"The most zealous among them saw it as their solemn duty to make a public display of their faith even if it meant arrest, torture and death … A few of the Soldiers of Christ actively sought martyrdom by charging into the shrines and temples of the pagans, smashing the statuary, and overturning the altars, as they were instructed to do by their own scriptures: 'You shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, for the Lord is a jealous God.' .... Indeed, the spectacle of men and women who went willingly and even ardently to their deaths – and, long afterward, the memory of these martyrdoms and the relics of the martyrs themselves – only stirred the fires of true belief and inspired ever greater acts of zealotry. Sometimes the pagan magistrates literally begged the Christians to make some gesture of compromise in order to save their own lives."