and fastened to the stake, while the executioners expected the definitive order from the emperor then present, (Galerius most probably) he asked cheerfully, Where is the fire for me? Cæsar, provoked at his boldness, ordered his tongue to be cut out. He put out his tongue with great readiness. After this punishment he was thrown into prison, and suffered there a considerable time. His feet were exposed to an unnatural distention, and in the end he was dismissed out of life by strangling. This happened during the first year of the persecution, while it raged only against the governors of the church.

In the second year, when the persecution grew hotter, Imperial letters were sent into Palestine, commanding all men, without exception, to sacrifice. At Gaza, Timotheus, after many sufferings, was consumed by a slow fire; Agapius and Thecla. were condemned to the wild beasts. At this time, when many apostatized to save their lives, there wanted not also some instances of an excessive forwardness. Six persons at Cæsarea, with their hands bound, ran to Urbanus the Judge, and offered themselves for martyrdom. They suffered in conjunction with two others, whose spirit and circumstances in the manner of their departure out of life, were more conformable to the rules of the Gospel.

Power being now communicated to the governors of the different provinces to punish the Christians freely, each exercised it, as his particular temper dictated. Some, for fear of displeasing, did even more than they were ordered. Some felt the impulse of their own enmity against godliness; others indulged a natural savageness of disposition: there were who saw, that to shed blood profusely, was the high road to preferment. There were those, (and Lactantius* looks on them as of the worst sort), who determined to torment, and not to kill.

* B. V. C. 11.

Such

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IV.

CHAP,

I.

persons studied those arts of torture, which might keep life still in being amidst the keenest sensations of pain. Eusebius tells us, that he himself heard some of this sort boasting, that their administration was not polluted with blood, and that he saw a Bithynian governor exulting, as if he had subdued a nation of Barbarians, because one person, after two years resistance, had yielded to the force of torments. Much pains were taken also with the tortured, to recover them, that they might be strengthened to endure new punishments. A considerable part of Roman jurisprudence was now employed on this subject. The constitutions of the law on this head had been published and commented on by the famous lawyer Ulpian, and were considered as serious objects of study by civilians.

At no time since the beginning of Christianity, was so systematical and so laboured an effort made to extinguish the Gospel of Christ. Satan had great wrath, as if he had foreseen that he should have but short time; and when we consider how poorly provided the Church was for this fiercest of all the invasions she had ever met with, we shall see cause to admire the grace of God, who yet furnished out a noble army of martyrs in a time of so great Evangelical declension; and in the end, more effectually than ever, baffled the designs of Satan.

In addition to other methods of persecution, the powers of genius and the arts of eloquence were introduced. Cyprian alone of the Latin writers was capable of pleasing the taste of the learned among the Pagans. A certain person of taste among them was heard by Lactantius, to call him Coprianus*, because he employed an elegant genius, adapted to better things, in the support of old wives' fables. In so contemptible a light did the Gospel appear to

* Lactan. B. V. 1, 2, the allusion is to xopía, dung.

the learned of that day, even when clothed in the dress of the eloquent Cyprian! but how much more contemptible in the hands of the generality of Christian teachers, who were destitute of the powers of argument and of language.

Encouraged by the favour of the emperors, and the apparently ruined state of Christendom, at the very time when the persecution raged in Bithynia, two writers appeared who insulted the Christians. One, whose name Lactantius does not give us, was a philosopher, and like many preachers of morality in all ages, a defender of virtue, and a practitioner of vice, a flatterer of the court, very rich, and very corrupt, one who condemned his own practice by his moral writings, and who dealt largely in the praises of the emperors, on account of their great piety in supporting the religion of the gods. Yet all men condemned his meanness in choosing that time particularly to write against Christians, nor did he obtain the favour at court which he expected.

The other writer, Hierocles, was doubtless a man of parts and talents. He was a virulent enemy of the Gospel, had great influence in promoting the persecution; and from being a judge in Nicomedia was promoted to the government of Alexandria. He attempted to compare the feigned miracles of Apollonius Tyanæus with those of Jesus Christ. This man wrote with an air of candour and humanity to the Christians, while his actions against them were fierce and bloody.

In France alone, and its neighbourhood, the people of God found some shelter. Yet was the mild Constantius, to save appearances with his superior Maximian, induced to persecute, not only by destroying the temples, as was mentioned, but also by dismissing those of his own household who would not renounce Christianity. The Christians of his family were tried by such means. But the event was contrary to their expectations. Constantius

CENT.

IV.

CHAP. retained the faithful, and dismissed the apostates, judging that those who were unfaithful to their God would also be disloyal to their prince.

At Cirta in Numidia, Paul, the bishop, ordered a sub-deacon to deliver up the treasures of the church to a Roman officer. The Holy Scriptures and the moveables of this society of Christians were surrendered by the perfidy or cowardice of those who ought to have protected them. But God reserved some, who were endowed with courage and zeal, at the hazard of their lives, to take care of the sacred writings, and baffle the intention of the persecutors, which doubtless was to destroy all records of Christianity among men. Felix of Tibiura, in Africa, being asked to deliver up the Scriptures, answered, I have them, but will not part with them. He was condemned to be beheaded. "I thank thee, O Lord," says this honest martyr, "that I have lived fifty-six years, have kept my virginity, have preserved the Gospel, and have preached faith and truth. O my Lord Jesus Christ, the God of heaven and earth, I bow my head to be sacrificed to thee, who livest to all eternity." I judge it not amiss to distinguish this man in the narrative. The preservation of civil liberty is valuable, and the names of men who have suffered for it with integrity are recorded with honour. But how much below the name of Felix of Tibiura should these be accounted! He is one of those heroes who have preserved to us the precious word of God itself. In Abitina, in Africa, forty-nine manfully perished through hunger and ill treatment. In Sicily*, Euplius a martyr being asked, Why do you keep the Scriptures, forbidden by the emperors?" answered, "Because I am a Christian. Life eternal is in them; he that gives them up loses life eternal." Let his name be remembered with honour, together with that of Felix. He suffered also in the same cause. Various

* Acta Sincera. Fleury.

martyrs suffered in Italy. For Maximian was to the full as much disposed to persecute as Dioclesian.

CENT.

IV.

of Diocle

In the year 304 or 305, a civil change took place in the empire, which paved the way for very important changes in the Church, though the persecution continued still for some time. Dioclesian resigned the Resignation empire, and Maximian followed his example, though sian. with no great cordiality. They were succeeded by Galerius in the East, (who ruled in the room of 304 or 305. Dioclesian, and put Maximin his nephew, in his own place,) and in the West by Constantius.

Maximin inherited the savageness and the prejudices of his uncle; and in Palestine and in the more eastern parts, over which Galerius had ruled, he still continued the horrors of the persecution. Let us now attend to the remaining part of Eusebius's account of the martyrs of Palestine, who suffered under the authority of this tyrant at different times.

A. D.

Apphian, a young person under twenty, who had Martyrdom received a very polite education at Berytus, and could of Apphian. not bear to live with his father and relations at Pagæ in Lycia, because of their aversion to the Gospel, left all his secular emoluments and hopes for the love of Christ, and came to Cæsarea; where he was so transported with zeal as to run up to Urbanus the governor, then making a libation, to seize him by the right hand, to stop his religious employment, and exhort him to forsake idolatry, and turn to the true God. The consequence was, what might be expected in the natural course of things. He was arrested, ordered to sacrifice; and, after he had sustained most dreadful tortures by fire and otherwise, which Eusebius* describes with an exactness of detial that needs not be repeated, he was thrown into the sea. His imprudence was great, and his zeal very irregular and extravagant; but who will not admire the sincerity of that love of Christ, which

* C. IV.