One of my ‘favorite’ stories of Christian persecutions in the Roman Empire is an account of a Roman magistrate pleading with a Christian defendant to just make the damn sacrifice. Goes and says “Please make it, you don’t have to believe in it, if not for your life, to spare your family the grief of you dying” to “I am forcing you. This is coercion. Therefore, this isn’t on your soul. Please, just make the sacrifice” and finally “I will literally move your hands for you. None of this has to be on you. You will not be making this ritual in the eyes of any god, just fulfilling the law’s need. Just let me do that, and you can go free”, and every time the Christian refuses.

When insistent ritualism meets unyielding belief.

Another ‘favorite’ is of a man who was executed for ‘obstinacy’ (the usual charge towards non-citizen Christians who refused to make the proper sacrifices), only for the magistrate to have a whole bunch of Christians show up at his house a few days later proclaiming themselves and begging to be martyred as well. Frustrated, the magistrate tells them that if they want to die so badly, they can go home and kill themselves instead, and stop bothering him.