing a holy rite in which we kill a little child and then eat it; in which, after the feast, we practice incest, the dogs— our pimps, forsooth, overturning the lights and getting us the shamelessness of darkness for our impious lusts . . . . This is what is constantly laid to our charge”

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman

the intellectual defenders of the faith, including the witty but relatively obscure Athenagoras of Athens, who lists “atheism” as the first accusation typically leveled against the Christians (Plea Concerning the Christians 3).

— The triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman