The earliest Christians had destroyed the meat industry in Bithynia, which was taxed by Rome.  Pliny invaded Bithynia in order to restore the animal sacrifices by torturing and killing the followers of Jesus.

1.  The Letter of Pliny the Younger, imperial governor of the Bithynia-Pontus area in northwestern Asia Minor to the Roman emperor, Trajan, dated 112, c.e. Pliny informs Trajan that through torture and execution he has successfully suppressed the vegetarian Christians who had persuaded the local population of Bithynia not to eat the corpses of slaughtered animals, and therefore caused financial losses to the meat industry in that region of the Roman Empire.  Who had preached in Bithynia?  The apostle Peter himself.  Pliny reports to Trajan the emperor:

   "I ask them if they are Christians.  If they admit it I repeat the question a second and a third time, threatening capital punishment; if they persist I sentence them to death....(6) others named by the informer first said that they were Christians and then denied it....they all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods and cursed Christ.... (9)....The contagion of this superstition has spread not only in the cities, but in the villages and rural districts as well; yet it seems capable of being checked and set
right. (10) There is no shadow of doubt that the temples, which have been almost deserted, are beginning to be frequented once more, that the sacred rites which have been long neglected are being renewed, and that sacrificial victims are for sale everywhere, whereas, till recently, a buyer was rarely to be found."  Quoted from pp. 3-4,  The Letter of Pliny the Younger (62-113) to Trajan, Emperor of Rome, Christians in Bithynia, dated 112 A.D. c. e. Plin. Epp. X (ad Traj.) xcvi.,  Documents of the Christian Church, Selected and edited by Henry Bettensen. 2nd. Edition. Oxford University Press London Oxford New York, 1967.

 "Persecution under Decius, 249-251. A libellus (certificate of sacrifice) discovered at Fayoum (Egypt) 1893; Milligan, Greek Papyri, 48.

[The Edict of Decius, 250, commanded provincial governors and magistrates, assisted where necessary by local notables, to superintend the sacrifices to the gods and to the genius of the Emperor, to be performed by all on a fixed day.  Many recanted; others bought certificates or had them procured by pagan friends.  There seems to have been wholesale connivance by the officials.]

TO THE COMMISSIONERS FOR SACRIFICES IN THE VILLAGE OF ALEXANDER'S ISLAND, FROM AURELIUS DIOGENES, SON OF SATABUS, OF THE VILLAGE OF ALEXANDER'S ISLAND, AGED 72; SCAR ON RIGHT EYEBROW.

I have always sacrificed to the gods, and now in your presence, in accordance with the terms of the edict, I have done sacrifice and poured libations and tasted the sacrifices, and I request you to certify to this effect. Farewell.

I CERTIFY THAT I WITNESSED HIS SACRIFICE, AURELIUS SYRUS.

Dated this first year of the Emperor Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanes Decius, Pius, Felix, Augustus, the 2nd of Epiph. (26 June, 250)

Quoted from p. 13, Documents of the Christian Church, Bettenson.

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, IX. x. 8. "...It was enacted by their majesties Diocletian and Maximian that the meetings of Christians should be abolished....VII, ii. 4. March 303....Imperial edicts were published everywhere ordering that the churches be razed to the ground, that the Scriptures be destroyed by fire (emphasis mine) that those holding office be deposed and they of the household be deprived of freedom, if they persisted in the profession of Christianity.  This was the first edict against us.  But not long after other decrees were issued, which enjoined that the rulers of the churches in every place be first imprisoned, and thereafter every means be used to compel them to sacrifice."  P. 14, Ibid.

Adolph Harnack says:
 
    "See on this point the statement of Origen's pupil Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria (in Euseb. H.E., vii. 10. 4) for the reason why the Valerian persecution broke out.  Here pagan and Christian exorcisers opposed each other.  Of the latter, Dionysius says: "There are and were among them many persons whose very presence and look, though they merely breathed and spoke, were able to scatter the delusive counsels of the sinful demons."  Local persecution of Christians elsewhere, and indeed the great persecution under Diocletian, arose in this way, pagan priests affirming that the presence of Christians who attended the sacrifices hindered their saving influence."  Page 144, footnote 2, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity (In the First Three Centuries), Adolph Harnack, published by Williams and Norgate, London. Vol. 1 of the 1908 edition, translated and edited by James Moffat.
 
Eusebius, De martyribus Palaestinae, iii, 2. "April 304....Imperial edicts were issued, in which, by a general decree, it was ordered that all the people without exception should sacrifice in the several cities and offer libations to the idols." Ibid.

308 Eusebius. De. m. P. ix. 2.  "Therefore a host of letters from Maximin was issued everywhere throughout every province.  The governor, and also the military commander, by edicts, letters and public ordinances pressed the magistrates, generals and notaries to implement the imperial decree which ordered that the idol's ruins be rebuilt with all speed; that all without exception--men, women, slaves and children, even infants in arms--should sacrifice and offer oblations....Pp. 14-15, Ibid.

311. Eusebius VIII. xiv. 9.  "Maximin...ordered temples to be erected in every city, and the sacred groves to be speedily restored, which had fallen into ruin through lapse of time.  He set idol-priests in every place and city, and over them he appointed in each province a high priest, one of the officials who had specially distinguished himself in all kinds of service, giving him a body of troops and a personal guard...."

l.  Edict of Toleration, 311.  Lactantius, De mort. pers. XXXIV.

"Among our other regulations to promote the lasting good of the community we have hitherto endeavoured to restore a universal conformity to the ancient institutions and public order of the Romans; and in particular it has been our aim to bring back to a right disposition the Christians who had abandoned the religion of their fathers...." (The Romans got along well enough with the orthodox Jews, the "fathers" of the Christians, for orthodox Jews were carnivorous and sacrificed animals, and were elitist, and slave-holders, as were the Romans.  Comment mine.)

Edict of Toleration.

"3. After the publication of our edict ordering the Christians to conform to the ancient institutions, many of them were brought to order through fear, while many were exposed to danger.  4. Nevertheless, since many still persist in their opinions, and since we have observed that they now neither show due reverence to the gods nor worship their own God (i.e. the "god" of orthodox Judaism affirming carnivorism and elitism--my commentary), we therefore, with our wonted clemency in extending pardon to all, are pleased to grant indulgence to these men, allowing Christians the right to exist again and to set up their places of worship; provided they do not offend against public order. (Emphasis mine).

  I purposely juxtapose the following selection from Eusebius' Life of Constantine, 3.64-66, which demonstrates that the origins of Christian orthodoxy contained the same "no tolerance" attitude which existed during the middle ages and which exists today towards Shamanic people and toward non-Christian populations throughout the world.

   64.  "Constantine the Great, Conqueror, Augustus, to the heretics.

Recognize now through this legislation, O Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites... and you who are called Cataphrygians, and, in general, all you who set out heresies in full form through your private assemblies, with how many lies your vanity has been interwoven, how your teaching is held together with certain poisonous drugs, so that through you the healthy are made sick and the living are reduced to perpetual death.  O enemies of the truth, and adversaries of the life, and counsellors of destruction, for with you all things are contrary to the truth, and in harmony with shamefully wicked things....

   65. Since, therefore, we cannot further bear this destructiveness of your abomination, we make public proclamation by this law that no one of you should henceforth dare to assemble.  On This account we have ordered that you be deprived of all your houses in which you hold these assemblies.  This attention extends not only to the assemblies of your foolish superstition gathering in a public place, but in a private house or any private places.  But the better way is for as many of you as care about true and pure religion to enter the Catholic Church and share in its holiness, through which you can attain the truth.  But let the deceit of your distorted teaching be totally removed from the good fortune of our times; what I mean is the accursed and pernicious discord of heretics and schismatics....And that there might be the power necessary to effect this cure, we have ordered, as has already been said, that all the assemblies of your superstition, I mean the houses of prayer of all the heretics, if indeed it is fitting to call them houses of prayer, having been taken from you incontrovertibly, be delivered to the Catholic Church without any delay, and that all the remaining places be held to be state property, and that no provision for assembling be left you for the future, that from this day your lawless assemblies may not dare gather in any place public or private.  Let it be published."

   66.  In this way the secret gatherings of the heterodox were destroyed by royal decree, and the beasts, the leaders of their impiety, were driven out. Some who had been deceived by them, because they feared the emperor's threat, slipped into the Church with a spurious intention, concealing their thoughts at the time.  Since the law also commanded that the books of the men be searched out (emphasis mine), those pursuing the forbidden evil arts were caught.  Fourth century, c.e.
 

Codex Theodosianus 16.5.34.
 
         The same Augustuses to Eutychianus, Praetorian Prefect.

  "Let the clerics of the superstition of Eunomius or of Montanus be expelled from the fellowship or frequentation of all municipalities and cities.  If perhaps those who live in the country are proven either to assemble the population or to participate in any assemblies, let them be banished forever.

Let the administrator of the property suffer the supreme penalty [death], and let the owner be deprived of the property in which, with his knowledge and compliance, these unpropitious and condemned meetings are proven to have been held.  If, indeed, after this order has been formally published, they are discovered in any city, or are proven to have entered any house for the purpose of celebrating their superstition, their goods shall be confiscated, they themselves shall suffer the supreme penalty, and the house they have entered in the manner mentioned shall be attached to the imperial treasury without delay, unless the lord or lady of the house immediately expelled and reported them.

[Commentary: The earliest scriptures about Jesus were called the Ebionite Gospel and even a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, Epiphanius, though critical, nonetheless describes Jesus, John the Baptist, James, and Jesus' other close disciples in the Ebionite Gospel as vegetarians denouncing the animal sacrifices, and as affirming that the Pentateuch was written by false scribes.  For this reason we understand why the Romans desired to destroy the scriptures of the charismatic Christians.

1. We command that the books indeed which contain the teaching and materials of all their crimes be sought out immediately and produced with extreme keenness and obvious authority. They are to be burned immediately under the supervision of the judges.  If, by chance, someone is convicted of having hidden any of these books under whatever pretext or deceit, and of having failed to bring them forward, let him know that he will suffer capital punishment as a retainer of harmful books and as guilty of the crime of sorcery. (Emphasis mine)

 Given on the sixteenth day before the kalends of June at Milan in the year of the consulship of the Most Noble Theodorus.---May 17, 399."