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And yet true Christians, having already seen civil rulers of varying immorality, were not wringing their hands as to who the next one will be to restore Rome to its former glory.

1. Caligula: 37 – 41 AD. He is called a bad emperor main because of reports that he killed at whim and financed himself with legalised looting... [His] horse, Incitatus, lived in a marble stable, and Caligula may have made him a consul. From AD 40 he started to present himself as a god, while his palace was described as a brothel.

2. Nero: 54 – 68 AD. As with all emperors, the horror stories may be the work of his enemies, but Nero has many to his name. He killed his mother so that he could remarry, by divorcing and then executing his first wife. His second wife he kicked to death. His third marriage was to a freed slave, whom he had castrated, calling him by his second wife’s name.

3. Commodus: 180 – 192 AD. The nicest thing said of Commodus was that he was not evil, but so stupid that he allowed wicked friends to take control of his reign. He wasn’t short of ego though. He portrayed himself as Hercules, the mythical Greek hero, in countless statues.

4. Caracalla: 198 – 217 AD. Ascending to power alongside his brother, Caracalla decided he couldn’t share and had his sibling rival killed, his followers slaughtered and his memory officially erased from history by the Senate...A theatrical satire of his excesses staged in Alexandria got under his skin. He took his army to the city and slaughtered the leading citizens before letting his troops off the leash for days of looting that left 20,000 dead.

5. Maximinus Thrax: 235 to 238 AD. Maximinus exhausted his empire with war....Because his predecessor had favoured Christians, Maximinus had all church leaders killed. When the senate backed a revolt against him, he sought to bring his constant war home to Rome. His enemies stood up to him and the siege was the final straw for his troops who killed him. - https://www.historyhit.com/worst-roman-emperors/

Meanwhile, just imagine all the books today's authors would write During Gordian III's reign ( 20 January 225 – c. February 244) in which "there were severe earthquakes, so severe that cities fell into the ground along with their inhabitants."[23] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_III

Later, after a succession of many emperors, most all of very brief reigns, under Diocletian (20 November 284 – 1 May 305) there was the severe The Diocletianic Persecution (303–312).

Christians had been subject to intermittent local discrimination in the empire, but emperors prior to Diocletian were reluctant to issue general laws against the religious group. In the 250s, under the reigns of Decius and Valerian, Roman subjects including Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods or face imprisonment and execution, but there is no evidence that these edicts were specifically intended to attack Christianity.[2] After Gallienus's accession in 260, these laws went into abeyance. Diocletian's assumption of power in 284 did not mark an immediate reversal of imperial inattention to Christianity, but it did herald a gradual shift in official attitudes toward religious minorities. In the first fifteen years of his rule, Diocletian purged the army of Christians, condemned Manicheans to death, and surrounded himself with public opponents of Christianity.

In the winter of 302, Galerius urged Diocletian to begin a general persecution of the Christians. Diocletian was wary and asked the oracle at Didyma for guidance. The oracle's reply was read as an endorsement of Galerius's position, and a general persecution was called on February 23, 303. Persecutory policies varied in intensity across the empire. Whereas Galerius and Diocletian were avid persecutors, Constantius was unenthusiastic. Later persecutory edicts, including the calls for universal sacrifice, were not applied in his domain. His son, Constantine, on taking the imperial office in 306, restored Christians to full legal equality and returned property that had been confiscated during the persecution. In Italy in 306, the usurper Maxentius ousted Maximian's successor Severus, promising full religious toleration. Galerius ended the persecution in the East in 311, but it was resumed in Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor by his successor, Maximinus. Constantine and Licinius, Severus's successor, signed the Edict of Milan in 313, which offered a more comprehensive acceptance of Christianity than Galerius's edict had provided. Licinius ousted Maximinus in 313, bringing an end to persecution in the East.

The persecution failed to check the rise of the Church. By 324, Constantine was sole ruler of the empire, and Christianity had become his favored religion. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution

Which answered prayer was also a test, which resulted in an already adulterated became increasingly Romanized. Including Further deformation of the church what was seen under Damasus 1 (366-384) who is reported to have begun his reign by employing a gang of thugs in seeking to secure his chair, which carried out a three-day massacre of his rivals supporters. Yet true to form, Rome made him a "saint."

• Upon Pope Liberius's death September 24 A.D. 366, violent disorders broke out over the choice of a successor. A group who had remained consistently loyal to Liberius immediately elected his deacon Ursinus in the Julian basilica and had him consecrated Bishop, but the rival faction of Felix's adherence elected Damasus, who did not hesitate to consolidate his claim by hiring a gang of thugs, storming the Julian Basilica in carrying out a three-day massacre of the Ursinians.

On Sunday, October 1 his partisans seized the Lateran Basilica, and he was there consecrated. He then sought the help of the city prefect (the first occasion of a Pope in enlisting the civil power against his adversaries), and he promptly expelled Ursinus and his followers from Rome. Mob violence continued until October 26, when Damasus's men attacked the Liberian Basilica, where the Ursinians had sought refuge; the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus reports that they left 137 dead on the field. Damasus was now secure on his throne; but the bishops of Italy were shocked by the reports they received, and his moral authority was weakened for several years....

Damasus was indefatigable in promoting the Roman primacy, frequently referring to Rome as 'the apostolic see' and ruling that the test of a creed's orthodoxy was its endorsement by the Pope.... This [false claim to] succession gave him a unique [presumptuous claim to] judicial power to bind and loose, and the assurance of this infused all his rulings on church discipline. — Kelly, J. N. D. (1989). The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 32,34

Another ancient narrative of events, the "Gesta" (dated to 368 A.D.), provides more detail.... (The First Pontiff: Pope Damasus I and the Expansion of the Roman Primacy , pp. 15,33-34)

You disgrace all the Christian martyrs! So many thousands died rather than pray to a false God, yet you write through your very hands that without a sound, without a protest he perverted the Church of Christ.

If Constantine introduced anything alien to the Church, where were the martyrs? Why were they utterly silent about Constantine’s alleged “innovations,” whereas there was bloodshed over Damasus?

Damasus DID face accusations that he supported the violent thugs... by Arians who shared Protestantism’s rejection of the Church, but also rejected the entirety of the Old Testament bible, which they replaced by diabolical nonsense.

But if the accusations were true and Damasus was no evil (he was never proclaimed a saint, but rather was recognized as a saint by popular acclamation), what of it? The Church never claimed popes couldn’t be evil people. The relavance of Damasus is this: Did he promote heresy or truth?

The truth that Damasus was acclaimed as a saint for promoting was that Arius was wrong;

that the the Old Testament is legitimately part of the sacred Scripture;

that Jesus’ divine origin did not mean that he lacked a human intellect;

that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity;

that Jesus was not born solely of Mary, but was conceived by the Holy Spirit;

that there were not two persons of Jesus, one of which was divine, and the other of which died on the cross;

that the Word is not separate from the Father, and will not have an end;

that the Son was begotten of the Father, that is, of the divine substance of Him Himself, that He is true God just as His Father is true God and He is all-powerful and omniscient and equal to the Father.

that those who say because He was established in the flesh when He was on earth, He was not in heaven with the Father are heretics.

that He sits at the right hand of the Father, in the flesh, in which He will come to judge the living and the dead.

that if anyone does not say that the Holy Spirit, just as the Son, is truly and properly of the Father, of divine substance, and is true God, he is a heretic.

that the Holy Spirit can do all things and knows all things and is everywhere just as the Son and the Father.

that If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a creature, or was made by the Son, he is a heretic.

that the Father made all things through the Son and His Holy Spirit, that is, the visible and the invisible.

that there is one divinity of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, one sovereignty, one majesty, one power, one glory, one dominion, one kingdom, and one will and truth.

Perhaps popular acclaim was wrong to suppose that such a powerful defender and articulator of the true Christian faith was innocent of the charges leveled against him by the Arians and again in modern times. Perhaps popular acclaim was wrong to presume that had he been guilty, he would not have been able to lead the bishops to consensus on so many contentious theological matters.

But know this: Damasus was held in such high regard among Protestant reformers that they did not dare allege that Damasus’ canon was wrong to include the deuterocanonicals (confusingly called “apocrypha” by Protestants, although this name was used to describe dozens of books clearly not in the canon). Rather, they alleged that someone must have appended them without proper cause to Damasus’ proclaimation.