Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have 
 no hurt ; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. 
 
 DANIEL in. verse 26.
 
 MARTYROLOGIA; 
 
 RECORDS OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION 
 
 A NEW AND COMPREHENSIVE 
 
 BOOK OF MARTYRS, 
 
 OP ANCIENT AND MODEttN TIMES. 
 
 COMPILE!) PARTLY PROM 
 
 THE ACTS AND MONUMENTS OF JOHN FOXE, 
 
 AND PARTLY FROM OTHER 
 
 GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS, 
 
 PRINTED AND IN MANUSCRIPT. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN MASON, 14, CITY-ROAD ; 
 
 SOLD AT 66, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 
 1848.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 1'RINTEP BY JAMKS NICHOLS, 
 HOXTON-SQUAR
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 OZI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 AT a period like the present, when "the Man of Sin" is 
 rallying his energies in order to renew his tarnished glory, and 
 his almost forgotten power ; when monastic institutions are in 
 various parts of Great Britain rearing their heads, and nume- 
 rous indefatigable efforts made to gain proselytes from among 
 the uneducated masses of the community; when members of 
 the Imperial Parliament are standing forward as the avowed 
 champions of the Papacy, having apostatized from the religion 
 of their fathers, and sought refuge in the Church of Rome; 
 when individuals connected with the ecclesiastical hierarchy of 
 England have not only avowed friendship, and positive attach- 
 ment, to the damnable errors of the Papacy, but have either 
 openly, and without hesitation, renounced Protestantism and 
 served at Popish altars, or maintained a cowardly and traitorous 
 connexion with the English Reformed Church; and when, 
 even while we are writing, a measure is undergoing discussion 
 in the Senate, on the expediency of establishing diplomatic 
 relations with the Court of Rome ; it will scarcely be thought 
 unseasonable or improper to call the attention of the Protestant 
 public to the means by which the Church of Rome acquired 
 her extraordinary power, and also to the spirit with which 
 that power has been exercised. 
 
 In the "Records of Religious Persecution" which are now 
 presented to the public, great care has been taken, in order that 
 the volumes shall be adapted to the present condition of the 
 religious world, and that due regard shall be paid to the accuracy 
 of the statements which may be made, and to the authorities 
 which may be adduced; the whole being intended to furnish 
 those who do not possess the entire work of John Foxe with a 
 portable and carefully-prepared book of martyrs, on which our 
 readers may rely with confidence. 
 
 Considerable use has been made of " John Foxe," and pro- 
 perly so ; because no book, with the exception of the Pilgrim's 
 Progress of John Bunyan, has been so deservedly popular and 
 so extensively read. The scenes which Foxe so graphically 
 
 a 2
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 depicts, the tragedies he records, very often from personal know- 
 ledge ; the names of the holy men who fell victims ; the truths 
 taught at the stake ; and the Bibles they endeavoured to bury 
 in the martyrs' grave ; are all fitted to arouse bygone reminis- 
 cences, which may lead us to bless and praise the Most High, 
 who gave our forefathers grace to labour, and to us the privilege 
 of entering into their labours. The veracity and faithfulness 
 of Foxe stand unimpeached and unimpeachable. " The volumes 
 of this writer are the faithful registers of the awful deeds of 
 the Church of Rome, the transcripts of those dreadful principles 
 which have made every country in which they have obtained the 
 ascendancy, from the wilds of the Arab to the steppes of the 
 Cossack, a very Aceldama." Since his records came to occupy 
 a large share of patronage and popularity, objections have been 
 urged, not only from Papal sources, but from professed Protest- 
 ants. One of the most bitter Papal opponents of Foxe was the 
 wily Harding. The following are some of the chaste and indi- 
 genous terms in which this Jesuit speaks of the Martyrologist : 
 " There have not so many thousands of your brethren been 
 burned for heresy in these last twenty years as ye pretend ; and 
 this is the chief argument ye make in all that huge dunghill of 
 your stinking martyrs, which ye have entitled ( Acts and Monu- 
 ments/ " To this Bishop Jewel makes the following free and 
 faithful reply : " Ye have imprisoned your brethren ; ye have 
 stripped them naked ; ye have scourged them with rods ; ye 
 have burned their hands and arms with flaming torches; ye 
 have famished them; ye have drowned them; ye have sum- 
 moned them, being dead, to appear before you ; ye have taken 
 up their buried carcases and burned them; ye have thrown 
 them out unto the dunghill ; ye took a poor babe, newly born, 
 and, in a most cruel and barbarous manner, threw him into the 
 fire. All these things are true, they are no lies. The eyes and 
 consciences of thousands can witness to your doings. Ye slew 
 your brethren so cruelly, not for murder, or robbery, or any 
 other grievous crime they had committed, BUT ONLY THAT THEY 
 TRUSTED IN THE LIVING GOD. The worst word that proceeded 
 from their lips was, ' O Lord, forgive them ; they know not what 
 they do : Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ! ' In the mean while 
 ye stood by and delighted your eyes with the sight. Oh ! Mr. 
 Harding, your conscience knoweth these to be no lies ; they are 
 written in the eyes and hearts of many thousands. These be 
 the marks of your religion. Oh ! what reckoning will ye yield, 
 when so much innocent blood will be required at your hands ! "
 
 I'KKFACE. 
 
 Milner, a zealous and subtle Romanist, in his work entitled, 
 " The End of Controversy," declares that Cranmer and others 
 of the Protestants were consigned to the flames because they 
 had been guilty of high treason. Foxe is a liar, and not to be 
 believed even when he speaks the truth. "All this," says a 
 modern writer, " may be exceedingly convenient to the cham- 
 pions of the Papal hierarchy; but they know well that the 
 martyrs in the days of Queen Mary, who, Lingard, the Romish 
 historian, says, e was one of the best of the English Princesses/ 
 suffered not for infringements of civil law, but for the mainte- 
 nance of Gospel truth. The policy of the Jesuits is always to 
 filiate on Protestants the very crimes of which they themselves 
 are guilty. Milner and Lingard show how well they have stu- 
 died in the school of Ignatius Loyola. The Protestants burned 
 in the days of Queen Mary, were burned, as legal and civil 
 documents, still accessible, demonstrate, simply for disclaiming 
 transubstantiation, the supremacy of the Pope, and the assumed 
 right of the Romish Priesthood to debar the laity from reading 
 the sacred Scriptures. But, on the. other hand, the Papists who 
 suffered in the days of Elizabeth were, as the indictments and 
 other authentic records show, executed for high treason, for 
 regicide principles, and for open or disguised, but clearly proved, 
 opposition to the dynasty and sceptre of Elizabeth. A convicted 
 murderer, of un renewed heart, will, of course, naturally impeach 
 Judge, jury, and evidence. The Papacy, however, has not put 
 down the Gospel, which illustrates the glory and the functions 
 of Christ ; and it shall not crush the humbler records, which 
 stamp his true character on the exploits of Antichrist. Neal, a 
 far abler and purer witness than Milner, or Lingard, or Hard- 
 ing, confirms the testimony of Jewel in these words : ' Foxe was 
 a person of indefatigable labour and industry, and an exile for 
 religion in Queen Mary's days ; he spent all his time abroad in 
 compiling The Acts and Monuments, which were first published 
 in Latin, and afterwards, when he returned to his native coun- 
 try, with enlargements. Vast were the pains he took in search- 
 ing records and collecting materials for his work ; and such WAS 
 
 ITS ESTEEM, that IT WAS ORDERED TO BE SET UP IN ALL THE 
 
 PARISH CHURCHES IN ENGLAND/ n " No book," continues 
 the historian of the Puritans, " ever gave such a mortal wound 
 to Popery as this." 
 
 As Foxe's Acts and Monuments will be often referred to in 
 the progress of this work, a brief history of the book itself will 
 not fail to be acceptable to our renders :
 
 YJ PREFACE. 
 
 "As the work commonly called Foxe's Martyrs is generally 
 held in high estimation by that branch of the catholic church 
 which is established in these kingdoms, some account of the 
 various editions of this celebrated work will not, it is hoped, be 
 unacceptable to our readers. The first form, we believe, in 
 which it appeared, at least a small portion, and containing the 
 first book, was under the following title, Commentarii rerum in 
 Ecclesia gestarum, a Wiclefi temporibus usque ad annum M.D. 
 Svo. Argentorati, 1554. 
 
 " We suppose this volume to be very rare, having never seen 
 it, or noticed it in any catalogue. It was followed by a much 
 enlarged volume entitled Rerum in Ecclesia gestarum maxi- 
 marumque per Europam persecutionum ac sanctorum Dei mar- 
 tyrum Commentarii, in folio, Basilece, 1559. 
 
 " This contains four additional books, and ends, if we recollect 
 right, with the examinations of John Philpott. It is, like the 
 preceding, a very rare book. There is a copy in the Bodleian 
 Library, and also in the Cathedral Library, Lichfield. Before 
 we proceed to the English editions we may notice a continuation 
 of Foxe's Latin volume in the same language by Henry Panta- 
 leon. The title is much the same as that which we have given 
 of Foxe's Martyrum historia, pars secunda, fyc., folio, Basilea, 
 1563. This is equally rare with the preceding volume. Panta- 
 leon published many other works, but most of them are easily 
 to be met with, compared with the present. A great portion 
 of the contents has been introduced into the later editions of the 
 Acts and Monuments. 
 
 " It will appear from the titles of the preceding editions, that 
 they were printed at Basle, where the author was residing in 
 exile, and where he ' was received/ says Strype, ' by the accu- 
 rate and learned printer Oporinus, for the corrector of his press/ 
 ' While he was here employed by Oporinus, at spare hours he 
 began his history of the Acts of the Church, in Latin ; which he 
 drew out more briefly at first ; and, before his return home into 
 England, well near finished. Having here completed the copy, 
 which was but the first part of what he intended, but making 
 just a volume in folio, he sent this work to Basle to be printed; 
 and so it was in the year 155-. It remained many years after 
 in those parts in great request, and was read by foreign nations ; 
 although hardly known at all by our own.' 
 
 " We may now attempt some description of the first English 
 edition of the ' Acts and Monuments ;' and we give the title as 
 furnished in Dr. Dibdin's Ames: ' Acts and Monuments of
 
 1' UK FACE. Vil 
 
 tlsi'sr latter tuul pcrillous dayes touching matters of the church, 
 wherein are comprehended said described the great persecutions, 
 mid horrible troubles, that have been wrought and practised by 
 the llomishc Prelates, especiallye in this realme of England 
 and Seotlande, from the year of our Lorde a thousande, uuto 
 the tyme nowc present. Gathered and collected according to 
 the true copies and wry tinges certificatorie, as wel of the parties 
 themselves that suffered, as also out of the Bishop's registers, 
 which were the doers thereof, by John Foxe/ folio, London, 1562, 
 from the press of John Day. 
 
 " Of this, one of the rarest volumes in English literature, the 
 date does not seem to be well ascertained. Dr. Dibdin thinks 
 it may be 1563, and Strype, from whom we shall make a liberal 
 extract, has ranged it under the year 1561. 'About this year/ 
 says he, ' did the laborious John Foxe set forth the first edition 
 in English of his great book of Acts and Monuments, in one thick 
 volume. Wherein he hath done such exquisite service to the 
 Protestant cause, in shewing from abundance of ancient books, 
 records, registers, and choice MSS. the encroachments of Popes 
 and Papalins, and the stout oppositions, which were made by 
 learned and good men in all ages and in all countries against 
 them ; and especially under King Henry and Queen Mary here 
 in England ; preserving to us the memories of those holy men 
 and women, those Bishops and Divines, together with their 
 histories, acts, sufferings, and their constant deaths, willingly 
 undergone for the sake of Christ and his Gospel, and for refus- 
 ing to comply with Popish doctrines and superstitions. The 
 design of writing this history was first set on foot among the 
 exiles abroad in Queen Mary's hard days ; and many of them 
 were concerned in it, to supply Foxe with matter from England. 
 The chief of these was Grindal, afterwards Bishop of London. 
 From him Foxe had the history of the holy John Bradford, and 
 the letters writ by him in prison, besides many other things. It 
 was agreed upon by them, that this history of those days should 
 be written both in Latin and English, and printed, the former 
 for the use of strangers, and the latter for the use of our own 
 country. And so it was. And first it was printed beyond sea 
 in Latin ; the; overseeing and finishing of which edition detained 
 the author some while abroad, after the entrance of Queen 
 Elizabeth upon her Government. 
 
 "'Great was the expectation of the book here in England 
 bc-lbrc it came abroad. The Papists then called it scurrilously 
 Foxe's Gofden Legend. AVhen it first appeared, there was extra-
 
 v iii PREFACE. 
 
 ordinary fretting and fuming at it through all quarters of Eng- 
 land, even to Lovain. They charged it with lies, and that there 
 was much falsehood in it. But, indeed, they said this, because 
 they were afraid it should betray their cruelty and their lies, as 
 the* author speaks in the epistle before his book. The Kalendar 
 standing before his said book, which he made on purpose to set 
 down the names of all that suffered for pure religion in those 
 evil days, gave the Papists great offence, taking it in that sense 
 as though he had cast out of the Kalendar the antient saints, 
 and in their places put new ones. But he said for himself, that 
 he composed this Kalendar only for an Index, designing the 
 month and year of each martyr. Yet, as he added, that if the 
 cause, and not the punishment made a martyr, he judged one 
 Cranmer to be preferable to six hundred Beckets of Canterbury; 
 and that there was in Nicholas Ridley what might be compared 
 with any that went by the name of St. Nicholas. 
 
 " ' Parsons also in his book of the Three Conversions of Eng- 
 land chargeth him with sporting of the Bishops registers and 
 ancient records. Which he spake without any assured ground, 
 more than his own uncharitable guess. He pretended that he 
 could have found abundant matter to have confuted Foxe out of 
 the records he used, had not he and his fellows made away, and 
 defaced the said records ; which were to be found before him in 
 the registers of every bishopric and cathedral church ; but now 
 no more, as we presume. Which last words, as we presume, do 
 plainly let us know, that what he had severely charged upon him 
 expressly before, depended indeed upon nothing but his own, 
 and his party's mere presumption. Foxe was an indefatigable 
 searcher into old registers, and left them as he found them, after 
 he had made his collections and transcriptions out of them. Many 
 whereof I have seen, and do possess. And it was his interest 
 that they should remain to be seen by posterity. And there- 
 fore we frequently find references thereunto in the margins 
 of his book. Many have diligently compared his books with 
 registers, and council books, and have always found him 
 faithful. 
 
 " ' He dedicated this first edition to Queen Elizabeth ; and 
 another edition, many years after done by him, he also dedicated 
 to her. In this first edition, which is rarely to be met with, are 
 many things, as commissions, instruments, letters, in Latin, and 
 divers other matters, which are left out in the after-editions for 
 brevity sake, there being such store of other things coming to 
 light to be inserted.'
 
 I'llKFACE. IX 
 
 " We hope the length of this extract may be excused for the 
 sake of the subject ; it might have been much extended. 
 
 " The second edition of Foxe was published by the same 
 printer, John Day, in two volumes, folio, 1570. The first volume 
 contains 922 pages, besides prefixes and affixes ; and the second, 
 beginning on p. 923, ends on p. 2302. Then follows ' A diligent 
 index or table of the most notable things in this whole book/ 
 &c. On the back of the last leaf is Day's portrait, and a colo- 
 phon agreeing with the title-pages. This second edition is 
 better methodized, much enlarged, and has more cuts than the 
 former. See Dr. Dibdin's Ames, vol. iv., p. 116. 
 
 " 3. The first volume of Ecclesiastical History the suffering 
 of Martirs, &c., 2 vols., folio, newly recognized and enlarged 
 by the author, J. Foxe, 1576. 
 
 " This is the third edition of the ' Acts and Monuments/ and 
 from the press of the same printer. The pages are 2008, besides 
 epistles, and 13 leaves of index. There are some additions in 
 this edition ' The oration of J. Hales to Queen Elizabeth, cer- 
 tain cautions to the reader, and three articles omitted in their 
 proper place, &c., but both paper and letter are considerably 
 smaller. Mr. Heber possessed a fine copy of this edition, bound 
 in one volume, in its primitive stamped binding/ Dibdin's 
 Ames, iv., 140. 
 
 "4. Acts and Monuments of matters most speciall and memo- 
 rable, happening in the church, with an universall history of the 
 same, wherein is set forth at large the whole race and course of 
 the church, from the primitive age to these latter tymes of ours, 
 with the bloody tymes, horrible troubles, and great persecutions, 
 agaynst the true martyrs of Christ, sought and wrought as well 
 by Heathen Emperours, as nowe lately practised by Romish 
 Prelates, especially in this realme of England and Scotland, 
 newly revised, &c., and now the fourth time agayne published 
 by John Foxe, an. 1583. 
 
 " This edition is also in two volumes ; we have given the title 
 somewhat at length, as Dr. Dibdin's account is rather deficient. 
 There is a grand copy of this fourth edition in the Bodleian 
 library, Oxford. 
 
 "5. Herbert's edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities 
 (vol. ii., p. 1208 9) will furnish some account of the fifth publi 
 cation of this now voluminous work. ' Actes and Monuments 
 of matters happening in the church, &c., now againe, as it was 
 recognized by the author, Maister John Foxe, the fift time 
 newly imprinted anno 1596.' 2 vols. 
 
 VOL. i. b 
 
 '
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 " Herbert gives the date of 1597, to the second volume of this 
 edition ; ' The partners in this impression, with their shares, 
 were as follow, viz., Mr. Harrison, 100 ; Mr. Bishop, 100 ; Mr. 
 Watkins, 200 ; Mr. Wight, 200 ; Mr. Newbery, 100 ; Mr. Col- 
 dock, 100; Mr. Norton, 100; Mr. Ponsonby, 100; Mr. Dewce, 
 100 ; and Mr. Woodcock, 100. At the court holden at Station- 
 ers 3 Hall, April 7, 1595, yt is agreed that P. Short shall finish 
 the impression of the B. of Martyrs from the place where Mr. 
 Denham left for which he is to have after the rate of xviis. vid. 
 for a booke for paper and printinge the paper shal be rated 
 at viis. the ream/ Note m. in Herbert. A copy of this edition 
 is, we believe, in the Duke of Devonshire's library at Chats- 
 worth." * 
 
 * Protestant Journal for 1832, pp. 48 ,51. 
 
 LONDON, 
 March 2d, 1848.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 OF THE PERSECUTIONS RECORDED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SECT. I. ABEL, B.C. 3875 Birth of Cain His Character The Occupation 
 of the Brothers Cause of Difference Nature of the Offerings presented 
 Sacrifices The Contrast Effect upon Cain Who murders his Bro- 
 ther Records of Targums SECT. II. ABRAHAM Moral State of the 
 World at his Birth His early Character The Idolatry of Terah Zabi- 
 ism Rise and Progress of the primitive Idolatry Rabbinical Tradition 
 Terah a Maker of Idols Abraham reproves his Father Is examined 
 and punished by Nimrod 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SECT. I. The Captivity in Egypt Joseph Cause of his Elevation The 
 Famine Visits of Joseph's Brethren to Egypt The Migration of the 
 Patriarch and his Family Goshen Shepherd Kings Death of Jacob 
 and Joseph Cruelty and Oppression of the Egyptians Reasons for this 
 Treatment Superstition of the People Fecundity of the Jews Exter- 
 minating Edict Josephus Birth of Moses Labours of the Hebrews 
 The Pyramids The Exodus Destruction of Pharaoh State Persecu- 
 tion SECT. II. Naboth the Jezreelite Jezreel Patrimonial Inherit- 
 ance Its Nature Regulations thereto Peculiarity of the Hebrew Con- 
 stitution Its Excellency Naboth's Refusal Ahab's Mortification Je- 
 zebel Her Control over Ahab Her murderous Scheme Slaughter of 
 Naboth Elijah Divine Retribution Awful End of Ahab and Jezebel. . 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ELIJAH. State of Religion in Judea when Elijah appeared Appearance of 
 Elijah His Name Conduct of Ahab Images Baal Astarte A 
 Drought threatened How received Prophets ofthe Most High Elijah 
 persecuted Flees to Cherith Afterwards to Zarephath Awful State of 
 the Country His second Visit to Ahab Obadiah Ahab's Interview 
 with the Prophet Elijah's Challenge The Trial Its Success The 
 Destruction of the Priests of Baal Elijah's Conduct vindicated Locke 
 Warburton Ahab's subsequent Interview with Jezebel She threatens 
 the Life of the Prophet He flees into the Wilderness His Despondency 
 and Encouragement His third Interview with Ahab Ahaziah Con- 
 sults Baalzebub Is reproved by the Prophet The King threatens His 
 Servants are slain by Fire from Heaven Eh'jah predicts his Death 
 Remarks on the Death of the Messengers On the Right of punishing 
 Heretics with the Sword Bossuet quoted Rev. Richard Watson 
 
 Schools of the Prophets Elisha Ascension of Elijah , 28 
 
 b 2
 
 x ii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Page. 
 
 SECT. I State of Israel Jehoiada Reign of Joash Its disastrous Circum- 
 stances Athaliah, her profane and profligate Conduct Preservation of 
 Joash His Proclamation Death of Athaliah And of Jehoiada Gene- 
 ral Apostasy Zechariah His Fidelity and Death Awful Retribution- 
 Death of Joash Supposed allusion of our Saviour to this Event The 
 Conjecture confirmed Discrepancy in the Name of the Priest. SECT. 
 II. Isaiah His Birth and Parentage His Sons Burden of his Pro- 
 phecyHis Wife His Costume Which was symbolical Period of his 
 Commission Character of his Ministry U/ziah His Character and war- 
 like Movements General Profligacy of the People Presumption and Pu- 
 nishment of the King Jotham Ahaz His fearful Idolatry And poli- 
 tical Troubles The Faithfulness of Isaiah Early Career of Hezekiah 
 Worship of God restored Manasseh, his idolatrous Conduct Isaiah put 
 to Death Remarks on the Punishment of the Saw. SECT. III. Amon 
 
 Short Reign Josiah Idols destroyed His Death Jehoahaz His 
 
 Idolatry Is exiled by the King of Egypt Jehoiakim Is a gross Idola- 
 ter Experiences severe Judgments Jeremiah Who is placed in the 
 Stocks And threatened with Death Jehoiakim is besieged by Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, and carried captive, with many others, to Babylon Jehoia- 
 kim is restored Persecution of Jeremiah Blasphemy of the King 
 Urijah His Fidelity His Life is threatened He flees into Egypt Is 
 seized and brought back to Jerusalem And is slain Jehoiakim throws 
 off the Assyrian Yoke His miserable Death 48 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SECT. I. JERUSALEM TAKEN. Nebuchadnezzar Agitated State of Jerusalem 
 Perilous Situation of Jeremiah Is thrown into a Dungeon Jerusalem 
 is besieged Distress of the Inhabitants The City taken Zedekiah 
 slain, and the City ruined Lamentations of Jeremiah Bishop Lowth 
 and Dr. South quoted Gedaliah Mizpeh Death of the Prophet. 
 SECT. II. THE CAPTIVITY. Hebrews in Babylon The Treatment of 
 the Captives Character of the King of Babylon Prediction of Isaiah 
 Daniel and his Companions Dangers to which they were exposed 
 Change of their Names Their moral Training Luxury of the Babylo- 
 nian Court Their Preservation from Evil Nebuchadnezzar's first Dream 
 Daniel and others sentenced to Death The former reveals the Dream 
 and its Interpretation Is promoted Nebuchadnezzar's Image Its De- 
 dication Principles developed All commanded to render Worship 
 Description of the Idol The Hebrew Confessors refuse to worship The 
 Consequences of such a Refusal The fiery Furnace The Deliverance of 
 the Jews Nebuchadnezzar's second Dream Its Interpretation Effect 
 of the Dream on Nebuchadnezzar His Death Evil-Merodach His 
 Character Belshazzar His Conduct The mysterious Writing Is ex- 
 plained and fulfilled Darius His Opinion of Daniel Who is accused 
 And thrown into the Den of Lions Mercifully preserved Destruction 
 of his Enemies Death and Character of Daniel 62 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT. Seleucus Philopater Antiochus Epiphanes Ac- 
 cession of the latter to the Throne His versatile and voluptuous Charac- 
 terHis Duplicity Deposes Onias, at the Suggestion of Joshua Who 
 is raised to the Priesthood He introduces the Customs of the Greeks 
 with the Intention of discarding the Religion of the one true God 
 General religious Declension The Temple spoliated Murder of Onias 
 Which Murder is avenged by Antiochus Menelaus in Difficulty- 
 Attempts to carry off the Gold of the Temple, but is frustrated Is uni- 
 versally detested Rumour of the Death of Antiochus, and Rejoicings in 
 Jerusalem on account thereof Massacre in that City The Roman
 
 CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 Government interferes Apollonius Miserable -Condition of Jerusalem 
 Persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Who attempts to eradicate Juda- 
 ismPhilip the Governor of the Province Cruel Martyrdom of Eleazar 
 _ And of Salome and her Sons Rise of Judas Maccabeus Death of 
 Antiochus . ........................................... 94 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 OF THE PERSECUTIONS RECORDED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SECT. I. MASSACRE OF THE INFANTS. Herod the Great, his Character 
 Aretas Phasselus Herod ingratiates himself with Cassius, for whom he 
 procures a Tribute His ambitious Projects viewed with Jealousy Anti- 
 gonus Duplicity of Herod He is alarmed at the Appearance of the 
 " Star " The Wise Men Herod's dark and bloody Project Is deceived 
 by the Magi The Effects of his Rage Silence of Josephus Absurd 
 Notion of Voltaire Remarks of Dr. Lardner Herod's sanguinary Cha- 
 racter His murderous Intentions when on his Death-Bed How frus- 
 trated Confirmation of Matthew's Testimony by Justin Martyr Origen 
 The Toldoth Jeshu Macrobius Remarks. SECT. II. MARTYRDOM 
 OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. Development of the Scheme of Redemption 
 Prediction concerning John His History Zacharias His Unbeh'ef 
 and Punishment Birth of John Events which transpired in early Life 
 His public Appearance Manner of Life The Wildernesses of Judea 
 Prophecy and its Fulfilment The Dispensation of John Character of 
 his Ministry It resembled that of the ancient Prophets Effects of his 
 Ministry Pharisees and Sadducees Their erroneous Expectations of 
 John Causes thereof He reproves the incestuous Herod Is impri- 
 soned The Indignation of his Paramour, Herodias Who resolves to 
 seek his Life The King's Birth-Day Salome Dancing Promises her 
 an unlimited Reward Instructed by her Mother, she demands the Head 
 of John Herod's Hypocrisy respecting the Sacredness of an Oath John 
 is murdered Review of his Career 104 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SECT. I. MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. Elevated Character of a Martyr for 
 Christ State of the Church at this Period Murmuring of the Grecians 
 Cause of it Hellenists Remedy for the Evil complained of Deacons 
 Their Office Agapae Ignatius and Justin Martyr quoted Stephen 
 His Character The Nature of the Discussions in which he engaged with 
 the Jews Various Synagogues in Jerusalem Foreign Jews Libertines 
 Cyrenians Alexandrians Of Cilicia Of Asia Stephen is falsely 
 accused Defends himself before the Council His Vision Its monitory 
 and consoling Character Rage of the Mob Stephen is hurried out of 
 the City and stoned Remarks on his Death The Place of his Martyr- 
 dom His Relics said to be discovered Their supposed miraculous 
 Power Folly of Romanism on this Subject The Power of the Jewish 
 Council considered Dr. Lardner quoted Stoning, a capital Punishment 
 of the Jews Duration of the Persecution which followed the Death of 
 Stephen Saul of Tarsus an active Agent of the Chief Priests His mode 
 of Assault upon the Christians The Gospel spreads Martyrdom of 
 Nicanor and others Comparison between Zechariah and Stephen. 
 SECT. II. MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER His History Charac- 
 ter Called to be an Apostle Tradition of James introducing the Gospel 
 into Spain, noticed His intimacy with our Lord Is cruelly put to 
 Death Career of Herod Agrippa His miserable End 128
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 PERSECUTIONS WHICH TOOK PLACE AFTER THE DEATH OF JAMES 
 THE ELDER, UNTIL THE CLOSE OF THE FIRST CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Paga 
 
 HOSTILITY of the Jews to Christianity Awful Punishments inflicted upon the 
 former Calamities brought upon the Church by the Gentiles The Idea 
 of TEN Persecutions examined Its Absurdity It is built upon Error 
 Augustine quoted Treacherous Testimony of Ecclesiastical Historians 
 Notion that all the Apostles suffered Martyrdom not sustained Hera- 
 cleon, Polycrates, and Tertullian referred to The Origin of this Idea 
 traced Meaning of the Words " Martyr " and " Confessors " Great 
 Honours rendered to them Cyprian quoted Relics of Martyrs Their 
 supposed Value Numerous flagrant Acts of Superstition with regard to 
 them Optatus quoted Anecdote of Lucilla Caecilian The Donatist 
 Schism Augustine on the Subject of Relics Edict of Theodosius the 
 Great Martyrium, what ? Bingham quoted Mabillon on the Abuse of 
 Relics Respect speedily degenerated into Adoration Relics a Source of 
 Wealth to the Church And of Extortion and Knavery in the Clergy 
 Bellarmine appeals to Scripture in Support of Relics The Labours of the 
 Apostles Uncertainty of all Documents respecting them, except those of 
 the New Testament Notices of Christianity in Rome 154 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SECT. I. NERO His Character The Conflagration of the City of Rome 
 The Public charge the Emperor with being the Incendiary Nero accuses 
 the Christians Tacitus quoted Name of Christian Persecutions they 
 endured Cruelties perpetrated Juvenal Martial Suetonius State of 
 Christianity in Rome Christianity and Heathenism are, for the first 
 time, brought into Collision Polytheism A persecuting Spirit may 
 exist when there is no outward Persecution Heathenism intolerant 
 Unacquainted with the Rights of Conscience Cicero quoted Cause of 
 the Persecutions from the Heathens Numerous Efforts to prejudice the 
 People against the Christians The Extent of Nero's Persecution The 
 celebrated Portuguese Inscription Tertullian quoted. SECT. II. MAT- 
 THEW AND MATTHIAS Birth and Parentage of MATTHEW His Occu- 
 pation The Office of Publican noticed Sabinius Why the Office was 
 in bad Repute Zaccheus The Detestation in which the Publicans were 
 held Call of Matthew Bede Travels of the Apostle Socrates quoted 
 
 Eusebius Simeon Metaphrastes Legendary Tales of Nicephorus 
 
 Death of Matthew Dorotheus Heracleon Power of Religion exempli- 
 fied in Matthew Porphyry and Julian Matthew's Character. MAT- 
 THIAS One of the Seventy His Apostleship Circumstances connected 
 with this Event Judas His Character And Death Election of Mat- 
 thias Ancient Custom of Decision by Lot The Manner of it Scrip- 
 ture Instances referred to His Labours And supposed Martyrdom 
 Numerous legendary Accounts concerning him. SECT III. MARK, 
 JAMES THE LESS, AND ANDREW The Conversion of MARK Asso- 
 ciate of Peter His Qualifications Writes the Gospel which bears his 
 
 Name His Travels Bishop of Alexandria Epiphanius Eusebius 
 
 Jerome His Martyrdom And Fate of his Remains. JAMES THE LESS 
 His Parentage Scanty Mention of him in the Scriptures Jerome- 
 Traditionary Anecdote Bishop of Jerusalem His Character Eusebius 
 Hegesippus Epiphanius Clement of Alexandria The Administration 
 of Festus His Death Duplicity of the High Priest His Schemes to 
 destroy James His Martyrdom. ANDREW His relative Situation
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Page. 
 
 among the Apostles Obtains ihe Title of ""the First Called " His Birth 
 Introduction to Jesus Call of Andrew He is raised to the Aposto- 
 late His supposed Travels Scythia of the Ancients noticed Andrew 
 suffers Persecution on Account of the Truth at Patrae " Acts of his Pas- 
 sion " too legendary to be credited yEgeas, the Proconsul Andrew sen- 
 tenced to the Death of the Cross Nicephorus Maximilla His Mar- 
 tyrdom Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, quoted Supposed Relic of the 
 Cross of Andrew Fabulous Stories concerning it Natalis Alexander 
 Idle Accounts of bis Remains related by Gregory Bishop of Tours, and 
 Alban Butler 164 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OPPROBRIOUS Epithets given to the Christians General Testimony in their 
 Favour Ill-Treatment of them under Nero " Evil-Doers " PETER 
 His Birth and Parentage His Occupation His Calling by the Saviour 
 Dr. Cave quoted Julian the Apostate Celsus Origen Peter's Charac- 
 ter exhibited The Cursing of the Fig-TreePeter's Trial and Fall 
 Scenes of the Day of Pentecost Change which took place in the Apos- 
 tle The Miracle in Solomon's Porch Peter and John before the San- 
 hedrim Are liberated State of the Jewish People with regard to 
 Christ Reason of the Conduct of the Scribes and Pharisees Christ no 
 Object of Envy to the Romans Great Hatred of the Chief Priests 
 Sadducees and Pharisees Remarks on Caiaphas and Annas, the High 
 Priest Apostles imprisoned Miraculously rescued They appear before 
 the Council And are dismissed Punishment of Scourging Gamaliel 
 Traditions respecting him Church is persecuted Saul of Tarsus 
 Philip the Deacon Samaria Simon Magus Miraculous Powers The 
 Magician is reproved History of Simon Gnosticism Platonism 
 Moses and Plato Doctrines of Simon Danger of the Church Herod 
 Agrippa Persecutes the Church Slays James And arrests Peter He 
 is imprisoned A Roman Guard Castle of Antonia Peter is delivered 
 Leaves the City Contradictory Opinions concerning Peter's Destina- 
 tion The persecuted Church at Rome Peter visits that City Encoun- 
 ters Simon Ancient Tradition Peter vanquishes the Impostor Simon 
 proposes to fly Perishes in the Attempt Rage of Nero Peter appre- 
 hended Mamertine Prisons Legendary Tale of the Apparition of the 
 Saviour Peter's Martyrdom Supposed Fate of his Remains Remarks 
 on bis Character 194 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 STATE of the Church at Stephen's Death The Rev. Richard Watson Saul of 
 Tarsus His Character and Conversion His Birth-place and Parentage 
 His Name Education And Trade Leaves Damascus on account of 
 Persecution History of that City Paul visits Jerusalem Suspicions of 
 the Church Barnabas Is introduced to the Apostles Peril from the 
 Hellenist Jews Is taken to Caesarea Tranquil State of the Church 
 Dr. Lardner Petronius Pbilo Cause of the Cessation of Persecution 
 The Call of Paul to the Gentiles Visits Antioch Agabus Famine 
 Liberality of the Antiochian Christians Paul and Barnabas visit Jerusa- 
 lem Are set apart by the Holy Ghost Asia Minor Description of the 
 Country Seleucia Cyprus Plan pursued by the Apostles in preaching 
 the Gospel Mark Paphos, its Character Sergius Paulus Elymas 
 Antioch of Pisidia Opposition to the Word Iconium Paul cures a 
 Cripple Idolatrous Homage about to be rendered by the Inhabitants 
 They are restrained by the Apostles Change of Affairs Public Opinion 
 Paul returns to Antioch Controversy on Mosaic Rites Dissension 
 between Paul and Barnabas Timothy Phrygia Galatia Vision of 
 Paul Philippi Persecution Its Cause Dr. A. Clarke The Apostles
 
 I? i CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 are cast into Prison, and commanded to be scourged The Earthquake- 
 Its Effects The Magistrates alarmed Paul claims the privilege of a 
 
 Roman Citizen Propriety of so doing Paul visits Thessalonica Oppo- 
 sition of the Jews Berea The Success of the Gospel Are again 
 assailed hy the Jews Athens Character of the Hearers of the Apostle 
 in that City Stoics and Epicureans Dionysius Corinth Banishment 
 of Jews from Rome Aquila and Priscilla Fabulous Accounts of Zac- 
 
 cha;us The ministerial Labours of Paul at Corinth Persecution at 
 
 Corinth Lucius Junius Gallio Paul is brought before the Proconsul 
 And is acquitted Revisits Antioch State of Judea at this Period- 
 Journeys of Paul Apollos Riot at Ephesus Diana of the Ephesians 
 Effects'of the Gospel in the City Revisits Philippi and the neighbouring 
 District Journeys towards Jerusalem Prophetic Intimations Agabus 
 
 The Inspiration of Paul Arrives at Jerusalem Perilous Situation of 
 
 the Apostle Means of Conciliation Trophimus Disturbance in the 
 
 Temple Claudius Lysias Paul is rescued Addresses the Multitude The 
 
 Tumult is resumed Sicarii Injustice of Claudius Lysias Paul is brought 
 before the Sanhedrim Insolence of Ananias Paul's Defence Dissension 
 between the Sadducees and Pharisees Desperate Conduct of the Jews 
 Conspiracy to kill Paul Nephew of Paul The Apostle is sent to Caesa- 
 rea Felix Paul's Defence Venality of the Governor Festus Schemes 
 of the Jews Paul claims the right of a Roman Appeals to Nero 
 Agrippa Paul is sent to Rome His Condition in that City Reason of 
 his long Residence there Progress of the Gospel Narcissus Pomponia 
 Gnecina Torpetes Poppaea Sabina Paul is liberated His subsequent 
 Journeys His Return to Rome Melancholy State of the Church Paul 
 arrested And beheaded Clemens Romanus Death of Nero 219 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JDDE His Parentage Tradition of Eusebius Abgarus Interview of Jude 
 with him Testimony of Jerome Identity between Thaddeus and Jude 
 His Labours and Death Grandchildren of Judas brought before 
 Domitian, and why Examined concerning their views of Christ Are 
 despised by the Emperor The Persecution ceases Hegesippus Tertul- 
 lian's Statement respecting Domitian BARTHOLOMEW The same as 
 Nathanael His Birth and Discipleship His attempts to propagate the 
 Faith Socrates Sophronius Pantaenus The Story of the Gospel of 
 Matthew in the Hebrew being found in India Eusebius Origin of the 
 Legend Is said to have visited Arabia Reasonableness of this Idea 
 Escapes Martyrdom at Hierapolis But is crucified at Albanople Horrid 
 Cruelty said to have been perpetrated at his Death Parysatis 
 Fabulous Character of a Gospel bearing his Name, and repudiated 
 THOMAS His Call to the Apostolate, and subsequent Labours The 
 Account of Thomas being the Apostle of India, considered His Mar- 
 tyrdom The Nestorians Uncertainty of all Accounts respecting 
 Thomas BARNABAS His Name and Parentage His Conversion and 
 Discipleship How he, a Levite, held Possessions His Sphere of La- 
 bour An Associate of Paul Afterwards they separated His subse- 
 quent Success And Martyrdom LUKE His Birth Description of 
 Antioch His Education Applies himself to Physic The Profession of 
 Physician among the Ancients Luke a Jewish Proselyte Is converted 
 to the Faith, and attends upon Paul His subsequent History, and sup- 
 posed Martyrdom SIMON His Name Account of the Jewish Zealots 
 Their dangerous Character His Labours And Death The Coadjutors 
 of the Apostles suffer Philemon and his wife Appia Vitalis and Vale- 
 ria Theodoret The despotic Character of Nero's reign Beneficial 
 Effects of the Neronian Persecution DOMITIAN His Character Both 
 persecuted the Christians on the same Principle Slanders and false 
 Accusations of Edict against them Compelled to accuse themselves
 
 CONTENTS. XV11 
 
 Various Modes of Torture Testimony of Justin Martyr Flavius Cle- 
 mens His Character Cause of his Offence His honourable Situation 
 
 Is put to Death, and his Wife banished Descendants of David still 
 persecuted JOHN the beloved Disciple His Views and Prospects 
 Report of his having been immersed in boiling Oil Doubts respecting 
 the Fact His Banishment Patmos Description of the Island Is 
 released, and resides at Ephesus DIONYSIUS the Areopagite Eusebius 
 quoted Athens Areopagus Dionysius hears the Gospel Paul the 
 Apostle Is instrumental in the Conversion of the Athenian Dionysius 
 is chosen Bishop of Athens Fabulous Records of his subsequent His- 
 tory His Martyrdom TIMOTHY His early Training And Usefulness 
 
 The Attention of Paul By whom he is addressed in two Epistles 
 Character of the People among whom he laboured Hermodorus Their 
 idolatrous Festivals In one of which Timothy is martyred The Rebuke 
 of the Ephesian Church in the Apocalypse NICOMEDES His Martyr- 
 dom Circumstances leading to Domitian's Death His Suspicions And 
 Assassination Indignities offered to his Remains Nerva His Character 
 and Death Is succeeded by Trajan ............................ 272 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 PERSECUTIONS WHICH TOOK PLACE FROM THE CLOSE OF THE 
 FIRST TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 STATE of the Church Political Aspect of Affairs General Character of the 
 Emperors Trajan His History Placidus Apparent conciliatory Cha- 
 racter of the Emperor His persecuting Spirit Hatred to the Christians 
 His Edict against Informers Delatores Deification of Nerva Chris- 
 tians molested Clement His History His Difficulties in Rome 
 Simon Magus Domitian Afflictive Condition of the Church at Rome 
 Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians Perilous Condition of the Chris- 
 tians Traditionary Accounts of Clement's Death Evaristus Alexander 
 Holy Water Christians harassed in the East Symeon Bishop of 
 Jerusalem His Origin Persecuting Spirit of the Jews Awful Condi- 
 tion of that People Destruction of Jerusalem Refuge of the Church 
 Return to the holy City Trajan's Suspicions Symeon is arrested and 
 martyred Pliny the Younger Circumstances in which he was placed 
 His Letter to Trajan Reply of Trajan to Pliny Uncertain State in 
 which the Church was left Tumultuous Proceedings against the Chris- 
 tians Artful and wicked Schemes of the pagan Priesthood Character 
 of Pliny Gibbon and Mosheim Tertullian on the Edict of Trajan 
 Persecution general Dacian war Parthia Trajan visits Antioch State 
 of the Antiochian Christians Ignatius Priority of the Church at An- 
 tioch Heresies Ignatius is brought before Trajan The Interview 
 Sentence pronounced Rev. John Gambold Why Ignatius was sent to 
 Rome Fondness of the Romans for Shows Journey of Ignatius to 
 Rome Is visited by the Asiatic Church Writes to the Roman Christians 
 And other Churches Character of the Epistles of Ignatius He 
 arrives at Rome His Interview with the Church Is led to the Amphi- 
 theatre Where he suffers Sanguinary Nature of the public Spec- 
 tacles Remains of Ignatius His Character Phocas Sulpitius Ser- 
 vilianus Onesimus and other Martyrs Remarks on the ten thousand 
 Martyrs of Armenia Insurrection of the Jews The Cause of it Hor- 
 rid Atrocities committed Suppression of the Insurrection Death of 
 
 Trajan Character of his Reign 300 
 
 VOL. I C
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Page. 
 
 ACCESSION of Hadrian His Birth And Qualifications Abandons a Portion 
 of the Roman Territory Trajan and Hadrian contrasted The Empire is 
 consolidated Achievements in Britain Hadrian's personal Character 
 And Versatility in respect of Religion The unsettled State of the Jewish 
 Nation Hadrian's Treatment of that People Condition of the Christian 
 Church at Jerusalem Is persecuted Swift Succession of Bishops 
 Alexandria Position of Christianity in that City Heresies Hadrian 
 visits Alexandria Quinquennalia Palilia Fatal Character of these 
 Feasts Symphorosa and her Sons The Mother is brought before the 
 Emperor, and undergoes Martyrdom Her Sons suffer on the following 
 Day Eustachius and his Family are put to Death Faustinus and Jovita 
 suifer General Order of Hadrian with regard to the Christians Cata- 
 combs Their Origin And Description Were Places of Refuge and 
 Worship to the ancient Church And also of Interment Dr. Maitland 
 quoted Martyrdom suffered in them Travels of Hadrian Publius 
 Quadratus Aristides Apologies of Persecution of the Church In- 
 fluence of the Populace The pagan Priesthood avail themselves of it 
 Serapia and Sabina are brought before Berillus Serapia is threatened 
 with Violation Tortured and beheaded Sabina is martyred Serenus 
 Granius His Appeal to Hadrian The Emperor's Answer to Minutius 
 Fundanus Effects of this Rescript The Deification of Antinous The 
 imperial Edict of Hadrian Dr. Burton quoted Effect of the Edict on 
 the Christians Barcochebas His Cruelty toward the Christians Insur- 
 rection of the Jews Their temporary Success Rufus the Prefect 
 Julius Severus The Jews are vanquished, and experience unheard-of 
 Cruelties Hadrian's Plan of annihilating the Jews ^EUa Capitolina 
 State of the Church at the Close of Hadrian's Reign Celsus the Epicu- 
 rean attacks Christianity Is replied to by Origen Description of the 
 Work of Celsus Dr. Doddridge and Leland quoted Death of Hadrian 
 His Character , 330 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HADRIAN and Antoninus Pius compared Character of the latter Hostility to 
 the Christians And to the Jews Telesphorus Irenaeus and Eusebius 
 quoted Arrius Antoninus Persecuting Spirit of the Pagans Edict of 
 Antoninus Its Object Its Authenticity suspected Apollonius The 
 Heretics Cerdon, Valentinus, and Marcion First Apology of Justin 
 When presented Antoninus unable to protect the Christians from Perse- 
 cution His Death. MARCUS AURELIUS Who associates with himself, 
 in the Empire, Lucius Verus Character of Marcus In what sense he 
 was a Persecutor Fate of Lucius Verus Marcus is designated Philoso- 
 pher Position of pagan Philosophy with regard to Christianity Hosti- 
 lity of Marcus and his Government towards the Christians How excited 
 Tertullian vindicates their Usefulness in Society The Religion of 
 Christ raises the Jealousy of the Pagans Intemperate Language of many 
 of the Teachers Sibylline Verses Superstitious Feelings of Marcus 
 From which the Christians suffer Delatores of a disgraceful Character 
 The Church given to the Fury of Persecution False Charges against 
 the Christians Cruelties inflicted True Cause of the Enmity of the 
 Emperor to Christianity The Martyrdom of Felicitas and her Children 
 Plumbatae Praxedes Ptolemaeus and Lucius Are martyred Cause 
 of the Second Apology of Justin Notices of other Martyrs Situation of 
 the Church at this Period Conjectures respecting the Date of the 
 Second Apology The supposed Edict of Marcus Aurelius, in the Acta 
 Symphoriani, considered Justin His Birth and Education His Tra- 
 vels His Search after Knowledge And Disappointment His Conver- 
 sation with the old Man Which ends in his Conversion to the Truth
 
 CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 Pi** 
 
 Writes on behalf of the Church His Address to the Greeks Visits 
 Rome Confutes the Marcionites And defends the Faithful Justin's 
 philosophic Garh He returns to the Provinces Disputes with Trypho 
 the Jew The perturhed State of the Church calls Justin again to Rome 
 He is brought into contact with Crescens The Character of this Man 
 The Condition of the Cynic School at this Period Its Decline and 
 Fall Justin's Vindication of Christianity Crescens an inveterate Enemy 
 to Justin By whom Evil is foreboded from his Machinations Justin is 
 thrown into Prison Junius Rusticus The Examination of Justin and 
 his Companions And their subsequent Martyrdom 356 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TATIAN Suffered for the sake of Christ Persecutions multiplied Quadratus 
 Dionysius His " Embassy on behalf of the Christians " Dr. Burton 
 quoted Persecutions in Asia Minor Martyrdom of Papias His Cha- 
 racter Broached the Notion of the Millennium Its Fallacy Polycarp 
 Place of his Birth Magnificence and Celebrity of Smyrna Present 
 State of that City Stoa Early Life of Polycarp Pionius Bucolus 
 Education of Polycarp Church of Smyrna Her Character Polycarp 
 constituted Bishop of that Church Archbishop Ussher, who supposes he 
 was the Angel of the Church mentioned in the Apocalypse Character of 
 the Bishop His early Privileges Story of the Bandit Captain Poly- 
 carp is visited by Ignatius Polycarp and Ignatius compared Persecu- 
 tion of Trajan Polycarp visits Rome Cause for this Journey Marcion 
 disputes concerning the Time of the Observance of Easter Amicable 
 Settlement of the Question State of the Church in the early Part of the 
 Reign of Aurelius Marcomanni Severe Persecution in Asia Minor 
 Statins Quadratus, Proconsid Qnintus of Phrygia Circumstances which 
 increased the Severity of the Persecution Dreadful State of Smyrna 
 Epistle of the Smyrnaean Church Martyrdom of Germanicus Polycarp 
 is called for Retires from the City His singular Vision And Appre- 
 hension Herod and Nicetes Irenarch Polycarp appears in the Sta- 
 dium Is interrogated by the Proconsul A mysterious Voice heard 
 Remarks upon it Polycarp replies to the Proconsul Philip the Asiarch 
 Polycarp is condemned to the Flames His Prayer Strange Appear- 
 ance of the Flames Fragrant Smell Remarks on these Traditions 
 Death of Polycarp Thraseas is martyred, and others Apollinarius 
 His Defence of Christianity State of the Churches in Asia Minor The 
 Thundering Legion Remarks on this Narrative The Christian Churches 
 at Lyons and Vienne Their Origin State of Religion among them 
 Commencement of the Persecution at Lyons Epistle of the Lyonese Dis- 
 ciples Mai-treatment Vettius Epagathus His Martyrdom Many failed 
 in the Hour of Trial Banquets of Thyestes Rev. Robert Turner Tes- 
 timony of Sir David Dalrymple The Charge of Incest against the Chris- 
 tians examined Sanctus Maturus Attains Blandina Her Fortitude 
 Severe Tortures inflicted on Sanctus Case of Biblias Various Kinds 
 of Punishments Pothinus Is martyred Contrast between the Apos- 
 tates and the Faithful Maturus, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attains, tortured 
 in various ways Thrown to the Beasts The iron Chair Maturus and 
 Sanctus slain Blandina and Attains again tortured Marcus Aurelius 
 appealed to Who encourages the Persecution Alexander Submits to 
 the Torture Ponticus is martyred Blandina expires Remains of the 
 Martyrs insulted Three Descriptions of Heathens who persecuted the 
 Church Popish Fable respecting the Relics of these Martyrs Sympho- 
 rianus His Martyrdom Iremeus Testimony of Joseph Addison, Esq. 
 Apollonius the Tutor of Marcus Aurelius Superstition in the Church 
 Alcibiades -Character of the Lyonese Epistle Rev. Joseph Milner 
 IrenKus Alexander and Epipodius Are examined Their undaunted 
 Bearing And manly Address Epipodius is beheaded Martyrdom of 
 
 c 2
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Alexander Gregory of Tours Marcellus and Valerian suffer Torture 
 and Death Their supposed Relics Other Martyrs Marcus Aurelius 
 engages in a second Campaign against the Marcomanni Temple of Bel- 
 lona in Rome Superstitious Observances His Victories He meditates 
 a third Campaign Arrested in his Progress by an alarming Illness Cha- 
 racter of his Son and Successor Commodus not favourable The Empe- 
 ror's dying Address to his Attendants His Death Character of his 
 Reign D r . g. Burton Commodus His Character Reason of the Ces- 
 sation of Persecution Marcia Exercises Kindness toward the Christians 
 Apollonius Irenaeus John Foxe, the Martyrologist Julius suffers 
 Martyrdom The abandoned Conduct and Assassination of Commodus . . 382 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COMPETITORS for the Throne Pertinax Julianus Niger, Albinus, and Seve- 
 rus The Emperor appears favourable to the Christians Who are still per- 
 secutedClement of Alexandria Circumstances calculated to win the 
 Esteem of Severus Proculus Evodus Training of young Caracalla 
 In early Life his Disposition was amiable Christians protected Tertul- 
 lian Severus angry with the Senate of Rome Discord in the Church 
 Theodotus excommunicated by Victor The Heresy imputed to him 
 Escaped Martyrdom by abjuring the Truth Controversy respecting the 
 Paschal Feast Intolerance of Victor Heresies Montanus Praxeas 
 Fidelity of Zephyrinus Evil Tendency of Errors Priscilla and Maxi- 
 milla The Wars of Severus Commences a Persecution of the Chris- 
 tians Character of Victor Historical Sketch of the early African 
 Churches Synods of Africa Fierce Nature of an Attack of the Empe- 
 ror on Christianity Tertullian's spirited Apology for Christianity Suf- 
 ferers in the Persecution Leonidas Notices of Origen His Character 
 and Predilections Ammonius Saccas His Philosophy Numerous Mar- 
 tyrs, Pupils of Origen Potamiaena, Marcella, and Basilides Milner's 
 Remarks upon their History The Corruption and Interpolation of Mar- 
 tyrologies Saturninus Martyrs of Scillita Their Examination and 
 Execution The Carthaginian Martyrs Perpetua, Felicitas, and others 
 Sketch of the History of Irenaeus His supposed Martyrdom Sufferings 
 of the Lugdunensian Christians Severus more bitterly afflicts the Church 
 Visits Britain, and dies in York State of the Church at the Death of 
 Severus Minutius Felix Tertullian Corrupt Practices among the Chris- 
 tians Peter Martyr of Alexandria Means employed to depreciate Chris- 
 tianity Julia Severa Philostratus Apollonius of Tyana His Character 
 Specimen of his Miracles Caracalla and Geta Persecution for a Time 
 continued Lenity of the Emperor towards the Church His horrid 
 Cruelties, and violent Death Short Reign of Macrinus Heliogabalus 
 succeeds to the Throne His Character Mammaea The Worship of the 
 Sun State of Christianity, and the Paganism of Rome Comparative 
 Tranquillity of the Church The Cause of it Popular Tumults adverse 
 to the Christian Martyrdom of Cecilia, Valerian, and others Ado, the 
 Martyrologist Legendary Tale recorded by Alban Butler Death of 
 Heliogabalus, who is succeeded by Alexander Severus His Character 
 when compared with that of his Predecessor Was kindly affected 
 towards the Christians Mammaea Opinions respecting her Was not a 
 
 Believer in Christ Eclecticism Alexander's tolerant Disposition 
 
 Attachment to Gospel Precepts Erection of Buildings for Christian 
 Worship Persecution during the Reign of Alexander, how accounted for 
 
 Character of Ulpian His Death Conjectures respecting Callistus 
 
 Catacombs of Callistus Urban His Martyrdom Agapetus Tragical 
 End of a Persecutor Other Martyrs recorded by Foxe .... 433
 
 CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 l 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Page. 
 
 DEATH of Alexander Severus, and his Mother Mammaea Sanguinary Character 
 of Maximin, the Successor of Alexander Reasons for his Conduct 
 Nature of this Persecution Its Extent General Aspect of Christianity 
 Persecution of Origen The Montanists Literary Labours of Origen 
 Martyrdom of Calepodius Pammachius Simplicius Quiritus Mar- 
 tina Hippolytus, a Christian Bishop Who he was Death of Maximin 
 Gordian The Character of his Reign Philip His Treatment of the 
 Christians Persecution at Alexandria Martyrdom of Metra, Quinta, 
 Apollonia, and Serapion Popular Character of the Persecution Testi- 
 mony of Origen Cyprian Importance of his Writings His Conversion 
 Is elected Bishop of Carthage Dethronement and Death of Philip 
 Election of Decius to the Empire Lamentable State of the Church 
 Persecution morally requisite Supposed Motives instigating the Persecu- 
 tion The Decian Edict Its Operation Eusebius Dionysius, Bishop 
 of Alexandria His Account of this Persecution Gregory of Nyssa 
 Gregory Thaumaturgus Description of the Imperial Edict Deportment 
 of the Sufferers Alexandrian Christians Pierius Sabinus, the Roman 
 Governor Capture of the Bishop of Alexandria Chaeremon Celibacy 
 at this Period unknown The Saracens Julian His Martyrdom The 
 Sufferings of Besas, Makar, Epimachus, Alexander, Ammoniarum, Mercu- 
 ria, Dionysia, Heron, Ater, Isidorus, Dioscorus, and others Nemesion, 
 Ammon, Zeno, Ptolemy, and Ingenes suffer The Iron Scraper The 
 Fires into which the Martyrs were thrown in primitive Persecutions 
 Fear of the Magistrates respecting the Soldiery Martyrdom of Ischurion 
 The Courage and Fortitude of Numidicus Filial Affection of his 
 Daughter Interesting Examples of Suffering Affecting Testimony of 
 Confessors Martyrdom of Fabian, Bishop of Rome Story of his Con- 
 version Cardinal Cusani State of Christianity in Rome Influence of 
 the Bishops Its Effects upon the ruling Powers The Persecution 
 increases in Intensity Death of Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem Ori- 
 gen is imprisoned Babylas, Bishop of Antioch, incarcerated, and dies 
 Eudacmon Retirement of Cyprian The Cause of his Flight His own 
 Vindication His Exile profitable to the Church Continuance of the 
 Persecution Retreat of Paul Asceticism Distinction between the 
 Monks and Ascetics Monachism, when it appeared Therapeutae Cle- 
 ment Pythagoras Martyrdom of Agatha Brutal Conduct of Quintien 
 Christianity in Carthage The Lapsed Cause of Defection in the 
 Church The Thurificati The Sacrificati The Libellatici What ? 
 Fearful State of Morality in the Christian Community Leniency of the 
 Confessors and Martyrs Especially of Lucian Letters of Peace 
 Instructions of Cyprian His Solicitude for the Welfare of the Church 
 Conduct of the Roman Clergy Schism at Carthage Novatus Felicissi- 
 mus Fortunatus State of the Nation Cyprian returns, and decides 
 respecting the Lapsed Election of Corneh'us to the Bishopric of Rome 
 Martyrdom of Moyses Julian Peter, and others Lucian and Marcian 
 Trypho and Respicius Cyril, Bishop of Gortyna Theodotus, and 
 others Theodora Warlike Preparations of Decius, and his subsequent 
 Death 467 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE Character of Callus Humiliating Condition of the Roman Empire A 
 dreadful Pestilence Testimony of Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria- 
 Conduct of the Christians Testimonies of Dr. Burton Dr. Cave Pom- 
 ponius Laetus Death of Hostilianus The Plague imputed to the Chris- 
 tians Demetrian Cyprian's Treatise " Liber ad Demetrianum " Ex- 
 tracts Approaching Persecution Council at Carthage More moderate 
 Measures taken respecting the Lapsed Reason for this Mitigation-
 
 XX11 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Imperial Edict Letter of Cyprian to the Thibaritans Benevolence of 
 Cyprian Severity of the Persecution at Rome Arrest of Cornelius 
 Epistle of Cyprian to him Contradictory Statements respecting the Mar- 
 tyrdom of the Bishop of Rome Plumbatae Lucius His Banishment 
 and Recall Epistle of Cyprian to Lucius Character of Gallus as a Per- 
 secutor Testimony of Mosheim Decretal Epistles Gross Forgeries 
 Intended to advance the Claims of Romish Supremacy Animadversions 
 on Mosheim Cruelties of the Gallian Persecution The Emperor desti- 
 tute of moral Courage The popular Cry constantly respected The Peo- 
 ple most eager to persecute Persecution instigated by the Populace 
 Numerous Testimonies to the Severity of the Persecution of Gallus 
 Martyrdom of Hippolytus Disastrous State of the Roman Empire 
 Unpopularity of the Emperor Rebellion of his General, ^Emilian Gallus 
 and his Son are slain The Senate gave a Sanction to the Rights of 
 Conquest Profession of ^Emilian, who meets with a Competitor in Vale- 
 rian, by whom he is slain Valerian ascends the Throne His Character, 
 and that of his Son Gallienus, his Associate in the Empire Brief Period 
 of Tranquillity to the Church Death of Origen Dispute concerning the 
 Baptism of Heretics State of that Controversy Character of Stephen, 
 Bishop of Rome His intemperate Conduct Cyprian on the Independ- 
 ence of Christian Bishops and Churches The grasping Propensity of the 
 Church at Rome Held no superior Powers or Influence The Attempts 
 of Stephen condemned Cause of the Change which took place in the 
 Conduct of Valerian towards the Christian Church Macrianus, his His- 
 tory and Character Commencement of the Persecution under Valerian 
 Nature of the Measures employed to induce Apostacy Supposed Mar- 
 tyrdom of Stephen Contradictory Accounts of the Event Cyprian 
 writes to the Churches He is summoned before the Proconsul, Paternus 
 Is interrogated Banished to Curubis His Sympathy with, and Bene- 
 volence to, the Sufferers, whom he encourages by an Epistle Martyrdom 
 of Saturninus, Bishop of Toulouse Of Ruffina and Secunda Dionysius, 
 Bishop of Alexandria, is brought before the Prefect History of Diony- 
 sius State of the Persecution in Egypt Frumentarii Dr. Cave quoted 
 Singular Escape of the Bishop Voluntarily conceals himself Returns 
 to Alexandria Is arrested Is interrogated by ^Emilian, and banished to 
 Cephro Heresies of Sabellius and Paul of Samosata Synods Death of 
 Dionysius Valerian's Persian Expedition Macrianus The Persecution 
 carried on with greater Severity The Imperial Edict Its Character 
 Martyrdom of Xystus And of Laurentius Remarks upon his History 
 Martyrdom of Romanus Cyprian returns from Banishment Prefers to 
 suffer at Carthage How this Object was attained Is apprehended and 
 brought before Galerius Maximus, the Proconsul The Interrogation 
 Martyrdom of Cyprian His general Character 510
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT is the persecution of Christians by Christians that has constantly 
 exhibited a mysterious aspect to the church at large, and which ought 
 to be fully and fairly investigated in all accounts which profess to 
 give a history of the progress of the carnal mind, in its enmity against 
 Almighty God. We allude especially to the accession of Constantine 
 to the empire, and the causes of persecution by the civil power, after 
 it became professedly Christian. Previous to this event, Christianity 
 had made great progress ; and even before the reign of Diocletian, its 
 course through the world was, humanly speaking, inevitable ; it 
 triumphed over the persecutions of the mob and the philosophers, the 
 Magistrates and the Emperors, to the time of Diocletian ; and it is a 
 stern, stubborn fact, that the last persecutors themselves, the worst, 
 vilest, severest, and crudest, published edicts in favour of Christianity 
 before they died. So powerful had Christianity become when Con- 
 stantine was made sole Emperor, that all endeavoured, to a greater or 
 less extent, to propitiate the Christians, and to obtain favour from 
 the Deity, by occasionally, or eventually, encouraging the Christian 
 religion. Galerius died in Nicomedia before the publi cation of the 
 Edict of Milan, and the supposed appearance to Constantine of the 
 cross in the heavens. He was an arbitrary and savage barbarian, and is 
 justly celebrated on the page of history for his unheard-of licentiousness 
 and atrocious cruelty. The time, however, came when he must die ; and 
 the miseries of his death-bed were as terrible as the pangs of his own 
 tormented sufferers, without the consolation of their hope and faith. 
 His attendants fled in horror from his cries. He sends to Apollo and 
 ^Isculapius ; but there was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that 
 regarded. He demanded the aid of the first Physicians of the 
 day. They were brought by force, and probably murdered, as he 
 remained uncured. " None of my companions can cure you," at 
 length said a Christian Physician : " God has afflicted you. Your 
 disease is not subject to our skill. I can die with my companions ; 
 but remember the war you have waged against a divine religion, and 
 then learn of whom you should pray for a remedy." Then it was 
 that, subdued by pain, he declared that he would rebuild the churches, 
 and satisfy the God of the Christians. He called his superior officers 
 around him. He commanded them to put a stop to the persecution,
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and dictated the edict which Lactantius has recorded, " to permit the 
 people to resume the exercises of Christianity." Maxentius lost his 
 life in the neighbourhood of Rome, in the October of the following 
 year, whilst fighting against Constantine at the head of the pagan 
 forces. He had once granted an edict of toleration to the Christians, 
 which he rescinded in jealousy of the splendid presents which were 
 made by the faithful to the church in that city. 
 
 Maximin was one of those more personally cruel persecutors, who 
 took delight in contemplating the sufferings of their victims. Exaspe- 
 rated at the conversion of one of his Magistrates by the firmness of a 
 confessor in Egypt, he caused them both to be put to death ; and killed 
 with his own hand Ingraphus, the servant of the martyr Mennas, for 
 daring to profess himself a Christian. He also published an edict in 
 favour of the Christians ; and though he palliates and excuses his 
 former conduct, he allows the Christians to rebuild their temples, and 
 resume their alienated revenues. Four days he lived convulsed in 
 torture. He threw himself on the ground, tore up the earth, and 
 devoured it. He confessed his sins. He called on Christ. He 
 prayed with tears. He died uttering howlings of remorse and sorrow, 
 of delirium and despair. The death of Maximin was a great dis- 
 couragement to the Magistrates of the empire any longer to persecute 
 Christianity. Licinius, also, was avaricious, ignorant, and cruel. He 
 joined in the celebrated Edict of Milan, which gave unlimited tolera- 
 tion to the Christians ; and after the death of Maximin, he slew 
 those who had been most active in persecuting the church. Before 
 his decease, he came to open collision with Constantine, and relapsed, 
 from appearing to encourage Christianity, into avowed Paganism. He 
 ridiculed the devotion of his rival, and gathered around him a train of 
 priests and soothsayers to predict success to his undertakings. He 
 defied the God of Christianity, met Constantine at Adrianople, and 
 was defeated. He again met Constantine at Chrysopolis, and was 
 vanquished ; and thus closed the more open enmity between Paganism 
 and Christianity. Before the Edict of Milan, which gave toleration 
 and protection to the church, should be noticed, we would advert to 
 some of the actions of Constantine, in order to understand that great 
 historical problem, the causes of persecution by Christians against 
 Christians in the church so soon after they were emancipated from 
 the yoke and terrors of Paganism. 
 
 Mr. Townsend, in his valuable work entitled, "Ecclesiastical and 
 Civil History, philosophically considered, with reference to the future 
 Re-union of Christians," from which we have quoted largely, traces 
 the whole to the following four causes: 1. The conduct of the 
 Donatists in disturbing the peace of the empire by their factious 
 opposition to their brethren, and to the Emperor. 2. Constantine's
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 subsequent fear of the recurrence of similar consequences in the 
 disputes between the Arians and their opponents. 3. The false 
 notion that the Christian Emperor succeeded to the divine power sup- 
 posed to pertain to his pagan predecessors. The catholic church did 
 not perceive, that whenever truth, or the desire to hold right opinions 
 respecting God and our destiny, is regarded as a duty to God, the 
 obedience which the subject owes to the Magistrate becomes more 
 conventional than in those arbitrary governments, where the will of 
 the Prince, or of the state, is the sole law, whether in things divine or 
 human. Where truth is obtained by reflection and evidence, and not 
 by authority only, there is always liberty. Where there is liberty, 
 there may be much error ; which must be removed rather by an 
 appeal to argument than by the edict of the Magistrate. The power 
 of the imperial Christian ruler was considered to be in all respects 
 the same as that of the imperial pagan officer ; and opposition to 
 his will became a crime. Schism was rebellion ; heresy was a political 
 offence ; and orthodoxy was allegiance : but schism, heresy, and 
 orthodoxy were defined as the Sovereign pleased, and not as the 
 church decided ; and the melancholy story remains to be told, of the 
 caprice of the Magistrate, and the mutual hatred of contending 
 Christians. 
 
 The fourth cause was, (and this in all after-ages through nearly 
 thirteen centuries,) that the laws of Constantino against the first 
 heretical disturbers of his government having described the offenders 
 against the civil law by their opinions, and not by their crimes only ; 
 the laws were supposed in subsequent periods to have been enacted 
 against the abstract opinion only ; and thus a precedent was set at the 
 commencement of the civil establishment of Christianity, which became 
 the principal foundation of the persecutions by the civil power which 
 succeeded Constantine, by their episcopal followers at the dissolution 
 of the Roman empire, and by the Bishops of Rome, until the age of 
 Luther. When, however, the genial liberty which genuine Christianity 
 throws around her path, is abused to licentious purposes, and to need- 
 less schisms in the church ; those schisms, without any persecution on 
 the part of the civil power, will lead men to oppose their ecclesiastical 
 superiors ; to heretical notions respecting the faith, rebellion against 
 Princes, and great scandal to religion at large. That was indeed a 
 dark day, when the conduct of the first dividers of the church com- 
 pelled the jealousy of the secular power, and laid the foundation of 
 that intolerable code, which still remains in the laws of the Church 
 of Rome, and which must be repealed, if mankind would hope for 
 repose in the profession of a common Christianity. 
 
 No sooner had Constantine ascended the throne than he assumed 
 the pontificate, which he doubtless deemed necessary to the exercise 
 
 VOL. i. d
 
 XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of authority in religious matters : he therefore hesitated not to give 
 the sanction of the religious and civil supremacy of the Roman law to 
 the long-despised, but now triumphant, Christianity. It was doubt- 
 less thought necessary that the supreme ecclesiastical power, as well as 
 the highest civil authority, should centre in one individual, as formerly 
 was the case in patriarchal times. The act, therefore, which gave 
 unlimited toleration to all the religions in the state, was thus rendered 
 more imperative. Maximin and Licinius were the partners of Con- 
 stantine in the divisions of the empire. Maximin was a cruel opposer 
 of the faith. Constantine, therefore, with Licinius, who at present 
 did not oppose the truth, published at Rome the first edict in favour 
 of freedom of religious worship. Maximin was highly incensed at the 
 publication of the decree. He now permitted, however, arguments 
 and persuasion only to be used to recover Christians to Paganism. He 
 prohibited all persons from molesting them, and granted liberty of 
 conscience to all. Subsequently, the Emperor published the glorious 
 Magna Charta of religious liberty at Milan, in which he gave to the 
 Christians " entire, absolute, unlimited freedom to exercise their reli- 
 gious worship. He cancelled all the restrictions of former edicts upon 
 their present liberty. He commanded their churches to be restored to 
 them, and promised that he would defray the charges of their re-con- 
 veyance, and all other expenses. It did more than all this : it conferred 
 free and absolute permission to all, without exception, by whatever 
 name they might be called, to follow any religion, or any form of 
 worship, according to their will, (the word ' conscience ' does not occur 
 in the decree,) and to practise the rites of their chosen religion, with- 
 out any molestation or interruption from the magistracy, or the Em- 
 perors. Two reasons are assigned for this indulgence. One is, the 
 promoting the peace and happiness of the empire ; and Christians 
 have always prayed for the peace of the city wherein they dwell. The 
 other is, the hope of pleasing the deity, whatever his power may be, 
 to whose worshippers the freedom of religion is thus granted. The 
 practices of the Heathen in their temples were necessarily suppressed 
 some years after, in spite of this edict, in consequence of their scan- 
 dalous immorality ; and the sternest lover of civil and religious liberty 
 would justify the overthrow of the public abominations, and the cruel 
 sacrifices, which still resisted the influence of our holier faith." * 
 
 Prudence and policy demanded of Constantine, that he should 
 observe inviolate the decree of Milan. Nevertheless, the assertion of 
 Gibbon has some truth, " The privilege of professing and choosing his 
 own religion, which the Edict of Milan had confirmed to each indi- 
 vidual of the Roman world, was soon violated. The sects which 
 dissented from the Catholic Church were soon oppressed." This 
 
 * Rev. George Townsend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXVU 
 
 remark is made in the spirit of those, says Mr. Townseml, who would 
 affirm or insinuate, that every attempt on the part of the state to 
 uphold and maintain religion must necessarily be the source of perse- 
 cution to some portion of its subjects. No error is so prevalent, and 
 none so much encouraged, as the popular notion, that the persecution 
 of Christian by Christian was the unavoidable result of the protection 
 of the Catholic Church by the imperial ruler, and that the union of 
 the Church and State is the sole cause of jealousy and hatred among 
 Christians. If Emperors, and rulers, and Kings, and Queens, and 
 nobles, and senates, are, like the people whom they govern, sinful 
 mortals, dying and accountable, they might be expected to take mea- 
 sures to recommend religion to their subjects, that they might extend 
 to others the same blessings of which they hope to partake themselves. 
 If the duty of extending religion be put upon the inferior and more 
 unworthy foundation of human policy only, it is no less their duty, 
 for the benefit of the community, to establish the public morality 
 upon the basis of religion. I would ask the meanest beggar who may 
 believe that there is a God, or a Providence, whether if he were 
 elevated to a throne, he would not endeavour to serve God on that 
 throne ; and whether, if he had deemed it his duty in his poverty and 
 sorrow to bid his fellow-sufferer be of good cheer, because there was 
 another and a better state, he ought to be less inclined to point his 
 fellow-immortal to God in his prosperity, than he had previously been 
 in his adversity? Are the wearers of coronets, and robes of gold 
 and purple, less sinful, mortal, or suffering, than the wearers of rags ? 
 If it be our duty to tell the poor that there is a better world, is it 
 not equally our duty to tell the rich also ? And are we guilty of per- 
 secution because the persons to whom we have made one equal 
 appeal quarrel among themselves, and we endeavour to prevent that 
 quarrel from disturbing the peace of our dominions, by using every 
 effort in our power to reconcile them ; and while we never restrain 
 argument, we still punish the crimes and murders which result from 
 increasing dissension ? This was the conduct of the first Christian 
 Emperor ; and he who would understand his laws must place himself 
 in the same circumstances, and then decide whether the guilt of per- 
 secution is to be imputable to the Christian Prince, or to the Chris- 
 tian subject ; when he reads the undoubted fact, that the edict of 
 Milan was broken, and that laws to punish religionists succeeded to 
 unlimited toleration. If it shall be found that, on the part of the 
 Emperor, there was unabated patience, courtesy, and anxiety to pre- 
 serve the public peace, and to maintain his tolerant edict ; while, on 
 the part of certain of his subjects, there was the most needless, use- 
 less, and unjustifiable abuse of their new liberty, which showed itself 
 in murder, rebellion, and crime ; we shall throw the blame of their 
 
 d 2
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 violation of the charter of liberty on the schismatic, and not on the 
 Magistrate ; and call the laws which restrain crime, punishment, and 
 not persecution. The conduct of the Donatists, the first violators 
 of the unity of the church after the accession of Constantine, was 
 the origin of the persecution of Christian by Christian. Donatus was the 
 first Christian of whom we read, that he called a number of Christians, 
 " My party ;" that he excited rebellion against the civil power, 
 because it refused to sanction his pretensions to exclusive authority 
 in the government of the churches in his district. He changed his 
 liberty into caprice, and brought odium upon freedom itself, by his 
 insults upon the forbearance of authority.* 
 
 The Donatists, as will be shown, were ancient schismatics in Africa, 
 so denominated from their leader, Donatus. They had their origin 
 in the year 311, when, in the room of Mensurius, who died in that 
 year on "his return to Rome, Csecilian was elected Bishop of Carthage, 
 and consecrated without the concurrence of the Nurnidian Bishops, 
 by those of Africa alone, whom the people refused to acknowledge, 
 and to whom they opposed Majorinus, who accordingly was ordained 
 by Donatus, Bishop of Casse Nigrse. They were condemned in a 
 Council held at Rome two years after their separation, and afterwards 
 in another at Aries the year following, and again at Milan before 
 Constantine, A.D. 316, who deprived them of their churches, and 
 sent their seditious Bishops into banishment, and punished some of 
 them with death. Their cause was espoused by another Donatus, 
 caUed the " Great," the principal Bishop of that sect, who, with a 
 number of his followers, was exiled. Many of them were punished 
 with great severity. After the accession of Julian to the throne in 
 362, they were permitted to return, and were restored to their former 
 liberty. Gratian published several edicts against them, and, in 377, 
 deprived them of their churches, and prohibited their assemblies. 
 But notwithstanding the severities they suffered, it appears that they 
 had a considerable number of churches towards the close of this cen- 
 tury ; but at this time they began to decline on account of a schism 
 among themselves, occasioned by the election of two Bishops in the 
 room of Parmenian, the successor of Donatus. One party elected 
 Primian, and were called " Primianists ; " and another, Maximian, 
 and were called " Maximianists." Their decline was also precipitated 
 by the zealous opposition of Augustine, and by the violent measures 
 which were pursued against them by order of the Emperor Honorius, 
 at the soli citation of two Councils held at Carthage, the one in 404, 
 and the other in 411. Many of them were fined, their Bishops 
 banished, and some put to death. This sect revived and multiplied 
 under the protection of the Vandals, who invaded Africa in 427, and 
 * Rev. George Torrasend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 took possession of this province ; but it again sunk under new seve- 
 rities when their empire was overturned in 534. Nevertheless they 
 remained in a separate body till the close of this century, when Gre- 
 gory, the Roman Pontiff, used various methods for suppressing them : 
 his zeal succeeded ; and there are few traces to be found of the Do- 
 natists after this period. They were distinguished by other appella- 
 tions, as Circumcelliones, Montenses or Mountaineers, Campetes or 
 Rupetes, &c. They held three Councils : that of Cita in Numidia, 
 and two at Carthage. The Donatists, it is said, held that baptism 
 conferred out of the church, that is, out of their sect, was null ; and 
 accordingly they re-baptized those who joined their party from other 
 churches ; they also re-ordained their Ministers. Donatus seems 
 likewise to have embraced the doctrine of the Arians, though Augus- 
 tine affirms that the Donatists in this point kept clear of the errors 
 of their leader. 
 
 But, to return : the chief object of Constantino was to preserve peace. 
 He does not appear at present to have exercised any severity against 
 the dissidents ; but as they had thrown off the name of Catholic, and 
 that name was studiously used in the edicts of the Emperor, they 
 were excluded from his bounty, and this omission excited their jea- 
 lousy. Now also began that series of appeals on the part of the 
 Donatists, which frequently elicited the decisions of the churches and 
 of the Emperor against them. Dissatisfied with the censure implied 
 in the letters of Constantine, they conducted themselves with so 
 much bitterness, that the common cause of Christianity began to be 
 desecrated before the whole empire. They unchurched all the 
 churches of the country ; and applying to themselves the passages of 
 Scripture which declare the church of Christ to be a small flock, 
 they affirmed themselves to be that flock. Their fanaticism was most 
 disgraceful. Private meetings of Christians set themselves up against 
 the communion of the churches, and preached the doctrine, that the 
 church of Christ consists only of the holy, the pure, and the spotless ; 
 and that such were only to be found among the separated congrega- 
 tions, where were better Ministers and purer ordinances. The first 
 appeal which the Donatists made to the Emperor to induce him to 
 acknowledge Majorinus Bishop of Carthage, was a petition that the 
 Gallic Bishops might consider the whole affair, and report accord- 
 ingly. They decided against Donatus. Here one would have thought 
 that the schism would have terminated ; but it did not. The Em- 
 peror was exceedingly vexed and harassed by these proceedings in the 
 bosom of that church of which he had so lately become the avowed 
 patron. The Pagans, to his exceeding grief, derided, as the infidel 
 party among mankind always must be expected to do, the dissensions 
 among Christians. They afford the most common argument for
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 unbelief and indifference, for careless contempt and neglect of inquiry 
 into evidence. Though some of the more refractory were imprisoned, 
 contrary to our present notions of religious liberty, they were treated 
 with a leniency which had never been known to his predecessors, who 
 had been accustomed to regard the will of the Prince as the criterion 
 of truth, and to few of his followers, either on the imperial or, in a still 
 later age, on the papal throne. He gave proof that he desired peace 
 at all hazards. The world saw with astonishment the manner in 
 which a Prince of violent resentments, and originally of cruel dispo- 
 sition, could submit to the provocations he received when the Dona- 
 tists returned into Africa, after the breaking up of these various 
 Councils, and after his own personal decision of the quarrel. Instead 
 of, at length, submitting to the verdicts so frequently pronounced 
 against them, their frantic mobs attacked the very church which Con- 
 stantine had built at Constantia. The Emperor orders another church 
 to be built. The boldness of the Donatists was increased : they 
 despised his power in proportion to his lenity, until, having exhausted 
 every effort to restore peace by patience and compliance, the Emperor 
 had now recourse to punishment. He did not condemn the rebels 
 to death, as both his predecessors and successors would have done : 
 he avoided as much as possible the shedding of blood, and was satis- 
 fied with condemning some of the more active spirits to banishment. 
 He exiled them, not for their religious opinions, but for their utterly 
 indefensible political conduct.* 
 
 Numerous excellent laws were passed by Constantine, between the 
 period of the Edict of Milan, and the assembling of the Council of 
 Nice. Nevertheless the Emperor could not yet be called a decided and 
 uncompromising Christian ; for he still consulted, to adopt the senti- 
 ments of Mr. Townsend, the Haruspices, if any public edifice was 
 struck with lightning ; and was guilty, also, of other adherences to 
 pagan observances, which show him to have been either ignorant or 
 inconsistent. He much ameliorated the public law by some enact- 
 ments founded on Christian principles. In 312 he released the 
 Clergy from burdensome municipal offices. He transferred by this 
 law a privilege of the Heathen, and of the leaders of the Jewish syna- 
 gogues, to the Christian Clergy. He permitted slaves, who had been 
 hitherto manumitted in the heathen temples, to be invested with their 
 freedom in Christian places of worship. These enactments familiar- 
 ized the people with the idea of substituting Christianity, slowly and 
 gradually, for Paganism. They were a legitimate mode of warfare, 
 infinitely superior to punishment and persecution. In 315 he abo- 
 lished crucifixion, in remembrance of, and veneration for, Him who had 
 been crucified for mankind. In 321 he permitted legacies to be left 
 * Rev. George Townsend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 to the Christian churches, and in the same year decreed the great 
 Christian law for the observance of the Lord's day. He does not, 
 indeed, call it by that name ; but by the old name, the " Day of the 
 Sun." Rest from the usual labours, and cessation from the usual 
 amusements, or irreligious employments of the week, had ever cha- 
 racterized Christians on this day. It was ever with them the poor 
 man's day, and the Lord's day. By calling it the " Day of the Sun," 
 Constantino endeavoured to please both parties in the empire. The 
 Pagans would highly approve, the Christians would not severely 
 censure, it. He prohibited the opening of the courts of law, and 
 all labour, excepting agricultural, on that day. He permitted the 
 manumission of slaves. It was an employment worthy of the Sab- 
 bath to let the oppressed go free. He commanded the soldiers on 
 the Sunday to attend the service of the church if they were Chris- 
 tians ; and if they were not, to march out into the fields, and offer a 
 prayer in general terms to God. They were to implore the supreme 
 Being to continue his protection unto them, to the Emperor, and to 
 his family. He would make them pure Deists, and free from idolatry, 
 if he could not make them Christians. He probably believed that if 
 the mind had embraced the conviction that there was but one God, 
 the Creator, it would soon conclude that the Creator was the Pre- 
 server ; and that therefore there was a Providence ; and if so, that 
 the providence of God would be displayed by granting to the human 
 mind some knowledge which reason alone could not obtain ; and that 
 such knowledge had only been imparted in the religion of which 
 Christianity was the completest form. He prohibited private divina- 
 tions, as the germ of all possible conspiracies. He endeavoured to 
 suppress all magical rites, but those that were harmless ; such as pre- 
 tending to avert storms and tempests. He prohibited the Pagans 
 from requiring the Christians to join in the sacrifices and ceremonies 
 which were performed for the public prosperity, under the pretence 
 that every citizen should interest himself for the welfare of the state. 
 He permitted suitors to bring their causes from the courts of law to 
 be heard before the Bishops ; probably with the view of extending 
 the knowledge of the justice and equity of the Gospel code, as well 
 as diminishing expense, and increasing the influence of the Christian 
 ruler. He freed the manumission of slaves from the difficulties which 
 had previously encumbered the ceremony, by ordering that it should 
 be sufficient to give them their freedom in the churches, in the pre- 
 sence of the Bishop and of the people. He reb'eved the Clergy from 
 all public taxes. He abrogated the punishment of branding the face ; 
 and put an end, as far as he was able, to gladiatorial shows. Because 
 celibacy was highly valued and commended by many Christians, he 
 repealed the Papian or Poppoean law, which had punished the unmar-
 
 XXXli INTRODUCTION, 
 
 ried. The subject was left to his own decision upon this matter. 
 Most of these laws were great improvements. They betokened great 
 progress. They rendered society more fused together. They gave a 
 proof to the empire that the natural fierceness and savageness of the 
 temper of Constantine were softened by the influence of his new 
 faith ; when the people saw him commending Christianity by the im- 
 partation of new principles to one party, without inflicting persecution 
 and misery on the other, as his predecessors had but too uniformly 
 done ; and if the dissensions of the Christians had permitted the 
 imperial power to have continued without interruption the work of 
 such legislation, the advantage which the world is destined to reap 
 from the laws of a Christian magistracy, would long ago have been 
 attained without one great portion, at least, of that mass of misery 
 which has intervened since the accession of Constantine. We are 
 now to look at the next great event which became the precedent for 
 twelve hundred years to the Christian church, of that mingled col- 
 lection of Councils, canons, edicts, denunciations of opinions, and 
 their maintainers, which has been productive of much good, and of 
 much more evil, to the world, which terminated in the establishment 
 of the earthly omnipotence of the Church of Rome.* 
 
 By the position which Constantine had assumed, he considered 
 himself the common head, or Bishop, in political affairs, and, in all 
 questions concerning the public peace of the empire, as the head of 
 the Christian church. He informed the Prelates of that day, that 
 they were Bishops within, of things pertaining to the church. " I," 
 said he, " am appointed by God to be the Bishop over things with- 
 out, appertaining to the church." He left to them the administration 
 of the word and sacraments. He assumed to himself the protection 
 and defence, both of doctrine and discipline, against the heretic and 
 schismatic, together with the punishment of the open enemy and 
 assailant. The empire, which had recently been disturbed by the 
 Donatists, now began to be agitated by the Arians ; and holding the 
 sceptre over religion, whether Christian or pagan, he summoned that 
 Council which has influenced, more than any other similar assembly, the 
 faith, the laws, and manners of the Christian world. The assembling 
 of this Council formed the precedent for calling still larger Councils, 
 the reception or rejection of the decrees of which have constantly been 
 one source of division or union among Christians, while the enactments 
 of Emperors, continues Mr. Townsend, that the canons of Councils 
 should be recognised as part of the civil law of the empire, con- 
 stituted new crimes, erected new tribunals, changed man into a 
 demon towards his fellow-man, gradually checked the energy of intel- 
 lect, perpetuated the reign of ignorance, discouraged the love of 
 * Rev. George Townsend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. Kill! 
 
 knowledge, superseded Scripture, encouraged the opposite extreme to 
 discipline, by rendering the very name of discipline hateful to the 
 reasoning and zealous ; and did all this by making heresy, which God, 
 and not man, should punish, a crime against the state, as well as 
 against the church ; and by constituting the heretic a traitor to his 
 temporal Prince, as well as to the spiritual church, or to his Master 
 in heaven. 
 
 The alleged cause of the assembling of the Council of Nice was 
 the heresy of Arius. With regard to the more especial cause, we 
 must recollect the great disorders in the church caused by the Dona- 
 tists. Open resistance to the decisions of many local synods, and to 
 the judgment of the Emperor, to whom the sectarians had appealed, 
 was carried to such extremes as to threaten rebellion throughout the 
 African provinces of the empire ; and the resentment of the heretical 
 partisans was raging to a great degree of violence at the time when 
 the unfortunate disputes concerning the Arian heresy commenced. 
 The vexations which Constantine experienced at this peculiar crisis, 
 and, if possible, to prevent a similar calamity following the disturb- 
 ances of Arius, were doubtless the powerful motive which induced 
 Constantine to summon the Council of Nice. The members assem- 
 bled from almost all parts of the world. They met in a hall of the 
 palace of the Emperor, whose predecessors, but a few years before, 
 had issued from that very place the edicts of persecution and tor- 
 ture. A short time previous to this event, many of them had been 
 driven, with scorn and insult, through the provinces to the mines, 
 and to the scenes of public cruelty and malice. Now they were 
 invited from all the cities and towns of the empire by courteous 
 entreaty, and at the public expense, to consult in peace on the purity 
 of that faith which they had defended with the endurance of torment, 
 and at the hazard of their lives. The individuals had come from all 
 parts of the Christian world. Hosius, the favourite counsellor and 
 friend of Constantine, was there from his bishopric in Spain ; with 
 Spyridion of Cyprus, (the reprover of the Preacher who imagined he 
 could render the Greek of the New Testament more elegantly,) whose 
 right eye had been torn out, and the sinews of his left hand cut, and 
 who had been sent to work in the mines, under the persecution of 
 Maximin. Paphnutius, the Confessor, who had lost his right eye, the 
 usual punishment of the Christian warriors, and who had been ham- 
 strung also, in the same persecution, was there from Upper Thebais ; 
 with Potamon, the Bishop of Heraclea, who had suffered the same 
 fate as the former, under Maximin ; and who endured a second 
 martyrdom under the Arians, ten years after the Council, by being 
 beaten with clubs till he was left on the ground as dead. Paul 
 of Neocsesarea, whose ears had been burnt off with hot irons ; 
 
 VOL. i. e
 
 XXXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Leontius of Csesarea, in Cappadocia, who predicted the future great- 
 ness of Gregory of Nazianzen ; Amphion, Hypatius, Nicolas of Nigra, 
 and others ; with Eusebius of Nicomedia, the friend of Arius, with 
 Theonas and Mans, and the rest who were of blameless character, but 
 who refused to sign the Homo-ousian creed. To these must be 
 added, Arius himself, of whom some historians report, that, whatever 
 be his errors, he was a man of majestic deportment, and grave and 
 venerable demeanour. Eustathius, the Patriarch of Antioch ; Atha- 
 nasius, the Deacon, so celebrated afterwards by his consistent adher- 
 ence to the truth, and his uniform zeal under persecution or in 
 prosperity, from whom is named the Creed which embodies, in one 
 formula, the decisions of the churches, on the four principal contro- 
 versies respecting the divinity and nature of Christ ; Marcellus of 
 Ancyra, who afterwards, in his attempts to simplify the Creed, adopted 
 notions which other Councils condemned ; Caecilian of Carthage, 
 Macarius of Jerusalem, Vitus and Vincentius of Rome, all names well 
 known, and once highly honoured ; with Eusebius of Ceesarea, and 
 others, to the number of three hundred Bishops, with an innumerable 
 train of Presbyters, Deacons, and attendants, were present at this 
 solemn assembly.* 
 
 When the Emperor had delivered his oration, which was spoken in 
 Latin, and afterwards interpreted into Greek by some who were pre- 
 sent, permission was given to all to speak in their turn. After 
 many and vehement discussions, to which Constantino paid the utmost 
 attention, and in which he acted with great prudence the part of a 
 kind and conciliating moderator ; the Creed of the Arian party, which 
 had been drawn up and presented by Eusebius of Csesarea, was con- 
 sidered unsatisfactory, and rejected. Another, composed by Hosius, in 
 which the word was retained which was agreed upon by all parties to 
 be most expressively declaratory of the identity of essence between the 
 Father and the Son, but which the Arians had refused to insert in the 
 Creed of Eusebius, was tendered to the Council, and accepted by them 
 as the confession of their faith, and adopted as their conclusion on the 
 controverted question. Anathemas were added against all who intro- 
 duced the heretical formula, and Arius and his immediate followers 
 were mentioned by name. Explanations were added, to prevent mis- 
 understanding and obscurity. The Creed was then offered, for 
 subscription, to the members of the Council, who bound themselves, 
 in consequence, to excommunicate from their respective churches all 
 who adhered to and taught the condemned opinions of Arius. The 
 laity were not required to subscribe, though they were exposed to the 
 operation of the anathema, if they ventured on any positive innova- 
 tions of the rule of faith. Twenty, or twenty-two, canons, or, as 
 
 * Rev. George Townsend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXV 
 
 certain Arabians say, eighty-four, were made. The three points on 
 which they had met, the Arian controversy, the Miletian schism, and 
 the keeping of Easter, were settled. Arius and his followers were 
 excommunicated. The Nicene canons became the law of the empire, 
 by the rescript of Constantino ; and so ended the Council of Nice, in 
 August, 325, amidst the general acclamations of all who were present. 
 Subsequent Councils, and especially that of Trent, were terminated in the 
 same manner. Five Bishops only refused to sign the Creed ; and the 
 general unanimity so pleased the Emperor, that he declared himself 
 gratified as by a second victory over the enemies of the church. 
 He commemorated the event by a banquet, at which all the Bishops 
 were present. The twentieth year of his reign had been commemo- 
 rated a little before, throughout all the provinces of the empire. 
 Great rejoicings were made, and the members of the Council were dis- 
 missed, with letters of approbation, and presents of great value, to 
 their several homes and churches.* 
 
 The determinations embraced in the Nicsean canons afford an 
 important insight into the state of discipline and opinion at the 
 period. Thus we find provision made, that such of the religious 
 officers of the Pagans as might be converted to Christianity, should be 
 accepted as religious officers among the Christians. The ancient 
 Flamines were the sacrificing Priests of Rome. These might be made 
 Bishops on their conversion. They were all subject, under Paganism, 
 to the Pontifex Maximus. Gratian discontinued this title, and it was 
 subsequently assumed by the Bishop of Rome, who claimed the 
 privileges, authority, and honours with the title. We also find a 
 penance of ten years prescribed to those who should have voluntarily 
 renounced their faith ; and one of thirteen years for such as should 
 have apostatized to procure any office. The door of the priesthood 
 was also for ever shut against those who should have done violence to 
 their persons, like Origen. The Bishop was endowed with the power 
 of granting, or refusing, at his discretion, the sacrament of the Lord's 
 supper to dying persons ; and if any one supposed to be at the point 
 of death should have received the viaticum, but afterwards recovered, 
 he was not to possess any superiority of rank, from the circumstance 
 of having enjoyed absolution. In respect of the Clergy, it was 
 decreed, that no Bishop, Priest, or Deacon should be suffered to keep 
 women in his house, unless they were near relations. Such as had 
 sacrificed were to be degraded ; but the Novatians were allowed to 
 retain their rank, if they consented to make profession of following 
 the discipline of the church, and again received imposition of hands. 
 The rights and jurisdictions of various Bishops, especially those of 
 Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, were also defined, without assigning 
 
 * Rev. George Townsend. 
 
 e 2
 
 XXXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 any superiority to the latter. The provision of the concluding canon 
 was somewhat singular, that the custom of kneeling at prayer on the 
 Lord's days and at Pentecost, which prevailed in some churches, 
 should be no longer continued ; and that the congregation in all 
 churches should pray standing. But the higher object of the 
 Council was, that the catholic doctrine might be formally declared 
 and that a judgment might be promulgated as to the basis upon which 
 communion with the church was thenceforth to be determined. 
 
 The Bishops after the Council of Nice returned to their respective 
 homes. John Foxe, the Martyrologist, relates the painful deaths 
 of certain persons who were burnt for heresy. What is the con- 
 nexion between these two events ? The same as that between the 
 consolations of my neighbour who died yesterday, and the events 
 which are recorded in the Scripture, which is older than the Council 
 of Nice. The principles of good and evil extend to unknown genera- 
 tions. As the blessings of the inspired revelation have continued 
 from the age of the Apostles to the present day, so the mixture of 
 good and evil which attended the efforts of Constantine to perpetuate 
 those blessings, have remained to our own age, and made the Council 
 of Nice the most important event which has occurred in the annals 
 of mankind, since the preaching of Christ and his Apostles. Men 
 were burnt in England by the statute law enforcing the canon law. 
 The canon law had become binding upon the principal part of Europe, 
 and, among other countries, on England ; and this by its union and 
 identity with that portion of the civil law of Rome, which had been 
 received into the European codes after the time of Justinian. Both 
 the canon law and the civil law, and for a period the statute law, of 
 England, punished heresy as a political crime ; and the heretic was a 
 political criminal. This union of the canon and civil law in European 
 countries, was derived from the Code, Pandects, and Novels of Jus- 
 tinian. These were derived from the Code of Theodosius. The Code 
 of Theodosius consisted of the enactments of the Emperors respecting 
 religion. Those enactments were founded upon the decrees and 
 canons of the earliest Councils ; and upon the edicts, rescripts, and 
 general laws of Constantine the Great, which forced the Christians of 
 the Roman Empire to adopt the canons and decisions of the Council 
 of Nice. The line of continued punishment for opinion cannot be 
 broken throughout the long period from the Council of Nice to the 
 Reformation. When we protest, therefore, against persecution, we 
 do not protest against the Church of Rome alone. We protest against 
 the conduct and principles of that Church ; but we aim a further 
 blow at the very foundation upon which that conduct and those 
 principles are built. We make Rome the greatest criminal ; but we 
 admit, in all candour and fairness, that it must be acquitted of the
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXVU 
 
 original guilt. We have no desire to prove any church to be more 
 erroneous than the facts of ecclesiastical history will warrant. We 
 must, therefore, calmly and patiently survey the several sources of that 
 peculiar state of the public mind in Europe and in England, which 
 could patiently approve, and even applaud and admire, the inflexible 
 severity which consigned thousands and tens of thousands to the 
 dungeon and the stake, in the manner which Foxe and others have 
 recorded. To do this, we must review ecclesiastical history, with 
 reference to the development of several principles which had their 
 birth in the Council of Nice, and trace them throughout in their effects 
 upon the Christian church. These principles may be thus enume- 
 rated : 
 
 The Emperor, or the civil power, was supreme over both his pagan 
 and Christian subjects. In questions of religious belief, he was to con- 
 sult the church assembled in General Council. The decisions of these 
 General Councils were submitted to the world in the form of creeds 
 and canons : the creeds respected faith, and the canons respected dis- 
 cipline. The authority of the Emperor made these decisions a part 
 of the civil law. The sanctions of that law were the usual sanctions 
 of fine, imprisonment, exile, or death, added to the canonical punish- 
 ment of excommunication, or to the scriptural punishment of being 
 no longer a member of the Christian community. The natural con- 
 sequence of our thus extensively considering the origin and continu- 
 ance of persecution, must be, that we shall be required to examine the 
 edicts of Constantine, and the sources of the power which enabled 
 him to make the canons of the Councils the law of the empire. Did 
 our room permit this, we should be led to survey the principal Coun- 
 cils, whose decisions were engrafted on the civil law as canons of 
 faith, discipline, and conduct. From this survey we should be led to 
 the Theodosian and Justinian codes. After the publication of the 
 latter, the sceptre passed from the Emperor to the Popes. It will be 
 seen, that the Bishops of Rome then succeeded to the same power 
 which the Emperors had possessed, that of making the canons of 
 Councils the Papal law, as they had before been the imperial law ; 
 and that this power constantly increased, and was exercised against 
 all who dared to think in a manner which the church disapproved, 
 until the yoke became insufferable. 
 
 Hence the fatal error into which Constantine fell. " He made the 
 decrees and canons of Nice a part of the imperial and civil law. The 
 decrees of the Council respecting the Divinity of Christ might have 
 been made the doctrine and creed of the universal church ; its deci- 
 sions respecting the discipline of the churches might have been 
 received as the canons or ecclesiastical rules of the church general ; 
 and both the doctrines and canons which were now promulgated as
 
 XXXViii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the conclusions of the Council, might have been regarded by Chris- 
 tians as binding on their consciences ; the denial of their doctrine, or 
 the violation of their enacted discipline, might have still been punished 
 by excommunication only, as before the conversion of Constantine ; 
 but the edict of the Emperor changed the spiritual offence into politi- 
 cal crime, and thus laid the foundation of all the subsequent perse- 
 cutions. Now there does not, at first sight, appear to be any reason 
 why the opinion of the Council should become the civil law, or why 
 heresy should become a civil crime, to be punished by the secular 
 authority. The ruler of England may hold the same opinion as that 
 of a Council or Convocation of the Clergy, without declaring that opi- 
 nion to be the law of the land ; and it might have been better, had 
 Constantine been contented with approving the decisions of the Coun- 
 cil, as an individual Christian, instead of enforcing them by legislation 
 as an Emperor. By the former conduct he would have left the church 
 in possession of its power as a spiritual body ; with the additional 
 moral influence of the solemn decree of the Universal Council, added 
 to the sentence of each Bishop in his respective diocess, without intro- 
 ducing the doctrine, that ecclesiastical conclusions may be sanctioned 
 by civil penalties : by the latter, the mode he unfortunately adopted, 
 he began the reign of punishment for opinion, which the Christian 
 church has still so much reason to deprecate. When their deliber- 
 ations were concluded, and his sanction as chief Magistrate of the 
 empire had been given to their decrees, the command of general con- 
 formity was substituted for persuasion to caution and calmness of 
 inquiry. Disobedience to the decision of the church in Council was 
 now to be regarded and punished as disobedience to the civil autho- 
 rity ; and banishment or subscription were the alternatives offered to 
 the obstinate and unconvinced majority. A synodical epistle to the 
 churches was drawn up and published. In this Arius was declared 
 to be excommunicated and anathematized. This was accompanied 
 with letters from Constantine. The letter of the Emperor to the 
 Church of Alexandria declared the resolution of the three hundred 
 Bishops to be the will of God ; and that the Holy Spirit of God had 
 dwelt in them when they came to their decision. By this very form 
 of expression, Synods or Councils of following ages were described by 
 those who affirmed their infallibility, and relied on their spiritual wis- 
 dom. In another letter to the churches in general, he re-affirms, that 
 whatever may be the conclusions of a Council, those determinations 
 must be regarded as the divine will. In a letter to Eusebius, he com- 
 manded him to take care that new churches be built, and that the 
 Prefects provide for the execution of the decree ; and he directs him 
 to order legibly written copies of the Scriptures to be procured for the 
 use of the churches. To these letters or edicts (for the formally
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 expressed will of the Emperor was the law of the subject) no objection 
 could be made ; but in other letters to the churches, which were gene- 
 rally circulated through the provinces, he declares Arius to be infa- 
 mous ; and not only condemns and anathematizes the man and his 
 opinions, but proceeds to that extremity of censure which was the 
 model for all the future persecutions which afflicted the churches of 
 Christ. He published a decree in which he compared Arius with a 
 Heathen, commanded his followers to be called by a reproachful 
 name, and ordered that the books written by Arius be forthwith 
 burnt, wherever they might be found. If he had been contented with 
 this severity, the world would not have had so much cause for com- 
 plaint ; but he proceeded to the last extremity, and added, that if any 
 person were found to have concealed a treatise written by Arias, and 
 not to have surrendered it immediately, and burnt it, that person 
 should suffer death. As soon as his guilt is proved, the decree goes 
 on to say, he shall suffer capital punishment. 
 
 " From this time forward, the disposition of Constantine began to 
 alter. He became, though variable in his opinions, and alternately 
 favouring the Arians and their opponents, more and more inflexible 
 and severe. He substituted the authority of his own edicts for the 
 sermons of his Bishops, and banished the heretics from the cities. He 
 published decrees against Novatianists, (though he preferred them to 
 other real or supposed heretics,) and against Valentinians and others, 
 by name, in the most abusive and intolerant language. He took away 
 their churches, prohibited their meetings, and forbade them to assem- 
 ble for worship, either publicly or privately. Search was made for 
 their books, which were burnt without delay. If any of the unfortu- 
 nate adherents of a suspected teacher presented themselves to the 
 Clergy to be admitted to the communion of the church, they were 
 subjected to a more rigid examination than proper protection of 
 society from danger of error might seem to require. While the 
 schismatic was admitted without delay, the heretic was received with 
 difficulty. The deadly upas, which breathed from its poisoned leaves 
 the fatal odour of persecution, formality, and death to the soul, while 
 the body bowed down in the assemblies of the saints, was now- 
 planted, by mistaken zeal, in the garden of God. The churches of 
 Christ now began to be cursed, for the first time, with that evil which 
 is more to be dreaded than any open hostility, compulsory uniformity 
 of faith and worship, the unavoidable source of coldness to all spirit- 
 ual religion, of lukewarmness in devotion, and of indifference, both to 
 the interests of Christianity, and to the welfare of the churches of 
 which they became outward and nominal members. So began the 
 persecution of Christian by Christian. The visible church was en- 
 larged ; the invisible church, the true Israel of Israel, was diminished.
 
 X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The frightful punishment of burning men alive, the common penalty 
 for many offences, soon became the punishment for heretics only, and 
 no longer for traitors, murderers, and poisoners ; for heretics were 
 considered guilty of the double treason against their King in heaven, 
 and their Sovereign upon earth. Semler and Jortin are both of opi- 
 nion, that the severe laws of Constantine were not observed, for they 
 were too atrocious to be executed ; and comparative toleration must 
 therefore, have existed in many instances. This might have been 
 sometimes the case ; but the seeds of future sorrow, of national grief, 
 of spirituality destroyed, and of uniformity compelled, were scattered. 
 The suppression, both of boldness of inquiry, and of the mental 
 efforts which arrive at truth by the exercise of the intellect, responsible 
 to God alone, instead of being amenable to a tribunal upon earth, 
 received a fatal blow. The communion of churches was now founded 
 upon obedience to the civil law, instead of the interchange of letters 
 from the Bishops and Clergy, anxious for the purity of the faith, and 
 maintaining uniformity from deference to the opinions, and love for 
 the persons, of each other. It is true, that the heretics were more to 
 blame in the beginning than the churches ; for they first dissolved 
 the union among them, by the wrong exercise of their common 
 liberty ; but the remedy of temporal punishment led to evils worse 
 than the disease. The laws of Constantine may not have been imme- 
 diately executed to the full extent of their severity ; but the time was 
 soon to come when security from popular indignation, and the pos- 
 session of unlimited power, permitted the unrelenting enforcement of 
 the most tyrannical and shameful of these laws ; and the Christian 
 rejoiced to shed the blood of Christians, as the heathen persecution 
 had so lately triumphed over the confessor and the martyr. The 
 laws of Constantine were the basis of the miseries of persecuting cen- 
 turies. The spark was awhile concealed, but it soon kindled into a 
 flame. Perverted religion became the curse of the world. Men 
 seemed to become demons, and kindled on earth the flames of hell. 
 Compassion, indulgence, and mercy, became crimes, if the heretic 
 were the object of their exercise ; and the lesson was given to the 
 world, which painful experience has taught it to know with perfect- 
 ness, that legislatures must avoid injustice and cruelty in theory, as 
 well as in practice."* 
 
 A period of fifty-six years elapsed between the Council of Nice and 
 the second General Council held at Constantinople ; the empire, in 
 the meantime, having fallen under the dominion of Constantine II., 
 Constantius II., Constans, Julian the Apostate, Jovian, Valentinian, 
 Gratian, Valentinian II., Valens, and Theodosius the Great. All of 
 these, whether orthodox in the faith or otherwise, may be said to have 
 
 * Rev. George Townsend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xK 
 
 pursued the policy of Constantino, in enforcing the observance of the 
 canons by the civil law. In the meantime, says Mr. Townsend, the 
 divisions in the church, caused by new metaphysical theories, as well as 
 by the rancour and malevolence exhibited against the defenders of the 
 Nicene faith, by the heterodox disciples of those of the preceding 
 ages, who were authors of Anti-Nicene doctrines, had at this time 
 proved exceedingly baneful to the church. The plausibilities and 
 courtly intrigues of the Arians were successful in gaining over Con- 
 stantius to favour their cause. The disputes on controverted and 
 mysterious points increased in virulence, the further they were carried 
 on ; while abilities and learning were thrown away on both sides 
 without bringing the inscrutable questions in dispute nearer to a 
 settlement. Athanasius signalized himself more, perhaps, than any 
 other antagonist of the Arian heresy ; and the refutations which the 
 theorists suffered from the unanswerable truths and exposures of his 
 pen, made him a distinguished object of their implacable revenge. 
 Through their undivided favour with the Emperor, and the calumnies 
 to which they had recourse, together with the denunciations of synods 
 partially convened, the Arians succeeded in obtaining a sentence of 
 banishment against their pious and vigorous adversary. Another sect 
 originated from the peculiar opinions of Priscillian, a Spanish Bishop, 
 whose character is given by Sulpitius, with his usual spirit and bril- 
 liancy of style. He is said to have been a man of great learning and 
 eloquence, endowed with vast powers of body and mind ; who, by 
 assumed modesty and gravity, was calculated to gain ascendancy over 
 ordinary capacities. Idacius, an aged Presbyter, in conjunction with 
 Ithacius, Bishop of Sossaba, (a doubtful locality,) accused him before 
 a Council at Saragossa, in 380, with being a teacher of Manicheean 
 doctrines, and obtained his condemnation ; but the death of Gratian 
 prevented the rescript for his banishment being put in force, and he 
 was again restored to his see for a short time. His accusers then 
 urged the civil power, that the heresiarch might be expelled from the 
 cities of Spain, which had generally become infected with his errors ; 
 and the Magistrates issued their decrees accordingly. Upon this the 
 Priscillianists sought protection in Italy, and prayed to be heard in 
 their own defence before Damasus, Bishop of Rome ; they appealed, 
 also, to Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, for the same privilege ; and in 
 both these cases their suit was rejected. Maximus, the Usurper, at 
 the death of Gratian, entered Treves, at the head of his forces ; and 
 Ithacius immediately sought to obtain his decree against the heretics. 
 Priscillian also appealed to the same authority ; and Maximus took 
 upon himself the office of Judge in this case. The heretics were 
 accused of spreading opinions opposed to Christianity : they were 
 declared guilty, and condemned by the Emperor. Martin, Bishop of 
 VOL. i. f
 
 xlii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Tours, interposed, and implored Maximus, that since they stood 
 expelled from the churches by the sentence of ecclesiastical Councils, 
 it was a new and unknown evil for a secular Judge to undertake to 
 decide cases purely spiritual. The interference in behalf of the lives 
 of the condemned party was ineffectual ; and Priscillian, with several 
 of his deluded adherents, suffered death at Treves. It has not been 
 satisfactorily shown what the precise opinions of this sect were ; but, 
 not consuming the eucharist, omission of fasts, the enjoining of celi- 
 bacy, and making perjury in time of persecution a pardonable crime, 
 are stated to have been errors of which they were guilty. Whatever 
 may have been his offence, Priscillian is deemed the first martyr to 
 sectarian opinions, under the operation of the system which resulted 
 from the measures of Constantine. 
 
 We are now brought to look at the publication of the Theodosiaa 
 Code, as the next cause of Christian persecuting Christian. It was 
 undertaken at the command of Theodosius the younger. It contains 
 the imperial Constitutions from Constantine to his own time. The 
 infliction of the severe punishment of banishment upon Arius, and 
 the sentence of death denounced upon the readers of his books, were 
 much regretted, we may believe, by the Emperor Constantine, if we 
 may judge of his feelings by his future conduct. The laws which 
 thus established persecution, as a part of the penal code of the em- 
 pire, were probably passed as an experiment to prevent, rather than 
 as a principle to punish, heresy. The absurd and wicked experiment, 
 however, if it were such, was repeatedly renewed by his successors. 
 A mass of confused and sanguinary enactments was at length passed 
 and consolidated, with various enlargements and additions into that 
 atrocious and cruel Code, which is not only execrated by the friends 
 of humanity and religion for its detestable provisions, but which is 
 memorable in the annals of jurisprudence, as being the foundation of 
 that intolerable canon law against heresy, by which the Church of 
 Home became the principal criminal in the guilt of persecution, which 
 was first established, and which must, therefore, be shared, by the 
 Emperors. Though the Justinian Code, which was promulgated 
 between the years 528 and 566, when the edicts which Justinian pub- 
 lished after the last edition of his Code were collected into one 
 volume, and given to the world under the name of Novella, confirmed 
 and strengthened the principal regulations of the Theodosian Code ; 
 nevertheless, the latter must be regarded with close attention, as the 
 principal foundation of the persecuting canon law. The imperial 
 edicts by which Christianity was first tolerated, then legalized, and 
 then established as the religion of the empire, were now collected into 
 one volume of laws. Immediately after its publication, the Theodosian 
 Code was received, by an edict of Valentinian III., into the empire of
 
 INTRODUCTION. xliii 
 
 the West. The Justinian Code superseded its authority in the East ; 
 but the Code of Theodosius still retained its influence in the West, 
 and therefore in Italy and Rome. The barbarians, who about this 
 time invaded that portion of the empire, permitted the Romans to 
 retain the use of their existing laws. In 506, Alaric, King of the 
 Visigoths in Gaul, ordered a legal code to be prepared, in which the 
 Roman and Gothic usages and edicts should be formed into one body 
 of law. This was accordingly done by his Chancellor, Anianus ; and 
 it was called from him, the Breviarium Aniani. This body of law was 
 extracted chiefly from the Theodosian Code, from the works of the 
 principal Roman lawyers, and from the edicts of the subsequent Em- 
 perors between Theodosius and Alaric. It was published for the use 
 of the Western empire, before the Code of Justinian was compiled. 
 It superseded the former laws, and became the only legal work of 
 authority. The enormous and inexpiable evil it occasioned to man- 
 kind was, that it not only confirmed in the West all the persecuting 
 enactments which had begun in the Eastern empire ; but it habituated 
 the new tribes, which were now becoming a part of the empire, to the 
 idea of persecution for religious opinion. The Church of Rome was 
 now beginning to seize the fallen sceptre, and to mount the vacant 
 throne, of the imperial Sovereign ; and when the barbarians came 
 down to hold divided empire with the Church, they found that the 
 civil and ecclesiastical authorities were united to punish heresy as a 
 crime, and heretics as criminals ; and they were not slow to follow the 
 general example, and to strengthen the universal error. When the 
 Manichees fled from Africa to Rome, about the year 445, and the 
 Bishop of Rome of that day, Leo the Great, appointed inquisitors to 
 discover and bring them to trial, he only followed the example of the 
 Emperor Theodosius, who had already appointed inquisitors to search 
 out heretics. Many of the provisions of the Theodosian Code were 
 subsequently repeated, also, in the capitularies of Charlemagne. The 
 Manichees, whom Diocletian had commanded to be burnt alive, were 
 no less persecuted by the Christian Emperors, whose edicts formed a 
 part of the Theodosian Code. Valentinian, Gratian, and Theodosius 
 the Great, renewed the same law ; and Messianus, the Proconsul of 
 Africa, immediately executed some of that sect whom he had dis- 
 covered. They were condemned by the Theodosian and Justinian 
 Codes ; and Huneric, King of the Vandals, imitating the imperial exam- 
 ple, caused great numbers of the party to be burnt alive, and ba- 
 nished the rest from his dominions. The Manichees were accused of 
 great crimes as well as erroneous opinions ; and history is obscure on 
 this point. However this may be, they were persecuted, not for crime 
 alone, but for their errors as a religious party ; and this persecution 
 was practised, not by one ruler, but by many ; not as the custom of 
 
 f 2
 
 Xv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 one day or year, but as the result of the universal law which began 
 with the Heathen, and was continued by the Christian, Emperors ; 
 and which was executed alike by the Bishop and the Vandal, and 
 which has remained till nearly our own day, as the disgrace and curse 
 of Christianity.* 
 
 Instead, therefore, of declaiming against the Bishops of Rome, as 
 the authors of the crime of persecution, we shall consider in what 
 manner the guilt of that crime must be imputed to the Emperors who 
 enacted the first laws, and laid the foundation for the subsequent folly, 
 of that Church. The power of the Church of Rome was based on the 
 canon-civil law ; and it is necessary, therefore, to our rightly under- 
 standing the causes of the universal prevalence of persecution by the 
 Church of Rome in the days of its greatness, to survey the code of 
 laws upon which its influence and authority were established. It is 
 not sufficient to declaim against the Church of Rome. Our wiser 
 plan will be to ascertain the causes of the conduct we condemn ; 
 and to endeavour to show in what manner they may be removed. He 
 is not a philosophical student of history who selects the chief facts 
 which float on the surface of time, and either eulogizes or censures 
 the actors, without reference to the circumstances which led to the 
 transactions in question. We are anxious to dwell on the sources of 
 the crime, rather than to indulge in the usual descriptions of the 
 sufferings and the sorrows of the victims, or in angry denunciations 
 against the ecclesiastical criminals. We may safely indulge the hope, 
 that the state of public feeling that permitted the sanguinary scenes 
 to which allusion has been made, will never again recur ; but the best 
 mode of preventing the possibility of the recurrence of persecution is, 
 to point out the causes of its former prevalence, as a warning both to 
 rulers and their people. 
 
 A sufficient insight into the severe enactments against heresy, em- 
 bodied in the Theodosian Code, having shown that dissent from certain 
 doctrines was punishable by confiscation, by cutting off the testamen- 
 tary privilege, by banishment, by torture, by death, by all the inhu- 
 man and horrible ways of inflicting torture and death that inquisitions 
 could devise, a very brief notice of the subsequent legislative decrees in 
 the Code of Justinian will be sufficient. The spirit of the atrocious laws, 
 says Mr. Townsend, preserved in the Code of Theodosius, was main- 
 tained in the East as entirely as in the Western part of the empire. They 
 were enlarged and extended by the Code of Justinian, in which enact- 
 ments are contained, that, in the present age, would appear to be no less 
 intolerable than those of Theodosius and his predecessors. Justinian 
 and his assistant legislators, Ulpian, Papinian, and others, have been 
 admired and praised for their sound judgment, as the oracles of juris- 
 
 * Rev. George Townsend.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xl? 
 
 prudence. Yet, none of these eminent civilians were sufficiently wise to 
 perceive that the law of Christ is the only true philosophy respecting the 
 best mode of abolishing or preventing heresy. None of the great legal 
 authorities of the day could understand, that the growth of the tares 
 together with the wheat, while the wheat was the great object of the 
 husbandman's attention, was the best and only way to prevent the 
 extension of the tares. It was left to the experience of an age so 
 late as our own, to discover the profoundness of the philosophy of the 
 New Testament ; and to perceive that the wisdom of Christ was the 
 anticipation of the best inferences which could be derived from the 
 study of history. The atrocious, unphilosophical, unchristian, and 
 even barbarous, laws of Justinian could not have been enacted, if the 
 legal advisers of the Emperor had been imbued with the holy gentle- 
 ness of the religion they professed. They would otherwise have taught 
 their imperial master to tolerate, rather than to destroy, the subjects 
 who differed from him ; and to maintain truth to the utmost, without 
 aiming to eradicate error by any other means than permission to 
 inquire, and encouraging the discussion of the pretensions and claims 
 of the teachers and doctrines of Christianity. 
 
 The laws of Justinian against the heretics are principally found in 
 the fifth title of the first book of the Code, which treats of heretics, 
 Manichees and Samaritans. The first law is the same as that in the 
 Theodosian Code, which confines the privileges of the faithful to the 
 orthodox only ; and to ascertain who is eligible to the privileges 
 of the faithful, it is determined, that he is a heretic who deviates in 
 the slightest degree from the smallest article of the well-considered 
 decisions of the Catholic religion in matters of faith, and from the 
 minutest enactments of the Catholic religion in point of discipline. 
 Another definition is, "He is a heretic who is not orthodox :" a compre- 
 hensive description, which sanctioned all the subsequent enlargements 
 of the Creed, to decide, as controversies arose, who were heretics. 
 An addition was afterwards made, which confines the privileges of 
 dower to orthodox women only. 
 
 By the second law, all heresies were to cease ; none were to teach 
 or learn profane, that is, heretical, things. We omit the enactments 
 respecting the appointments of Bishops, as not relevant to the sub- 
 ject ; but direct the attention of the reader to a point on which a 
 great portion of the justice of the laws before us must unavoidably 
 turn ; and that is the meaning of the words " heresy " and " heretic," 
 as they are given in the words of Theodosius and Justinian, and 
 consequently, also, by the writers who have implicitly followed their 
 authority. The definition in the Novels of Justinian is this : " We 
 declare those also to be heretics who are attached to any kind of heresy, 
 and all who are not members of that holy, catholic, and apostolic
 
 xlvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Church, in which are all the holy Bishops and Patriarchs of the 
 whole world, both of Italy, and Rome, and Constantinople, and Alex- 
 andria, of Theopolis, and Jerusalem ; and all the Bishops who are 
 appointed by them to preach the apostolic faith and tradition. We 
 justly call those heretics who do not partake of the holy communion 
 in the Catholic Church with the Bishops, who are honoured of God. 
 Although they give to themselves the title of Christians, still, as they 
 separate themselves from the faith and communion of Christians, we 
 know that they are condemned by the just judgment of God." It will 
 be observed, that the Church of Rome is here mentioned in the proper 
 manner, as one of the churches only, which held the apostolic and 
 catholic faith ; and not as the sole depository of the faith, or as the 
 mother and mistress of all the churches. 
 
 The third law deprives heretics of all their places of worship, 
 whether called churches or by any other name ; and the houses or 
 buildings in which they meet are to be given to the Catholic Church. 
 All meetings, too, even for prayer, whether by day or night, are to be 
 punished by the payment of heavy fines. The fourth law decrees, 
 that " all Manichsean men or women, and all Donatists, are to be 
 severely punished ; and they are to be deprived of the protection 
 universally granted by the laws to all, and which we punish with con- 
 fiscation." " We regard," it says, " the heresy of Manes, and of the 
 Donatists, as a public crime against our divine religion, which is done 
 to the injury of us all, and which we punish with confiscation ; we 
 declare them to be neither capable of succession, nor of receiving 
 gifts, nor buying, selling, giving, or contracting ; and we decree, that 
 the inquisition into such crimes be contrived after the death of the 
 heretics." If a man be discovered to have been a Manichsean, his last 
 will is to be made void, with all its codicils and provisions. His sons 
 are not to inherit unless they renounce ManichaBism ; all their 
 favourers, receivers, and accomplices, are to be condemned ; servants 
 are to denounce their masters, and to be welcomed with gratitude by 
 the Church. 
 
 By the fifth law, a long list of heretics, especially Manichseans, are 
 commanded to remain no longer in the Roman territory. The Mani- 
 chaeans were to be driven from the cities, and put to death, that they 
 might do injury to no one. The law then proceeds to repeat and 
 enforce the enactments of the Theodosian Code, and declares all the 
 laws against heresy to be in force. It mentions the places of heretical 
 worship with contempt as mere conventicles, while the heretics who 
 frequent them are commanded never to assemble for worship at all, 
 nor to build any churches for that purpose. In imitation of the 
 conduct of Constantiue, who ordered the Arians to be called by igno- 
 ble epithets, heretics were commanded by the sixth law of this part
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the Code to be branded with the name of their respective founders, 
 and not to be called Christians. None are to dare to keep, read, 
 or discuss their books, which are to be diligently sought for and 
 burnt, no mention is even to be made of them, nor to hold commu- 
 nion with their authors or readers in any place, house, or field, on 
 pain of excommunication ; and no meetings are to be held for the 
 purpose of discussion, either publicly or privately. 
 
 The seventh law provides, that none are to be admitted to offices of 
 trust but the orthodox. The eighth law is the longest and most 
 important of all this part of the Code. Its first decree, that the four 
 first Councils are to be venerated, forms a part of the laws and articles 
 of the Church in England, and of the other episcopal Churches gene- 
 rally throughout the world. Its second enactment condemns the 
 Eutycheans and Apollinarians : it goes on to command, that any 
 Bishop who ordains any of these heretics should be banished ; and 
 that such heretics were neither to hold conventicles, nor to build 
 churches : if they did so, their houses were to be confiscated to the 
 Church. Those who disobeyed this humane command were to be fined ; 
 and if they were too poor to pay in purse, they were to pay in per- 
 son, by being beaten with mallets or clubs ; whether they were beaten 
 to death or not, does not appear. Heretics were not to be admitted 
 into the army : if they were there already, they were to be deprived 
 of their rank, and banished from society, whether in the palace, the 
 cities, towns, or provinces. No public discussions were to be held 
 with them. No notice, either in writing or by any other mode, was 
 to be taken of them. None were to keep their books ; and all who 
 were convicted of so doing, were to be subjected to perpetual banish- 
 ment. All who kept their books from curiosity were to be fined 
 very heavily ; and those who persisted to teach unlawful doctrines 
 were to be put to death. All their books were to be burnt ; and all 
 Magistrates who neglected to perform their duty, were to be fined ten 
 pounds of gold, a sum equivalent to 36400. 
 
 The ninth law gives to heretics a little earth for charity. " We deem 
 it a humane and pious thing," says the insolent pity of the decree, "to 
 give heretics permission to bury their dead in the usual grounds for 
 burial." The tenth decree enacts, that any land sold to heretics, on 
 which are the churches of the orthodox, shall be confiscated ; the 
 purchase being made void for the good of the Church. The eleventh is 
 the most summary, harsh, and tyrannical. " Wherever Manichseans 
 are found, let them be executed ; wherever a Manichsean is found on 
 the Roman territory, let his head be taken off." The twelfth decree is, 
 that the Manicheeans be everywhere banished and executed. Other 
 heretics, a heretic being merely not one of the orthodox, such as 
 Pagans, &c., were to be deprived of rank, office, and magistracy, lest
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 they became the judges of the orthodox and Bishops. To this it was 
 added, that when parents are of different religions, the orthodox only 
 shall rule in the matter of education. The thirteenth law provides, 
 that heretical parents are to maintain, give in marriage, and endow their 
 orthodox sons, as the Magistrates and Bishops direct. The orthodox 
 children of heretical parents are to receive that portion of property 
 which would have been granted to them if their parents had died 
 intestate. If their heretical parents offend them, they are to be 
 brought to trial and punished. Thus, the members of a family were 
 made the judges of the religion of each other ; and the words were 
 literally fulfilled, "A man's foes shall be they of his own house." 
 
 The fourteenth law was no less infamous. It decreed, that heretics 
 were not to be permitted to hold meetings, ordinations, baptisms, 
 Bynods, lands, or abbacies, nor defend them by law, nor take charge 
 of them by themselves, or others ; nor do anything prohibited. The 
 penalty of disobedience to this law was death. By the fifteenth law, 
 Manichaeans were commanded to leave their property to their ortho- 
 dox children only. The sixteenth provided the most extraordinary 
 precaution against Manicheeism, by enacting, that if a convert from 
 Manicheeism were found guilty of doing anything which savoured 
 of his former error, or if he conversed with a Manichee without 
 denouncing him to a competent tribunal, he was to be put to death. 
 Self-denunciation, or friend-denunciation, was no less commanded by 
 the canon or inquisitorial laws of Spain, than in this statute of Jus- 
 tinian, which, besides decreeing that all Mauichees be denounced, 
 commands the surrender of all heretical books to the Magistrates, in 
 order that they may be burnt. The sixteenth law commanded, that 
 the synagogues of the Samaritans were to be destroyed ; that the 
 orthodox should make wills, settlements, or deeds of gifts ; and that 
 Bishops were directed to see that property bequeathed by heretics 
 should be confiscated to the benefit of the Church. The eighteenth 
 law applied to the Samaritans all the former edicts against heretics. 
 By the nineteenth law the children, and, if they have no children, the 
 nearest relations, of the orthodox were to inherit their property. If 
 no relations claimed it, it was to go to the public treasury. 
 
 Gothofred insists, in this part of the Code, that the celebrated bull, 
 Excommunicamus, which is still read yearly at Rome, and by which 
 certain heresies and heretics, ourselves among the number, are de- 
 clared infamous, and pronounced to be under a ban, their goods 
 confiscated, and their sons declared to be incapable of succession to 
 their property, is still only without force from want of power to exe- 
 cute its provisions. The reason upon which all ecclesiastical severity 
 is justified, is affixed to this bull, that it is a greater crime to offend 
 eternal than temporal Majesty. By the same law, all who are sus-
 
 INTRODUCTION. xllX 
 
 pected of heresy are declared infamous, unless within one year they 
 prove themselves, or are proved, to be innocent. 
 
 The twentieth law is an epitome, or recapitulation, of the former. 
 Heretics who baptize are outlawed. The twenty- first decrees, that 
 heretics are not to be admitted as witnesses against the orthodox, 
 though they may be against each other ; and the twenty-second law 
 confirms the provisions of the former. Various constitutions of the 
 more immediate successors of Justinian are also appended to the civil 
 law. They are not, however, generally considered as a part of that 
 law which consists solely of the Pandects, Institutes, Code, and Novels. 
 It will, therefore, be enough to say further of them, that they main- 
 tain, in religious matters, the same spirit of intolerance which charac- 
 terizes the law of his predecessors. The Emperor Leo proceeded 
 further than even Justinian. He commanded the Jews to live accord- 
 ing to the manner of the Christians ; an edict which follows some wise 
 enactments, that all are to rest from labour oil the Lord's day. A 
 revolter to Judaism was to be severely punished by the same law. A 
 law of Heraclius banished the Jews from Constantinople, and com- 
 manded them not to come within three miles of the city. These 
 constitutions are continued to the reign of Michael Palaeologus. It 
 is only necessary to say of them, with regard to their enactments 
 concerning religion, that none of the Emperors appear to have con- 
 sidered toleration to be either the duty of Sovereigns, or the privilege 
 of subjects. The will of the Emperor was the sole criterion of truth. 
 The imperial mandate was regarded as the best arbiter of controver- 
 sies, provided the orthodox was satisfied, and the heretic was 
 helpless.* 
 
 The time was soon to arrive when these sacerdotal usurpations were 
 to yield to the Papal supremacy, and the imperial power was to be 
 given to one Bishop of Rome, rather than to the Bishops of the em- 
 pire. We must now leave the civil Princes of the earth, who had 
 succeeded in establishing the ecclesiastical authority of the rulers of 
 the churches over their people, to consider that stupendous dominion 
 which grasped the sceptre of the Caesars, which executed to the 
 utmost the laws of that imperial intolerance, and which enforced with 
 decision, energy, and cruelty, the most atrocious principles of its once- 
 powerful masters, till mankind revolted from the yoke. I shall, 
 therefore, says Mr. Townsend, only add, respecting the laws of Jus- 
 tinian, that so much of them is good and excellent, that, though very 
 many of them may be said to be superseded, the civil law, as an indis- 
 putable authority, has obtained either a general or partial admittance 
 into the jurisprudence of nearly all the governments of Europe ; and 
 even where it is least favourably received, it has been regarded with 
 
 * Rev. George Townsend. 
 VOL. I. g
 
 1 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 great deference and respect. This could not have happened, had it 
 not been deeply and extensively grounded on principles of justice and 
 equity ; applicable, excepting always in many of its religious decrees, 
 to the public and private concerns of mankind, at all times, and in 
 every situation. The principal enactments of the Theodosian Code 
 were embodied in the Breviary of Anianus, and so became the general 
 law of the Western empire. The Codes of Justinian, as a body of 
 Roman law, ceased to be the law of the Western empire when the 
 exarchate of Ravenna, the last Italian possession of the Emperors, was 
 conquered by the barbarians in the year 753. This year is univers- 
 ally assigned as the era of the final extinction of the Roman law in 
 Italy. The result of all these laws was, the establishment, over the 
 catholic church of Christ, of the power of the Church of Rome, the 
 gradual and increasing influence of which now commenced. The eccle- 
 siastical authority continued for some years to encroach upon the impe- 
 rial ; each subsequent Pope continued to augment the dominion of his 
 predecessor, till the ecclesiastical influence of the East and West, which 
 has thus been growing and strengthening from age to age, together 
 with the absolute authority of the imperial rule, became united and 
 concentrated in the see of Rome. 
 
 It is beyond the object of an introduction such as this, to trace the 
 successive usurpations of temporal as well as spiritual power practised 
 by the Romish Pontiffs and the Clergy during the darkest ages of 
 European ignorance, when possessions were regulated by custom 
 only, and transactions were chronicled in the memory alone. Among 
 those nations, those great vassals, those Kings, who could neither 
 read nor write, the most superficial instruction was sufficient to enable 
 the Clergy to engross the management of most civil concerns. They 
 held in their hands the keys both of religion and letters ; they drew 
 up wills, marriage-contracts, agreements, and public acts ; they 
 extorted legacies and donations ; they emancipated themselves from 
 the secular jurisdiction, and strove to make all persons and all things 
 amenable to their own. It was in the latter half of the eleventh 
 century that the whole extent of the Papal pretensions was manifested, 
 and that those pretensions began to be enforced with unbounded 
 arrogance and inflexible perseverance. Hildebrand, for instance, 
 endeavoured to raise the empire of the priesthood over the rest of 
 mankind, and the domination of the Pope over the whole priesthood : 
 he consequently found it necessary to concentrate the relations of the 
 latter, to separate them more completely from the rest of the world, 
 and form them into one great family. He resolved to establish celi- 
 bacy as a rigorous law, and to treat the wives of Priests as concubines, 
 excommunicating them and their husbands, if their union were not 
 immediately dissolved. Some of the Clergy resisted ; but Hildebrand,
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 to put away the semblance of opposition, set down and treated the 
 complaining parties as heretics. 
 
 The circumstances of the times, says a modern writer, were most 
 favourable to the ambitious designs of Hildebrand. Ever since the 
 death of Otho the Great, the German empire had been declining ; 
 Italy was divided into petty states ; a young King was seated on the 
 throne of France ; the Moors were masters of the greater part of Spain ; 
 the Normans had recently conquered England ; and the kingdoms of 
 the north, newly converted, and ignorant of the limits of the Pontifi- 
 cal authority, might be expected to set an example of docility. Dal- 
 matia, Sardinia, and Russia were in the eyes of Hildebrand but fiefs 
 dependent on the tiara. " In the name of St. Peter," he wrote to 
 the Russian Prince Demetrius, " we have given your crown to your 
 son, who is to come and receive it at our hands, on taking an oath of 
 allegiance to us." To give a complete list of the Princes whom Gre- 
 gory VII. excommunicated, it would be necessary to mention all who 
 reigned contemporaneously with himself: Nicephorus Botoniates, 
 Greek Emperor, whom he commanded to abdicate the crown ; Boles- 
 laus, King of Poland, whom he declared to be deposed, adding, 
 that Poland no longer should be a kingdom ; Solomon, King of Hun- 
 gary, whom he referred to his aged subjects to learn from them 
 whether their country belonged to the Romish Church ; the Spanish 
 Princes, to whom he wrote that St. Peter was lord paramount of all 
 their petty states, and that it would be better for Spain to be com- 
 pletely subdued to the Saracens, than not to pay homage to the Vicar 
 of Christ ; Robert Guiscard, the Norman conqueror of Naples, who, 
 to strengthen a right acquired by the sword, had consented to 
 acknowledge himself the Pope's vassal, and whom he punished by his 
 anathemas for the slightest disobedience ; the Duke of Bohemia, from 
 whom he exacted a tribute of one hundred marks in silver ; Philip I. 
 of France, of whom he required the same kind of tribute, and whom 
 he denounced to the French Bishops as a tyrant steeped in guilt and 
 infamy, who was unworthy of the royal title, and whose accomplices 
 they made themselves, if they did not vigorously resist him. " Follow 
 the example," said he, " of the Romish Church, your mother ; sepa- 
 rate yourselves from the service and the communion of Philip, if he 
 continue hardened ; let the celebration of the holy offices be inter- 
 dicted throughout all France ; and know that, with the assistance 
 of God, we will deliver that kingdom from such an oppressor." But, 
 of all the European Sovereigns, the Emperor Henry IV., who had 
 most influence in Italy, was, for that very reason, most exposed to the 
 thunderbolts of Hildebrand. 
 
 Against all these potentates, and Henry IV. in particular, Gregory 
 had no other ally, than the Emperor's cousin, a woman of little 
 
 g 2
 
 1U INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ability, but extremely devout : this was Matilda, Countess of Tuscany. 
 She lived on bad terms with her husband, Godfrey the Hunchbacked, 
 and was strongly attached to Gregory, who, as her spiritual director, 
 wrote extremely affectionate letters to her, circumstances which have 
 led to the inference of a more intimate connexion between them. This 
 Princess gave all her possessions to the Holy See ; and though they 
 were afterwards seized by the Emperor Henry V. as her heir, the 
 Popes did eventually obtain part of this donation, and called it the 
 Patrimony of St. Peter. 
 
 Henry IV. had just gained a victory over the Saxons, with whom 
 he was at war, when two Legates arrived with orders from the Pope to 
 repair to Rome, and answer to charges which had been preferred 
 against him. They related to investitures which he had given to 
 Bishops, a right claimed by the Pope, who threatened to excommunicate 
 him, unless he sought pardon for his fault. Henry, in a Council held 
 at Worms, deposed Gregory, who, aware of the inefficacy of such a 
 decree, replied to it by the following : " In the name of Almighty 
 God, and by my full authority, I forbid Henry, the son of Henry, to 
 govern the Teutonic kingdom and Italy ; I absolve all Christians from 
 the oaths which they have taken, or may take, to him ; and all per- 
 sons are forbidden to render any service to him as King." This 
 extravagant denunciation was sufficient to wrest from the Emperor 
 the fruit of all his triumphs ; civil war was rekindled in Germany : 
 an army of confederates assembled near Spire, surrounded Henry, and 
 obliged him to engage to suspend the exercise of his power, till judg- 
 ment should be pronounced between him and the Pope, in a Council 
 at Augsburg, where the Pontiff was to preside. 
 
 To prevent this definitive decision, Henry resolved to beg pardon 
 of Gregory, and for that purpose repaired to the fortress of Canossa, 
 where the Pope was shut up with his Countess Matilda. He went 
 without guard or retinue. He was stopped in the second court, where 
 he suffered himself to be stripped of his garments, and a hair shirt to 
 be put upon him. Barefoot, in the month of January, 1077, he 
 awaited in the court the answer of the Holy Father. That answer 
 was, that he must fast three days before he could be admitted to kiss 
 the feet of Gregory ; at the expiration of that time the Pope would 
 receive and absolve him, upon the promise of entire submission to the 
 future judgment of the Council of Augsburg. This excessive arro- 
 gance and tyranny revolted the Italians. Lombardy armed for Henry, 
 whom the Germans abandoned ; and the empire elected another head ; 
 Italy set up another Pope. 
 
 The vengeance of Gregory's successors pursued the Emperor. His 
 son, at the instigation of Pascal II., rebelled against him, and pro- 
 cured his own election to the imperial dignity. The three ecclesias-
 
 INTRODUCTION. lift 
 
 tical Electors, the Archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, tore the 
 diadem from his brow with their own hands ; and an Emperor, who 
 had distinguished himself in sixty-six battles, was reduced, through 
 the persecution of the Church, to such abject want, as to be obliged to 
 solicit, but unsuccessfully, an humble office in a church which he had 
 himself built. When he died, the Pope would not permit the remains of 
 the excommunicated Prince to rest in peace : they were torn from the 
 tomb, and for five years remained unburied, till the Clergy of Liege 
 ventured to inter them, and for so doing called down upon themselves 
 the Papal anathemas. 
 
 In the eleventh century originated in several churches the use of an 
 oath, by which each newly-elected Prelate engaged " to defend the 
 domains of St. Peter against every aggressor ; to preserve, aug- 
 ment, extend, the rights, honours, privileges, and powers, of the Lord 
 Pope and his successors ; to observe, and with all his might to 
 enforce, his decrees, ordinances, reservations, provisions, and all dispo- 
 sitions whatever, emanating from the court of Rome ; to prosecute, 
 and to combat to the last extremity, heretics, schismatics, and all who 
 will not pay to the Sovereign Pontiff" all the obedience which the 
 Sovereign Pontiff shall require." This oath has been taken by Bishops 
 who had Sovereigns that were not Catholics. Who could have con- 
 ceived that Kings, whether Roman Catholics or not, had permitted 
 their subjects to contract engagements so contrary to the public order 
 of society? Complaints have been made of it in Hungary, in Tus- 
 cany, in the kingdom of Naples ; and the Prelates of Germany have 
 subjected this form to restrictions. But it is so revolting in itself, 
 and so foreign to the discipline of the first ten centuries of the 
 church, that we cannot imagine how any one could seriously allege it 
 as a proof of the necessity of Bulls of Institution. The Pontificate 
 of Eugenius III. is rendered memorable in the history of the 
 Papal power, by the approbation which he gave of the decrees 
 of Gratian. The term decrees is here applied to a canonical compila- 
 tion, completed in 1152 by Gratian, a Benedictine Monk, born in 
 Tuscany. The recent discovery of the Pandects of Justinian had 
 revived in Italy the study of civil jurisprudence ; and the first of these 
 studies was soon deemed subordinate and supplementary to the other. 
 
 This leads us to the notice of the ecclesiastical laws against heresy, 
 which are unrepealed by the Church of Rome : indeed, what law has 
 she ever repealed ? It may be objected, that the same necessity does 
 not now exist, for the repetition of these laws against those who were 
 opposed to the faith of the Romanists. This, however, is a great 
 mistake. If the Romish hierarchy had renounced the Canons, Decre- 
 tals, Bulls, and Rescripts that embody the worst elements of persecu- 
 tion it would be ungenerous to upbraid them with the deeds of their
 
 Hv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 predecessors. But they neither have renounced, nor can as Roman- 
 ists renounce, the principles that received the stamp of infallibility in 
 days that are passed. The Church of Rome cannot recede one jot 
 from her ancient pretensions, without renouncing the ground on which 
 she stands. It would be suicide to admit that her most sanguinary 
 canons were sinful and erroneous. Nor does she wish to make any 
 such concession. She may cast dust in the eyes of Protestants ; she 
 may profess all meek and merciful things ; but this is designedly, and 
 for a specific end. Depressed, she arrays herself in all the pomp and 
 splendour of universal liberality and good-will : in Spain, in Italy, 
 and in Britain too, if she were what she would be, these attractive 
 assumptions drop off, and the woman, drunk with the blood of mar- 
 tyrs, trampling on the name of Christ, and on the hopes and happi- 
 ness of believers, starts into bold and prominent relief. 
 
 I. The laws, ecclesiastical and civil, made against heretics by Popes, 
 Kings, Emperors, and Councils, may be reduced to the following heads : 
 (i.) Laws which are made for the preservation of the members of the 
 Roman Catholic Church from falling into what they call heresy, (ii.) The 
 laws made for the discovery of heretics, their favourers, abettors, or 
 such as are suspected to be inclined to heresy : now they are either 
 such as empower persons to be active in inquiring after them, and 
 encourage them to make discoveries of this nature, or such as lay an 
 obligation on them, to be diligent in making these inquiries and disco- 
 veries ; and upon others, to assist them in so doing. Or, (iii.) Laws 
 which refer to the punishment of heretics, discovered so to be, and 
 the engagement which they lay upon men to execute these punish- 
 ments. 
 
 II. (i.) So conscious are the Romish Prelates of the gross absurdity 
 and the apparent folly of their own doctrine, and the manifest con- 
 tradiction that it bears, in many of its articles, to Scripture and the 
 clearest reason, that they dare not permit the meanest members of 
 their own Church to look into the Scriptures, or make inquiry into the 
 articles of their faith ; or even trust a child of the age of twelve 
 years, without an oath, binding him firm unto their superstitions. 1 . 
 It' hath been decreed by several Councils, "That all males at fourteen, 
 and females at twelve, years of age, shall abjure all heresy, extolling 
 itself against the holy Catholic Roman Church, and orthodox faith ; 
 and shall swear also, that they will hold the Catholic faith which the 
 Roman Church teacheth and holds." This is determined by a Coun- 
 cil of Bishops and Prelates held at Toulouse, in France, A.D. 1229; 
 (can. 12 ;) also by a Council held at Besiers, A.D. 1246 ; (can. 31 ;) 
 by a Council of Bishops and Prelates held at Alby, in France. (Can. 
 11, 12.) Moreover, this oath, by the decrees of the Council of 
 Toulouse and Alby, is to be renewed every two years. Again, " All
 
 INTRODUCTION. lv 
 
 that do come in and confess their heresy, must take the same oath." 
 (Council of Besiers, can. 5.)* 2. " All Consuls, Governors of castles, 
 authorities, and Barons, must be compelled, by ecclesiastical censure, 
 to abjure heretics, with the favourers and abettors of them :" so 
 determines the Provincial Council of Narbonne. (Can. 15.)f 3. "No 
 layman, upon penalty of excommunication, must dispute, publicly or 
 privately, touching the Catholic faith," saith Nicholas III. (Const., sect. 
 19.)J 4. " No layman must have any books of the Old or New 
 Testament, except the Psaltery, the Breviary, and the Hours of the 
 Blessed Virgin," (three New Testament books of the Roman edition,) 
 "any of which they must by no means have in the vulgar tongue," saith 
 the Council of Toulouse. (Can. 14.) Such unworthy arts do give 
 just reason to all persons to suspect the truth of that religion which re- 
 quires thus to be supported by oaths and abjurations made by children : 
 by stopping the mouths of men, and not permitting them to ask that 
 reason of their faith which all men are obliged by their Christianity 
 to be in readiness to give to all that ask it : (1 Peter iii. 15 :) and by 
 withholding the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which are able to 
 make them wise unto salvation ; (2 Tim. iii. 15 ;) which by the law 
 of Moses were to be continually read unto, and continually talked of by, 
 the people ; (Deut. vi. 7 ;) to which they, by the Prophets, were advised 
 to go, and by which they were to pass judgment on those who spake 
 unto them of religious matters; (Isai. viii. 20;) which our Lord doth 
 enjoin them both to hear and search ; (John v. 39 ;) as also his 
 Apostles, commending them who from their youth had known, and 
 who upon occasion searched, the Scriptures ; (2 Tim. iii. 15 ;) and also 
 those of the New Testament, which were written in the most vulgar 
 language, that all might know them ; (Acts xvii. 11;) and with plain- 
 ness of speech, that they might understand them ; (2 Cor. iii. 12;) 
 and which were left to be a rule of faith and practice, to all succeed- 
 ing generations, which the primitive fathers do strongly commend to 
 the perusal of all Christians, and which the heathen persecutors, as 
 fiercely as the Roman Catholics, did strive to wrest out of their hands. 
 III. (ii.) If, notwithstanding all this care to keep the people ignorant 
 and blind, some by the strength of natural reason and religion, add 
 others by conversing with men of better principles, or reading that 
 pestilent, and therefore carefully forbidden, book, the word of God, 
 come to the knowledge of his truth, and be convinced of the supersti- 
 tions and follies of the Roman doctrines, and become, according to 
 their notions, heretics ; all imaginable care is used that they may nor 
 escape their cruelty, nor find even a corner in villages and woods, 
 above or under ground, to hide them from their fury : therefore, for the 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., pp. 430, 693, 724, 725. f Ibid., p. 308. 
 
 t Magn. BuUar. Rom., torn, i., p. 157. I/abb. Concilia, torn, i., p. 430.
 
 v INTRODUCTION. 
 
 better discovery and apprehension of heretics, as well as of those who 
 favour and encourage them, or are suspected of doing so, the follow- 
 ing persons are authorized to be employed in that work ; namely, 
 Inquisitors of heretical pravity, constituted by his Holiness for that 
 end ; *" all Archbishops and Bishops in their respective provinces and 
 diocesses, with their Officials and Vicars ; f all Abbots within their 
 precincts. And, further, for the assistance of these persons, " every 
 Governor or Magistrate throughout Lombardy and Italy is bound to 
 keep twelve honest men, two Notaries, and as many servants as the 
 Bishop, or two of the brethren Inquisitors, shall see fit, who shall be 
 bound to search after and apprehend heretics, or bring them within the 
 power of the Diocesan or his Vicars ; and to require all persons to 
 assist them in so doing." J Such are the persons authorized by as 
 good authority as the Court and Church of Rome possess, to discover 
 and apprehend the heretic and his abettors. And their commission is 
 exceeding large. For instance : 
 
 IV. 1. If the Bishop or his Vicar, the Inquisitor or these twelve 
 Officers, require it, the Magistrate must assist them in inquiring after, 
 arresting, and the spoliation of heretics, by furnishing them with 
 soldiers : this must be done by cities, under the penalty of one hundred 
 pounds; and by villages, under the penalty of twenty-five pounds. By 
 the Constitutions of Clement IV., " every Governor and private person 
 is also bound to assist the Inquisitors and Officials of the Bishop and 
 his Visitor." 2. " They shall also have power to compel the neigh- 
 bourhood to swear, that if they know of any heretics, or of any that 
 keep secret conventicles, or any that believe, defend, receive, or 
 favour heretics, they will give notice thereof to the Inquisitors 
 appointed by the Apostolic See." || The Council of Toulouse decrees, 
 " That the Archbishops and Bishops shall, in every parish within and 
 without their cities, compel one Priest, and two or three honest lay- 
 men, or more if needful, by their oath, that they will diligently, 
 faithfully, and frequently inquire after heretics in the said parishes, 
 by searching any house, or subterranean receptacle, that may give 
 suspicion of them ; and if they find any heretics, believers, favourers, 
 receivers, or defenders of them, they will take them into custody, and 
 then with all speed give intimation of them to the Archbishop, 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 619. 
 
 t The Bull of Martin V., published with the consent and approbation of the General 
 Council of Constance, begins thus : " Martinus Episcopus Archiepiscopis, Episcopis 
 ac Inquisitoribus haereticse pravitatis ubilibet constitutis." (Mag. Bullar. Rom., 
 torn, i., p. 288. 
 
 t Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 605 ; Constit. Innocentii Quarti, cap. iii., iv. : 
 Constit. Clement. IV., Leg. 3 ; Mag. Bull. Rom., torn, i., p. 91. 
 
 Constit. xix. Innocent. IV. ; Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 606. 
 
 H Labb. Condi., torn, xi., part i., p. 608.
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ivii 
 
 Bishop, Lord, or Bailiff of that place." * This decree is renewed by 
 the Provincial Council of Besiers, held A.D. 1246 ; (can. 34 ;) f by 
 the Council of Alby ; (can. 1 ;)| by the Council of Aries, A.D. 1234. 
 (Can. 5.) The Council of Saltzburg, held A.D. 1420, (can. 32,)|| 
 commands "all persons, under the penalty of excommunication and 
 eternal death, as soon as they know that any heretic is in their terri- 
 tories, to discover him to their superiors ; and all Magistrates, when 
 the Inquisitors give notice of such, are bound, under the same 
 penalty, to apprehend, imprison, and deliver them to the Inquisitors." 
 And by the Constitutions of Nicholas III., directed to Christians, 
 all are liable to excommunication, who neglect to do so.^f 
 
 3. " The Lords of territories must be solicitous to inquire after 
 heretics in their houses and in the woods, and destroy their hiding- 
 places." (Concil. Toulouse, can. 3, stat. Raimundi, Com. Toulouse ; 
 Concil. Albiense, can. 4.) ** " They must assist, also, the Ordinary in 
 arresting them, under the penalty, likewise, of excommunication." 
 (Concil. Paris, A.D. 1346, can. 4.)ff 4. "All Earls, Barons, 
 Rectors, Consuls of cities, and other secular powers bearing any office 
 whatsoever, must be admonished by the Diocesan to swear, that they 
 will faithfully and efficaciously assist the Church, according to their 
 power and office, against heretics and their accomplices, and will use 
 their utmost diligence therein ; and if it be found requisite, they, by 
 the infliction of Church censures, must be compelled to do so," saith, 
 the Council of Besiere ; (can. 9 ;) the Council of Alby ; (can. 20 ;) 
 the Provincial Council of Narbonne.JJ And suitably to this, the canon 
 law determines, that " all Earls, Barons, Rectors, and Consuls 
 of cities, and other places, shall, at the admonition of the Bishops, 
 engage themselves by an oath, when required, that they will faithfully 
 and efficaciously help the Church, according to their office and power, 
 against all heretics and their accomplices." 
 
 V. There are not only the decrees of Popes and Emperors, and of 
 Provincial Councils, but many of them are confirmed by General 
 Councils. For, 1 . The fourth General Council of Lateran, assembled 
 A.D. 1215, (can. 3,)||)| decrees, that "all Archbishops, by themselves 
 or their Archdeacon, or by some fit and honest persons, twice or at the 
 
 * Labb. Concil., torn, xi., part i., p. 428. 
 t Ibid., p. 694. 
 t Ibid., p. 722. 
 5 Ibid., part ii., p. 2341. 
 || Ibid., torn, xii., p. 325. 
 IT Mag. Bullar. Rona., torn, i., p. 156. 
 ** Cone. Labb., torn, xi., part i., pp. 428, 449, 723. 
 tt Labb. Concil., torn, xi., part ii., p. 912. 
 U Ibid., part i., pp. 679, 693, 694, 726, 489. 
 
 5 Corp. Jur. Canon., torn. ii. ; Decretal, lib. v., tit. vii., cap. ix., p. 238. 
 III! Labb. Concil., torn, xi., part i., p. 152. 
 VOL. I. U
 
 Iviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 least once a year, shall visit their own parishes, in which it is reported 
 that any heretics dwell ; and shall compel three or more men of good 
 report, or, if it seem expedient to them, the whole neighbourhood, to 
 swear, that if any of them, know of heretics, or of them that keep 
 secret conventicles, or that differ in their lives or manners from the 
 common conversation of the faithful, they will endeavour to acquaint 
 the Bishop with them." The General Council of Constance, that is, 
 Martin V., with the consent and approbation of that Council, com- 
 mands " all Archbishops, Bishops, Inquisitors, Commissaries, or elect 
 persons, by virtue of their obedience, that every of them within 
 their limits, or places of their jurisdiction, diligently do watch for the 
 extirpation and correction of all errors and heresies. And where- 
 soever they find any that are reported or are even suspected to be guilty 
 of those crimes, to compel them, under the penalty of excommu- 
 nication, suspension, interdict, or confession of the crime, or any 
 other more formidable punishment, canonical or legal, to take a 
 corporal oath upon the Evangelists, the relics of the saints, or a 
 crucifix, to answer to the questions they shall ask them."* Now the 
 questions, among many others, are these following ; namely, 
 
 (1 .) " Whether they think it lawful that such an oath should be 
 
 imposed upon or taken by them, for their purgation ; that is, an oath 
 
 ex qfficio, obliging them to condemn themselves." (2.) "Whether 
 
 they hold it a mortal sin to be guilty of perjury, though it be to save 
 
 their lives, or for the advantage of the faith. This may be done by 
 
 Catholics, but must not be done by heretics." (3.) Whether he 
 
 believes, " that after the consecration of the Priest, in the sacrament 
 
 of the altar under the elements of the holy bread and wine, there 
 
 remains no material bread and wine, but the same Christ entirely, who 
 
 suffered on the cross, and sits at the right hand of the Father." (4.) 
 
 Whether he believes, " that the consecration being made by a Priest, 
 
 under the species of bread alone, and without the species of wine, 
 
 there is the true flesh, and blood, and soul, and deity of Christ, and 
 
 whole Christ, in his broken body, and the same Christ absolutely, 
 
 and under every one of the species in particular," that is, whether 
 
 there be one million of Christs, and yet but one. (5.) Whether he 
 
 believes, " that the custom of communicating laymen in the species 
 
 of bread alone, approved by this holy Council, be to be observed, so 
 
 that it is not lawful to change it without the authority of the Church ; " 
 
 that is, whether he hold that the Council, forbidding what Christ 
 
 commands, is to be obeyed before Christ. (6.) Whether he believes, 
 
 "that the Pope, being canonically elected, is the successor of St. 
 
 Peter, and hath supreme authority in the whole Church of God." 
 
 * Labb. Concil., torn, xii., p. 263.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1JX 
 
 With many questions of the like nature, containing the whole super- 
 stition of the Church of Rome.* 
 
 2. If any person whom they suspect to be guilty of heresy will 
 not undergo such canonical purgation, or by a damnable obstinacy 
 refuse thus to swear, in order to his purgation, he is to be condemned 
 as a heretic ; according to the fourth General Council of Lateran,f and 
 the General Council of Constance. 3. This power is given to "Arch- 
 bishops, &c., throughout all parts of the world where any heresy aris- 
 eth ; namely, to make these inquiries, and proceed in like manner;" 
 so that no country where this religion doth obtain, " can expect any- 
 thing but a continual butchery of all who will not be most gross 
 idolaters." And, 4. They command their officers " to proceed against, 
 and to condemn as heretics, all persons, of whatsoever dignity, office, 
 pre-eminence, state, and condition they shall be, and what names 
 soever they are called, who think otherwise of the sacrament of the 
 body and blood of Christ, or of baptism, or of confession of sins, or 
 of peaance, or any other sacraments, or articles of faith, than the holy 
 Roman Church and universal teacheth, and as heretics to give them 
 over to the civil Magistrate." || 5. They renew, also, the Constitu- 
 tion of Boniface VIII. concerning the Inquisition, " requiring and 
 commanding all powers, and Lords temporal, and Judges, of whatso- 
 ever dignity, name, or office, as they desire to be reputed Christians 
 and sons of the Church, and to glory in the name of Christ, that 
 they obey and attend these Inquisitors and other ecclesiastical per- 
 sons deputed, or hereafter by the Apostolical See to be deputed, for 
 the finding out and punishing of heretics, affording them their aid 
 and favour in finding out, apprehending, and imprisoning them, and 
 all that do believe, favour, receive, or defend them." ^[ 
 
 VI. (iii.) The laws which refer to the punishment of heretics, 
 when they are discovered and apprehended, are either such as 
 declare what punishments shall be inflicted on them, or such as 
 oblige men to inflict those punishments. Now the punishments 
 which by their laws must be inflicted, are the following ; namely, 
 excommunication, confiscation of their goods, imprisonment, exile, 
 death. (Concil. Bitter.,** A.D. 1246, can. 2.) 1. "They must be 
 excommunicated, with all their favourers, every week." (Council of 
 
 * Concilia Labb., torn, xii., p. 269. 
 f Ibid., torn, xi., part i., p. 152. 
 t Ibid., torn, xii., p. 262. 
 Ibid., p. 263. 
 || Ibid., p. 261. 
 
 IT Corp Jur. Canon., torn, ii., Sexti Decret., lib. v., tit. ii., cap. xviii., p. 332. Fol. 
 Paris., 1687. 
 
 ** Labb. ('nut-ilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 688. 
 
 h 2
 
 Ix INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Besiers, A.D. 1233,* can. 1; and A.D. 1246, can. 8;f and the 
 Council of Alby, can. 19.+) They are actually excommunicated, 
 according to the canon law. This sentence passes upon them yearly 
 in the Bulk Ccense. 2. They must lose all their goods. Who- 
 soever apprehends them, (which all have liberty to do,) hath free 
 leave to take from them all their goods, and full right to enjoy them. 
 (Const. Innocentii IV., cap. 2.||) And this punishment, saith Inno- 
 cent III., " we command to be executed on them by the Princes and 
 secular powers, who shall by ecclesiastical censures be compelled 
 thereunto." Moreover, after the sentence is pronounced against 
 them, " their goods, if they have any still remaining, shall be all 
 confiscated, and never shall return unto them." (Const. Fred. 2 ;^[ 
 Concil. Bitterense, can. 3 ;** Statuta Raimundi, Com. Tolos. ;ff Con- 
 cil. Arelat., A.D. 1234, can. S.Jt) "The very house in which the 
 heretic is found must be destroyed, and never built again ; and the 
 ground must be confiscated ; and so must all the other houses conti- 
 guous to it, if they belong to the same person ; (unless it appear to 
 the Inquisitors that the landlords were wholly inculpable ;) and all 
 the goods must be sold, or become his that takes them." (Innocent. 
 IV., cap. 26; Concil. Tolos., can. 6;|[|| Concil. Albien., can. 
 6 ;^[f Stat. Raimundi, Comit. Tolos. ;*** Concil. Bitter., can. 
 
 35.fft) 
 
 3. They are to be imprisoned without delay. And when they have 
 them thus in hold, the Governor is, by the Constitutions of Pope 
 Innocent IV., obliged " to compel them, by any punishments which 
 do not dismember them, or endanger their life, expressly to confess 
 their errors, and to accuse all other heretics they know of, and the 
 believers, receivers, or defenders of them ; and to tell where their 
 goods are." (Const. Innocent. IV., cap. 25. 1$) Which constitution 
 is renewed by Clemens IV., const, xiii., leg. 24 ; and is the ground 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 453. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 679. 
 
 ! Ibid., p. 726. 
 
 Corp. Jur. Canon., torn, ii., Sexti Decret., lib. v., tit. ii., cap. vii., p. 331. 
 
 || Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 605. 
 
 1T Ibid., p. 622. 
 
 ** Ibid., p. 678. 
 
 tt Ibid., pp. 449, 450. 
 
 JJ Ibid., part ii., p. 2341. 
 
 Ibid., part i., p. 607. 
 
 Illl Ibid., p. 428. 
 
 Hf Ibid., p. 449. 
 
 *** Ibid., p. 694. 
 
 ttt Ibid., p. 723. 
 
 W Ibid., p. 607. 
 
 $ Magn. Bull. Rom., toin. i., p. 92.
 
 INTRODUCTION. hi 
 
 of all the cruelties which those creatures meet with in the Inqui- 
 sition. 
 
 VII. 4. They must be banished, exterminated, or driven out of all 
 places where they are. For the Council of Cologne commands " all 
 that are subject to it to rise up against heretics, their favourers and 
 receivers, and faithfully to procure their extermination." (Can. 9, 
 A.D. 1425.*) And in order hereunto, all secular powers must 
 swear to expel heretics out of their dominions. f The Constitutions 
 of the Emperor Frederick II. run thus : " We make a perpetual 
 decree, that the officers, Consuls, Rectors, whatsoever office they 
 enjoy, shall, in defence of the faith, take a public oath, that they will 
 honestly endeavour, with their utmost power, to expel all heretics, as 
 such, condemned by the Church, out of their territories. And all 
 that shall be admitted hereafter to any place of government, temporal 
 or perpetual, shall be bound to take this oath, or lose his govern- 
 ment." Ludovicus VII., King of France,! with the advice of his 
 nobles, sets forth his edicts against heretics, "commanding all his 
 Barons, Bailiffs, and other subjects, present and future, to be solici- 
 tous and intent to purge their territories from heretics and heretical 
 pravity, and to swear to the observation of this and all other statutes 
 made against them. They must swear to do their endeavours to 
 exterminate out of their dominions ah 1 heretics, believers, receivers, 
 favourers, or defenders of them, according to the Council of Alby, 
 can. 20. The Council of Aries gives power to the Bishop to compel 
 them, by Church censures, to take this oath. (Can. 3 : || see the like, 
 Concil. Bitter., can. 9 ;^[ and can. 32.**) The Constitutions of 
 Innocent IV. decree, "that every Governor in Lombardy, having 
 called a common Council, shall put forth his edict, to banish all 
 heretics from under his jurisdiction, and to declare that none of them 
 shall stay within his authority." (Const. 2.ff) Now, for the bet- 
 ter execution of this punishment, it is decreed, 
 
 VIII. 1 . " That if any Governor knowingly permit a heretic to 
 dwell in his dominions, he shall be excommunicated." (Concil. Bit- 
 ter., can. 2.J) 2. "That whosoever, having temporal dominion, 
 neglects to prosecute those who by the Church are denounced here- 
 tics, or to exterminate them out of his province or dominion, is to be 
 deemed a grievous favourer of heretics." (Concil. Narbon., can. 15.) 
 3. " He who knowingly permits a heretic to abide in his dominions, 
 shall for ever lose them ; and his body shall be in the power of his 
 Lord, to do with him as he ought." (Concil. Tolos., can. 4 ;|||| Concil. 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn xii., p. 363. t Ibid., tom xi., part i., p. 622. 
 
 J Ibid., p. 423. Ibid., p. 726. || Ibid., part ii., p. 2340. 
 
 f Ibid.^part i., p. 679. ** Ibid., p. 693. ft Ibid., p. 605. 
 
 JJ Ibid., p. 677. i Ibid., p. 492. i||j Ibid., p. 428.
 
 Ixii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Bitter., can. 2;* Concil. Alb., can. 5.t) "If the temporal Lord, 
 being required, shall neglect to purge his territory from heretical pra- 
 vity, after one year elapsed from the time of his monition," saith the 
 Emperor Frederick, " we expose his territories to be seized by Catho- 
 lics ; who, having exterminated the heretics, without contradiction 
 shall possess it, and preserve it in the purity of faith, so as no injury 
 be clone to the right of the superior Lord, who doth not any way 
 oppose this procedure ; provided notwithstanding that the same law 
 take place against them who have no principal Lords." (Const. Fred. 
 II. J) And this Constitution is confirmed by Honorius III. 
 
 IX. Now all these Constitutions of Popes, Kings, Emperors, Pro- 
 vincial Councils, are also confirmed by the approved General Councils 
 of the Roman Church, and are extended and enlarged by them to 
 Kings, Emperors, and supreme Governors : so they are not only 
 Constitutions of state, or of the court of Rome, but also of the whole 
 Church of Rome. For, 1. The fourth General Council of Lateran 
 begins the chapter against heretics thus :|| "We excommunicate and 
 anathematize every heresy extolling itself against the holy orthodox 
 Catholic faith, which we have now expounded, condemning all here- 
 tics, by what names soever they are called.^]" We anathematize them, 
 their defenders and receivers." 2. The third General Council of 
 Lateran,** under Alexander III. ; the fourth General Council of Late- 
 ran, ft under Innocent III. ; and the General Council of Constance ;J 
 decree, that " the goods of heretics, if they be laymen, shall be 
 confiscated." 
 
 3. They decree, that " the temporal Lords, being required by the 
 Inquisitors, Archbishops, Bishops, &c., shall within their jurisdiction, 
 without delay, imprison heretics, and cause them to be kept in close 
 custody, by putting them into fetters and iron chains, till the 
 Church hath passed sentence on them ; and not freeing them from 
 prison without the licence of the Bishop or Inquisitors. || || And, 4. 
 They decree, ^[^f that the "secular powers, what offices soever they 
 enjoy, shall be admonished, and, if needs be, compelled by eccle- 
 siastical censure, that as they desire to be reputed Christians, so they 
 
 * Labh. Concilia, torn, xi., part i.. p. 67J" 
 
 t Ibid., p. 723. 
 
 J Ibid., p. 622. 
 
 Magn. Bullar. Rom., torn, i., p. 64. 
 
 || Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 148. 
 
 IT Ibid., torn, x., p. 1522. 
 
 ** Ibid., p. 1522. 
 
 tt Ibid., torn, xi., part i., p. 149. 
 
 tt Ibid., torn, xii., p. 260. 
 
 Ibid., torn, xii., p. 260. 
 
 (Ill Corp. Juris Canon., torn, ii., p. 238, Decret. Sext.. lib. v., tit. vii., cap. 9. 
 
 HIT Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 148.
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixiii 
 
 will take an oath for the defence of the faith, that they will honestly 
 endeavour, with their whole power, to exterminate all heretics con- 
 demned by the Church out of their territories." Thus the fourth 
 Lateran Council hath defined. The General Council of Constance 
 requires* "ah 1 Archbishops, Bishops, and other persons chosen for 
 this work, to admonish and require all Kings, Emperors, Dukes, 
 Princes, Earls, Barons, &c., and by the apostolical authority to com- 
 mand them, to expel all heretics forementioned out of their kingdoms, 
 provinces, cities, towns, castles, Tillages, territories, and other places, 
 according to the canon of the Lateran Council, which begins with the 
 words, Sicut ait; that is, according to the twenty-seventh canon of 
 the third General Council of Lateran,f which, under anathema, for- 
 bids any one to allow the heretics there mentioned to tarry within 
 their houses or territories." 
 
 5. The fourth Council of Lateran adds, that "if the temporal 
 Lord, being required and admonished by the Church, shall neglect 
 to purge his territories from heretical pravity, he shall be excommuni- 
 cated by the Metropolitan and his Suffragans ; and if he neglect to 
 give satisfaction within a year, this shall be signified to the Pope, 
 that he, from henceforth, may pronounce his subjects discharged 
 from their obedience, and expose his territories to be enjoyed by 
 Catholics, who, having exterminated the heretics, shall possess it 
 without all contradiction, and keep it in the purity of faith, so that 
 no injury be done to the principal Lord, who doth not oppose his 
 procedure ; provided notwithstanding that the same law take place 
 against them who have no temporal Lords." J Now let it be observed, 
 that both the Councils of Constance and of Basle || do reckon this 
 Lateran among those Councils which all their Popes must swear to 
 maintain to the least tittle, and to defend even to blood ; and that 
 the Council of Trent not only hath declared it to be a General Coun- 
 cil, but also affirms one of its definitions to be the voice of the whole 
 Church ; and therefore these three General Councils must be supposed 
 to approve of all that is cited from this Council. The General Coun- 
 cil of Constance ^[ decreed, that " all heretics, all followers and defend- 
 ers of them, or partakers with them, though they shine in the dig- 
 nity of Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Kings, Queens, Dukes, or 
 any other ecclesiastical or mundane title, shall be pronounced excom- 
 municate in the presence of the people every Sunday and holy-day ; 
 and that the Archbishops, Bishops, and Inquisitors shall diligently 
 inquire concerning them who hold, approve, defend, dogmatize, or 
 receive such heresies or errors as they before had mentioned, of what 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xii., p. 260. f Ibid., torn, x., p. 1522. 
 
 : Ili<l., to:u. xi. part i., p. 148. Ibid., torn, xii., p. 239. ]| IbiJ., p. 623. 
 
 IT Ibid., p. 271.
 
 Ixiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 dignity, state, pre-eminence, degree, order, or condition soever they 
 may be ; and if they be found guilty, or represented to their disad- 
 vantage, they by their authority shall proceed against them by the 
 punishments of excommunication, suspension, interdict, and also of 
 deprivation of their dignities, offices, and benefices ecclesiastical, and 
 also of their secular distinctions, and honours, and by any other penal- 
 ties, sentences, ecclesiastical censures, ways, or measures which they 
 shall judge expedient, even by taking and imprisoning their persons, 
 and executing upon them any corporal punishments with which here- 
 tics are wont to be punished, according to the canonical sanctions." 
 The General Council of Siena confirms this Bull of Martin V., made 
 with the approbation and concurrence of the Council of Constance, 
 and thus renews all the forementioned decrees.* 
 
 X. And whereas our Lord declares, " he came not to destroy men's 
 lives, but to save them," they have set up under the banner of the 
 cross a host of men, on purpose to exterminate, destroy, and butcher 
 those whom they are pleased to call heretics ; and, to encourage 
 them in this inhuman service, they promise them the greatest privi- 
 leges. The Council of Bourges, approved by the General Council 
 of Basle, declares, that " war may justly be waged against condemned 
 heretics, and that Princes and Christian people may be stimulated to 
 fight against them." The fourth General Council of Lateran decrees, 
 that f " they who, under the badge of the cross, will exterminate 
 heretics, shall enjoy that indulgence and that holy privilege which is 
 granted to them who go in defence of the Holy Land ; and that is, 
 full remission of all their sins which they confess, and for which they 
 have been contrite ; and a greater degree of everlasting happiness 
 than others are warranted to expect." (Can. 3.) The third General 
 Council of Lateran decrees,! " they shall be taken under the defence 
 of the Church, and shall be secure from any manner of molestation 
 in their goods and persons, and shall have two years' release of the 
 penance enjoined them, and receive greater indulgence at the discre- 
 tion of the Bishops." (Cap. 27.) The General Council of Siena 
 decrees, that " all who prosecute and procure the extirpation of the 
 Wickliffists and Hussites, shall enjoy all the rights, privileges, and 
 indulgences concerning the pardon of their sins, which have been 
 granted to those who rise up against heretics. And to all that will 
 prosecute them, apprehend, or bring them to the Inquisitors ; or, if 
 they cannot apprehend, will expel them from their territories ; and, 
 if they be required, will also fight against them ; they promise all the 
 privileges granted to those who went to the assistance of the Holy 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xii., p. 367. t Ibid., torn, xi., part i., p. 149. 
 
 I Ibid., torn, x., p. 1523. Ibid., torn, xii., p. 368.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xV 
 
 Land " So also doth the canon law.* Eugenius IV., in his Bull of 
 revocation of the General Council of Basle, objects this to them, 
 " that against the decrees of the Holy Fathers, and the edicts of Em- 
 perors, which deny the admitting heretics to audience, and in preju- 
 dice to the authority apostolic, and the authority of the holy Coun- 
 cils, they had invited the Bohemians to dispute at Basle, about certain 
 articles condemned by the decrees of the Popes and Councils," it 
 being notorious to the whole world, that the Bohemian heretics were 
 duly and solemnly condemned in the Council of Constance, and in 
 the Council of Siena they were by divers processes of the Apostolic 
 See, and his Legates, repudiated once and again ; and that war was 
 proclaimed, and the secular arm invoked, against them. " He shall 
 obtain of God the kingdom of heaven who dies for the defence of 
 Christians," saith a lemma of the canon law : the words of the 
 chapter are said to be directed by Leo IV. to the French army ; and 
 they speak thus, namely, " Laying aside all fear and terror, act boldly 
 against the enemies of the holy faith, and the adversaries of all reli- 
 gion ; for the Omnipotent knows, that, if any of you die, he expires for 
 the true faith, the preservation of his country, and the defence of 
 Christians ; and therefore he shall obtain of God a heavenly 
 reward." f 
 
 XI. The last punishment which these creatures must undergo is 
 death. They shall not be suffered to live, say the Constitutions of 
 Frederick II. " The Patareni, and all other heretics, shall be duly 
 punished by the secular Judge ; they shall take them away by a 
 damnable death." " For their extirpation we decree," saith Ludo- 
 vicus VII., King of France, " that, being condemned, they shall be 
 punished with the animadversion due unto them." So also doth 
 the canon law. (Decretal, lib. v., tit. vii., cap. 13.) By the statute 
 of our King Henry IV. against the Lollards, " after the sentence pre- 
 nounced against these heretics, the Mayor, the Sheriff, or their 
 officers, who must be present at the execution, shall take them into 
 their custody, and burn them before the people in some eminent 
 place." || 
 
 The Constitutions of Frederick II. decree, that " the same punish- 
 ment shall be inflicted upon those who cherish and defend them ; " 
 and upon all who having once abjured their heresy relapse into it.*[ 
 
 * Corp. Juris Canonici, torn, ii., Decret. Sexti, lib. v., tit. vii., cap. xiii., p. 240. 
 t Ibid., pars ii., caua. xxiii.. qu. viii., cap. ix., torn, i., p. 327- 
 1 Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 621. 
 Ibid,, p. 423. 
 
 || Corptis Juris Canon., torn, ii., Pecret. Greg., ix., lib. v., tit. vi., cap. xiii. 
 1T Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 619- 
 VOL. I. i
 
 iv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 If after death they shall be found to have been heretical, "their 
 bodies must be digged up, and their bones burnt." (Concil. Albiense, 
 can. 25.)* " And the temporal Lords, by the Diocesan and the 
 Inquisitors, must be compelled by ecclesiastical censures to dig up 
 their bodies." (Concil. Alb., can. 27.)f Moreover, " The sons and 
 successors of heretics, | or of their receivers, defenders, or favourers, 
 must be admitted to no public office or benefice, ecclesiastical or secu- 
 lar, nor to succeed to the inheritance of their fathers." (Const. 
 Fred. II., Innocent. IV., cap. 29. ) Such are the laws established, 
 which lay an obligation upon those of this communion to punish 
 heretics. 
 
 XII. And that what they have thus established may be inviolably 
 observed, they decree, 1. That all the Governors forementioned must 
 proceed, according to their Constitutions, against all heresies exalting 
 themselves against the Church of Rome. (Clem. Constit. 8.) |] That 
 " these punishments of heretics must by no means be relaxed." 
 (Const., Innoc. IV., cap. 32.)^[ And as they must not be relaxed, so 
 neither must they be delayed. For, " when any person is condemned 
 for heresy, the Magistrate, within five days, must execute the sen- 
 tence which hath passed upon him." (Innoc. IV., Const., cap. 24.)** 
 He must presently receive them into his custody for that end. " He 
 shah 1 punish them without delay ; " (Const. Ludovici, Regis Franco- 
 rum ;)ff and, that no person may have any temptation or excuse, 
 either for relaxation or delay, they are required to execute them 
 without any further inquiry whatsoever : for, by the Constitutions 
 of Innocent VIII., " all Magistrates, under the penalty of excommu- 
 nication, must execute the penalties by the Inquisitors imposed on 
 heretics, without revising the justice of the act ; because heresy is a 
 crime merely ecclesiastical." (Const. 10.)JJ 
 
 XIII. Moreover, that no Governor may plead ignorance of any of 
 these laws, by the Constitutions of Innocent IV., " every Governor 
 must have a copy of them inserted into the statute-book of the city 
 where he doth preside." (Const. 38.) Clemens IV. commands all 
 rulers throughout Italy to write down in their chapter-acts, or in 
 their books of statutes, the Constitutions set forth against heretics 
 by Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. " If any blot out, diminish, or 
 alter any of these Constitutions without the consent of the Apostolic 
 See, he must be proceeded against as a public defender or favourer 
 of heretics ;" (Innocent IV., Const. 34 ;)|||| that no person may plead 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 727. f Ibid., p. 728. J Ibid., p. 622. 
 
 Ibid., p. 608. || Magn. Bullar. Rom., torn, i., p. 157. 
 
 IT Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 607. ** Ibid., p. 607. 
 
 ft Ibid., p. 423. U Mag. Bull. Rom., torn. 430, Luxembourg, 1727. fol. 
 
 Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 609. |||| Ibid.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 an obligation, by virtue of any other Constitutions, to neglect the 
 prosecution of these laws. All statutes contrary to them, throughout 
 all Italy, must be abolished and rased out of all places and cities 
 within their jurisdiction." (Innoc. IV., Const. 37.)* By the Con- 
 stitution of Urban IV., " the statutes of any city, castle, village, or 
 other place, whereby the business of the inquisition of heretical pra- 
 vity is directly or indirectly hindered or retarded, are made void, and 
 the Rectors and Governors of these places are, by ecclesiastical cen- 
 sure, to be compelled to revoke them." f 
 
 XIV. Again : that, knowing of these Constitutions, they may not 
 dare to be remiss as to the execution of them ; at their admission 
 they must swear to the observance of them : " he who will not do so, 
 must not be owned as a Governor in any place in Italy, nor must any 
 of his acts be valid, nor any person be obliged to perform the oaths 
 made to him." (Innoc. IV., Const. 1.) Nor is he, by the laws of 
 Frederick II. , to be admitted as a Governor in any place of the 
 empire. And these two Constitutions are made a part of the canon 
 law, as you may see. (Sexti Decretal., lib. v., tit. ii., cap. 11. ) If, 
 having thus sworn, " he shall neglect to observe all and several of 
 these Constitutions, he must be divested of his office and government, 
 and be henceforth incapable of any dignity, office, and honour, and 
 must be prosecuted as a person infamous, perjured, suspected con- 
 cerning the faith, and a favourer of heretics." || (Const. Innoc. IV., 
 Const. 1.) If he do not proceed according to these rules against 
 all heresies lifting themselves up against the Church of Rome, he 
 must be punished with an excommunication and an interdict upon 
 his jurisdiction, to be inflicted by the Inquisitors on all refusers. 
 " If any Bishop be negligent or remiss in purging his diocess from 
 heretical pravity, he, by the canon of the fourth General Council of 
 Lateran,^[ must be deposed from his episcopal office ; and the same 
 punishment is threatened by the General Council of Constance to all 
 Archbishops, Bishops, or Inquisitors who are thus negligent and 
 remiss, and also by the canon law. (Decretal., lib. v., tit. vii., cap. 
 18.)** " If any Bailiff be negligent in this work, he must lose his 
 goods and be incapable of the office." (Concil. Tolos., can. vii. ; Con- 
 cil. Albiense, can. vii., p. 723. )ff "If any person whatsoever will 
 not execute the sentence of the Inquisitors, he must be compelled to 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 609. 
 
 t Corp. Juris Canon., torn, ii., Sexti Decret., lib. v., tit. ii., cap. is., p. 331. 
 
 t Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 622. 
 
 Corp. Juris Canon., torn, ii., Sexti Decret., lib. v., tit. ii., cap. xi., p. 332. 
 
 || Labb. Concilia, toin. xi., part i., p. 604. 
 
 H Ibid., p. 152. 
 
 ** Corp. Juris Caunnid, torn. ii.. lib. v., tit. vii.. cap. xviii., p. 333. 
 
 ft Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., pp. 482, 723. 
 
 i 2
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it by ecclesiastical censures ; and if then he amend not, both his 
 Diocesan and the Inquisitors must proceed against him as a defender 
 and favourer of heretics." * So the Council of Valence. (Can. ix., 
 Concil. Albiense, can. 22.)f 
 
 XV. And that no man may dare to give these heretics credit, or 
 show them the least favour, they have decreed, 1 . That all who are 
 believers of heretics, or give credence to their errors, shall be con- 
 demned and punished as heretics. J (Innoc. IV., Const. 27.) Now 
 "such a one is he," says the Provincial Council of Narbonne, 
 " who shows them any reverence ; who believes that they, continuing 
 in their sect, may be saved, or may be good and holy men, or friends 
 of God, or of good life and conversation, or that they who prosecute 
 them do offend." (Can. 29.) " They are to be reputed favourers of 
 heretics," saith the Provincial Council of Narbonne, " who hinder the 
 correction or extirpation of heretics, and those that believe them, 
 or do not that which, without manifest fault, they cannot omit 
 towards it ; they greatly favour them who conceal them when they 
 may and ought to reveal them ; they more, who by concealing 
 them maliciously endeavour to hinder their examination, incarce- 
 ration, or punishment ; they most of all, who release them without 
 the consent of the Church, when they are taken or imprisoned, or by 
 whose counsel, aid, or command such things are done : nor are they 
 free from this crime, who, having opportunity of place and time and 
 power to apprehend heretics, or help others so to do, wickedly let it 
 slip, especially when they are required to assist by others that are 
 willing to apprehend them."|| 
 
 , 2. ." If any believer, receiver, defender, or favourer of heretics, 
 being excommunicated, do not satisfy (the Church) within a year, he 
 from henceforward shall be infamous, and shall not be admitted to 
 give testimony, or to public offices, or to Councils, or to the election 
 of those that belong to them ; he shall have no power of making any 
 will, or succeeding to any inheritance ; no man shall be obliged to 
 answer him in any cause, but he shall be compelled to answer others ; 
 if he be a Judge, his sentence shall be void and null, nor shall any 
 causes come before him ; if an Advocate, he shall not be admitted to 
 plead ; if a Clerk or Notary, the instruments drawn by him shall be 
 of no moment." *[ So the Constit. Freder. II. And, lastly, all this 
 is confirmed by the fourth General Council of Lateran in express 
 words. (Cap. 3, de Hereticis.)** 
 
 XVI. Moreover, for the security and the encouragement of all 
 such as shall accuse them, (whereas, according to the laws of heathen 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 698. f Ibid., p. 726. 
 
 : Ibid., p. 607. Ibid., p. 495. || Ibid., p. 492. 
 
 IT Ibid., p. 622. Ibid., p. 149.
 
 INTRODUCTION. l.XJX 
 
 Rome, no man could be condemned till he had his accusers brought 
 before his face, Acts xxv. 1 6,) they have decreed that the " names of 
 the accusers of heretics shall not be made public either by word or 
 sign, because this is the pleasure of the Apostolic See.* So Concil. 
 Narbon, can. 22; Concil. Bitter., cap. 10. f And whereas in other 
 cases, by the laws of all nations, notorious criminals, infamous and 
 perjured persons, were not to be admitted to give testimony against 
 others, especially in matters of life and death : all criminals and infa- 
 mous persons, though partakers with them in their crimes, may be 
 admitted to accuse and testify against the heretics." (Concil. Narbon., 
 can. 24; J Concil. Bitter., cap. 12.) 
 
 XVII. Now, suitably to these decrees and principles, the Pope hath 
 frequently proceeded to deprive civil Governors of their dominions, 
 as being favourers of heretics, or as neglecting to extirpate them out 
 of their territories. For Raimond, Count of Toulouse, was excom- 
 municated by Innocent III. : " because he was a favourer of heretics, 
 his dominions were given by the Pope to any who would seize them. 
 In the year 1210, the citizens of Toulouse were by the Council of 
 Avignon excommunicated, because they neglected to perform what 
 they had promised concerning the expulsion of heretics. In a Coun- 
 cil held at Vaur, A.D. 1213, Arnauld, the Pope's Legate, by the 
 apostolic authority, admonished and commanded the King of Arragon 
 to abstain from the protection, defence, or communion of heretics, 
 threatening that otherwise he would pronounce against him the same 
 censures and ecclesiastical punishments which are denounced against 
 them. Yea, the Pope himself informs him, that if he proceeded to 
 be a favourer of heretics, he could not spare him, nor delay his 
 punishment ; and that he might, by the example of others who of 
 late had opposed themselves to God and the Church, perceive what 
 great danger hanged over his head." The occasion of all this was, 
 Peter, King of Arragon, solicits for Raimond, Count of Toulouse, 
 that he might be received into the Church, and for the Counts of 
 Cominges and Fucis, "that they might be restored to their own again." 
 To this the Council answer, " that Count Cominges had made a 
 league with heretics and their favourers, and that the Count of 
 Fucis was a receiver of them, and therefore His Majesty ought not 
 to intercede for them till they have satisfied the Church." Where- 
 upon the King sides with them, endeavouring to obtain by force what 
 by petition he could not obtain. In the year 1214, a Council met 
 at Montpelier of five Archbishops, and twenty-eight Bishops, who 
 choose the Count of Montfort, Prince and Monarch of the dominions 
 of the Count of Toulouse, the forementioned favourer of the Albigenses, 
 
 Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 494. f Ibid., p. 689. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 494. 5 Ibid., p. 690.
 
 llX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 desiring the Pope's Legate to confirm their choice : he, having no 
 instructions touching this matter, acquaints the Pope with their 
 request, who doth immediately commit to him the custody, and allow 
 him the benefit, of those dominions, referring the matter of the title 
 to the decision of the fourth General Council of Lateran, then called, 
 and the next year assembled, which resolves the case thus : " That 
 the Pope shall absolve the subjects of such favourers of heretics from 
 their allegiance, and expose their territories to be enjoyed by Catho- 
 lics, who, having destroyed the heretics, shall possess it without any 
 contradiction, so that no injury be done to the principal Lord, who in 
 this case was the French King." * In a Council held in the province 
 of Narbonue, A.D. 1227, "Raimond, the son of Raimond, Count of 
 Toulouse, the Count of Fuciensis, the heretics of Toulouse, and the 
 receivers, believers, favourers, defenders of them, are denounced 
 excommunicate by bell, book, and candle, and are exposed, as it 
 regards their goods and persons, to every one that can seize them."-f- 
 
 A.D. 1281. Martin IV. actually passed sentence of excommunica- 
 tion, incurred against " Michael Palaeologus," as being a favourer 
 of those schismatics, "the Greeks, and therefore a maintainer of 
 heretics, and of their heresies and schisms ; and, moreover, com- 
 manded all Kings, Princes, Dukes, &c., and all other persons, of what 
 dignity, condition, or estate soever, under the penalty of the same 
 excommunication, to make no leagues or confederacies with him ; 
 pronouncing all such confederacies null and void, though they have 
 been confirmed with an oath, or by any other firmness whatsoever." J 
 
 A.D. 1307. Clemens V., by the advice of his brethren, doth pass 
 the very same sentence upon Andronicus Palaeologus, the Emperor of 
 the Greeks, for the same crime. A.D. 1326. Castrutius, Governor 
 of Lucca, is condemned by the Pope's Legates, as a persecutor of the 
 Church, and a favourer of heretics and schismatics, and is deprived 
 of all his dignities, and exposed to every one that would fall upon 
 him. A.D. 1425. Martin V. pronounced a most heavy and severe 
 sentence against the person and kingdoms of Alphonsus, King of 
 Arragon, as being a favourer of schism. || A.D. 1512. Julius II. 
 having notice that the King of Navarre favoured the enemies of the 
 Church, he recurred to that last remedy which is wont to be used 
 against rebellious Princes, execrating the King and Queen of Navarre, 
 depriving them of their dominions, and exciting all Princes to seize 
 upon the common prey. Henry III. of France ^[ spared the blood 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part, i., p. 148. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 308. 
 
 t Corp. Juris Canon., torn ii., Extrav. Com., lib. v., tit. x., cap. iii., p. 425. 
 
 Spondau. Annales, torn, i., p. 582, sect. 2. folio. Paris, 1641. 
 
 II Ibid., torn, ii., p. 269, sect. 1. 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 851, sect. 23-
 
 INTRODUCTION. llXl 
 
 of Protestants, and refused to declare his successor incapable of the 
 succession, though he was a Protestant : wherefore, Sixtus V., A.D. 
 1585, excommunicated him as a manifest favourer of heretics; and 
 granted nine years of indulgence to any of his subjects who would 
 bear arms against him, and absolved them all from their allegiance to 
 him. Upon this his subjects rebelled against him, and Friar Clement 
 murdered him.* 
 
 A.D. 1592. Clement VIII. declares, that Henry IV. of France was 
 unworthy of the kingdom, as being a destroyer of the orthodox faith, 
 and a favourer of heretics ; and therefore he commands the election 
 of another.* A.D. 1570. Pius V. " declares Queen Elizabeth a 
 heretic, and a favourer of heretics, and for that cause deprived of 
 all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever, and her subjects 
 absolved from their oaths, and from all duty, allegiance, and obedi- 
 ence, by that oath due unto her."J 
 
 XVIII. Let it be then considered, that though Councils join with 
 Popes in the making of canons, yet, by the Constitution of that Church, 
 the Pope alone is he to whom belongs the execution, and the authentic 
 expounding, of those canons, as they must be reduced to practice; 
 and that the Pope is authorized by their Councils, both to interpret 
 and to execute their canons during the interval of their sessions. 
 And then, this being well considered, you will find reason to conclude, 
 that their whole Church is very much concerned in what the Popes 
 practise by virtue of those canons, or in pursuance of them. And 
 unless that practice of the Popes in execution of the canons, which is 
 allowed by Councils themselves during the intervals of their sitting, 
 may be reputed the practice of their Church, I cannot imagine how 
 they can impute anything to it which is not done in Councils ; 
 and if that only which is done in Councils must be reputed 
 as done by the Church, the Church must be wholly inactive in the 
 intervals, and unable to exercise any authority by virtue of such 
 canons as have no authentic expositor, and no man authorized to 
 execute them. 
 
 XIX. Moreover, though any Prince, who hath embraced the Romish 
 faith, shall promise not to prosecute the Protestant subjects according 
 to the tenor of these severe and sanguinary laws, yet cannot his most 
 solemn promises give to them any just security of freedom and 
 exemption from these punishments. This will sufficiently appear, 
 if we consider, 1. That the same impulse of conscience that makes a 
 man a Roman Catholic, will also make him act like one when he hath 
 opportunity to do it : it, therefore, must engage him to believe, that 
 
 * Thuani, lib. Ixxxii., sect, v., p. 301, Fol., torn. IT. London, 1733. 
 
 t Spondan. Annales, torn, ii., p. 739, sect. 4. 
 
 J Magn. Bullar. Rom., torn, ii., p. 324. 
 
 Corp. Jar. Canon., torn, i., Decret. I., Pars. Dist., xvil., cap. iv., p. 20.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the decrees of General Councils concerning the punishment of heretics 
 must in themselves be just and equitable, and fit to be observed by him, 
 and that the practice of the whole Roman Church, pursuant to them, 
 for the space of three whole centuries, must be a cogent demonstration 
 of the reception and approbation of those laws throughout all Catholic 
 kingdoms ; that he who doth not punish heretics, according as these 
 laws require, must be guilty of the crimes with which these laws do 
 charge him, and well deserves the punishments they have decreed 
 against him ; and that whosoever doth exterminate and punish here- 
 tics, as they encourage him to do, shall certainly obtain the blessings 
 which they promise to him for that act. How can a Popish Prince 
 abstain from thus reflecting with himself? " Either the Roman Coun- 
 cils, provincial and general, and the great monarch of the Church, do 
 well in animating and exciting all Roman Catholics to fight against all 
 heretics, expel them out of their dominions, and execute these laws 
 upon them ; and in proposing the rewards forementioned, as blessings 
 certainly to be obtained by all who do engage under the banner of the 
 cross for their destruction : and all the Roman Catholics did well, 
 who, in obedience to their commands and expectation of these bless- 
 ings, hazarded and lost their lives, by their endeavours to extirpate 
 heretics, or who did murder and massacre so many millions of here- 
 tics : and, consequently, I also shall do well, and may expect these 
 blessings, by acting as they did : or else these Popes and Councils, 
 and all those Roman Catholics, who fought or acted, or did encou- 
 rage others to act thus against heretics, were truly guilty of all the 
 Christian blood which in those wars, between the heretic and Catho- 
 lic, was spilt, and all the barbarous massacres and horrid murders 
 which have been committed upon them. And if so, why do I own 
 that Church, that Pope, those Councils, who have been guilty of these 
 horrid crimes and these notorious marks of Antichrist ; and which 
 hath often sainted, but never in the least discountenanced, but kept 
 communion and good correspondence with, the authors of them?" 
 
 2. This further will appear, if we consider that the same principles 
 which oblige a Popish Prince to own that faith, oblige him also to 
 execute these sanguinary laws upon the heretic, whatsoever promises 
 or obligations he hath made to the contrary : that he is subject to 
 a power which can absolve him from all obligations of this nature 
 which he at any time shall make, and concerning which already he hath 
 declared that it is not in his power to make them, or to observe them 
 when they have been made : that they are prejudicial to that superior 
 tribunal of the Church to which he must be subject, and made con- 
 cerning heresy, of which, as being a spiritual concern, he must not 
 judge, nor of the punishments belonging to it, or of the lawfulness 
 of suspension of those punishments. All this it is easy to demon-
 
 INTRODUCTION. IxXlli 
 
 strate. (1.) According to plain reason, when two Princes, who have 
 distinct tribunals, make laws or Constitutions thwarting one ano- 
 ther, the Constitutions of the inferior tribunal must give place to 
 those of the superior ; but by the principles of the communion of 
 the Roman Church, the ecclesiastical tribunal is superior to that 
 of Princes : since then it is decreed by that tribunal, as we have 
 seen already, that all Catholic Princes shall faithfully endeavour 
 to extirpate heretics from their dominions, and that all Constitu- 
 tions made to the contrary are ipso facto void ; no Constitutions 
 made by Princes in favour of heretical subjects can be observed by 
 them, or be of any moment prejudicial to the determinations of the 
 superior tribunal of the Church. Now that, according to the princi- 
 ples of Roman Catholics, the ecclesiastical tribunal is superior to that 
 of Princes, is evident : 
 
 First : From express declarations of the Church in her most general 
 and approved Councils. ^EgidiusViterbiensis says, with the great applause 
 and approbation of the fifth Lateran Council under Julius II., that no 
 Kings or Princes can neglect the commands, or refuse the authority, 
 of their General Councils.* The Council of Constance declares, " that, 
 being a General Council, it hath power immediately derived from 
 Christ, which every person, of what state or dignity soever he be, 
 even His Holiness himself, is bound to yield obedience to, in matters 
 which concern faith, the extirpation of the present schism, and the 
 reformation of the Church." The General Council of Basil, in the 
 second session, renews the same decree ; and, session 1 2th, doth 
 challenge, " by virtue of the omnipotent God, immediate power over 
 all faithful Christians;" and, session 33d, declares this to be "a 
 doctrine of the Catholic faith, which he that pertinaciously resists 
 is a heretic ;" and, session 45th, affirms, " that it is an article 
 which cannot be neglected, without the loss of salvation." 
 
 Second : This will appear from express acts of jurisdiction exercised 
 by the Church over Kings and Princes : for, to omit the frequent excom- 
 munications, and sentences of deprivations, passed upon Emperors and 
 Kings in the fourth General Council of Lateran, can. 3 ; in the General 
 Council of Lyons ; in the Council of Pisa, sess. 14 ; in the General 
 Council of Constance, sess. 12, 17, 37 ; of Basil, sess. 27, 34, 40, 41 ; 
 - all which expressly have decreed, that Emperors and Kings, for 
 misdemeanours mentioned there, shall lose their dignity and honour, 
 and be deprived of their government ; I say, to pass by this, they 
 frequently demonstrate their supposed power over them by laying their 
 commands upon them. " We enjoin Princes," saith the fourth Lateran 
 Council, cap. 67 ; and the Council of Vienna. "We command secular 
 Princes," saith the fourth Lateran Council, cap. 68. " We peremptorily 
 
 * Labb. Concilia, torn. XIT., Cone. Constant., sess. 4. 
 VOL. I. k
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 enjoin them," saith Julius II., with the approbation of the fifth Lateran 
 Council. " We command that they be compelled by the secular power," 
 saith the fourth Lateran Council, cap. ult. ; and the General Council 
 of Lyons, cap. super cruciata. 
 
 Third : Their canon law is full of Constitutions to this effect, declar- 
 ing, that "when the things of God are treated of, the King must study 
 to subject his will to the will of the Priests, and not prefer it before 
 theirs ; that the law of Christ subjects Kings to the priesthood of 
 Christ, and puts them under their tribunals ; that Christian Emperors 
 ought to subject their executions to the Prelates of the Church, and 
 not prefer them to theirs, because God would have them to be subject 
 to the Priests of the Church." By the same law it is determined, 
 that " Kings must follow the Church form, and not prescribe human 
 laws to her, nor seek to domineer over her Constitutions, but submit 
 their necks to her clemency ; and that they ought to yield obedience 
 to the laws of the Church, and not exalt their power above her." * 
 
 (2.) According to the principles of that communion, all Princes must 
 submit to, and obey, the definitions of their General Councils, and the 
 determinations of the Church in cases spiritual, because she is their 
 only guide in spirituals : this being, therefore, a spiritual case, 
 (namely, how far the civil Magistrate doth stand obliged to punish 
 heretics,) the Romish Prince must stand to her determination in that 
 matter ; and therefore he is obliged to act according to the decrees 
 forementioned, which are firmly established by the Church, whatsoever 
 promises or oaths he may have made unto the contrary. Now that 
 the cause of heresy, and of the punishments to be inflicted on the 
 heretic, is by them judged a spiritual cause, with which the civil power 
 must not intermeddle, is evident from that decree of Boniface V., 
 which strictly forbids " all powers, Lords temporal and Rectors, 
 with their officers, to judge or take cognizance of that crime, it being 
 merely ecclesiastical, or to free them out of prison without the licence 
 of the Bishops or Inquisitors, or to refuse to execute the punishments 
 enjoined by them, or any way directly or indirectly to hinder their 
 process or sentence, under the pain of excommunication, which if 
 they obstinately He under for a year, they are to be condemned as 
 heretics ; " and this decree is taken into the body of the canon law,f 
 and is confirmed by the General Council of Constance, sess. 45. 
 " The crime of heresy must be judged only by the ecclesiastical court, 
 and the secular must not meddle with it." (Gregory XIV., Const. 7, 
 sect. 6.) 
 
 (3.) No promises, oaths, or engagements can oblige to the omission 
 of that which is our duty, by the confession of all Christians : they 
 
 * Corp. Juris Canon., torn, i., Decret., pars i., Dist. xcvi., cap. xi., xii., p. 118. 
 
 t Ibid., torn, ii., Sexti Decret., lib. v., tit. ii., Negotium Inquisitions, p. 340, et > ? .
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TV) -7 
 
 cannot bind, saith their own canon law,* to anything which is 
 against the benefit of holy Church ; for, according to the determina- 
 tion of Innocent III., received into the body of that law, " they are 
 not to be called oaths, but perjuries, which are attempted against the 
 benefit of the Church." They cannot bind against the right of a 
 superior ; for the same law f declares, that in any oath that is taken, 
 the right of the superior must be supposed to be respected. They can- 
 not bind against the canonical sanctions ; " for otherwise," saith the 
 same law, " it is a rash oath, and not valid." Since then, according 
 to the doctrine of the Church, it is the duty of all Catholic Princes to 
 punish and extirpate heretics, they cannot be obliged by any oath or 
 promise to neglect that duty : since this neglect is against law and the 
 canonical sanctions, against the plain determinations of the supreme 
 tribunal, and against the benefit of the holy Church, therefore no 
 oath or promise can oblige them to it. And, 
 
 (4.) They who claim a power to absolve Catholic Princes from 
 their contracts, leagues, and engagements made to heretical Princes, 
 must have an equal power to absolve them from contracts made with 
 their own heretical subjects : for, sure, the contracts made with equals 
 must be more firm than those which we have made to our inferiors ; 
 but the Pope claims, and oft hath exercised, this power of absolving 
 Catholic Princes from their contracts made with other Princes, on 
 this account, because they were made with heretics, or persons 
 excommunicate. Ergo, &c. To give some few examples ; the 
 Bull of Urban VI. concerning this matter, runs thus : " Amongst the 
 many cares with which we continually are pressed, our chief concern- 
 ment is, to provide fit remedies for preventing the subversion of 
 the faithful, by consorting or by participating with schismatics or 
 heretics ; and truly we have lately heard," saith he, " that Wence- 
 laus, King of the Romans and Bohemians, and Charles the Emperor, 
 have entered into some confederacies, leagues, compacts, or conven- 
 tions, with divers Kings, Princes, Dukes, Earls, grandees, and nobles ; 
 some of which Kings, &c., then were, or afterwards have become, 
 manifest heretics and schismatics, being separated from the union of 
 the Roman Church, though not by us declared such : we, therefore, 
 considering that such confederacies, leagues, compacts, or conven- 
 tions, made with these heretics and schismatics, after they were such, 
 are rash, void, and null by sentence of the law ; but if they were 
 made before their falling into schism and heresy, and confirmed by an 
 oath, or by the Apostolic See, or by whatsoever firmness, as soon as 
 they become guilty of these crimes, the King, and all that with him 
 have entered into these compacts, is absolved from the observation of 
 
 * Corp. Juris Canoii., torn, i., Deeret. Greg, ix., lib. ii., tit. xxiv., cap. 27, p. 110. 
 t Ibid., lib. v., tit. xxiv., cap. xix., p. 109. 
 
 k 2
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 them, and ought not to observe them ; therefore, we, by our aposto- 
 lical authority, declare the said King absolved from them, and the com- 
 pacts themselves to be wholly void and null." Pope Martin V., * in 
 his epistle to Alexander, Duke of Lithuania, who had received the 
 Bohemians into his protection, writes thus : "If thou hast been any 
 ways induced to promise to defend them, know, that thou couldst not 
 pawn thy faith to heretics, the violators of the holy faith ; and that 
 thou mortally offendest, if thou dost observe it."f 
 
 When Uladislaus,J King of Hungary, had made peace with Amu- 
 rath the Turk, for ten years, and had confirmed it with an oath, the 
 Pope, Eugenius IV., writes to Julian the Cardinal, to persuade him 
 to violate that peace, alleging and declaring, " that no league made 
 with the enemies of the Christian faith, without consulting with the 
 Pope, is valid :" hereupon the poor King is prevailed with to become 
 a most perfidious wretch, and fall upon the Turk unawares ; which 
 he observing, and being straitened in his arms, pulls out the articles 
 of the covenant, and, looking up to heaven, cries out, " crucified 
 Jesus, see the perfidiousness of this nation, which, against their oath, 
 have violated all right and faith ; and if thou art a God, do thou 
 revenge this perjury upon them ;" which was no sooner said, but the 
 Christians were put to flight, the perjured King, and the Cardinal who 
 persuaded him to violate his oath, were both slain ; God teaching us 
 by this example, saith JEneas Sylvius, that oaths are to be kept, when 
 made, not only with the faithful, but with enemies. || Pope Innocent 
 III-j^F in his epistle to Peter, King of Arragon, writes thus: "We 
 enjoin thy serenity, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, that thou desert the 
 forenamed people of Toulouse, and that thou do not afford them any 
 counsel, aid, or favour, whilst they continue as they are, notwith- 
 standing any promise or obligation whatsoever made unto them, in 
 elusion of the ecclesiastical discipline." Paul III., in his Bull against 
 Henry VIII., edit. A.D. 1538, "exhorts and requireth, in the Lord, 
 all Christian Princes shining in imperial or regal dignity, that they do 
 not, under pretence of any confederations or obligations whatsoever, 
 although corroborated by frequently-repeated oaths, or any other 
 firmness," I say he doth exhort them, " not to yield to King Henry, 
 his accomplices, favourers, adherers, consulters or followers, or any 
 of them, by themselves or others, openly or secretly, directly or indi- 
 rectly, tacitly or expressly, any counsel, aid, or favour ;" and that 
 
 * Spond. Annales, toin. ii., p. 265, sect. 1 . 
 
 t Cochlei Hist. Hussitar., lib. v., p. 212, A.D. 1423, fol. Mogunt., 1649. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 428, sect. 3. 
 
 Ibid., p. 341, sect. 10. 
 
 || Ant. Bonfinii, Rerum Ungar., Decad. v., lib. iii., fol. Basil., 1568. 
 
 If Labb. Concilia, torn, xi., part i., p. 93.
 
 INTRODUCTION. l.XXVii 
 
 they might not think themselves obliged so to do, he " absolves them 
 all from all oaths or obligations, made or to be made unto him or 
 them, and declares them to be void and null, and of no strength and 
 moment." And, lastly, Pius V. absolves not only all the subjects 
 of Queen Elizabeth, but also " all others who had in any sort sworn 
 to her." 
 
 (5.) They who claim a power to absolve subjects from these pro- 
 mises and oaths by which they were obliged to yield obedience to 
 their heretical Princes, must have an equal power to absolve Catholic 
 Princes from their promises and oaths made to heretical subjects ; for, 
 sure, the obligation of Princes to their subjects cannot be greater 
 than that of subjects to their Prince. Now it is known that Roman 
 Popes and Councils claim the power of absolving subjects from that 
 obedience which they have sworn to yield to their heretical superiors : 
 ergo, by the same principles, they must have power to absolve Catholic 
 Princes from those promises and oaths which they have made to their 
 heretical subjects. To give some instances of this kind : " Let them 
 know," saith Gregory IX.,* "who were bound by any bond, how 
 firm soever, to persons manifestly fallen into heresy, that they are 
 absolved from that fidelity, obedience, and homage which they 
 were obliged to pay ; " and this decree is put into the body of the 
 canon law, and hath, according to Singleton,f been commended 
 and observed in the Church practice about four hundred years. The 
 truth and modesty of which assertion, as to the limitation of it to four 
 hundred years, will be abundantly made good by the following : 
 
 In the eighth century, Sigonius and others inform us, that 
 " Rome and the Roman duchy were lost by the Grecians, by reason 
 of their wicked heresy, and fell into the hands of the Pope of 
 Rome." The "wicked heresy" of Leo Isaurus, which lost him the 
 empire of the West, was this, that he forbade the adoration of 
 images, and pulled them down everywhere ; for this Gregory II. 
 persuades the Italians to revolt from him, as being a heretic, he 
 absolves them from their oaths of obedience, and strictly forbids them 
 to pay him any tribute ; whereupon they, rejecting the Emperor, 
 do bind themselves by oath to be obedient to the Pope. This is the 
 title by which the Pope holds Rome at present, even plain rebellion 
 and tyrannical invasion of his Sovereign's estate and dominions. 
 " Now by this action," saith Baronius, "he left to posterity a worthy 
 example, that heretical Princes should not be suffered to reign in the 
 Church of Christ, if, being warned, they were found pertinacious in 
 
 * Corpus Juris Canon., torn, i., Dccret. Greg, ix., lib. v., tit. vii., cap. xvi., p. 241. 
 
 t Singleton Discuss. Decret. Con. Lat., p. 98. 
 
 t Sigon. I)e Regno Italia, lib. iii., fol. Hanov., 1609.
 
 Ixxviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 error." * The next successor of Gregory II. was Gregory III.,t 
 who, " as soon as he had obtained the Papal dignity, by the consent of 
 the Roman Clergy, deprived Leo III., Emperor of Constantinople, 
 both of his empire and the communion of the faithful, because he had 
 swept away the holy images out of the Church." 
 
 In the eleventh century, Gregory VII. writes thus : " Either King 
 Philip of France, rejecting the filthy merchandise of simoniacal heresy, 
 will permit fit persons to be chosen into the government of the 
 Church, or the French will refuse to obey him any longer, unless they 
 had rather cast away the Christian faith, being smitten with the sword of 
 a general anathema." Where it is plainly to be seen, that the Pope sup- 
 poses heresy to be a crime sufficient, not only to justify subjects in their 
 refusal of obedience to their lawful Prince, but also to justify him in 
 excluding them from the communion of Christians who obey him. 
 
 In the twelfth century, to give the better colour to the depositions 
 of Henry IV. and Henry V., it was first voted in the Council held at 
 the Lateran, 1102, "that it was heresy to assert the right of laymen 
 to invest into ecclesiastical preferments." And this decree was 
 renewed in a Council at Vienna, A.D. 1112, and by another held at 
 the Lateran, A.D. 1116 ; and in pursuance of these decrees were these 
 two Emperors deposed. But, notwithstanding all the thunderings of 
 Paschal II. against Henry IV., the Church of Leon stood firm to him, 
 which so incensed the good Pope, that he writes to Robert, Count 
 of Flanders, to expel those schismatics out of the Church. His words 
 are these : "It is just, that they who have separated themselves 
 from the Catholic Church should be separated from the Church's 
 benefices : wheresoever, therefore, thou art able, do thou persecute 
 Henry, the head of the heretics, and all his favourers, with all 
 thy might ; for truly thou canst offer no more acceptable sacrifice to 
 God, than by impugning him who hath lifted up himself against God ; 
 who, by the judgment of the Holy Spirit," (0 horrid blasphemy !) " is 
 cast out of the house of God by the Princes of the Apostles and their 
 Vicars : this we command thee to do for the obtaining the remission 
 of thy sins, and the familiarities of the Apostolic See ;" which, as it 
 seems, cannot be more effectually obtained by anything than by rebel- 
 ling against heretical Princes, and persecuting them with all our might. 
 
 In the thirteenth century, in the year of our Lord 1245, Pope 
 Innocent IV. assembles a General Council at Lyons, where he declares 
 the Emperor Frederick II. guilty of heresy, || "because he violated 
 
 Baronii Annales, A.D. 730, sect. 40, p. 98, fol., torn. ix. Rom*, 1600. 
 t Platina De Vitis Pontificum, Greg. III., p. 110, folio, Colon., 1568. 
 J Labb. Concilia, torn, x., p. 34, Kpistolse Greg. VII., lib. i., epist. 35. 
 Ibid., p. 629, Paschal II., epist. rii. 
 || Ibid., torn, xi., part i., p. 645.
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxi.X 
 
 his oath ; and because he diminished the privilege granted to the suc- 
 cessors of St. Peter, in these words, ' Whatsoever thou shalt bind on 
 earth,' &c. ; and contemned the keys of the Church ; which," saith he, 
 " must be heresy, seeing the civil law declares him a heretic, and 
 worthy to be punished as such, who in a light matter doth deviate 
 from Catholic religion." Then follows his deposition of the Emperor 
 in these words : " We, therefore, after mature deliberation had with 
 our Cardinals, and with the sacred Council, upon the premisses, 
 
 declare the forementioned Emperor deprived by God of all 
 
 honour and dignity, and by our sentence we deprive him of them, 
 perpetually absolving all his subjects from their oaths of fidelity to 
 him, and by our apostolical authority forbidding them to acknowledge 
 or obey him hereafter as Emperor or King ; and decreeing, that all 
 who under that relation yield him counsel, aid, or favour shall be 
 ipso facto excommunicate." 
 
 A.D. 1254. Innocent IV. pronounceth an anathema, on Maundy 
 Thursday, against Ecelinus, Governor of Marchia Tarvisina, as being a 
 manifest heretic, and frequently excommunicated on that account. 
 And, A.D. 1256, he gathers an army of Crusadoes against him.* 
 
 In the fourteenth century, A.D. 1322, John XXII. excommunicates 
 Matthew, Viscount of Milan, his sons and abettors, as being heretics 
 and schismatics ; passeth upon them the sentence of deprivation of all 
 their goods, deposition from all office and dignity, ecclesiastical and 
 secular, and of inability to any other ; and exposes their persons to be 
 seized upon ; and treats with Frederick of Austria, King of the 
 Romans, about sending an army into Lombardy to suppress them.f 
 
 A.D. 1324. John XXII. commands Lewis of Bavaria to cease from 
 all administration of the empire, and never to assume it again, with- 
 out the approbation of the Apostolic See ; and this was done, as for 
 other reasons, so in particular this, that Lewis had showed favour and 
 patronage to Count Galeatius and his brethren, who had been lawfully 
 condemned for heresy, and to some others who had rebelled against 
 the Church. J A.D. 1324. This Pope pronounces the Emperor con- 
 tumacious, and deprived of all right to the empire ; reserving to him- 
 self the inflicting of other penalties upon him, if ever he endeavour 
 to meddle with the administration of the empire, or should presume 
 to favour the forementioned heretics and rebels, forbidding all the 
 subjects of the empire, under the most grievous penalties, in any 
 manner to obey him, to call him Emperor, or yield him any aid 
 or favour. A.D. 1335. Benedict XXII. renews this sentence 
 
 * Spondan. Annales, A.D. 1254, torn, i., sect. 3. 
 t Ibid., torn, i., A.D. 1322, sect, v., p. 564. 
 t Ibid., A.D. 1324, sect, ii., p. 574. 
 5 Ibid., A.D. 1335, sect, i., p. 631.
 
 1XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of John. And the next year the Emperor makes a large promise of 
 doingalmost anything the Pope would ask, and giving power to his own 
 subjects to rise up against him if he did not perform it ; and yet this 
 was not thought sufficient to expiate the guilt of favouring heretics 
 and rebels to the Church of Rome, and doing that which was at Rome 
 esteemed heresy. He therefore proceeds to confess, that he had 
 done ill in favouring the Viscount of Milan and others, condemned 
 by the Church as heretics and schismatics ; that, in his appeal made 
 against John XXII., he had said many heretical things ; that he 
 would make a full confession of these things, and would supplicate 
 for absolution ; and take an oath, stare mandatis Ecclesice, to obey the 
 commands of the Church, and to extirpate heretics : and yet all this 
 would not prevail for the obtaining of his pardon. A.D. 1343. 
 Clement VI. renews the same sentence against the Emperor ; and the 
 conditions which he required, in order to his absolution, were, that he 
 should confess his heresies and errors, of which he was accused ; and 
 that he should resign the empire, not resuming it, but by the 
 favour of the Pope ; that he should deliver up his sons, goods, and 
 his whole concerns, into the hands and will of the Pope ; all which the 
 Emperor promised to do : and yet this would not satisfy. 
 
 Such is the Church of Rome. We write considerately, inasmuch as 
 she has not renounced the principles that received the stamp of 
 infallibility in bygone days. Dr. Delahogue, in his class-book for the 
 instruction of the Priests educated at Maynooth, states, that the 
 Church holds her jurisdiction over all baptized persons, as a com- 
 mander retains authority over deserters, and may decree for them 
 severe punishments. The worst and bitterest persecutors are canon- 
 ized and beatified as saints in the Romish Church. St. Dominic, 
 Thomas Aquinas, (whose Secunda Secundce is replete with persecuting 
 principles,) Ferdinand of Castile, and Pius V., are embalmed in the 
 devotions of, and exhibited as models to, the Roman Catholics of 
 Britain. To warn the Protestants of the unchangeable character 
 of the Papacy, is the object of the following volumes.
 
 MARTYROLOGIA, 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 OF THE PERSECUTIONS RECORDED IN THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SECT. I. ABEL, B.C. 3875 Birth of Cain His Character The Occupation of the 
 Brothers Cause of Difference Nature of the Offerings presented Sacrifices 
 The Contrast Effect upon Cain Who murders his Brother Records of Tar - 
 gums SECT. II. ABRAHAM Moral State of the World at his Birth His early 
 Character The Idolatry of Terah Zabiism Rise and Progress of the primi- 
 tive Idolatry Rabbinical Tradition Terah a Maker of Idols Abraham reproves 
 his Father /* examined and punished by Nimrod. 
 
 SECTION I. - THE MARTYRDOM OF ABEL. 
 
 WE cannot direct our attention to this melancholy event without 
 acknowledging the awful fact, that when holiness of life has been 
 abandoned and trampled upon, the heart of man eagerly gives 
 entrance to every species of iniquity. In Cain, the near kinsman 
 and murderer of Abel, we behold the first specimen of the conduct 
 of a son and a brother. In the former relationship we meet with the 
 primary example of disobedience to an earthly parent. Eve, doubtless, 
 rejoiced in his birth. What she thought and felt upon this interest- 
 ing occasion, we learn from what she said, and from the name which 
 she gave to her new-born son, in token of her gladness in having 
 " gotten a man from the Lord." With a heart teeming with grati- 
 tude she would look up to God, who had not only prolonged and 
 spared her life, but had made her the joyful mother of a living child, 
 and who, though, according to the curse, he had multiplied her 
 sorrow, yet had not refused to administer to her consolation. She 
 would also rejoice in the birth of Cain as an earnest of the accom- 
 plishment of the promise of the Redeemer from among her seed, who 
 should bruise the serpent's head. How soothing to the maternal 
 heart must have been the hope of relief and deliverance through the 
 instrumentality of her offspring ! And how gratefully would she medi- 
 tate upon thus repairing the ruin which she, through frailty, had 
 induced, little contemplating that fearful developement of evil in him, 
 for the destruction of which she was earnestly looking ! 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. 
 
 We have to regard Cain as a brother. Of the early life and deport- 
 ment of these children little is said in the sacred records ; but from 
 the sequel we are led to conclude the juvenile career of the elder could 
 not have been happy. By personal experience he knew nothing of the 
 height from whence he had fallen. He had been taught from infancy 
 the nature of the primitive transgression, and he could not have been 
 altogether an unconcerned witness of the lamentation and tears which 
 fell from the guilty, but now repenting, pair ; the supplications and 
 prayers which were uttered at the footstool of Mercy's throne would 
 be familiar to him ; the frequent comparisons which they might be 
 expected to institute between their present and former state, one 
 might have imagined, would have excited a deep and thrilling interest 
 even in the heart of Cain ; and the name of the promised Mediator 
 and Redeemer, which his parents uttered with reverential gratitude, 
 as their only consolation and hope, would doubtless excite his atten- 
 tion, while it raised in his mind sentiments of fear, mingled with 
 desire to know more respecting him. 
 
 Cain was a husbandman, Abel was a shepherd. "Abel was a 
 keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." (Gen. iv. 2.) 
 Such the fruit of sin. The sons arrive at manhood, at the age of 
 reason, vigour, and activity, and feel the law of God and of nature 
 resting on them. Though the earthly lords of creation, they must 
 obtain a livelihood by the sweat of the face. (Gen. iii. 19.) The 
 earth no longer yields spontaneously her increase. The land must 
 be ploughed, and the grain cast in the furrow through the care and 
 labour of man, else in vain will the heavens pour upon it their fertil- 
 izing showers, or the blessing of the Most High be sought. " Cursed 
 is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the, 
 days of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." 
 (Gen. iii. 17, 18.) That the cattle, also, those innocent partakers 
 of man's woe, may furnish their fleece for clothing, or their milk for 
 food, they must be protected from the inclemency of the weather, 
 and the fangs of ravenous beasts ; they must be led to suitable pas- 
 ture, and to the brook. Hence the first employment of our progeni- 
 tors. It has been observed, that " the different dispositions of the 
 brothers may be traced in the occupations which they followed. 
 Pious and contemplative, Abel tends his flock ; his profession affords 
 more retirement, and more leisure for meditation ; and the very 
 nature of his charge forms him to vigilance, to providence, and to 
 sympathy. His prosperity and success seem. to flow immediately and 
 only from the hand of God. Cain, more worldly and selfish, betakes 
 himself to husbandry, a work of greater industry and art ; the neces- 
 sary implements of which suppose the prior invention of sundry 
 branches of manufacture ; and in whose operations and their effects, 
 art, blending with nature, would claim at least her full proportion 
 of merit and importance. But it is not the occupation which has 
 merit or demerit, the man who exercises it is the object of censure 
 or praise. It is not the husbandry of Cain, but wicked Cain the 
 husbandman, that we blame : it is not the shepherd's life, but good 
 Abel the shepherd, we esteem. ' And in process of time it came to
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ABEL. 3 
 
 pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto 
 the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock 
 and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to 
 his offering : but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.' 
 (Gen. iv. 35.)"* 
 
 What constituted the difference ? In attempting to answer this 
 question, we shall discover that the first murder, with the blood of 
 which the earth was polluted, was the result of a religious dispute. 
 Cain had the weakest argument, and greater power, which he hesitated 
 not to employ in the destruction of his opponent. From that time 
 to the present, all religious persecution has commenced and been 
 carried forward on the same principle. " For the flesh lusteth 
 against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh : and these are 
 contrary the one to the other." (Gal. v. 17.) 
 
 The respective nature and quality of the offerings presented could 
 not have made the difference concerning which we inquire. We must 
 penetrate deeper. Cain had evidently profited but little by the pre- 
 cept and example of his parents. Pride appears to have blinded his 
 eyes and hardened his heart, which refused to acknowledge the degra- 
 dation of his nature. From his subsequent conduct, it appears that 
 he regarded the transgression of his parents as purely their own, and 
 terminating entirely in them. What had he to do with it, who was 
 not then in the world ? How was he accountable for any part of its 
 consequences ? They might have fallen from their primitive state, 
 as they said they had ; but he himself was as God had made him, 
 and what more could be demanded ? They, as having violated and 
 lost their nature, might want a Redeemer to repair and restore it ; 
 but he had ever continued in that condition in which he at first was 
 made, and he was thankful for it, and desired scarcely a better. 
 What need, then, had he of a Redeemer? his very worst sin could 
 be but the developement of that nature in the assignment of which 
 to him he had had no choice. Thankful for the blessings with 
 which God had surrounded him, he asked not forgiveness ; he could 
 not believe himself accountable for his varied actions, therefore he 
 beheld no sin of which he had been guilty that needed an atonement, 
 much less to require an atonement from without, through inability to 
 make due satisfaction himself. 
 
 Ere long a day arrived which tested the rectitude of these princi- 
 ples. Adam, and in him his descendants, had been commanded to 
 signify their estimate of sin, of which death was the penalty, and 
 their hope of pardon through a Redeemer, by means of the lively 
 figure of a slaughtered animal offered to God in prayer and thanks- 
 giving. A day was probably set apart for this purpose, on which all 
 the members of the primitive family were gathered together to present 
 an offering. Some are led to imagine that this day was the anniversary 
 of creation : it is, however, even more than probable that it was the 
 Sabbath on which Adam and his household offered oblations to God : 
 divine worship was doubtless instituted, and the sacred day properly 
 
 Hunter's Sacred Biography, vol. i., pp. 76, 77. 8vo. Fourth Edit. London, 
 1792. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. 
 
 observed in the family. This worship, in its original institution, 
 was confessedly simple : it consisted of two parts ; namely, thanks- 
 giving to God as the Author and Dispenser of all the bounties of 
 nature, and oblations indicative of that gratitude ; and also piacular 
 sacrifices to his justice and holiness, implying a conviction of their 
 own sinfulness, confessions of transgression, and faith in the pro- 
 mised Deliverer. 
 
 " Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, an offering." Thus 
 acknowledging God as the bountiful Donor, and making a thanks- 
 giving ; but expressing no consciousness of sin, no faith in the 
 appointed atonement. Not so the presentation of Abel. " He 
 brought of the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof ; " and in 
 the act of laying them on the altar, he acknowledged his guilty and 
 fallen state, confessed his transgression, and, through the medium 
 of the bleeding victim before him, he beheld by faith the Lamb slain 
 from the foundation of the world. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, abundantly establishes this fact. " By FAITH Abel offered 
 unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." (Heb. xi. 4.) Cain 
 came before God as a righteous man ; Abel, as a sinner. Cain brought 
 an offering of acknowledgment ; Abel, a propitiatory sacrifice. Cain's 
 gift bespoke a grateful heart ; Abel's, a contrite spirit. Cain beholds 
 the goodness of God only ; Abel, his mercy and long-suffering. Cain, 
 in effect, says, " Lord, I thank thee for all thy benefits towards 
 me ; " Abel, in the language of one of his posterity, " I am not wor- 
 thy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou 
 hast showed unto thy servant." (Gen. xxxii. 10.) Cain rejoices in 
 the world as a goodly portion ; Abel, by faith, discerns and antici- 
 pates a better inheritance. Cain draws near with his offering, trust- 
 ing in an imperfect righteousness of his own, and departs unjustified ; 
 Abel approaches depending on the merit of a Saviour who was to 
 appear, and retires, having " obtained witness that he was righteous, 
 God testifying of his gifts." (Heb. xi. 4.) 
 
 The divine approval of the first believer of all born in sin, by 
 some special token, and the manifest rejection of the offering of the 
 first deist, stung the proud and rebellious heart of Cain. A fierce 
 malignity took possession of him on account of the preference shown 
 by the Most High, whom he had wilfully disobeyed. " God conde- 
 scended to remonstrate with him, and asked him, when his counte- 
 nance fell with the scowl of discontent upon it, ' Why art thou angry 
 and fallen of countenance? With all things wherewith thou truly 
 endeavourest to please me, will I not be pleased? And for those 
 things, in which thou neither hast pleased me, nor canst please me, 
 have I not provided, by covenanting to accept a sin-offering ? Is not 
 this ever at hand ? Why, then, was it not offered ? And why be 
 angry with thy brother ? He shall still be subject to thee as younger 
 to elder. The mark of my approbation will make no difference in 
 this respect ; I have not subjected thee to him.' But when the spi- 
 rit of selfishness within a man is roused, vain is all expostulation 
 from without ; unheard the warning voice of man, of angel, and of 
 God. So blind, so deluding, is this spirit; occupied in contem-
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ABEL. 
 
 plating its own worthiness, it attends to nothing else. It is at once 
 both worshipper and worshipped ; and self-love, self-admiration, take 
 the place of love towards God, and charity to man. Everything, 
 therefore, which for a moment stands in the way of its lust and 
 pride is an intolerable grievance, is the instrument of a tyranny 
 which must by every means be resisted and overthrown. Cain lis- 
 tened not to God, but kept his ear exclusively open to the complaints 
 of his own malignant spirit. Over the imaginary wrongs which it 
 continually suggested, he brooded, until the abominable nestlings 
 were full fledged, and their flight was immediately towards their 
 prey." * 
 
 " When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin : and sin when 
 it is finished, bringeth forth death." (James i. 15.) Cain, jealous 
 of the preference which was given to the offering of his brother, 
 became the slave of a fiery persecuting spirit, and determined on the 
 destruction of his rival ; and thus exhibited to future generations 
 what the true faith has ever to anticipate from those who trample 
 upon and oppose the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 
 On the subject of the martyrdom of Abel, the Scriptures record 
 little more than the fact. It is there stated, that " Cain talked with 
 Abel his brother : and it came to pass, when they were in the field, 
 that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." (Gen. 
 iv. 8.) There is some obscurity in this passage, and a breach of 
 analogy and grammatical accuracy. What is here wanting is sup- 
 plied in the principal ancient versions of the Scriptures, especially in 
 the Samaritan, f and may safely be considered as belonging to the 
 original text. According to the reading alluded to, the passage 
 would stand thus, " And Cain said unto Abel his brother, Let us go 
 out into the field ; and it came to pass when they were in the field, 
 that Cain rose up," &c. The natural conclusion at which we must 
 arrive with regard to this awful transaction, is, that Cain requested 
 Abel to accompany him to the field, and when he had inveigled him 
 to a distance from home and from help, he rose upon him, and slew 
 him. 
 
 Some of the ancient Jewish writers enter into detail, and profess 
 not merely to state the manner in which the murderous assault was 
 made, but also the conversation of the two brothers immediately pre- 
 ceding the event. It is found in the Jerusalem Targum, and also in 
 the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, and is as follows : 
 
 " And Cain said unto Hebel, his brother, ' Let us go out into the 
 field ; ' and it came to pass that, when they were in the field, Cain 
 answered and said to Hebel, his brother, ' I thought that the world 
 
 Scripture Biography. By the Rev. Robert \V. Evans, M.A. Second series. 
 12mo. pp. 9, 10. London. 1835. 
 
 t " The Syriac has, Let us go to the desert. The Vulgate, Egrediamur fora*, ' Let 
 us walk out.' The Septuagint, Aie\0w/j.tt> tts TO veSiov, ' Let us go out into the field." 
 The two Chaldee Targums have the same reading, so has the Coptic version. This 
 addition is completely lost from every MS. of the Pentateuch now known ; and yet it Lt 
 sufficiently evident, from the Samaritan text, the Samaritan version, the Syriac, Septua- 
 gint, and Vulgate, that it was in the most authentic copies of the Hebrew before, and 
 some time since, the Christian era." 2>r. A. Clarke, in loco.
 
 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. 
 
 was created in mercy ; but it is not governed according to the merit 
 of good works, nor is there any judgment, nor a judge, nor shall 
 there be any future state in which good rewards shall be given to the 
 righteous, or punishment executed on the wicked ; and now, there is 
 respect of persons in judgment. On what account is it that thy sacri- 
 fice has been accepted, and mine not received with complacency ? ' And 
 Rebel answered and said, ' The world was created in mercy, and it is 
 governed according to the fruit of good works ; there is a judge, a 
 future world, and a coming judgment, where good works shall be 
 given to the righteous, and the impious punished ; and there is no 
 respect in judgment ; but because my works were better, and more 
 precious than thine, my oblation was received with complacency.' 
 And because of these things they contended on the face of the field ; 
 and Cain rose up against Hebel, his brother, and struck a stone into 
 his forehead, and killed him." 
 
 " It is here supposed," observes Dr. A. Clarke, " that the first death 
 which occurred in the world was the result of religious dissension : 
 however this may have been, millions since have been sacrificed to 
 prejudice, bigotry, and intolerance. Here certainly originated the 
 many-headed monster, religious persecution : the spirit of the wicked 
 one, in his followers, impels them to afilict and destroy all those who 
 are partakers of the Spirit of God. Every persecutor is a legitimate 
 son of the old murderer. This is the first triumph of Satan : it is 
 not merely a death that he has introduced, but a violent one, as the 
 first-fruits of sin. It is not the death of an ordinary person, but 
 of the most holy man then in being ; it is not brought about by the 
 providence of God, or by a gradual failure and destruction of the 
 earthly fabric, but by a violent separation of body and soul ; it is not 
 done by a common enemy, from whom nothing better could be 
 expected, but by the hand of a brother ; and for no other reason, 
 but because the object of his envy was more righteous than himself. 
 Alas ! how exceeding sinful does sin appear in its first manifesta- 
 tion ! " 
 
 SECTION II. OF ABRAHAM. 
 
 ACCORDING to the testimony of ancient Jewish Scribes, Abraham, 
 the father of the faithful, suffered on account of his belief in the 
 most high God. Previous to his birth there was a fearful departure 
 from primitive purity, and an increasing licentiousness. The descend- 
 ants of Ham fell deeply into this abominable apostasy. It greatly 
 infected the descendants of Japheth, and also of Shem. Some of 
 the posterity of the latter resided in a country which was contiguous 
 to that of Ham, in Ur of the Chaldees, which lay between the rivers 
 Euphrates and Tigris ; and here it was that Terah, the eighth of the 
 descendants of Shem, was worshipping other gods than the true. 
 " And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of 
 Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, 
 even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor : and 
 they served other gods." (Joshua xxiv. 2.) 
 
 Jehovah, who never left himself without witness, however dense
 
 OF ABRAHAM. 7 
 
 and extensive the gloom which enveloped the moral world, graciously 
 interfered to preserve his truth from complete and final annihilation. 
 Terah had three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. The first of these 
 was chosen by the Almighty, through whom his church was to be 
 transmitted to succeeding ages, and the gracious promise vouchsafed to 
 the common parent of all, forwarded to those who hereafter should 
 believe. We have no definite proof that Abraham, even in early life, 
 was an idolater : when he received his call, he was a worshipper of 
 the one true God. Instances are exceedingly rare of any other cha- 
 racter being appointed to responsible and important offices in the 
 church. The case of the Apostle Paul is by no means parallel. 
 " He was not called back from idolatry to the anciently established 
 truth. He was not living in a transmitted apostasy, but was con- 
 verted from the h'teral observance of a religion established by God him- 
 self, to the newly-revealed spirit of that religion." * The Almighty 
 invariably has maintained the existence of his church in the world in 
 times the most dark and troublous : were it otherwise, the hallowed 
 community would have undergone a total and complete interruption, 
 which has never happened, and the revelation which was made to 
 Abraham would have been totally independent of the original pro- 
 mise made to Adam ; it would not have been a renewal and extension 
 of the grant, but one altogether new. Every view which we may 
 take of the passage of Abraham's life, now under consideration, leads 
 to the firm and consistent conclusion, that " the father of the faith- 
 ful " was free even from the stain of idolatry, when he received his 
 call. 
 
 The idolatry of Terah was notorious. In the neighbourhood of 
 Ur, the residence of this Patriarch, the country is open, dry, and 
 barren, well suited for pasture, but not for tillage. In the spacious 
 and level plains of Chaldea, where the nights are delightfully cool 
 and serene, a pastoral people would naturally be led to contemplate 
 the heavenly bodies with peculiar attention. To this country the 
 first rudiments of astronomy are generally ascribed ; and here the 
 earliest form of idolatry, the worship of the host of heaven, usually 
 called "Zabiism," began to spread.t The Arabian traditions sup- 
 
 Evans's Sacred Biography, p. 47. 
 
 t It is not probable that they fell at once into the grossest kind of idolatry ; but, 
 from making observations on the celestial bodies, they declined into judicial astrology ; 
 then to imagine the sun, moon, and stars living and intelligent beings ; then as subor- 
 dinate, and, finally, as principal, deities ; thns was the worship of God discarded, and 
 polytheism introduced. This species of iniquity rapidly spread, and was called " Zabi- 
 ism ; " and the followers of such a system wern designated " Zabii," or " Zabians," 
 who maintained that the stars are divinities ; that the sun is the chief deity ; that the 
 five planets are gods, but the two great luminaries are superior ones ; and that the 
 sun governs both the upper and the lower world. Intimations of the existence of this 
 superstition are found in the Mosaic account of the creation, where much of the beauty 
 and interest of the narrative is lost from want of acquaintance with the history of 
 the times in which Moses wrote. That historian emphatically says, " He made the stars 
 also." (Gen. i. 16.) " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of 
 them ; " (Gen. ii. 1 ;) as if he had said, " The gods which the Zabii worship are inferior 
 to Jehovah, for he made them." Job, also, vindicates himself from such wickedness 
 by a very strong and solemn asseveration. (Job xxxi. 26 28.) In process of time 
 these idolatrous practices spread to the most distant parts of the inhabited world ; they
 
 8 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. 
 
 pose that a farther step had been already taken, and represent Terah, 
 the father of Abraham, as a maker of images, called, from his name, 
 " Teraphim." Other legends attribute to this period the origin of 
 fire-worship. But whatever the system or systems of religion, in 
 whatever manner he acquired his purer notions of the Deity,* Abra- 
 ham stood alone in a tribe and family of idolaters as the worshipper 
 of the one great Creator.f 
 
 That Abraham should have abstained from idolatry, will not appear 
 singular, when we consider the peculiar privileges with which he was 
 favoured. In that day of moral darkness and sterility, the worship 
 of Jehovah was not utterly abandoned. Laban, actually supported 
 idolatry in close connexion with the worship of the true God. 
 (Compare Gen. xxiv. 21, 50, with Gen. xxxi. 19.) Abraham, proba- 
 bly from his earh'est years of understanding, had heard the preach- 
 ing of Shem, who (according to the Hebrew chronologists) survived 
 by many years the transmigration of Terah ; nor can we suppose 
 that the faithful patriarch saw with indifference the progress of idol- 
 atry among his kinsfolk, and that he did not declare with untiring 
 zeal and diligence the truth of divine revelation, and with tears of 
 poignant sorrow, and feelings of holy indignation, the denunciations 
 of divine wrath. It is at this period of the history of Abraham, that 
 the persecution to which our attention is directed took place. It 
 is found in the traditionary records of the Jewish church, but 
 inherits so much of what is fabulous and legendary, that the account 
 is only viewed in the light of a curious and antique document, and 
 calculated to amuse rather than instruct. As such, it is presented 
 to our readers. 
 
 infected not only the eastern and western Scythians and Tartars, but the Mexicans too j 
 for there the Spaniards found them when they first came to America. The Canaanites 
 were singularly addicted to them, which is the reason that they, as the Egyptians, gave 
 such names to their cities as Beth-shemesh, or " the house or temple of the sun :" 
 (Joshua xv. 10:) Mount Heres, or "the mountain of the sun:" (Judges i. 35:) 
 Timnath-heres, or " the image of the sun ; " which, agreeably to the command, (Exod. 
 xxiii. 13; Joshua xxiii. 7,) was changed into Timnath-serah, or "the image of wan- 
 tonness ; " but when the Israelites fell into idolatry, the old name was resumed. 
 Relics of this superstition are found in the present day in the island of Ceylon, in Ire- 
 land, and Scotland, and even in this country, among those who pretend to foretell, by 
 the motions of the stars, the adverse or prosperous circumstances of men, and among 
 the horde of nativity-casters, horoscope-makers, &c., whose practices are degrading to 
 man, and insulting to God. For an account of these idolaters the reader may consult 
 an interesting paper in the Methodist Magazine, vol. xlv., p. 504, et seq. ; a disserta- 
 tion prefixed to a work entitled, the Reasons of the Laws of Moses, from the More 
 Nevochim of Maimonides, both from the pen of the late Dr. James Townley ; Young 
 on Idolatrous Corruptions of Religion, vol. i., pp. 55, 56, &c. 
 
 One of the most pleasing of the traditionary fictions with regard to Abraham is the 
 following : " As he was walking by night from the grotto where he was born to the city 
 of Babylon, he gazed on the stars of heaven, and among them on the beautiful planet 
 Venus. ' Behold,' said he within himself, ' the God and Lord of the universe ! ' but 
 the star set and disappeared ; and Abraham felt that the Lord of the universe could not 
 thus be liable to change. Shortly after, he beheld the moon at the full : < Lo ! ' he cried, 
 the divine Creator, the manifest Deity ! ' but the moon sank below the horizon, and 
 Abraham made the same reflection as at the setting of the evening star. All the rest 
 of the night he passed in profound rumination ; at sunrise he stood before the gates of 
 Babylon, and saw the whole people prostrate in devotion. ' Wondrous orb,' he 
 exclaimed, ' Thou, surely, art the creator and ruler of all nature ! but thou, too, has test 
 like the rest to thy setting ! neither, then, art thou my Creator, my Lord, or my God ! ' ' 
 
 t History of the Jews, vol. i., p. 7.
 
 OF ABRAHAM. 9 
 
 " Terah, the father of Abraham," says tradition, " was not only an 
 idolater, but a manufacturer of idols, which he used to expose for 
 public sale. Being obliged one day to go out on particular business, 
 he desired Abraham to superintend for him. Abraham obeyed reluct- 
 antly. ' What is the price of that god?' asked an old man who had 
 just entered the place of sale, pointing to an idol to which he took a 
 fancy. ' Old man,' said Abraham, ' may I be permitted to ask thine 
 age ?' ' Three-score years,' replied the age-stricken idolater. ' Three- 
 score years!' exclaimed Abraham, 'and thou wouldest worship a 
 thing that has been fashioned by the hands of my father's slaves, 
 within the last four-and-twenty hours? Strange that a man of 
 sixty should be willing to bow down his grey head to a creature of a 
 day !' The man was overwhelmed with shame, and went away. 
 After this there came a grave and sedate matron, carrying in her 
 hand a large dish with flour. ' Here,' said she, ' have I brought an 
 offering to the gods. Place it before them, and bid them be propi- 
 tious to me.' ' Place it before them thyself, foolish woman,' said 
 Abraham : ' thou wilt soon see how greedily they will devour it.' 
 She did so ; in the mean time, Abraham took a hammer, broke the 
 idols in pieces, all excepting the largest, in whose hands he placed 
 the instrument of destruction. Terah returned, and with the utmost 
 surprise and consternation, beheld the havoc amongst his favourite 
 gods. ' What is all this, Abraham ? What profane wretch has dared 
 to use our gods in this manner?' exclaimed the infatuated and 
 indignant Terah. ' Why should I conceal anything from my father ? ' 
 replied the pious son. ' During thine absence there came a woman 
 with yonder offering for the gods. She placed it before them. The 
 younger gods, who, as may be well supposed, had not tasted food for 
 a long time, greedily stretched forth their hands and began to eat, 
 before the old god had given them permission. Enraged at their 
 boldness, he rose, took the hammer, and punished them for their want 
 of respect.' ' Dost thou mock me ? Wilt thou deceive thy aged 
 father ?' exclaimed Terah in a vehement rage. ' Do I then not know 
 that they can neither eat, nor stir, nor move ?' ' And yet,' rejoined 
 Abraham, ' thou payest them divine honours adorest them, and 
 wouldest have me worship them !' It was in vain Abraham thus rea- 
 soned with his idolatrous parent. Superstition is ever both deaf and 
 blind. His unnatural father delivered him over to the cruel tribunal 
 of the equally idolatrous Nimrod. But a more merciful Father the 
 gracious and blessed Father of us all protected him against the 
 threatened danger ; and Abraham became the father of the faithful. 
 
 " Abraham, being brought before Nimrod, was urged by the tyrant 
 to worship the fire. ' Great King,' said the father of the faithful, 
 ' would it not be better to worship the water ? it is mightier than 
 fire, having the power to extinguish it.' ' Worship the water, then,' 
 said Nimrod. ' Methinks,' rejoined Abraham, ' it would be more 
 reasonable to worship the clouds, since they carry the waters, and 
 throw them down upon the earth.' ' Well, then,' said the impatient 
 King, ' worship the clouds, which, by thine own confession, possess 
 great power.' ' Nay,' continued Abraham, ' if power is to be the 
 
 VOL. i. c
 
 10 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 object of adoration, the preference ought to be given to the wind, 
 which by its greater force, scatters the clouds, and drives them before 
 it.' ' I see,' said Nimrod, ' we shall never have done with this prat- 
 tler : worship the wind, then, and we will pardon thy former profa- 
 nations.' ' Be not angry, great King,' said Abraham : ' I cannot 
 worship the fire, nor the water, nor the clouds, nor the wind, nor any 
 of the things thou callest gods. The power they possess is derived 
 from a Being, not only most powerful, but full of mercy and love ; the 
 Creator of heaven and earth, Him alone will I worship.' ' Well, then,' 
 said the tyrant, ' since thou refusest to adore the fire, thou shalt 
 speedily be made sensible of its mighty force.' He ordered Abraham 
 to be thrown into a fiery furnace ; but God delivered him from the 
 raging flames, and made him a source of blessing to many nations." 
 We leave this tale where we found it, in the Medrash Bereshith 
 Rabah* 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SECT. I. The Captivity in Egypt Joseph Cause of his Elevation The Famine 
 Visits of Joseph's Brethren to Egypt The Migration of the Patriarch and his 
 Family Goshen Shepherd Kings Death of Jacob and Joseph Cruelty and 
 Oppression of the Egyptians Reasons for this Treatment Superstition of the 
 People Fecundity of the Jews Exterminating Edict Josephus Birth of Moses 
 Labours of the Hebrews The Pyramids The Exodus Destruction of Pha- 
 raoh State Persecution SECT. II. Naboth the Jezreelite Jezreel Patrimonial 
 Inheritance Its Nature Regulations thereto Peculiarity of the Hebrew Consti- 
 tution Its Excellency Naboth's Refusal Ahab's Mortification Jezebel Her 
 Control over Ahab Her murderous Scheme Slaughter of Naboth Elijah 
 Divine Retribution Awful End of Ahab and Jezebel. 
 
 SECTION I. THE AFFLICTION OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD IN 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 How long a period elapsed between the migration into Egypt 
 under Jacob, and the exodus, or departure under Moses, has been a 
 question debated from the earliest ages, by Jewish as well as Christian 
 writers. " While some assign the whole duration of four hundred 
 and thirty years to the captivity in Egypt, others include the resi- 
 dence of the patriarchs, two hundred and fifteen years, within this 
 period. The vestiges of this controversy appear in all the earlier 
 writings. The Hebrew and Samaritan texts ; the several copies of 
 the Greek version of the Scriptures, differ : St. Stephen, in the Acts, 
 seems to have followed one opinion ; St. Paul, in his Epistle to the 
 Galatians, the other ; Josephus contradicts himself repeatedly ; the 
 great body of English divines follow the latter hypothesis ; the modern 
 scholars of Germany generally prefer the former. The following 
 
 ' * Hebrew Tales ; selected and translated from the Writings of the Ancient Hebrew 
 Sages : to which is prefixed, An Essay on the uninspired Literature of the Hebrews. 
 By Hyman Hurwitz, Author of Vindirice Heoraicte, be. 12mo. London, 1826.
 
 THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 1 I 
 
 brief statement, however, may throw light on this intricate subject. 
 The Jews were firmly and religiously persuaded, that their genealogies 
 were not merely accurate, but complete. As then only two names 
 appeared between Levi and Moses, those of Kohath and Amram, and 
 the date of life assigned to these two seemed irreconcileable with the 
 longer period of four hundred and thirty years, they adopted very 
 generally the notion, that only two hundred and fifteen years were 
 passed in Egypt. They overlooked, or left to miraculous intervention 
 to account for a still greater difficulty, the prodigious increase in 
 one family during one generation. In the desert, the males of the 
 descendants of Kohath are reckoned at eight thousand six hundred 
 and nine. Kohath had four sons ; from each son then, in one gene- 
 ration, must have sprung, on the average, two thousand one hundred 
 and fifty males. On this hypothesis the alternative remains, either 
 that some names have been lost from the genealogies between Kohath 
 and Amram, or between Amram and Moses ; a notion rather con- 
 firmed by the fact, that, in the genealogy of Joshua, in the book of 
 Chronicles, he stands twelfth in descent from Joseph, while Moses is 
 the fourth from Levi. There are strong grounds for believing some 
 general error runs through the whole numbering of the Israelites in 
 the desert."* 
 
 The circumstances connected with the removal of Jacob and his 
 family into Egypt, form an interesting page of his eventful history, 
 which none can peruse without acknowledging " the finger of God." 
 An insignificant sparrow falls not to the ground without his notice. 
 The laws of nature are the rules by which his power is guided, and 
 these laws are of his own appointment, and subject to his control. It is 
 from him, therefore, that the seasons have their succession, and their 
 vicissitudes. Joseph was a youth of indisputable piety, and enjoyed the 
 paternal regard and affection of Jacob. This partiality gave rise to an 
 inveterate jealousy, on the part of his elder brethren ; and an opportu- 
 nity ere long presented itself, in which that spirit was called into dis- 
 graceful and diabolical exercise. The flocks of the patriarch had been 
 sent to Shechem, for the sake of pasturage, under the guardianship 
 of his elder sons. Joseph was sent to inquire after them ; when, per- 
 ceiving his approach, they determined on his destruction. Reuben 
 hesitated to imbrue his hands in his blood, and proposed that he 
 should be cast into a pit, which they found, intending afterwards to 
 draw him out, and restore him to his aged parent. At the suggestion 
 of Judah, however, they all agreed to sell him into slavery, by dis- 
 posing of him to a company of Ishmaelitish merchants, who were on 
 their route toward Egypt. Into this country, therefore, Joseph was 
 conveyed ; where, by a strange association of circumstances, he was 
 elevated to a conspicuous station in the government. 
 
 The immediate cause of the rise of Jacob's exiled son, was a certain 
 dream which had greatly disturbed the rest of the Egyptian King, 
 and which his wise men had failed to interpret. At the suggestion 
 of the chief butler, Joseph was summoned, who, after asserting with 
 
 The History of the Jews. 12mo.. Vol. i., pp. 67, 58. Second Edition. London, 
 1830. 
 
 c 2
 
 12 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 great faithfulness, that the power of interpreting dreams belonged 
 only to the Most High, proceeded to declare, that the dreams of Pha- 
 raoh were mercifully sent of God, to admonish him with regard to 
 what was ahout to take place in his kingdom ; and then proceeded to 
 state, that his visions portended seven years of great plenty, which 
 would he followed by seven years of great scarceness ; and that the 
 abundance of former years would be consumed by the sterility of the 
 latter. His address to the Monarch concluded with the advice, that 
 some prudent individual should be placed over the land, with autho- 
 rity to collect the surplus produce of the years of plenty ; and thus 
 " lay up in store a good foundation against the time to come." To 
 this responsible office, Joseph was appointed, whose reputation emi- 
 nently depended on the future. His character was fully established, 
 and the divinity of his predictions made manifest. 
 
 The famine was as extensive as it was severe. The neighbouring 
 countries were visited as well as Egypt. The land of Canaan bitterly 
 felt the scourge ; and the family of Jacob, which now amounted to a 
 considerable number, shared in the common calamity, as the children 
 of the patriarch were all married and had families, and resided toge- 
 ther, if not under the same roof, yet in the same neighbourhood, as 
 one little patriarchal community. Among the first who came to 
 purchase corn, appeared the ten sons of Jacob. It is, as is well 
 observed by a modern historian, no easy task to treat, after Josephus, 
 the transactions which took place between Joseph and his family. 
 The relation in the book of Genesis is, perhaps, the most exquisite 
 model of the manner in which history, without elevating its tone, or 
 departing from its plain and unadorned veracity, assumes the lan- 
 guage and spirit of the most touching poetry. The cold and rheto- 
 rical paraphrase of Josephus, sometimes a writer of great vigour and 
 simplicity, enforces the prudence of adhering as closely as possible to 
 the language of the original record. The brothers are at first received 
 with sternness and asperity ; charged with being spies, come to observe 
 the undefended state of the country. This accusation, though not seri- 
 ously intended, in some degree confirms the notion, that the Egyptians 
 had recently suffered ; and, therefore, constantly apprehended foreign 
 invasion. They are thrown into prison for three days, and released 
 on condition of proving the truth of their story, by bringing their 
 younger brother Benjamin with them. Their own danger brings up 
 before their minds the recollection of their crime. They express to 
 one another their deep remorse for the supposed murder of their 
 brother, little thinking that Joseph, who had conversed with them 
 through an interpreter, understood every word they said.* "And 
 Joseph turned himself about from them and wept." (Gen. xlii. 24.) 
 Simeon was left as a hostage, and the brothers were dismissed ; but 
 on their journey towards Canaan, they were surprised and alarmed to 
 find their money returned. The aged and suspicious Patriarch, at 
 first, refused to intrust his youngest and best-beloved child to theiv 
 care ; but the present supply of corn being consumed, they have no 
 alternative between starvation and their return to Egypt. Jacob 
 
 * History of the Jews. Vol. i.. pp. 49, 50.
 
 THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 13 
 
 reluctantly, and with many fond admonitions, commits the surviving 
 child of Rachel to their protection. On their arrival in Egypt, they 
 are more favourably received ; and Joseph anxiously inquires ahout 
 the health of their father. The eight of his uterine brother, Benja- 
 min, overpowers him with emotion. The brethren are feasted ; 
 Benjamin is peculiarly distinguished by a larger portion of meat. The 
 brothers are once more dismissed, but are now pursued and appre- 
 hended on a charge of secreting a silver cup, which had been con- 
 cealed in the sack of Benjamin ; and ultimately, Joseph, the Vizier, 
 the great Minister of the King of Egypt, makes himself known as the 
 brother whom they had sold into slavery. " Then Joseph could not 
 refrain himself before all them that stood by him ; and he cried, 
 Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with 
 him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he 
 wept aloud : and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. 
 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph ; doth my father yet 
 live ? And his brethren could not answer him ; for they were 
 troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come 
 near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am 
 Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, be 
 not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither : for 
 God did send me before you to preserve life. So it was not you 
 that sent me hither, but God : and he hath made me a father to 
 Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the 
 land of Egypt." (Gen. xlv. 1 8.) Joseph forthwith sends his 
 brethren back to Canaan, with a store of provision, and with wag- 
 gons to transport the Patriarch and all his kindred into Egypt, dur- 
 ing the continuance of the famine. These tidings were more than 
 the feeble frame of Jacob could sustain : he fainted, and his life was 
 in jeopardy. At length he revived, and, convinced of the truth of 
 the statement made by his children, he exclaimed, " It is enough ; 
 Joseph my son is yet alive ; I will go and see him before I die." 
 (Gen. xlv. 28.) 
 
 The descendants of Abraham migrate into Egypt. Joseph secures 
 for them a favourable reception ; and the fruitful district of Goshen, 
 the most fertile pasture-land in the country, becomes their residence ; 
 where, according to Maillet, the grass grows to the height of a man, 
 and so thick, that an ox may browse a whole day, lying on the 
 ground.* The establishment of Jacob in Goshen coincides with, and 
 confirms, an important point of Egyptian history. While Egypt 
 
 * " This was the most fertile pasture-ground in the whole of Lower Egypt : thence 
 called Goshen, from Gush, in Arabic, signifying ' a heart,' or whatsoever is choice, or 
 precious. There was also a Goshen in the territory of the tribe of Jiula.li. so called 
 for the aaine reason. (Joshua x. 41.) Hence Joseph recommended it to his family, as 
 <th best of the land;' (Gen. xlvii. 1 1 ;) and < the fat of the land.' (Gen. xlv. 18.) 
 The Jand of Goshen lay along the most easterly branch of the Nile, and on the east 
 side of it. For it is evident that, at the time of the exode, the Israelites did not cross 
 the Nile. In ancient times, the fertile land was more considerably extensive, both 
 in length and breadth, than at present, in consequence of the general failure of the 
 eastern branches of the river ; the main body of the stream verging more and more to 
 the west continually, and deepening the channels on that side." Halo's Chronology, 
 vol. i , p. 374. 8vo. London, 1830.
 
 14 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 was rapidly advancing in her national prosperity, a fierce and barba- 
 rous Asiatic horde burst suddenly upon her fruitful provinces, de- 
 stroyed her temples, murdered her Priests ; and, having subdued the 
 whole of lower Egypt, established a dynasty of six successive Kings. 
 These hyksos, or royal shepherds, were afterwards expelled. The 
 hostility exhibited by the Egyptians to the memory of these marau- 
 ders, was of the most deadly description, in which the shepherds 
 of Canaan were called to bear a part.* The generosity of Joseph is, 
 therefore, of a highly exemplary character, inasmuch as he did not 
 disclaim all association and connexion with them, but made ample 
 provision for their present and future necessities. The last strong 
 hold of the shepherd Kings was the city of Abaris, which must have 
 been situated either within or closely bordering upon the district of 
 Goshen. The expulsion of the shepherds would leave the tract 
 unoccupied, and open for the settlement of another pastoral people. 
 Goshen itself was likewise called Rameses, a word ingeniously ex- 
 plained by Jablonski, as meaning the land of shepherds, and contain- 
 ing all the low, and sometimes marshy meadows, which lie on the 
 Pelusiac branch of the Nile, and extend very considerably to the 
 south. f 
 
 In the luxuriant department of Goshen the sons of Israel multi- 
 plied with a fecundity which astonished their neighbours ; the fertile 
 soil of Egypt, it would appear, not only increasing the fruitfulness of 
 animal and vegetable life, but also that of the human race. Some 
 of the ancient writers have stated, that it was no uncommon event 
 for the women of Egypt to produce sometimes three, four, or even 
 seven, children at a birth. Marriage contracted in early life, the 
 unrestrained and unlimited practice of polygamy, the protracted 
 duration of human existence, together with the plenty and compara- 
 tive cheapness of the necessaries of life, would naturally tend to 
 increase the population, even were the finger of divine Providence 
 hidden or concealed. At the expiration of about seventeen years, 
 the venerable Jacob is gathered unto his fathers. Before his depart- 
 ure he pronounced his final benediction on Joseph, and with great 
 solemnity adjured him to convey his remains to the burial-place of 
 the family in Canaan. This was done with even more than Egyptian 
 magnificence, to the great and lasting astonishment of the people 
 of Canaan. In a short period Joseph also died, leaving directions 
 
 * " Every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians." Mons. Champollion 
 Imagines, and with apparent reason, that he can recognise on the ancient monuments of 
 Egypt, these shepherd Kings with their savage hordes : a people having red hair and 
 blue eyes, and covered only with an undressed hide, loosely wrapped over them ; they 
 are painted ; and also represented as struggling in mortal warfare with the natives, and 
 occasionally in attitudes of the lowest degradation which the scorn and hatred of their 
 conquerors could invent. They lie prostrate under the footstools of the Kings, in the 
 position described in the book of Joshua, where the rulers actually set their feet on the 
 necks of the captive Monarcha. (Joshua x. 24.) The common people appear to have 
 taken pride in having the figures of these detested enemies wrought on the soles of 
 their sandals, that they might be thus perpetually trampled upon : even the dead carried 
 this memorial of their hatred into the grave ; the same figures being painted on the 
 lower wrappers of the mummies, accompanied with similar marks of abhorrence and 
 contempt." History of the Jews. 
 
 t History of the Jews. Vol. i., p. 52
 
 THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 15 
 
 that hib body should be embalmed and enclosed in a suitable coffin, 
 that when his kindred should return to the land of their fathers, his 
 remains might also be deposited in the common tomb. 
 
 In process of time, the services of Joseph were forgotten, and a 
 new King arose who knew him not. (Exod. i. 8.) Two reasons 
 may be assigned for the cruelty and oppression which were exercised 
 upon the descendants of Jacob. They had multiplied with such 
 great rapidity as to have become a considerable people. The Monarch 
 who had succeeded to the throne was opposite, both in character and 
 disposition, to the patron and protector of Joseph. He was natu- 
 rally subtle, cruel, and suspicious, and regarded with a jealous eye 
 the increasing numbers of the Hebrews ; and, heedless of the bene- 
 fits which the land of Egypt had derived from their celebrated kins- 
 man, he contemplated with dread and dismay the unfriendly influence 
 which they might exert in case of war or civil tumult, especially as 
 they occupied the most open and accessible frontier of the country ; 
 and were able, on that account, to give free passage to, or join in, 
 a dangerous confederacy with any foreign invader. The cruelty and 
 oppression which the Egyptians had in former times received from 
 the shepherd Kings, would tend to render them even more invete- 
 rate toward the shepherds of Canaan ; especially as it is not impro- 
 bable that the terms of the Abrahamic covenant had come to the ears 
 of the authorities of Egypt, and that part which predicted the vast 
 increase of the race, together with their power and authority, would 
 be received with dread and apprehension. " I will multiply thy seed 
 as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea- 
 shore ; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." (Gen. 
 xxii. 17.) 
 
 Another cause of the persecution of the Hebrews, was the religion 
 which they held. That professed by the inhabitants of Egypt was 
 of the most degrading and immoral character. In the days of Moses, 
 Egypt was renowned for learning ; he was instructed " in all its 
 wisdom ; " and it is one of the commendations of Solomon, at a 
 later period, that he excelled in knowledge " all the wisdom of the 
 children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt." Astro- 
 nomy, which probably, like that of the Chaldeans, comprehended also 
 judicial astrology, physics, agriculture, jurisprudence, medicine, architec- 
 ture, painting, and sculpture, were the principal sciences and arts ; to 
 which were added, and that by their wisest men, the study of divina- 
 tion, magic, and enchantments. They had, also, their consul ters with 
 familiar spirits, and necromancers, those who had, or pretended to 
 have, intercourse with the infernal deities, and the spirits of the 
 dead, and delivered responses to inquirers. Of all this knowledge, 
 good and evil, and of a monstrous system of idolatry, Egypt 
 was the polluted fountain to the surrounding nations ; but in that 
 country itself it appears to have degenerated into the most absurd 
 and debased forms. Among nations who are not blessed by divine 
 revelation, the luminaries of heaven are the first objects of worship. 
 Diodorus Siculus, mentioning the Egyptians, informs us, that " the 
 first men, looking up to the world above them, and struck witli
 
 16 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 admiration at the nature of the universe, supposed the sun and moon 
 to be the principal and eternal gods." This, which may be called 
 the natural superstition of mankind, we may trace in the annals of 
 the West, as well as of the East ; among the inhabitants of the new 
 world, as well as of the old. The sun and moon, under the names 
 of Isis and Osiris, were the chief objects of adoration among the 
 Egyptians. In earlier times they had a purer faith. 
 
 A superstitious reverence for certain animals, as propitious or hurt- 
 ful to the human race, was not peculiar to the Egyptians. The cow 
 has been venerated in India from the most remote antiquity. The 
 serpent has been the object of religious respect to one half of 
 the nations of the known world. The Romans had sacred animals 
 which they kept in their temples, and distinguished with peculiar 
 honours. We need not therefore be surprised that a nation so super- 
 stitious as the Egyptians should honour, with peculiar marks of 
 veneration, the ichneumon, the ibis, the dog, the falcon, the wolf, 
 and the crocodile. These they entertained at great expense, and 
 with much splendour. Lands were set apart for their maintenance, 
 persons of the highest rank were employed in feeding and attend- 
 ing them, rich carpets were spread in their apartments, and the 
 pomp at their funerals corresponded with the profusion and luxury 
 which waited on them while alive. What chiefly tended to favour 
 the progress of animal-worship in Egypt was the language of hiero- 
 glyphics. In the inscriptions on their temples and public edifices, 
 animals, and even vegetables, were the symbols of the gods whom 
 they worshipped. Such being the polluted form of worship adopted 
 by the people of Egypt, it cannot excite surprise in any that the 
 more simple and unostentatious form of religion inculcated by the 
 Patriarchs excited disgust and condemnation. Let it also be remem- 
 bered, that the object contemplated by the divine Being in the selec- 
 tion of the family of Abraham, and conferring upon it important 
 privileges, would not fail to raise the enmity of the carnal mind, and 
 to direct against it the energy and skill of the powers of darkness 
 to frustrate the design, and, if possible, erase the name of that 
 family from the remembrance of man. For the preservation and 
 increase of pure religion, the Almighty, called him to be the head of a 
 nation who should preserve his worship, and exhibit to the world a 
 wise and a happy people ; that a covert might be provided for the 
 Heathen around, who might forsake idolatry and become worshippers 
 of the one true God ; that an illustrious line of Prophets might be 
 raised who should direct the eye of Israel's faith to Him who was to 
 be " exalted a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, 
 and forgiveness of sins." (Acts v. 31.) All would have been frus- 
 trated, had the murderous machinations of the Egyptian King suc- 
 ceeded ; but, in opposition to such a failure, the Most High multi- 
 plied the holy seed in Egypt with distinguished care, rescued them 
 from the iron hand of oppression ; and caused his gracious purposes, 
 with regard to the redemption of the world, to be fully and gloriously 
 accomplished. 
 
 With a policy at once inhuman and cruel, the King, who knew not
 
 THIS ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 17 
 
 Joseph, commenced a system of unheard-of oppression, which was 
 intended, not only to check the increase of the Hebrews, but to subdue 
 and smother any spirit of insubordination which might manifest itself 
 in open revolt ; a state of things, considering the immense number 
 of disaffected and oppressed Israelites, that would have been appalling 
 and dangerous to the existence of the Government. They were seized, 
 and compelled to labour at the public works, in the erection of new 
 cities, as Pithom and Rameses, which were intended to be storehouses 
 for the vast treasures of the land. Other historians assert, that they 
 were employed on the pyramids,* on the great canals of the country, 
 and in the construction of dams, for the purpose of irrigating the 
 plains of Egypt. Notwithstanding this hard treatment, the Israelites 
 continued to multiply. In the quarries, the lime-kilns, and brick- 
 fields of Egypt, toiling beneath an almost vertical sun, they increased 
 with a rapidity as great as in the cool tents and among the 
 balmy breezes of Goshen. A constant succession of barbarous usage 
 would tend to produce hostility ; and tyranny, having wantonly 
 enlarged the number of enemies, must resort to further and more 
 cruel measures to subdue them. A murderous decree is promulgated : 
 the midwives, who in this land of hereditary professions, were pro- 
 bably a distinct class, and under the surveillance of responsible 
 officers, were commanded to destroy all the Hebrew children at their 
 birth. " But the midwives feared God, and did not as the King of 
 Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive." (Exod. 
 i. 17.) The King, being frustrated in his plans through the disobe- 
 dience of the midwives, resolves to take into his own hands the execu- 
 tion of his exterminating scheme, which, if carried into effect, would 
 have cut short, at one stroke, the race of Abraham. " And Pharaoh 
 charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast 
 into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive ;" (Exod. i. 22 ;) 
 probably to fill in time the harems of their oppressors. 
 
 The testimony of Josephus is important : he says, " The Egyptians 
 grew delicate and lazy, as to pains-taking, and gave themselves up 
 to other pleasures, and in particular to the love of gain. They also 
 became very ill-affected towards the Hebrews, as touched with envy 
 at their prosperity ; for when they saw how the nation of the Israel- 
 ites flourished, and were become eminent already in plenty of wealth, 
 which they had acquired by their virtue and natural love of labour, 
 they thought their increase was to their own detriment ; and having 
 in length of time forgotten the benefits they had received from 
 Joseph, (particularly the crown being now come into another family,) 
 they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways 
 
 Josephus states that they built the pyramids. It is certain, from the Scriptures, that 
 several cities were erected by them, among which were Pithom and Rameses. A tomb 
 has been discovered at Thebes belonging to a superintendent of public works, of the 
 reign of Thosmos III., on which is sculptured a representation of Hebrews making 
 bricks. It is published by the antiquary, Sig. Rosellini. (Man. Civ., pi. xlix.) The 
 whole is too graphical and expressive to be mistaken, and seems greatly to confirm the 
 statement of Josephus, that the exodus took place under that Monarch. Serious ilifli- 
 culties, however, stand in the way of such a conclusion, as may be seen in Mr. Culli- 
 niore's admirable paper on " the esrvdi of the Jews and Greeks." (Fraser'b Magazine, 
 Oct., 183G, vol. xiv., p. 461, ft seq.) 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 18 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 of afflicting them ; for they enjoined them to cut a great number 
 of channels for the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating upon 
 its running over its own banks ; they set them also to build pyra- 
 mids, and by all this wore them out ; and forced them to learn 
 all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard 
 labour. And four hundred years did they spend under these afflic- 
 tions ; for they strove one against the other which should get the 
 mastery, the Egyptians desiring to destroy the Israelites by these 
 labours, and the Israelites desiring to hold out to the end under 
 them. 
 
 " While the affairs of the Hebrews were in this condition, there 
 was this occasion offered itself to the Egyptians, which made them 
 more solicitous for the extinction of our nation. One of those 
 sacred scribes who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly, 
 told the King that about this time there would a child be born to the 
 Israelites, who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian domi- 
 nion low,* and would raise the Israelites ; that he would excel all 
 men in virtue, and obtain a glory that would be remembered through 
 all ages. Which thing was so feared by the King, that, according to 
 this man's opinion, he commanded that they should cast every male 
 child, which was born to the Israelites, into the river, and destroy it ; 
 
 * The child received an excellent education, and became trained in all the wisdom 
 of the Egyptians. This last fact rests on Jewish traditions reported by Stephen ; but 
 it is highly curious to contrast the other romantic fictions of the later writers, probably 
 the Alexandrian Jews, with this plain narrative. These fables have no appearance 
 of ancient traditions, but all the exaggeration of Rabbinical invention. The birth of 
 Moses was prophetically foreshown. The sacred scribe announced to the King that a 
 child was about to be born among the Israelites, who was to bring nun on the power 
 of Egypt, and unexampled glory on the Hebrew nation : he was to surpass all the 
 human race hi the greatness and duration of his fame. To cut short this fatal life, not 
 with the design of weakening the Jewish people, this elder Herod issues out his edict 
 for the first massacre of the innocents. Amram, the father of Moses, is likewise 
 favoured with a vision, foretelling the glory of his son. Thermutis, the daughter of 
 Pharaoh, (the manners having become too refined to suppose that a King's daughter 
 would bathe herself in the river,) is more elegantly described as amusing herself on the 
 banks. Seeing the basket floating on the water, she orders certain divers, ready, of 
 course, at her command, to bring it to her. Enchanted by the exquisite beauty of the 
 child, she sends for a nurse ; but the infant patriot indignantly refuses the milk of an 
 Egyptian ; nurse after nurse is tried and rejected ; nothing will satisfy him but the 
 breast of his own mother. When he was three years old, he was such a prodigy of 
 beauty, that all who passed by would suspend their work to gaze upon him. The Princess 
 adopts him, shows him to her father, and insists on his being recognised heir to the king- 
 dom. The King places the diadem on his head, which the child contemptuously seizes 
 and tramples under his feet. The royal scribe in vain attempts to awaken the appre- 
 hensions of the Monarch. The youth grows up in such universal esteem and favour, 
 that when the Ethiopians invade the country, he is placed at the head of the army. 
 The district through which he chooses to march, rather than ascend the Nile, being full 
 of noxious reptiles, he presses a squadron of tame ibises, lets them fly at the serpents, 
 and thus speedily clears his way. By this extraordinary stratagem he comes unexpect- 
 edly upon the enemy, defeats and pursues them to their capital city, Meroe. Here the 
 daughter of the King falls in love with him, and the city is surrendered on condition 
 of his marrying the Ethiopian Princess ; a fiction obviously formed on the Cushite or 
 Arabian (translated in the LXX., " Ethiopian") wife of Moses. Jealousy and hatred, 
 the usual attendants on greatness, endanger his life ; the Priests urge, and the timid 
 King assents to, the death of the stranger, who with difficulty makes his escape into 
 the desert. But as is usual with those who embellish genuine history, the simple dig- 
 nity of the Jewish patriot is lowered, rather than exalted. History of the Jews, vol. i., 
 pp. 61 63. Edit. 12mo. London, 1838.
 
 THJ ISRAELITKS IN EGYPT. 19 
 
 that, besides this, the Egyptian midwivcs * should watch the labours 
 of the Hebrew women, and observe what is born, for those were the 
 women who were enjoined to do the office of midwives to them ; and 
 by reason of their relation to the King would not transgress his com- 
 mands. He enjoined, also, that if any parents should disobey him, 
 and venture to spare their male children alive, they and their families 
 should be destroyed. This was a severe affliction indeed to those who 
 suffered it, not only as they were deprived of their sons, and, while 
 they were the parents themselves, they were obliged to be subservient 
 to the destruction of their own children ; but as it was to be supposed 
 to tend to the extirpation of their nation, while upon the destruction 
 of their children, and their own gradual dissolution, the calamity 
 would become very hard and inconsolable to them ; and this was the 
 ill state they were in. But no one can be too hard for the purpose 
 of God, though he contrive ten thousand subtle devices for that end ; 
 for this child, whom the sacred Scribe foretold, was brought up and 
 concealed from the observers appointed by the King ; and he that 
 foretold him did not mistake in the consequences of his preserva- 
 tion.''! 
 
 Some historians have stated, without hesitation, that the Israelites 
 were not employed in the erection of the pyramids, and that they 
 are of a much later date. As there are several of them, both great 
 and small, and some were built during the sojourn of the people 
 of God in Egypt, it is the firm conviction of several learned and 
 deservedly reputable and popular writers, that they were the work- 
 manship of the oppressed descendants of Jacob. It is also ours. 
 
 A description of the pyramids of Egypt has hitherto been regarded, 
 says the Editor of the Fragments in Calmet, as matter of curiosity, 
 rather than as being applicable in illustrating Scripture ; but after 
 considering the subject thoroughly, we conceive that Providence has 
 left us these as everlasting monuments of the veracity of that sacred 
 history with which we are favoured ; in fact, that they are part, at 
 least, of the labours of the Israelites previous to the exodus ; and 
 that they remain to witness the leading events of that portion of 
 the history of the sons of Jacob. The following considerations have 
 led to this opinion : 
 
 1. If we inquire what were the labours of the Israelites for the 
 Pharaohs, we find they consisted in making bricks to be hardened 
 in the s.un ; for such bricks alone require the assistance of straw 
 in their composition, which material is particularly mentioned by the 
 officers of this people. " They made their lives bitter with hard bond- 
 age, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the 
 field." (Exod. i. 14.) Accordingly, it appears from various travellers, 
 that the internal construction of these mighty masses consists, among 
 other materials, of brick of this description, and thereby agrees with 
 that fact of the sacred story. This is true of the great pyramid which 
 
 Josephus is clear that these were Egyptians, and not Israelites ; which is very pro- 
 bable, it being not easily supposed that Pharaoh could trust the Israelite midwivf.-* to 
 execute so barbarous a command against their own nation. 
 
 t Josephus, Autiq., book ii , chap, ix., sect. 1, 2. 8vo. edit. Vol. i. London, 
 1825. 
 
 D 2
 
 20 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 is usually visited ; but the pyramids of Sakkara, at some distance, 
 are wholly composed of sun-burnt bricks, so that these are undeni- 
 able. 
 
 2. The multitude when in the wilderness are represented as saying, 
 " We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely ; " (that 
 is, gratuitously, not at their own expense ;) " the cucumbers, and 
 the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic." (Num. 
 xi. 5.) We are informed by Herodotus, that on the pyramid was an 
 inscription " expressing the expense of the articles of food consumed 
 by the labourers ; the radishes," (which were probably the leeks of 
 Scripture,) " onions, and garlic, and that they cost sixteen hundred 
 talents of silver." No doubt these vegetables were cheap enough, so 
 that this considerable sum implies a prodigious number of workmen 
 employed during a great length of time. Pliny gives a similar testi- 
 mony.* 
 
 3. With regard to the number of persons employed in the erection 
 of these structures, Diodorus Siculus says, that three hundred and 
 sixty thousand workmen or slaves were occupied twenty years in con- 
 structing the pyramid of Chemnis.-f Herodotus says, one hundred 
 thousand were employed in bringing stones, ten thousand at a time, 
 and relieved each other every three months. We suppose, therefore, 
 that the number given by Diodorus includes the whole of the popu- 
 lation engaged in the work ; while the number given by Hero- 
 dotus is that employed in a specific department ; but that all 
 were relieved every three months ; and that only a proportion of one 
 tenth was employed at a time, seems to have been a kind of rule in 
 the business. Now, it is very probable that the Israelites were in 
 this manner relieved ; for we find that the mother of Moses (Exod. ii. 
 2, 3) could not longer hide him than three months. Aaron, also, 
 was able to take a journey (which, according to Dr. Shaw, usually 
 occupies two months) to Mount Horeb to meet Moses, which, had he 
 been kept without intermission to his labour, would have been impos- 
 sible. Indeed, if the Israelites laboured for Pharaoh in the field, 
 they could not have been constantly employed in building ; labours 
 in the field, also, have their interval by the appointment of nature, 
 not to allude to the fact, that the possession of great herds of cattle 
 by the Israelites when they went out of Egypt, shows that they must 
 have had time to attend to them. In addition to all this, it must 
 be observed that their profession was that of shepherds, that they 
 
 Hist. Nat., li'j. xxxvi., cap. 12. 
 
 t Pliny states that three hundred and sixty-six thousand men were employed twenty 
 years in building the great pyramid ; and that, during the building of this and two 
 others, there were not less than one thousand eight hundred talents expended in radishes, 
 garlic, and onions for the workmen. These three hundred and sixty-six thousand men 
 were in all likelihood Israelites, and were as many as could be spared from other slavish 
 employments ; and it is likely that the radishes, garlic, and onions mentioned by Pliny, 
 were the whole of the food, with the addition of melons and some fish, which these 
 persecuted people had from their cruel oppressors. Hence we may learn how much 
 they had degenerated afterwards, when they preferred the onions and garlic which they 
 had in Egypt, to the manna which God sent. In other words, they became so corrupt 
 that they were capable of preferring their Egyptian bondage to the service of the Lord 
 of hosts. Christian Martyrology, edited by Dr. A. Clarke.
 
 THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 21 
 
 were placed in the richest pasturage of the country, that Moses sti- 
 pulated that not a hoof should be left behind, and that the very 
 institution of the passover implied the possession of flocks ; these, 
 with other circumstances, abundantly prove that the Israelites must 
 have had intervals of time in which to pay attention to their own 
 property and business. 
 
 4. It appears also, that the native Egyptians, the governing peo- 
 ple, did not labour on these edifices. This, we are told, was the 
 custom of the Egyptian King, Sesostris, and seems to have been the 
 rule adopted, as a dictate of policy, in early as well as in later ages. 
 Respecting Sesostris, Diodorus Siculus says : He built and employed 
 in those works, none of his own subjects, but only the labours of 
 captives. He was even careful to engrave these words on the tem- 
 ples, " No Egyptian had a hand in these structures." It is, there- 
 fore, likely that the stranger Israelites found in Egypt by the " King 
 who knew not Joseph," and whose increasing numbers and strength 
 that King dreaded, would be set to labour, though in mere waste of 
 their strength, on structures only useful in a political view, rather 
 than any of the natural inhabitants ; towards whom the same policy was 
 not necessary. This conduct was afterwards adopted by Solomon, 
 when he desired to build " cities of store, in Jerusalem, and in Le- 
 banon, and in all the land of his dominion : " " All the people that 
 were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, 
 which were not of the children of Israel ; their children that were 
 left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not 
 able utterly to destroy ; upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of 
 bond-service unto this day. But of the children of Israel did Solomon 
 make no bondmen." (1 Kings ix. 19 22.) That it was anciently, 
 as it still is in the East, the custom to employ bondmen in building, 
 is notorious : we have, therefore, only to inquire, how far this custom 
 was pursued with regard to the Israelites. They are said to have 
 been " brought out of the house of bondage ; " (Exod. xx. 2 ;) they 
 are charged, " Thou shall remember that thou wast a bondman in the 
 land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee." (Deut. xv. 
 15.) " Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bond- 
 men in Egypt." (Deut. vi. 21.) That the Israelites did not make 
 brick only, but performed other labours of building, may be inferred 
 from Exodus ix. 8, 10 : " Moses took ashes of the furnace, and stood 
 before Pharaoh," no doubt from one of the furnaces which was 
 tended by his people ; and also, " I removed his shoulder from the 
 burden, his hands were delivered from the mortar basket," not 
 " pots," as in our translation. It is recorded, that the Israelites 
 built cities for Pharaoh, and in such erections they might and must 
 have carried the burden and the mortar-hod ; yet, as their delivery 
 from these things is spoken of, as the furnace was in all probability 
 not very distant from the palace of the Egyptian Monarch ; and as 
 there is no reason to suppose that soon after they had built the cities, 
 they were dismissed, these circumstances evidently corroborate the 
 positive testimony of Josephus, that Israel was employed on the 
 pyramids. As the last of these edifices was never completely
 
 22 BOOR I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 finished, we may, perhaps, attribute the omission to the confu- 
 sion consequent on the overthrow of the tyrant in the Red Sea,* 
 which event terminated the ungodly life and the sanguinary deeds of 
 Pharaoh. Neither the cunning and malice of the King, the cruelty 
 and oppression of the task-masters, nor the wretched quantity and 
 quality of their food, could succeed against them. The Most High, 
 in whom, they trusted, arose in their behalf. After scourging the 
 people with ten grievous plagues, the Israelites were brought from 
 " out of the house of bondage with a stretched-out arm, and with great 
 judgments;" (Exod. vi. 6 ;) while the impious Sovereign, meditating 
 and attempting a blow which was intended to sweep the servants of 
 Jehovah from the face of the earth, was destroyed without remedy. 
 
 Such was the issue of the first state persecution recorded on the 
 page of history ; and such, observes Dr. A. Clarke, must be their lot ; 
 for he who opposes the truth, opposes the God of truth ; and he who 
 contends against Omnipotence, must certainly he cut off. As this 
 was the first church of God established in the earth, what happened 
 to it may be considered as typical of what should happen to the true 
 church to the conclusion of the world ; and teach us what true reli- 
 gion had to expect from heathen Emperors, and Kings, impious 
 Magistrates, corrupt Judges, and Christless Popes ; and the event has 
 fully declared, that succeeding persecutors have not only acted on the 
 same principles, but have improved on the murderous schemes of their 
 cruel predecessors ; for as the religion of Christ gave no quarter to 
 vice, the vicious have never given any quarter to religion. 
 
 This persecution, like every succeeding one, was both ivicked and 
 impolitic. The Egyptians owed the salvation of their country to the 
 Israelites ; and Pharaoh owed his crown and all its splendour to the 
 wise and politic management of Joseph. To forget such benefits 
 was abominable ; and to persecute the authors of them to death, was 
 the excess of cruelty. But it was not less impolitic than wicked. 
 The Israelites, by their numbers, were a great accession to the strength 
 of the country ; and there was nothing to be dreaded from their mul- 
 titudes, as the religion they professed would never permit them either 
 to rebel against or to injure the state ; when they were numbered 
 after their expulsion from Egypt, they amounted to six hundred and 
 three thousand, Jive hundred and fifty persons, from twenty years old 
 and upwards, (Num. i. 46,) not reckoning the tribe of Levi, nor the 
 many thousands of young people. What a stroke was this to the 
 population, the strength and wealth of the kingdom ! A blow from 
 which, in the nature of things, the nation could not recover for centu- 
 ries ! One would have imagined, that the bad success of this state 
 persecution would have prevented its repetition in any nation, where 
 the history that recorded it was publicly and commonly read. But 
 the following work shows that it was repeated, and repeated again 
 and again, even in civilized and in Christian countries, and with 
 the same result as in the beginning. The persecutors lost their 
 strength and their wealth, and the course of the persecuted was 
 accredited by the patient, unprovoked sufferings of its votaries ; and 
 
 * Cahaet, Diet. Frag. DXLI.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF NABOTH. 23 
 
 gained ground both in numbers and respectability. But sucb is the 
 enmity of the carnal mind against God and his truth, that men will 
 oppose and persecute, not only at the risk of their souls, but also to 
 the manifest injury of their secular interests. This has been exem- 
 plified in every state persecution, when those who took joyfully the 
 spoiling of their goods, rather than defile their consciences, were 
 obliged to seek refuge in other nations, whither they carried their 
 arts and sciences ; and thereby added both to the population and pros- 
 perity of those countries which opened the arms of benevolence to 
 receive them.* 
 
 SECTION IT. THE MARTYRDOM OF NABOTH, THE JEZREELITE. 
 
 JEZREEL, the place where this sanguinary and diabolical transac- 
 tion occurred, was a town in the tribe of Issachar, (Joshua xix. 18,) 
 in which the King of Israel had a palace, and where the court often 
 resided, although Samaria was the metropolis of the kingdom. It is 
 most frequently mentioned in the history of the house of Ahab, it 
 being the scene of some of his most cruel and oppressive acts, and 
 the place where Jehu executed his dreadful commission against his 
 family, when Jezebel, his infamous wife, and Joram, together with all 
 pertaining to that wretched dynasty, perished. (2 Kings ix. 14 37 ; 
 x. 1 11.) These horrid events appear to have given the Kings of 
 Israel a distaste to this residence, as it is not again mentioned in their 
 history.f 
 
 Naboth was an inhabitant of Jezreel, and the possessor of a patri- 
 monial vineyard adjoining the garden of the palace, which the Kings of 
 Israel had there. To these inheritances great importance was attached. 
 When the children of Israel were numbered, immediately before 
 their entrance into the promised land, and found (exclusive of the 
 Levites) to exceed six hundred thousand men, the Lord said unto 
 Moses, " Unto these the land shall be divided for an inheritance, 
 according to the number of names. To many thou shalt give the 
 more inheritance, and to few thou shalt give the less inheritance : 
 to every one shall his inheritance be given according to those that 
 were numbered of him. Notwithstanding the land shall be divided 
 by lot : according to the names of the tribes of their fathers shall they 
 inherit." (Num. xxvi. 53 55.) By this regulation, provision was made 
 for the support of six hundred thousand yeomanry, with from six to 
 
 Christian Martyrology. By Dr. A. Clarke. 
 
 t It is, however, named by Hosea ; (chap. i. 4 ; comp. i. 11, ii. 12;) and in Judith, 
 (i. 8 ; iv. 6 ; vii. 3,) it occurs under the name of Esdraelon. In the days of Eusebius 
 and Jerome it was still a large village, called Esdraela ; (Onomast. sub voce Jezreel ;) 
 and in the same age it again occurs as Stradela. (/tin. Hieros., p. 686.) Nothing more 
 is heard of it till the time of the Crusades, when it is called by the Franks, Paroum 
 Gerinutn, and by the Arabs, Zerin ; it is described as commanding a wide prospect on the 
 east, to the mountain of Oilead ; and on the west, to Mount Carmel. (Will. Tyr., xxii. 
 26.) But this line of identification seems to have been afterwards lost sight of, and Jezreel 
 came to be identified with Jenin. Indeed, the village of Zerin ceased to be mentioned 
 by travellers, till Turner, Buckingham, and others after them, again brought it into 
 notice ; and it is still more lately, that the identification of Zerin and Jezreel has been 
 restored. (Raumer Patast, p. 165; Schubert, iii. 164 ; Elliott, il. 379; Robinson, Hi. 
 1G4 ; Kitto, Cyclop. Bib. Lit., in loco.)
 
 24 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 twenty-five acres of land each.* This land they held independent of 
 all temporal superiors, by direct tenure from the Lord Jehovah, their 
 Sovereign, by whose power they were to acquire their territory ; and 
 under whose protection only they could retain it. On this principle, 
 the lands so distributed were unalienable. " The land shall not be 
 sold for ever," says the law, " for the land is mine, saith the Lord ; 
 ye are strangers and sojourners with me." (Lev. xxv. 23.) Every 
 tribe and every family being thus settled in their inheritances, became 
 local without remove ; each was to continue, and their posterity after 
 them, on the same estate which originally fell to them. 
 
 Thus the basis of the Hebrew constitution, continues Dr. Graves, 
 was an equal agrarian law. But this law was guarded by other pro- 
 visions most wise and salutary. The accumulation of debt was pre- 
 vented, first, by prohibiting every Jew from accepting of interest from 
 any of his feUow-citizens ; (Lev. xxv. 36, 37 ;) next, by establishing 
 a regular release of all debts and servitude, every seventh year ; that 
 the Hebrew nation might not decline from so great a number of free 
 subjects, and be lost to the public in the condition of slaves ; and, 
 finally, by ordaining that no lands could be alienated for ever, but 
 must, on each year of jubilee, or seventh sabbatic year, revert to the 
 families which originally possessed them, discharged of all incum- 
 brances. For this, express provision was made : " Ye shall hallow 
 the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all 
 the inhabitants thereof ; it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall 
 return every man unto his family." (Lev. xxv. 10.) Thus, without 
 absolutely depriving individuals of all temporary dominion over their 
 landed property, it re-established, every fiftieth year, that original and 
 equal distribution of it, which was the foundation of the national 
 polity ; and as the period of such reversion was fixed and regular, all 
 parties had due notice of the terms on which they negotiated ; there 
 was no ground for public commotion, or private complaint. 
 
 A farther regulation respecting the release in the year of jubilee, 
 will illustrate the character of Naboth, and consequently is deserving 
 of notice. It did not extend to houses in cities : these, if not 
 redeemed within one year after they were sold, were alienated for 
 ever. (Lev. xxv. 29, 30.) This circumstance must have given pro- 
 perty in the country a decided preference over property in cities ; 
 and induced every Jew to reside on and improve his land,f and em- 
 ploy his time in the care of his flocks and agriculture; which, as 
 they had been the occupation of those revered Patriarchs from whom 
 
 Vide Lowman on the Hebrew Government, chap. iv. Second Edition. 8vo. 
 London, 1745. Vide also Cunseus de Republics Hebraeorum, cap. ii. ; De Lege Agra- 
 ria, et inaestimabile ejus Utilitate ; and Ledeyker de Kepublica Hebraeorum, lib. v., cap. 
 xi., xii., xiii. ; The Universal History, vol. i., p. 617} Graves's Lectures on the Penta- 
 teuch, part ii., sect. iv. 
 
 t "These lands were given unto the fathers, and must pass to the children, and 
 remain for ever in the same tribes and families. This law was the effect of deep and 
 wine policy. It perpetuated all the advantages of the first distribution, and by confining 
 the citizen to his original spot, it kept up in him the love of industry and frugality. It 
 repressed avarice, it prevented the ambitious schemes of great land-holders, and the 
 oppression of the poor, jealousies, discontent, factions, and all those evils which other 
 commonwealths vainly endeavoured to remedy, by their agrarian laws." Letters of 
 certain Jews to Mons. de Voltaire, vol. ii., part iii., letter 2, sect, v., pp. 18, 19.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF NABOTft. '25 
 
 the Jews descended, were with them the most honourable of all 
 employments. Further, the original division of land was to the seve- 
 ral tribes according to their families, so that each tribe was settled in 
 the same county, and each family in the same barony or hundred. 
 Nor was the estate of any family in one tribe permitted to pass into 
 another, even by the marriage of an heiress. So that, not only was 
 the original balance of property preserved, but the closest and dearest 
 connexions of affinity attached to each other the inhabitants of every 
 vicinage. Thus, domestic virtue and affection had a more extensive 
 sphere of action ; the happiness of rural life was increased ; a general 
 attention to virtue and decorum was promoted, from that natural 
 emulation which each family would feel to preserve unsullied the 
 reputation of their neighbourhood ; and the poor might everywhere 
 expect more ready assistance, since they implored it from men whose 
 sympathy in their sufferings would be quickened by hereditary 
 friendship, and hereditary connexion.* 
 
 It was on these considerations, that Naboth clung with such indo- 
 mitable and religious tenacity to the inheritance of his fathers, when 
 Ahab required him to sell his land to him, or to exchange it for 
 another portion. In the estimation of the Jezreelite, it would be a 
 sin against God for him to alienate from his family the property 
 which, on the division of Canaan, fell to their lot ; and also an infamy, 
 the stain of which, in the sight of a Jew, was indelible. Naboth, 
 therefore, who appears to have feared God, chose rather to expose 
 , himself to the resentment of the King, than commit an act which was 
 not only in itself dishonourable, but opposed to the divine command, 
 and contrary to the custom of the country. He, therefore, with 
 promptitude, and with due respect to the person and authority of the 
 Monarch, replied, " The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the 
 inheritance of my fathers unto thee." (1 Kings xxi. 3.) 
 
 Despotic and abandoned as Ahab confessedly was, it appears he 
 could not, in accordance with the established law of the land, compel 
 Naboth to give up the desired vineyard ; but his covetousness and 
 pride were so hurt at this unanticipated refusal, that, deeply affected, 
 he went home, and, like a spoiled child, threw himself upon his bed, 
 turned his face to the wall, and refused to take his food ! Poor 
 imbecile wretch ! he was lord over ten-twelfths of the land, and 
 became miserable because he could not add a poor man's vineyard to 
 all that he possessed. As soon as his wife, the notorious Jezebel, 
 understood the cause of his trouble, she bade him be of good cheer, 
 for she would procure him the vineyard. The manner in which this, 
 wicked woman acquired and exercised her power over her weak and 
 corrupt husband, is strikingly shown in the matter in question, which, 
 perhaps, more than all the other affairs in which she was engaged, 
 brings out her true character, uncovers the hell which she ever 
 carried in her bosom, and displays the nature of that influence 
 which she employed for purposes that were idolatrous and cruel. 
 
 Ahab, entirely under the control of Jezebel, after being severely 
 reproved for not fulfilling his own pleasure, on the ground of that 
 
 * Graves's Lectures on the Pentateuch. Part ii., lect. iv. 
 VOL. I. E
 
 26 BOOK I. CHAPTER II. 
 
 supreme authority which he wielded, tacitly left the affair in her 
 hands. She, therefore, wrote letters to the Elders, the Magistrates 
 of the city of Jezreel, and sealed them with Ahab's signet, which he 
 lent for that purpose, commanding them to proclaim a public fast, to 
 set Naboth in an elevated station among the chiefs of the people, and 
 to suborn false witnesses against him, who should depose that Naboth 
 had blasphemed God and the King. The Magistrates, who appear to 
 have been as corrupt as their mistress was wicked, did, without hesi- 
 tation, what they were commanded ; and the innocent and righteous 
 Naboth was stoned to death, according to the law, outside the town. 
 (Lev. xxiv. 16.) "Then they sent to Jezebel, saving, Naboth is 
 stoned, and is dead." 
 
 It is highly probable, that the children of Naboth perished with 
 him, being, perhaps, put to death by the servile creatures of Jezebel ; 
 otherwise the deed of blood would have been useless and abortive, 
 as the children would have been entitled to the heritage of the father. 
 The destruction of the family of the Jezreelite is strongly intimated 
 in the commission of the Most High to Jehu : " Surely I have seen 
 the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons, saith the Lord ; and 
 I will requite thee in this plat, saith the Lord." (2 Kings ix. 26.) 
 Be this as it may, it seems that a usage had crept in, for the property 
 of persons convicted of treason (and blasphemy was treason in Israel) 
 to be estreated to the crown. There are numerous indications of this 
 usage. If it did not exist, the estate of Naboth could not have 
 lapsed to the' crown, even if his children had shared his fate ; and if 
 it did exist, it was not necessary that the children should be slain to 
 secure the estate to the King. 
 
 Jezebel, who had not scrupled at murder, under the abused forms 
 of religion and of law, to accomplish her purpose, said to Ahab, 
 " Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelitej 
 which he refused to give thee for money : for Naboth is not alive, but 
 dead." Although the Most High did not see fit to restrain these 
 wicked men in the ungodly deeds which they committed, but suffered 
 his faithful servant to be speedily removed from the evils of this world, 
 into the rest remaining for his people ; he soon gave proof that the 
 eye of his justice had been watching all these infamous transactions. 
 Ahab went down to Jezreel to take possession of the inheritance of 
 his murdered subject, whose person and property he ought to have 
 protected, and was made to hear the sentence of God from the mouth 
 of the Prophet Elijah, who arrested him upon the very spot, and in 
 the act of seizing the paternal estate of Naboth. " The word of the 
 Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Arise, go down to meet 
 Ahab, King of Israel, which is in Samaria : behold, he is in the vine- 
 yard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it. And thou 
 shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, 
 and also taken possession ? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, 
 Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the Hood of 
 Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine. And of Jezebel also 
 spake the Lord, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of 
 Jezreel." (I Kings xxi. 1719, 23.) This fearful prediction was
 
 MARTYRDOM OF NABOTH. 27 
 
 fulfilled, if not to the letter, on account of Ahab's temporary peni- 
 tence, it was in its spirit, the result of which was the destruction of 
 Ahab's race. Ahab died of the wounds which he received in a battle 
 with the Syrians, according to a prediction of Micaiah, which the 
 King disbelieved, but yet endeavoured to avert by disguising himself 
 in the action. " And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and 
 smote the King of Israel between the joints of the harness : wherefore 
 he said unto the driver of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me 
 out of the host ; for I am wounded. And the battle increased that 
 day : and the King was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, 
 and died at even : and the blood ran out of the wound into the 
 midst of the chariot. So the King died, and was brought to Sama- 
 ria ; and they buried the King in Samaria. And one washed the 
 chariot in the pool of Samaria ; and the dogs licked up his blood ; and 
 they washed his armour ; according unto the word of the Lord which 
 he spake." (1 Kings xxii. 34 38.) Jezebel perished in the streets 
 of Jezreel ; and when " they went to bury her, they found no more of 
 her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands. Where- 
 fore they came again, and told him" (Jehu). " And he said, This is 
 the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, 
 saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel : 
 and the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field 
 in the portion of Jezreel ; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel." 
 (2 Kings ix. 35 38.) The whole family was soon extirpated. 
 "How oft is the candle of the wicked put out!" (Job xxi. 17.) 
 The Almighty may permit his faithful servants to seal the truth with 
 their blood ; yet those who stretch out their hands against them do it 
 to their own destruction ; for the persecutors of the truth, and of 
 those who propagate it, shall ultimately fall a prey to the wrathful 
 indignation of Him who hath said, " Touch not mine anointed, and 
 do my Prophets no harm." (1 Chron. xvi. 22.) 
 
 ic 2
 
 28 BOOK I. CHAPTER III, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ELIJAH. State of Religion in Judea when Elijah appeared Appearance of Elijah 
 His Name Conduct of Ahab linages Baal Astarte A Drought threatened 
 How received Prophets of the Most High Elijah persecuted Flees to Che- 
 rith Afterwards to Zarephath Awful State of the Country His second Visit to 
 Ahab Obadiak Ahab's Interview with the Prophet Elijah's Challenge The 
 Trial Its Success The Destruction of the Priests of Baal Elijah's Conduct 
 vindicated Locke Warburton Ahab's subsequent Interview with Jezebel She 
 threatens the Life of the Prophet He flees into the Wilderness His Despond- 
 ency and Encouragement His third Interview with Ahab Ahaziah Consults 
 Baalzebub Is reproved by the Prophet The King threatens His Servants are 
 slain by Fire from Heaven Elijah predicts his Death Remarks on the Death of 
 the Messengers On the Right of punishing Heretics with the Sword Bossuet 
 quoted Rev. Richard Watson Schools of the Prophets Elisha Ascension 
 of Elijah. 
 
 THE first act recorded in the sacred Scriptures of Elijah's ministry 
 is one of obedience. He was deputed by divine authority to rebuke a 
 people who had long been strangers to the path of righteousness, who 
 had deposed the Priests of the Most High, despised his ordinances, 
 forsaken his holy place, and were, when this Prophet appeared, far- 
 ther than ever astray. A frightful harvest of crime had sprung up 
 among them. The seed that was sown by Jeroboam, the son of 
 Nebat, who first taught Israel to sin, had been most prolific. His 
 successors zealously carried on the deadly work, which gathered at 
 every step increasing strength, and cast a still deeper shade of pollu- 
 tion upon the land and its inhabitants, till Ahab, the son of Omri, arose, 
 who " did evil in the sight of the Lord, above all that were before 
 him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to 
 walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife 
 Jezebel,* the daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Zidonians, and went 
 and served Baal, and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar 
 for Baal, in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. 
 And Ahab made a grove, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord 
 God of Israel to anger than all the Kings of Israel that went before 
 him." (1 Kings xvi. 3033.) 
 
 In the midst of this overwhelming wickedness, Elijah the Tishbite 
 makes his appearance. No warning of his approach is given, no 
 tidings of his mission are communicated ; but when Israel was steeped 
 in guilt and depravity, this Prophet arises to " visit their offences 
 with the rod." No mention is made of the place of his birth, nor 
 of his tribe and lineage. He is introduced to our notice like another 
 
 " This woman was active and bold, and fell into so great a degree of impurity and 
 madness, that she built a temple to the god of the Tyrians, which they called ' Belus,' 
 and planted a grove of all sorts of trees ; she also appointed Priests and false Prophets 
 to this god. The King, also, himself had many such about him ; and so exceeded in 
 madness and wickedness all that went before him." (Joseph. Antiq., lib. viii., cap. xiii., 
 sect. J.) These are the false Prophets spoken of 1 Kings xviii., in the memorable con- 
 test at Mount Carmel ; and again 1 Kings xxii., where they encourage Ahab to go 
 down to Ramoth Gilead.
 
 OF ELIJAH. 29 
 
 Mclchisedek, (Gen. xiv. 18 ; Heb.vii. 1 3,) without any mention of 
 his father or mother, or of the beginning of his days, as if he had 
 dropped out of that cloudy chariot which, after his work was done on 
 earth, conveyed him back to heaven ; and hence we may account for 
 the various and fanciful interpretations concerning his origin and per- 
 son which are to be found in the writings of the Jewish commenta- 
 tors.* His very name, Elijah, or, as it is called in the New Testa- 
 ment, Elias, indicates some special mark of the divine authority ; its 
 literal signification being, "The Lord God is he ;" and the designa- 
 tion of " the Tishbite " attached to it is thought by some to have 
 been derived from Thisbe, the town or region where he was born ; f 
 others suppose that " Tishbite " means a " converter " or " reform- 
 er," deriving it from the Hebrew radical, mm' 
 
 This is the limit of our information respecting the early history of 
 Elijah, who was far more glorious in his ministry than any who had 
 arisen since the days of Moses, although we are unable distinctly to 
 associate his person with the family or habitation of any of God's 
 people. How often from the darkest cloud we behold the lightnings 
 glare most brilliant and imposing ! So, likewise, the glories of Elijah's 
 holiness shine forth with a more clear and majestic lustre from the deep 
 mystery and gloom of surrounding shadows. Ahab was the most weak 
 and wicked of all the Kings which the land of Israel had produced ; 
 and having married an idolater, he plunged recklessly into all the 
 abominable superstitions of her nation. The ambitious woman was not 
 content with this mark of the influence which she had over him : 
 she resolved to effect the universal dissemination of her vicious 
 principles. She possessed a powerful party in the kingdom, which, 
 while it nestled itself under the fostering wing of royalty, embraced 
 every opportunity to bid defiance to the opposition of the faithful 
 servants of God ; so that it was far from difficult to substitute her 
 religion in place of the corrupt service which was rendered to the Most 
 High. " When images are once introduced as objects of adoration, 
 it little matters whom they represent ; and it was easy for men, if 
 scruples arose, to be persuaded that Baal and his fellows were no 
 other than their own Jehovah under peculiar attributes. When they 
 had once degraded his glory to the likeness of a calf that eateth hay, 
 it was but a short step to give him another name and form. The 
 apostasy was soon general. Baal had a temple and altar at Samaria, 
 the worship of Astarte J was established, and both deities were fur- 
 nished each with a long train of about four hundred Priests. It was 
 amid such impieties that God interfered, and commanded Elijah to 
 
 Thus by some he was supposed to have been miraculously descended from the 
 tribe of Aaron ; by others, to have been an angel sent from heaven ; and by others, to 
 have been PLinehas, the son of Aaron, who, after having lived a long time concealed, 
 appeared again in the world, under the name of Elijah. See Stackhouse and Patrick, 
 in Inc., and Lightfoot, Harmony of the Four Evangelists, 8vo., vol. iv., p. 399. gel- 
 don has given a full account of the last of the three opinions above referred to, in the 
 second chapter of his Treatise, De Successions in PontificatiMn Hebrtxorum. 
 
 t A town in Galilee, belonging to the tribe of Naphtali. (Tob. i. 2.) See also 
 Relandi PaLcstina, torn. ii. , p. 1 036. 
 
 1 For a farther account of Astarte, see note A, p. 42. 
 
 For various opinions respecting Baal, see note B, p. 43.
 
 30 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 go before Aliab, and denounce a drought upon the land. The man- 
 ner in which this communication was received is a striking example 
 of degeneracy. Saul had submissively listened to Samuel, and David 
 to Nathan, notwithstanding the unwelcomeness of their message. 
 But Ahab immediately sought the life of his rebuker, and began a 
 cruel and general persecution of the Prophets of God. This class 
 of men was maintained by Jehovah in constant succession among his 
 people, in order to keep alive in them that spirituality to which their 
 law, taken by itself, was unfavourable. They were to maintain 
 those grand truths and doctrines which the law presumed upon, or 
 typified, rather than expressed. They were God's peculiar servants 
 and messengers, and after the establishment of kingly power were 
 more than ever necessary to remind both ruler and people of the only 
 true Potentate, and real source of all power and might. Good Kings 
 received them with the utmost submission, while they were odious, above 
 all men, to a wicked Government, which saw in these his Ministers a 
 continual rebuke. When they would willingly put God out of sight, 
 these men brought him immediately before them. They were God's 
 spies upon them. They made them feel that there were bosoms full 
 of purity and wisdom hourly arraigning it, and pleading against them 
 before the throne of God ; and they felt an awe which they would not 
 avow, while the sense of it was intolerable. The Prophets were, 
 therefore, ever the first to suffer in national calamities. Such, as St. 
 Peter says, ever commence ' with the house of God.' (1 Peter iv. 17.) 
 For wicked measures necessarily create their determined, because con- 
 scientious, opposition ; and this opposition is charged with factious 
 obstinacy from the fewness of its maintainers. Alas! the faithful 
 servants of God, and only possessors of truth and wisdom, ever have 
 been, and will be, a few. Of course, Jezebel was delighted to obtain 
 any ground upon which to assail them ; and it was not difficult to 
 charge upon them, as represented in Elijah their head, all the mise- 
 ries of the famine which was so sorely vexing the land."* 
 
 In the first account which is given of Elijah in the sacred volume, 
 we find him deli vering a message from the Lord of direful denuncia- 
 tion against the King of Israel, which he confirms by a solemn oath. 
 Doubtless many previous warnings had been despised, and this 
 punishment was inflicted both on the Monarch and upon his subjects 
 for their gross contumacy and rejection of the Prophet. He declared, 
 " As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall 
 not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." 
 (1 Kings xvii. 1.) It can easily be imagined that the idolatrous King 
 and Queen were greatly incensed against Elijah for having foretold 
 and prayed that those calamities would befall the land. For a time, 
 they might endeavour to attribute the whole to natural causes, and 
 not to the instrumentality of the man of God ; and therefore, however 
 they might be inclined to treat him with contempt, they would not 
 proceed immediately to punish him. Affairs at length assumed a 
 serious and terrific aspect ; for three years and a half " the heaven 
 was shut up, and great famine was throughout all the land ; " (Luke 
 
 Evans's Scripture Biography. First Series. 12mo. pp. 164 1(56. London. 1834.
 
 OF ELIJAH. 31 
 
 iv. 25 ;) and yet the people remained impenitent. The various hosts 
 of creation are at the divine command, so that when the Most High 
 directs, they are ready to go forth as the executioners of his ven- 
 geance to chastise or destroy ungodly sinners. The rain falls not by 
 chance, and frequently God " turneth a fruitful land into barrenness 
 for the wickedness of them that dwell therein." (Psalm cvii. 34.) 
 When, therefore, Ahab and Jezebel beheld the fearful consequences 
 of this scourge, instead of turning to the Lord with contrition, they 
 sought the life of the Prophet, as though he, and not their iniquities, 
 had occasioned the calamity ; but he was miraculously protected. 
 He was commanded, in the first instance, to go and hide himself in 
 the glen of the Cherith, which was one of the tributaries of the Jor- 
 dan. " Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by 
 the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou 
 shalt drink of the brook ; and I have commanded the ravens to feed * 
 thee there." (1 Kings xvii. 3, 4.) Accordingly he went forth from 
 the presence of the King to the lonely brook, leaning on the arm of 
 Him who is mightier than the mightiest, and looking only to that 
 sure word of promise which he had received. 
 
 In process of time, the faith of Elijah was tried in a different way. 
 As some suppose, for a period of one year God miraculously provided 
 for the wants of his servant ; but, ere long, the drought which him- 
 self had predicted exhausted the brook. " It came to pass after a 
 while, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the 
 land. And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get 
 thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there : 
 behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee." 
 (1 Kings xvii. 7 10.) But this widow of Zarephath (or, as it is 
 called in the New Testament, "Sarepta") was herself worn down 
 with poverty and hunger. When Elijah saw her first at the city-gate, 
 she was gathering sticks, that she might go in and dress the last 
 handful of meal that remained in her barrel for herself and her son. 
 He asked her to bring him a morsel of bread in her hand ; but " she 
 said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful 
 of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse : and, behold, I am 
 gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my 
 son, that we may eat it, and die. And Elijah said unto her, Fear 
 not ; go and do as thou hast said : but make me thereof a little cake 
 first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. 
 For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not 
 waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord 
 sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to 
 the saying of Elijah." (1 Kings xvii. 1216.) The faith of this 
 woman was exemplary. She was an inhabitant of that heathen land 
 whence the idolatrous Jezebel had come, to share the power of 
 Israel's sceptre, and swell the catalogue of Israel's sins. Yet she was 
 a believer in the God of Israel. His own people had cast away the 
 law and testimonies which he had given to them ; but she, who 
 had sprung not from the seed of Abraham, obeyed the command. 
 
 See this subject pursued at length in note C, p. 44.
 
 32 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 She received a Prophet in the name of a Prophet, and verily she 
 received " a Prophet's reward." 
 
 During Elijah's residence in Sarepta, the widow's son sickened and 
 died. The distressed mother, under deep convictions of her guilt, 
 considered the calamity as a judgment inflicted upon her by the 
 Prophet : she seems to have thought within herself, that as God 
 had shut up heaven from pouring down refreshing showers upon a 
 guilty nation in consequence of his servant's prayer, so she was now 
 suffering from a similar cause. She had looked upon Elijah as 
 an herald of the Lord ; to his knowledge she must have turned for 
 instruction, to his power for protection ; and when that protection 
 was withdrawn, as it seemed to be in the present instance, and inter- 
 fered not to support the drooping spirit of the child, what could she 
 think but that anger had taken the place of mercy, and that the 
 messenger of peace had become the minister of vengeance ? So deeply 
 did she feel the calamity as a judgment of which he was the instru- 
 ment, that she dreaded his residence beneath her roof, and was impa- 
 tient for his departure. But in answer to his fervent prayer the child 
 revived ; the Almighty afresh manifesting his power. Before this 
 event no such miracle had been worked upon the earth. A poor, 
 desolate widow obtained what would have been denied to Kings. 
 " He raised her son from the dead ; and was thus a forerunner of Him 
 that should raise Lazarus, and the son of the widow of Nain, and 
 shall come again in glory to raise the dead at the last day." * 
 
 The wretchedness of the country was now extreme. The terror of 
 the Lord was real. It came, not, as it often does, in the havoc of 
 war, or the darkness of the storm, or the swiftness of the whirlwind, 
 but with the withering touch of famine. There was no rain nor dew, 
 to make glad the hills and valleys of the land, nor provide food for 
 its people. Beauty and strength and greatness alike sank beneath 
 the plague ; every form of misery which the pencil of inspired 
 Prophets has portrayed, in visitations such as these, must have been 
 realized, to the very uttermost, in the present infliction of divine 
 anger : f " the land mourning, the gates thereof languishing, the 
 cry of their cities ascending up to heaven, the ploughmen covering 
 their heads with shame, the hind, also, calving in the field, and 
 forsaking it because there was no grass, and the wild asses standing 
 in the high places, and snuffing up the wind bike dragons, the 
 nobles sending their little ones to the waters, and seeing them return 
 with their vessels empty, their eyes failing with tears, and their 
 visage blacker than coal, the tongue of the sucking child cleaving to 
 the roof of his mouth for thirst, the young children asking bread, 
 and no man breaking it unto them." (Jer. xiv. 2 6.) Such were 
 the signs of Israel's desolation, and such the fearful evidences of 
 God's wrath upon his people, when Elijah was- commanded to go up 
 from Zarephath, and seek once more the presence of the King. He 
 immediately obeyed. On his way he met Obadiah, the steward of 
 
 Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 166. 
 
 t Discourses on Elijah and John the Baptist. By the Rev. James S. M. Anderson, 
 M.A. Second Edition, p. 9. London, 1835.
 
 OF ELIJAH. 33 
 
 the King's household : from him he learned the melancholy tidings of 
 the destruction of all his brethren of prophecy, who had remained in 
 the land, and whom Obadiah had made a vain attempt to save by 
 hiding a hundred of them, by fifty, in a cave, and supporting them on 
 bread and water ; so that he only remained a Prophet of the Lord. 
 Elijah immediately requested the steward to announce him to the 
 King, who was exceedingly alarmed, and apparently hurt by the 
 unkindness of the command, and replied, " What have I sinned, that 
 thou shouldest expose me to Ahab's rage, who will certainly slay me 
 for not apprehending thee, for whom he has so long and so anxiously 
 sought in all lands, and in confederate countries, that they should not 
 harbour a traitor, whom he looks upon as the author of the famine ? " 
 Satisfied with Elijah's reply to this appeal, in which all the fears 
 which he expressed are simultaneously removed, he resolved to 
 become the Prophet's messenger to the King. Elijah said, " As the 
 Lord of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself 
 unto him to-day. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him; 
 and Ahab went to meet Elijah." (1 Kings xviii. 15, 16.) 
 
 When Ahab heard the tidings which the Governor of his house 
 communicated, he went to the interview. More than three years had 
 passed since he had seen the Prophet, when he denounced the judg- 
 ments which were now devastating the country. Everything that 
 was gloomy and terrific tended to suggest to the mind of Ahab the 
 name and prophecy of Elijah. The imbecile King Lad not Jezebel 
 immediately at his ear to incite and support him ; consequently, the 
 dignified air of the man of God appalled him ; and though his troubled 
 spirit was driven to the highest pitch of hatred and exasperation, and 
 the object of his wrath was placed within his grasp, whom he and 
 his emissaries had sought in vain, he feared to lay hold upon him, 
 and was content to reproach the Prophet with the cause of the na- 
 tional affliction. "Art thou," he said, "he that troubleth Israel?" 
 Elijah indignantly flung back the charge upon the King, and, with a 
 laudable intrepidity, reproved the furious persecutor, and attributed 
 all the miseries of the land to that infamous system of idolatry which 
 he and his family had adopted. He raised his voice, as a messenger 
 of God, against iniquity, although enthroned in high places, and, 
 assured of the help of the Most High, he feared not the anger of the 
 murderer of his brethren the Prophets, but challenged him to sum- 
 mon the whole of the Priests of Baal to meet him in the face of all 
 Israel, at Mount Carmel, that the controversy might be decided, whether 
 the King or the Prophet were the troubler of Israel. To this pro- 
 posal 'Ahab consented, and God directed the result. 
 
 Elijah offered to decide this question between God and Baal, not by 
 Scripture, but by a miracle from heaven ; for an appeal to the word 
 of God would have fallen powerless on the minds of the infidel 
 multitude. As fire was the element over which Baal was supposed 
 to preside, the Prophet proposes that, two bullocks being slain, and 
 laid each upon a distinct altar, the one for Baal, the other for 
 Jehovah, whichever should be consumed by fire, must proclaim 
 whose the people of Israel were, and whom it was their duty to 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 34 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 serve.* The Israelites, probably, were not altogether ignorant how the 
 Most High had formerly answered by fire, (Gen. iv. 4 ; Lev. ix. 24 ; 
 Judges vi. 21 ; xiii. 20 ; 1 Chron. xxi. 26 ; 2 Chron. vii. 1,) which fur- 
 nished evidence for the authority of Elijah's appeal, which the adversaries 
 of the Prophet could not gainsay or resist. " The spectacle was sufficient 
 to stir every heart that could feel in Israel. There they saw before 
 them the Prophet of the true and only God, whom they had been 
 hunting down for more than three years, standing all alone, solitary 
 survivor of his persecuted brethren, brought as it were to his trial 
 without an advocate, without a friend; and this very trial granted 
 him as a favour. He came before them weary and worn, the de- 
 spised Minister of an abandoned God. Opposed to him, and arrayed 
 in costly vesture, accompanied with all the pomp and circumstance 
 that could win the eye and ear, and allure the imagination, and which 
 idolatry knows so well how to employ, with robes, and fillets, and 
 standards, and instruments of music, stood the Prophets of Baal. 
 But the solitary old man was not to be dismayed at the sight of such 
 fearful odds. He kept up his high and gallant bearing, amid his 
 seeming helplessness, and, bold in the help and cause of his God, recked 
 neither of Prophets, nor of people. One who had to plead a cause 
 less sacred and uncompromising, would have endeavoured to win the 
 favourable attention of these parties. He, on the contrary, rebuked 
 them with a bold and taunting severity, and with all the air of a 
 superior." -f 
 
 Confident of success, Elijah enters the lists. The sides of Carmel 
 are crowded with Israel's people ; the King and his idolatrous Pro- 
 phets have accepted the challenge of the man of God ; the altars are 
 raised, the limbs of the slaughtered victims are laid upon them, and 
 Baal is invoked to consume the sacrifice. From morning even until 
 noon, his votaries offered their supplications, and rent the air with 
 their clamorous shoutings. Their frantic outcries are repeated, the 
 blood gushes out beneath their knives and lancets, they leap wildly 
 upon the altar, and finally relinquish the effort in despair. Elijah, 
 having rebuked their folly and wickedness with the sharpest irony, 
 offered up his prayer. The Priests of Baal prayed long ; the Prophet 
 of Jehovah short, charging God with the care of his covenant, of his 
 truth, and of his glory ; when, behold, " the fire came down, licked 
 up the water, and consumed not only the bullock, but the very stones 
 of the altar also." The effect of this on the mind of the people was 
 what the Prophet desired. Acknowledging the awful presence of the 
 Godhead, they exclaim, as with one voice, " The Lord he is the God ! 
 The Lord he is the God !" Thus were the hearts of the people once 
 again turned to their God, the hearts of the disobedient to the 
 
 * The altar which was repaired by Elijah, seems to have remained for a long time, 
 and to have given a sacredness to Carmel, which was acknowledged many centuries 
 after, even by the heathen conquerors of the country. Tacitus tells us, that the Empe- 
 ror Vespasian offered up sacrifices on that Mount, when he consulted Basilides, the 
 Priest of its god, and thus describes it, " Est Judeam inter Syriamque Carmelus, ita 
 vocant montem Deumqne ; nee simulacrum Deo, aut templum ; sic tradidere majores : 
 ara tantum et reverentia." Tac. Hist., lib. ii., cap. 78. 
 
 t Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 168.
 
 OF ELIJAH. 35 
 
 wisdom of the just. So far, the glory of Jehovah was vindicated ; 
 but another work remained to be accomplished, a work of chastise- 
 ment and terror. Seizing the opportunity whilst the people's hearts 
 were warm with the fresh conviction of this miracle, he said, " Take 
 the Prophets of Baal ; let not one of them escape. And they took 
 them : and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon,* and slew 
 them there." (1 Kings xviii. 40.) 
 
 Some have manifested offence at this portion of the history of the 
 persecuted Prophet. They have been at a loss to know how one man 
 should thus be the instrument to inflict death on many, or why the 
 superstitious worship of a mistaken creed should be so signally and 
 severely punished. It is clear that Elijah acted throughout by and 
 with the divine authority. As it was the power of God alone which 
 could inflict this death, so it was the will of God alone which 
 ordained it. The word of God expressly declared idolatry to be a 
 capital crime to the sons of Israel. The record of the law is as fol- 
 lows : " If there be found among you, within any of thy gates 
 which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath 
 wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in transgress- 
 ing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worship- 
 ped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which 
 I have not commanded ; then shalt thou bring forth that man or 
 that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die." (Deut. 
 xvii. 2 5.) The principle and authority of the Jewish law explain the 
 ground of this enactment. It had been, from its first institution, and 
 still continued to be, a theocracy : a government, that is, which, 
 through the medium of temporal rewards and punishments, was car- 
 ried on by the visible interposition of the Almighty. The common- 
 wealth of Israel, therefore, and the church of Israel, were one and 
 the same. Each was identified with the other. "The laws estab- 
 lished there, concerning the worship of one invisible Deity, were the 
 civil laws of that people, and a part of their political government, in 
 which God himself was Legislator." f To renounce Jehovah as King, 
 was to reject him as God ; and to reject him as God, was to renounce 
 him as King. And since idolatry was to reject him as God, idolatry 
 was evidently treason in the Jewish state. " By necessity, there- 
 fore, as well as right, idolatry was punishable by the civil Laws of a 
 theocracy ; it being the greatest crime that could be committed 
 against the state, as tending, by unavoidable consequences, to dis- 
 solve the commonwealth."! Hence the enactments of the Mosaic 
 
 * This is not the first time that the channel of that stream drank the blood of the 
 slain ; for when the powers from heaven fought against the chariots and armies of 
 Jabin's hosts, and " the stars in their courses against Sisera," It was the same river 
 of Kishon that " swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon." (Judges v. 
 20, 21.) Its waters were then swollen and impetuous, but now well-nigh dried up, by 
 the long burning drought. " The battle of the warrior " had then gathered round its 
 banks, " with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood ;" (Isaiah is. 6 ;) but now, 
 with deliberate and solemn judgment, the hand of the avenger executed the sen- 
 tence of God's wrath, and cast therein the bodies of unholy Prophets. (Anderson's 
 Discourses.) 
 
 f Locke on Toleration, p. 37- 
 
 t Warburton's Divine Legation, book v.. sect, ii., p. 27. 
 
 t '2
 
 36 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 institution ; hence the signal punishments recorded in the Mosaic 
 history ; hence the destruction of Baal's Prophets by Elijah at the 
 brook Kishon.* 
 
 This transaction, with the removal of the curse of the drought, is 
 one of the most memorable in the history of the ancient church, 
 whether we take into consideration its consequences, its example, or 
 the character which Elijah sustained throughout the whole. Idolatry 
 did indeed again rear its head, and exercise a fearfully demoralizing 
 influence ; but its power was effectually broken, and hence its strug- 
 gles were principally for existence, rather than dominion. For a time 
 the nation enjoyed tranquillity ; but the troubles of the man of God 
 were soon as great as before. Immediately after the defeat of the 
 Priests of Baal, Ahab arrived at his residence in Jezreel, and speedily 
 announced to the imperious Jezebel the events of the day. We can 
 easily imagine with what emotions he would enter her apartment and 
 say : " The Tishbite has triumphed ! Fire from heaven has con- 
 firmed his word. Upon his prayer I beheld, with my own eyes, 
 flames fall from the skies, consume the burnt-offering, the wood, the 
 stones, and lick up the water in the trench. All the people can bear 
 witness to it. They fell on their faces, and cried out, as with one 
 voice, that Jehovah is God. The Priests of Baal are slain ; Elijah 
 and the people have destroyed them, and their blood is flowing in the 
 brook Kishon. They were laughed at as liars, and impotent deceivers. 
 Their authority and their worship is gone for ever. There is univer- 
 sal enthusiasm for Elijah. He is a Prophet of the living God. The 
 miracle on Carmel has placed it beyond doubt, and these heavy rains 
 speedily confirm it. At his command, they fall : he closed heaven, 
 and he has now opened it again." f At this unwelcome narrative all 
 that was fiendish and diabolical in the idolatrous Queen was excited ; 
 her features gathered blackness as a storm, and she resolved to gratify 
 her blood-thirsty revenge. The weak and deluded King did not dare 
 to think differently from his wife ; he also wanted firmness, and 
 doubtless an inclination to support the man of God. No acknowledg- 
 ment is made of the hand of the Most High, no confession of guilt, no 
 supplication for pardon. Elijah is the individual to whom everything 
 is ascribed, as if his voice alone could have called down fire from 
 heaven, or his single arm have stained the waters of Kishon with the 
 blood of idolaters. Against this Prophet, therefore, Jezebel directed 
 her fury, and " sent a messenger unto him, saying, So let the gods 
 do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one 
 of them by to-morrow about this time. And when he saw that, he 
 arose, and went for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongeth 
 to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's 
 journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper- 
 tree : and he requested for himself that he might die ; and said, It 
 is enough ; now, Lord, take away my life ; for I am not better than 
 my fathers." (1 Kings xix. 24.) How inexplicable is all this! 
 
 Anderson's Discourses on Elijah, pp. 61. 62. 
 
 t Elijah the Tishbite. From the German of Dr. F. W. Krummacher. Revised by 
 the Rev. R. F. Walker, 12mo. p. 101. London.
 
 OP ELIJAH. 37 
 
 " The man who had not shrunk from rebuking the impious King 
 upon his throne, nor feared to seek his sustenance from the ravens 
 of the valley, or the scanty meal and oil of the Zidonian widow ; he 
 who had stood undaunted amid a host of enemies, and raised up 
 before them an altar of triumphant victory, is now a trembling fugi- 
 tive, hastening from the wrath of an idolatrous woman, murmuring 
 at his trials, and praying that he might die. The language which 
 now fell from his lips shows that his flight was not such an one as 
 prudence might have justified, or to which he might have deliberately 
 resorted, in order to collect fresh strength for the renewal of his 
 labours ; but that it was prompted by weariness and alarm. Had 
 his prayer been like the sighing of the weary traveller for rest, or 
 of the prisoner for liberty, or the exile for the home of his fathers ; 
 nay, had it resembled that holy aspiration which constrained St. Paul, 
 in after-ages, to desire ' to depart, and be with Christ,' it would have 
 been consistent with the character and purpose of a faithful servant 
 of God ; but now, it was a call for death, out of a very weariness 
 of life, and impatience of suffering." * How truly did the Apostle 
 James describe Elijah, as "a man subject to like passions as our- 
 selves," and what a lesson of warning does this illustration of it 
 convey to all ! 
 
 The Most High was not unmindful of his faithful and much- 
 enduring servant. He sent an angel to feed him, and in the strength 
 of this food he went forty days and forty nights, until he reached the 
 Mount Horeb. Here the Almighty threw a glorious dignity around 
 him, and, by a fearful exhibition of his divine power, convinced him 
 that He was nigh to direct and to help. In this sublime and awful 
 manifestation which he experienced, it was announced that he 
 must go and anoint Hazael, King over Syria, Jehu, King over 
 Israel, and Elisha Prophet in his own place, ere death should ter- 
 minate his mortal career. When the Almighty had comforted 
 his servant, by referring to these three instruments whom he had 
 prepared to vindicate his insulted honour, he forthwith assured the 
 Prophet of his mistake, when he said, " I, even I only am left," by 
 informing him, that there were " left seven thousand in Israel, all the 
 knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath 
 not kissed him." (1 Kings xix. 18.) 
 
 For a period of nearly six years we lose sight of Elijah, during which 
 time the weak and wicked Ahab was pursuing his career of idolatry and 
 crime, aided and abetted by the execrable Jezebel. At the expiration 
 of this term, the Prophet is once more sent to the King, to denounce 
 sore and impending judgments upon him and his idolatrous wife, for 
 the murder of unoffending Naboth ; which began to operate (their 
 execution being mercifully delayed on the temporary repentance of the 
 Monarch) on his son Ahaziah ; who, having received some dangerous 
 injury, sent, after the idolatrous notions of his devoted family, to 
 consult " Baalzebub,t the god of Ekron." But " the angel of the 
 Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers 
 
 * Anderson's Discourses, p. 71. 
 
 t For some farther considerations on this subject, see note L), p. 47.
 
 38 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 of the King of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is 
 not a God in Israel, that ye go to inquire of Baalzebub the god of 
 Ekron ? Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not come 
 down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely 
 die. And Elijah departed." (2 Kings i. 2 4.) The messengers are 
 overawed, and go back to the King : upon his inquiring the cause 
 of their speedy return, they repeat to him, without any reserve or 
 alteration, the words which they had heard. How strange and 
 unaccountable ! Who could this be, who thus intruded between the 
 King and the indulgence of his will, and so abruptly compelled him 
 to turn his attention from the idol of Ekron, to the God of Israel ? 
 He, therefore, asks the messengers, " What manner of man was he 
 which came up to meet you, and told you these words ? And they 
 answered him, He was an hairy man,* and girt with a girdle of leather 
 about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite." (2 Kings 
 i. 7, 8.) Ahaziah immediately recognised the man. The message 
 could come from no one but him, whom his mother, if not his father, 
 had taught him to look upon as the unrelenting enemy of his house. 
 A crowd of associations would throng upon his mind. The terrible 
 denunciation which had been accomplished of the three years' drought ; 
 the signal triumph which had been achieved over the Prophets of 
 Baal, on Mount Carmel ; the withering, blighting curse which was 
 pronounced when his father went down to take possession of the 
 vineyard of Naboth ; all, all were the works of the Prophet, the Tish- 
 bite ; his voice, his very appearance were associated with them all ; 
 his stern, unbending figure, the rough hair-garment thrown around 
 him, the leathern girdle upon his loins, these were the ensigns which 
 had marked the Preacher of righteousness, in the days of Ahab ; and 
 these now belonged to the man who had turned aside his own mes- 
 sengers, from their mad and impious journey to Philistia.f 
 
 With desperate impiety, Ahaziah determined to chastise the inso- 
 lence of the Prophet ; and for this purpose he despatched a Captain 
 with fifty men to seize him, who, with impious mockery, addressed 
 him, " Thou man of God, the King hath said, Come down. And 
 Elijah answered and said to the Captain of fifty, If I be a man of 
 God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and 
 thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed 
 him and his fifty." (2 Kings i. 9, 10.) Probably, attributing this 
 destruction of his men to some natural cause, or resolving to main- 
 tain a reckless contest with the King of Kings, he presumptuously 
 ordered another band of soldiers upon the same errand ; but they met 
 with a similar fate. Still the King was unconvinced, and with con- 
 summate arrogance he sent a third company ; but the officer, intimi- 
 dated by the previous display of divine power, sued the Prophet for 
 his life. Elijah, being directed from above, complied with the 
 
 Tremellius interprets it, " Veste villosa cinctus," girt with a hairy garment. 
 This was the usual habit of the ancient Prophets, as appears from Zech. xiii. 4, where 
 he is speaking of the false Prophets, " Neither shall they wear a rough garment to 
 deceive." See also Sir Thomas Brown's Inquiries into Vulgar Errors on the Picture 
 of John the Baptist, hook v., cap. xv., folio. London, 1646. 
 
 t Anderson's Discourses on Klijah, &c., p. 130.
 
 OF ELIJAH. 3D 
 
 request ; and with unflinching fidelity he stood before the King, to 
 whom he declared the righteous indignation of God, and his speedy 
 death. 
 
 See here the power of God, revealing his wrath from heaven 
 " against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." (Rom. i. 18.) 
 It is evident, that Elijah was in this, as in every other recorded 
 instance of his ministry, a special instrument to accomplish the 
 divine will. It was no personal feeling of anger that had opened his 
 lips to pronounce the desolation of famine upon Israel, no indul- 
 gence of personal triumph that had led him to destroy the Prophets 
 of Baal at the brook Kishon, no gratification of personal malice that 
 had led him to denounce death to Ahab, and now, again, to Ahaziah ; 
 neither was it the working of personal indignation that now invoked 
 God's consuming fire upon his enemies. In all and each of these 
 cases, the authority was that of God, the power was that of God.* 
 Let none, therefore, wrest the Scripture to his own destruction, nor 
 look upon it as furnishing any precedent, or encouragement to perse- 
 cute in our own day, the enemies of the Lord. The righteous spirit 
 may, indeed, be " vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked," 
 and long to vindicate the glory of God, by their subjection ; but the 
 weapons of the Christian's warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and 
 " mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds." (2 Cor. 
 x. 4.) Call to mind that event which happened in the days of the 
 Saviour, with reference to this feeling. It was when he was passing 
 through Samaria, on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, (and pro- 
 bably near to that part of Samaria, in which the events which 
 we are considering occurred,) that two of his disciples, James and 
 John, angry at the refusal of certain Samaritans to receive Jesus into 
 their village, came to him, and said, " Lord, wilt thou that we com- 
 mand fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as 
 Elias did ? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not 
 what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to 
 destroy men's lives, but to save them." (Luke ix. 54 56.) Truly, 
 they were ignorant of their own spirit. " Elijah was God's minister 
 for the execution of so severe a judgment : they were but the ser- 
 vants of their own impotent anger. There was fire in their breasts, 
 which God never kindled : far was it from the Saviour of men, to 
 second their earthly fire with his heavenly. He came, indeed, to 
 send fire upon earth, but to warm, not to burn ; and if to burn, not 
 
 * Some have blamed the Prophet for destroying these men, by bringing down firo 
 from heaven upon them. But they do not consider that it was just as possible for 
 Klijah to bring down ike from heaven, as for them to do it. God alone could send the 
 fire ; and an He is just and good, He could not have destroyed these men, had there 
 not been a sufficient cause to justify the act. It was not to please Elijah, or to gratify 
 any vindictive humour in him, that God thus acted ; but to show His power and his 
 justice. No entreaty of Elijah could have induced God to have performed an act th&t 
 was wrong in itself. Elijah personally had no concern in the business : God led him 
 simply to announce, on these occasions, what he himself had determined to do. " If I 
 be a man of God," that is, " as surely as I am a man of God, fire shall come from hea- 
 fen, and shall consume thee and thy fifty." This is the literal meaning of the original ; 
 and by it we see. that Elijah's words were only declarative, and not imprecatory. (Dr. 
 A. Clarke.)
 
 40 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 the persons of men, but their corruptions. How much more safe is 
 it for us to follow the meek Prophet of the New Testament, than 
 that fervent Prophet of the Old ! Let the matter of our prayers be 
 the sweet dews of mercy, not the fire of vengeance." * The attempt 
 made by the officers of Ahaziah to seize Elijah, was a direct defiance 
 of God's authority. Their King was but God's vicegerent : his 
 injunctions, therefore, whatever they might be, could not nullify or 
 supersede the divine command. Nay, the attempt to do so was, as 
 we have seen, from the nature of a Theocracy, an act of treason 
 against Jehovah ; and the instruments of such treason were punish- 
 able, and punished by death. f Far otherwise were the circumstances 
 of the case referred to in the New Testament. The Theocracy had 
 ceased ; and with it had ceased also its temporary enactments. The 
 ministration of death had given way to the ministration of the Spirit ; 
 the terrors which had been revealed in the earthquake, and the wind, 
 and fire, were forgotten in the still small voice of Him who came not 
 to destroy men's lives, but to save them ; who speaketh not in judg- 
 ment, but in mercy ; and who, in every word and work of his, hath 
 invited the weary and the heavy laden to rest, the mourner to be 
 patient, the penitent to rejoice, and the oppressed, not to be " over- 
 come of evil, but to overcome evil with good." This was the gracious 
 power which restrained the impetuous indignation of the Apostles, 
 and taught them that Elijah's conduct was no precedent for them. 
 And if not for them, still less is it for ourselves ; still less does it 
 become us, who are armed with no special authority from above, to 
 call down vengeance upon the heads of our opposing brethren.J 
 Vengeance is not ours, but God's. " I will repay, saith the Lord." 
 
 The remarks of the Rev. Richard Watson are well worthy of per- 
 usal. " The Jews, under their Theocracy, were subject to a system 
 of temporal rewards and punishments, immediately inflicted or 
 
 * Bishop Hall's Contemplations. Book xix., cont. iv. Works. Vol. ii., p. 78. 
 Oxford, 1837. 
 
 t The guilt of Ahaziah's Captains may be best understood, by contrasting it with the 
 conduct of the followers of Saul, who refused to slay Abimelech and the Priests of Nob, 
 at his command. " And the King said unto the footmen that stood about him, Turn, 
 and slay the Priests of the Lord ; because their hand also is with David, and because 
 they knew when he fled, and did not show it to me. But the servants of the King would 
 not put forth their hand to fall upon the Priests of the Lord." (1 Sam. xxii. 17-) 
 (Anderson.) 
 
 J Anderson's Discourses. 
 
 It is painful to observe, how Bossuet, one of the brightest ornaments of the Romish 
 Church, has erred upon this point, and how he has misrepresented the feelings of 
 Protestants, with regard to it. In his Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes, 
 liv. x., p. 61, he uses these words : " L'Eglise Romaiue permet 1'exercise de la puis- 
 sance du gloire dans les matieres de la religion et de la conscience, chose aussi qui ne 
 peut etre revoquee en doute, sans enerver et comme estropier la puissance publique ; 
 de sorte qu'il n'y a point d'illuskm plus dangereuse, que de donner la souffrance pour un 
 caractere de vraie Eglise." In the former part of the same paragraph, he maintains, 
 the Protestants agree with members of the Romish Church, as to the right of punishing 
 heretics with the sword ; and in proof of it, he refers to the work of Luther, De Magist., 
 torn. Hi., to Calvin, who condemned Servetus to death, and to Melancthon, who expresses 
 in a letter to Calvin, his approbation of that act. A little further on, he says, " Je ne 
 connois parmi les Chretiens, que les Sociniens et les Anabaptiates qui s'opposent a cette 
 doctrine ; " an assertion which is as much at variance with the fact, as the authority 
 which he seeks to derive from the conduct of Luther, Calvin, and Melancthon, in the 
 instances referred to, is opposed to the spirit of true Protestantism. (Anderson.)
 
 OF ELIJAH. 41 
 
 bestowed by Jehovah, their Governor. In this case the King had sent 
 to apprehend God's Prophet and representative, and had been guilty 
 of a crime against the Divine Majesty, which was thus publicly 
 punished. It was a case in which God himself interposed to defend 
 his servant, by a single vengeance upon a wicked Prince and his 
 servants. But in the case of these erring disciples, the matter was 
 one of national prejudice, and personal resentment ; and into such 
 hands God would not put his thunderbolts. The genius of the 
 Gospel is also essentially different from that of the law. In the 
 latter, civil government was blended with religion, and God acted as 
 judge ; but under the Gospel, we stand only in spiritual relations, 
 and the time of judgment is deferred to one day, to be executed by 
 that one man, whom God hath appointed. ' Now is the accepted time, 
 now is the day of salvation ; ' and, after the example of Christ, all 
 his followers ought to be occupied only in the work of saving and 
 blessing men, leaving vengeance to Him to whom it belongs, and to 
 that future time when He who only can be an infallible judge in 
 the case, shall 'give to every man according as his works shall 
 be.'"* 
 
 The interview with Ahaziah was the last public effort which the 
 Prophet made to reform Israel ; and now his active, though suffering, 
 career draws to a close. Conscious of his speedy departure, he 
 remitted not his customary diligence, but, in company with his faith- 
 ful attendant Elisha, he spends his remaining hours in making a 
 circuit from Gilgal, near the Jordan, to Bethel, and from thence to 
 Jericho, to visit the schools of the Prophets, { in order to impart 
 instruction, and pronounce his last benediction to the students. The 
 whole brotherhood appear to have had the fact of his departure 
 revealed, and announced to Elisha, " that the Lord would take away 
 his master from his head that day." When they reached the Jordan, 
 Elijah smote the waters with his folded mantle, and they divided 
 
 Watson's Exposition, in loco. 
 
 t In the middle period of the Jewish history of civilization, from the time of Samuel, 
 to that of Jeremiah and Ezra, these assemblies occur under a double appellation : 
 1. Schools of the Prophets, in the first part of that period ; and, 2. Assemblies of the 
 wise, in the latter part. Of the existence of such schools or meetings, so early as the 
 time of Moses, hut faint traces are found, in comparing Exodus xviii. 13 26, vrith 
 Num. xi. 24 29, where the eminent men, whom Moses used to consult on important 
 affairs, receive the same designation (of Prophets) as the members of the Prophet 
 schools, in the subsequent ages. But in the time of Samuel, \ve find more distinct 
 proofs of their existence. (1 Sam. is. 9 ; x. 5 11 ; xix. 18, sey.j 1 Chron. xxv. 6, 7 ; 
 2 Kings ii. 3; ii. 16,16; iv. 38, 43; Isai. viii. 18, 19; Prov. i. 26; xxv. 1; 
 Eccles. i. 2 ; xii. 8 ; vii. 27 ; xii. 9 1 1.) These institutions were chiefly intended to 
 rouse, develope, and strengthen the powers of thought, by mutual instruction, commu- 
 nication, criticism, and controversy ; to hear public teachers, counsellors, and leaders 
 of the people, and the Monarch ; to save from oblivion the sayings and speeches of 
 ancient times, by collecting them in proper order ; and to rear from among them, 
 teachers and writers for the public. That the so called (sons) pupils of the Prophets, 
 were not boys, but grown men, is evident from 1 Kings xx. 35, et seg. ; 2 Kings ii. 16, 
 16; where mention is made of fifty strong men, the pupils of the Prophets, who had 
 assembled at Jericho ; as also from 2 Kings iv. 40. The places where these schools 
 had an existence, were Ramah, (1 Sam. xix. 18 24,) Bethel, (2 Kings ii. 3,) Jericho, 
 (2 Kings ii. 5,) Gilgal. (2 Kings iv. 36 ; vi. 1.) By comparing 1 Kings xviii. 20, with 
 2 Kings ii. 25, there seems to have been another such place somewhere in Mount 
 Cnrmel Kitto, sub voce. 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 42 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 hither and thither, and gave them a dry passage to the other bank. 
 The Prophet then asked his intended successor, what he should do 
 for him before he was taken away : the latter solicited a double por- 
 tion of his spirit. Elijah, acknowledging the magnitude of the 
 request, promised the grant on the contingency of Elisha seeing him 
 at the moment of his separation from him. As they went forward, 
 walking and talking, " there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses 
 of fire, and parted them both asunder ; and Elijah went up by a 
 whirlwind into heaven." (2 Kings ii. 11.) 
 
 NOTES. 
 NOTE A. Page 29. 
 
 ASTARTE, in Heb. n^pitEiJ? (1 Kings xi. 5,) is the name of a goddess 
 of the Sidonians, (1 Kings xi. 6, 33,) and also of the Philistines, (1 Sam. 
 xxxi. 10,) whose worship was introduced among the Israelites during the 
 period of the Judges, (Judges ii. 13 ; 1 Sam. vii. 4,) was celebrated by 
 Solomon himself, and was finally put down by Josiah. (2 Kings xxiii. 13.) 
 She is frequently mentioned in connexion with Baal, as the corresponding 
 female divinity ; (Judges ii. 13 ;) and, from the addition of the words, 
 " and all the host of heaven," in 2 Kings xxiii. 4, it is probable that she 
 represented one of the celestial bodies. There is also reason to believe that 
 she is meant by the " Queen of heaven," in Jer. vii. 18 ; xliv. 17 ; whose 
 worship is there said to have been solemnized by burning incense, pouring 
 libations, and offering cakes. Further, by comparing the two passages, 
 2 Kings xxiii. 4, and Jer. viii. 2, which last speaks of the " sun and moon, 
 and all the hosts of heaven whom they served," we may conclude, that the 
 moon was worshipped under the names of " Queen of heaven" and of Ash- 
 toreth, provided the connexion between these titles is established. This 
 constitutes nearly the sum of all the indications in the Old Testament 
 concerning Ashtoreth. The rites of her worship, if we may assume their 
 resembling those which profane authors describe as paid to the cognate 
 goddesses, in part agree with the few indications in the Old Testament, and 
 in part complete the brief notices there, into an accordant picture. The 
 " cakes" mentioned in Jer. vii. 18, which are called in Hebrew C3'31D 
 were also known to the Greeks by the name x a ^ vfs > an d were by them 
 made in the shape of a sickle, in reference to the new moon. Among 
 animals, the dove, the crab, and, in later times, the lion, were sacred to 
 her; and among fruits, the pomegranate. No blood was shed on her 
 altar ; but male animals, and chiefly kids, were sacrificed to her. (Tacit. 
 Hist., ii. 3.) Hence some suppose that the reason why Judah promised the 
 harlot a kid was, that she might sacrifice it to Ashtoreth. The most 
 prominent part of her worship, however, consisted of those libidinous 
 orgies which Augustine, who was an eye-witness of their horrors in 
 Carthage, describes with such indignation. (De Cimt. Dei, ii., 3.) Her 
 Priests were eunuchs in women's attire, (the peculiar name of whom is 
 D s U)'lp sacri, i. e., tincedi Galli, 1 Kings xiv. 24,) and women, (mttnp 
 sacrce, i. ., meretrices, Hosea iv. 14, which term ought to be distin- 
 guished from ordinary harlots, Dlill) who, like the Bayaderes of India, 
 prostituted themselves to enrich the temple of this goddess. The prohibi- 
 tion in Deut. xxiii. 18, appears to allude to the dedication of such funds to 
 such a purpose. As for the places consecrated to her worship, although
 
 OF ELIJAH. 43 
 
 the numerous passages in which the authorized version has erroneously 
 rendered mtytf \>y grove, are to be deducted, there are yet several occa- 
 sions on which gardens and shady trees are mentioned as peculiar seats 
 of (probably her) lascivious rites. (Isai. i. 29 ; Ixv. 3 ; 1 Kings xiv. 23 ; 
 Hosea iv. 13 ; Jer. ii. 20 ; Hi. 13.) She also had several temples. (1 Sam. 
 xxxi. 10.) (Kitto's Cyclopedia.) 
 
 NOTE B. Page 29. 
 
 THE frequent recurrence of the word " Baal," or its plural, " Baalim," 
 in Scripture, especially in that part of it more immediately connected 
 with this subject, has led me to give the following summary respecting it 
 from Selden and others : 
 
 The title of the Phoenician god " Baal," and of the Chaldsean " Bel," is 
 derived from the Hebrew word by 3. which signifies " Lord ;" the former 
 retaining, the latter omitting, the letter y. According to the author of the 
 Alexandrine Chronicle, and Cedremus, it was the interpretation of the 
 name of " Mars," given by the Assyrians to the deified successor of King 
 Ninus, the founder of the Assyrian monarchy. 
 
 Dean Prideaux says, that Bel is supposed by some to have been the 
 same with Nimrod, and to have been called Bel from his dominion, 
 and Nimrod from his rebellion ; for this is the signification of the word 
 " Nimrod," in the Jewish and Chaldean languages. The former, he states, 
 was his Babylonish name, by reason of his empire in that place ; and the 
 latter his Scripture name, by reason of his rebellion, in revolting from God 
 to follow his own wicked designs. 
 
 The title of " Baal," or " Lord," thus bestowed upon the objects of idol- 
 atry, was, in fact, an assumption of dignity belonging only to the true 
 God ; and a proof of this is found in Hosea ii. 16 : " And it shall be at that 
 day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi ;" (that is, "my hus- 
 band;") "and shalt call me no more Baali," (that is, "my Lord.") 
 " For I will take away the name of Baalim out of her mouth, and they 
 shall no more be remembered by their name." 
 
 It were useless to detail the various forms under which the service 
 of Baal was conducted, or the objects which are supposed to have repre- 
 sented him ; but it may be observed, that the Phoenicians worshipped the 
 sun, under his name, believing it to be the supreme divinity of heaven ; 
 and the moon, under the name of Astarte, or Ashtoreth. In Zidon, a sea- 
 town of Phoenicia, he was also worshipped under the title of the " Marine 
 Jupiter." (See Hesychius, in loc.) 
 
 We may trace, further, the veneration in which Baal or Belus was held 
 in Phoenicia, by the reference which is made to his name, in the first book 
 of the jEneid, 1. 728730. 
 
 " Hie regina gravem gemnus aoroque poposcit, 
 Implevitque mere, pateram ; quain Belus, et omnea 
 A Belo solid." 
 
 The termination of many of the Punic names, (for example, Hannibal, 
 Hasdrubal, Adherbal,) is another evidence of the acknowledgment of the 
 Phoenician idol by the Carthaginians ; and is an instance of their con- 
 formity with the general custom of the nations from whom they sprang, in 
 adding, by way of honour to their own names, the titles of their gods. 
 
 There is abundant and conclusive testimony to prove that the Asiatic 
 Baal was the same with the European Jupiter or Ztvs ; and, as the name 
 of Jupiter received a different meaning, according to the designations 
 appended to it, of Serapis, Olympius, &c., so the generic term of Baal was 
 
 G 2
 
 44 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 applied to denote different specific objects, according to the word added to 
 it ; for example, Baal-Peor, the god of the Moabites, Baal-Zephon, Baal- 
 Berith, the idol of the Shechemites, &c. 
 
 The worship of the god Belinus, or Belenus, among the ancient Gauls 
 and Britons, is supposed to have been derived from that of Baal ; and not 
 only have monuments been discovered in various parts of our island, with 
 inscriptions which bear testimony to this effect, but traces of his name and 
 worship are to be found existing in various parts of the United Kingdom. 
 The observance of the custom of " Bel-tein," in Scotland, for example, is 
 thus described : On the first day of May, which is called " Bel-tan," or 
 " Bel-tein," or " Baal's fire," all the boys in a township or hamlet, meet in 
 the moors. They cut a table in the green sod, of a round figure, by casting 
 a trench in the ground, of such circumference as to hold the whole com- 
 pany. They kindle a fire, and dress a repast of eggs and milk of the 
 consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted 
 at the embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide 
 the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to one another in size 
 and shape, as there are persons in the company. They daub one of these 
 portions all over with charcoal, until it be perfectly black. They put all 
 the cakes into a bonnet. Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He 
 who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit. Whoever draws the black 
 piece, is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour 
 they mean to implore in rendering the year productive of the sustenance 
 of man and beast. There is little doubt of these inhuman sacrifices having 
 been once offered in this country, as well as in the East, although they 
 now pass from the act of sacrificing, and only compel the devoted person to 
 leap three times through the flames, with which the ceremonies of this 
 festival are closed. 
 
 Similar customs are observed in parts of Ireland, Wales, and Lancashire. 
 It is said, in accordance with many other testimonies, that " the recogni- 
 tion of the pagan divinity, Baal, may still be discovered in Scotland, 
 through innumerable etymological sources." 
 
 In historical records, down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 multiplied prohibitions are found against " Baal-fires," which the people 
 were so much disposed to kindle. 
 
 Mr. Daly ell asserts, that the festival of this divinity was commemorated 
 in his country " until the latest date ;" and he adds, " Should it have been 
 ever truly interrupted, the citizens of the metropolis seem willing to 
 promote its revival in recollection, by ascending a neighbouring hill 
 (Arthur's Seat) in troops, on the 1st of May, to witness the glorious 
 spectacle of sunrise from the sea." Anderson's Discourses. 
 
 NOTE C. Page 31. 
 
 WrfH regard to the above incident in Elijah's history, we have adopted 
 that interpretation of it which is given by our translators of the Bible, 
 and believe that the Tishbite was actually supported, at the brook Che- 
 rith, by the means and in the manner described ; namely, that, by the 
 Lord's command, " the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, 
 and bread and flesh in the evening ; and he drank of the brook." (1 Kings 
 xvii. 6.) 
 
 But as a different view of the subject has been taken by some com- 
 mentators of high authority, it may be as well to consider the opinions 
 which they have advanced, and their reasons for so doing. 
 
 It has been urged that the meaning of the word Q s ^ni> (orebini), which
 
 OF ELIJAH. 45 
 
 is here translated " ravens," is not confined to that signification ; but may- 
 denote either merchants, or Arabians, or the inhabitants of a place called 
 Arabo, or Orbo. 
 
 In support of the first of these interpretations, reference has been made 
 to Ezekiel xxvii. 27, where these words occur, rjanyQ S 5"]i> i.e.,qut 
 negotiantur negotia tua, or, as in our version, " the occupiers of thy mer- 
 chandise ; " but to this Bochart replies, in his Hierozoicon, lib. ii., cap. 
 xiii., p. 214, that, although the above is a correct translation of the passage 
 in question, yet the word D s ani> taken by itself, is nowhere found to sig- 
 nify merchants. 
 
 And certain it is that in all the other authorized passages of the autho- 
 rized version of the Old Testament, wherever the word "raven," or 
 "ravens," occurs, it will be found expressed in the original by 2Ti> or 
 D s a*ii> and by none other. (Gen. viii. 7 ; Lev. xi. 15; Deut. xiv. 14; 
 Job xxxviii. 41 ; Psalm cxlvii. 9 ; Prov. xxx. 17 ; Canticles v. 11 ; Isai. 
 xxxiv. 11.) 
 
 Why then should a different meaning be attached to it in the present 
 instance, more especially as our version of the word has precisely the same 
 signification given to it by Josephus, by the Chaldee Paraphrase, the 
 Syriac, Septuagint, and Vulgate translations ? The Arabic version is the 
 only one which renders it differently. 
 
 With regard to the second interpretation mentioned, namely, that it 
 denotes Arabians, it will be sufficient to observe, with Bochart, that this 
 opinion assumes as a matter of fact, that the Arabians dwelt in, or occasion- 
 ally travelled through, that region ; which is contrary to all received opinion 
 upon the subject. Beside which, Arabians are called in Hebrew, not D S 3 "]i> 
 Orebim, but O^ny Arbim. 
 
 The third interpretation, namely, that it denotes the inhabitants of a 
 place called Arabo, or Orbo, is derived from the Bereschith Rabba, sect. 
 xxxiii., fol. 207, where it is described as being in the borders of Bethshan ; 
 but to this Bochart again replies, by saying, that no city of that name ia 
 known near Jordan : and Reland observes further, that if there had been a 
 region or city of that name, its inhabitants would have been called, accord- 
 ing to the analogy of the Hebrew language, not Orebim, but Orbonites, 
 just as Shilonite is applied to an inhabitant of Shiloh, (1 Kings xi. 29,) 
 and Gilonite to a native of Giloh. (2 Sam. xv. 12.) (Relandi Pakestina 
 Illustrata, torn, ii., p. 913.) 
 
 The word orebim, moreover, has been supposed by Herman van der 
 Hardt, to mean the inhabitants of Oreb, mentioned in Judges vii. 25 ; 
 Psalm Ixxxiii. 11 ; and Isai. x. 26 ; an opinion which Reland has fully 
 discussed in his admirable work already referred to, and most completely 
 refuted, by showing, first, that Oreb, where Gideon overthrew the two 
 Princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeb, was not a city, but merely a 
 rock ; and, secondly, that it was on the opposite side of the Jordan to that 
 traversed by the brook Cherith. (Judges viii. 4.) (Reland, ut supra, pp. 
 914, 916.) 
 
 Independently, however, of the above considerations, there is another 
 very great difficulty in the way of adopting the opinion that Elijah owed 
 his support to the supplies furnished him by merchants or any other peo- 
 ple ; and that is, the opportunity which it would have afforded to Ahab of 
 discovering the place of his abode. We learn from the sacred narrative, 
 that there was no nation or kingdom whither he had not sent to seek the 
 Prophet : " cind when they said, he was not there ; he took an oath of the 
 kingdom and nation, that they found him not." (1 Kings xviii. 10.) If
 
 46 BOOK I. CHAPTER III. 
 
 then, under these circumstances, there had been persons dwelling so near to 
 Samaria, who visited Elijah, not occasionally, but daily, who " brought 
 him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening," 
 it seems impossible that they could have escaped the knowledge, or 
 eluded the search, of the King of Israel. Added to which, if he received 
 food from the hands of men, might he not, as Reland observes, have 
 received water from the same hands, and so have remained undisturbed in 
 his retreat? Yet we are told, that as soon as the brook Cherith dried up, 
 he was commanded to leave that place and repair to Zarephath. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, see any good reason why a departure should be 
 made from the words of our authorized version, or any other interpretation 
 sought after than that which is plainly set forth there. We are not called 
 upon, be it remembered, to explain the mode in which the miracle in ques- 
 tion was accomplished ; for this would be to make God's work dependent 
 on man's weakness. The vain attempts, in fact, which have been made to 
 explain it, have contributed, in no small degree, to strengthen the convic- 
 tions of those who disbelieve the miracle ; and, because some have 
 advanced fanciful and absurd hypotheses respecting it, others have argued, 
 from the very absurdity of these, against the correctness of the translation 
 itself, and the matter of fact which it relates. (See Hales's " Analysis of 
 Sacred Chronology," vol. ii., p. 386.) Let but the simple record of the 
 truth be received with singleness of mind, and we shall avoid both these 
 errors : we shall feel the value of that sound principle of scriptural inter- 
 pretation, which is so justly enforced by an excellent French writer, in his 
 commentary on this very subject : " Lorsqu'un texte de 1'Ecriture est 
 clair, et qu'il ne renferme rien d'absurde, ni d'indigne de Dieu, il ne faut 
 pas s'eloigner du sens qui se presente d'abord, pour en chercher un autre 
 par des conjectures plus subtiles que solides, et cela dans la vue de ne pas 
 admettre un miracle que 1'on croit etre produit sans necessite." (M. Saurin.) 
 
 There is only one more objection worthy of notice, which pretends to 
 urge, that, as ravens were among those animals which the law of Moses 
 had pronounced to be unclean, so they were unfit to be the instruments of 
 Elijah's sustenance. But surely we cannot for a moment admit this objec- 
 tion to be valid, when we remember that He who ordained the law could 
 at any time dispense with or suspend its sanctions, (as we know was done 
 in the case of David, to which our Lord refers in Luke vi. 4, and, there- 
 fore, " what God hath cleansed," let no man call " common or unclean." 
 
 We have dwelt longer upon this subject than many will think necessary, 
 from a conviction that there exists, in the present day, a great desire to 
 bring down the mysterious records of Scripture to a level below their pro- 
 per grandeur, and to follow the example of those writers of the German 
 school of divinity, who explain away many of the supernatural works of 
 God and Christ, by a reference to the ordinary modes of operation in daily 
 life. It is a principle of interpretation always likely to gain admirers, 
 because it is flattering to our pride. For this reason we should guard 
 against it with the greater vigilance, and strive to conquer "the sturdy 
 doubts and boisterous objections " wherewith the unhappiness of our 
 knowledge too nearly acquainteth us ; not in a martial posture, but on our 
 knees. "For our endeavours," saith the author of the Religio Medici, 
 "are not only to combat with doubts; but always to dispute with the 
 devil, and the villany of that spirit takes a hint of infidelity from our 
 studies, and by demonstrating a naturality in one way, makes us mistrust 
 a miracle in another. Thus having perused the archidoxes, and read the 
 secret sympathies of things, he would dissuade my belief from the miracle
 
 or ELIJAH. 4" 
 
 of the brasen serpent, make me conceit that image worked by sympathy, 
 and was but an Egyptian trick to cure their diseases without a miracle. 
 Again, having seen some experiments of bitumen, and having read far 
 more of naphtha, he whispered to my curiosity the fire of the altar might 
 be natural, and bade me mistrust a miracle in Elias, when he entrenched 
 the altar round with water ; for that inflammable substance yields not 
 easily unto water, but flames in the arms of its antagonist. And thus 
 would he inveigle my belief to think, that the combustion of Sodom might 
 be natural, and that there was an asphaltic and bituminous nature in that 
 lake, before the fire of Gomorrha. I know that manna is now plentifully 
 gathered in Calabria ; and Josephus tells me in his days it was as plenti- 
 ful in Arabia : the devil therefore made me the quaere, Where was then 
 the miracle in the days of Moses? The Israelites saw but that in his 
 time, the natives of those countries behold them in ours. Thus the devil 
 played at chess with me, and, yielding a pawn, thought to gain a Queen 
 of me ; taking advantage of my honest endeavours, and whilst I laboured 
 to raise the structure of my reason, he strived to undermine the edifice of 
 my faith." (Sir Thomas Brown's Religio Medici, p. 11, fol. ed.) 
 
 NOTE D. Page 37- 
 
 THE literal meaning of the word " Baalzebub " is, " The Lord of a 
 fly ; " and hence the Septuagint renders the passage, as if the fly were 
 worshipped as a god by the inhabitants of Ekron, which interpretation is 
 also adopted by Flavius Josephus and Gregory Nazianzen. Some have 
 thought that as flies were supposed to infest idolatrous temples, being 
 attracted thither by the flesh of the victims slain there, but were not 
 to be seen in the temple of the true God at Jerusalem, therefore the word 
 " Baalzebub " was applied by the Jews as a term of derision to the idol 
 of Ekron. But Selden is of opinion that the title was invented by the 
 Ekronites themselves, and that it is unreasonable to suppose that Ahaziah 
 would apply a contemptuous title to the god from whom he was about to 
 seek the means of recovery from sickness. In corroboration of this opi- 
 nion, Selden shows that Jupiter and Hercules were worshipped among the 
 Europeans under titles of similar import to that of " Baalzebub." Thus 
 the Arcadians offered up yearly sacrifices to propitiate TOV Mviaypov ', and 
 the Eleans, in the same manner, honoured Jupiter, 'ATro/mor. Hercules 
 was worshipped by the Trachinians under the title of Kopvoniav ; because 
 he was supposed to drive away the Kopvoirfs, a species of fly or locust ; and 
 by the Erythrseans he was called IJTOKTOVOS, from killing the insects that 
 were injurious to the vines; and in like manner Apollo was entitled, 
 MVOKTOI/O?. None of these titles were considered as terms of ridicule or 
 reproach ; neither can that of " Baalzebub " be so regarded. The name 
 and worship of this divinity seem, in after-ages, to have extended to 
 Africa ; for Pliny writes, in Hist, x., cap. xxviii., that the Cyrenians 
 invoke the god Achor, whenever a multitude of flies brings a pestilence 
 upon them ; and that they perish as soon as sacrifices are performed to that 
 divinity. The name of " Baalzebub " is applied in the New Testament 
 to " the prince of devils ; " but the word is there found with some differ- 
 ence in its termination, BeeAfefovA, " Beelzebul," which reading is followed 
 by Chrysostom, and most of the ancient fathers ; and Prudentius, in the 
 hymn Jltpi STffpavuv, to Vincentius the martyr thus writes, 
 
 ' Sed Beelzebalis callida 
 Commeiita Ckristus destruit."
 
 48 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 This change in the termination of the word was most probably made for 
 the sake of casting a reproach upon the idol, as " Beelze&wZ " has a mean- 
 ing even more contemptuous than " Baalzeiwi." Several instances are to 
 be met with of similar changes ; for example, the name of " Barchochebas," 
 (that is, " son of a star,") the false Messiah, in the reign of Adrian, was 
 changed to that of " Barchozibas," (that is, " son of a lie.") Thus, likewise, 
 in the Old Testament, we find that the Mount of Olives, after it had been 
 polluted by the high places which Solomon built for the Moabitish and 
 Zidonian idols, was called "the Mount of Corruption." No reason has 
 been discovered why the name of " Baalzebub " should have been applied to 
 denote " the prince of devils ; " and Selden himself confesses that he can offer 
 no hypothesis in explanation of it : " Ob quam rem ad principem daemo- 
 niorum denotandum usurpatur Beelzebub, fateor cum Origine, me omnino 
 latere." (Anderson.) Dr. A. Clarke humorously observes, that " Baalze- 
 bub became a very respectable devil, and was supposed to have great power 
 and influence." Comment, in loco. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SECT. I. State of Israel Jehoiada Reign of Joash Its disastrous Circumstances 
 Athaliah, her prof ane and profligate Conduct Preservation of Joash His Pro- 
 clamation Death of Athaliah And of Jehoiada General Apostasy Zechariah 
 His Fidelity and Death Awful Retribution Death of Joash Supposed allu- 
 sion of our Saviour to this Event The Conjecture confirmed Discrepancy in the 
 Name of the Priest. SECT. II. Isaiah His Birth and Parentage His Sons 
 Burden of his Prophecy His Wife His Costume Which was symbolical 
 Period of his Commission Character of his Ministry Uzziah His Character and 
 warlike Movements General Profligacy of the People Presumption and Punish- 
 ment of the King Jotham Ahaz His fearful Idolatry And political Troubles 
 The Faithfulness of Isaiah Early Career of Hezekiah Worship of God restored 
 Manasseh, his idolatrous Conduct Isaiah put to Death Remarks on the Punish- 
 ment of the Saw. SECT. III. Amon Short Reign Josiah Idols destroyed 
 His Death Jehoahaz His Idolatry /* exiled by the King of Egypt Jehoiakim 
 /* a gross Idolater Experiences severe Judgments Jeremiah Who is placed in 
 the Stocks And threatened with Death Jehoiakim is besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, 
 and carried captive, with many others, to Babylon Jehoiakim is restored Perse- 
 cution of Jeremiah Blasphemy of the King Urijah His Fidelity His Life is 
 threatened He flees into Egypt /* seized and brought back to Jerusalem And 
 is slain Jehoiakim throws off the Assyrian Yoke His miserable Death. 
 
 SECTION I. THE MARTYRDOM OF ZACHARIAH, SON OP 
 
 JEHOIADA. 
 
 THE condition of Israel previous to and during the time that 
 Jehoiada the Priest flourished, was truly deplorable. The revolt of 
 the ten tribes had taken place, which left to Rehoboam, the son 
 of Solomon, only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin ; and thus gave 
 rise to the kingdom of Judah, otherwise called the Jews, as distin- 
 guished from that of Ephraim. As if to mark the displeasure of 
 God at the schismatical proceedings of the ten tribes, and to render 
 more conspicuous his favour toward the dynasty of David, the former
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ZECHARIAH. 49 
 
 speedily declined ; and, under a succession of unprincipled, idolatrous, 
 and impious governors, became weak through internal anarchy and 
 broils, and were actually despised by those with whom they were sur- 
 rounded ; whereas the latter, being blessed with numerous Princes 
 of piety and ability, enjoyed internally a large measure of tranquil- 
 lity, and rose to universal eminence and respect. One circumstance 
 equally affected both kingdoms ; namely, that God now withdrew the 
 manifestation of his Spirit from the supreme Ruler in Israel ; which 
 gift, either in the way of prophecy, or some other form, had hitherto 
 been a remarkable token of his presence among them. Whether its 
 withdrawal was on account of the schism, is not declared ; but the 
 fact itself is undeniable. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the 
 heads of Israel during the patriarchal period, were endowed with it ; 
 after the Exodus it was enjoyed, not only by Moses, but by all the 
 Princes who formed the great council of the nation. Of the judges 
 it is mentioned as given in the instance of every one whose deeds are 
 recorded, Joshua, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and Samuel ; 
 and, finally, to the three Kings, Saul, David, and Solomon, who ruled 
 over the nation in its integrity ; but no sooner is it dissevered, 
 through intestine jealousy and strife, than the Holy Spirit is withheld 
 in general from the Princes, and confined to the Prophets, who both 
 previously and afterwards were from time to time raised up in Israel.* 
 Such were the circumstances in which the chosen seed were placed 
 when Jehoiada the Priest, and the father of Zachariah, began his 
 protracted and eventful life ; commencing with the close of the reign 
 of Solomon, and terminating in that of Joash. He had probably 
 witnessed the decline of Solomon's glory, and bitterly lamented its 
 cause. He saw the temples which were dedicated to false and abonK- 
 nable deities, some of which were erected in the very front of the 
 house of Jehovah in which he had his residence ; so that from his 
 cradle this great and good man, and future restorer of the worship 
 of the true God, endured the sight of idolatry, and his country bleed- 
 ing beneath its baneful consequences. He witnessed the unhappy and 
 disastrous rupture between Israel and Judah, and the dreadful doom 
 of Jerusalem in its capture by Shishak, King of Egypt, and the 
 plunder of the temple. Scarcely had this juvenile Priest arrived at 
 manhood, and been called to take an active part in the temple service, 
 than he witnessed another spoliation of its treasures, with which Asa 
 bribed the Syrian King. The reign of Jehoshaphat, which lasted 
 through twenty years of the best part of his life, brightened his 
 hopes, and administered to his comfort. He rejoiced in the sight 
 of the worship of the living God being restored, Jerusalem purged 
 of her abominations, and all Judah standing before the Lord with 
 their little ones, their wives, and their children. This day, so bright 
 and cheering, was not without a cloud : Jehoshaphat inconsiderately 
 allowed his son and successor to marry Athaliah, a daughter of the 
 idolatrous house of Ahab. Idolatry, in its most debasing forms, was 
 ere long established ; and, although many followed his example, the 
 more respectable part of the community disapproved of his conduct, 
 
 * Brooks's History of the Hebrew Nation, p. 250. Seeley. London. 
 VOL. I. H
 
 50 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 and adhered to the true faith : nevertheless the worship of Baal was 
 the religion of the palace and its dependents. 
 
 The cloud which had obscured the brilliancy of Jehoiada's prospect 
 f happiness, soon covered the land. The rod was near. The 
 Heathen around were wise enough to know that the power and 
 strength of the danger were suspended on Israel's obedience to Jeho- 
 vah. The Edomites revolted, and came against Jehoram. Then Libnah 
 raised the standard of rebellion ; and, subsequently, the Philistines, 
 united with the tribes of Arabia, invaded the land, captured Jerusa- 
 lem, and carried off the treasures, wives, and part of the family of 
 the King. 
 
 On the death of Jehoram, Ahaziah ascended the throne, and within 
 a few months was slain by the desolating and God-avenging hand 
 of Jehu. At the decease of Ahaziah, his mother, Athaliah, who was 
 equally as profane and profligate as Jezebel, and even more ambitious, 
 conceived the horrid project of murdering all the branches of the 
 royal family, and of seizing the reins of government. This bloody 
 scheme succeeded, with the exception of Joash, an infant child of her 
 own son Ahaziah, who was concealed by his aunt, a woman of a 
 better spirit, the daughter of Jehoram, whom Jehoiada the High Priest 
 had married. 
 
 It is at this last point that Jehoiada first appears on the page of 
 Jewish history ; who, being related by marriage to the royal family, 
 was in a situation which enabled him to take an active part in the 
 affairs of his country. The Queen, having ascended the throne, imme- 
 diately established the worship of Baal throughout her dominions ; 
 she closed the temple of Jehovah, having previously stripped it of its 
 splendid ornaments and utensils, which she bestowed upon Baal ; and 
 for a period of six years wallowed in all the excesses of libertinism 
 and idolatry. Thus was the Most High abandoned and despised ; 
 and as in after-years the servant did not fare better than his master, 
 so did it prove in the case before us. " Many, doubtless, were the 
 mockings and revilings which he underwent, and hopeless must have 
 appeared the task of reclaiming his countrymen. Yet another agent 
 was working with him, which is a much more effectual Preacher than 
 the voice of persuasion. The sword and chains of the intolerable 
 tyranny of the idolatrous Athaliah were the Preachers which effectually 
 prepared their hearts in the end to listen to him. It was soon made 
 to appear that if the spirit of Jezebel had set itself on the throne 
 in Athah'ah, the spirit of Eh'jah was not wanting at its post of resist- 
 ance in the sanctuary in Jehoiada. The royal babe was brought up 
 secretly in the most retired part of the enclosure of the temple, which 
 was a hiding-place the more secure, from the utter neglect into which 
 the prevalence of idolatry had thrown it. The Queen and her party 
 never entered it for worship ; and none but well-wishers to the house 
 of David were likely to be met with there." * 
 
 After the expiration of seven years the High Priest, beholding the 
 desolated condition of the country, and the distress and dissatisfaction 
 of the people, who sighed for the rule of the sons of David while suf- 
 
 Evans's Scripture Biography.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ZECHARIAH. 51 
 
 fering under the whip of scorpions wielded by the abandoned Queen, 
 having concerted measures with certain chief men and officers for 
 placing upon the throne the child Joash, summoned his friends upon an 
 appointed day to the temple, an act which his sacerdotal office ena- 
 bled him to perform without suspicion. To this company he introduced 
 the long-lost descendant of the house of David, who was forthwith 
 acknowledged as King, and measures were taken to accomplish his 
 restoration. He was subsequently crowned and anointed. On hear- 
 ing the acclamations, the Queen hastened to the temple ; but at the 
 command of Jehoiada she was dragged from thence, and led to exe- 
 cution. 
 
 Jehoiada lived a few years after this event, and, on account of his 
 memorable services, he was buried with great honour in the tomb 
 of their Kings. But no sooner was he consigned to the mansion of 
 the dead, than a fearful apostasy again overspread the land ; the chief 
 nobles of Judah left the house of God, and served groves and idols, 
 and Joash hearkened unto them. The Almighty, in the plenitude 
 of his long-suffering, withheld the punishment they justly merited, 
 and sent his Prophets to warn them of the danger to which they 
 were exposing themselves, and to bring them back to himself; but 
 they turned a deaf ear to his reproof. At length the Spirit of God 
 came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada. He went to the temple, 
 which was again polluted by the idolatrous practices of the people, 
 and, standing on the steps of the court of the Priests, BO as to be 
 above the people in the outer court, he opened to them his commis- 
 sion, and cried, " Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the com- 
 mandment of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper ? because ye have 
 forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you." (2 Chron. xxiv. 20.) 
 Confounded at this just and bitter rebuke, the King and his nobles 
 were enraged beyond measure ; and the multitude, gladly obeying the 
 orders of their unthankful King, rushed upon him, and pursuing him 
 as he retreated to the altar of burnt-offerings, there, at that holy 
 seat of mercy and atonement, and between it and the temple, they 
 stoned and slew him. The Prophet with his dying breath continued 
 the words of his commission : " The Lord look upon it, and require it." 
 " Thus Joash the King remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his 
 father had done to him, but slew his son." The dying words of the 
 martyred Priest were, ere long, fulfilled. Before the year expired in 
 which that diabolical deed was perpetrated, a small band of Syrians 
 surprised Jerusalem, and overran the country, making havoc more 
 especially of the Princes and chief men, ransacking their palaces, and 
 sending away the spoil to Damascus. The subjects of Joash had no 
 power to resist, for God was not with them ; and his own servants, 
 during the panic which prevailed, conspired against his life, and mur- 
 dered him in his bed. The inspired writer declares that this came 
 upon him " for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the Priest." 
 (2 Chron. xxiv. 25.) 
 
 It is generally supposed, and not without great appearance of pro- 
 bability, that our Lord refers to the martyrdom of this holy man. 
 (Matt, xxiii. 35,) whom hi- calls " Zacharias, son of Barm-bias."
 
 52 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the 
 earth," meaning, doubtless, the land of Judea, which interpretation 
 the word frequently sustains ; and implying, the national punishment 
 of all the innocent blood which had been shed in the land shall 
 speedily come upon you, " from the blood of Abel the just," the first 
 Prophet and Preacher of righteousness, (Heb. xi. 4 ; 2 Peter ii. 5,) 
 "unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew 
 between the temple and the altar." 
 
 Some have objected to the truth of this supposition, and assert 
 that it was some other individual of the same name to whom allusion 
 was made. Let it, however, be observed, that this Zechariah is the 
 only one of that name of whom mention is made in Scripture, as 
 having fallen a victim to his fidelity in declaring the truth. He, 
 when " he died, said, The Lord look upon it, and require it ; " so 
 that both cases mentioned, that of Abel, and that of Zecharias, are 
 those of men persecuted to death for righteousness' sake, and whose 
 deaths were expressly connected with the awful circumstance, a cry to 
 heaven for righteous retribution. The conjectures of commentators, as 
 to the other persons of this name, are without foundation, that espe- 
 cially which would refer it prophetically to a Jew called Zecharias, 
 who was slain by the Jewish zealots in the temple a little before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem ; an irrelevant fact which has been singled 
 out under the false assumption that our Lord's words in Matt, xxiii. 
 35, mean, that the Jews of that generation were to be held guilty 
 of the blood of all the righteous men, from Abel downwards, to the 
 last righteous blood shed by the Jews before their city was destroyed. 
 This is not only a monstrous supposition, but plainly contrary to that 
 principle of the divine government which is so expressly laid down in 
 the words, " Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, 
 to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Besides, 
 that the Jews should be held particularly responsible for the blood 
 of Abel, when they stood in no nearer relation to him than the per- 
 secutors of good men of any other nation, cannot be conceived ; and 
 that they should be chargeable with even the murder of those Pro- 
 phets whom their fathers put to death, when our Lord himself 
 declares, that they disavowed the deeds of their ancestors in this 
 respect, although they would act as to him and his disciples in a 
 similar manner, is as little reconcilable with the known equity of the 
 divine proceedings. The interpretations formed upon this view of the 
 meaning of our Lord's words, create, therefore, a difficulty which 
 does not exist. Their meaning is, that the vengeance of all the righ- 
 teous blood shed upon earth, from Abel to Zecharias, should come 
 upon that generation ; that is, a punishment equal to the accumu- 
 lated woes brought upon men for the crime of rejecting the truth, 
 and persecuting its righteous Preachers in all these ages, should be 
 heaped upon the devoted heads of the Jews. And this was an act 
 of manifest justice, since they put one, infinitely greater than all the 
 Prophets, to death, even the Messiah himself ; and in opposition to 
 stronger evidences of a divine mission than any former Prophets had 
 given, wreaked their persecuting hate both upon him and his disci-
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ZECHARIAH. f>3 
 
 pies. The punishments brought upon the Jews bear a remarkable 
 correspondence to those inflicted both upon the murderer of Abel, 
 and upon those of Zecharias. The Jews have borne, ever since the 
 subversion of their nation by the Romans, the curse of Cain ; a 
 " mark " has been set upon them ; and " fugitives " and " vaga- 
 bonds " have they been in the earth. And as in consequence of the 
 murder of Zechariah, at the command of Joash, " the host of Syria 
 came to Judah and Jerusalem, and destroyed all the Princes of the 
 people from among the people," so it was, only in a severer degree, 
 in the Roman invasion. And with respect to other Prophets, because 
 " they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and 
 misused his Prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his 
 people, till there was no remedy, therefore he brought upon them 
 the King of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword 
 in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young 
 man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age : he gave them 
 all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great 
 and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the trea- 
 sures of the King, and of his Princes ; all these he brought to Baby- 
 lon. And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall 
 of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and 
 destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped 
 of the sword carried he away to Babylon ; where they were ser- 
 vants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia." 
 (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16 20.) This, too, was realized with aggravated 
 severity, and this terrible type of vengeance was accomplished in an 
 accumulation of similar woes, when the prophetic words of our Lord, 
 as related by Matthew, were fully accomplished. These especially 
 were the calamities which Christ had in view when he adds, " Verily 
 I say unto you, that all these things shall come upon this genera- 
 tion." But these terrible denunciations proceeded from no resent- 
 ment, no indignant feelings at the wrongs he himself had endured : 
 they were wrung from this lover of his country, this lover of the 
 souls of his own people, by the stern necessity of reluctant justice ; 
 and they were uttered amidst the heavings of compassion and sor- 
 row.* 
 
 The discrepancy in the name of the Priest under consideration has 
 also tended to confirm the doubts of many with regard to the per- 
 son alluded to by our Lord. By the Old-Testament writers he is de- 
 scribed as Zechariah, sou of Je,hoiada ; our Saviour spake of the 
 martyr as the son of Barachias. Hesitation and doubt will be 
 removed, when we consider, 1. That double names were frequent 
 among the Jews ; and sometimes the individual was called by one, 
 and sometimes by the other. Compare 1 Sam. ix. 1, with 1 Chron. 
 viii, 33, where it appears that the father of Kish had two names, 
 Abiel and Ner. Matthew is called Levi. (Matt. ix. 9 ; Mark ii. 14.) 
 Peter was called Simon, and Lebbeus was also called Thaddeus. 
 (Matt. x. 2, 3.) 2. Jerome assures us, that in the Gospel of the 
 Nazarenes it is written Jehoiada instead of Barachiah. And, 3. 
 
 Watson's Exposition I'M loco.
 
 54 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Jehoiada and Barachiah possess the same meaning, literally signifying 
 "the praise or blessing of Jehovah." Zechariah is the last Prophet 
 whose mal-treatment and consequent death is recorded in the canoni- 
 cal books of the Jewish Scriptures. 
 
 SECTION II. THE MARTYRDOM OF ISAIAH. 
 
 COMPARATIVELY little is known of the early life and history 
 of the Prophet Isaiah. His father's name was Amoz, and hence seve- 
 ral of the authorities of the primitive church confound him with the 
 Prophet Amos, because they were unacquainted with Hebrew, and in 
 Greek the names are spelt alike. The opinion of the Rabbins, that 
 Isaiah was a brother of King Amaziah, rests also on a mere etymolo- 
 gical combination. Isaiah resided at Jerusalem, not far from the 
 temple. We learn, also, from the seventh and eighth chapters of the 
 book that bears his name, that he was married. Two of his sons 
 are mentioned, Shear-jashul, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz. These sig- 
 nificant names which he gave to his sons prove how much Isaiah li ved 
 in his vocation. He did not consider his children to belong merely to 
 himself, but rendered them living admonitions to the people. In 
 their names were contained the two chief points of his prophetic 
 utterances : one called to mind the severe and inevitable judgment 
 wherewith the Lord was about to visit the world, and especially his 
 people : the other, which signifies " the remnant shall return," 
 pointed out the mercy with which the Lord would receive the elect ; 
 and with which, in the midst of apparent destruction, he would take 
 care to preserve his people and his kingdom. Isaiah calls his wife, 
 ilfcO^D "Prophetess." This indicates that his marriage life was 
 not in opposition to his calling ; and also, that it not only went 
 along and harmonized with it, but was intimately interwoven with it. 
 This name cannot mean the wife of a Prophet, but indicates that 
 the Prophetess of Isaiah had a prophetic gift, like Miriam, Deborah, 
 and Huldah. The appellation given denotes the genuineness of their 
 conjugal relation. Even the dress of the Prophet was subservient to 
 his office. He wore a garment of hair, or sackcloth. (Isai. xx. 2.) 
 This seems, also, to have been the costume of Elijah, (2 Kings i. 8,) 
 and it was the dress of John the Baptist. (Matt. iii. 4.) Hairy sack- 
 cloth is in the Bible the symbol of repentance. (1 Kings xxi. 27 ; 
 Jonah iii. 8.) This costume of the Prophets was a sermo propheticus 
 realis, " a prophetic preaching by fact." The Prophet came forward 
 in the form of personified repentance. What he did, exhibited to the 
 people what they should do. Before he opened his lips, his external 
 appearance proclaimed MeravoeiTs, " Repent."* 
 
 Isaiah flourished at a period which, of all others, was most suited 
 to the purposes of the delivery of prophecy. The kingdoms of Israel 
 and of Judah had recovered much of their ancient greatness ; the 
 former under the second Jeroboam, the latter under Uzziah. The 
 people generally were greatly corrupt, and their national welfare 
 depended, in a considerable degree, on the individual who occupied 
 
 * Kitto's Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, vol. ii., pp. 35, 36.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ISAIAH. 55 
 
 the throne. If a feeble or wicked Monarch swayed the sceptre, the 
 country fell into desolation and ruin ; and, on the contrary, when 
 God was acknowledged, and his laws obeyed, prosperity and happi- 
 ness prevailed. This is abundantly exemplified in the history and 
 death of the Prophets. 
 
 From among a company of youths, trained to be the vessels of 
 God's prophetic spirit, Isaiah was chosen, and received his commission 
 at the close of the long and golden reign of Uzziah. The inaugura- 
 tion of the Prophet was one of thrilling interest and powerful subli- 
 mity. (Isai. vi. 1, &c.) In the vision with which the man of God 
 was favoured, the incurable corruption of the people, the gross depra- 
 vity of the heart, and their utter disregard of spiritual truth, were 
 faithfully and significantly placed before him. Nevertheless, encouraged 
 by the presence and promise of the Almighty, he entered upon his 
 arduous undertaking. His was indeed a painful and a thankless 
 office. The prosperous reign of Uzziah unfitted the people for 
 taking an honest and faithful view of their own circumstances. They 
 cried " Peace," when God had not spoken peace. They imagined 
 themselves "rich, and increased with goods, and having need of 
 nothing ;" and knew not that they were " wretched and miserable 
 and poor and blind and naked." (Rev. iii. 17.) So that when the 
 Prophet opened his mournful message, and in a deeply melancholy 
 strain described those iniquities of his countrymen, which were 
 hastening upon them the judgment of the Most High, their forgetful- 
 ness of God, their hypocrisy, extortion, and murder, he was compelled 
 to exclaim, " I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebel- 
 lious people, which walked in a way that was not good, after their own 
 thoughts." (Isai. Ixv. 2.) 
 
 The abundance of temporal benefits which the people enjoyed 
 during the present protracted reign, prepared the way for a fearful 
 amount of immorality and crime, which ultimately led to the mar- 
 tyrdom of Isaiah. Uzziah was, with regard to international pros- 
 perity, highly favoured. He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and added 
 greatly to the strength and durability of the strongholds of the coun- 
 try.* His warlike movements against the Philistines and some of the 
 Arabian tribes, were successful. He constructed numerous magazines, 
 arsenals, and military engines ; laid the foundations of new cities, 
 which rose into importance and wealth during his life- time. After 
 he had thus provided for the protection and security of the land, his 
 attention was directed to its agriculture. He encouraged the multi- 
 plication of extensive flocks and herds, for the safety of which he 
 caused to be erected large folds, well fortified with towers. The 
 growth of the vine was cultivated on a wide scale, and other important 
 branches of husbandry were promoted. 
 
 It is worthy of record, that Uzziah is said to have been the inventor of the Bal- 
 listae and Catapult*, afterwards adopted by the Greeks and Romans. (See Calmet.) 
 Engines were certainly constructed by him, for discharging stones and arrows, and 
 attributed to the invention of his " cunning men." (2 Chron. xxvi. 15.) The founda- 
 tion of Rome is, by some writers, placed in his reign ; others assign to it the succeeding 
 one, varying from B.C. "53 to 748. The era of the Greek Olympiads likewise com- 
 menced in his reign, namely, B.C. 777. (Hist, of the Heb. Nation).
 
 56 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 When Jeshurim waxed fat, he kicked. Worldly prosperity is, at 
 all times, au unfriendly soil to the growth of piety. The prophetic 
 writings of Joel, Isaiah, and Micah, abound with intimations that the 
 general well-being of the country, and especially the unlimited culti- 
 vation of the grape, had induced a fearful extent of drunkenness and 
 impiety. Parents were notorious for selling their offspring for wine. 
 The women dressed themselves in fantastic apparel, and indulged in 
 wantonness ajid frivolity. The rich were greedy in the pursuit of 
 gain, adding field to field, irrespective of the rights, civil and patri- 
 monial, of those with whom they were surrounded. The " abomina- 
 tion" of deceitful weights and balances was common among the 
 merchants ; and the bench of justice was polluted by flagrant acts of 
 unrighteousness and oppression. The religion of the people, as taught 
 by Jehovah himself, was undermined, and idolatry became rampant ; 
 and then, as if to fill the measure of his iniquity, Uzziah aspired to 
 the office of Priest as well as King ; and, notwithstanding the expos- 
 tulations and opposition of Azariah, the chief officer, the Monarch 
 advanced to the altar of incense, where in judgment he was met by 
 the Lord of the temple, struck with leprosy, which immediately began 
 to appear, was hurriedly expelled from the precincts of the sacred 
 edifice, and, being by this judgment rendered politically dead, he 
 withdrew from a palace to a separate house, where he dwelt until his 
 death. " His heart was lifted up to his destruction : for he trans- 
 gressed against the Lord his God." (1 Chron. xxvi. 16.) 
 
 Uzziah was succeeded by Jotham, of whose reign but little is 
 recorded, save, that he " became mighty, because he prepared his 
 ways before the Lord his God." Ahaz, the following King, furnished 
 a striking contrast. He placed before him the Princes of Ephraim, 
 whom he endeavoured to imitate ; Baal was introduced, sacrifices were 
 offered in the high places, images were erected, and the Monarch not 
 only gave himself up to every species of the most vile idolatry, but 
 actually offered several of his own children at the shrine of Moloch. All 
 governments which have been founded on false worship, or, in the spirit 
 of a compromising apostasy, have bowed the knee to the man of sin, 
 have been pusillanimous and weak. Hence the feeble and crippled 
 administration of Ahaz invited the inroads of his envious and rapa- 
 cious neighbours, the evil consequences of which were averted through 
 the timely intercession of the Prophet, who speedily beheld the King 
 and people return to their idolatrous practices, as soon as their 
 deliverance from the Syrians had been achieved. 
 
 " Yet one hearer Isaiah had obtained, who, as a boy of the tender 
 age of ten years, was standing by the side of his royal father, when 
 the Prophet appeared before him with his message of deliverance and 
 visitation. The sight and the words of the holy man sank deep into 
 the mind of the youth ; and if he had not formerly, he did then, con- 
 ceive serious and lasting impressions of holy thought and feeling. He 
 had no sooner mounted the throne, than the seed sown by the Pro- 
 phet disclosed its fruit in Hezekiah ; and we may faintly enter into 
 the joy of Isaiah's heart, when the juvenile King set about the holy 
 duty of restoring the worship of the Lord. Doubtless, God's Prophet
 
 MARTYRDOM OF ISAIAH. O/ 
 
 lent all his help and encouragement, when the long-closed doors of 
 the temple were opened once more, the destroyed vessels were re- 
 placed, the intermitted sacrifices were renewed, and the Passover, that 
 solemn allegiance to the Lord, was celebrated. It was, indeed, a 
 joyous sight ; but not even the mind of the politician, still less of the 
 Prophet, could be cheated by it out of its well-founded despondency. 
 For what did this same enthusiastic multitude, when Ahaz defiled the 
 temple with idols, mutilated its vessels, filled Jerusalem with idola- 
 trous altars, and was seconded by the High Priest ? It did as every 
 corrupt populace does. In such, there is a prevailing laxity of 
 principle, and every one is ready, for the sake of selfish indulgence, 
 or from a base love of popularity, or from fear of ill-will, singularity, 
 or ridicule, to acquiesce with an active leader or leading party, 
 whether for right or for wrong. Thus independence of mind is gone, 
 fashion becomes omnipotent, and all bow before the tyranny of the 
 spirit of the times. From what other cause could Judah, under Ahaz, 
 repudiate the Lord, under Hezekiah return to him, under Manasseh 
 reject him, under Josiah restore him, under Zedekiah reject him 
 again ? So little comfort was this transitory burst of light likely to 
 bring to Isaiah !" * 
 
 There is, perhaps, nothing that is so calculated to test the nature 
 of that religion which is professed by the multitude, when godliness is 
 patronised by the throne, as the withdrawal of that influence, and 
 when an evil ruler grasps the sceptre of power and directs the realm. 
 The true character of Judah's faith was exhibited on the death of 
 Hezekiah : Mauasseh, a lad of but twelve years of age, was his suc- 
 cessor, who, with reckless and indecent haste, plunged into idolatry ; 
 he repaired the high-places which had been thrown down, established 
 again the altars of Baal, offered his son to Moloch, and introduced 
 images and heathen altars, even into the courts and sanctuary of the 
 house of God. The unprincipled and profligate inhabitants of Judah 
 very speedily followed in the wake of their Monarch, and ere long 
 the whole land presented the appearance of one large temple, dedi- 
 cated to the service and worship of deities, whose religion consisted 
 in acts which were awfully impure, licentious, and diabolic. At this 
 fearful result, none can be surprised, when the demoralized condition 
 of the priesthood, as described by Isaiah, is taken into consideration, 
 who represents them as being sensual, drunken and slothful, covetous 
 and base : The " watchmen are bh'nd : they are all ignorant, they 
 are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark ; sleeping, lying down, loving to 
 slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, 
 and they are shepherds that cannot understand ; they all look to their 
 own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter." (Isai. Ivi. 10, 11.) 
 Thus did Manasseh proceed in his headlong career of determined 
 apostasy and crime : not satisfied with exhibiting to his subjects an 
 awful example of idolatry and sensuality, he became tyrannical and 
 cruel, so as to drench Jerusalem with the blood of those whom he 
 had arbitrarily put to death. 
 
 Among the number of these primitive martyrs, we have to include 
 
 Kvans's Scripture Biography. Second wries, p. 160. 
 VOL. I. I
 
 58 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 the venerable Prophet. Isaiah was not long ere he followed his royal 
 master. Manasseh, who spared not the Prophets, was not likely to 
 exercise leniency towards Isaiah, inasmuch as desperate wickedness 
 cannot endure the slightest hint of rebuke. The Prophet before us 
 would be obnoxious beyond all the rest, from the influence which he 
 was enabled legitimately to exercise over Hezekiah, the late Monarch, 
 from his great reputation as the Prophet of God, and also from the 
 unflinching boldness of his character and conduct. Tradition declares 
 that Isaiah suffered death at the hand of Manasseh, by being sawn 
 asunder with a wooden saw.* 
 
 SECTION III. THE MARTYRDOM OF XJRIJAH. 
 
 UPON the death of Manasseh, the idolatrous Amon ascended the 
 throne of Judah. His career was but short ; a conspiracy among 
 his own servants sent him to sleep with his fathers, in the second 
 year of his reign. At the tender age of eight years, Josiah as- 
 cended the throne. He was richly endued with the grace of God, and, 
 
 The infliction of death by the saw was known among the Hebrews. We imagine 
 this punishment came originally from the Persians, or the Chaldeans. We are assured 
 that it is not unknown among the Switzers, and that they practised it not many years ago 
 on one of their countrymen, guilty of a great crime, in the plain of Grenelle, near 
 Paris. They put him into a kind of coffin, and sawed him at length, beginning at his 
 head, as a piece of wood is sawn. Parisatis, King of Persia, caused Roxana to be 
 sawn in two alive. (Ctesia in Persia.) Valerius Maximus says, that the Thracians 
 sometimes subjected living men to this torture. The laws of the twelve tables which 
 the Romans had borrowed from the Greeks, condemned certain crimes to the punish- 
 ment of the saw. But the execution of it was so rare, as Aulus Gelliussays, (Noct. Alt., 
 lib. xii., cap. 2,) that none remembered to have seen it performed. Herodotus (lib. vi.) 
 relates, that Sabacus, King of Egypt, received an order in a dream, to cut in two 
 all the Priests of Egypt. Caius Caligula, the Emperor, often condemned people of con- 
 dition to be sawn in two through the middle ; aut medios serru dissecuit. St. Paul, 
 speaking of the calamities suffered by saints of the Old Testament, says, some were 
 " sawn asunder." (Heb. xi. 37.) Eirpiffdr]trav, Serru secti sunt ; Origen, Ju.stin 
 Martyr, (Dialog, cum Tryphone,) Jerom, (in Isa. lib. xv. ad Jinem,) the author of the 
 poem against Marcion, printed under the name of Tertullian, and several other 
 ancients, explained this passage of the death of Isaiah, who is said to have been mur- 
 dered by King Manasseh, with a wooden saw. This circumstance of a saw of wood is 
 perplexing) for no saws are made of wood ; and, besides, a man could not be cut hi two 
 with such a saw. Our conjecture on this matter is, by supposing this saw of wood was 
 a sledge loaded with stones and iron spikes, with which they threshed the ears of com, 
 to get out the grain. Or, might it not be understood more simply of a wood saw, that 
 is, a saw for cutting wood, there being saws of several kinds, for stone, for iron, for 
 wood ? &c. Daniel also speaks of the punishment of the saw, (Hist, of Susanna, ver. 55,) 
 " Even now the angel of God has received the sentence of God to cut thee in two." 
 St. Matthew says, that the wicked servant shall be cut hi two, and thrust among hypo- 
 crites. (Matt. xxiv. 51 ; Luke xii. 46.) The Old Testament alludes to this custom, 
 when it uses the word, "to cut in two," "to divide," &c., for putting to death- 
 (Calmet Diet., in loco.) 
 
 " It is a regular tradition, both among Jews and Christians, that the Prophet Isaiah 
 reproved, and denounced the judgments of the Lord against the enormities of Manas- 
 seh ; in consequence of which, this impious King caused him to be cut asunder with n 
 wooden saw. Origen, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Chrysostom, Jerom, and Augustin, 
 have all handed down this account to us. It is said, that the pretence made use of 
 by this wicked King, for the murder of this holy man, was an expression employed by 
 liim, (chap. vi. 1,) / saw the Lord sitting in the throne. Therefore, (said the impious 
 King,) you must be put to death , for God hath said to Moses, (Exod. xxxiii. 20,) No 
 man shall see me and live. Thus, as in numberless succeeding cases, the Scriptures of 
 truth were perverted, to afford persecution the colour of a pretence for shedding the 
 blood of the saints of the Most High." A. Clarke's Christian Jliartyrolagy.
 
 MARTYRDOM OI UUIJAII. 
 
 as soon as he had reached his twentieth year, began to assail and to 
 remove the abuses which up to that period he had tolerated. The 
 altars of Baal were once more broken down, and the images of every 
 description were ground to powder, which was strewed upon the 
 graves of those who had formerly been their worshippers ; an instruc- 
 tive and valuable lesson to all of the impotence of the gods, in which 
 their fathers had vainly trusted. After the death of Josiah, who was 
 slain in the valley of Megiddo, from a wound which he received in a 
 conflict with Pharaoh-Necho, his younger son Jehoahaz was made 
 King by the people, who immediately displayed the iniquity of his 
 heart, by restoring all those idolatrous practices which his pious 
 father endeavoured to destroy. But " the triumphing of the wicked 
 is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment." (Job xx. 5.) 
 Pharaoh-Necho, returning from his expedition against the King of 
 Assyria, surprised Jerusalem, placed Jehoahaz in chains, exiled him 
 from the country, after having reigned the short period of three 
 months, and placed his elder brother Eliakim, whose name he changed 
 to Jehoiakim, on the throne. 
 
 The religious aspect was not altered by this movement. The peo- 
 ple, who uublushiugly traversed the compass in politics and religion 
 so frequently within the space of a few years, were not prepared to 
 offer much, if any, resistance to such flagrant departure from the 
 path of truth and righteousness. Jehoiakim was a gross idolater, 
 and the people were speedily led to wander from and reject God ; so 
 fickle and changing is the voice of the multitude ! In the midst of 
 this fearful apostasy, a serious famine visited the country, which, so 
 far from being accompanied with permanent good, produced still 
 greater hardness of heart and contempt of the Most High, as is proved 
 in their treatment of Jeremiah the Prophet, who, taking occasion to 
 admonish them, and to warn them of more serious judgments, was 
 placed in the stocks ; and, being a second time apprehended and 
 imprisoned, was on the eve of being put to death, but was happily 
 rescued from the hands of Jehoiakim by the timely intervention 
 of Ahikam, a pious friend, who had been the Secretary of Josiah, and 
 one of those four persons of distinction whom that Monarch sent 
 to consult Huldah the Prophetess. (2 Kings xxii. 12 14.) 
 
 The storm which had been for several years gathering, at length 
 burst over the guilty and oft-reproved Jehoiakim. Nebuchadnezzar 
 with great power besieged Jerusalem, laid it waste, carried the Jewish 
 King a captive to Babylon in fetters of brass, with a multitude of 
 noble and honourable captives, among whom we have to enumerate 
 the pious and highly-gifted Daniel, and his faithful and devout com- 
 panions, Hanauiah, Mishael, and Azariah, all of whom were of the 
 seed royal ; and on account of the comeliness of their persons, and 
 strength of intellect which they exhibited, were either educated as 
 Magi, or trained to wait upon the Babylonian King as Pages at court. 
 After having promised fealty to the King of Babylon, Jehoiakim was 
 restored to his throne, unhumbled and unimproved. The captives 
 were retained. The Prophet of Anathoth, in consequence of faithful 
 and unwelcome warnings, was in such constant jeopardy of life, as to 
 
 i 2
 
 60 BOOK I. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 keep himself in a state of perpetual concealment. A message from 
 the Lord, which the Prophet sent the King written on a roll of 
 vellum, containing an invitation to repentance, with tremendous warn- 
 ings of severe punishment if he refused, was cut to pieces by Jehoi- 
 akim with his penknife, and cast into the fire. (Jer. xxxvi. 23.) To 
 destroy the sacred Scriptures, a crime which denotes the offender to 
 have arrived at the pinnacle of impiety and presumption, and the 
 utmost extent of rebellion against the God of truth, has of late been 
 frequently perpetrated by infidels, apostates, and by various members 
 of the idolatrous Church of Rome. 
 
 It was during this unhappy reign that Urijah flourished. Ani- 
 mated and encouraged by the fidelity and active fortitude of Jeremiah, 
 he shunned not to declare to the ungodly race around him " the whole 
 counsel of God." Of his personal history, we know but little : the 
 brief account that is recorded, states that he was the son of Shemaiah 
 of Kirjath-jearim ; that he prophesied in the name of the Lord against 
 Jerusalem, and against the land, according to all the words of Jere- 
 miah. (Jer. xxvi. 20.) He had boldly denounced the judgments of 
 God against the wickedness of the nation, in the presence of Jehoia- 
 kim and the Princes of his court. Incensed at this liberty, the King 
 determined to put the Prophet to death ; who, hearing of his murder- 
 ous intentions, fled into Egypt. The cruel and oppressive Monarch 
 (Jer. xxii. 1 7) was firm to his purpose ; and, therefore, sent a troop 
 of men, under the command of Elnathan, to seize Urijah in that coun- 
 try, and convey him back to Jerusalem. This was done, and Urijah, by 
 the command of the King, was slain by the sword, and his body cast 
 into the graves of the common people : thus, to him was refused that 
 honourable burial with which the Prophets from time immemorial had 
 been favoured, when the word of the Lord was recognised as true and 
 faithful among the people of Judah. 
 
 " Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." 
 (Prov. xi. 21.) Much time did not elapse, before Jehoiakim fell 
 beneath the retributive dispensations of the Most High. Jeremiah 
 had prophesied " concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah King of 
 Judah ; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother ! or, 
 Ah sister ! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord ! or, Ah his 
 glory ! He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast 
 forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem;" (Jer. xxii. 18, 19 ; 2 Kings 
 xxiii. 34 37; xxiv. 1 7; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 4 8;) and mark how 
 literally this awful prediction met with its accomplishment. The 
 counsel of God against him stood sure. Finding the King of Babylon 
 elsewhere employed, and being deluded by the Egyptian party who 
 had nestled themselves in the bosom of his court, he foolishly ven- 
 tured to withhold his customary and pledged tribute ; thus virtually 
 shaking off the Chaldean yoke, contrary to the earnest and oft- 
 repeated remonstrances of Jeremiah. In a short period, the land was 
 invaded by the armies of Chaldea, accompanied by a vast number 
 of their auxiliaries from the neighbouring countries, the Edomites, 
 Moabites, and others; who were, for the most part, actuated by 
 fierce hatred against the Jewish name and nation. Jerusalem fell
 
 MARTYRDOM OF URIJAH. 01 
 
 into the hands of the conqueror, or, more correctly, surrendered on 
 terms, which the Babylonian Monarch in a short time utterly disre- 
 giirded. Jehoiakim was slain ; * but whether this event took place 
 during the action, or subsequent to the surrender, is not mentioned. 
 Suffice it to say, that those manifestations of indignity and cruelty with 
 which he treated the righteous Urijah, " returned upon his own 
 head." (Psalm vii. 16.) He slew the Prophet of the Most High with 
 the sword ; and with the sword of the Chaldeans God caused him to 
 be slain. He refused the Prophet a decent burial ; and God caused 
 him " to be buried with the burial of an ass." Calmet, without 
 hesitation, declares, that he was thrown into a common sewer, outside 
 the walls of the city of Jerusalem. Josephus asserts, that he was 
 " thrown before the walls, without any burial." This is one instance, 
 among many, which will be adduced during the progress of this work, 
 of the retributive dispensations of the Most High, descending upon 
 those persecutors of the righteous, who have dared to "touch" the 
 Lord's " anointed," and to " do" his " Prophets" harm. The 
 devoted Urijah suffered martyrdom, A.M. 3395, and about 605 years 
 anterior to the Christian era. 
 
 The books of Kings and Chronicles are silent, as to the manner of Jehoiakim'a 
 death ; hut Josephus states, that he was slain by the Chaldeans : " The King of Baby- 
 lon slew such as were in the flower of their age, and such as were of the greatest dig- 
 nity, together with their Kiug Jehoiakim, whom he commanded to be thrown before 
 the walls, without any burial, and made his son Jehoiachin, King of the country 
 and of the city ; he also took the principal persons in dignity for captives, three thou- 
 sand in number, and led them away to Babylon ; among whom was the Prophet Eze- 
 Itiel, who was then but young." (Jos. Antiq., book x., chap. 6.) That his death waa 
 violent and inglorious, is evident from the Prophet Jeremiah ; a prediction which refers 
 to the custom of adjudging the funeral-rites, according to the previous character.
 
 62 BOOK I. CHAP. V. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SECT. I. JERUSALEM TAKEN. Nebuchadnezzar Agitated State of Jerusalem, Peril- 
 ous Situation of Jeremiah /* thrown into a Dungeon Jerusalem is besieged 
 Distress of the Inhabitants The City taken Zedeftiah slain, and the City ruined 
 Lamentations of Jeremiah Bishop Lowth and Dr. South quoted Gedaliah 
 Mizpeh Death of the Prophet. SECT. II. THE CAPTIVITY. Hebrews in 
 Babylon The Treatment of the Captives Character of the King of Babylon 
 Prediction of Isaiah Daniel and his Companions Dangers to which they were 
 exposed Change of their Names Their moral Training Luxury of the Baby- 
 lonian Court Their Preservation from Evil Nebuchadnezzar's first Dream 
 Daniel and others sentenced to Death The former reveals the Dream, and its 
 Interpretation Is promoted Nebuchadnezzar's Image Its Dedication Princi- 
 ples developed All commanded to render Worship Description of the Idol 
 The Hebrew Confessors refuse to worship The Consequences of such a Refusal 
 The fiery Furnace The Deliverance of the Jews Nebuchadnezzar's second 
 Dream Its Interpretation Effect of the Dream on Nebuchadnezzar His Death 
 Evil-Merodach His Character Belshazzar His Conduct The mysterious 
 Writing 7* explained and fulfilled Darius His Opinion of Daniel ff. ho is 
 accused And thrown into the Den of Lions Mercifully preserved Destruction 
 of his Enemies Death and Character of Daniel. 
 
 SECTION I. OF JEREMIAH. 
 
 NEBUCHADNEZZAR was the name of the Chaldean Monarch by 
 whom Judea was conquered, and the Jews led into their seventy years' 
 captivity. Nebo was originally the name of a Chaldean deity, sup- 
 posed to be Mercury, and enters frequently into the composition of 
 the proper names of Chaldea, as Nabopolassar, Nebuzaradan, (2 Kings 
 xxv. 8,) Samgar-nebo, and Nebushasban. (Jer. xxxix. 3, 13.) The 
 name Nebuchadnezzar has been commonly explained to signify " the 
 treasure of Nebo ; " but, according to others, it means " Nebo, the 
 Prince of gods." The only notices which we have of this Monarch in the 
 canonical writings, are to be found in the books of Kings, Chronicles, 
 Daniel, and Ezra, and in the allusions of the Prophets Jeremiah and 
 Ezekiel. 
 
 From the inspired records, (2 Kings xxiii. 29 ; 2 Chron. xxxv. 20,) 
 we learn, that in the reign of Josiah, (B.C. 610,) Pharaoh-Necho, 
 King of Egypt, having approached by sea the coast of Syria, applied 
 to Josiah to be allowed to pass through his territories towards the 
 dominions of the Assyrian Monarch, with whom he was at war. " I 
 come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I 
 have war ; for God commanded me to make haste." The design of the 
 Egyptian King was to seize upon Carchemish, a strong post on the 
 Euphrates ; but Josiah, who had sworn fealty to the Babylonian 
 Monarch, resolutely opposed his progress at Megiddo, where, being 
 defeated and mortally wounded, Necho marched forward to Jerusalem, 
 which subsequently became tributary to that Monarch. Hearing of 
 this aggressive movement on the part of Necho, Nebuchadnezzar, King 
 of Babylon, (2 Kings xxiv. 1 ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6, where his name is for
 
 OF JEREMIAH. (J3 
 
 the first time introduced in the sacred history,) invaded Judah, retook 
 Carchemish, with the territory which had been wrested from him by 
 Necho, and reduced him to submission. This invasion took place in the 
 fourth year of Jehoiakim, or, according to Daniel, (chap. i. 1, 2,) in 
 the third year. In order to reconcile this apparent contradiction, it is 
 supposed that the first year of Nebuchadnezzar fell partly in the third, 
 and partly in the fourth, year of Jehoiakim. He was at first laden 
 with chains, in order to be led to Babylon ; but was eventually 
 restored by Nebuchadnezzar, on condition of paying an annual tri- 
 bute. The sacred vessels, however, were transferred to the idol- 
 temple in the Assyrian capital. The fate of Jerusalem was now fast 
 approaching. At the termination of three years, Jehoiakim renounced 
 his fealty to Babylon, and renewed his connexion with Necho ; the 
 result of which was, that he was made prisoner, and slain. He was 
 then succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, whose reign terminated in 
 three months ; but, brief as it was, it was nevertheless strongly 
 marked by iniquity. He was deposed, and carried away captive by the 
 Babylonian King, who at the same time sacked Jerusalem, and trans- 
 ported to his capital all the most distinguished inhabitants. Among 
 the captives, who amounted to not less than fifty thousand, were 
 Ezekiel, (Ezek. i. 1,) and Mordecai. All the golden vessels of Solo- 
 mon, together with the royal treasures, were removed ; and Matta- 
 uiah, the brother of Jehoiakim, placed on the throne by Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, who gave him the name of Zedekiah, and bound him by an 
 oath not to enter into alliance with Egypt. He followed in the same 
 course of idolatry, and also foolishly rebelled against the King of 
 Babylon ; which policy the Lord in anger suffered, that he might 
 accomplish against Judah what he had threatened. 
 
 The situation of Jeremiah had now become exceedingly unpopular 
 and precarious. The disposition which the Jews displayed to form 
 an alliance with Egypt, filled the Prophet with great apprehension 
 and alarm. From that people, the Jews confidently expected protec- 
 tion and help against the Chaldean and Assyrian, whom they both 
 hated and dreaded, while Jeremiah hesitated not in strong and faith- 
 ful language to repudiate all such dependence, as futile and false ; and 
 hesitated not to declare, that all who submitted to the King of Babylon 
 would thereby secure safety and peace. This conduct naturally exposed 
 him to the imputation of traitorous designs, so that they made the 
 departure of Jeremiah from the city, during the short respite which 
 occurred between the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar and his re- appearance, 
 the pretext for accusing him of deserting to the Chaldeans, and he 
 was forthwith cast into prison. All this was the prelude of additional 
 calamities, both to the King and to the people. Jerusalem was again 
 invested by a besieging army. Pharaoh-Hophra, who had succeeded 
 Necho, coming to the assistance of Zedekiah, was driven back into 
 Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. The inhabitants of the city were panic- 
 stricken. Zedekiah sent to the Prophet, now immured in the dun- 
 geon, to pray for him and his people, and to inquire of the Lord, 
 while he and the few persons of distinction who rallied around his 
 throne, confidently expecting a favourable reply, emptied their prisons,
 
 64 BOOK I. CHAP. V. 
 
 and emancipated those who were in bondage, slavery being an evil 
 against which the Prophets had loudly spoken. The answer of the 
 Most High was unpropitious ; and the King, burning with rage, again 
 condemned the Prophet to his solitary and wretched abode, and the 
 elders, also, reduced their slaves to their former state of subjection 
 and thraldom. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar, flushed with victory, now determined to prosecute 
 his plans against Jerusalem, with vigour and efficiency. Zedekiah, 
 learning to his sorrow and chagrin the overthrow of the army on 
 which he vainly relied, was distracted by awful misgivings of consci- 
 ence, and privately sent for Jeremiah. He pledged himself that he 
 should not again be sent to prison ; but so weak and corrupt had 
 he become, by giving himself up into the hands of his courtiers, 
 and of foreigners who were found among them, he was so utterly 
 helpless, that, when they demanded it, he, with great imbecility 
 and treachery, surrendered the Prophet into their power, who again 
 imprisoned him. In this instance he was cast into a noisome pit, or 
 cess-pool, within the dungeon, and there left to perish ; but Ebed- 
 melech, an Ethiopian eunuch of rank, and one also of the little 
 remnant who had embraced the faith of the one true God, again pre- 
 vailed upon the unstable and vacillating King in behalf of Jeremiah ; 
 upon which he was rescued from the pit, but still kept in confinement 
 in the court of the prison-house.* 
 
 The siege was now prosecuted with untiring energy, and the be- 
 sieged were reduced to great privation and distress, on account of the 
 failure of their provision and the appearance of disease, the natural 
 result of want and badness of food ; women even boiling their own 
 children and devouring them, to satisfy the merciless cravings of 
 hunger. (Lam. ii. 20; iv. 10.) Josephus says, "There came upon 
 them also, two of the greatest calamities at the same time that Jeru- 
 salem was besieged, a famine and a pestilential distemper, and made 
 great havoc of them ; and though the Prophet Jeremiah was in 
 prison, he did not rest, but cried out, and proclaimed aloud, and 
 exhorted the multitude to open their gates, and admit the King of 
 Babylon, for that if they did so, they should not be destroyed ; and 
 he foretold, that if any one stayed in the city, he should certainly 
 perish by one of these ways, either be consumed by the famine, or 
 
 * Josephus informs us, that Zedekiah, " that he might not he engaged in a quarrel 
 with those rulers at such a time, by opposing what they intended, let them do with the 
 Prophet whatsoever they would : whereupon, when the King had granted them such 
 a permission, they presently came into the prison and took him, and let him down with 
 a cord into a pit full of mire, that he might be suffocated and die of himself. So he 
 stood up to the neck in the mire, which was all about him, and so continued ; but there 
 was one of the King's servants who was in esteem with him, an Ethiopian by descent, 
 who told the King what a state the Prophet was in ; and said, that his friends and his 
 rulers had done evil in pxitting Jeremiah into the pit, and by that means contriving 
 against him, that he should suffer a death more bitter than that by his bonds only. 
 When the King heard this, he repented of his having delivered up the Prophet to the 
 rulers, and bade the Ethiopian take thirty men of the King's guards, and cords with them, 
 and whatsoever else they understood to be necessary for the Prophet's preservation, and 
 to draw him up immediately. So the Ethiopian took the men he was ordered to take, 
 and drew up the Prophet out of the mire, and left him at liberty in the prison." (Joseph. 
 dntiq., lib. x., cap. vii., sect 5.)
 
 OF JEREMIAH. 65 
 
 slain by the enemy's sword ; but that it' he would fly to the enemy, 
 he should escape death." " 
 
 The miserable Monarch was yet irresolute, and once more requested 
 the counsel of the deeply-injured and maligned Prophet, who still 
 assured him, that if he would go forth and surrender to the 
 King of Babylon, the city should be spared and himself saved ; but 
 that if he refused, he would be taken prisoner, and the city burnt 
 with fire. " When the King heard this," says Josephus, " he said 
 that he would willingly do what he persuaded him to, and what he 
 declared would be to his advantage ; but that he was afraid of those 
 of his own country that had fallen away to the Babylonians, lest 
 he should be accused by them to the King of Babylon, and be 
 punished ;"f he dreaded also the reproach to which such a step 
 would subject him, from his people. At length, famine reduced the 
 fatal obstinacy of the King, and Jerusalem opened her gates to 
 the irresistible conqueror. When Zedekiah was sensible that his 
 capital was in the hands of the enemy, " he took his wives and 
 children, and his Captains, and his friends, and with them fled out of 
 the city, through the fortified ditch, and through the wilderness ; and 
 when certain of the deserters had informed the Babylonians of this, 
 at break of day, they made haste to pursue after Zedekiah, and over- 
 took him not far from Jericho, and encompassed him about ; but for 
 those friends and Captains of Zedekiah who had fled out of the city 
 with him, when they saw their enemies near them, they left him and 
 dispersed themselves, some one way, and some another, every one 
 resolving to take care of himself : so the enemy took Zedekiah alive, 
 with his children and his wives, and brought him to the King. 
 When he was come, Nebuchadnezzar began to call him a wicked 
 wretch and a covenant-breaker, and one that had forgotten his former 
 words, when he promised to keep the country for him. He also 
 reproached him for his ingratitude, that when he had received the 
 kingdom from him, who had taken it from Jehoiachin, and given 
 it him, he had made use of the power he gave him, against him that 
 gave it; but, said he, 'God is great, who hateth that conduct of 
 thine, and hath brought thee under us.' And when he had used 
 these words to Zedekiah, he commanded his sons and his friends to 
 be slain, while the royal captive and his Captains looked on ; after 
 which he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him, and carried him 
 to Babylon,"! where he died in prison. At the same time that Nebu- 
 chadnezzar thus disposed of the King, he put to death all the nobility 
 that he found in Jerusalem, together with the Chief Priests, and other 
 principal and official persons. The remainder, small in number, who 
 were of any consideration, he took in triumph to Babylon, leaving 
 the meaner classes to cultivate the land. For a year and a half had 
 Jerusalem effectually withstood Nebuchadnezzar. Her capture took 
 place on the ninth day of the fourth month ; and on the seventh 
 day of the fifth month, (two days, on which Hebrew devotion still 
 
 Joseph. Antiq., lib. \., cap. vii., sect. 4. 
 t Ibid., lib. x., cap. vii., sect. 6. 
 j Ibid., lib. x., cap. viii., sect. 2. 
 VOL. I. K
 
 66 BOOK I. CHAP. V. 
 
 commemorates the desolation of the city by solemn fast and humilia- 
 tion,) Nebuzar-adan received the orders of the Assyrian King to 
 pillage the palace and temple, to burn them both, and then to level 
 the city and all it contained in one common ruin, and transport the 
 captives to Babylon. The two brasen pillars which stood before the 
 temple, were removed to the capital, to decorate the fane of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar's god. 
 
 Jeremiah survived the general overthrow, to behold the sad accom- 
 plishment of all his darkest predictions. He witnessed the hor- 
 rors of the famine, and, when that had done its work, the triumph 
 of the enemy. He saw the strong-holds of the city cast down ; the 
 palace of Solomon, the temple of God, with all its courts, its roofs 
 of cedar and of gold, levelled to the earth, or committed to the 
 flames ; the sacred vessels, the ark of the covenant itself, with the 
 cherubim, pillaged by profane hands. What were the feelings of a 
 patriotic and religious Jew at this tremendous crisis, he has left on 
 record in his unrivalled elegies. Never did city suffer a more miser- 
 able fate ; never was ruined city lamented in language so exquisitely 
 pathetic. Jerusalem is, as it were, personified and bewailed with the 
 passionate sorrow of private and domestic attachment ; while the 
 more general picture of the famine, the common misery of every rank 
 and age and sex, all the desolation, the carnage, the violation, the 
 dragging away into captivity, the remembrance of former glories, 
 of the gorgeous ceremonies, and the glad festivals, the awful sense 
 of the divine wrath heightening the present calamities, are successively 
 drawn with all the life and reality of an eye-witness in that inimitable 
 poem, " The Lamentations of Jeremiah." " Never," says Bishop 
 Lowth, " was there a more rich and elegant variety of beautiful 
 images and adjuncts arranged together within so small a compass, nor 
 more happily chosen and applied." " One would think," says Dr. 
 South, " that every letter was written with a tear, every word, the 
 sound of a breaking heart ; that the author was compacted of sor- 
 rows, disciplined to grief from his infancy, one who never breathed 
 but in sighs, nor spoke but in a groan." 
 
 The miserable remnant of the people were placed under the com- 
 mand of Gedaliah, as a Pasha of the great Assyrian Monarch ; the seat 
 of government was fixed at MLzpeh. Nebuchadnezzar formed a more 
 just estimate of the character of Jeremiah, and of the value of his 
 counsels, than the Princes of his own country, and gave a special charge 
 to his Captain, Nebuzar-adan, not only to provide for him, but also 
 to follow his advice. (Jer. xxxix. 12.) He was accordingly removed 
 from the prison, and allowed free choice either to go to Babylon, 
 where, doubtless, he would have been held in honour in the royal 
 court, or to remain with his own people. We need scarcely be told, 
 that he who had devoted more than forty years of unrequited service 
 to the welfare of his falling country, should choose to remain with the 
 remnant of his people, rather than seek the precarious fame which 
 might await him at the court of the King of Babylon. Accordingly, 
 he went to Mizpeh with Gedaliah. Among those who had repaired 
 to that place, was a Prince of the seed-royal, named Ishmael, with a
 
 OF DANIEL. ()/ 
 
 small party of Ammonites. He appears to have been a wicked and 
 abandoned person ; and, instigated by the King of Ammon, he con- 
 trived by deceit and treachery to murder Gedaliah, and a consider- 
 able portion of his followers, and to effect his escape to Rabbah ; 
 and the remainder of the Jews, having chosen one Johanan for their 
 leader, now resolved to pass into Egypt, notwithstanding the earnest 
 and oft-repeated remonstrances of the Prophet, who endeavoured to 
 persuade Johanan to remain in the land, assuring them by a message 
 from God, in answer to their inquiries, that if they did so, the Lord 
 would build them up ; but if they fled into Egypt, the evils which 
 they sought to escape should come upon them there. (Jer. xlii. 
 10, &c.) The people refused to attend to the divine message, saying, 
 " We will not dwell in this land, neither obey the voice of the Lord 
 your God," and resolved to pass into Egypt, taking Jeremiah and 
 Baruch along with them. (Jer. xliii. 6.) But there they were speedily 
 overtaken by the punishment of which the Prophet had forwarned 
 them ; for Nebuchadnezzar soon after invaded Egypt, and having 
 defeated Pharaoh-Hophra, and taken him prisoner, put to death the 
 refugee Jews whom he found there, with the exception of about seven 
 hundred persons, whom he carried away with him to Babylon. About 
 this time the Prophet died : some conclude that he was put to death 
 by the Jews ; others, by Hophra the King of Egypt ; others suppose 
 that he was stoned by the people of Taphnse, where the Jews were 
 settled ; and many confidently assert, that he joined his brethren in 
 Babylon, and closed his career there, it being difficult, as they say, 
 otherwise to account for the preservation of his writings, which relate 
 to this period ; while Dr. Hales states, that his last and most ominous 
 prophecy proved fatal to himself, his ungrateful and infatuated 
 countrymen stoned him to death, and cast his body into a pit. 
 
 SECTION II. OF DANIEL. 
 
 " NOTHING could present," writes the author of the History of the 
 Jews, " a more striking contrast to their native country, than the 
 region into which the Hebrews were transplanted. Instead of their 
 irregular and picturesque mountain-city, crowning its unequal 
 heights, and looking down into its deep and precipitous ravines, 
 through one of which a scanty stream wound along, they entered 
 the vast square and level city of Babylon, occupying both sides of the 
 broad Euphrates ; while all around spread immense plains, which 
 were intersected by long straight canals, bordered by rows of willows. 
 How unlike their national temple a small but highly finished and 
 richly adorned fabric, standing in the midst of its courts on the brow 
 of a lofty precipice the colossal temple of the Chaldean Bel, rising 
 from the plain, with its eight stupendous stories or towers, one above 
 the other, to the perpendicular height of a furlong ! The palace 
 of the Babylonian Kings was more than twice the size of their whole 
 city : it covered eight miles, with its hanging gardens built on 
 arched terraces, each rising above the other, and rich in all the luxu- 
 riance of artificial cultivation. How different from the sunny cliffs 
 
 K -'
 
 68 BOOK I. CHAP. V. 
 
 of their own land, where the olive and the vine grew spontaneously, 
 and the cool, shady, and secluded valleys, where they could always 
 find shelter from the heat of the burning noon ! No wonder then 
 that, in the pathetic words of their own hymn, ' By the waters of 
 Babylon they sat down and wept, when they remembered thee, 
 Zion.' The Psalm above quoted seems to intimate, that the Baby- 
 lonians had taste enough to appreciate their poetical and musical 
 talent, and that they were summoned occasionally to amuse the 
 banquets of their masters, though it was much against their will that 
 they sang the songs of Zion in a strange land. In general, it seems 
 that the Jewish exiles were allowed to dwell together in considerable 
 bodies, not sold as household or personal slaves, at least, not those 
 of the better order, of whom the captivity chiefly consisted. They 
 were colonists rather than captives, and became by degrees possessed 
 of considerable property. There was one large settlement on the 
 river Chebar, considerably to the north of Babylon. It was there 
 that the Prophet Ezekiel related his splendid visions, which seem 
 imbued with the immense and gigantic character of the region and 
 empire of Babylon. To the bold and rapid creations of the earlier 
 Hebrew poets, Ezekiel adds not merely a vehement and tragical 
 force, peculiar to his own mind, but a vastness and magnificence 
 of imagery, drawn from the scenery and circumstances by which he 
 was surrounded. The world of Ezekiel, and that of his contemporary, 
 Daniel, seems enlarged ; and the future teems with imperial dynasties, 
 and wide and universal monarchies." 
 
 Of the general treatment of the captives, we know but little. With 
 the exception of those who were transported to the Assyrian capital, 
 previous to the taking and destruction of Jerusalem, there is reason 
 to believe, they were treated with considerable severity, insomuch 
 that the Prophets who resided among them, denounced, in accents 
 both mournful and bitter, the woe of Babylon. And although 
 Almighty God has frequently made use of earthly potentates, who 
 were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, to chastise and afflict 
 his heritage, he has ever been jealous on their account, and has not 
 failed to visit with condign punishment those powers when they 
 have betrayed malignity, or triumphed over the chosen of the Lord. 
 In process of time, the condition of these exiles from their father-land 
 was considerably mitigated, and the Jewish religion began to be 
 respected and understood ; for, let it be remembered, it has ever 
 formed a part of the inscrutable, though beneficent, counsels of the 
 Most High, not only to correct and purify his people by affliction in 
 the chief seats of idolatry, but to turn the chastisement into a 
 blessing, by making them instrumental of spiritual good to the 
 Heathen. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar has been celebrated as one of the most illustrious 
 Monarchs, and as a prudent, brave, and successful warrior. In early 
 life he ascended the throne of Babylon ; and to the extensive domi- 
 nions which he inherited from his father, he made large additions by 
 his own conquests, insomuch that the greatest part of the then 
 known world was tributary. "All people, nations, and languages
 
 OF DANIEL. 69 
 
 trembled and feared before him : whom he would he slew ; and whom 
 he would he kept alive ; and whom he would he set up ; and whom 
 he would he put down." (Dan. v. 19.) He was now in the second year 
 of his reign, and was reposing for a time, after many and mimerous 
 military exploits, and embellishing his capital, both by land and water, 
 with those wonders which have contributed as much to its celebrity 
 as any remarkable events with which its history is associated. His 
 tyranny, however, was equal to his magnificence and splendour. 
 
 The words of Isaiah to Hezekiah, " Thy sons shall be chamber- 
 lains in the palace of the King of Babylon," were, at the expiration 
 of little more than a century, fulfilled. When Kings and nobles, 
 Priests and people, were carried into captivity, -Nebuchadnezzar gave 
 orders that out of the families of the most honourable such children 
 as were best looking, and of the best parts, should be instructed in 
 the language and learning of the Chaldeans, in order that, in due 
 time, they might be appointed to responsible offices in his household. 
 Among these were Daniel and three of his companions, who, at the 
 first invasion of the Assyrian King, were transported to Babylon, pro- 
 bably as hostages for the good conduct and submission of the vassal 
 Monarch. " These young men were treated with much kindness, and 
 educated with great assiduity in the manners and duties of the Assyrian 
 court, as well as in all the half-scientific, half-superstitious knowledge, 
 the astronomy, the divination, and skill in the interpretation of dreams, 
 for which the priesthood of the Chaldeans long maintained unrivalled 
 celebrity."* In such a situation, and surrounded with all that was 
 evil, these youths had every temptation to forget the religion and 
 maxims of their fathers. Ignoble and undisciplined minds are dis- 
 posed to, and frequently do, exchange the customs, the institutions, 
 the language, and even the faith, of their ancestors, for those of the 
 spot wherever their abode is fixed, and however notoriously opposite 
 and distinct such profession from the former one may be found. Such 
 unprincipled characters would hail with gladness the opportunity of a 
 removal from the promised land, and a separation from the temple, 
 in order that they might have an excuse to shake off the burden 
 of their law, and free themselves from the bondage of its ordi- 
 nances. In this class Daniel and his companions were not to be 
 found. They were to be sumptuously fed from the King's table : 
 this, however, would involve them in legal defilement : they therefore 
 obtained from the officer who was charged with their education that 
 they might be fed with pulse and water, on which they throve so 
 well, as to surpass in the healthiness and vigour of their looks those 
 who were not troubled with a tender conscience, and had luxuriated 
 in the dainties and wine which the King's purveyor furnished. Cor- 
 responding with the personal appearance of the young men, were 
 their mental qualifications, so that when brought up for examination, 
 in order to their appointment in the palace, Daniel and his associates 
 were selected for the high posts of M'aiting immediately upon the 
 person of the King. Daniel received the name of Belteshazzar ; his 
 
 History of the Jew*, vol. ii., j>. 5.
 
 70 BOOK I. CHAP. V. 
 
 chief companions, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, those of Shadrach, 
 Meshach, and Abednego.* 
 
 The early history and moral training of the Hebrew youths are by 
 no means destitute of interest. The mode of the new spiritual crea- 
 tion of which they were the subjects, is hidden, to a great extent, 
 from the highest order of finite intelligence. " We are permitted, 
 however, to trace the operation of the means divinely employed, so 
 far at least as to discover in them the uniformity of a law not less 
 certain than that which ' binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades.' 
 Before honour is humility : the way to glory lies through the vale 
 of humiliation. How little can be foreseen from the earlier steps 
 of those whom the King of saints delighteth to honour, of their 
 future elevation ! Joseph, forgotten in the dungeon, was in a course 
 of moral preparation for the highest honours of Egypt, and for the 
 deliverance of his father's house. The babe, who wept by the banks 
 of the Nile, was designed to be the lawgiver of Israel. Saiil of Tar- 
 sus, led in solitude and blindness to an obscure street in Damascus, 
 was destined to become the ' very chiefest of the Apostles.' The dis- 
 tinguished champion of the Reformation begged his daily bread, in 
 childhood, from door to door. The children of Judah, who main- 
 tained their steadfastness in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, were torn 
 from the parental roof as captives of war. They were introduced 
 to the court of Babylon by the express command of the King. The 
 royal palace was at that time a scene of extraordinary splendour. 
 The nobles revelled in luxury ; and nothing was wanting that might 
 inflame the passions of a youth. Led into the banquetting-rooms, 
 glistening with a thousand gems, and thronged with the fairest and 
 noblest of the land, their dignified appearance and singular beauty 
 of countenance rivetted the admiring gaze of all. Yet, amid the 
 enchantment of the scene, they retained their sacred integrity ; and, 
 although surrounded by so many poUuting influences, they preserved 
 their heavenly purity. From the first, the young men knew the 
 danger of their position, and they attended with diligence to the 
 means of safety. How is this to be accounted for ? When we recol- 
 lect the degeneracy of the times in which they lived, and the sad 
 decline of their countrymen from the principles and practices of true 
 
 * It was customary in the East, when a change took place in one's condition in life, 
 a.nd especially if the personal liberty of the individual was affected, to change his name. 
 (2 Kings xxiii. 34 ; xxiv. 17 ; Esther ii. 7 ; Ezra v. 14.) The name of Daniel, which 
 literally signified, " God is my Judge," was altered to " Belteshazzar," that is, " Beli 
 Princeps, Princeps cui Belus favet." Hananiah, whose name implied, " The grace, 
 mercy, and gift of the Lord," or, " The Lord has been gracious to me," was changed to 
 " Shadrach," which has been variously translated, " The inspiration of the sun, God, 
 the author of evil, be propitious to us j let God preserve us from evil." Mishael 
 signifies, " He who comes from God." Him they called Meshach, which in Chaldee 
 signifies, " He who belongs to the goddess Sheshach ; " a celebrated deity of the Baby- 
 lonians, mentioned by Jeremiah, (xxv. 26.) Azariah, which signifies, " The Lord is my 
 helper," they changed into Abednego, which in Chaldee means, " The servant of Nego," 
 who was one of their divinities, by which they meant either the sun, or the morning 
 star ; whether Jupiter or Venus. Dr. A. Clarke observes, " The vicious pronunciation 
 of this name should be carefully avoided ; I mean, that which lays the accent upon the 
 second syllable, and hurries to the end, without attending to the natural division of the 
 word ' Abed-nego.' "
 
 OF DANIEL. 71 
 
 piety, this remarkable exception to the almost universal state of moral 
 delinquency cannot be attributed to the influence of external circum- 
 stances. It is equally certain that their early maturity in goodness 
 did not arise from any native superiority. Their heart was originally 
 depraved, and at enmity with God. There was everything around 
 them to foster its evil propensities. If, therefore, we find them in 
 the enjoyment of friendship with the divine Being, and manifestly 
 walking according to the direction of his hand, there must have been 
 a transformation of character as real as it was marvellous. They 
 must have been led to deep repentance, and to exercise faith in the 
 Messiah who should come ' to finish the transgression, and to make 
 an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring 
 in everlasting righteousness ! ' " * 
 
 After Nebuchadnezzar had successfully concluded the Tyrian war, 
 he invaded Egypt, and quickly overran the whole extent of the coun- 
 try, from Migdol, its northern extremity near the Red Sea, to Syene, 
 the southern, bordering on Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, which he also 
 reduced, with the other auxiliaries of the Egyptians ; and was revel- 
 ling in ease and greatness, when it pleased the Most High to make 
 him an instrument for his revelation of the future. He visited him 
 with a dream which exceedingly affected him ; but after he awoke, 
 he retained nothing of the visions of the night, but the troubled 
 feelings which still agitated his mind. Eager to recover the memory 
 of that which so greatly disturbed him, he commanded the magicians, 
 astrologers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans to appear before him, whom he 
 required to stipply him with the facts of the dream, and at the same 
 time its interpretation. Accustomed as the Monarch was to be grati- 
 fied with implicit obedience in everything that he wished, he was 
 exceedingly enraged when he found that these men limited their skill 
 in intepretation to an acquaintance with the facts of the dream ; and 
 these being unknown, they frankly confessed they could do nothing. 
 It must, however, be acknowledged, that the requisition of the King 
 to the wise men of Babylon was based on profound policy. He 
 justly considered their telling the dream itself, as a sure test of the 
 truth of their interpretation afterwards, and which it was not unrea- 
 sonable to require of them even upon their own principles ; because 
 the same divine power which could communicate to them the inter- 
 pretation, as they professed, could also communicate to them the 
 dream itself. In the raging fever of his disappointment, he com- 
 manded all the wise men in Babylon to be put to death.f "Ye 
 shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill." 
 (Dan. ii. 5.) Daniel and his companions, being numbered among the 
 
 The Hebrew Martyrs ; or, the Triumph of Principle. By John Waddington, pp. 
 1315. London, 1844. 
 
 f Such acts of cruelty and capricious tyranny were by no means uncommon among 
 the despots of the East. Herodotus relates that Astyages, King of the Medes, put to death 
 all those who had given him erroneous advice, as the event proved, with regard to Cyrus. 
 (Herod. Clio., cap. 128.) And Xerxes, when constructing a bridge of boats across the 
 Hellespont, and a storm destroyed it, ordered the superintendents of the work to be 
 beheaded, and then commanded two pair of chains to be thrown into the sea, as if he 
 meant to shackle and confine it, and his men to chastise it, by giving it three hundred 
 strokes of a whip. (Herod., lib. vii., cap. 3336.)
 
 72 BOOK I. CHAP. V. 
 
 Magi of the empire, were necessarily included in the decree : " They 
 sought Daniel and his fellows, to be slain." (Dan. ii. 13.) 
 
 No sooner was Daniel made acquainted with the jeopardy in which 
 he and his companions were placed, than he went boldly to Nebuchad- 
 neazar, " and desired that he would give him time, and that he would 
 show the King the interpretation." (Dan. ii. 16.) He does not appear to 
 have been prompted to take this step by any special communication 
 from Jehovah, but by faith only ; a faith which was the result of his 
 habitual intercourse with God, which was built upon the great and 
 wonderful mercies which had been manifested toward his fathers, and 
 experienced by himself, and which had been confirmed by the Holy 
 Spirit of God prompting it with high confidence, and illumining all 
 darkness of doubt. Thus acting, he threw himself upon God, and 
 requested the prayers of his companions ; remembering the promise, 
 " In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." 
 (Prov. iii. 6.) Nor did they pray in vain. God heard the supplica- 
 tions of his faithful, though oppressed, church. In the course of the 
 night, the secret of the dream was revealed ; and after he had 
 acknowledged the mercy of the Most High in a song of praise, he 
 went with confidence before the King, and informed him that it was 
 from God in heaven, and not from his own human wisdom, that he 
 had obtained the revelation of the secret, and forthwith proceeded to 
 state the circumstances of the dream, and then the interpretation. 
 
 From the thanksgiving which Daniel offered to God, and the decla- 
 ration which he made when brought before the King, we may collect 
 both the occasion and the drift of the dream. The thoughts which came 
 into the King's mind upon his bed were, " what should come to pass 
 hereafter ; " or, what should be the future destiny of that great empire 
 which he had now acquired ; whether it should continue, or whether 
 it should be changed, and pass away to others, in the course of 
 " those seasons and times of revolution in which God removeth and 
 setteth up Kings ; " and the ensuing dream figuratively intimated that 
 it should be changed. In the compound image which he saw in this 
 vision, 1 . " The head of pure gold," denoted Nebuchadnezzar him- 
 self, and the succeeding Kings of the Babylonian dynasty ; 2. " The 
 breast and arms of silver," the next kingdom of the Medes and 
 Persians, inferior to the former ; 3. " The belly and the thighs of 
 brass," the succeeding kingdom of the Macedonians and Greeks, 
 whose arms were brass ; 4. " The legs of iron, and the feet and toes 
 partly iron, and partly clay," the empire of the Romans, which 
 should be as strong as iron ; but the kingdoms into which it was to 
 be divided, composed of heterogeneous materials, which should be 
 partly strong, and partly weak ; and, 5. The spiritual kingdom of 
 the stone, or of Christ, which was to be set up by the God of heaven, 
 " in the days of these Kings," or, before the end of the last, the Ro- 
 man empire, upon the ruins of those temporal kingdoms and empires ; 
 and was destined to fill the whole earth, and to stand and continue 
 for ever : * a prophecy which, from that day to this, has been run- 
 ning its course, and is still running. Suffice it to say, that the King 
 
 Hales's Analysis of Chronology, be., vol. ii., p. 467. 8vo. London, 1830.
 
 OF DANIEL. 73 
 
 recognised his lost dream, and without hesitation appears to have 
 accepted its interpretation. Daniel obtained the only reward for 
 which he cared, a public recognition of the greatness and glory of 
 the God of Israel ; and he received a recompence which to* one as 
 mercenary as Balaam would be the summum bonum of his desires. 
 Nebuchadnezzar prostrated himself before Daniel, and offered him 
 incense, according to the usual mode of adoration to Kings and supe- 
 riors in the east ; the Prophet was loaded with magnificent presents, 
 appointed ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and made chief 
 Governor, or President, (Rab-mag, or Archimagus, Jer. xxxix. 3,) 
 over the whole college of wise men in Babylon, the two highest civil 
 and ecclesiastical employments in the state. When Daniel entered 
 upon the duties of his somewhat novel office, he forgot not his friends 
 and companions in tribulation ; but at his request they were pro- 
 moted, under him, to conduct the affairs of the province of Babylon, 
 while he acted himself as Privy Counsellor to the King, to advise him 
 in the administration of justice. 
 
 The companions of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 
 addressed themselves to the King's business with diligence and care. 
 Attempting nothing in the form of display, they pursued the even 
 tenor of their course, exemplifying a wise and beneficial administra- 
 tion. Envy was ultimately excited ; their enemies sought to injure 
 their reputation at court, and to alienate from them the royal favour. 
 It was not long before an opportunity was afforded. Nebuchadnezzar 
 was a gross idolater, and not many months elapsed after the event 
 which we have just recorded, when a colossal image of gold * was 
 erected by the haughty and arrogant conqueror, as if in opposition to 
 his dream, and the interpretation thereof. The conduct of the King 
 on this occasion certainly proves that the miraculous interposition 
 of the Most High, with regard to the import of the vision, made no 
 lasting impression on his mind. The consecration of this idol to Bel 
 or Belus, (Dan. iv. 8,) shows, also, that he no longer acknowledged 
 the superiority of the God of Daniel. (Dan. ii. 47.) Having erected 
 this statue, he issued a royal mandate, requiring the authorities of 
 the land to attend at the grand festival to be held at its dedication. 
 Doubtless the Hebrew Princes received the summons to be present, 
 and to render their homage. Their absence could not be overlooked ; 
 and the utmost advantage would be taken of it by their active and 
 malignant foes. The situation of these confessors was doubtless one 
 of great difficulty. " Emergencies analogous to it," says a modern 
 writer, " arise in the history of every servant of God. The incidents 
 connected with it may not be so striking, but to himself they are 
 equally trying. A step is to be taken, decisively, which must affect 
 his character and destiny for life. The secret and most important 
 point involved in it, is fidelity to God. No friend on earth can 
 advise with him conclusively in the matter, for he cannot enter fully 
 into all the circumstances of the case ; nor is he acquainted with the 
 inward monitions of conscience which should be taken into account. 
 He may state general principles ; such, for example, as this, ' The 
 
 For some particulars respecting Nebuchadnezzar's golden image, see note A, p. 90. 
 VOL. I. L
 
 74 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 will of God is your sanctification ; ' ' In all thy ways acknowledge 
 him ; ' 'Do all to the glory of God ; ' but their special application 
 rests with the individual who should best know his own position. A 
 trial is presented, and every facility is given to evade it ; none of his 
 acquaintance will be reluctant to justify his immediate escape from it, 
 but will rather applaud his determination to turn away. Yet within 
 him there is a deep and a solemn consciousness that to do this would 
 be to betray his trust. Then is to be fulfilled the saying of the Lord 
 Jesus, ' He that loveth his life shall lose it : and he that hateth his 
 life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal.' 
 
 " It is not sufficient to imagine reasons that might have been urged 
 with some degree of plausibility, to dissuade the youths from a rash 
 exposure to the wrath of the King. ' Let us consider,' one of them 
 might have said, ' the fatal consequences of maintaining, under existing 
 circumstances, inflexible adherence to an abstract principle. By a 
 remarkable interposition of Providence, we have been raised to places 
 of honour and emolument. Our influence is gradually extending in 
 the country, and facilities, ere long, no doubt, will be afforded for 
 religious usefulness. All will be lost by precipitation. The posts we 
 hold will be occupied by men of opposite views, who will employ 
 their official power to crush what we have attempted with so much 
 care to foster. There is no hope of making the slightest impression 
 by the open avowal of our principles in a juncture like this. To do 
 so, will be perfectly suicidal : it will only be to offer ourselves as 
 sheep for the slaughter. And where is the necessity for it ? Can 
 we not mingle in the crowd, and present a kind of homage in our 
 civil capacity to the golden image, which involves no act of religious 
 worship ? * In a short time events may transpire that will enable us 
 to speak with greater advantage from our present moderation. Be- 
 sides, after the royal favours we have received, obstinate pertinacity, 
 and that on an occasion of such great national interest, will be 
 looked upon as ingratitude, and disaffection to the state. Our coun- 
 trymen will also suffer, and the happy state of tranquillity hitherto 
 
 " There are three sorts of men who think they may be freed from the charge 
 of idolatry for any outward, reverent gesture yielded unto an image, having their heart 
 free : those who do thus conform to please a Prince, or, through fear, to escape the 
 peril of death, or other grievous punishment ; or those who approach such idolatrous 
 services, and pomp of Papal superstitious ceremonies, only to see the manner of them. 
 But all these are found to be in great error. 1. The Lord, in the second commandment, 
 directly forbids bowing down to such images. And the Lord saith to the Prophet Elias, 
 that he had reserved seven thousand who had not bowed their knees unto Baal. 2. Our 
 bodies, with our souls, are the temples of the Spirit ; and therefore neither the one 
 nor the other should be defiled, but preserved pure and holy for the Lord. 3. It satis- 
 fieth the idolaters themselves, if men be but conformable in their outward gesture to 
 their idolatrous service j as, in this case, Nebuchadnezzar exacteth no confession of the 
 month or subscription with the hand of or unto this image, but only to fall down and 
 worship it. 4. In the purer ages of the church, even they were held to be idolaters 
 who, being constrained by force, did yield the least outward service unto the idols of the 
 Gentiles ; as Origen was excommunicate of the church for holding a little incense in his 
 hand before an idol. 6. The Romanists will not come to our churches and service 
 when there is no external object that may offend them ; therefore, much less should 
 Protestants show such weakness as to assemble with them in their idolatrous temples 
 which lay so many stumbling-blocks before their eyes." Hexapla in Danielem. By 
 Daniel Willett. Fol., 1610.
 
 OF DANIEL. 75 
 
 enjoyed will be broken up, without the faintest prospect that any 
 good will be effected to counterbalance the serious evils that must 
 inevitably accrue. Be not righteous over much ; neither make thy- 
 self overwise : why shouldest thou destroy thyself ? ' Had counsels 
 and suggestions of this nature been entertained, the young men 
 would have been enfeebled, divided in opinion, and so filled with anx- 
 ious misgivings, as to become unfitted for the high resolve, fidelity to 
 God now commanded. But they knew what to do. This was not the 
 first time they had to ask mercies of the God of heaven, and to inquire 
 his will. They acted in concert. They were agreed in the request 
 they should offer, and were prepared to submit the judgment, the 
 conscience, and the affections to divine control. The sincere Chris- 
 tian, relying implicitly on his gracious Leader, never needs to fear 
 that he shall lose his way. The saying of the Lord Jesus is divinely 
 true : ' The light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be 
 single, thy whole body shall be full of light.' As on the night when 
 the Lord stood by the Apostle, and said, ' Be of good cheer, Paul ; 
 for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear wit- 
 ness also at Rome ; ' so distinctly was the will of God made known 
 to his witnesses in the province of Babylon. Charged to bear testi- 
 mony to the truth, their determination was inflexible. The firm- 
 ness and resolution called forth by a sense of Christian duty, is truly 
 wonderful. It is said of President Edwards, that ' one of the most 
 impressive features of his moral and religious character, was the 
 paramount regard for duty which controlled all his actions. When 
 his mind was once made up to the course he should pursue, he was 
 distinguished by a stern fixedness of purpose, an indomitable resolve, 
 which no consideration of interest, no strength of prejudices, no 
 allurements of ease, no impulse of passion could penetrate or soften. 
 All these fell around him, like snow-flakes on granite, and produced 
 about as much effect.' We have a noble example of this in St. Paul, 
 when he met the elders at Miletus. Yet there is a distinctive 
 peculiarity in decision of character, arising out of the force of holy 
 principles, which should be carefully noted. It is not blind and 
 impetuous, and there is nothing in it reckless or irrational."* 
 
 The principles which until now had governed these devoted men 
 were about to be tested. " Blessed is the man that endureth tempta- 
 tion ; for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life, which 
 the Lord hath promised to them that love him." (James i. 12.) The 
 scene that is described in the third chapter of the Book of Daniel is 
 highly imposing. A vast multitude are assembling on the plain of 
 Dura. The pomp and splendour of Babylon are gathered to render 
 honour to the golden image which the King had erected. Presently 
 the royal Herald proclaims, "To you it is commanded, people, 
 nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the 
 cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of 
 music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchad- 
 
 The Hebrew Martyrs, <fec. By John Waddington. Pp. 33 36. See also Scrip- 
 ture Characters. By the Rev. Thomas Robinson, M.A. Vol. ii., p. 424. 8vo. edit. 
 London. Longman, 1818. 
 
 L 2
 
 ,"6 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 nezzar the King hath set up : and whoso falleth not down and worship- 
 peth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery 
 furnace."* (Dan. iii. 4 6.) The immense multitude would eagerly 
 fall down, and yield the obsequious and disgusting homage. The 
 enemies of the Hebrews, judging the moment had arrived in which 
 they must be undone for ever, immediately announced their absence 
 from the festival to the Sovereign, saying, " King, live for ever. 
 There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the 
 province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ; these 
 men, King, have not regarded thee : they serve not thy gods, nor 
 worship the golden image which thou hast set up."-f Messengers 
 were immediately despatched to bring the nonconformists into the 
 royal presence, to answer the charge of the Chaldeans. We may 
 imagine them standing in the centre of a malignant group of spec- 
 tators, and in the presence of an exasperated and furious Monarch. 
 The silence of the moment is broken by Nebuchadnezzar, who thus 
 addresses the offending captives : " Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, 
 and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden 
 image which I have set up ? Now if ye be ready, that at what time 
 ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and 
 dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the 
 image which I have made, well : but if ye worship not, ye shall be 
 cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace ; and 
 who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands 1 " Shad- 
 rach and his companions staggered not, nor felt any difficulty in 
 determining the line of conduct which they ought to pursue. With- 
 out even alluding to their individual interest or preservation, or 
 endeavouring by any subtleties to evade or explain away the guilt of 
 sinful concession, and without even seeking to avert the King's dis- 
 pleasure by any mean and cowardly artifice or obsequious persuasion, 
 they declared their unalterable purpose to hazard all consequences, 
 and maintain steadfast adherence to the worship of Jehovah. The 
 result of their early training, and the effect of fervent and habitual 
 prayer, are now conspicuous. Their minds were resolved. They 
 required no time for deliberation. Their spirit rose with the increas- 
 ing responsibility of their situation, and at once they expressed those 
 
 For some further considerations on this subject, see note B, p. 92. 
 t " 1. The malicious Chaldees were so incensed against the servants of God, who 
 refused to worship the image, that they could not stay at all ; but presently, at the same 
 instant, they made their complaint of them. 2. They bend their accusation, not only 
 against those three, whom they hold to be offenders, but against the whole nation of the 
 Jews. ' They grievously accused the Jews.' 3. They, by flattering speech, insinuated 
 themselves to the King, that they might be the better heard. ' O King, live for 
 ever!' 4. Then they subtilly seek to bring their persons into disgrace and hatred : 
 (1.) By their nation and country, they were Jews, the King's captives and vassals. 
 (2.) By their unthankfulness for the benefits which the King had bestowed upon them, 
 who had made them governors and chief officers. (3.) By their apostacy, that, being 
 called by Babylonian names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and incorporated into 
 that nation, yet were of a diverse religion and usage. 5. Then followeth the crime, 
 which they object against them, which was threefold: (1.) Contempt of the King's 
 commandment and decree. (2.) Irreligion in not worshipping the King's gods. (3.) 
 Mutiny and sedition in being singular, among the rest, in that they did not fall down 
 before the King's image." Hexapla in Danielem. By Andrew Willett. Fol., 1610.
 
 OF DANIEL. 77 
 
 noble sentiments recorded by tbe pen of inspiration, tbe heroism and 
 sublimity of which will be applauded unto the end of time : " O 
 Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. 
 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the 
 burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, 
 King. But if not, be it known unto thee, King, that we will not 
 serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set 
 up." One thing they had to do. Whatever the issue of the con- 
 test might be, the duty of these noble men was as clear as a sun- 
 beam. " If it be so," said the intrepid confessors, " our God whom 
 we serve is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us ; but if not, we 
 will not serve thy gods." * 
 
 This praiseworthy independence of spirit which was manifested by 
 these Hebrew confessors gave them a moral superiority which in a 
 considerable degree disturbed the mind of Nebuchadnezzar. From 
 the sacred record we learn that it excited his fiercest indignation. 
 " Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage 
 was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego : therefore 
 he spake, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one 
 seven times more than it was wont to be heated. And he com- 
 manded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shad- 
 rach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to cast them into the burning 
 fiery furnace. Therefore because the King's commandment was 
 urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew 
 those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. And. 
 these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell down bound 
 into the midst of the burning fiery furnace." (Dan. iii. 19 23.) 
 None can contemplate this scene without admiring the piety and 
 courage of the three men. If, indeed, as a pious writer has 
 observed, our religion be not worth contending for, it were absurd 
 to incur reproach and opposition on its account : but if it be the 
 most important concern, as it doubtless is, every other consideration 
 should be sacrificed to it. Where, then, is our esteem for the Gospel 
 of Christ ? We know not its value, nor are we attached to its inter- 
 est, if we are easily led away by the enticements of an evil world. 
 If we be afraid or ashamed to maintain the confession and practice 
 of it against the infidel and the sensualist ; if we lend a listening ear, 
 and yield to the suggestions and solicitations of those who would 
 induce us to abandon the truth, it would not then be so properly 
 stated that our principles have been renounced, as that we are desti- 
 
 Never was the observation of the heathen poet better illustrated than in the history 
 before us : 
 
 " Justum ac tenacem propositi virum 
 Non civium ardor prava jnbentium, 
 Non vultus instantis tyranni, 
 Mente quatit solida." 
 
 Hor., Carm., lib. iii., 3. 
 Thus translated by Francis : 
 
 " The man in conscious virtue bold, 
 
 Who daivs his secret purpose hold, 
 Unshaken hears the crowd's tumultuous cries, 
 And the stern tyrant's brow, in act to rage."
 
 78 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 tute of all good principles. Those adversaries are far less dan- 
 gerous to Christianity who openly, and without a blush, reject the 
 whole scheme of salvation by Jesus Christ, than those who privately 
 profess attachment to it, but in public shrink from its avowal. Let 
 us cease to talk of the prudence or expediency of temporizing, as 
 though our usefulness and peace could be increased and established 
 by an occasional conformity to the sinful maxims and customs of an 
 unregenerate world. According to this scheme, the noble army of 
 martyrs acted a most foolish part, and the church would have been 
 better served had they spared their blood ! If such a plan had been 
 adopted in this country, the Pope and the devil would have been the 
 harmonious dividers of the spoil, and the announcement of the doc- 
 trines of the cross have been hushed in the silence of the grave. 
 The undaunted confessors of the faith in every age have appealed to 
 the word of God, and to the reason of those who would draw them 
 from their steadfastness. " Whether it be right in the sight of God 
 to hearken unto you, more than unto God, judge ye." (Acts iv. 19.) 
 " Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no 
 more that they can do ; but fear him, who after he hath killed hath 
 power to cast into hell." (Luke xii. 4, 5.) The Most High is more 
 honoured by our steadfast adherence to his cause, than by our cow- 
 ardly desertion. Let us therefore allow no circumstances in which 
 we may be placed to terrify or alarm. Shame, poverty, imprison- 
 ment, or even " the burning fiery furnace," are infinitely less to be 
 .dreaded than the frown and indignation of a just and sin-avenging 
 God! 
 
 The Hebrews were cast down, but not destroyed. They were 
 bound, but they lost nothing of their liberty ; although the hallowed 
 intrepidity and courage with which they vindicated the insulted 
 honour of Jehovah exasperated the Monarch more and more, his rage 
 and pride were suffered to break forth with unrestrained violence, 
 as if to remind Nebuchadnezzar of his former ephemeral and forgot- 
 ten convictions, and to convince his subjects how weak and contempt- 
 ible an earthly potentate can become, when he is " by stronger arm 
 belaboured." The heat of the furnace reached an intensity that might 
 fuse steel or liquify the diamond ; but to these confessors it became 
 as harmless and refreshing as the gentle mountain breeze. This the 
 King ere long was made to know. In astonishment he rose up in 
 haste, and said to his counsellors, " Did we not cast three men bound 
 into the midst of the fire 1 They answered and said unto the King, 
 True, King. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, 
 walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt ; and the 
 form of the fourth is like the Son of God."* This effectually sub- 
 dued the wrath of the King, so that he instantly called forth the 
 persecuted saints from their prison. The fourth person alluded to 
 has been present in every scene of tribulation into which devoted 
 men have been led for the sake of truth since the world began. His 
 
 It is not improbable that Daniel might have communicated to Nebuchadnezzar, 
 Nathan and David's prophecies of the Son of God. (2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Psalm ii. 7 ; 
 ex. 1, &c.)
 
 OF DANIEL. 79 
 
 presence has cheered the solitude of (he desert ; it has made the 
 dungeon as the vestibule of glory ; it has filled the house of mourn- 
 ing, like that of the spirit of a better world ; it has given a tranquil- 
 lity in the midst of tumult, like the serene vault of heaven ; and 
 even in the agony of death, and in the loneliness of the dark valley, 
 it has brought to the soul of the believer light and joy fresh from 
 the fount of God. The utmost rage and hostility of all the powers 
 of evil can only drive the faithful follower of Christ nearer to him 
 who is the source of his strength, and the spring of all his joys. 
 " Upon their bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their 
 heads singed ; neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire 
 had passed on them ; " and thus was the promise fulfilled, " The Lord 
 will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in 
 darkness : for by strength shall no man prevail." 
 
 Those who have been valiant for the truth, and even ready to die 
 for its advancement, have ever felt the inwrought assurance of its 
 ultimate prevalence and success. The language addressed by the 
 Genevan Eeformer to the imperious and persecuting Monarch of 
 France expresses convictions common to all \vho have been commis- 
 sioned to make known the revealed thoughts of God. " We are," 
 said he, " fully conscious to ourselves how very mean and abject we 
 are, being miserable sinners before God, and accounted most despica- 
 ble before men ; being (if you please) the refuse of the world, deserv- 
 ing of the vilest appellations that can be found ; so that nothing 
 remains for us to glory in before God, but his mercy alone by which, 
 without any merit of ours, we have been admitted to the hope of 
 eternal salvation, and before men nothing but our weakness, the 
 slightest confession of which is esteemed by them as the greatest dis- 
 grace. But our doctrine must stand exalted above all the glory, 
 and invincible by all the power, of the world ; because it is not ours, 
 but the doctrine of God and of his Christ, whom the Father hath 
 constituted King, that he may have ' dominion from sea to sea, and 
 from the river to the ends of the earth ; ' and that he may rule in 
 such a manner, that the whole earth, with its strength of iron and 
 brass, with its splendour of gold and silver, smitten by the rod of his 
 mouth, may be broken to pieces like a potter's vessel ; for thus do 
 the Prophets foretell the magnificence of his kingdom." Hitherto 
 the course of truth in our revolted world serves rather to illustrate 
 the magnitude of the obstacles to be removed, and the might of the 
 foes with which it has to contend, than to exhibit, on a scale that 
 might strike the common observer, the rapidity and splendour of its 
 victories. It is the determination of the Most High that no flesh 
 shall glory in his presence. " Not by might, nor by power, but by 
 my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." He will make his strength 
 perfect in our weakness. The recorded experience of his servants, 
 who have laboured for truth in past times, is designed to impress 
 more deeply this sentiment on the hearts of his people. Yet it is 
 one they are too slow to learn. Oftentimes the chosen witness for 
 God has passed through years of suffering, and has sustained a long 
 succession of bitter disappointments, before he could feel habitually
 
 80 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 his own nothingness, and rest at the same time in the assurance of 
 the divine all-sufficiency. Whenever that preparation of mind has 
 been vouchsafed, the right hand of the Most High has achieved at 
 once that which never could have been accomplished by the combined 
 energies of all created beings exerted through the whole period of 
 their existence. It is possible that obstructions may arise to the 
 progress of holy principles far more formidable than have yet been 
 known, and that the church may be trained to a dependence on 
 divine aid far more simple and entire than that now felt. The signal 
 to break up the camp, and to depart from the sunny glades in which 
 it has long reposed, for the toilsome march and the arduous struggle, 
 will call forth the spirit of mutiny. Having in a state of compara- 
 tive truce " enjoyed great quietness," murmurs will be raised against 
 pushing the contest further. In the day of conflict, many will be 
 found more fit for the hospital than the field. Even the anticipation 
 of it will prompt many to ask leave of absence. Victory may seem 
 more remote than ever. Nevertheless the purposes of God cannot 
 be broken. The designs of infinite wisdom and love shall have their 
 fullest accomplishment. There shall come a period when the sacred 
 principles of the Gospel shall have a blessed and an illimitable sway. 
 " The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the 
 light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the 
 day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth 
 the stroke of their wound." (Isai. xxx. 26.) Already some gleams 
 of its splendour have burst forth from the thickest gloom. The 
 proudest opponents of the truth have had to acknowledge its power. 
 The haughty Monarch of Babylon was constrained to make this con- 
 fession : " Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, 
 who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in 
 him, and have changed the King's word, and yielded their bodies, that 
 they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God." 
 By the same sublime principle of trust in the Most High, the word 
 of Kings shall again be changed. Truths, simple and divine, pro- 
 claimed in weakness, in sorrow, and in the midst of scorn, shall find 
 their way secretly to the minds and hearts of men ; and, though 
 long buried, they shall effect a moral revolution : no decrees of 
 senates, and no devices of human policy, can prevent. " Just as the 
 seeds scattered in one generation, after lodging in the fissures of the 
 rock that frowns over all that is good and free and happy, gather 
 strength from every dew-drop, and sunbeam, till at length they tear 
 it from its seat ; so silent shall be the germination of truth in the 
 hearts of the people, and far more momentous its results." * 
 
 Thirty years rolled away, when Almighty God again visited Nebu- 
 chadnezzar with perplexing dreams, and exalted his name among the 
 Heathen through the wisdom imparted to Daniel. Having raised the 
 Chaldean empire to a state of grandeur till then unparalleled, and 
 enriched his metropolis with the spoils of vanquished nations ; hav- 
 ing terminated his victorious wars, and completed many astonishing 
 
 The Hebrew Martyrs ; or, the Triumph of Principle. By John Waddington. Pp. 
 6053. London, 1844.
 
 OP DAN1KL. 81 
 
 and ingenious designs for the enlargement, strength, and beauty of 
 his capital, and whilst he was enjoying the fruit of his ambition and 
 his toils ; he had a dream or vision which filled him with fearful appre- 
 hension and alarm. He saw a stately tree, fair and flourisliing to 
 look upon, affording shelter to the beasts of the field, and food to 
 the fowls of the air ; he witnessed an angel descend from heaven, 
 who ordered it to be cut down ; but the stump of the tree was to 
 remain until " seven times," or seven years, had passed over it, when 
 the fallen tree should recover its former height .and stateliness. The 
 wise men and astrologers of Babylon acknowledged their inability to 
 expound the dream, when Daniel was summoned into the presence 
 of the King, and ultimately declared the import of the vision. The 
 great and flourishing tree denoted the King himself, his greatness and 
 dominion. The holy Watcher who came down from heaven, and com- 
 manded to hew down the tree, but to bind the stump of its roots 
 that was left in the ground with a band of iron and brass, that it 
 might be wet with the dew of heaven, and its portion with the beasts 
 of the field, until the expiration of seven times, signified the decree 
 of the Most High, that he should be deprived of his reason, 
 dethroned, be banished from men, or human society, that he should 
 associate with the beasts of the field for seven years, until, by means 
 of this wholesome but severe discipline, he should come to himself, 
 and acknowledge the supremacy of Almighty God, " who ruleth in the 
 kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will." Daniel 
 followed this interpretation of the dream with impressive and excel- 
 lent counsel. "Wherefore, King, break off thy sins by righteous- 
 ness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if it may be 
 a lengthening of thy tranquillity." (Dan. iv. 27.) 
 
 The threatened judgment was delayed for the space of twelve 
 months, to allow the guilty Monarch time for repentance. He con- 
 tinued, however, to walk in the pride of his heart, forgetting his 
 dependence upon God, and arrogating glory to himself ; until one 
 day, when he was amusing himself in his palace, and from some 
 proud eminence of the building, taking an extensive survey of his 
 metropolis ; and, boasting of his mighty achievements, he exclaimed, 
 in the hearing of some obsequious courtier in attendance upon his 
 person, " Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the house 
 (capital) of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the 
 honour of my majesty ?" " While the word was in the King's mouth, 
 there fell a voice from heaven, saying, Nebuchadnezzar ! to thee be 
 it spoken, thy kingdom is departed from thee." The same hour the 
 thing foretold was fulfilled : he lost his reason and memory at once, 
 became incapable of governing the kingdom, and even of human 
 converse. Not one trace of his former rank, rationality, or grandeur 
 remained ; but he became like a beast of the field, ran wild, and 
 shunned the society of mankind. His Ministers, perceiving that it 
 was the hand of Providence which had thus debased their Sovereign, 
 and expecting, from Daniel's exposition of the dream, that the cala- 
 mity would continue seven years, left him to his fate, and put the 
 kingdom under a regency. There is a fragment of Chaldean history 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 82 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 still extant, -which mentions an interregnum occasioned by this King's 
 distraction. In this miserable condition he remained for the space 
 of seven years, under the peculiar care of divine Providence, which 
 is represented by a band of iron round the stump of the tree. At 
 the end of that time he recovered his reason and his kingdom ; was 
 re-established in his former authority, his Lords and Counsellors 
 sought unto him, and excellent majesty was apparent. Being made 
 fully sensible of the universal and uncontrollable dominion of the 
 Most High, by a public decree he acknowledged it throughout his 
 great empire, and magnified the mercy of God in his restoration. Here 
 was a reward to Daniel far more excellent than the gift of provinces. 
 What comfort to him, both as a saint and a patriot, was here ! Never, 
 in the brightest days of the church of Jerusalem, had a foreign King 
 confessed her God. But now, that to the eye of flesh she was pros- 
 trate in the dust, the first Monarch upon earth publicly acknowledged 
 him. In this the Prophet could not but see a prelude to the fulfilment 
 of his own prediction regarding the universal dominion of the kingdom 
 of heaven. Could his eye also faintly discover the future inutility of the 
 complex machinery of his own church, as based upon the narrow 
 and low foundation of the priesthood of Aaron, when he saw what 
 could be effected now that it was in abeyance ? Might he not see in 
 Nebuchadnezzar the first-fruits of that harvest of Kings and Queens, 
 that were to be its nursing-fathers and nursing-mothers, when its pale 
 should be opened to the whole earth ? But whatever entrance might 
 have been made for it by Nebuchadnezzar, it soon closed again, as far 
 as he was concerned. In the ensuing year he died.* 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil-Merodach. -f- The 
 first act of his reign was the enlargement of the Jewish King, Jehoia- 
 chin, from his prison, whom he treated kindly and hospitably all the 
 days of his life, setting him above the other captive Kings that were 
 in Babylon. (Jer. lii. 32; 2 Kings xxv. 28; compare Esther iii. 1.) 
 A Jewish tradition, noticed by Jerome, on Isai. xiv. 29, reports that 
 Evil-Merodach, (or Foolish Merodach,) during his father's distraction, 
 behaved so ill, in provoking a war with the Medes, that, on his reco- 
 very, Nebuchadnezzar threw him into prison, where he contracted 
 an intimacy with Jehoiachin. It is, however, not improbable that 
 this imprisonment took place at an earlier period. Xenophon relates, 
 in his Cyropsedia, (lib. i.,) that the son of the King of Assyria, or 
 Babylon, during the reign of Astyages, King of Media, on a hunting 
 party, when he was going to be married, wantonly made a predatory 
 excursion into the Median territory, but was encountered and repulsed 
 by a party of Medes, chiefly by the valour of young Cyrus, the grandson 
 of Astyages, then about fifteen or sixteen years old, which fixes the 
 date of the transaction about B.C. 584, the year of the siege of Tyre. 
 But this aggression of Evil-Merodach, and still more his disgraceful 
 
 Evans's Scripture Biography, pp. 181, 182. 
 
 t The accession of this Prince was in the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's cap- 
 tivity, (Jer. lii. 31 ; 2 Kings xxv. 27 ; or B.C. 697 36 ; B.C. 561,) which exactly 
 accords with the date of the accession of Ilvarodam, in Ptolemy's canon, proving that 
 he was Evil-Merodach, and also the correctness of this period of sacred chronology from 
 its conformity with that scientific canon. (Hales's Chronology.)
 
 OF DANIEL. 83 
 
 defeat, must have provoked his irritable father, and also his mother, 
 the wife of Nebuchadnezzar,* who was a Mede herself, and the 
 daughter of Astyages, for this insult offered to his grandfather. 
 
 On Evil-Merodach's accession to the throne, Xenophon relates that 
 he set himself to form a powerful confederacy of the neighbouring 
 states, the Lydians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Carians, Paphlagonians, 
 and Cilicians, westwards, and the Indians eastward, against the 
 Medes ; alleging that, by their junction and intermarriages with the 
 Persians, they were grown great and powerful, and unless they were 
 opposed with the united force of the confederates, they would subdue 
 them separately ; but Cyrus, who was appointed General of the com- 
 bined army of the Medes and Persians, by Cyaxares, his uncle and 
 father-in-law, by his promptness and activity anticipated the threat- 
 ened invasion, attacked the Babylonians, routed and pursued them 
 to their camp, and in the engagement slew their King.f 
 
 Belshazzar succeeded to the empire, who was the grandson of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, who is, however, called " his father," by the usual 
 latitude of signification that is attached to that term in Scripture. 
 (Dan. v. 2, 11, 13.) The only circumstances of his reign which are 
 recorded on the sacred page, are the visions of Daniel, and the sacri- 
 legious feast of the King, and his violent death. While he swayed 
 the sceptre, the influence of Daniel declined, and the Jews expe- 
 rienced the greatest pressure from their captivity. The Prophet 
 Isaiah described the Babylonian dynasty as " the scourge of Pales- 
 tine," Nebuchadnezzar, " a serpent," Evil-Merodach, " a cockatrice," 
 and Belshazzar, "a fiery flying serpent." Xenophon, it will be 
 remembered, confirms this prophetic character by two atrocious 
 instances of cruelty and barbarity, exercised by Belshazzar upon some 
 of his chief and most deserving nobles. He slew the only son of 
 Gobryas, in a transport of rage, because at a hunting match he hit 
 with his spear a bear, and afterwards a lion, when the King had 
 missed both ; and, in a fit of jealousy he brutally mal-treated Gada- 
 tas, because one of his concubines had commended him as a hand- 
 some man. His last and most heinous offence was the profanation 
 of the sacred vessels belonging to the temple of Jerusalem, which 
 his wise grandfather, and even his foolish parent, hesitated not to 
 respect. Having made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, he 
 ordered those vessels to be brought during the banquet, that he, his 
 Princes, his wives, and his concubines might drink out of them, 
 which they did ; and, to aggravate sacrilege by apostacy and rebellion, 
 and ingratitude against the supreme Author of all their enjoyments, 
 they " praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and 
 stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know, and the God in whose 
 
 " Herodotus, who calls her Nitocris, and represents her as the principal improver 
 of Babylon, because she carried on, during her regency, the works which Nebuchadnez- 
 zar had begun before his distraction, says, that she carefully and anxiously endeavoured 
 to obstruct the passes leading to Media, and to prevent any intercourse with that king- 
 dom, because the Medes were now grown powerful and formidable. (Males'* Chrono- 
 
 l*gyO 
 
 t Hales's Analysis of sacred Chronology, vol. U , p. 461. 
 
 M '-'
 
 84 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 hand was their breath, and whose were all their ways, they glorified 
 not." (Dan. v. 23.) 
 
 Almighty God, who was provoked at such insolence and impiety, 
 denounced the doom of the King in the midst of the entertainment, 
 by the sudden apparition of a divine hand, which wrote on the 
 plaster of the wall a mysterious inscription. The King was terribly 
 surprised and affrighted : " His countenance was changed, and his 
 thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, 
 and his knees smote against each other." * (Dan. v. 6.) When 
 none of the wise men of Babylon, whom the King hastily sent for, could 
 even read, f much less interpret, the writing, Nitocris, " the Queen- 
 mother," or " grandmother " of the King, hearing of the alarm occa- 
 sioned by the prodigy, came into the banqueting room, and endea- 
 voured to compose the mind of the King, advising him to send for 
 Daniel, who with the Queen had been absent from the feast, as one, 
 with whose abilities in such affairs she was well acquainted, whom 
 she had constantly employed in the direction of the state, and as one 
 in whom " the spirit of the gods" resided. Daniel was, therefore, 
 immediately summoned : he modestly declined the proffered honours 
 and rewards which Belshazzar promised, and proceeded to show, 
 with admirable intrepidity and freedom, the designs of Jehovah, 
 with regard to the impious and wretched Monarch. He proved that 
 the writer of the inscription was none other than the offended God 
 of Israel ; and, after reminding the King of the punishment incurred 
 by Nebuchadnezzar for his pride and capricious cruelty in the tem- 
 porary loss of his understanding, and of his kingdom on account of 
 his rebellion and ingratitude, he proceeded to read the inscrip- 
 tion, which was in the Chaldee tongue : MENE, " God hath num- 
 bered thy kingdom (reign) and finished it ; " the repetition empha- 
 tically signifying, that the decree was certain, and would " shortly 
 come to pass." (See Gen. xli. 32.) TEKEL, " Thou art weighed in 
 the balance, and art found wanting." (Job xxxi. 6 ; Rev. vi. 5.) 
 PERES, "Thy kingdom is divided ;" UPHARSIN, "and given to the 
 Mede and Persian." " In that night was Belshazzar King of the 
 Chaldeans slain." J (Dan. v. 2530.) 
 
 * This passage is supposed to be one of the finest and liveliest amplifications of dis- 
 may to be found throughout the sacred classics, and infinitely exceeds, both in accuracy 
 and force, the most admired of the Heathen ; such as, " et corde et genibus tremit," 
 of Horace, and " tarda trementi genua labant," of Virgil. 
 
 t The reason why the Magi could not decipher the inscription, was, that it was 
 written hi the primitive Hebrew character, which differed totally from the Chaldee. It 
 was the original from which the Samaritan was formed, and which therefore it nearly 
 resembled, though being greatly superior to it in beauty, symmetry, and elegance. Some 
 advantageous specimens of it are fortunately preserved on sacred shekels and Jewish 
 coins of high antiquity, drawings of which may be seen in Walton's Supplementum de 
 Siclorum Forms et Inscriptionibus, prefixed to the first volume of the London Polyglott 
 Bible, and elsewhere. 
 
 t The conciseness of Holy Writ has not explained how he was slain. This we may 
 collect, with some correction, from the account of Xenophon, that he was slain by con- 
 spirators ; for he states, that Gobryas and Gadatas, who led the band that broke into 
 the royal palace, were the first who adored the gods for having punished the impious 
 King. Daniel's interpretation of the hand-writing upon the wall most probably has- 
 tened his doom. The conspirators, with their leaders, considered him as devoted to
 
 OF DANIEL. 85 
 
 The family of Nebuchadnezzar being now extinct, and the Babylo- 
 nian dynasty ended, according to the testimony of the inspired 
 Prophets, no one had a greater right to the crown than Cyaxares, or 
 " Darius the Mede." He was pointed out as the next successor 
 by Daniel, whose interpretation of the divine inscription must 
 have had the strongest weight with the grandees and the whole 
 nation ; he was the Queen-mother's brother, and the next of kin by 
 her side to the throne, and also he was the most powerful competitor 
 for it, and a Prince of an amiable and pleasant disposition. On 
 these accounts, the Babylonians made to him a voluntary tender of 
 the sovereignty, which he accepted. (Dan. v. 31.) 
 
 The first act of his reign, as may be collected from the historian 
 Berosus, was the appointment of Nabonadius, a Babylonian nobleman, 
 not allied to the royal family, to be King, or Viceroy, under him, 
 according to the established policy of the Medes and Persians, in 
 order, as far as possible, to conciliate the good-will of his new sub- 
 jects. Daniel, who contributed so greatly to the accession of Darius, 
 was in high favour with him ; and, accordingly, on his next appoint- 
 ment of the Presidents of the provinces, he placed the Prophet at 
 their head, and designed to set him over the whole united realm, 
 because of his consummate wisdom. (Dan. vi. 1 3.) The Median 
 and Persian nobility could not brook the exaltation of a man who 
 was of a despised nation, who had no country, who was a slave, and 
 had been found in the ranks of the enemy, to become a Vizier or 
 Satrap in the mighty empire. It is recorded, that they despaired of* 
 discovering anything whereof to accuse him in his government, 
 which is an irrefragable proof of his uprightness and fidelity ; but 
 knowing his firmness and consistency in the worship of Jehovah 
 alone, they laid a snare for him in this matter : the expedient, how- 
 ever, was, under the superintending care and control of the divine 
 Being, made to advance his own glory, and to expedite the redemp- 
 
 immediate destruction, by Jehovah himself, for his sacrilege. The great feast, on 
 the night of which he was slain, appears to have been a season of profound peace and 
 tranquillity, when " a thousand of his lords " could freely come from all parts of his 
 empire, without molestation or interruption from a besieging enemy, and when the King 
 would be most apt " to forget God," after he had eaten and was full. Profane writers 
 give a variety of names to the last King that reigned in Babylon : he is called by 
 Berosns, Nabonnedus ; by Megasthenes, Nabonnedochus ; by Herodotus, Labynetns ; 
 and by Josephus, Naboandelns, who, he says, is the same as Belshazzar ; but these 
 authors are, on many occasions, so contradictory and inconsistent, that when they at 
 all interfere with Scripture, their evidence must lose its authority. They agree in the 
 important fact, that Babylon was taken during a festival ; and both Herodotus and 
 Xenophou relate the drainage of the river by Cyrus ; by which stratagem he gained 
 admission for his troops. The cause of the contradictory accounts related in the ancient 
 writers, may, in some degree, be ascertained from the hints they give us of the state of 
 the kingdom of Babylon, after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, or, perhaps, during his 
 distraction. Evil-Merodach, his successor, was, as his name implies, a weak Prince; 
 and, taking advantage of this circumstance, several of the Princes mentioned by these 
 different authorities, may have opposed him, and successively exercised the regal power, 
 while he only nominally retained it. And to these usurpers, in all probability, may be 
 attributed the various accounts handed down to us of the Babylonish succession, during 
 thin period. The injured nobleman in the Cyropaedia, repeatedly praises the father of 
 that King of Babylon, whom Cyrus was proceeding against ; whom the latter calls the 
 Assyrian.
 
 86 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 tion of his captive people. Wherever an eminent degree of vital 
 religion has been conspicuous, even in the most exalted station, it has 
 been the object of hatred and opposition, thus exhibiting the depra- 
 vity of the human heart, that real holiness, when exemplified in life, 
 should excite disgust and persecution. 
 
 It was a maxim of the Medo-Persian empire, that no law con- 
 firmed or signed by the King could be abrogated or altered ; a 
 maxim evidently based upon the principle, that the King was infalli- 
 ble ; which the revocation or revision of an edict would seem to con- 
 tradict. The Princes, therefore, repaired to the King, and informed 
 him, that they had determined to establish a royal statute, that if 
 any man should prefer a petition to any other than the King himself, 
 whether God or man, during the space of thirty days, he should 
 be cast into the den of lions,* kept for the punishment of crimi- 
 nals. The proposition flattered the vanity of Darius : blinded 
 by which, he signed the impious decree, and it became law. In 
 this wicked and foolish order, we perceive the distinct beginning 
 of that deification of their despots, which Rome transferred from 
 Asia ; and Daniel gave a glorious example of resistance, which was 
 afterwards maintained by his countrymen of the flesh, against the 
 pretensions of the insane Caligula, and by his spiritual countrymen, 
 the Christians, against the whole series of heathen Emperors ; and 
 which has greedily been adopted by the Church of Eome, in her 
 iniquitous and blasphemous pretensions. 
 
 After the decree had received the sign-manual of the Monarch, 
 Daniel was diligently watched ; and as he sought no concealment, he 
 was very soon found praying and giving thanks to God as usual, thrice 
 a day, in his chamber, with his face towards Jerusalem ; on which 
 the Princes hastened to report him to Darius, as one who had violated 
 the decree, and who evidently despised the authority and majesty of 
 the King. The effect upon Darius was different from what they had 
 anticipated. He immediately perceived the error into which he had 
 fallen, together with the subtlety and malice of the enemies of the 
 man of God ; and it must doubtless have been mortifying to discover 
 that whilst these men had been extolling him as a god, they had in 
 reality been only using him as a tool to serve their own malignant 
 and cruel purposes. He endeavoured to dissemble his resentment for 
 the present, and laboured with great assiduity the remainder of the 
 day, to contrive some counteracting decree, but in vain : the King was 
 most reluctantly compelled to order his execution ; and the same even- 
 ing Daniel was thrown into the den of lions, when the Monarch 
 
 * Exposing to wild beasts appears to have been a punishment among the Medes 
 and Persians. From them it doubtless passed to the Romans. In their theatres 
 they had two sorts of amusements, each sufficiently barbarous. Sometimes they cast 
 men naked to the wild beasts, to be devoured by them : this punishment was inflicted 
 on slaves and vile persons. Sometimes individuals were sent into the theatre, armed, to 
 fight with wild beasts : if they conquered, they had their lives and liberty ; but if 
 not, they fell a prey to the animals. To this latter usage, St. Paul refers, in 2 Tim. iv. 
 17, and 1 Cor. xv. 32. (Home's " Introduction to the Holy Scriptures," vol. iii., p. 167. 
 Ninth Edit.)
 
 OF DANIKL. 
 
 expressed an earnest wish, " May the God whom thou servest con- 
 tinually, deliver thee." (Dan. vi. 16.) * 
 
 The King evidently had some impression that the Most High 
 would appear in behalf of his servant, notwithstanding the injustice 
 and ingratitude which he had displayed. "A stone," we are told, 
 " was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den ;f and the King 
 sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords, that 
 the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel." All this pre- 
 caution served to render the purposes of divine Providence more 
 conspicuous. There was no trick or collusion. If Daniel be pre- 
 served, it must be by the power of the supreme God. The same care 
 was taken subsequently by the Jews, in the case of the burial of our 
 Saviour, which has served as one of the strongest proofs of his resur- 
 rection. Let us, however, see " the end of the Lord." Daniel was 
 protected, his enemies utterly confounded, and the name of the true 
 God was made known and glorified throughout that idolatrous country. 
 The Prophet went down into the midst of those fierce and voracious 
 animals ; and what else could have been expected, than that he would 
 instantly have been torn to pieces ? But he descended into the den 
 in faith, and the lions seemed for a time to forget their savage 
 nature. "No manner of hurt was found upon him, because he 
 believed in his God." (Dan. vi. 23.) 
 
 Early the following day, after a night of mourning and fasting, 
 Darius arose from his couch, and hastened to the den. When he 
 came thither, he cried to Daniel with a doleful voice, " Daniel, 
 servant of the living God, is thy God whom thou servest continually 
 able to deliver thee from the lions ? Then said Daniel unto the 
 King, King, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath 
 shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me : forasmuch as 
 before him innocency was found in me ; and also before thee, King, 
 have I done no hurt." (Dan. vi. 20 22.) Then the King was 
 exceedingly glad, and ordered Daniel to be drawn up, and at the same 
 time retaliated the punishment upon his accusers, their wives, and 
 
 * " In Morocco the King has a lions' den, into which men, particularly Jews, are 
 sometimes thrown ; but the latter generally come off unhurt, because the keepers of 
 these animals are Jews, who may safely be with them, with a rod in the hand, if they 
 only take care to go out backwards, as the lion does not suffer any one to turn his back 
 upon him. The other Jews do not let their brethren remain longer than a night 
 among the lions, as they might otherwise become too hungry ; but ransom them with 
 money, which is, in fact, the King's object. 
 
 " The construction of this lions' den is thus described by Host, in his Account of 
 Morocco and Fez: 'At one end of the royal palace there is a place for ostriches and 
 their young ; and beyond the other end, towards the mountains, there is a large lions' 
 den, which consists of a square hole in the ground, with a partition, in the middle of 
 which there is a door, which the Jews, who are obliged to maintain and keep them for 
 nothing, are able to open and shut from above, and can thus entice the lions, by means 
 of the food, from one division to the other, that they may clean it in the mean time. It 
 is all in the open air, and a person may look down over a wall, which is a yard and a 
 quarter high.' " Burder's " Oriental Customs," pp. 261, 262. 
 
 t " The mouth of the den." " A spacious subterraneous range, connected with a 
 lake of water, as the word 3T3 is sometimes taken. In ancient monarchies lions were 
 kept for the diversion of the people, and criminals were given them for fights and for 
 food. This, it would seem, was the case in Persia, and in Babylon. A hundred lions 
 were once exhibited at a show in Rome." (Sutcliffe's Comment. in loco.)
 
 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 their children, whom the lions instantly overcame, and brake their 
 bones in pieces before they reached the bottom of the den. 
 
 See this holy man ! 
 
 Death hath no power to harm him. Yon fell band 
 Of famish'd lions, soften'd at his sight, 
 Forgot their nature, and grew tame before him. 
 The mighty God protects his servants thus ! 
 The righteous thus he rescues from the snare ! 
 While Fraud's artificer himself shall fall 
 In the deep gulf his wily arts devised, 
 To snare the innocent. H. MORE. 
 
 Daniel had again the inexpressible satisfaction of being the instrument 
 of the Most High, in making His name known among the Heathen. 
 Darius was not content with the simple acknowledgment of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, but ordered that the God of Daniel should be feared and 
 honoured in all parts of his dominion ; and thus was he the means 
 of preparing the way of his countrymen to the land of their fathers. 
 
 The period of Israel's captivity was now fast approaching the 
 close. The manner in which Daniel is frequently named by his 
 contemporary Ezekiel, shows the pride and reverence with which the 
 whole nation looked up to their distinguished compatriot, the only 
 ground of hope and consolation to the scattered exiles. Beyond the 
 gloomy waste of the captivity, their Prophets had always opened a 
 vista of long ages of more than their former happiness and glory ; 
 but to which, their restoration to their own rich and pleasant land 
 was the first and preparatory promise. Jeremiah had limited the 
 duration of the captivity to seventy years : he had evinced his confi- 
 dence in the certainty of his own predictions, by one of the most 
 remarkable examples of teaching by significant action, so common 
 among the Hebrew Prophets. In the time of the greatest peril, he 
 had purchased an estate at Anathoth, and concealed the title-deeds 
 with the greatest care, in order that they might come to light, for the 
 benefit of his posterity, after the restoration of the Hebrew polity ; 
 in which event he thus showed his own implicit reliance. When, 
 therefore, they saw the storm bursting upon the haughty and oppres- 
 sive Babylon, when the vast plains of Shinaar glittered with the hosts 
 of the Medes and Persians, and Cyrus, the designated deliverer, 
 appeared at their head ; amid the wild tumults of the war, and the 
 shrieks and lamentations of the captured city, the Jews, no doubt, 
 were chanting, at least murmuring, in secret, the prophetic strains 
 of Isaiah or Jeremiah, which described the fall of the son of the 
 morning, the virgin daughter of Babylon sitting in the dust, the ceas- 
 ing of the oppressor, the ruin of the golden city.* 
 
 The life of Daniel was now advanced " some steps into the glorious 
 course of prophecy, which had been revealed to him. He had seen 
 the breast and arms of silver succeed to the golden head of the 
 image ; he had seen the first beast give way to the second ; he had 
 seen with his own eyes the fated Cyrus of Isaiah's prophecy ; and heard 
 with his own ears his proclamation of deliverance to Israel, amid 
 
 History of the Jews, vol. ii., p. 7. 12mo. London, 1830.
 
 OF DANIEL. 89 
 
 prayers, and tears, and blessings ; he had bidden farewell to the first 
 caravan of his returning countrymen. His eyes had seen the Lord's 
 salvation, and he was calmly awaiting his dismissal to that heavenly 
 Jerusalem, whose earthly type was denied to his eyes, now dim with 
 the infirmity of near ninety years. Yet his country and his church 
 occupied his unceasing care ; and he felt much concern at the news 
 of impediments which had already arisen within the first two years of 
 his country's restoration. He had been mourning and fasting, on 
 this account, for three whole weeks, when his final and crowning vision 
 was vouchsafed to him. It was, indeed, a fit termination to the mag- 
 nificent prospect which had been opened before him. Its approach 
 was announced by an involuntary quaking, which seized on Daniel 
 and his attendants. They fled and hid themselves, and Daniel was 
 left alone, half dead with exceeding awe, to behold the fearful 
 splendour of his visitant. It was no longer the angel Gabriel that 
 now appeared ; but his eyes beheld the glory of the Son of God, who 
 showed himself to him, as he afterwards did to St. John, clad in 
 the ensigns of his priestly office. A prophecy was then announced 
 to him, which, starting from that moment, ran its course through 
 successive ages, to the end of the world. Three grand periods were 
 marked out by numbers, so that it exceeded all previous disclosures 
 in certainty of application, no less than in magnificence and extent. 
 How trifling would now appear to him those lets and hinderances 
 which he had been bewailing ! What news could effectually trouble 
 him after the stupendous announcements of his glorious vision ? 
 
 " The brightness of this vision could scarcely become dull before 
 the Prophet breathed his last, and entered the holy region within that 
 veil, behind which lay the substance of the shadows which he had 
 been contemplating. His last days were such as befell no other of the 
 Prophets before him. Isaiah and his contemporaries died amid the 
 thickening gloom which portended the captivity of their country. 
 They saw the beginning of the anguish, but not of the comfort, which 
 they foretold. Jeremiah died with his melancholy song of rebuke in 
 his mouth. Ezekiel appears not to have survived the captivity. But 
 the life of Daniel was sufficiently long to include the captivity 
 between Jerusalem still standing, and Jerusalem rebuilt. He saw 
 the storm come on, and also go off. And, doubtless, from him 
 many of his countrymen derived those lessons of patient faith, which 
 supported them in the anxious vicissitudes of their resettlement. 
 In another respect, also, his life differed from that of every other 
 Prophet, excepting David. It was passed amid the splendour of a 
 court, and in the ministration of secular power. But this, which 
 has been objected to him by the narrow-minded and superstitious 
 descendants of his countrymen, serves to give him greater claim 
 to our admiration. To the man who finds a refuge from the 
 temptations of society only in fleeing to inactive solitude, surely 
 little praise can be awarded. He, probably, abandons a post in 
 which he might benefit others, for that which, at best, can only 
 benefit himself, and unprofitably lays up the talents which he had in 
 charge to spend. Daniel did not so. He manfully stood, where God 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 90 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 bad placed him, in the foremost rank, and maintained, with unbending 
 uprightness, a situation of most perilous temptation. A heathen 
 court surrounded the Jew with more than common calls of allurement 
 from duty. His legal purity was in jeopardy every moment ; and if 
 he once gave way on this point, it was not easy to stop in his career 
 of apostacy. Daniel maintained this point with the utmost jealousy, 
 and with it his moral rectitude and spiritual fidelity. He might at 
 any moment have retired from the weary toil of the perpetual struggle, 
 and might thus have won the reputation of a holy and mortified 
 hermit, instead of being excluded (as with David he has been) from 
 the bright ranks of the canonical Prophets. But his notions of duty 
 were not those of these wretched unpractical Doctors. He stood and 
 fought at his proper post. He not only kept himself as undefiled by 
 the world as the hermit, but, by active influence and public ministry, 
 did essential service both to his country and to the church of God. 
 Therefore, that glorious person whom he saw in vision, and the time 
 of whose coming he so distinctly marked out, has assigned to him 
 that rank which Rabbinical ignorance has denied. He that spake the 
 parable of the talents, and rebuked the hypocritical self-mortifying 
 notions of the Pharisees, pronounced Daniel to be a Prophet ; and his 
 beloved disciple built upon his prophecy, as upon a sure foundation, 
 the glorious fabric of his Revelation. His prophecy, indeed, is not 
 conveyed through the pleasing channel of poetry ; neither does it 
 contain the heart-stirring eloquence of exhortation, deprecation, and 
 denunciation, which moves us so much in all the other Prophets, 
 especially in the three greater ; but he simply narrates his visions, of 
 which his work is a prose history. But to what Prophet were such 
 visions accorded ? Assuredly, as long as the importance of prophecy 
 shall be measured by its extent, by its clearness, by its magnificence, 
 by its vital importance to the soul of man, the book of Daniel 
 is the first among prophetic books, and Daniel the first among 
 Prophets." * 
 
 NOTE A. Page 73. 
 
 NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S golden colossus has been considered a stupid subject, 
 because measured by false proportions : nevertheless, a proper understand- 
 ing of the altitude and accompaniments of this image, may solve the diffi- 
 culties which have been collected out of the description given of it : " It 
 was an image of gold : its height threescore cubits ; its breadth six cubits." 
 (Dan. iii.) The learned Prideaux felt very strongly the embarrassment 
 which arises from these dimensions : he expresses himself in these 
 words : 
 
 " This temple [of Belus] stood till the time of Xerxes ; but he, on his 
 return from the Grecian expedition, (Strabo, lib. xv., p. 738 ; Herodotus, 
 lib. i. ; Arrianus, de Expeditions Alexandri^) demolished the whole of it, 
 and laid it all in rubbish, having first plundered it of all its immense 
 riches, among which were several images or statues of massive gold, and one 
 which is said by Diodorus Siculus (lib. ii.) to have beqji forty feet high, 
 
 Scripture Biography. By the Rev. R. W. Evans, M. A. Second series, pp. 190 
 193. London, 1835.
 
 OF DAN ILL. 01 
 
 which might perchance have been that which Nebuchadnezzar consecrated 
 in the plains of Dura. Nebuchadnezzar's golden image is said, indeed, 
 in Scripture, to have been sixty cubits, that is, ninety feet high ; but that 
 must be understood of the image and pedestal both together. For that 
 image being stated to have been but six cubits broad, or thick, it is impos- 
 sible that the image could have been sixty cubits high. For that makes 
 its height to be ten times its breadth, or thickness, which exceeds all 
 the proportions of a man ; no man's height being above six times his 
 thickness, measuring the slenderest man living at his waist. But where 
 the breadth of this image was measured, is not said : perchance it was 
 from shoulder to shoulder ; and then the proportion of six cubits breadth 
 will bring down the height exactly to the measure which Diodorus hath 
 mentioned. For the usual height of a man being four and a half of his 
 breadth between the shoulders, if the image were six cubits broad between 
 the shoulders, it must, according to this proportion, have been twenty-seven 
 cubits high, which is forty feet and a half. Besides, Diodorus (lib. ii.) 
 tells us, that this image of forty feet high, contained a thousand Babylonish 
 talents of gold ; which, according to Pollux, who, in his Onomasticon, 
 reckons a Babylonish talent to contain seven thousand Attic drachmas, that 
 is, eight hundred and seventy-five ounces, this [according to the lowest 
 computation, valuing an Attic drachm at no more than seven-pence half- 
 penny ; whereas Dr. Bernard reckons it to be eight-pence farthing, which 
 would mount the sum much higher] amounts to three millions and a half 
 of our money. But if we advance the height of the statue to ninety feet 
 without the pedestal, it will increase the value to a sum incredible ; 
 and, therefore, it is necessary to take the pedestal also into the height 
 mentioned by Daniel. Other images and sacred utensils were also in that 
 temple, all of solid gold." (Prideaux's Connect., pp. 100, 101.) 
 
 The reader will perceive, that our learned author supposes the image 
 itself to have been only forty feet high ; while its pedestal was fifty feet 
 high : a disproportion of parts, which, if not absolutely impossible, is 
 utterly contradictory to every principle of science, even of the rudest ; and 
 a fortiori of the more refined periods. We have no instance of such 
 disproportion remaining. The arts had long been cultivated in India, and 
 in Egypt ; and doubtless in Babylon also. 
 
 Let us hear the original authors. Herodotus, who saw the temple 
 of Belus, is the best authority respecting it. " The temple of Jupiter 
 Belus, whose huge gates of brass may still be seen, is a square building, 
 each side of which is two furlongs. In the midst rises a tower, of the solid 
 depth and height of one furlong ; upon which, resting as upon a base, 
 seven other lesser towers are built in regular succession. The ascent is on 
 the outside ; which, winding from the ground, is continued to the highest 
 tower ; and in the middle of the whole structure there is a convenient 
 resting-place. In the last tower is a large chapel, in which is placed a 
 couch, magnificently adorned, and near it a table of solid gold ; but there 
 is no statue in the place. In this temple there is also a small chapel, lower 
 in the building, which contains a figure of Jupiter, in a sitting posture, 
 with a large table before him : these, with the base of the table, and the 
 seat of the throne, are all of the purest gold ; and are estimated by the 
 Chaldeans to be worth eight hundred talents. On the outside of this 
 chapel are two altars ; one is of gold, the other is of immense size, and 
 appropriated to the sacrifice of full-grown animals ; those, only, which 
 have not yet left their dams, may be offered on the golden altar. On the 
 larger altar, at the anniversary festival in honour of their god, the Chal- 
 
 N 2
 
 92 BOOK I. CHAPTER V. 
 
 deans regularly consume incense to the amount of a thousand talents. 
 There was formerly in this temple a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits 
 high : this, however, I mention, from the information of the Chaldeans, 
 not from my own knowledge." (Clio. 183.) 
 
 Diodorus Siculus, a much later writer, speaks to this effect (lib. ii.) : 
 " Of the tower of Jupiter Belus, the historians who have spoken have 
 given different descriptions ; and this temple being now entirely destroyed, 
 we cannot speak accurately respecting it. It was excessively high ; con- 
 structed throughout with great care ; built of brick and bitumen. Semi- 
 ram is placed on the top of it three statues of massive gold, of Jupiter, Juno, 
 and Rhea. Jupiter was erect, in the attitude of a man walking : he was 
 forty feet in height, and weighed a thousand Babylonian talents. Rhea, 
 who sat in a chariot of gold, was of the same weight. Juno, who stood 
 upright, weighed eight hundred talents." Diodorus proceeds to mention 
 many more articles of gold ; among others, " a vast urn, placed before the 
 statue of Jupiter, which weighed twelve hundred talents." 
 
 The reader will judge for himself respecting this extract : to us, it seems 
 that the Babylonians, regretting exceedingly the loss of their sacred treasures 
 from this temple, magnified both their value and their importance, when 
 discoursing concerning them, to inquiring strangers. Diodorus acknow- 
 ledges " he could not speak accurately respecting it." We rather adhere, 
 generally, to the relation of Herodotus : at least in these particulars, 1. 
 There was no statue in the highest chapel ; but, 2. In another chapel there 
 was a statue of Jupiter [Belus] sitting. 3. The worth, not the weight, 
 was calculated at so many talents, that is, including the labour, skill, pre- 
 paration, and accompaniments of the statue, its throne, &c. 4. The fes- 
 tival in honour of the god Belus was annual ; and it was prodigious, since, 
 no doubt, the other offerings corresponded to that of the incense ; a thou- 
 sand talents! 5. A statue of solid gold, of twelve cubits, (eighteen feet,) 
 is mentioned by the historian as a thing barely credible ; observe, of solid 
 gold ; yet a statue not solid, but an external shell of that metal, as statues 
 are usually cast, might have been very much larger, at much less expense 
 of gold. 6. We conclude, that Nebuchadnezzar consecrated his image at 
 an anniversary festival in honour of his deity. 
 
 After stating these variations and embarrassments of conception and 
 description, it will be thought desirable to obtain an idea of this image 
 more accurately approaching its true appearance and dimensions. 
 
 In the first place, we assume that the taste for sculpture in those ages was 
 pretty much the same throughout the East, in Babylon and in Egypt : 
 so that, by what figures of equal antiquity now exist, in Egypt, for 
 instance, we may estimate what was then adopted in Babylon, whose works 
 of art have perished. Secondly, that Nebuchadnezzar, having conquered 
 and ravaged Egypt, but a few years before this period, had undoubtedly 
 seen there the colossal statues of that country, erected by its ancient 
 Monarchs ; and as these were esteemed not only sacred objects, but also 
 capital exertions of art, we infer, that he proposed to imitate these, as to 
 their magnitude, and to surpass them, as to their materials. These assump- 
 tions being admitted, we proceed to examine some of those colossi which 
 still continue to ornament Egypt. 
 
 NOTE B. Page 76. 
 
 PROFESSOR EICHORN has manifested a strong inclination to expel the Pro- 
 phet Daniel from the sacred writings. As the difficulties which attend 
 some representations in this Prophet, (" fires which do not burn, and an
 
 OF DANIEL. 93 
 
 image strangely disproportioned," are especially selected,) are among the 
 Professor's principal reasons ; we could wish, before sentence were passed 
 on the delinquent, that the following hints in relation to some of his 
 subjects, were duly weighed, and accurately understood. 
 
 The story of the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace would be much 
 more within our comprehension, if we knew the true form of what is 
 denominated a " furnace : " it is usually conceived of, as being somewhat 
 like our tile-kilns, a solid, enclosed brick building, with an aperture only 
 for entrance, or, at most, with a door-way below, and a vent above, for the 
 flame, smoke, &c. But the circumstances of the story do not warrant an 
 edifice of this construction ; for it appears, that Nebuchadnezzar, still 
 seated on his throne, saw the persons in the fire. Now this he could not 
 do, through the solid wall of such a building ; neither could the flame, 
 issuing from a narrow orifice, easily slay those men who threw in the 
 Hebrews ; the solid wall being between them and the fire. Either, then, 
 the opening to this furnace, if it were a solid edifice, was large enough to 
 admit of full view into it ; or we must seek some other construction for it. 
 We may carry this idea somewhat farther, and infer the propriety of sup- 
 posing Nebuchadnezzar to see throughout the structure : by consequence, 
 the building had no covering ; but was, at most, an enclosure of fire ; or, 
 an area surrounded by a wall, within which the fire raged. [Was this 
 furnace made on purpose, in terrorem ? or was it already established for 
 the purposes of burning brick, or pottery of any kind ; or was it any part 
 of the furnace in which the image had been wrought ? &c. These uncer- 
 tainties greatly affect the history.] 
 
 We find no assistance from the nature or derivation of the Chaldee word 
 (prm aturi) rendered " furnace : " it seems to signify "a place of fire ; " 
 but without ascertaining the form, extent, or nature of such a place. Nei- 
 ther is any farther illustration derivable from the apocryphal history of 
 this miracle, which evidently labours to describe it in hyperbolical terms. 
 
 There is, however, a hint given by the apocryphal writer to this effect : 
 " But the angel of the Lord descended and smote the flame of fire out of 
 the furnace," (xap-wov, " oven," in our rendering,) " and made the middle 
 part of the furnace as if a moist, dewy, whistling wind " were passing over 
 it. If there be any approximation to truth in this representation, then we 
 must farther understand the construction of this furnace to be such as 
 might admit a passage of air over it ; which idea contributes essentially to 
 determine against a close and solid building.
 
 94 BOOK I. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT. Seleucus Philopator Antiochus Epiphanes Accession of 
 the latter to the Throne His versatile and voluptuous Character His Duplicity 
 Deposes Onias, at the Suggestion of Joshua Who is raised to the Priesthood He 
 introduces the Customs of the Greeks with the Intention of discarding the Religion of 
 the one true God General religious Declension The Temple spoliated Murder 
 of Onias Which Murder is avenged by Antiochus Menelaus in Difficulty 
 Attempts to carry off the Gold of the Temple, but is frustrated Is universally detested 
 Rumour of the Death of Antiochus, and Rejoicings in Jerusalem on account 
 thereof Massacre in that City The Roman Government interferes Apollonius 
 Miserable Condition of Jerusalem Persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Who 
 attempts to eradicate Judaism Philip the Governor of the Province Cruel Mar- 
 tyrdom of Eleazar And of Salome and her Sons Rise of Judas Maccabeus 
 Death of Antiochus. 
 
 IN the year of the world 3815, Antiochus the Great was overcome 
 by the Romans, and obliged to cede all his possessions beyond Mount 
 Taurus, to give twenty hostages, among whom was his own son Anti- 
 ochus, afterwards surnamed Epiphanes, and to pay a tribute of twelve 
 thousand Euboic talents, each fourteen Roman pounds in weight. To 
 defray these charges, he resolved to seize the treasures of the temple 
 of Belus, at Elymais ; but the people of that country, being informed 
 of his design, surprised and destroyed him with the whole of his 
 army. He left two sons, Seleucus Philopator, and Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes who succeeded him. 
 
 Seleucus being the elder brother, ascended the throne ; and as 
 Antiochus Epiphanes had continued a hostage at Rome for the space 
 of fourteen years, he resolved to procure his return to Syria, and to 
 send his own son, Demetrius, to Rome in his place. Whilst Antiochus 
 was on his journey to Syria, he received intelligence of his brother's 
 death, and forthwith assumed the reins of government. None ever 
 grasped the sceptre of power with greater ecldt. He was recognised 
 as some propitious deity, who was to oppose the designs of the King 
 of Egypt, who had long threatened to invade and subdue Syria ; and 
 hence he obtained the surname of Epiphanes, " the illustrious," or 
 Epimanes, " the madman." 
 
 Antiochus united the quick and versatile character of a Greek 
 with the splendid voluptuousness of an Asiatic. At one time he 
 debased the royal dignity by mingling with the revels of his meanest 
 subjects, scouring the streets in his riotous frolics, or visiting the 
 lowest places of public entertainment, and the common baths ; or, 
 like Peter of Russia, conversing with the artisans in their shops on 
 their various trades. With still less regard to the dignity of his own 
 character, he was fond of mimicking in public the forms of election 
 to the Roman magistracies ; he would put on a white robe, and can- 
 vass the passengers in the streets for their votes. Then, supposing 
 himself to have been elected cedile, or tribune, he would place his 
 curule chair in the open market-place, and administer justice ; a poor
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 9.~> 
 
 revenge against a people, before whose power he trembled. On the 
 other hand, the pleasures of Antiochus were those of a Sardanapalus ; 
 and his munificence, more particularly towards the religious cere- 
 monies and edifices, both of his own dominions and of Greece, was on 
 a scale of truly oriental grandeur ; for among the discrepancies of 
 this singular character must be reckoned a great degree of bigotry 
 and religious intolerance. The admirers of the mild genius of the 
 Christian religion, and those who suppose religious persecution un- 
 known in the world till the era of Christianity, would do well to con- 
 sider the wanton and barbarous attempt of Antiochus to exterminate 
 the religion of the Jews, and substitute that of the Greeks. Yet the 
 savage and tyrannical violence of Antiochus was, in fact, and surely 
 we may say providentially, the safeguard of the Jewish nation from 
 the greatest danger to which it had ever been exposed ; the slow and 
 secret encroachment of Grecian manners, Grecian arts, Grecian vices, 
 and Grecian idolatry. It roused the dormant energy of the whole 
 people, and united again, in indissoluble bonds, the generous desire 
 of national independence, with zealous attachment to the national 
 religion. It again identified the true patriot with the devout wor- 
 shipper.* 
 
 Antiochus quickly turned his attention to Egypt, which was then 
 governed by his nephew Ptolemy Philopator, son to his sister, Cleo- 
 patra, whom Antiochus the Great had married to Ptolemy Epiphanes, 
 King of Egypt. He sent Apollonius, one of his officers, into Egypt, 
 apparently to honour Ptolemy's coronation, but in reality to obtain 
 intelligence whether the great men of the kingdom were inclined to 
 place the government of Egypt in his hands, during the minority 
 of the King, his nephew. (2 Mace. iv. 21, &c.) Apollonius, however, 
 found them not disposed to favour his master, and this obliged Anti- 
 ochus to make war against Philopator. In the mean time, Joshua, 
 the brother of Onias III., the High Priest, afterwards called Jason, out 
 of compliment to the Greeks, made Antiochus an offer of three hun- 
 dred and fifty talents, if he would depose Onias from his office, and 
 appoint him in his place. Insulting as the proposal was to Antio- 
 chus, he had the meanness and mercenary spirit to accept it. Joshua 
 had well studied his man. His scheme was successful; he was raised 
 to the pontificate ; and Onias, whose continued residence in Jerusa- 
 lem, on account of his character and popularity in the city, would 
 prove a sharp thorn in the sides of the usurper, was banished to 
 Antioch. 
 
 On his return to Jerusalem, Jason proceeded to strengthen his own 
 interests by undermining the national character. Being immoderately 
 fond of Grecian customs, he immediately began to introduce them 
 among the Jews ; he obtained permission to build a gymnasium, which 
 attracted all the youth of the city ; he also founded a college in which 
 the youth were educated in the Grecian literature and manners ; and 
 thus weaned them by degrees from all the habits and opinions 
 of their fathers. He procured from Antiochus the power of rewarding 
 
 History of the Jews, vol. ii., p. 38.
 
 96 BOOK I. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 those who distinguished themselves, with the freedom of Antioch. 
 He subsequently sent some of these graduates to the Olympic games. 
 He allowed the services of the temple to fall into disuse ; and carried 
 his alienation from the Jewish faith so far as to send a contribution 
 to the great games, which were celebrated at Tyre, in honour of their 
 tutelar deity, the Hercules of the Greeks. This last act of impiety 
 was frustrated by the conscientious scruples of his messengers, who 
 were not as yet prepared for a deed so flagrantly idolatrous, and, there- 
 fore, presented the money to be employed in the service of the Tyrian 
 fleet. The ill-gotten booty of Jason was not long enjoyed. He sent 
 to pay the accustomed tribute to Antioch, another Onias, (his own 
 brother, according to Josephus, or the brother of Simon, the son 
 of Joseph, according to the Book of Maccabees,) who, in con- 
 formity to the Grecian fashion, had assumed the name of Mene- 
 laus ; and being ambitious to surpass his relative in acts of 
 profligacy and crime, boldly offered to Antiochus double the sum 
 given him by his brother, if he would again act the deposer, 
 and confer the priesthood upon him. The unprincipled and 
 shameless tyrant acceded to the request, and Menelaus returned 
 to Jerusalem, holding the King's commission ; but finding the adhe- 
 rents of Jason disposed to dispute his claim, he returned to Antioch, 
 and informed the King that he and his followers had come to the 
 resolution of conforming altogether to the Greek religion, who, flat- 
 tered by the resolution, granted Menelaus a military escort, before 
 which his opponents fled. 
 
 The spirit of true piety was confined to a very small party in 
 Judea. The greater portion of the inhabitants were lovers of plea- 
 sure, and eagerly countenanced every innovation on the faith of 
 Israel : many of the Priests were open apostates, and preferred the 
 idolatrous exercises of Heathenism, to the services of the Lord's house. 
 The attempts, therefore, of Menelaus to establish the idolatrous rites 
 of the Syrians, were cordially hailed by many, while the great mass 
 of the people looked on with a stoical indifference. A few there 
 were, " who faith preferred, and piety to God." The more virtuous 
 of the Zadikim and the Pharisees viewed these proceedings with grief 
 and indignation. The great teachers of the law and of the traditions 
 were not at this time confined to the priesthood ; and now that the 
 reflecting part of the community witnessed the fearful corruption 
 of manners betrayed by the Priests in general, and the venal and 
 scandalous means by which the Pontiffs obtained their dignity, they 
 transferred their confidence and veneration to the apparently devout, 
 and certainly more zealous, advocates of Judaism. By this means, 
 also, the worship of the synagogue spread itself more over the 
 country, and gradually came under the control of the Scribes and 
 Doctors of the law ; whilst those of the teachers who claimed to be 
 depositaries and interpreters of the oral traditions, acquired an immense 
 influence over the minds of their hearers, to whom they became the 
 casuists and confessors ; and their dictum was considered equally 
 authoritative as the law. By this means was the providence of God
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 97 
 
 preparing a number of confessors to the truth, in the midst of great 
 darkness and apostacy.* 
 
 " Menelaus soon got into difficulty. For, having neglected to pay 
 the tribute, he was summoned to Antioch to explain ; and from thence 
 he wrote to another brother, Lysimachus, whom he had left in charge 
 of his affairs at Jerusalem, to forward to him some of the golden ves- 
 sels of the temple ; by the sale of which he paid his arrears, and 
 had a large surplus remaining. But the transaction coming to the 
 knowledge of the banished Onias, who resided at Antioch, he 
 denounced it to the other Jews, who, one and all, reprobated the sacri- 
 lege. In order to avert the danger which threatened him, Menelaus, 
 in the absence of Antiochus, applied to his viceroy, Andronicus, and 
 by bribery induced him privately to murder the upright, but unfor- 
 tunate, Onias. The baseness and treachery of this act excited general 
 abhorrence, both among the Syrians and Jews, by which even Antio- 
 chus himself was so much affected, that, on his return to his capital, 
 he caused Andronicus to be stripped of the purple, and put to death, 
 with every mark of infamy, on the spot where the bloody deed had 
 been perpetrated. But it was a solitary impulse of virtuous indigna- 
 tion in the King. The turn of Menelaus came, and he was called on 
 to defend himself; and, seeing no chance of escape from his perilous 
 situation but by bribery and intrigue, he wrote to Lysimachus for 
 another supply of gold ; and he, being on this occasion more jealously 
 watched, was surprised by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, whilst engaged 
 in packing up a second freight of valuables; and, notwithstanding 
 he was surrounded by soldiers, was slain in the treasury. At the 
 time appointed for the trial of Menelaus, the Jews deputed three of 
 the most respectable members of their Sanhedrim, to repair to Tyre, 
 where the cause was heard, for the twofold purpose of explaining the 
 death of Lysimachus, and of accusing Menelaus. The case was so 
 clear on behalf of the deputies, that Menelaus was convicted ; but 
 Antiochus, being at this crisis influenced by the promise of a bribe, 
 tendered him through a favourite whom Menelaus had secured, was 
 vile enough to reverse what he had done, and, acquitting the guilty 
 Menelaus, put the three innocent deputies to death. The Tyrians 
 showed their sense of the result, by giving to the bodies of the mur- 
 dered delegates an honourable funeral." f The news of this tragedy 
 speedily reached Jerusalem, and filled the city with consternation and 
 despair. 
 
 Antiochus had commenced his campaign for the subjugation of 
 Egypt. In the mean time, a false report had reached Palestine, that 
 he had fallen before the walls of Alexandria. Antiochus, being 
 informed that there had been great demonstrations of joy among the 
 Jews on that intelligence, hastened to Jerusalem in a state of great 
 exasperation, the gates were thrown open to him by the partisans of 
 Menelaus, and the city was doomed to three days' massacre and 
 pillage, during which forty thousand individuals were slain, and an 
 almost equal number sold into slavery. The abandoned Menelaus 
 
 * Brooks's History of the Hebrew Nation, pp. 333, 334. f Ibid., p. 335. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 SO BOOK I. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 conducted the tyrant into the temple, where the plunder which had been 
 commenced by the pontifical caitiff, was completed. The aggressions 
 of Antiochus were soon after arrested by the Roman government, 
 and he was sternly forbidden to pursue his hostilities in Egypt, which 
 led to the Jews experiencing the effects of his mortification. The 
 year following, he sent Apollonius into Judea with an army of 
 twenty-two thousand men, who, concealing his designs, and being 
 quietly admitted into Jerusalem, remained inactive until the following 
 Sabbath, when he suddenly fell upon the Jews, whilst engaged in 
 worship or repose ; he slew all he could find, and sold the women and 
 children into captivity, according to the instructions which Antiochus 
 had given him. (2 Mace. v. 23 26.) He then surrendered the city 
 to pillage, and subsequently set it on fire, and demolished the walls. 
 The temple, probably from its isolated situation, escaped the flames. 
 Apollonius built a strong fortress, called Acra, on the highest part of 
 Mount Sion, which commanded the city and the temple, from whence 
 he harassed all the people of the country, who might steal in with 
 fond attachment to visit the ruins, or to offer a hasty and interrupted 
 service in the house where their fathers worshipped. The voice of 
 adoration was no longer heard in the holy city ; the rude and bois- 
 terous orgies of Heathenism alone disturbed the deathless quiet, and 
 the unavailing screams and cries for help from those who had ven- 
 tured forth from their hiding-places. 
 
 The rage of their persecutor did not terminate here. Antiochus, 
 apprehending that the Jews would never be faithful in their vassalage 
 to him, unless he obliged them to change their religion, issued an 
 edict, enjoining them to conform to the laws of the Greeks, and for- 
 bade the usual sacrifices in the temple, their festivals and their Sab- 
 bath ; he also despatched officers into all parts, to enforce rigid 
 compliance with the decree. Athenaeus, a bitter enemy of the Jews, 
 who was well acquainted with their customs, and a thorough mis- 
 creant, was the Commissioner for Judea. The temple at Jerusalem 
 was dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, whose statue was erected on the 
 altar of burnt-offering ; and thus the abomination of desolation was 
 seen in the temple of God.* He commanded a great sow to be sacri- 
 ficed, part of the flesh to be boiled, and the liquor of the unclean 
 animal to be sprinkled over every part of the temple ; and thus did he 
 desecrate with the most odious defilement the sacred place, which 
 the Jews had considered for centuries the most holy spot in the 
 universe. Altars and images were erected in the streets of Jerusalem, 
 and throughout Judea, where the people were compelled to offer 
 sacrifice of forbidden meats, or to be put to death. Some women, 
 who were discovered to have circumcised their children, were paraded 
 about the city, with their little ones suspended by the legs to their 
 necks ; they were hung in a conspicuous part, and then thrown over 
 
 * By the term " abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place," the Roman 
 eagles, or standards, are generally understood ; for these, being objects of worship to the 
 Romans, were an abomination, that is, idolatrous : and wherever the armies which 
 bore them came, they inflicted desolation. At one time it was customary for the Roman 
 Governors to respect the scruples of the Jews ; and when they came up to Jerusalem, 
 to leave the eagles of their guard behind at Caesarea.
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 9f) 
 
 the battlements of the castle. All the copies of the law were to be 
 immediately given up, and publicly burnt : whosoever was found 
 guilty of concealing the sacred volume, was immediately put to death. 
 From Jerusalem, the persecution spread throughout the country : in 
 every city the same barbarities were perpetrated, the same professions 
 introduced ; and, as a final insult to the majesty of an offended God, 
 the feasts of the Bacchanalia, the licence of which, as they were cele- 
 brated in the later ages of Greece, shocked the severe virtue of the 
 older Romans, were substituted for the national festival of the taber- 
 nacles. The reluctant Jews were forced to join in those riotous and 
 obscene orgies, and to carry the ivy, the emblem of the god. So near was 
 the Jewish nation, and the worship of Jehovah, to total extermination ! 
 
 Many of the devoted Jews preferred martyrdom to sin. The 
 majority of them withdrew to the caves and fastnesses of Judea, and in 
 secret engaged in acts of solemn worship. A thousand of these were 
 surprised by Philip the Governor of the province, in a large cavern 
 near Jerusalem, engaged in worship on the Sabbath-day. Disposed 
 to proceed gently with them, he promised them life, if they would 
 apostatize ; but, being emboldened, and not intimidated, by a sense of 
 danger, they again were found assembled on the Sabbath-day : they 
 were forthwith surrounded by Philip, and all put to the sword. 
 
 Antiochus was now resolved to direct the persecution with 
 increased vigour, and came himself to Jerusalem. The first victim 
 of his cruelty was Eleazar, who had attained to the venerable age of 
 ninety, was a Scribe of true piety, and who had, by his instruction 
 of others, strengthened many to endure. He was brought before the 
 multitude on a public stage, in order that he might be compelled to 
 eat swine's flesh ; but though it was thrust into his mouth with brutal 
 violence, he resolutely refused to swallow it. The soldiers who stood 
 around him, with some feelings of shame and commiseration, suggested 
 that he might eat publicly some other food of his providing, which 
 would probably satisfy the King, and deceive the people ; but the hoary- 
 headed martyr gave them meekly to understand, that such an example 
 would be equally calculated to make them stumble, while the dissi- 
 mulation would be highly offensive to God. He was then led away to 
 execution : the soldiers who had before pitied, now upbraided him for 
 obstinacy and pride. When he was ready to die with stripes, he 
 groaned, and said, "It is manifest unto the Lord, that hath the holy 
 knowledge, that whereas I might have been delivered from death, I 
 now endure sore pains in body by being beaten, but in soul am well 
 content to suffer these things, because I fear him." And thus this 
 man died, leaving his death for an example of a noble courage, and a 
 memorial of virtue, not only unto the young, but unto all his nation. 
 (2 Mace. vi. 30, 31.) 
 
 There were also brought before the tribunal of Antiochus, seven 
 sons and their mother,* who was very old, by a strong body of armed 
 
 * The name generally given to this lady, is Salome. The book entitled, "The Govern- 
 ment of Reason," attributed to Josephus, does not name her. The Greeks, in their 
 calendar, designate her Salome. Ben Goriou calls her Anne ; others name her Maccabaea. 
 Erasmus, in his paraphrase on the " Government of Reason," recognises her as Salome. 
 
 o 2
 
 100 BOOK 1. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 men, and commanded to eat of swine's flesh, and meats offered to 
 idols, upon pain of torture in case of a refusal. The men, from the 
 symmetry of their form, and elegance of their deportment, attracted 
 his notice ; and, therefore, after beholding them with a sort of appro- 
 bation, he thus accosted them : 
 
 " I invite you to comply with me, under an assurance of my parti- 
 cular friendship ; for I have it in my power to oblige and advance 
 them that obey me, in as eminent a manner as I have to punish those 
 who withstand my commands. Be assured, then, you shall not fail 
 of preferment, but have places of honour and profit under me, pro- 
 vided you will renounce your country's customs, and be content to 
 live after the Greek manner ; but I assure you, that in case of dis- 
 obedience, you have nothing to expect but racks and torture, fire and 
 death." 
 
 The tyrant had no sooner thus spoken, than he commanded the 
 instruments of torture to be produced, in order to work the more 
 strongly on their fears. When the guards had set before the brethren 
 the wheels, racks, manacles, combustible matter, and other instru- 
 ments of horror and execution, Antiochus, taking advantage of the 
 impression he supposed this spectacle would make, once more applied 
 to them to this effect : " Young men, consider the consequences : 
 your compliance is no longer a wilful offence ; you may rest assured, 
 that the Deity you worship will consider your case, in being compelled 
 to violate your law." But they were so far from being terrified at 
 the consequences of a refusal, that their resolutions became stronger ; 
 and through the power of reason, aided by religion, they secretly 
 triumphed over his barbarity. 
 
 These intrepid youths, exulting in the magnanimity of their con- 
 duct, made Antiochus the following reply : " To what purpose, O 
 King, is this delay ? If with design to know our final resolution, 
 be assured we are ready to encounter death in its most frightful 
 forms, rather than transgress the laws of our forefathers ; for, besides 
 the reverence due to their example on other accounts, this is what 
 our obedience to the law, and the precepts of Moses, particularly 
 require from us. Do not, then, attempt any more to persuade us to 
 apostacy ; do not put on a counterfeit pity for those who know you 
 hate them : even death itself is more supportable than such an insult- 
 ing, dissembling compassion as would save our lives with the loss 
 of our innocence. Try us, therefore, and see if it be in your power 
 to destroy our souls, when we suffer in the cause of God and religion. 
 Your cruelty cannot hurt us; for all the effect our pains can have 
 will be to secure us the glorious rewards due to unshaken patience 
 and injured virtue." 
 
 The tyrant, enraged at their contumacy, gave the word of com- 
 mand, and the guards immediately brought forth the eldest of the 
 seven brethren ; and having torn off his garment, and tied his hands 
 behind, cruelly scourged him ; and continued their lashes till they 
 were tired ; but it availed nothing. They then put him on the wheel, 
 where, his body being extended, he underwent the severest tortures 
 of the rack. They then put fire under him, and exposed his body,
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER ANTIOCHTJS EPIPHANES. 101 
 
 as much extended as possible, to the devouring flames, insomuch that 
 he exhibited a spectacle horrible beyond description ; and this conti- 
 nued until nothing was left of the human form but a skeleton of 
 broken bones. This brave youth was not heard to utter a single 
 groan : he bore his torments with invincible fortitude, as if he had 
 been translated to immutability in the midst of the flames. 
 
 The guards now advanced with the second brother, and fixed his 
 hands in manacles of iron ; but before they put him to the rack, they 
 demanded if he would accept the conditions. Finding by his reply 
 that he possessed the same resolution as his brother, they tore off his 
 flesh with pincers, and flayed the skin off his face and head. He 
 bore his torture with singular magnanimity, saying, " How welcome 
 is death in any form, when we suffer for our religion and laws ! " 
 
 The third brother was next produced, and pressed with arguments 
 and entreaties to preserve life. But he nobly replied, with some 
 vehemence, " Are you ignorant that I am the son of the same father, 
 and the same mother, with those that went before me ? Shall I, 
 then, at this awful period renounce the honour of that alliance? 
 The same institutions were taught us all ; and I will abide by them 
 while I breathe." The freedom of this speech enraged the execu- 
 tioners, who, to express their malice and resentment, stretched his 
 hands and his feet on the engine, and broke them to pieces ; but 
 when they found it did not deprive him of life, they drew off his 
 skin at the ends of his fingers, and flayed him from the very crown 
 of the head. Not content with mangling his body in this merciless 
 manner, they dragged him to the wheel ; where, being yet more dis- 
 tended, his flesh was torn away, and streams of blood gushed forth, 
 till at last he expired. 
 
 The guards now produced the fourth brother, whom they persuaded 
 to bethink himself, and be wiser than those who had gone before 
 him. But his answer was, " Your fire has not heat enough in it to 
 make me renounce my opinion. I solemnly vow I will not renounce 
 the truth." Antiochus, on hearing these words, was so excessively 
 enraged, that he gave immediate orders to have his tongue cut out ; 
 whereupon the intrepid youth thus proceeded, " You may deprive me 
 of the instrument of utterance ; but that God who seeth the heart 
 knows the inward sensations of the silent. Here is the member : 
 you cannot by this act deprive me of reason. that I could lose 
 my life by inches to support the cause of religion ! Though you 
 take away the tongue, which chants the praises of God, remember 
 that his high hand will very soon let its vengeance fall down on your 
 guilty head ! " 
 
 When this brother, quite exhausted with pain, and miserably man- 
 gled, had resigned his breath, the ffth instantly sprang forward of 
 his own accord, exclaiming, " Prepare your torments ! I am here 
 ready to suffer the worst you can inflict. I come voluntarily to die 
 in the cause of virtue. What have I done, wherein have I trans- 
 gressed, to deserve this merciless treatment ? Do we not worship the 
 universal Parent of nature, according to his own decrees ? Do we 
 not act in conformity to the institution of his most holy law ? These
 
 102 BOOK I. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 are truths that ought to meet with reward, instead of punishment." 
 While these words were in his mouth, the tormentors bound and 
 dragged him to the wheel ; to which fastening his knees with iron 
 rings, they stretched him round the engine, and then broke his joints. 
 Thus, after undergoing similar torments with his heroic brothers, he 
 expired. 
 
 The sixth youth was then brought before Antiochus ; and, being 
 asked by the tyrant whether he would accept deliverance on the terms 
 aforementioned, resolutely answered, " It is true, indeed, I am 
 younger than my brothers ; but my mind is as firm as theirs was. 
 We had all of us the same parents, and the same instructions ; and 
 it is but necessary that we should all die alike for them : therefore, 
 if you are determined to put me to the torment on my refusal to eat, 
 torment me at once ! " Hereupon they fastened him to the wheel ; 
 and having broken his bones, put fire under him ; the guards then 
 heated their spears, and thrust them into his back and sides, till his 
 very entrails were burnt up. In the midst of these torments he 
 exclaimed, " glorious conflict, in which so many brethren have 
 engaged so victoriously for the sake of their religion ! I will accom- 
 pany my brothers, and, relying on my God as my defence, cheerfully 
 submit to death." 
 
 The sixth brother was at length despatched, by being thrown 
 into a boiling caldron. When the seventh and youngest appeared, 
 fettered and pinioned, the tyrant's heart began to relent. Calling 
 upon him, therefore, to approach the tribunal, he endeavoured to 
 soothe him. "You see what horrid kinds of death your brothers 
 have undergone ; but their disobedience and contumacy have been the 
 sole cause of all the torments and cruelties they have sustained. Yet 
 you, if you obey not my commands, shall be exposed to the same, 
 nay, worse, torments, and so suffer a premature death ; but if you 
 comply with my desires, I will take you into the number of my 
 friends." Not content with these persuasions, he addressed himself 
 to the mother, with a seeming compassion for her loss, entreating her 
 to prevail upon her child, in pity to her at least, to save this small 
 remnant of her family. But his mother addressed him in the He- 
 brew tongue, and exhorted him to suffer. Upon this he suddenly 
 exclaimed, " Take off my fetters ; for I have something to communi- 
 cate to the King, and all his friends." The King and his nobles, 
 hearing this promise, seemed greatly rejoiced, and his chains were 
 immediately knocked off. Taking the advantage of this circumstance, 
 he thus exclaimed : 
 
 " Tyrant ! have you no fears nor apprehensions in your mind, after 
 having received at the hands of the Almighty the kingdom and riches 
 you enjoy, than to put to death his servants, and torment his wor- 
 shippers ? Is your conscience touched with no scruples, thus to 
 deprive of their tongues those who share alike the same nature and 
 passions with you ? My brothers have undergone a glorious death, 
 and shown how much their piety and uprightness were for the honour 
 of the true religion. For this reason I will suffer death ; and in my 
 last pangs discover how much my desire was to follow the brave
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES. 103 
 
 example of ray brothers. I beg and entreat the God of my fathers, 
 that he would be propitious and merciful to our nation." Having 
 finished his address, he committed himself to the boiling caldron, 
 and expired. 
 
 The dauntless mother of these young men, after being scourged 
 and otherwise severely tortured by order of Antiochus, finished her 
 existence by surrendering herself to the flames. 
 
 A termination to the tyrannical and impious proceedings of Antio- 
 chus was fast approaching. One of his myrmidons, named Apelles, 
 was commissioned to visit Modin, (the modern Sobah,) a small town 
 on the sea-coast, and the birth-place of an aged Priest, called Matta- 
 thias, to which he had retired with his family from the impending 
 storm, and to compel the inhabitants to conform to the Greek reli- 
 gion. An apostate Jew, at the bidding of Apelles, came forward to 
 set the example by offering sacrifice. Mattathias, instigated by a 
 holy zeal, like another Phinehas, instantly struck him dead ; and 
 his sons at the same time attacking Apelles and his followers, slew 
 them all, and then pulled down the idolatrous altar. The standard 
 of insurrection was forthwith erected, and great success followed. 
 On the death of Mattathias, who through age and infirmities sank 
 under the toils and excitement of the crisis, Judas, his third son, 
 afterwards called Maccabeus, assumed the command.* 
 
 The deliverance of this afflicted and oppressed people from this 
 monster in human form, ere long took place. That the death of 
 Antiochus was miserable, both the Jewish and Roman historians 
 agree. He had been defeated in an assault on a rich and magnificent 
 temple in Persia, called by the Greeks that of Diana ; perhaps of the 
 female Mithra, or " the moon." Whether he were induced to take 
 this aggressive step from a desire of plunder, or from what other 
 cause, does not appear; but at this juncture the intelligence of. the 
 successes of Judas reached him, and he immediately hastened from 
 Persia to Antioch in a complete rage, breathing threatening and 
 slaughter. He was seized on the road with an incurable and offen- 
 sive disease, and died at a small town called Paretacene. Polybius 
 the historian says, " His mind was agitated by remorse for his out- 
 rages on the Persian temples." The authors of the books of the 
 Maccabees say, " For his horrible barbarities and sacrilege in Judea." 
 
 Some say he was BO called from the Hehrew word lpO which signifies, "the 
 hammerer." Others derive the name from the abbreviated form of the motto adopted 
 on his banner : Mi camo-ca Baalim, Jehovah ? " Who is like onto thee among the god*, 
 O Jehovah ? "
 
 104 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 OF THE PERSECUTIONS RECORDED IN THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SECT. I. MASSACRE OF THE INFANTS. Herod the Great, his Character Aretas Pha- 
 xa'lus Herod ingratiates himself with Cassius, for whom he procures a Tribute 
 His ambitious Projects viewed with Jealousy Antigonus Duplicity of Herod 
 He is alarmed at the Appearance of the " Star " The wise Men Herod's dark 
 and bloody Project Is deceived by the Magi The Effects of his Rage Silence 
 of Josephus Absurd Notion of Voltaire Remarks of Dr. Lardner Herod's 
 sanguinary Character His murderous Intentions when on his Death-Bed How 
 frustrated Confirmation of Matthew's Testimony by Justin Martyr Origan 
 The Toldoth Jeshu Macrobius Remarks. SECT. II. MARTYRDOM OF JOHN 
 THE BAPTIST. Developement of the Scheme of Redemption Prediction concerning 
 John His History Zacharias His unbelief and Punishment Birth of John 
 Events which transpired in early Life His public Appearance Manner of Life 
 The Wildernesses of Judea Prophecy and its Fulfilment The Dispensation 
 of John Character of his Ministry It resembled that of the ancient Prophets 
 Effects of his Ministry Pharisees and Sadducees Their erroneous Expectations 
 of John Causes thereof He reproves the incestuous Herod Is imprisoned The 
 Indignation of his Paramour, Herodias Who resolves to seek his Life The 
 King's Birth-Day Salome Dancing Promises her an unlimited Reward 
 Instructed by her Mother, she demands the Head of John Herod's Hypocrisy 
 respecting the Sacredness of an Oath John is murdered Review of his Career. 
 
 SECT. I. MASSACRE OF THE INFANTS. 
 
 THIS act, however barbarous, was quite accordant with the malig- 
 nant character of the perpetrator. Herod was the son of Antipater, 
 the Idumean, one of the chief friends of Hyrcanus, and distinguished 
 no less for his turbulent and seditious temper, than for his wealth. 
 The times were favourable to men of such a character ; and, while he 
 obtained universal sovereignty over his native province of Idumea, he 
 contrived to make Hyrcanus so subservient to his will, as to induce 
 him to form an alliance with Aretas, King of the Arabians, from 
 which he trusted to secure means to effect his own aggrandisement. 
 Having so far accomplished his designs as to ingratiate himself with 
 Rome, he obtained for his son Phasselus the governorship of Jerusa- 
 lem, and for Herod, then only fifteen years of age, the chief com- 
 mand in Galilee. 
 
 In the events which followed the death of Caesar, Herod found 
 numerous opportunities of extending his ambitious projects. By col- 
 lecting a considerable tribute for Cassius in Galilee, he obtained the 
 friendship of that General, and was appointed to the command of the 
 army in Syria. No less successful with Marc Antony, he overcame
 
 THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS.
 
 MASSACRE OF THE INFANTS. 105 
 
 the powerful enemies who represented the dangerous nature of his 
 ambitious views ; and was exalted, with his brother Phasaelus, to the 
 dignity of Tetrarch of Judea. They had not, however, long enjoyed 
 their office, when the approach of Antigonus toward Jerusalem com- 
 pelled them to meditate immediate flight. Phasselus and Hyrcanus 
 fell into the hands of the enemy; but Herod, making good his 
 escape, hastened to Rome, where he pleaded his cause, and his former 
 merits, with so much skill, that he was solemnly proclaimed King of 
 the Jews, and endowed with the proper ensigns and rights of royalty. 
 Augustus, three years afterwards, confirmed this act of the senate ; 
 and Herod scrupled not to commit the most horrible crimes to give 
 further stability to his throne. 
 
 The King, knowing how much he was detested by the Jews, gave 
 full scope to the exercise and display of his sanguinary temper. He had 
 obtained the kingdom by great crimes, and by the shedding of much 
 blood : he was therefore easily alarmed by any remarkable appearance ; 
 and the fact that a star had been seen, and that it was regarded as a 
 proof that the King of the Jews was born, greatly alarmed him, anti- 
 cipating that his short, but tyrannical, career would soon be termi- 
 nated. Brooding over dark and malignant designs, he secretly sum- 
 moned the "wise men," the philosophers and Priests, the learned 
 of the eastern nations who were devoted to the study of astronomy, 
 religion, and medicine, in order to ascertain the precise time that the 
 star appeared ; and as he imagined the exhibition would take place 
 precisely at the time of his birth, he could then ascertain the exact 
 age of the children, and arrange accordingly. All this was done 
 under the cloak of religion, that he might not excite suspicion. But 
 the Most High discovers his intention ; and although men may be 
 deceived, God cannot. 
 
 The " wise men," being commanded to visit Bethlehem, that they 
 might see the new-born King, and communicate the news to Herod, 
 were guided to the precise spot by the luminous meteor. Had they, 
 however, complied with the instructions of their King, and given him 
 exact information where " he that is born King of the Jews " might 
 be found, it would have been easy for the jealous Monarch to have com- 
 missioned one of those myrmidons of blood by whom he was con- 
 stantly surrounded, to slay him ; but by a dream they were divinely 
 assured that they ought not to return to Herod ; and an angel of the 
 Lord appeared to Joseph, directing him to flee into Egypt with Mary 
 and the young child, and there to remain until the storm was overpast. 
 
 Herod was now in a perfect rage. Deceived by the wise men not 
 returning as he had expected, he plotted the destruction of the babe 
 of Bethlehem in another way. He " sent and slew all the male chil- 
 dren in Bethlehem, and in all its borders, from two years old and 
 under, according to the time which he had accurately inquired of the 
 wise men." He probably intended to send an executioner, and kill 
 Jesus alone ; but having been " mocked," he resolved to accomplish 
 the barbarous project in a way which was the most likely to succeed. 
 Therefore, to make " assurance doubly sure," he sent forth and put 
 all the children in the place to death. Such is an illustration of the 
 
 VOL. i. P
 
 106 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 awful influence of wickedness and anger ! Nothing can present a 
 successful barrier against it. If it cannot achieve what it contem- 
 plates, it does not hesitate to go farther, and to accomplish much 
 more evil, than was at first designed. He who possesses a depraved 
 heart, and is the slave of angry passions, knows not the end of his 
 tumultuous and maddened proceedings ! The design of Herod was 
 to cut off him that had been born King of the Jews : his purpose, 
 therefore, did not require that he should put to death the female 
 children; the male only were the sufferers ; and this he effected 
 throughout all the coasts thereof ; that is, in all the adjacent places, 
 the settlements or hamlets around Bethlehem, "from two years old 
 and under." He supposed he knew the age of the predicted child. 
 He had endeavoured to ascertain the time of his birth ; and therefore 
 slew all that were born about the time when the star appeared, perhaps 
 from six months old to two years. The extending of the massacre 
 to children of the latter age, when infants only of the last year 
 might have sufficed, seems to have arisen from excess of precaution, 
 to compass more surely the destruction of Christ within this wider 
 limit, by including all that were under it. 
 
 Josephus has not noticed this massacre. It might, perhaps, have 
 not been considerable enough to have attracted his attention ; Bethle- 
 hem being but a small village, and its environs not extensive. Vol- 
 taire, either from ignorance or dishonesty, asserts that fourteen thou- 
 sand children must have lost their lives in this murderous assault. 
 If this were true, the silence of Josephus would be a very important 
 objection to the veracity of St. Matthew's narrative ; and with this 
 view, doubtless, the assertion is made by the philosopher, who every 
 where shows himself an inveterate enemy of revealed, and not un- 
 frequently of natural, religion. But as the children whom Herod 
 caused to be put to death were only males of two years old, and 
 under, it is obvious, according to Voltaire's statement, that more 
 children must have been born annually in the village of Bethlehem, 
 than there are either in Paris or London. Further, as Bethlehem was a 
 very small place, scarcely two thousand persons in it and its depend- 
 ent districts, consequently, in the massacre not more than fifty at 
 most could be slain.* 
 
 It has also been stated, that if there had been so cruel a slaughter 
 made by Herod, of innocent infants at Bethlehem, a place not far from 
 Jerusalem, it is very unlikely it should have been omitted by Josephus, 
 who has written the history of the Jews, and particularly of the 
 reign of Herod. 
 
 To this, Dr. Lardner replies in an elaborate manner : he says, 
 1. The most exact and diligent historians have omitted many events 
 that happened within the compass of those times of which they 
 undertook to write ; nor does the reputation which any one historian 
 has for exactness, invalidate the credit of another who seems to be 
 well-informed of the facts he relates. Suetonius, Tacitus, and Dio 
 Cassius, have all three written of the age of Tiberius ; but it is no 
 
 Townsend's New Testament arranged in Chronological and Historical Order. 8vo. 
 vol. i., pp. 77, 78.
 
 MASSACRE OF THE INFANTS. 107 
 
 objection against the veracity of any one of them, that he has men- 
 tioned some things of that Emperor which have heen omitted by the 
 rest. No more is it any objection against St. Matthew that he has 
 related an action of Herod not mentioned by Josephus. The Gospel 
 of St. Matthew was published about the year of our Lord 38 ; at 
 which time there doubtless were persons living who could, and, from 
 the hostility then manifested against the Christian faith, who would, 
 have contradicted his assertion, if it had been false or erroneous. 
 Their silence is a tacit proof that the Evangelist has stated the fact 
 correctly. 
 
 2. There have been as great cruelties committed by many eastern 
 Princes ; nor was there ever any man more likely than Herod to give 
 the orders here mentioned by St. Matthew. When he had gained 
 possession of Jerusalem * by the assistance of the Romans, and his 
 rival Antigonus was taken prisoner, and in the hands of the Roman 
 General, Sosius, and by him carried to Marc Antony, Herod, by a 
 large sum of money, persuaded Antony to put him to death. Herod's 
 great fear was, that Antigonus might some time revive his preten- 
 sions, as being of the Asmonean family. Aristobulus, the last of the 
 Maccabsean family, was murdered by his directions at eighteen years 
 of age, because the people of Jerusalem had shown some affection for 
 his person. f In the seventh year of his reign, from the death of Anti- 
 gonus, he put to death Hyrcanus, grandfather of Mariamne, then eighty 
 years of age, who had saved Herod's life when he was prosecuted by 
 the Sanhedrim ; a man who, in his youth, and in the vigour of his 
 life, and in all the revolutions of his fortune, had shown a mild and 
 peaceable disposition. His beloved wife, the beautiful and virtuous 
 Mariamne, had a public execution ; and her mother Alexandra was 
 put to death soon after. || Alexander and Aristobulus, his two sons 
 by Mariamne, were strangled in prison by his order, ^[ upon ground- 
 less suspicions, as it seems, when they were at man's estate. 
 
 In his last sickness, a little before he died, he issued an edict through- 
 out Judea, requiring the presence of all the chief men of the nation at 
 Jericho. His orders were obeyed ; for they were enforced with no less 
 penalty than that of death. When these men were come to Jericho, 
 he had them all shut up in the Circus, and, calling for his sister 
 Salome, and her husband Alexas, he told them, " My life is now but 
 short : I know the dispositions of the Jewish people, and nothing 
 will please them more than my death. You have these men in your 
 custody : as soon as my breath is out of my body, and before my 
 death can be known, do you let in the soldiers upon them, and kill 
 them. All Judea, and every family there, will then, though unwillingly, 
 mourn at my death."** Nay, Josephus says, ff " That with tears in 
 
 * Joseph. Antiq., lib. xiv., cap. xvi., sect. 4. 
 t Ibid., lib. xv., cap. iii., sect. 3. 
 t Ibid., lib. xv., cap. vi., sect. 3. 
 Ibid., lib. xv., cap. vii., sect. 5, 6. 
 || Ibid., sct. 8. 
 
 TT Ibid., lib. xv., cap. xi., sect. 7- 
 Joseph. Bell., lib. i., cap. xxx., sect. 6. 
 ft Joseph. Antiq., lib. xvii., cap. vi , sect. 6. 
 
 p 2
 
 108 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 his eyes he conjured them, by their love to him, and their fidelity to 
 God, not to fail of doing him this honour ; and they promised they 
 would not fail." 
 
 These commands were not executed ; but, as an historian of great 
 learning and candour observes, " The history of this his most wicked 
 design takes off all objection against the truth of his murdering 
 the Innocents, which may be made from the incredibility of so barba- 
 rous and horrid an act. For this thoroughly shows, that there can 
 nothing be imagined so cruel, barbarous, and horrid, which this man 
 was not capable of doing. In most of his actions, as described in 
 history, may be read the character of a most bloody, cruel, and 
 wicked tyrant ; but in none more than in these two." * 
 
 The account of St. Matthew is abundantly confirmed by the testi- 
 mony of ancient Christian authors. We select one from Justin Mar- 
 tyr, who flourished before the middle of the second century : " But," 
 says he, " Herod, when the Arabian wise men did not come back to 
 him, as he had desired them, but, according to a command given 
 them, returned by another way into their own country ; and when 
 Joseph, together with Mary and the young child, were gone into Egypt, 
 according to directions given to them also by a divine revelation ; 
 not knowing the child whom the wise men had come to worship, 
 commanded all the children in Bethlehem, without exception, to 
 be killed." f This tragical event is also mentioned by Irenseus, who 
 lived in the same century ;J and by Origen, who flourished in the 
 third century, in his answer to Celsus, the Heathen, where he says, 
 " Herod put to death all the little children in Bethlehem and its 
 borders, with a design to destroy the King of the Jews, who had been 
 born there." The fact is noticed in a rabbinical work, entitled, 
 Toldoth Jeshu, in the following passage : " And the King gave 
 orders for putting to death every infant to be found in Bethlehem ; 
 and the King's messengers killed every infant, according to the royal 
 order; "|| and Macrobius, a Heathen, has also been supposed to 
 corroborate the history. He flourished in the latter end of the fourth 
 century ; and, among other sayings which he records of Augustus, con- 
 siderable notoriety has been given to the following : " When the 
 Roman had heard, that among the children within two years of age, 
 which Herod the King of the Jews commanded to be slain, his own 
 son had been killed, he said, ' It is better to be Herod's hog than his 
 son,'"^[ alluding to the Jewish abhorrence of swine's flesh. Very 
 little stress is laid upon this legendary tale. It meets with a place 
 in ecclesiastical history, at a very remote period, while there is just 
 reason to suppose, that Macrobius must have been mistaken with 
 
 * Prideanx's Connection of the Old and New Testament. Vol. ii., Part II., p. 655. 
 8vo. London, 1718. 
 
 t Justini Philosophi et Martyris Apologia Duae, et Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo. 
 Cum Notis et Emendationibus Styani Thirlbii. Fol., p. 307. Londini, 1722. 
 
 t Iren. adv. Haeres., lib. Hi., cap. 16. 
 
 'O 8 'HpctfSijs ca>ei\f iravra ra tv T$ri&\tf/j. KOI rots opiots avrijs wcuSia, ais avva- 
 tcupr)(T{t>v rov ytvyrfBivra lovtiauav BafftAea. Origen. cont. Celsum. Edit. Spenceri. 
 4to. lib. i., p. 47. Cantab. 1677. 
 
 || Sharpe's First Defence of Christianity, p. 40. 
 
 H Macrob. Sat., lib. ii., cap. 4.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 109 
 
 respect to the origin of the jest. If Augustus passed this jest upon 
 Herod, it was probably occasioned by the death of Antipater, or 
 rather of Alexander and Aristobulus. 
 
 Be that as it may, no valid objection exists against the relation 
 of St. Matthew : there is nothing improbable in it, considering the 
 jealous, cruel temper of Herod. The silence of Josephus, or of the 
 ancient Greek and Roman historians, can be no difficulty with any 
 reasonable person. The fact is confirmed by the testimony of very 
 early Christian writers, which the corroborative evidence of Macrobius 
 tends to strengthen, because it shows that the event was not then 
 contested, and that it was even better known than the fate of those 
 sons of Herod, whom, Josephus says, he put to death at man's estate.* 
 The sacred historian, in the simple statement he has given of the san- 
 guinary transaction, does not attempt to add to the verisimilitude of 
 his narrative, by any reference whatever to the public or private 
 character of the tyrant. The inspired writers were cautious of speak- 
 ing of the characters of wicked men. Here was one of the worst 
 men in the world, committing one of the most awful crimes ; and yet 
 there is not a single mark of exclamation ; not a single reference to 
 any other part of his proceeding ; nothing that could lead to the know- 
 ledge that his other conduct was not upright. There is no wanton and 
 malignant dragging him into the history, that malice might be grati- 
 fied, in making free with a bad character. What was to their purpose 
 they record ; what was not, they left to others. This is the nature 
 of religion. It does not speak evil of others, except when necessary ; 
 nor then take pleasure therein. 
 
 SECT. II. MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 IT has been well observed, that " on turning from the Old Testa- 
 ment to the New, we are immediately struck with the wonderful 
 manner in which God prepared the mind of man for his final bless- 
 ing. The gradual opening of his glory to him through the means of 
 prophecy, both as expressed by types and in words, is not the least 
 remarkable part of this ceremony. It was singularly adapted both to 
 excite, to maintain, and to reward, a lively faith. Every prediction, 
 however near its first application may be, still proceeds onward towards 
 the great end of all. Some march forward through time, with suc- 
 cessive stages of brighter and clearer accomplishment. The denunci- 
 ations against Jerusalem have not ceased with their two dreadful fulfil- 
 ments. They are still active in the course which our Lord has assigned 
 them, towards the judgment of the last day. Such intermediate 
 accomplishments are like images reflected in a series of mirrors, one 
 from another. The image in the furthest is faint, but at every succes- 
 sive and nearer mirror grows clearer and brighter, until at last it ter- 
 minates in the original object. Thus, every age has had its light, and 
 rejoiced in it. Thus, God has given breadth, comprehension, and 
 compactness of unity, to our views, regarding his dealings with his 
 
 Lardner'a Credibility of Gospel History. Part I., Book II., chap, ii., sect. 1. 
 Works, Vol. i. 8vo. London, 1831.
 
 110 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 church, and has maintained that principle of the association of mind, 
 which is so remarkably preserved throughout the structure of the 
 scheme of redemption. Events fulfilled, leading us on from one to 
 another, enable us to view with greater clearness what still remains 
 unfulfilled ; and characters, foreshadowed by characters, are more 
 completely developed, and appear more striking. We no sooner 
 open the Gospel, than we are presented with an example of this sin- 
 gular arrangement. John the Baptist appears as having been pre- 
 figured by Elijah. And so cherished was the prediction of that 
 Prophet's re-appearance, that men were now anxiously looking out 
 for him as the harbinger of the Messiah, in whom all their hopes 
 terminated. The seventy weeks (Dan. ix, 24) stood at the very 
 brim of fulfilment, and more fervent and more continual became the 
 prayer to God, that he would hasten the kingdom of his elect by the 
 advent of the promised Redeemer." * 
 
 It was after a prayer of this description, that John the Baptist 
 made his appearance. In the Scriptures he bears the title of the 
 " forerunner," or " messenger of the Lord." f The records of him, 
 which the Gospels introduce, are dislocated and imperfect : enough, 
 however, is vouchsafed to posterity, to show that he was a man of a 
 lofty character, and that the relation in which he stood to Christianity 
 was one of very high importance. His parents were Zacharias and 
 Elizabeth, the latter " a cousin of Mary," the mother of Jesus, whose 
 senior John was by a period of six months. Zacharias was a Priest of the 
 course of Abia, whose duty it was to offer incense in the holy place. The 
 precise spot where John entered into life, is not decisively determined. 
 The Rabbins, with others, have fixed on Hebron, in the hill country 
 of Judea, situated on an eminence, twenty miles southward from 
 Jerusalem, and about twenty miles to the north from Beersheba. It 
 was appointed a dwelling for the Priests, and declared one of the 
 cities of refuge. (Joshua xxi. 13.) Others, Paulus, Kuinoel, and 
 Meyer, after Relaud, are in favour of Jetta, "a city of Judah." 
 After the usual supplication had been officially presented, at that 
 solemn and covenanted time of the offering of incense, the angel 
 Gabriel, who had foreshown this advent to Daniel, appeared to 
 Zacharias the Priest and offerer, and announced to him that his 
 prayer had been heard ; that his wife, now far advanced into years 
 of age and sterility, should bring forth a son ; and that he, " filled 
 with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb," should go before 
 the Lord in the power and spirit of Elijah, that is, in his power 
 of conversion, and in his spirit of reproof, as prophesied by Malachi, 
 to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient 
 to the wisdom of the just,J by promoting peace and harmony among 
 men ; and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, implying 
 the reception of the Gospel. 
 
 Scripture Biography. By the Key. Robert \V. Evans, M.A. Pp. 194, 195. 
 London, 1835. 
 
 t "Antecursor et praeparator viarum Domini." Tertull. adv. Marc,, lib. iv., cap. 
 33. Opera, torn, i., p. 509. Wirceb., 1780. 
 
 t See his conversion of the people of Israel from Baal, 1 Kings xviii. 21 40 ; his 
 reproofs of Ahab, 1 Kings xviii. 17, 18 ; xxi. 2029; of Ahaziah, 2 Kings i. 16, 17-
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. Ill 
 
 Zacharias is slow to credit these tidings, and querulously demands 
 some evidence in token of their truth. The case of Abraham and 
 Sarah, to whom a son Isaac was promised under similar circum- 
 stances, ought to have instructed him : he was punished in the sign 
 which he required, which was inflicted on account of his want of 
 faith : he was struck dumb by the angel until the accomplishment 
 of the promise, and the circumcision of his son, when his speech was 
 restored to him at the naming of the child ; he was also inspired to 
 utter that admirable and prophetic hymn, praising God for the 
 promised redemption of Israel, by that Horn of Salvation, Christ, 
 of the house of David, foretold by the mouth of God's holy Prophets, 
 from the beginning of the world, in the Seed of the woman ; and 
 styling John a Prophet of the Most High, and a harbinger of Christ. 
 Six months subsequent to this event, Elizabeth received a visit from 
 Mary, the maternal parent of Jesus. On being saluted by her relation, 
 Elizabeth felt her babe leap in her womb, and, being filled with the 
 Spirit, broke forth into a poetic congratulation of Mary, as the des- 
 tined mother of the Lord. At length, Elizabeth brought forth a son, 
 whom her relations were anxious to name Zacharias, after his father : 
 to this she objected, and preferred the name of John. Zacharias was 
 consulted, who signified in writing that he should be called John. 
 The education of the child was suitable to the office which he had to 
 fill. He was brought up, like Samuel, as a Nazarite. According to 
 the rule to which he was thus bound, he was to abstain from wine 
 and all fermented liquors, and to keep himself holy all his days, unto 
 the Lord. Hence it is said, " The hand of the Lord was with him." 
 (Luke i. 66.) How deeply his father felt the responsibility resting 
 upon himself, appears from the following part of the song to which 
 he gave utterance : " And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of 
 the Highest : for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare 
 his ways ; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people, by the 
 remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God ; whereby 
 the day-spring from on high hath visited us, to guide our feet into 
 the way of peace." The sacred historian further adds, that " He 
 was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel."* (Luke 
 i. 7680.) 
 
 The Emperor Tiberius, if we reckon from the period of his being 
 made colleague with Augustus in the empire, had swayed the sceptre 
 fifteen years when John made his public appearance, exhibiting the 
 austerity, the costume, (2 Kings i. 8 ; Zech. xiii. 4,) and the manner 
 of life, of the ancient Jewish Prophets. It were easy to show that 
 he came at the precise time which had been foretold : the sceptre 
 was departing from Judah ; the seventy weeks of Daniel were 
 
 The apocryphal Protev. Jac., chap, xxii., states, that his mother, in order to rescue 
 her son from the murder of the children at Bethlehem which Herod commanded, fled 
 with him into the desert. She found no place of refuge : the mountain opened at her 
 request, and gave the needed shelter in its hosom. Zacharias, being questioned by 
 Herod as to where his son was to he found, and refusing to answer, was slain by the 
 tyrant. At a later period Elizabeth died, when angels took the youth under their care. 
 (Fabricut, Cod. Apocrypha, p. 117, ft seq. Comp. Kuhn. Leben Jesn, i. 163. Remark 
 4.) Kitto, Cyclopedia.
 
 112 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 expiring, and many were waiting for the consolation of Israel, 
 when John appeared to declare, that the promised Deliverer of the 
 church, and Desire of all nations, was at hand, and that " the Lord 
 whom they sought, would suddenly come to his temple." At a 
 fitting time he left the paternal roof, and embraced a desert life, 
 which was to be the place of his training, and the stage on which he 
 was first to appear. Here he observed the most rigid austerity. He 
 was clothed with a rough garment, composed of camels' hair,, bound 
 by a leathern belt. This was not the fine hair of the camel from 
 which our elegant cloth is made, called camlet, nor the more costly 
 stuff, brought from the East Indies, under the name of camels' hair, 
 but the long shaggy hair of the animal, from which a coarse cheap 
 cloth is made, still worn by the poorer classes of the East, and 
 by Monks. He subsisted, also, on such food as the wilderness 
 afforded. " His meat was locusts." These were the food of the com- 
 mon people. Among the Greeks, the lowest orders used them ; and 
 the fact that John made his food of them, is indicative of his poverty 
 and self-denying life. The historian informs us, that he partook 
 also of " wild honey," found in the rocks and trunks of trees. Pales- 
 tine was often called the land flowing with milk and honey. (Exod. 
 iii. 8, 17; xiii. 5.)* The wilderness, which was the scene of John's 
 labours, comprehended the mountains and part of the plain along the 
 Jordan, and also the hill-country south of Jerusalem. In this part, 
 at Hebron, John was brought up, but retired, before he opened his 
 commission, to the neighbouring wilderness, probably of Ziph, or 
 Maon. He first taught in that district, and then towards the Jordan, 
 a tract sufficiently desert, yet with a great resort of people, and near 
 large cities. The wildernesses of Canaan were not in every part 
 without towns or cities. 
 
 The mission of John, as the harbinger of our Lord, exhibits an 
 instance of the fulfilment of those prophecies to which Matthew, as 
 writing first especially to the Jews, directed their attention more 
 frequently than the other Evangelists. At the same time, the accom- 
 plishment of a prophecy which borrows its terms from the magnifi- 
 cence of Eastern Monarchs, (who were preceded by heralds,-)- and 
 before whom valleys were exalted, and hills levelled,) in a manner so 
 manifestly spiritual, and turns the attention so absolutely from exter- 
 nal to moral grandeur, sufficiently reproves those who contend too 
 strenuously for the literal accomplishment of the sayings of the 
 
 * " I was informed of one whose name was Banus, that lived in the desert, who used 
 no other clothing than grew upon the trees, and had no other food than what grew of its 
 own accord, and hathed himself with cold water frequently, both by night and by day, in 
 order to preserve his chastity : I imitated him in those things, and continued with him 
 three years." (Life of Josephus prefixed to his Works. Vol. i., p. 2. Edit. London, 
 1825.) 
 
 t In illustration of the allusion to the practice of Eastern Monarchs, to send pioneers 
 to prepare the roads, open the passes, and remove impediments in the rough and desert 
 countries, through which they were to travel with their pompous retinues, we mention 
 the case of Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, in her royal expeditions into Media and 
 Persia, and the other countries of Asia subject to her dominions, who, wherever she 
 went, ordered mountains and precipices to be levelled, raised causeways in the low- 
 countries, and by great cost and trouble made straight, short, and commodious high- 
 ways, through places impassable before. (Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii.)
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 113 
 
 ancient Prophets, and thereby often fall into a Jewish mode of inter- 
 preting them. Prophecy has its peculiar imagery, its own appro- 
 priate dress of metaphor and allegory, which must not he overlooked. 
 Here, the Monarch is Christ ; but his Majesty is in his doctrine, his 
 character, and his works. The herald, too, is a man in rough 
 raiment, issuing from the wild solitudes in which he had been trained 
 to converse with God, to rouse a slumbering people by urging their 
 immediate repentance upon pain of imminent judgments ; and the 
 levelling of hills and valleys is that preparation of the heart for the 
 doctrine of Christ which consists in contrition and humility. That 
 John was a powerful Preacher, the immense number of persons who 
 flocked to his baptism, confessing their sins, is a sufficient proof; 
 that he was a successful one, in his spiritual office of "preparing the 
 way of the Lord," appears from this, that several of the Apostles, and 
 others of the early disciples of Christ, had been previously the dis- 
 ciples of John ; and the effect of his preaching was, no doubt, not 
 only to prepare them, but multitudes of the Jews, to receive the 
 Gospel, both in Judea and in other places into which his disciples 
 carried his doctrine ; for of this the evangelical history contains many 
 indications. There was also, probably, in this dispensation of John, 
 something of a typical character. The way of Christ, in all ages, is 
 "prepared" only by repentance ; and whenever that is preached with 
 power, and under right views of the Lamb of God, to which it is to 
 point, as " taking away the sins of the world," the valleys are 
 exalted, the mountains and hills are brought low, the crooked is made 
 straight, and the rough places plain ; and then comes the revelation 
 of the Lord in pardoning mercy, and manifestation of Christ as " the 
 salvation of God." 
 
 The ministry of John the Baptist was of a .kind peculiar to itself. 
 As a Prophet, he not only spoke of the immediate appearing of the 
 Christ, but pointed him out to his disciples ; and his baptism was, in 
 fact, the token of initiation into a new dispensation, intermediate 
 between that of Moses and fully revealed Christianity. It was a 
 declaration of repentance and renunciation of sin, and it was a pro- 
 fession of faith in the immediate revelation of the Messiah, and of 
 trust in him to take away sin ; for to him, as the Redeemer, John 
 directed his converts. " I indeed baptize you with water unto 
 repentance ; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose 
 shoes I am not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you with the Holy 
 Ghost, and with fire." With baptisms or washings, as emblems 
 of the putting away of sin, the Jews were familiar ; and proselytes 
 from Gentilism to the religion of the Jews were baptized as well as 
 circumcised, in token of the same thing, and the renunciation of their 
 old religion. All the Jews, therefore, who, in truth, and with a 
 right understanding of the case, submitted to John's baptism, so far 
 renounced Judaism in its primitive form as a ground of hope, as to 
 wait for the remission of sins, for which they repented and confessed, 
 no longer from their accustomed sacrifices, but immediately from the 
 Messiah: "Behold," said John, "the Lamb of God, which takctli 
 away the sin of the world." Lightfoot has shown from the Kabbi- 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 114 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 nical writings, that the Jews themselves have held, and still hold, 
 that repentance should precede the coming of the Messiah. The 
 circumstance of our Lord's submission to John's baptism, does not 
 affect this view of its nature and design. That it was not necessary 
 for Christ as a sign of repentance, and passing into a new dispensa- 
 tion and better hopes of salvation, is clear from the objection of 
 John to administer the peculiar rite of his ministry to Christ, until 
 urged by his authority; and also from the ground on which our 
 Lord puts his own act, which he makes not one of repentance, but 
 of fulfilling all "righteousness," that is, perfectly obeying the will 
 of the Father in every appointment laid upon him ; and, finally, from 
 the baptism of John, as administered to Christ, rising into an entirely 
 different and higher order from his ordinary one ; for our Lord was 
 then " baptized with the Holy Ghost," which it was no part of John's 
 baptism to bestow. All these circumstances prove, that John was, 
 in the case of our Lord, employed in a ministry quite distinct from 
 his common one ; and that the chief end of the baptism of Christ was, 
 to attest his Messiahship fully to John, by making him the witness 
 of the sign which God had previously appointed. " Upon whom 
 thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same 
 is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare 
 record that this is the Son of God." (John i. 33, 34.) 
 
 The burden of John's preaching bore no slight resemblance to the 
 old prophetic exhortations whose last echo had now died away for 
 centuries. He not only resembled Elijah in his sackcloth dress, 
 spare diet, and retired mode of life, but also in his character, in his 
 power of conversion, and spirit of reproof. Both, indeed, were 
 raised up by Providence in times of general apostacy from the true 
 faith, and corruption of morals, to reclaim and reform their country- 
 men. Both were commissioned to denounce vengeance from heaven, 
 unless the nation repented, and were converted to the Lord their 
 God ; both were actuated by the same ardent and undaunted zeal in 
 the discharge of their commission; both were persecuted for their 
 labour of love; yet nothing deterred Elijah from boldly rebuking 
 Ahab, Jezebel, and the idolatrous Israelites ; nor John from reproving 
 Herod, Herodias, and that " wicked and adulterous generation " 
 of the Jews who flocked to his baptism.* John declared that the 
 Almighty was about to establish in the earth that holy and spiritual 
 kingdom which had been foretold, especially by Daniel, (chap. ii. 
 44 ; vii. 14, 27,) and that no one could be admitted into it who did 
 not abhor and forsake his sin, and with a contrite heart return unto 
 the Lord. He considered all persons, without exception, as in a 
 state of depravity and guilt and condemnation. He unreservedly 
 exhibited the doctrine which alone prepares for a renewal of the 
 heart. He was the Preacher of that discipline which makes the soul 
 submit to the grace and government of Christ, and which it must 
 feel and understand in order to everlasting salvation. Those who 
 professed a deep compunction were required to conform to the sig- 
 nificant rite of baptism, which he administered, thereby publicly 
 
 * Hales's Analysis of Chronology, &c., vol. iii., p. 64. Second edition.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 115 
 
 acknowledging their pollution, their need of a spiritual washing, and 
 determination to abandon every evil way. He addressed the Scribes 
 and Pharisees who crowded to his preaching in terms of the sharpest 
 reprehension, and described them all as under the same sentence 
 of punishment. Surprised by their appearance, and suspecting their 
 sincerity, he called on them to give decided proofs of their penitence 
 by fruits of righteousness. He warned them that their relation to 
 Abraham, and their place in the visible church, would avail them 
 nothing ; that the last trial was then afforded them ; and that, if this 
 were neglected, their case was desperate, and their everlasting destruc- 
 tion unavoidable. 
 
 The ministry of John was consequently energetic and powerful ; 
 and it drew a great concourse of people to him from Jerusalem, all 
 Judea and round about the Jordan. But when he saw many of the 
 higher orders and rulers of the people thronging to partake of the 
 baptism which he administered, not in sincerity, but in hypocrisy, he 
 boldly rebuked them. " generation of vipers,* who hath warned 
 you to flee from the wrath to come ? " A sentence which has gene- 
 rally been supposed to allude solely to the approaching destruction 
 of Jerusalem which is threatened at the conclusion of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and explained by our Lord in his parable of the barren fig- 
 tree ; (Luke xiii. 6 9 ;) words which evidently imply a negation, 
 signifying that no one has warned you effectually ; you are not peni- 
 tently apprehensive of the displeasure of God, but either as Pha- 
 risees trust in yourselves that you already possess the favour of God, 
 or as Sadducees treat the doctrine of a future punishment as vain and 
 fabulous. Neither is the wrath to come to be confined to the destruc- 
 tion of the civil polity of the Jewish nation ; for John dealt with hia 
 auditors as sinners in the sight of God, and, as such, liable to the 
 penalty of transgression in a future life. " Bring forth therefore 
 fruits meet for repentance. And think not to say within yourselves, 
 We have Abraham to our father : for I say unto you, That God is able 
 of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." The Jews 
 regarded it as sufficient righteousness that they were descended from 
 so holy a man as Abraham, which would go very far to justify his 
 posterity, though both the faith and the works of that patriarch 
 were wanting among them. The futility of such a hope John endea- 
 voured to prove, by showing, not that children to Abraham could be 
 raised up from stones in the sense of natural descent and relation- 
 ship, which was a thing impossible, but that as children to Abraham 
 were at first raised up by a miracle in the birth of Isaac, so, though 
 God should destroy the present race of Jews, no purpose of his would 
 be void, because he was able to raise up a people from the stones to 
 
 This expression in equivalent to " children of the devil," as being the seed of the 
 "old serpent," always ready to calumniate and persecute the righteous "seed of the 
 woman," (Gen. iii. 16,) as they did both John and Christ. (Luke vii. 31 35.) Our 
 Lord adopted it (Matt. xii. 34 ; xxiii. 33) as synonymous with a "wicked and adul- 
 terous generation." The word " serpent," or "viper," is used to denote both cunniug 
 and malignancy, or wickedness. Among the Jews it was regarded as the symbol of 
 artifice, circumspection, and prudence : it ws* thus viewed in the Egyptian hiero- 
 glyphics. 
 
 Q 2
 
 116 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 stand in the place of the natural descendants of Abraham, were that 
 necessary to accomplish the designs of his providence and grace ; 
 evidently adverting to the calling of the Gentiles, whom the Jews 
 despised as stupid and insensible, upon whom they trampled as on 
 the stones beneath their feet, and whom they considered as unlikely 
 to become members of the true church of God as the pebbles of the 
 Jordan on the banks of which John was preaching. To these stones 
 the Most High, by his grace, not only imparted spiritual life, adopt- 
 ing them as Abraham's believing seed, but also formed them into his 
 church, to the exclusion of the disobedient Jews, making them his 
 peculiar people. 
 
 " And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees : there- 
 fore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, 
 and cast into the fire." Fruitful and fruitless trees have in all ages 
 been used as metaphors to express good and bad men ; and as barren 
 trees, after patient forbearance, are finally cut down and burned, so 
 the certainty and terribleness of the punishment of the wicked are 
 forcibly indicated by the metaphor. The same image is employed by 
 Isaiah with great effect to express the judgments which should fall 
 upon all the ranks of a guilty nation, by the Chaldean invasion : 
 " Behold, the Lord of hosts shall lop the bough with terror : and 
 the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shah 1 
 be humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with 
 iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one." (Isai. x. 33, 34.) 
 The Baptist does not, however, refer to the Jewish state, but to the 
 dangerous condition of sinful individuals. The axe being laid to the 
 root, intimates both the long-suffering of God which gave them space 
 for repentance, and the certainty that if the tree remained unfruitful, 
 it would be " hewn down, and cast into the fire." Mercy grants 
 delay, but justice lays down the axe in preparation for the work of 
 excision. " Whose fan," continues the Preacher, " is in his hand, 
 and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather the wheat into his 
 garner; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." The 
 metaphors are here taken from the process of thrashing among the 
 Jews. The sheaves of corn were trodden by oxen upon a " thrash- 
 ing-floor," or prepared plain area, formed upon some elevated place, 
 so as to force out the grain ; then the winnowing-fan, which was 
 often a portable instrument used by the hand, and here not inaptly 
 rendered by some " a winnowing-shovel," was applied to throw up 
 the grain to the wind, that the chaff" might be separated from it ; 
 whilst the straw, being crushed beneath the feet of the oxen, and 
 rendered worthless, was reserved, with the separated chaff, to be 
 burned with other fuel in heating their ovens. The word " unquench- 
 able fire " is awfully emphatic. The domestic fires in which the straw 
 was burned as fuel, were extinguishable, and often extinguished ; but 
 this is " unquenchable," a clear indication of the perpetuity of future 
 punishment. Those who refer all this to the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem, do not rightly apprehend the nature of John's ministry. His 
 office was to warn men of their eternal danger, and to pluck them, 
 if possible, out of the fire of divine wrath. There is not an expres-
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 117 
 
 sion in the whole of this discourse which leads to the supposition, 
 that he intended merely or chiefly to warn his hearers against tem- 
 poral judgments. Its awakening character was manifestly framed 
 upon views of deeper and more formidahle dangers than the Roman 
 invasion, before which most of his hearers, he knew, would be in an 
 eternal world. And as he had preached Christ in his offices of grace, 
 so here he proclaims him in his office of Judge, separating the chaff 
 and straw from the grain, the wicked from the righteous, the office 
 which he now exercises in the invisible world, upon all departed spi- 
 rits, between whom he will make a still more public separation, with 
 visible majesty at the judgment of the great day.* 
 
 Alarmed by these awful denunciations of divine vengeance, the 
 multitudes inquired, " What shall we do, then ? " In answer to 
 which this celebrated Preacher exhorted every class to forsake their 
 ruling vices ; he inculcated upon the hard-hearted and uncharitable 
 Jews the necessity of being bountiful to the poor. " He that hath 
 two coats, let him impart to him that hath none ; and he that hath 
 meat, let him do likewise ; " a benevolent and liberal spirit, which 
 would be most unequivocally expressed by giving clothing to the 
 naked, and food to the hungry. Many of the publicans had been 
 impressed by his preaching, and naturally asked his advice with regard 
 to their conduct. He does not declare their occupation to be an 
 unlawful one, as many of the Jews imagined, for governments must 
 be upheld by tribute, and that must be collected ; but they were 
 exposed to great temptations from the practices of their fellows, from 
 the low standard of morality which existed among them, and from 
 favourable opportunities to practise injustice ; and he therefore made 
 it the test of their sincerity, the " fruit meet for repentance," in 
 their case, that they should " exact no more than was appointed 
 them ; " that is, appointed by law, or fixed by the authority of the 
 supreme power. The soldiers, who were probably those of Herod, 
 for the Roman troops were but little likely to go to his baptism, 
 sought for practical direction in that new state and profession into 
 which, by his instrumentality, they had been introduced. John did 
 not exhort them to abandon a military life, as inconsistent with piety 
 and godliness, but simply prohibits those vices which the licentious- 
 ness of the soldiery in those days most encouraged ; namely, rapine, 
 false information, and mutiny. They were to " do violence to no 
 man ; " that is, to put no man in fear, as the word signifies, either 
 from wanton cruelty, or in order to extort property by threats of vio- 
 lence ; nor " accuse any falsely," in order to obtain reward for an 
 apparent zeal in the discharge of duty, or to share in the fines and 
 confiscations inflicted upon suspected persons ; and "be content with 
 your wages," which includes meat, money, and all lawful perquisites. 
 He did not spare the King himself, but reproved even Herod for his 
 adultery respecting his brother Philip's wife, Herodias. " It is not 
 lawful for thee to have her;" and, " For all the evils which he had 
 done." (Luke iii. 19.) 
 
 "Of all people, the Pharisees and Sadducees were most intolerant 
 
 * Watson's Exposition in loco.
 
 118 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 of rebuke upon any point of their darling corruptions ; and they 
 composed between them the Sanhedrim, or supreme ecclesiastical 
 council. Ever on the watch against the slightest resistance against 
 its dogmas, this body immediately took alarm at the boldness of 
 John, who had neither asked their sanction to his mission, nor taken 
 care to preach agreeably to their notions. When he first arose, they 
 had gladly hailed him. His high birth recommended him to both 
 parties ; his austerity was especially agreeable to the Pharisees. 
 They themselves, at the moment, smarting under Roman control, were 
 anxiously expecting their promised deliverer from the hateful yoke, 
 and joyfully accepted John's credentials. They acknowledged him 
 for a burning light, and rejoiced in his light : but only for a time. 
 As his preaching proceeded, and his doctrine unfolded itself, their 
 zeal slackened. They had expected a Prophet fashioned after their 
 own corrupt and carnal notions of the character of Elias, a man 
 who should instantly call down fire upon all gainsayers, should 
 vindicate, with a high hand, the church of God, by which they prin- 
 cipally understood their own corrupt tradition, should pronounce 
 sentence of deposition on Csesar, as Eh'as did on the Kings of Sama- 
 ria and Damascus, and work miracles that should at once console 
 the Jew, and confound the Heathen. Such only could be a worthy 
 forerunner of the Messiah, whom they looked for, of an unre- 
 lenting warrior who should avenge the wrongs and oppression of 
 Israel seven times seventy fold on the Heathen with fire and sword. 
 They looked not for a spiritual Redeemer, and therefore not for a 
 spiritual harbinger. But John preached of righteousness and a judg- 
 ment to come : instead of promising victory, threatened them with 
 destruction : instead of appealing to their fiery zeal, called them to 
 repentance : instead of ritual holiness, demanded personal holiness : 
 instead of saluting them as the chosen of God through their 
 father Abraham, rebuked them as being but flinty and lifeless 
 stones : instead of promising them the inheritance of the Heathen, 
 commanded them to share their meat and raiment with the poor. 
 He called not on them to prepare to rise and maintain their cause by 
 arras ; he bearded not the Roman oppressor ; he did not inculcate 
 hatred of their heathen masters ; he did not declaim upon their 
 wrongs, and light the fire of sacred sedition in their bosoms ; and he 
 worked no miracles. All this was a grievous disappointment of their 
 hopes. Jesus himself scarcely disappointed them more." " Ho- 
 nourable mention is made of him by Josephus,* in a passage which 
 cannot reasonably be disputed ; and our Lord himself affirmed that 
 he had filled the anticipated duties of Elias, and pronounced upon 
 him that sentence before living men, which others must receive at the 
 resurrection of the dead. Many hearts of the fathers did he turn to 
 the children, and of the children to the fathers ; and when the great 
 and terrible day of the Lord came, his work abode and stood the 
 proof. His course was brief: like Elias, he was going to rebuke 
 Kings, and, like Elias, to have his life sought by them ; but not, like 
 Elias, to escape."'!' 
 
 * Joseph. Aotiq., lib. xviii., cap. 5. 
 
 t Evans's Scripture Biography, pp. 207, 208.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. ]]'j 
 
 By the lower orders of the people, John was held in high estimation, 
 which attracted the notice, and probably the jealousy and displeasure, 
 of the higher. Accordingly he was sent for to the court of Herod 
 the Tetrarch * of Galilee, before whom he had an opportunity of 
 bearing a faithful testimony. This Prince was an abandoned charac- 
 ter. He had divorced his own wife, and joined himself to another by an 
 adulterous and incestuous connexion : he had married the wife of his 
 brother Philip, at whose house he sojourned when on a visit to Rome, 
 thus violating the laws of morality, and the rights of hospitality, by 
 seducing the wife of his host, whom he persuaded to abandon her own 
 husband, and live with him in the perpetration of the double crime 
 of adultery and incest, such marriages being expressly forbidden by 
 the Levitical law. (Lev. xviii. 16.) John durst not connive at the 
 sinful practices of the King. He sought not his favour ; he feared 
 not his displeasure. As a faithful servant of the Most High, not 
 having respect to persons, he brought the heavy charge against the 
 royal delinquent, and reprehended him with honesty and plainness. 
 It was not a general invective against his numerous immoralities, but 
 a special application to his conscience of the enormity of the offence, 
 on account of it being dishonourable to the cause of religion, and 
 injurious to the best interests of the nation : John, therefore, called 
 upon him to put away the woman with whom the laws of God and 
 of man forbad him to cohabit. 
 
 At this proceeding Herod was greatly enraged, and his officers were 
 immediately commanded to bind and imprison the devoted man. It 
 is recorded that the tyrant " added yet this above all," as if it were 
 the greatest of all his enormities, " that he shut up John in prison." 
 The adulterous Herodias, however, was more incensed than he, and 
 from the first wished to destroy the Baptist. Probably she appre- 
 hended, that, through the Preacher's admonitions, she might lose her 
 influence, and be dismissed with disgrace : she therefore urged the 
 King, not merely to imprison, but put to death, the faithful messen- 
 ger, that they might be no longer annoyed with his plain-spoken 
 exhortations and reproofs. To this proposition Herod hesitated to 
 yield an implicit compliance ; he was evidently restrained by the 
 powerful impression on his mind described in the following words 
 of inspired truth : " He feared John, knowing that he was a just 
 man, and an holy." Well has it been observed, " This circumstance 
 demands our attention. The Lord put an honour upon his faithful 
 servant, and made him respectable in chains, even before the most 
 enraged enemies. Such a power very frequently accompanies emi- 
 nent examples of godliness. It keeps in awe, and often terrifies, 
 the persons who are disposed to persecute. Herod was struck with 
 reverence for the man whom he had cast into the dungeon ; and 
 under the view of John's singular holiness, probably perceived his 
 own baseness, so as to be distressed with painful apprehensions.'^ 
 
 * For an account of the family of Herod, see note, p. 126. 
 
 f Scripture Characters ; or a practical Improvement of the principal Histories in 
 the Old and New Testaments. By Thomas Robinson, M. A. 8vo. edit., vol. iv.. p. 328. 
 London, 1818.
 
 120 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 The life of this useful man was now nearly at its close. The 
 haughty and unprincipled Herodias had never lost sight of the attain- 
 ment of her revenge ; and, after having long and fruitlessly urged 
 Herod to grant it to her, wrung it out from him, at length, through an 
 unlooked-for opportunity. Herod's birth-day was kept. From times 
 of old, Kings were accustomed to observe the anniversary of their 
 natal day with much splendour, frequently giving an entertainment 
 to their principal nobility.* (Gen. xl. 20.) According to the Evan- 
 gelist Mark, this was done with great pomp, who says, that Herod 
 " made a great feast for his Lords, high Captains, and the chief per- 
 sons of Galilee ; " that is, the chief men in office : the term " high 
 Captains," refers to the commanders of thousands, or of a division 
 of one thousand men. " The daughter of Herodias f danced before 
 them, and pleased Herod." The dancing of this child of the Queen 
 in the midst of the company, was a public and shameless glorying of 
 Herod, and of his unlawful wife, in their wickedness ; this daughter 
 of Herodias being the offspring of Philip whom she had deserted, and 
 whose child, as well as wife, had been violently taken from him by 
 the stronger power of his brother. Dancing was common among the 
 Jews on festive as well as on other occasions ; and hence there 
 appears no ground for considering it as in itself an act of lightness 
 or indignity, the Princess being but a child, though sufficiently old 
 to be instructed by her mother in what subsequently took place. Her 
 name was Salome ; and Herod appears to have been gratified with 
 the elegance of her steps. His lavish admiration was also an act 
 of flattery to the mother, who possessed such great influence over 
 him. Nor is there any reason for the conjecture that this dance was 
 one of that pantomimic character, satirised as licentious by some of 
 the poets, and which, in truth, was of heathen original. Such 
 dances were performed by hired women, who studied and practised 
 them as a profession. Amateur dancing in high life was by no means 
 uncommon in the voluptuous times of the Roman Emperors. But in 
 the age of Herod it was exceedingly rare, and almost unheard-of ; 
 and, therefore, the condescension of Salome, who volunteered, in 
 honour of the anniversary of that Monarch's birth-day, to exhibit her 
 person, as she led the mazy dance in the saloons of Machserus, (for 
 
 The ancients took only a very small refreshment for breakfast and dinner ; for 
 example, a little bread and wine, with an apple or two : the only meal to which friends 
 were invited was made toward sunset. (Fleury, Masurs des Juifs et Chret.; Melmoth's 
 NotS on Pliny's Letters.) 
 
 t Her name was Salome. She first married Philip the Tetrarch, her uncle ; after- 
 wards Aristobulus, son of Herod, King of Chalcis, by whom she had three sons, Herod, 
 Agrippa, and Aristobulus. (Joseph. Antiq., lib. xviii., cap. 7.) Nicephorus (lib. L, 
 cap. 20) and Metaphrastes relate that Salome accompanied her mother Herodias, and 
 her father-in-law Herod, in their banishment ; and that the Emperor having obliged 
 them to go into Spain, as she passed over a river that was frozen, the ice broke under 
 her feet, and she sunk in up to her neck ; when the ice uniting again, she remained 
 thus suspended by it, and suffered the same punishment she had made John the Baptist 
 undergo. But none of the ancients mention this ; and it is contrary to Josephus, who 
 tells us she first married Philip the Tetrareh, son of Herod and Cleopatra, who died 
 about the year 33 or 34 ; and afterwards Aristobulus, her cousin-german, by whom she 
 had several children. Thus she lived above thirty years after the exile of her father-in- 
 law. (Calnuet.)
 
 MAKTYItnOM OF JOHN THK BAPTIST. 1'J 1 
 
 though she was a child at this time, as some suppose, she was still a 
 Princess,) was felt to be a compliment that merited the highest reward. 
 Herod was not backward to give it. 
 
 The inspired record informs us, that so great was the gratification 
 of the King, that " he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever 
 she would ask," * (Matt. xiv. 7,) even unto the half of his king- 
 dom. (Mark vi. 23.) This instance of extreme rashness and folly 
 produced the most terrible effects ; for she, being instructed to that 
 purpose by her mother, f said, " Give me here John Baptist's head in 
 a charger." J It is by no means improbable that Herod was flushed 
 with wine, and the Queen, fearing he would retract his promise if she 
 deferred to urge her request until the morning, instigated Salome 
 to demand immediately the head of John. What will not a vindictive 
 mind surrender for the sake of wreaking its vengeance on an enemy ! 
 
 Herod appeared to be struck with horror at the atrocious proposal, 
 and yet had no firmness to resist. However his conscience might 
 remonstrate, he determined not to exasperate Herodias by a refusal, 
 and absurdly argued, that unless he complied, he would be despised 
 
 In the east it is customary for public dancers, at festivals in great houses, to solicit, 
 from the company they have been entertaining, such rewards as the spectators may 
 choose to bestow : these usually are small pieces of money. Herod, however, offered 
 half his kingdom to Salome, who had danced to please him ; and in this, if he were not 
 equal in wisdom, he was certainly superior in extravagance, to a Monarch, " Shah- 
 Abbas, who being one day drunk in his palace, gave a woman, that danced much to his 
 satisfaction, the fairest Khan in all Ispahan, which was not yet finished, but wanted 
 little; this Khan yielded a great revenue to the King to whom it belonged, in chamber 
 rents." So far the parallel is tolerably exact ; for, that Herod was far from sober is a 
 pardonable suspicion ; but the sequel is different. " The Nazer having put him in mind 
 of it, next morning, took the freedom to tell him that it was unjustifiable prodigality ; 
 so the King ordered to give her a hundred tomans," (200,) with which she was forced 
 to be contented. (Thevenot's Travels in Persia, p. 100.) 
 
 t "She went forth," (Mark vi. 24,) slipped away, out of that hall, to her mother, 
 who was either close by, or in the harem of the palace ; and returning " straightway," 
 in haste, before she could be missed by the King, or he could possibly suspect where she 
 had been for advice, demanded, forthwith, instantly the head of John the Baptist ; who, 
 being in the prison in another part of the palace, (a common thing in the east,) was slain 
 directly by a capitzi sent by Herod. So that the whole of this histoiy passed in a very 
 rapid manner, was over presently, and was, as it were, one transaction. This account, 
 thus understood, agrees more precisely with that of Matthew ; (chap. xiv. ;) the pre- 
 instruction of the daughter by the mother (verse 8) becomes perfectly easy ; and the 
 " Give me here " (not presently, as we now use that word, as in our rendering of Mark, 
 but instantly, at the present time) "the head of John," is an entire coincidence. 
 (Taylor's Fragments.) 
 
 t At the time of this event, it was common for Princes to require the heads of emi- 
 nent persons, whom they ordered for execution, to be brought to them, especially when 
 there was any particular resentment. We have an instance in Josephus, which follows 
 the story of this criminal marriage of Herodias. Aretas was extremely provoked at 
 the treatment of his daughter, to whom Herod was previously united. At length a war 
 broke out between them. A battle was fought, and Herod's troops were defeated. 
 " Herod sent an account of this to Tiberius ; and he, resenting the attempt of Aretas, 
 wrote to Vitellius to declare war against him, with orders, that if he were taken pri- 
 soner he should be brought to him in chains, and that, if he were slain, his head 
 should be sent to him." (Joseph. Antiq., lib. xix., cap. vi., sect. 1.) Agrippina, 
 then wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero, who was afterwards Emperor, sent an 
 officer to put to death Lollia Paulina, who had been her rival for the imperial dignity. 
 And Dio Cassius says, when Lollia's head was brought to her, not knowing it at first, 
 she examined it with her own hands, till she perceived some particular feature by which 
 that lady was distinguished. (Lardner's Works, vol. i., p. 20. 8vo. edit. London, 
 1831. 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 122 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 by his nobility for weakness and inconstancy. Herod had not been 
 over-scrupulous in performing oatbs taken on much more solemn 
 occasions than this. How had he kept his oath towards his people '.' 
 how the oath of espousal to his former repudiated wife ? Yet here 
 he thought himself compelled to keep faith with a party who, knowing 
 that he never contemplated such a request, had recourse to a quibble, 
 in order to accomplish her sanguinary purpose ; for had she asked, 
 simply, to put the Baptist to death, her demand would not have 
 answered to the terms or sense of his promise, which was a gift. 
 And this too when the act required of him was one of abominable 
 wickedness, the murder of a just and holy and innocent man, as he 
 knew John to be. But it was not from any principle that he kept his 
 oath. He was afraid of appearing fickle ; he was afraid of showing a 
 tenacious respect for a man of John's austerity ; he was afraid of 
 appearing regardless of an oath before man, but thought not how he 
 should appear before God, in whose name he had made it. This cun- 
 ning fox was thus caught in a snare, and cut the Gordian knot, which 
 his first crime of a rash oath had tangled for him, with the sword of 
 murder. He now presented the first-fruits of his mocking the Saviour 
 of the world, and remanding him to Pilate.* 
 
 The Evangelist Matthew records this unprincipled and cruel act in 
 terse but emphatic language : " And the King was sorry : neverthe- 
 less, for the oath's sake and them which sat with him at meat, he 
 commanded it to be given her." Such are the contradictions in 
 human nature, and especially in tyrants accustomed to indulge every 
 passion to excess, and to surrender themselves to every impression, 
 unchecked by anything but some contrary feeling in their own 
 minds, swelling like waves, and dashing against each other. Many 
 reasons have been suggested as the cause of his sorrow. Herod had 
 a high esteem for John, and feared him. He stood in awe of his 
 sanctity, knowing that he was a just man and a holy, and protected 
 him, probably, from the persecutions of some of the more powerful 
 Pharisees and Sadducees : " when he heard him, he did many things" 
 according to his exhortations, " and heard him gladly." And yet, in 
 his unjust anger, excited because John refused either to sanction or to 
 be silent respecting an incestuous marriage, he first cast him into 
 prison, and then surrendered his life to the fury of the partner of his 
 guilt. Of so little consequence is it for us to do " many things," at 
 the command of God, unless we walk " in all his statutes and ordi- 
 nances blameless ;" for the example of Herod teaches this important 
 lesson, that a partial surrender of ourselves to the influence of truth 
 is no security at all against the overwhelming out-breakings of those 
 corruptions of the heart which remain unmortified.f Again : John 
 was in high repute among the people, and Herod might have been 
 afraid that his cold-blooded murder might excite commotion ; Herod, 
 
 Scripture Biography. By the Rev. R. W. Evans, M. A. Second series. Pp. 211, 
 212. London, 1836. 
 
 t An Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, and of some other 
 detached Parts of Holy Scripture. By the Rev. Richard Watson. In loco. London, 
 1833.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 123 
 
 though a notoriously wicked man, does not appear to have been 
 insensible to some of the common principles of human nature. Here 
 was a great and manifest crime proposed ; no less than the murder 
 of an acknowledged Prophet of the Lord. It was deliberate. It was 
 to gratify the malice of a wicked woman. It was the price of a few 
 moments' entertainment. His conscience, though in feeble and dying 
 accents, cheeked him. He would have preferred a request not so 
 manifestly wicked, and one which would not have involved him in 
 such difficulty and perplexity, so as to drive him to such wretched 
 casuistry as that of which he was guilty. Had Herodias instructed 
 her daughter to demand Herod's own head, no doubt this pretended 
 respecter of oaths would have excused himself from the obligation ! 
 Herod was probably, for the most part, influenced by the circumstances 
 of those who sat with him at meat, in whose presence he would not 
 seem to refuse to gratify his wife, for whom he had a blind passion, 
 and whose suit they might enforce by way of making their court 
 to her. It is not improbable, that among the guests were some 
 of those enemies of John, from whose persecutions Herod had before 
 protected him. Doubtless, the greater number present were infidel 
 Sadducees, and those Pharisees who were justly characterized by our 
 Lord, as " whited walls and painted sepulchres." Had they been any 
 thing better, they would have interposed in behalf of the victim, and 
 discovered their true skill in interpreting the law, of which they made 
 their boast, by showing Herod that no oath could bind him to commit 
 murder, much less a vague and general one. This is sufficiently 
 indicative of the character of his guests.* 
 
 The sanguinary order was executed ! " He sent and beheaded 
 John in prison.'" (Matt. xiv. 10.) For the sake of the wicked men 
 with whom " he sat at meat," the bloody offering, the head of the 
 slaughtered Prophet, slain alone in a dungeon, and by night, f was 
 brought and given as the reward to the daughter and the mother ! 
 
 Watson's Exposition, in loco. 
 
 f- This is not the only instance of such an outrage. Whilst Commodus was immersed 
 in blood and luxury, he devolved the detail of the public business on Perennis ; a servile 
 and ambitious minister, who had obtained his post by the murder of his predecessor, but 
 who possessed a considerable share of vigour and ability. By acts of extortion, and the 
 forfeited estates of the nobles sacrificed to his avarice, he had accumulated an immense 
 treasure. The Praetorian guards were under his immediate command ; and his son, 
 who already discovered a military genius, was at the head of the Illyrian legions. Peren- 
 nis aspired to the empire ; or what, in the eyes of Commodus, amounted to the same 
 crime, he was capable of aspiring to it, had he not been prevented, suppressed, and put 
 to death. Herodian relates, that Commodus, having learnt from a soldier the ambitious 
 designs of Perennis, and his son, caused them to be attacked and massacred by night. 
 (Gibbon's Rome. Milman's Edition, 8vo. Vol. i., p. 152.) 
 
 1 Jerome relates, that Herodias, holding the Baptist's head in her hands, pierced the 
 tongue with her bodkin, in like manner as Antony's wife served Cicero. (Calmet.) He 
 had been doomed to death at the instigation of Antony, one of the triumvirate. He 
 had fled in a litter towards the sea of Caieta, and when the assassins came up to him, 
 he put his head out of the litter, and it was severed from the body by Herennius. This 
 event happened in December, B.C. 43, after the enjoyment of life for nearly sixty-four 
 years. The head and right hand were carried to Rome, and hung up in the forum ; 
 and, so inveterate was Antony's hatred against the unhappy man, that even Fulvia, the 
 triumvir's wife, wreaked her vengeance upon his head, and drew the tongue out of his 
 mouth, and bored it through repeatedly with a gold bodkin, verifying, in this act 
 of inhumanity, what Cicero had once observed, that no animal it more revengeful thin 
 a woman. 
 
 R 2
 
 124 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 What an offering to a woman ! Well might Josephus say respecting 
 her, that " she was a woman full of ambition and envy, having a 
 mighty influence on Herod, and able to persuade him to do things 
 he was not at all inclined to." The same historian, however, assigns 
 a somewhat different cause for this execution from that given in the 
 narrative of the Evangelists. The passage, notwithstanding, carries 
 forcible evidence to the general truth of the Gospel narrative, and 
 therefore we transcribe it. " Some of the Jews thought that the 
 destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, 
 as a punishment of what he did against John that was called the Bap- 
 tist ; for Herod slew him, although he was a good man, and com- 
 manded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness one 
 towards another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism. 
 Now, when others came in crowds about him, (for they were greatly 
 moved by hearing his words,) Herod, who feared lest the great influ- 
 ence John had over the people might put it into his power and incli- 
 nation to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to anything he 
 should advise,) thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent 
 any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties 
 by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should 
 be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, on account of 
 Herod's suspicious temper, to Machserus,* and was there put to 
 death."-)- There is no inconsistency between this account, and that 
 of the inspired Evangelists. Both may be correct. John was con- 
 demned in the mind of Herod on political grounds, as endangering 
 his position, and afterwards executed on private and apparent reasons, 
 in order to gratify a malicious but powerful woman. The scriptural 
 reason was but the pretext for carrying into effect what the machi- 
 nations of Herod's court had long determined. Josippon, who flou- 
 rished about the ninth or tenth century, though silent respecting 
 Jesus Christ, or James the Lord's brother, mentions the death of 
 John the Baptist, and in a manner more consonant with the records 
 of the New Testament, than the passage of Josephus above quoted. 
 He represents the Tetrarch as a very wicked Prince, and says, " that 
 
 * The castle of Machaerus, where John was imprisoned and beheaded, was a fortress 
 lying on the southern extremity of Peraea, at the top of the lake Asphaltites, between the 
 dominions of Herod and Aretas, King of Arabia Petraea, and at the time of our history 
 appears to have belonged to the former. (Lardner's Works, vol. vi., p. 483.) Accord- 
 ing to the Scripture account, the daughter of Herodias obtained the Baptist's head 
 at an entertainment, without delay. How could this be, when Machaerus lay at a dis- 
 tance from Jerusalem ? The feast seems to have been made at Machaems, which, 
 besides being a strong-hold, was also a palace, built by Herod the Great ; and Herod 
 himself was now on his route towards the territories of Aretas, with whom he was 
 at war. Bishop Marsh (Lecture xxvi.) remarks, that the soldiers, who, in Luke iii. 14, 
 are said to have come to John while baptizing in the Jordan, are designated by a term 
 (tnpa.rfvofj.fvoi, not ffrpafuarcu) which denotes persons actually engaged in war, not 
 merely soldiers. In the same way, in Mark vi. 27, the officer sent to bring John's head 
 bears a military title, airtKovKarup. These minute indications are quite accordant with 
 the fact, that Herod was then making war with Aretas, as appears from Josephus, 
 (Antiq., lib. xviii., cap. 5, sect. 1,) and afford a very strong evidence of the credibility 
 of the sacred narratives, by showing that the authors described what was actually 
 proceeding before their own eyes. We also see a reason why Herodias was present on 
 this occasion, since she was Herod's paramour, and had, u like another Helen," led 
 to the war. (Kitto's Cyclopedia.) 
 
 + Joseph. Antiq., lib. xviii., cap. v., sect. 2.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 12.1 
 
 he took to himself, to be his own wife, the wife of his brother 
 Philip, though his brother was still living, and she had children by 
 him. He killed many wise men in Israel ; and he killed that great 
 Priest, John the Baptizer, because he had said to him, ' It is unlawful 
 for thee to have thy brother's wife.' " * 
 
 Thus fell the honoured Prophet, a martyr to ministerial faithful- 
 ness, in the bold maintenance of the truth of God before the face 
 of Princes ; and thus added his name to the list of Prophets whose 
 blood was shed by an unthankful country. His character is one 
 of singular interest. Other Prophets testified of Christ : he pointed 
 to him as already come. Others saw him afar off : he beheld the 
 advancing glory of his ministry eclipsing his own, and rejoiced to 
 " decrease," while his Master " increased." His ministry stands as 
 a type of the true character of evangelical repentance : it goes before 
 Christ, and prepares his way ; it is humbling, but not despairing ; 
 for it points to " the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the 
 world." Elijah stood alone ; and, without a partner, successfully 
 combated the apostacy of the people, and re-established the church 
 of God among them. John, also, stood single in a remarkable man- 
 ner. He was the sole herald of a new dispensation in the church. 
 The law and the Prophets were until him. The one proclaimed by 
 typical rites, the other by inspired prediction, the kingdom of hea- 
 ven to come. Their still small voice was superseded by the loud 
 proclamation of John, which announced as close at hand what they 
 foreshowed at a distance. Thus he was greater than all the Prophets 
 before him, several of whose predictions terminated in him. His 
 solitary voice from the desert is the single connecting note between 
 the strains of the Preachers of the Old and New Testaments ; the 
 rigid austerity of his life was the last hold of the law upon the 
 church, and his doctrine and baptism were the first contact of the 
 first embrace of the Gospel ; he came forth in the power and spirit 
 of Elijah, the grand prophetic Minister under the old covenant, and 
 conferred the right of inauguration upon the divine messenger of the 
 new.f 
 
 The death of the Baptist took place, as is generally believed, about 
 the end of the thirty-first year of the vulgar era, or in the commence- 
 ment of the thirty-second. The Greek and Latin churches celebrate 
 the festival of John's beheading on the 29th of August. The disci- 
 ples of John being informed of his death, gave notice thereof to 
 Jesus Christ, and came and carried away his body. (Matt. xiv. 12.) 
 The Gospel does not tell where they buried him ; but in the time 
 of Julian the Apostate, his tomb was shown at Samaria, where the 
 inhabitants of the country opened it and burnt a part of his bones : 
 the remainder were saved by some Christians, who carried them to 
 an Abbot of Jerusalem, named Philip. This Abbot made a present 
 
 " Ipse accepit uxorem Philippi fratris sui adhuc viventis in uxorem, licet illahaberet 
 filios ex fratre ejus : earn, inquam, accepit sibi in uxorem. Occidit autem multos 
 aapientes Israel. Occidit etiatn Jochanon sacerdotum magnum, ob id quod dixerat ei : 
 Non licet tibi acoipere uxorem fratrw tui Philippi in uxoreui. Occidit ergo Jochanon 
 Bapti.-itam." Joxipp., lib. vi.. cap. Ixiii., p. 274. 
 
 f Evans's Scripture Biography, second series p. 212.
 
 126 BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 
 
 of them to Athanasius, at Alexandria, who put them in a well, till 
 they were lodged in a more honourable place. Some time after, 
 Theodosius, having demolished the temple of Serapis, a church was 
 built in the room of it in honour of John the Baptist, where these 
 relics,* it is said, were placed, A.D. 395. 
 
 NOTE. Page 119. 
 
 THE mention of Herod renders it necessary to connect his history with 
 that of the Jews after their return from the Babylonish captivity. This 
 took place four hundred and thirty-five years before the birth of Christ. 
 The Jews continued under the protection of the Kings of Persia for two 
 hundred years ; in the early part of which period they were ruled by 
 governors of their own nation, appointed by the Persian court ; and in the 
 latter the High Priests were deputed to this office. The Persian empire 
 was subverted by Alexander the Great, on whose death the Seleucidce 
 reigned in Syria, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. The provinces Ccelo-Syria 
 and Palestine were wrested from the Ptolemies by Antiochus the Great, 
 King of Syria. His son, Antiochus Epiphanes, conquered Egypt, and then 
 made a furious attack upon the Jews one hundred and seventy years before 
 Christ, plundered Jerusalem, polluted the temple, destroyed forty thousand 
 of the inhabitants ; and a short time afterwards renewed his atrocities ; 
 and, being a bitter persecuting Pagan, he abolished, as far as he was able, 
 the worship of God, and consecrated the temple to Jupiter Olympus. 
 These acts of outrage and cruelty, as we have noticed, called forth the 
 pious patriotism of the celebrated family of the Maccabees, who, after the 
 most severe and noble struggles, in which they were well supported by the 
 devoted heroism of the Jews, succeeded in expelling the Syrians. This 
 was the rise of the Asmonean family, as the Maccabees were also called, 
 from an ancestor of the name of Asmoneus ; and Judas Maccabeus, who 
 
 If we were to credit the ludicrous stories which Romish annalists have recorded, we 
 should speedily arrive at the conclusion that John the Baptist was remarkably prolific 
 in heads, as a multitude are exhibited on the Continent, each of which is represented 
 as the undoubted caput of the celebrated martyr. Several churches and religious 
 houses, professing to possess among their rarities the veritable head, are at this moment 
 to be found. On this foolery we shall not stop to descant. Alban Butler, in his " Lives 
 of the Saints," says enough : " Ruflnus and Theodoret inform us, that in the reign of 
 Julian the Apostate, the Pagans broke open the tomb of John the Baptist which waa 
 at Sebaste, in Samaria, and burnt part of his sacred bones, some part being saved by 
 the Christians. These were sent to Athanasius at Alexandria. Some time after, in 
 396, Theodosius built a great church in that city in honour of the Baptist upon the spot 
 where the temple of Serapis had formerly stood, and those holy relics were deposited in 
 it, as Theophanes testifies. But a distribution of some portions was made to certain 
 other churches ; and the great Theodoret obtained a share for his church at Cyrus, and 
 relates, that he and his diocess had received from God several miraculous favours 
 through the intercession of this glorious saint. The Baptist's head was discovered at 
 Emisa, in Syria, in the year 453, and was kept with honour in the great church of that 
 city, till, about the year 800, this precious relic was conveyed to Constantinople, that it 
 might not be sacrilegiously insulted by the Saracens. When that city was taken by the 
 French in 1204, Waldo de Sarton, a Canon of Amiens, brought part of this head, that 
 is, all the face, except the lower jaw, into France, and bestowed it on his own church, 
 where it is preserved to this day. Part of the head of the Baptist is said to be kept in 
 St. Sylvester's church in Campo Marzo at Rome ; though Sirmond thinks this to be the 
 head of St. John the Martyr of Rome. Pope Clement VIII., to remove all reasonable 
 doubt respecting the relic of this saint, procured a small part of the head that is kept 
 at Amiens for St. Sylvester's church." (Butler's Lives, vol. i., p. 374. 8vo. edit. 
 Dublin.)
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 1 '27 
 
 united the high priesthood with the supreme government, formed an 
 alliance with the Romans, the better to defend the new commonwealth 
 which his valour had founded. The successors of Judas were Jonathan, 
 Simon, John Hyrcanus, who subdued the Idumeans, Aristobulus, who 
 assumed the title of King, Alexander Janaeus, Alexandra his widow, Aris- 
 tobulus the younger son, deposed by Pompey, who restored Hyrcanus the 
 elder son, but forbade the use of the diadem, and made the nation tribu- 
 tary to the Romans. The Prime Minister of this Hyrcanus, the last of 
 the Asmonean family, was Antipater, who, having ingratiated himself with 
 the Romans, obtained from them for his son Herod, afterwards called the 
 Great, the government of Galilee ; and Herod, having married Mariamne, 
 the grandaughter of Hyrcanus, with much opposition and violence, and 
 by the favour of Marc Antony, took possession of the kingdom of Judea. 
 He died within two years after the real time of the birth of Christ, and 
 soon after the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem. The distribution 
 of his kingdom, by his will, was confirmed by Augustus Caesar. Arche- 
 laus had Judea, Herod Antipas the tetrarchy of Iturea and Trachonitis. 
 Herod Philip seems to have been left in a private station. The names 
 of these Princes appear in the Gospels. Archelaus was reigning when 
 Joseph and Mary returned from Egypt. Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch, or, 
 by courtesy, the King, of Galilee, is several times mentioned ; (Matt. xiv. 
 1, 3, 6 ; Mark vi. 14 ; Luke iii. 1, 19 ;) and to him our Lord was sent by 
 Pilate. Philip is mentioned, Luke iii. 1. Herodias was the wife of 
 Herod Philip, and was married to Herod Antipas during the life-time 
 of her husband, which proved the occasion of the murder of John the 
 Baptist. (Matt. xiv. 3 10.) The Herod Agrippa mentioned in the Acts 
 of the Apostles, was a grandson of Herod the Great, and brother of Hero- 
 dias. The Emperor Caligula made him Tetrarch of Trachonitis and 
 Abilene, to which Claudius added the kingdom of Judea. He it was that 
 put James the Apostle to death, (Acts xii. 1, 2,) and was mortally smitten 
 of God, in the height of his pride, at Csesarea. (Acts xii. 20.) On his 
 death, a Roman governor was again appointed to Judea. His son, Agrippa 
 II., succeeded to the tetrarchies of Trachonitis and Abilene. Before this 
 Agrippa St. Paul delivered his reasons for becoming a Christian. (Acts 
 xxvi.) ("Watson's Exposition.") Herod Antipas and his guilty para- 
 mour died in disgrace. In the year nine of the Christian era, Herodias, 
 being jealous of the prosperity of her brother Agrippa, who from a private 
 person had become King of Judea, persuaded her husband, Herod Antipas, 
 to visit Rome, and desire the same dignity of the Emperor Caius. She 
 resolved to accompany him, and hoped that her presence and appearance 
 would contribute to procure the Emperor's favour. However, Agrippa, 
 obtaining intelligence of this design, wrote to the Emperor, and accused 
 Antipas. The messenger of Agrippa arrived at Baise, where the Emperor 
 was, at the very time when Herod received his first audience. Cains, on 
 the delivery of Agrippa's letters, read them with great earnestness. In 
 these letters, Agrippa accused Antipas of having been a party in Sejanus's 
 conspiracy against Tiberius, and said that he still carried on a correspond- 
 ence with Artabanus, King of Parthia, against the Romans. As a proof 
 of this, he affirmed that Antipas had in his arsenals arms for seventy 
 thousand men. Caius, being angry, demanded hastily of Antipas, if it 
 were true that he had such a quantity of arms. The King, not daring to 
 deny it, was instantly banished to Lyons in Gaul. The Emperor offered to 
 forgive Herodias, in consideration of her brother Agrippa ; but she chose 
 rather to follow her husband, and to share his fortune in banishment.
 
 128 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 This is that Antipas, who, being at Jerusalem at the time of our Saviour's 
 passion, ridiculed Jesus whom Pilate had sent to him, dressed him in worn- 
 out royalty, and sent him back to Pilate as a mock King, whose ambition 
 gave him no umbrage. (Luke xxiii. 7, 11.) The year of the death of 
 Antipas is unknown ; but it is certain, that he, as well as Herodias, died 
 in exile. Josephus says that he died in Spain, whither Caius, on his com- 
 ing into Gaul the first year of his banishment, might have ordered him to 
 be sent. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SECT. I. MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. Elevated Character of a Martyr for Christ 
 State of the Church at this Period Murmuring of the Grecians Cause of it 
 Hellenists Remedy for the Evil complained of Deacons Their Office -Agapte 
 Ignatius and Justin Martyr quoted Stephen His Character The Nature of the 
 Discussions in which he engaged with the Jews Various Synagogues in Jerusa- 
 lem Foreign Jews Libertines Cyrenians Alexandrians Of Cilicia Of 
 Asia Stephen is falsely accused Defends himself before the Council His Visirm 
 Its monitory and consoling Character Rage of the Mob Stephen is hurried out 
 of the City and stoned Remarks on his Death The Place of his Martyrdom 
 His Relics said to be discovered Their supposed miraculous Power Folly of 
 Romanism on this Subject The Power of the Jewish Council considered Dr. 
 Lardner quoted Stoning, a capital Punishment of the Jews Duration of the 
 Persecution which followed the Death of Stephen Saul of Tarsus an active 
 Agent of the Chief Priests Hi? mode of Assault upon the Christians The Gos- 
 pel spreads Martyrdom of Nicanor and others Comparison between Zechariah 
 and Stephen. SECT. II. MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER His History Cha- 
 racter Called to bean Apostle Tradition of James introducing the Gospel into 
 Spain, noticed His Intimacy with our Lord /* cruelly put to Death Career 
 of Herod Agrippa His miserable End. 
 
 SECTION I. MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 
 
 How different is the feeling, observes a modern writer, with which 
 we read the words and deeds of the martyrs from that which accom- 
 panies the consideration of all other characters ! That which comes 
 nearest to it is our regard to the memory of the hero who died for 
 his and our country. We admire his high spirit and courage, we 
 venerate him for his wisdom, we love him for his kinder qualities, 
 especially for the love which he bore to his country, we pity him for 
 his short date of life, we are stirred as with the sound of a trumpet 
 at the story of his mighty deeds ; and these feelings are rendered still 
 more lively by the insinuation into them of our personal vanity, 
 which is gratified at being fellow-countrymen of such a man. Yet 
 our sympathy is exceedingly imperfect. If we gaze M'ith a reveren- 
 tial fervour upon his mouldering sword and surcoat, which, with his 
 rusty casque and tattered banner, are hung over his tomb, yet these 
 aspirations soon make way for a sigh upon the vanity of this world. 
 Not only the rust and rags of these monuments teach us the frailty 
 of everything earthly, but their very fashion also forcibly reminds us 
 how completely his age has gone by, how very different are the times 
 in which we are living. It is with difficulty that we can trace down
 
 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OP STEPHEN.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 129 
 
 to ourselves, in an uninterrupted tissue of reflection, the benefits 
 which he acquired for his country. Still more hard do we find it, 
 amid such striking contrarieties from without, to associate our feel- 
 ings with his. But the martyr died for an universal, an everlasting, 
 country, of which the fashions, the principles, the laws, and there- 
 fore the feelings, are the same throughout all nations, and all gene- 
 rations of nations, to the end of the world. The crown of glory 
 which he has acquired is imperishable ; and when we look upon his 
 tomb, we think not of his bones below, but of his spirit above. The 
 cause in which he fell is uot only just and honourable before man, 
 but approved and precious before God. And it is one to which we 
 ourselves are bound, in common with him, in its most minute parti- 
 cularities, in particular weapon, particular armour, particular interest, 
 particular friend, particular foe, particular King ; and not only have 
 we in common with him, but we are one with him, and he with us : 
 the same spirit fills us : we look not on one who had once the same 
 breath of life which we now have, but on one who has the same 
 breath of everlasting life at this moment ; who is in the same com- 
 munion of saints with ourselves. Our sense of obligation to him is 
 exalted by the consideration that he was the chosen instrument of the 
 most high God to call us into the blessedness of the membership 
 of his eternal city ; and the greater our advance in holiness, the 
 greater is our sympathy with him, and the more do we love and bless 
 his memory.* 
 
 The church of Christ in these early days was distinguished for 
 " unity and godly love," being of one heart and soul. They conti- 
 nued together with one accord, worshipped in one place, and fed 
 together at one table. None could want ; for they had all things in 
 common. Those who were rich sold their estates to minister to the 
 necessities of the poor ; the money was deposited in one common 
 treasury, and distributed under the inspection of the Apostles. The 
 church increasing daily in numbers, the superintendence of the 
 Apostles over the distribution of the common fund was of necessity 
 committed to others, and due equality ceased to be observed : some 
 received larger gratuities, and others less, than their just wants 
 required : the result was, " there arose a murmuring of the Grecians 
 against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the 
 daily ministration." (Acts vi. 1.) 
 
 It may not be useless to inquire who these Greeks or Hellenists 
 were, who felt themselves thus injured, or treated with indifference 
 and neglect, in the daily act of charity. Dr. Cave informs us, that 
 the opinion that has most generally obtained is, that they were ori- 
 ginally Jews, born and bred in Grecian or heathen countries, of the 
 dispersed among the Gentiles, who accommodated themselves to their 
 manner of living, spake the Greek language, but altogether mingled 
 with Hebraisms and Jewish forms of speech, and used no other Bible 
 but the Greek translation of the Septuagint. Salmasius has endea- 
 voured, with considerable ingenuity, to confute this idea, by showing 
 that no people ever went under that name or character ; that the 
 
 * Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 334. London, 1834. 
 VOL. 1. S
 
 J30 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Jews, in whatever part of the world they might be found, were not 
 a distinct nation from those that lived in Palestine, and that there 
 never was any such peculiar distinct Hellenistic dialect, nor any such 
 ever mentioned by ancient writers. Tt is therefore probable, that they 
 were not of the Hebrew race, but Greek or Gentile proselytes, who 
 had themselves, or by their ancestors, deserted the superstitions and 
 idolatry of Paganism, and entered the Jewish church, taking upon 
 themselves circumcision, and the observance of the Mosaic law, and 
 were now converted to the Christian faith. Many of these proselytes 
 were now at Jerusalem, who were brought under the influence of the 
 Gospel, from among whom one of the seven chosen to be Deacons 
 was a proselyte of Antioch. Hence we learn why the widows of 
 these Hellenists had not so much care taken of them as those of the 
 Hebrews : the individuals with whom the Apostles in a great mea- 
 sure intrusted the distribution of the supplies, were more indulgent 
 toward those of their own nation, their neighbours, and kindred, 
 than to others who agreed with them only in the profession of Chris- 
 tianity, and were utterly unable to contribute to the general stock in 
 an equal proportion with the native Jews, who had lands and posses- 
 sions which " they sold and laid at the Apostles' feet." (Acts iv. 37.) 
 To remedy this evil, and to preserve " the unity of the spirit in 
 the bond of peace," the Apostles called the disciples together, whom 
 they informed that the disposal of the common stock, and making 
 daily provision for the poorer members of the church, were incon- 
 sistent with the due and efficient discharge of other and more import- 
 ant duties of their office as the Apostles of Christ, and Ministers 
 of the Gospel. They therefore recommended that the people should 
 choose from among themselves seven men " of honest report, full 
 of the Holy Ghost and wisdom," whom they might set apart pecu- 
 liarly to superintend these affairs, while they, more freely and with- 
 out interruption, might give themselves " continually to prayer, and 
 to the ministry of the word." (Acts vi. 4.) This was the origin 
 of Deacons in the Christian church : * they were to " serve tables," 
 
 * The term " Deacon " is from a Greek word which, in its proper and primitive sense, 
 denotes a servant, who waits on his employer at table, and is always near his person to 
 ohey his orders, which was accounted a more creditable kind of service than that which is im* 
 plied by the word Sou\os, " a slave ; " hut this distinction is not usually observed in the 
 New Testament. Our Lord makes use of both terms in Matt. xx. 26, 27, though they are 
 not distinctly marked in our translation. " Whosoever will be great among you, let him 
 be your Deacon ; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." In 
 ecclesiastical polity, the Deacon is the lowest of the different orders of the Clergy. In the 
 Romish Church he served at the altar, in the celebration of what are called " the holy 
 mysteries." He is also allowed to baptize, and to preach with the permission of the 
 Bishop. Formerly, Deacons were allowed to marry ; but this was prohibited very early ; 
 and at present the Pope dispenses with this prohibition only for very important reasons. 
 In such cases they re-enter the condition of laymen. There are eighteen Cardinal 
 Deacons in Rome, who have the charge of the temporal interests and the revenues 
 of the Church. A person, to be consecrated Deacon, must be twenty-three years of 
 age. In the English Church Deacons are also Ecclesiastics, who can perform all the 
 offices of a Priest, except the consecration of the sacramental elements, and the pro- 
 nouncing of the absolution. In German Protestant churches the assistant Ministers are 
 generally called " Deacons." If there be two assistants, the first of them is called 
 " Archdeacon." In the Presbyterian churches, the Deacon's office is generally merged 
 in that of Ruling Elder ; but in some it is distinct, and simply embraces the distribution
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 131 
 
 that is, to wait upon the necessities of the poor, to make provision 
 for the public festivals of the community, to attend to the secular 
 affairs of the church, receive and disburse money, and provide every- 
 thing necessary for its temporal good. Thus while the Bishop 
 attended to the souls, the Deacons attended to the bodies, of the 
 people ; the Pastor to the spiritual, and the Deacons to the temporal, 
 interests of the church. This description of the office of a Deacon 
 agrees with a definition of the word 8axovoj which we find in the 
 ancient classics, whose duty it was to distribute portions to every 
 guest, either according to the command of the up^Tpixfavos, 
 " governor of the feast," or according to the rule of equality, which 
 apportioned to each alike. It is, however, probable, that other ser- 
 vices were exacted, as it cannot be supposed that the Apostles would 
 have laid so much stress on the character of the men to be chosen, 
 nor would they have set them apart in a manner so solemn and 
 imposing, had the office been confined merely to the adjustment of 
 the temporal affairs of the community, which might have been dis- 
 charged by men of ordinary rank and capacity.* " Serving tables " 
 doubtless implied the attendance at the table of the Lord's supper ; 
 and as their agapce, or " love-feasts," at which the rich and the poor 
 sat down together, were always associated with the administration 
 of the eucharist, the services of the Deacon were in constant requi- 
 sition. To these Ignatius the martyr referred in his epistle to the 
 Trallians : " The Deacons, also, as being the ministers of the myste- 
 ries of Jesus Christ, must, by all means, please all. For they are not 
 the ministers of meat and drink, but of the church of God."f Jus- 
 tin Martyr, also, makes similar mention of these functionaries : " The 
 eucharistical office," he says, "being thus performed by the Bishop, 
 and concluded with the acclamation of the people, those we call 
 ' Deacons ' distribute to every one present, to partake of this eucha- 
 ristical bread and wine and water, and then they carry it to the 
 absent. "J In the inspired record of these events, Stephen stands 
 foremost. 
 
 Stephen was one of those Jews who were born among the Heathen, 
 spoke their language, and, where it was indifferent, conformed to 
 their habits. He was chosen with six others to minister to the neces- 
 sities of their slighted and overlooked brethren. With this unequi- 
 vocal testimony of the church in his favour, Stephen first appears 
 among us ; and there is something exceedingly moving in the specta- 
 
 of alms. Among Congregationalists the Deacons, besides attending to the temporal con- 
 cerns of the church, assist the Minister with their advice, take the lead at prayer- 
 meetings when he is absent, and preach occasionally to smaller congregations in the 
 contiguous villages. (Henderson.) 
 
 * Some remark that there were two orders of Deacons : 1. The Deacons of the table, 
 whose business it was to take care of the alma collected in the church, and distribute 
 them among the poor, widows, fec. j and, 2. The Deacons of the word, whose business 
 it was to preach, and variously instruct the people. It seems that after the persecution 
 raised against the apostolic church, in consequence of which they became dispersed, the 
 deaconship of tables ceased, as did also the community of goods ; and Philip, who was 
 one of these Deacons, who at first served tables, betook himself entirely to the preach- 
 ing of the word. 
 
 t Wake's Kpistles of the Apostolical Fathers. 8vo. edit., p. 67. London. 1737. 
 
 \ ReevesV Apologies of the Fathers. 8vo. Vol. i., p. 119. London. 1709. 
 
 si 2
 
 132 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 cle of a youthful disciple advancing so quickly to the fight, and tri- 
 umphing so gloriously. He was early removed to a hetter world. 
 He was fitted for extensive usefulness ; his acquaintance with the 
 doctrines of the Gospel, and his eloquence in declaring them, ren- 
 dered him an useful herald of the cross ; he was favoured also with 
 miraculous powers, and the spirit of courage, which enabled him to 
 preach the truth with firmness, and also to confirm the word by 
 numerous public and unquestionable miracles. The zeal and diligence 
 of his ministry, together with the extraordinary success which 
 attended it, excited the malice of the Jews, and many testified their 
 readiness to oppose and resist him ; but they were not able to with- 
 stand the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. They had then 
 recourse to the usual artifices of the discomfited children of perdi- 
 tion, which they learn from their father the devil, who stands accus- 
 ing the brethren night and day. Misrepresentation, perjury, and 
 calumny were employed incessantly against him. 
 
 The nature of the discussions in which Stephen had to engage, 
 and the disputants with whom he had to contend, necessarily come 
 under consideration. The relief which the Apostles felt in having 
 the trouble of " the tables " taken off their hands, seems to have 
 shown itself immediately in the increasing number of converts. We 
 now meet with the extraordinary fact, that a great multitude of the 
 Priests embraced the Gospel ; and the feast of tabernacles, which Dr. 
 Edward Burton supposed to be at hand, would be likely to bring 
 many new converts among the foreign Jews. The presence of one 
 of the great festivals is also indicated by what we read of Stephen 
 disputing with persons belonging to the synagogues of Gyrene, Alex- 
 andria, Cilicia, and Asia Minor. We are told that there were as 
 many as four hundred and eighty synagogues in Jerusalem ; * and 
 it seems highly probable, that many of them were built by foreign 
 Jews, who thus had synagogues of their own to which they could 
 resort when they attended the public festivals. Some of these per- 
 sons now heard, for the first time, of a new sect which was making 
 a surprising progress in Jerusalem ; and we may perhaps infer, that 
 the Chief Priests had been waiting for their arrival in the hope 
 of engaging them in their scheme against the Christians. There 
 were now several persons besides the Apostles who were active in 
 preaching the Gospel ; and though the synagogues were crowded by 
 this influx of foreign Jews, they entered them boldly, and defended 
 their doctrines. In these disputations Stephen engaged : and, as far 
 as words were concerned, his victory was easy ; for prejudice and 
 error were against him, but truth and sincerity were on his side. 
 
 Of those who took an active part in the dispute with Stephen, 
 were " certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the 
 Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia 
 and of Asia." (Acts vi. 9.) Opinion has been much divided respecting 
 the Libertines. The conjectures which have been formed concerning 
 them may be reduced to three. 1. The term is of Latin origin, and 
 
 * Burton's Lectures upon the Ecclesiastical History of the first Century, p. 66. 
 Oxford. 1831.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 133 
 
 signifies " a freed man," one who had been a slave and had obtained 
 emancipation. Many have supposed that these persons were manu- 
 mitted slaves of Roman origin, but who had become proselytes to 
 the Jewish faith, and had a synagogue in Jerusalem. This opinion 
 is open to much dispute, though it is certain Tacitus tells us of many 
 of this description being resident in Rome ; * and that four thousand 
 Jewish proselytes of Roman slaves made free were sent at one time 
 to Sardinia. 2. A second opinion is, that these persons were Jews 
 by birth, and had been taken captive by the Romans, and then set 
 at liberty, and hence called " freed men," or " Libertines." That 
 there were many Jews of this description, cannot be doubted. Pom- 
 pey, when he subjugated Judea, sent large numbers of the inhabit- 
 ants to Rome, who were afterwards liberated, and a residence assigned 
 to them beyond the Tiber. These persons were called by Philo, 
 " Libertines," or freed men. 3. But, another, and more feasible 
 opinion is, that they took their name from some place which they 
 occupied ; an idea which derives probability from the fact, that the 
 other individuals mentioned in the same category are designated by 
 the countries which they occupied. Suidas declares that it is the 
 name of a place. The Cyrenians were Jews who inhabited Gyrene, 
 a celebrated city of Libya, where a great number resided, and who 
 were accustomed to send their several offerings to Jerusalem. They 
 had a synagogue in that city, and some were among the earliest 
 converts to the faith of Christ. Hence we read of Simon of Gyrene, 
 whom the Jews compelled to bear our Saviour's cross ; of Lucius of 
 Gyrene, a celebrated Teacher in the church of Antioch ; and of " men 
 of Gyrene," who, upon the persecution that followed the death of 
 Stephen, were " scattered abroad " from Jerusalem, and preached 
 "as far as Phenice, Cyprus, and Antioch." (Acts xi. ID, 20.) The 
 synagogue of the Alexandrian Jews is mentioned in the Talmud, 
 which states that they built it at their own charge, which was probably 
 true in other cases. They were inhabitants of Alexandria, in Egypt, 
 which was founded by Alexander the Great, B.C. 332, and peopled by 
 colonies of Greeks and Jews. It was much celebrated, and contained 
 not less than three hundred thousand free citizens, and as many slaves. 
 The city was inhabited by many Jews ; and Josephus f asserts that 
 the founder assigned to them a particular quarter of the city, and 
 allowed, them equal privileges with the Greeks. Philo affirms, 
 that of five parts of the city, into which it may be supposed 
 divided, the Jews occupied two ; and that, in his time, there dwelt at 
 Alexandria and in other Egyptian towns, not less than two hundred 
 thousand of the descendants of Israel. The Cilicians were from a 
 province of Asia Minor, on the sea coast, at the north of Cy- 
 prus. The chief town was Tarsus, the birth-place of Paul the 
 Apostle, who, probably, took a principal part in these discussions 
 against Stephen, as a member of that synagogue. The term " Asia," as 
 used with regard to another class of Stephen's disputants, is employed 
 in a very limited sense, distinguishing it from Phrygia, Galatia, Bithy- 
 
 * Annales, lib. ii., cap. 86. Edit. Grierson. Dublin. 1780. 
 1 Joseph. Antiq., lib. xiv., cap. 7.
 
 134 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 nia, and Mysia. The name had anciently various significations. 
 There was Asia in the more extensive sense, denoting all that was 
 known of the East ; then a comparatively small, but to those of 
 former time well-known, part, designated Asia Minor; and of this 
 limited division a portion was denominated Asia, and, when distinction 
 was required, it was recognised as Asia Proper. This comprehended 
 the provinces of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, Lydia, ^Eolia } and Ionia. But 
 the scene of the Apostles' ministry will be found in the Lydian Asia, 
 which formed but a small part of Asia Proper. It is in this restricted 
 sense that St. John uses the word, when addressing "the seven 
 churches which are in Asia." (Rev. i. 11.) 
 
 Being overcome with the power of the Spirit, these men gave over 
 disputing, and a new plan of attack was adopted. False witnesses 
 were hired, who accused Stephen of " speaking blasphemous words 
 against Moses and against God ; " and of saying, that " Jesus of 
 Nazareth should destroy that place, and change the customs which 
 Moses had delivered." We can hardly suppose, that even the Apos- 
 tles were aware at this time, that the Gospel was to supplant the 
 religion of Moses ; still less could we imagine, that Stephen would 
 have spoken blasphemously of Moses or of God. But while he was 
 enforcing the indispensable necessity of faith in Christ's death, he 
 may have given offence to many Jews, who thought, that, as followers 
 of the law, they could not be excluded from salvation. He would 
 also be sure to represent Moses as inferior to Jesus ; and to those who 
 knew the latter only as a crucified Galilaean, the assertion would be 
 looked upon as little less than blasphemy. When the Chief Priests 
 represented the doctrines of the Apostles as subversive of the law, 
 they struck upon a chord which vibrated to the heart of every Israelite. 
 The Pharisees would even have been more forward than the Saddu- 
 cees to resent an insult such as this ; and the High Priest and his 
 followers could not have devised a plan more likely to unite all parties 
 against the Christians ; nor could there have been a fitter time for 
 spreading this new calumny, than when persons were entering Jeru- 
 salem every day, who had as yet heard nothing of the rising sect. 
 If some Jewish accounts may be believed, Gamaliel himself was no 
 longer the advocate of cautious measures. It is possible, that, as a 
 rigid Pharisee, and even upon his own principle, he may have looked 
 upon it as a proof that the counsel of the Apostles was not of God, 
 since they blasphemed Moses and the law.* With this charge, 
 Stephen's accusers hurried him before the High Priest and Elders : 
 they "brought him to the council." 
 
 The court having been set, and the charge brought in and opened, 
 that nothing might be wanting to conduct this mock exhibition of 
 justice, Stephen was permitted to defend himself. While the Judges 
 of the Sanhedrim earnestly gazed upon him, they discovered the appear- 
 ance of an extraordinary splendour and brilliancy in his countenance, 
 as indicative of the innocence and rectitude of his cause. The 
 High Priest having asked him whether he were guilty or not, the 
 holy confessor pleaded his own cause, undaunted by the assembly of 
 
 * Burton's Lectures upon the Eccles. Hist, of the First Century. 8vo. Edit. p. 67.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 13." 
 
 the wise and learned and powerful of his nation, and cheered by the 
 consciousness of the presence of the Great High Priest of our profes- 
 sion. In this address he went through a summary of the Jewish 
 history, showing God's free mercies to the nation, and the return 
 which it had made by rebellion and idolatry. He showed them, 
 among other apostacies, how their fathers had forsaken the 
 tabernacle of Jehovah, and taken up the tabernacle of Moloch. 
 This brought him to the mention of the temple, which they, 
 although no longer idolaters, yet regarded with a carnality little 
 short of idolatry.* With the usual abuse of superstition, they con- 
 fined God's presence on earth to that favoured spot, and only there 
 thought of the purity necessary for appearing before him : nowhere 
 else did they reck of his eye. Here, too, of course, it consisted but 
 in outward rites and oblations. In vain had Prophets been sent from 
 God to recall them to more spiritual notions : they persecuted and 
 slew them, both them who spoke of the coming of the Just One, and 
 the Just One himself. Their menaces, during the latter part of his 
 speech, when he came to the subject of the temple, were very signifi- 
 cant ; and, perhaps, drew him to dilate more at large on their resist- 
 ance to God's will : he saw that he himself was shortly to be added 
 to the number of His maltreated messengers, and burst out into that 
 indignant apostrophe, " Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, 
 ye do always resist the Holy Ghost : as your fathers did, so do ye. 
 Which of the Prophets have not your fathers persecuted ? and they 
 have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One, 
 of whom ye have now been the betrayers and murderers ; who have 
 received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept 
 it." f On this, the rage of his hearers became excessive ; they were cut 
 to the heart, and interrupted Stephen in the progress of his discourse 
 with clamour and boisterous tumult ; who, seeing them gnashing upon 
 him with their teeth, and aware of what was preparing for him, lifted 
 his heart above all earthly fears, and, being full of the Holy Ghost, 
 looked stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus 
 standing at the right hand of God, as ready to receive this champion 
 of the faith, when the trammels of mortality shall be violently taken 
 away. 
 
 The appearance of this vision is monitory and consoling. Two 
 circumstances, says the Rev. Richard Watson, are here recorded. The 
 fact that he was " full of the Holy Ghost," being again mentioned, 
 intimates that he had, in that moment, a special visitation of divine 
 strength and comfort. The moment was a trying one. His enemies 
 were numerous, and their rage was great ; so that from them he 
 could expect no mercy. Then the visitation was granted. How 
 often does this interesting circumstance of the seasonable interposition 
 of God, in behalf of his servants, appear in the New Testament ! 
 Hence, St. Paul remarks, that, while his outward afflictions abounded, 
 his consolations by Christ abounded in proportion. "We glory in 
 tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and 
 
 Sancti Barnabas Apoatoli Epist. Catholica. Sect. xii. 4to. Paris, 1645. 
 t Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 340. London, 1834.
 
 136 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 patience experience, and experience hope ; and hope raaketh not 
 ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the 
 Holy Ghost, which is given unto us." Similar instances occur in the 
 Old Testament. When the three Hebrew children were cast alive 
 into the burning fiery furnace, "one like unto the Son of God" 
 appeared amongst them, so that not a hair of their heads was singed, 
 nor did the smell of fire pass upon their clothes. When St. John 
 was banished to the Isle of Patmos, for the word of God and the tes- 
 timony of Jesus, he was favoured with the presence of his glorified 
 Lord, and of the holy angels. All these facts are designed to teach 
 us, that, if we trust in the Lord, mercy shall compass us about ; and 
 that he is, as it is emphatically expressed, " a very present help in 
 trouble." The immediate effect of this visitation was, that " he 
 looked up stedfastly unto heaven ;" not attracted by the vision, which 
 appears to have been vouchsafed afterwards, while he was looking 
 up. The action carries its own comment. It was an appeal from 
 the injustice of earth, to the eternal justice of heaven ; from merci- 
 less men, to a compassionate God. It was a devout committal of 
 his cause into a supreme hand ; saying " If it be right for me to be 
 delivered, thou canst deliver me ; no rage of man can prevent this. 
 If it be thy will that I should die, behold, here I am : do with me 
 as seemeth thee good." Can we not here catch an illustrious view 
 of the manner in which true Christianity lifts man above himself; 
 and how lofty a character is stamped upon a regenerate nature ? A 
 man, whose eye is fixed on heaven, tramples equally under foot the 
 smiles and the frowns of earth. Here is no defiance, no collecting 
 of a man's resisting energies, resting on the centre of a dogged reso- 
 lution ; which is all that heathen virtue can reach. Here is no retreat- 
 ing of man into himself, in search of natural courage, or other principles 
 to sustain him. The contrast is most impressive. In Christian hero- 
 ism, man goes out of himself to a higher power ; his strength is in his 
 weakness ; he trusts in another, an almighty power ; and thus con- 
 fesses that he can do nothing. Stephen looks directly up into 
 heaven ; commits his case there, and becomes mighty through God.* 
 " How easily can heaven delight and entertain us in the want of all 
 earthly comforts ! and how near are divine consolations, when humau 
 assistance is furthest from us ! " 
 
 Stephen was elated with this glorious manifestation, and his soul 
 inspired with renewed courage and zeal, so that he cried out in the 
 presence of the assembly, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and 
 the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." The application 
 to Jesus (for so they could not but understand it) of that high title, 
 which when Jesus himself made, the High Priest rent his clothes as 
 at blasphemy, and pronounced sentence of death, was also fatal to his 
 faithful servant. The furious and misguided bigotry of the mob knew 
 no bounds ! They did not wait to procure a warrant from the Roman 
 Governor, without whose leave they had not power to put any man 
 to death, they had not even prudence to wait for the judicial 
 sentence of the Sanhedrim, which would, most probably, have been 
 
 Watson's Works. Vol. ii., p. 422. 8vo. Edit. London, 1834.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 137 
 
 given against the persecuted and injured man ; but, seizing the sword 
 of justice with a determination to use it, without waiting for any 
 of the ordinary formalities of law, like fanatics and madmen, they 
 raised a great clamour, and stopped their ears that they might hear 
 no further blasphemies, and be deaf to all appeals for mercy ; they 
 rushed upon him ; and, as zeal is superstitious, even in its wildest and 
 most frantic rage, the mob hesitated to shed the blood of Stephen 
 within the walls, lest they should pollute the city with his blood, but 
 hurried him without, and stoned him, while he was invoking Jesus 
 in the same prayer in which he himself had invoked the Father 
 from the cross, saying, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." He knelt 
 down to receive his death, and crying out, " Lord, lay not this sin 
 to their charge !" he fell asleep. 
 
 Thus Stephen fell, and his death is highly instructive. It was a 
 death of prayer. He died calling upon God. He needed prayer to 
 the end, because to the end he needed divine support. No former grace 
 which he had received was then sufficient ; and no visions with which 
 he might have been favoured, could supersede the necessity of direct 
 communications of divine help and comfort. It was a death of faith. 
 Christ was recognised by the dying martyr, and into his hands the 
 soul was commended. The soul of Stephen had been thus committed 
 to the merit of the Saviour's passion for justification ; it had been 
 committed to his care through life ; and Christ was acknowledged as 
 the Saviour, the only Saviour, of souls in death. The language of St. 
 Paul was very similar : " I know," says he, " whom I have believed ; 
 and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have com- 
 mitted to him against that day." It was a death of certainty. In 
 the mind of Stephen, there was no gloom as to the future : the death 
 of the Christian is, the surrender of his spirit into the hands of his 
 glorified Saviour. What a thought is this ! View the language 
 of Stephen in contrast with that of even the wisest of the Heathen, 
 and especially with that of unbelievers. " And now, ye Judges," 
 said Socrates, " ye are going to live, and I am going to die. Which 
 of these is best, God knows, but I suppose no man does." " I am 
 going to take a leap in the dark!" exclaimed an infidel in the pro- 
 spect of dissolution. The despairing sinner, who has neglected the 
 salvation of the Gospel, trembles at the sight of the great gulf ; and 
 many unfaithful professors of Christianity, in their last hours, have 
 painfuf doubts as to whether they shall sink or rise. The vision 
 made no difference in the case of Stephen. St. Paul saw no vision, 
 and yet he employs the same language of blessed assurance. It was 
 a death of charity. The man of God was surrounded by fierce and 
 bloody men, who were inflicting upon him th greatest injury in their 
 power ; yet a soul ripe for heaven can have no resentments ; and he 
 cries with a loud voice, expressive, not only of a forgiving spirit, but 
 of the utmost ardour of benevolence, " Lord, lay not this sin to 
 their charge ! " thus exemplifying the doctrine of his Lord, " I say 
 unto you, Love your enemies ; bless them that curse you, and pray 
 for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." It was a death 
 of peace. He fell asleep. So easy is death to the good man. He 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 138 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 possessed the most perfect calmness in the midst of violence, and an 
 expression of that tranquillity was, perhaps, left upon the countenance 
 of his breathless remains.* 
 
 No information is contained in the Holy Scriptures, either with 
 respect to the time of his death, or the place of his interment.f The 
 martyrdom, in all probability, occurred a short time after the ascen- 
 sion of our Lord, without the walls, as tradition reports, near the gate 
 on the north side that leads to Cedar, afterwards termed St. Stephen's 
 Gate ; it was anciently called the Gate of Ephraim, or, according to 
 others, the Valley Gate, or Fish Gate ; it stood on the east side of the 
 city, where the place, until lately, was exhibited, where St. Paul sat 
 when he kept the clothes of them that slew him. Over this place, 
 the Empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius, when she repaired the walls 
 of Jerusalem, erected a beautiful and stately church J to the honour 
 of Stephen, wherein she herself was afterwards buried. The gieat 
 stone upon which he stood while he suffered martyrdom, is said to have 
 been afterwards removed into the church, built to the honour of the 
 Apostles, upon Mount Sion, and there kept with great care and reve- 
 rence : one of the stones with which he was killed, being also pre- 
 served by some Christian, was carried into Italy, laid up as a choice 
 treasure at Ancona, and a church erected to the memory of the 
 martyr. In the fifth century, the relics of the martyr were said to 
 have been miraculously discovered by a Greek Priest, of the name 
 of Lucian, and they were brought to Europe by Orosius. Evodius, 
 Bishop of Myala, wrote a small treatise concerning the miracles per- 
 formed by them ; and Severus, a Bishop of the Island of Minorca, 
 wrote a circular letter of the conversion of the Jews in that island, 
 and of the miracles wrought in that place, by the relics which 
 Orosius left there. These writings are contained in the works of 
 Augustine, who gives the sanction of his authority to the incredible 
 and ludicrous follies which they record. To this power the Church 
 of Rome still pretends, which it endeavours to justify by appealing to 
 these and similar instances. But in vain, and to no purpose : the 
 pretended miracles of that Church being generally trifling and ridicu- 
 lous, far beneath that gravity and seriousness that should work upon 
 a wise and considerate mind, the manner of their operation obscure 
 and ambiguous, their numbers excessive and immoderate, the occa- 
 sions of them light and frivolous ; and, after all, the things them- 
 selves, for the most part, false, and the reports very often so 
 monstrous and extravagant as would choke any sober and rational 
 belief, so that a man must himself become the greatest miracle that 
 believes them. I shall observe no more, says Dr. Cave,|j than that in 
 
 Watson's Works. Vol. ii., p. 428. 8vo. Edit. London, 1834. 
 
 t The story is worthy of little attention, that the body of Stephen continued a day 
 and a night without interment ; during which time it was not touched hy any animal, 
 and that at length, Gamaliel was instrumental in having it buried in his own ground, 
 eight leagues from Jerusalem. (Tillemont, Memoires, torn, ii., p. 9. Paris, 1694. 
 
 t Evagr. Hist. Eccles., lib. i., cap. 22. 
 
 Luciani Presbyteri Epistola de Inventione S. Stephani. 
 
 || Cave's Lives of the Fathers of the Church. 8vo. Edit. Vol. i., p. 76. Oxford, 
 J840.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 139 
 
 all these cases related by Augustine, we never find that they invo- 
 cated or prayed to the martyr, nor begged to be healed by his merits 
 or intercession, but immediately directed their addresses to God 
 himself.* 
 
 The circumstances which preceded and attended the condemnation 
 and death of Stephen, were entirely tumultuary and irregular, and 
 offer no ground whatever for us to infer, that a proper course of 
 authorized proceeding was adopted. The enraged mob took the 
 matter into their own hands, without waiting the result of judicial 
 proceedings. The effect is the same, whether we affirm or deny the 
 power of the Jewish council to inflict capital punishment ; for if they 
 had such power, it seems evident that they did not in this instance 
 exercise it, since the excited mob would not wait for their judicial 
 determination. By some this has been quoted as an evidence, that 
 the Sanhedrim was not, as is usually stated, at this time, without the 
 power of inflicting the punishment of death. The instance proves nothing 
 either way. The question, however, has given rise to considerable 
 discussion. Relying on the present and other cases, some contend 
 that the Jewish tribunal did really possess the power of inflicting 
 capital punishment ; and the case of our Saviour, whom the Jews 
 could not put to death until they had obtained the concurrence of the 
 Roman Governor, is met by the observation that they wished to avoid 
 the odium of so unpopular an act themselves, and to throw it upon 
 
 The relics of Stephen were found, together with those of Nicodemus, and those of 
 Gamaliel, and of Abibas, his son. They were found by the help of revelations and 
 visions, and they wrought innumerable miracles. Tillemont (Memoires, torn, ii., p. 
 1, ft scq.) calls it one of the principal events of the fifth century, and gives a large detail 
 of it, which welJ deserves to be perused ; for, take it all together, it is, perhaps, one of 
 the most barefaced and impudent impostures that ever was obtruded upon the Christian 
 world. The vouchers for it are Lucian, a Presbyter of the church of Jerusalem, who 
 was the happy discoverer of these relics, Augustine, Sozomen, Orosius, Gregory 
 of Tours, and many others. " Dr. Cave is not willing to give the same credence to 
 modern miracles, as to those which they say were performed in the days of Honorius. 
 He seems inclined to allow, that a great number of sick persons were cured by the 
 admirable odour which issued from the sepulchre of St. Stephen, when it was first 
 opened, if we may believe Lucian and Photius. But he is much more persuaded of the 
 relation given us by St. Augustine, concerning the miracles wrought in a chapel where 
 some relict) of Stephen were deposited. Cave is of opinion, that God might perform 
 such miracles at that time, for the conversion of the Pagans, who were still numerous 
 amongst the Christians ; though at present, miracles are ceased, because there is not 
 the same occasion for them. The author of the ' Logic of Port Royal,' speaking of 
 these miracles, affirms, that every man nf good sense, though he should not have a grain 
 of piety or religion, must needs acknowledge them to be true. But a man may have 
 both good sense and piety too, and yet may rather believe that Augustine was mistaken 
 and credulous, or, that he judged it expedient to propagate miraculous tales, which he 
 thought calculated to convert the Pagans, without examining them too strictly. It i* 
 true, indeed, that he relates them with the utmost confidence ; and, with the same 
 confidence, the most notorious impostures are still recommended to our belief every day." 
 Du Pin, speaking of these miracles, says : "These relations have in them so little of 
 the probable and the credible, that if they were not authorized by the testimony 
 of Augustine and Gennadius, we would scarcely believe them." "A phial, filled with 
 the blood of St. Stephen, brought to Naples by one Gaudioso, an African Bishop, used to 
 boil and bubble of itself on the 3d of August, according to the old calendar. But 
 since Gregory XIII. has corrected the calendar, the blood does not boil up till the 
 13th of August, on which the festival of the saint is fixed by the new regulation. 
 A manifest proof," says the writer, " that the Gregorian calendar is received in heaven, 
 though some heretical countries upon earth refused to follow it!" (Jortin's Remarks, 
 <fec. Vol. ii., pp. '204, i!05. K.lit. 8vo. London, 1846.) 
 
 T '2
 
 140 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 the Romans ; to which end they accused him of a political offence, 
 sedition, which it is allowed that the Romans doubtless reserved for 
 their own tribunal. But to this is opposed the confession of all the 
 Jewish writers, that their great council lost this power before the 
 time of our Lord's death, though they differ as to the mode in which 
 it was lost ; and this may seem conclusive, when taken in connexion 
 with the avowal of the Jews themselves, before Pilate, that it was not 
 lawful for them to put any man to death. It is true that this decla- 
 ration might, if it stood alone, be open to a restrictive interpretation, 
 as implying that they might not put any one to death accused of 
 sedition, or, under the peculiar circumstances of the case. But some 
 of the explanations given of this are also untenable, such as, that 
 they meant to say it was unlawful for them to put any man to death 
 at the festival ; for this, neither the letter nor spirit of the law of 
 Moses made illegal : and even with regard to what is inferred from 
 the charge of sedition and treason, it is forgotten that they only made 
 this charge as a last resort, after they found that Pilate was unwilling 
 to allow of Christ's death on the charge of blasphemy. Further- 
 more, an important circumstance has been entirely overlooked ; namely, 
 that the two thieves who were crucified with Christ, were certainly 
 condemned by the Romans, otherwise they would not have been cru- 
 cified : hence we find that the Jews could not punish theft or robbery 
 without the concurrence of the Romans. Resisting the temptation 
 of examining the question more largely, we shall only observe, that 
 all other considerations which bear against the conclusion that the 
 Sanhedrim possessed the power of punishing with death, are strongly 
 supported by any reference to the character and constitution of a 
 Roman province, and the powers of the person to whom its govern- 
 ment was intrusted. In all states the power of life and death is an 
 attribute of sovereignty, exercised only by the reigning power, or by 
 those specially commissioned as its administrators. So it was among 
 the Romans. The power rested primarily in the Emperor, and was 
 by him delegated to his representatives in the provinces. But these 
 representatives could not re-delegate their power to other persons, or 
 to tribunals inferior to their own, while they were themselves in the 
 provinces which they governed. No evidence has been offered to 
 show that this power in a province was possessed by any other tri- 
 bunal than that of the Governor, or by any tribunal jointly with his. 
 Indeed, even as a first impression, it would appear most unlikely that 
 the Romans, however disposed to favour the Jews, should have 
 left to them the exercise of this most essential function of sovereign 
 power. The relative position and character of the Romans and Jews 
 would alone render this supposition replete with difficulties, which no 
 explanation can obviate. 
 
 The Jewish council appears, however, to have been permitted to 
 retain the power of trying and punishing offences not capital, and par- 
 ticularly ecclesiastical offences. Indeed, it seems that it possessed the 
 power of trying and passing sentence even in capital cases, as in the 
 instance of our Saviour ; but their sentence had no force until the case 
 had been re-examined, and the sentence confirmed, by the Roman
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 141 
 
 Governor. Their decision on such cases practically amounted to a 
 conclusion, to denounce the criminal to the Governor as one deserv- 
 ing of death. We incline to think, that they were allowed this 
 privilege only with respect to offences against their own law ; the 
 Romans taking entire charge of those against the public peace. 
 The Jews, probably, found it difficult to persuade their Governors 
 to consent to inflict the punishment of death upon blasphemers, 
 Sabbath-breakers, and others, which may have rendered the people all 
 the more ready, as in the present and other instances, to take the 
 punishment into their own hands.* 
 
 Dr. Lardner is still more explicit : Here is not only a man, he 
 observes, brought before the council, and witnesses heard ; but he is 
 put to death, by stoning, an ordinary Jewish punishment, without 
 any mention of his being prosecuted before a Roman Magistrate. It 
 has, in the conclusion, very much the appearance of a legal Jewish 
 punishment ; for the witnesses seem to have stoned him, or thrown 
 the first stone at him. The sacred historians are not accountable for 
 the legality of the facts or proceedings which they relate. Though 
 this affair should be allowed to have all the forms of a legal process, 
 sentence and punishment according to the Jewish law and customs, 
 yet it does not follow that it was rightful, according to the constitu- 
 tion they were then under. It is certain that Magistrates do sometimes 
 transgress the bounds of their authority, as well as that people com- 
 mit disorders. We have a plain instance of this at Philippi, (Acts xvi.,), 
 where the Magistrates commanded Paul and Silas to be beaten and 
 imprisoned. But in this sudden passion, they acted very irregularly, 
 of which they were soon sensible. And it is not impossible but 
 the Jewish council at Jerusalem, in compliance with their own malice 
 and the clamours of the people, might pronounce a sentence that 
 exceeded the bounds of their authority, and execute it, before the 
 Roman officer could come in to prevent it. 
 
 This might be said, supposing there were present the complete form 
 of a legal process, which we think there is not. It is true, here 
 were witnesses, and they bring their charge ; but here is no sen- 
 tence pronounced by the council, not one word of it ; nor does the 
 High Priest collect the opinions. If this had been done, it is not 
 likely that St. Luke would have omitted it. In the account of the 
 proceedings against our Saviour, (Matt. xxvi. 66 ; Mark xiv. 64,) 
 particular mention is made of the High Priest's asking the council 
 their opinion, " What think ye ? " and of the answer they made, 
 "He is guilty of death." St. Luke (chap. xxii. 71) has given the 
 result of their debates : " And they said, What need we any further 
 witnesses ? for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth." In the 
 cases recorded, Acts iv. 1, et seq., and v. 17 40, the Evangelist 
 informs us, not only of the accusations against the prisoners, and the 
 defence they made, but of the debates of the council after the pri- 
 soners had been heard. These were ordered to go aside, then follow 
 debates, the final resolution is taken ; afterwards the prisoners are 
 recalled, and the sentence pronounced. 
 
 Illustrated Commentary. Vol. v., pp. 177, 178. London, 1841.
 
 142 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the present instance, after the witnesses which they had 
 suborned had delivered their accusations, "then said the High 
 Priest," " Are these things so ? " (Acts vii. 1 ;) that is, he gave 
 Stephen leave to speak for himself. If, after Stephen had concluded, 
 the council had ordered him to go out ; or, if there had been any 
 debates in the assembly concerning him, or the High Priest had asked 
 their opinion, and a sentence had been pronounced, it is incredible that 
 these things should have been omitted, as they are entirely. St. Luke 
 briefly informs us, that, having heard what Stephen said, the multi- 
 tude " gnashed on him with their teeth ; " and that the martyr then 
 " looked up to heaven, and said, I see the heavens opened, and Jesus 
 standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud 
 voice, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the 
 city, and stoned him." This has all the appearance of a tumultu- 
 ous proceeding of the people, which the council, probably, had no 
 inclination to check ; for of them we must understand the words, 
 " When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they 
 gnashed on him with their teeth ; " words which represent ungovern- 
 able rage. 
 
 Stephen is apparently convicted, not upon the evidence of the 
 witnesses, but upon his saying, " I see the Son of man standing on 
 the right hand of God." " Then they cried out," &c. His expressions 
 were termed blasphemous ; and in this case the Jewish people made 
 no scruple of stoning a man immediately, without a trial. Several 
 instances of this occur in the New Testament. (John v. 17, 18 ; viii. 
 58, 59 ; x. 30 39.) Putting Stephen to death by stoning is no 
 proof that sentence had been pronounced, or that any legal form was 
 observed in his death. This was common in their tumultuous out- 
 breaks. Jesus having said some things which had given offence, 
 "the Jews took up stones to stone him." He proceeded to reason 
 with them. They " answered him, saying, For a good work we 
 stone thee not, but for blasphemy." (John x. 31, 33 ; xi. 7, 8.) 
 The stoning which Paul suffered at Lystra was altogether turbulent 
 and irregular. (Acts xiv. 19.)* 
 
 Stoning was probably the only capital punishment ordered by 
 Moses. The Rabbins tell us, that when a man was condemned to 
 death, he was led out of the city, an officer going before him with a 
 pike in his hand, at the top of which was a linen cloth to render it 
 distinguishable from afar, and that those who might have anything 
 to offer in favour of the criminal, might propose it. If no one 
 offered, he was conducted to the place of execution, and exhorted 
 to acknowledge and confess his fault, because those who confess their 
 sins have a part in the life to come. After this he was executed. 
 Lapidation was performed in two ways. The former mode was when 
 stones were thrown upon the guilty person until he died, the wit- 
 nesses casting the first stone. In the latter, the criminal was brought 
 to a steep place, in height exceeding that of two men, whence one 
 of the witnesses cast him headlong, and the other rolled a large stone 
 
 Lardner's Works, vol. i., p. 60, et seq. 8vo. edit. London, 1831. See also Biscoe's 
 History of the Acts of the holy Apostles. 8vo. edit. Oxford, 1840.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF STEPHEN. 143 
 
 upon his body. If he did not die by the fall from the rock, he was 
 despatched by throwing stones upon him from above. We are 
 informed that after a criminal had suffered the extreme penalty of the 
 law by stoning, having been convicted of idolatry or blasphemy, they 
 fastened his body to a stake by tying his hands together, and so left 
 him until sunset, when they buried him, with the stake to which he 
 was fastened, in the valley of carcasses. When an individual was stoned 
 by the mob, as was the case with Stephen, then brutal rage armed 
 every man ; justice was set aside, and the will and fury of the people 
 were law, judge, jury, and executioner. 
 
 The persecution which commenced at the death of Stephen lasted, 
 it is supposed, about four years. The disciples were much harassed 
 by the Jewish council from the beginning ; but now, after the mar- 
 tyrdom of Stephen, a more open and violent attack was made upon 
 Christianity. Pontius Pilate, whose government among the Jews had 
 become very feeble and inert, had been recently superseded : previous 
 to this taking place, his notorious misrule had tended, in a consider- 
 able degree, to encourage various acts of violence and oppression. 
 The same persecution probably extended to the last year of the reign 
 of Caligula, when Petronius, according to a command which he had 
 received, erected the Emperor's statue in the temple at Jerusalem, an 
 act of sacrilege which threw the inhabitants of Judea into such gene- 
 ral consternation and displeasure, as fully to employ them about their 
 own affairs, without giving them any further time to interfere con- 
 cerning those of their neighbours. 
 
 In the commencement of this outbreak of popular distaste against 
 the religion of the Redeemer, the services of such a zealous agent as 
 Saul of Tarsus were not to be neglected by the Chief Priests. We 
 may perhaps infer that Gamaliel himself did not now oppose the 
 ardour of Ids former pupil ; and the watch-word of the temple and 
 the law being in danger, was sufficient to raise a ferment from one 
 end of Jerusalem to the other. Many believers, who had never 
 viewed the matter in this light, might perhaps begin to doubt of their 
 newly-adopted faith ; the suspicions of those who had hesitated or 
 wavered before, would be strengthened ; and, in the meantime, both 
 Pharisees and Sadducees were active in prejudicing others against the 
 Christians. The success of the attempt against Stephen showed the 
 policy of attacking the leaders of the party. The places where they 
 assembled would be easily discovered ; and the panic, which attends 
 any great popular movement, would cause many of the believers to 
 hide themselves from the storm. Saul and his party succeeded in 
 laying hold of some who were less cautious ; and they either lodged 
 them in the prisons, or, bringing them into the synagogues, which were 
 sure to be filled with the foreign Jews, they ordered them to abjure 
 their doctrines on pain of instant punishment. The necessity of 
 yielding to circumstances was apparent. It was decided that the 
 Apostles should remain in Jerusalem, and endeavour, if they could, to 
 protect their converts ; but that the Deacons, and the others who had 
 taken a prominent part in public discussions, should leave the city. 
 Nicolas, one of the Deacons, was a native of Antioch : Philip appears
 
 144 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 to have resided at Csesarea ; some of those who fled with them 
 belonged to Cyprus and Cyreiie, so that if many of them returned to 
 their homes, the persecution was, in fact, the cause of the Gospel 
 being more widely spread. It was carried by some as far as Pheni- 
 cia, Antioch, and Cyprus ; but the immediate result was the con- 
 version of several persons in the nearer places of Judea and Samaria.* 
 This accession to the church may be attributed to several causes, 
 such as, the patience and fortitude of the disciples, their discretion in 
 avoiding needless offence, their zeal and intrepidity in asserting the 
 resurrection of Jesus, and other fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, 
 and also to the exercise of miraculous powers with which they were 
 largely endowed. During this sanguinary and often tumultuous perse- 
 cution, Nicanor, the Deacon, and above two thousand other believers, 
 suffered martyrdom for the Christian faith, in and about Jerusalem. 
 
 In comparing the circumstances of the death of this blessed proto- 
 niartyr, with those which attended Zechariah, f the first thing which 
 strikes us is, their different fruits. A mournful solitude and barren- 
 ness surrounds the fate of Zechariah. We are not told of any bright 
 vision which cheered him ; and his blood seems to have flowed in 
 vain, to have been shed as seed upon the barren sand. He had no 
 followers ; his death was the herald of the destruction of his 
 country, but wrought no spiritual regeneration. It prophesied the 
 downfal of the law ; but Stephen's helped the rising of the Gospel. 
 His blood fell on the fat soil of God's vineyard of the church, arid 
 among his murderers was its future most efficient Apostle. The 
 death of Zechariah drove the faithful servants of God to hiding-places 
 and silence ; but that of Stephen, by scattering his companions, 
 sent Preachers of the word into all corners of the world. The 
 blow, in the one case, drove the waters, as in a circumscribed 
 pool, to break fruitlessly upon the shingle ; but in the other, 
 like the impression of the heavenly bodies on the wide ocean, it 
 sent the waters rolling away in every direction to far distant 
 regions. The end of Stephen is no less contrasted with Zechariah's, 
 than its effects. It is full of exulting triumph ; it partakes of the 
 splendour of Elijah's ascension. Here is no dark and mournful soli- 
 tude ; the glory of God, which had guided Israel, which surrounded 
 Christ upon the Mount, which formed his chariot of ascent into 
 paradise, is revealed to his eyes amid the opening heavens, and in the 
 midst of it appears the triumphant Saviour ready to receive into bliss 
 the departing spirit of his servant. The death of Zechariah was that 
 of a true son of the Lion of Judah ; he resisted unto blood, and 
 died amid struggling defiance, and in the bold utterance of the com- 
 mission of denunciation with which he had been charged : " The 
 Lord look upon it, and require it." But the death of Stephen is 
 that of a follower of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins 
 of the world. He fell asleep with the words, " Lord, lay not this 
 sin to their charge," upon his lips. His last words were nearly those 
 of the blessed Lamb himself, who cried, " Father, forgive them, for 
 
 Burton's Lectures upon Eccles. Hiat., p. 72. Edit. 8vo. Oxford, 1831. 
 t Vide supra, pp. 61, 62.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER. 145 
 
 they know not what they do." Both suffered most cruel injustice nt 
 the hands of their fellow-countrymen, dying the death of idolaters 
 for declaring the will and word of the only and ever-living God. But 
 a shade of melancholy overspreads the martyrdom of Zechariah, and 
 a gladness relieves the gloom of Stephen's. Stephen was still in 
 communion with his countrymen, and when he came into the temple 
 worshipped the same God, joined in the same prayer, partook of the 
 same sacrifice. But Zechariah, when he came into the temple, found 
 none but apostates ; saw the altars of God overthrown, and the courts 
 thronged with the votaries of Moloch and Baal. Stephen had to 
 complain of their corrupting the law ; Zechariah, of their abolishing 
 it. Stephen spoke to men who abused their knowledge ; Zechariah, 
 to those who had cast it away. Stephen spoke to men, many of 
 whom, perhaps, and most assuredly at least one, had the zeal of God, 
 though not the true knowledge ; but Zechariah, to a throng who, in 
 despite of late signal mercies, had, with their King at their head, 
 conspicuously abandoned him, displaying thus an utter debasement 
 of mind, a serpent-like ingratitude, a fiendish malignity. Stephen, 
 therefore, might hope for converts ; Zechariah could hope for none. 
 Stephen's blood fell like dew, watering and fattening ; but Zecha- 
 riah's was as that of Abel, crying for vengeance, and fell on the 
 floor of the temple like the showers of brimstone and fire upon 
 Sodom.* Well has Dr. Clarke observed, " The martyrdom of Ste- 
 phen, and the spirit in which he suffered, have for eighteen hundred 
 years been an honour to the cause for which he cheerfully gave up his 
 life. While Christianity endures, and it will endure till time is 
 swallowed up in eternity, the martyrdom of Stephen will be the 
 model, as it has been, for all martyrs, and a cause of triumph to the 
 church of God." 
 
 SECT. II. THE MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER. 
 
 JAMES, the brother of John the Evangelist, and son of Zebedee 
 and of Mary, surnamed Salome, who was cousin-german to Mary 
 the mother of our Lord, was a Galilean, a native of Capernaum, or 
 Bethsaida ; his father was a fisherman, who maintained a number 
 of servants in his employment, and was in partnership with Simon 
 Peter ; (Luke v. 10 ;) he was surnamed the " Elder," or the 
 " Great," to distinguish him from another Apostle of the same name, 
 who filled the office of Bishop of Jerusalem, and was termed the 
 " Less," probably, on account of his being lower in stature, or his 
 being junior in point of age. Jesus had but recently returned into 
 Galilee, after having experienced among his own kinsmen and 
 acquaintance at Nazareth, the first manifestation of the almost uni- 
 versal rejection of his countrymen. Accompanied by a large con- 
 course of people which crowded around him, he came to the shores 
 of the lake of Gennesaret, and, to relieve himself from the pressure 
 of the multitude, he entered the boat of Peter, where he sat, and taught 
 the people as they stood and listened on the brink. In company with 
 
 * Burton's Lectures upon Eccles. Hist, p. 72. Edit. 8vo. Oxford, 183J. 
 VOL. I. U
 
 146 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 this vessel was the fishing-boat of Zebedee, containing his sons, James 
 and John. Our Lord having summoned Peter and Andrew to " fol- 
 low him," he afterwards called the sons of Zebedee for a similar pur- 
 pose ; and so rejoiced were they at this command, that they imme- 
 diately threw away their nets, quitted their father, and followed 
 Jesus : they held no consultation, they did not hesitate, they neither 
 raised nor imagined any difficulties, they contemplated neither conse- 
 quences nor dangers, but constituted the sacrifice which they had to 
 make, as far as human aid was necessary thereto, perfect and com- 
 plete. Zebedee appears to have approved of their resolution, and 
 Salome devoted all her energies to the service of their common 
 Master. 
 
 Owing to the early removal of James from a scene of persecution 
 and suffering, but little is recorded relating to his personal history in 
 the inspired writings. In the course of our Lord's ministry, he was 
 chosen, with eleven others, to be an Apostle, from whom also he 
 received on this occasion, and in common with his brother John, 
 the surname of Boanerges,* or " sons of thunder." This appellation 
 could not refer, as some have imagined, to the hasty and impetuous 
 disposition of the brothers, of which, however, but one instance is 
 given, and that one rather of mistaken zeal than natural ardour ; 
 and it is not at all probable that our Lord would perpetuate the 
 remembrance of an infirmity which his divine grace was to cure, even 
 did it exist, by affixing it upon them with their new name. Neither 
 can this designation be applicable to their manner of preaching. That 
 of John appears from his writings to have been as sweet and as attract- 
 ive as his disposition, and the reverse of either loud, stentorian declama- 
 tion, or the hurling of the flaming thunderbolts of the divine threaten- 
 ings. From what little appears of James's character, he filled his high 
 office with " meekness of wisdom," and stands forth as a calm, rather 
 than an impetuous, man. The reason of the appellation is probably 
 drawn from the truth of which they were to be such eminent Minis- 
 ters, rather than their own mode of preaching.-)- The thunder is 
 the Gospel itself, the public voice of God in the world, moving and 
 shaking the minds of men, wherever proclaimed ; and when James 
 and John are termed " sons of thunder," the meaning is, that they 
 should rank among the greatest instruments of sounding forth the 
 voice of God, the authoritative declaration of his will contained in 
 the revelation of his Son, and cause the " glad tidings " of salvation 
 to be heard through the world like thunder from one end of the sky 
 to the other. Most effectually did these brothers cause the intima- 
 tion of our Lord to be realized. It is singular that they were the 
 first and the last in their deaths of all the apostolic company. James 
 shed the first drops of that blood, which has been called the seed 
 of the church ; and John, before his death, in extreme old age, gave 
 to the church that inspired record, the sound of which has gone 
 forth into all the world, and shall never be silent. 
 
 * See the opinions of the Fathers in Suicer, under Ppovri). That the term was 
 applied as a rebuke, is inconsistent with the place in Mark iii. 17, where it appeara. 
 f Watson's Exposition, in loco.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER. 147 
 
 It was not long after the election of James to the apostolate, that 
 the martyrdom of the Baptist occurred, which furnished an indubita- 
 ble illustration of what the Saviour declared should befall his own 
 Preachers. Calculated as this event was to produce a permanent 
 impression on the minds of the disciples, by convincing them that it 
 was not in the world that their services would be rewarded, and that 
 " tribulation " only might be expected, such impression was speedily 
 obliterated. The sublime scene of the transfiguration fixed the eyes 
 of the disciples so intently upon the Master's glory, that they were 
 ever after, even up to his death, unprepared for his sufferings. A 
 remarkable example of this blindness is related on the occasion of 
 Jesus taking his disciples with him to Jerusalem for the last time. 
 He told them that " the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the Chief 
 Priests, and unto the Scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, 
 and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to 
 crucify him ; " (Matt. xx. 18, 19 ;) but, strange to say, the disciples 
 did not understand him ! So far from it, that the two sons of Zebe- 
 dee urged their mother to ask, that they might sit, the one on his 
 right hand, and the other on his left, in his kingdom. Our Lord 
 immediately replied, " Ye know not what ye ask." He not only 
 reproved the request which they made, but also their ignorance of the 
 true character of his kingdom, where the highest eminence was that 
 of severe labours and painful sufferings, and, further, said he, "Are 
 ye able to drink of the cup * that I shall drink of, and to be bap- 
 tized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " To this solemn 
 and important question, they fearlessly answered, " We are able." 
 They little conceived of the contents of that cup, or the nature of 
 that baptism ! They imagined that our Saviour was on his way to 
 take possession of his kingdom, in which his Apostles should sit on 
 twelve thrones, and their highest ambition was to occupy the most 
 honourable. How literally were the words of our Lord fulfilled : 
 " Ye shall indeed drink of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism 
 that I am baptized with ! " Both were called to endure afflictions for 
 the truth's sake, and thus drank of the same cup, and were baptized 
 with the same baptism, though in a lower measure ; for the sufferings 
 of Christ were in themselves, as well as in their design, peculiar to 
 himself. Unflinchingly they followed the track which was wet with 
 their Master's blood, and meekly gave themselves up to indignity and 
 shame, submitting to every humiliation for his sake, and after his 
 example. 
 
 Numerous were the tokens of affectionate regard which were vouch- 
 safed to James by his Lord and Master, as well as his brother and 
 Peter, who were favourite disciples, with whom on several occasions 
 he communicated exclusively. These three were chosen to be wit- 
 nesses of some of the most remarkable events in the history of our 
 
 It was formerly a custom at great entertainments for the governor of the feast to 
 appoint to each of his guests the kind aud proportion of wine which they were to drink, 
 and to assign to every one his cup. Hence, both in sacred and profune writers, the cup 
 ii metaphorically used for the portion of good or evil that befalls men in life ; but is 
 more frequently used to express an evil or afflictive lot. The allusion in some passages 
 appears to be to the empoisoned cup given to malefactors. (Jer. xlix. 12 ; Isai. li. 17.) 
 
 v 2
 
 148 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Lord. On the summit of Mount Tabor they beheld the bright shin- 
 ing cloud, the peculiar token of the Saviour's presence, which 
 descended upon the mountain, and spread its fleecy folds around 
 them, while they gazed upon their Master transfigured as the Lord 
 of glory, attended by Moses and Elias, the representatives of the 
 old and expiring dispensation. The same company were admitted 
 into the house of Jairus to witness the resurrection of his daughter. 
 Surrounded by this chosen band, the Saviour, sitting on Mount 
 Olivet, gave utterance to those awful denunciations against Jerusalem, 
 which in a short period of time met with a terrific accomplishment. 
 The persecutions which James endured were but a significant indica- 
 tion of the fast-approaching fulfilment, and prepared the way for the 
 erection of that spiritual temple, built upon the ruins of that of tim- 
 ber and stones, and which should last for ever. In the garden of 
 Gethsemane James shared with his brother and Peter the mournful 
 scene of the Saviour's agony. He witnessed the inexpressible anguish 
 of a being "holy, harmless, and undefiled," about to undergo the 
 wages of sin ; he beheld him in earnest prayer to the Father, when, 
 " being in an agony, his sweat was as it were great drops of blood 
 falling down to the ground." (Luke xxii. 44.) how insignificant 
 must have appeared every suffering which could befall himself, on the 
 comparison with the sufferings of which he witnessed the outward 
 tokens in Him ! He must have hailed any affliction as a message 
 from Him, and as bringing him back personally to his mind. It was 
 one of his means of communion with him ; and from the depth of 
 this he could appreciate the height of glory which he should be called 
 to share hereafter.* 
 
 Ecclesiastical writers are silent with regard to the employment 
 of James subsequent to the ascension of our Lord. It is even more 
 than probable that he left Judea shortly after the persecution that 
 was raised at the martyrdom of Stephen. Jerome states that he 
 preached the Gospel to the twelve tribes of the Jews in their disper- 
 sion ; f and the Spanish historians inform us, that after having 
 preached the word in Judea and Samaria, he journeyed into the western 
 parts, and visited Spain, Britain,! an( ^ Ireland. Some Roman Catholic 
 
 * Scripture Biography. By the Rev. R. W. Evans, M.A. P. 222. 
 
 t De flirts Illustribus. The period of the death of James makes it quite impos- 
 sible that he should have preached to the twelve trihes dispersed throughout the earth : 
 the assertion was probably made from a mistaken notion that the General Epistle of 
 St. James was written by this Apostle. 
 
 t This opinion has been supported by Alban Butler ; but the authorities he has intro- 
 duced are destitute of weight or importance. " That he preached there," says Butler, 
 " is constantly affirmed by the tradition of that church, mentioned by St. Isidore, the 
 Breviary of Toledo, the Arabic books of Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch, concerning 
 the passions of the martyrs and others." He further observes, that " Cnpar, the Bol- 
 landist, traces this tradition very high, and confirms it from St. Jerome, St. Isidore, the 
 ancient Spanish Office," &c. The writers to whom the Jesuit Cupar refers, are the 
 Jesuit Flores, in his Espana Sagrada de la Predication de San Jago in Espana, and 
 his answers to F. Mamachi, the Roman Dominican ; the Jesuit Farlat, Illyrici Sacri 
 Prolegomena; Cardinal d'Aguirre, Cone. Hisp. upon the words of Jerome in Esaiam 
 cap. xxxiv. On the other side of the question we refer the reader to Baronius, who 
 once supported the above hypothesis, but afterwards retracted his opinion. It is 
 opposed by Estius, in Rom. xv. 20 ; Natalis Alexander, Diss. xiv. sect. 1. Tillemont 
 says, " Toutes les Eglises d'Espagne pretendent qu'il a presche le premier dans ce
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER. 149 
 
 writers have favoured this conjecture, and say that as the Apostles 
 during the first twelve years proclaimed the Gospel in the neighbour- 
 hood of Jerusalem, James might, during that interval, make a voyage 
 into Spain. The notion rests on no good foundation whatsoever, and 
 even many Romish historians have demonstrated it to be utterly 
 untrue. There can be no doubt, that, like the other Apostles, he 
 preached in Judea and Galilee, and that his apostolical labours were 
 confined to those countries. 
 
 It was about the year 44 that Saul went up to Jerusalem with 
 contributions for the inhabitants of Judea, who were suffering 
 extremely on account of famine. This visitation had been predicted 
 at Antioch some time before, by a man named Agabus : * the Chris- 
 tians were enabled to send timely relief, they made a collection, which 
 they forwarded to Jerusalem by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. 
 They arrived in the metropolis of Judea about the time of the pass- 
 over, in 44, which was the fourth year of the reign of Claudius ; and 
 the state of the church there would forcibly remind Saul of what had 
 happened to himself at his last visit. Ten years had now elapsed since 
 he had left Jerusalem, and the interval had been one of compara- 
 tive rest to the Christians. The Jews, however, were now under a 
 King, who might be said to be of their own nation ; and they had 
 succeeded in prejudicing him against the Christians. Herod Agrippa 
 was in Rome at the time of Caligula's death, where he had been 
 endeavouring to obtain the revocation of the edict which had ordered 
 the erection of the Emperor's statue in the temple. The death of 
 Caligula saved him any further trouble ; and one of the first acts of 
 the new Emperor Claudius was, to confirm to Agrippa the territories 
 which he already possessed, with the addition of Judea, Samaria, and 
 the district called Abilene ; so that the kingdom of Agrippa now 
 included all the countries over which his grandfather, Herod the 
 
 royaume. On ne voit point cependant qu'on en ait de preuve ni ancienne, ni autlien- 
 tique ; et il s'y rencontre de grand es difficultez." (Memoires, torn, i., p. 347. Paris, 
 1693.) Pope Innocent I. disbelieved it also. (Condi. Lot., vol. ii., p. 1245.) Moreri, 
 in hia Diclionnaire Historique, is decisive and clear. He says, " Les Espagnols, 
 fondez sur je ne sai quellea traditions, pretendent avoir en Saint Jacques poor apdtre, 
 bien qu'il n'y ait point d'autenr ancien qui 1'ait ecrit. L'Eveque de Compostelle, von- 
 lant alleguer ce voyage pretendu du Saint, pour defendre 1'independance de son Kglise 
 de celle de Tolede dans le grand Concile de Latran, sous Innocent III., ne put repondre 
 aux puissant es raisons de Roderic Ximenes son Archeveque, qui lui nia formeUement 
 ce voyage. Le Cardinal Baronius, qui dans ses remarques sur le martyrologe Remain, 
 avoit soutenu cette tradition chimerique dea Espagnols, etant depnis convaincu par 
 beaucoup de raisons solideea fondees sur plusienrs Epitres des Papes, et sur divers 
 temoignagea d'auteurs celebres, changes de sentiment dans sea Annales, et improuva 
 1'opinion des Espagnols." 
 
 * Some writers suppose that the famine was general ; but most modern commentators 
 unite in understanding, that the large terms of the original apply not K> the whole 
 world, nor even to all the Roman empire, but, as in Luke ii. 1, to Judea only. State- 
 ments respecting four famines, which occurred in the reign of Claudius, are produced by 
 the commentators who support this view ; and as all the countries put together would 
 not make up a tenth part of even the Roman empire, they think it plain that the words 
 must be understood to apply to that famine which, in the fourth year of Claudius, over- 
 spread Palestine. The poor Jews, in general, wore then relieved by the Queen of 
 Adiabene, who sent to purchase corn in Egypt for them ; (Jos. Antiq., lib. M., cap. 2, 
 6 ;) and for the relief of the Christians in that country, contributions were laiced by the 
 brethren at Antioch. (Kitto.)
 
 150 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Great, had swayed the sceptre. He also at the same time procured 
 the small territory of Chalcis, with the title of King, for his brother 
 Herod. This was in some sense, and for a few years, a restoration 
 of independence to the Jews. Since the removal of Pontius Pilate, 
 they had been governed by the President of Syria, instead of having 
 a Procurator of their own.* They now had once more a King, who 
 had some of the ancient Asmonean blood in his veins, and who, upon 
 more than one occasion, had shown himself a real friend to the 
 interests of the nation. His power appears to have been as despotic 
 as that of his ancestor. He continued the Roman policy of frequently 
 removing the High Priests ; and his reign, which lasted not quite 
 four years, saw three persons in succession fill that office. f By this 
 measure, which might be thought an unpopular one, he was sure to 
 have the person, who actually filled the office, at his command ; and 
 the others who were expecting it, would be careful not to offend him. 
 Agrippa also found it convenient to secure the good-will of his sub- 
 jects by yielding to their worst passions and caprice, especially as he 
 was so narrowly watched by Marsus, the President of Syria ; and it 
 was no easy matter for a King of the Jews to be popular with his 
 subjects, and yet to stand well with the Roman authorities in the 
 country. One of the means which Agrippa took to make himself 
 popular at Jerusalem, was by persecuting the Christians : and since 
 he wished to be accounted particularly strict in his observance of the 
 law, he would easily be persuaded that it was his duty to crush this 
 increasing sect. As the passover was selected as the fittest season of 
 the year for the crucifixion of our Lord, so that period is again chosen 
 on which to perpetrate acts of cruelty, and to shed blood ; and as 
 the chief civil power was on the side of the ungodly, there was 
 less difficulty in commencing and carrying on the attack. Agrippa 
 began at once with seizing the ringleaders, and arrested James, 
 whom he beheaded summarily, by his own military mandate, and 
 without any process of Jewish law.J " Now about that time Herod 
 the King stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. And 
 he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he 
 saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also." 
 (Acts xii. IT 3.) Thus fell the Apostle James, a victim to his open 
 and steadfast testimony to the resurrection of Jesus, and to other ser- 
 vices for the church, whereby he had greatly signalized himself in the 
 short period of his life after our Lord's ascension. Probably he had, 
 with a freedom not a little offensive to Agrippa, spoken of the calami- 
 ties coming upon the Jewish people, if they did not repent, and believe 
 in Jesus as the Christ, as John the Baptist and Stephen had declared 
 in their preaching. (Matt. iii. 7 12 ; Luke in. 17 ; Acts vi. 13, 14.) 
 It is remarkable that the brunt of persecution came upon the three 
 
 * " Josephus speaks of VitellSus sending Marcellus, a friend of his own, to manage the 
 affairs of Judea, when he ordered Pilate to Rome ; (Antiq., lib. xviii. cap. 4, sect 2 ;) 
 but I do not conceive him to have been Procurator." (Dr. E. Burton.) 
 
 t Simon, Matthias, Elioneus. 
 
 j Burton's Lectures upon the Ecclesiastical History of the First Century. 8vo. 
 Oxford, 1831. Milman's History of Christianity, from the Birth of Christ to the Aboli- 
 tion of Paganism in the Roman Empire. Vol. i., p. 409, London, 1840.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDKR. 151 
 
 favourite disciples of Jesus, inasmuch as their more intimate know- 
 ledge of him at once supplied them with a more abundant store of 
 that which would provoke the wrath of the Jews, while, at the same 
 time, it inspired them with greater boldness. Thus this blessed mar- 
 tyr fulfilled to the Lord his promise, in some degree at least, of drink- 
 ing of the cup of which He drank, and of being baptized with the 
 baptism that He had been baptized with. 
 
 Ancient tradition, as Eusebius informs us, on the authority of 
 Clemens Alexandrinus, states, that the courage and constancy of James 
 were such, as to induce the man who led him to the judgment-seat to 
 confess himself a Christian. Both, therefore, says the historian, were 
 led away to die. On the road to the place of martyrdom, he 
 entreated James to forgive him ; and the latter, considering a little, 
 replied, *' Peace be to thee," and kissed him, and then at the same 
 time both were beheaded. In all probability James was buried at 
 Jerusalem, where he suffered. With regard to the story of his body 
 having been brought to Spain,* and of the miracles performed 
 through it at the chapel of Compostella,f they present so much of the 
 fabulous and romantic, that we are bound to recognise them only as 
 intended to impose upon the credulous, and to impoverish the purses 
 of those who are silly enough to credit them. 
 
 According to the testimony of Dorotheus, it is stated, that Nicanor, 
 one of the seven Deacons, with two thousand others who believed in 
 Christ, suffered on the same day as the proto-martyr Stephen. The 
 same historian asserts, that Timon, another of the Deacons, afterwards 
 Bishop of Bostra in Arabia, was there burned ; and also Parmenas, a 
 
 * Surius, De Probatis Sanctorum, &c., whom Dr. Ligktfoot terms the " hell-wether 
 for old winter tales," informs us, that after the martyrdom of James, the body was 
 shipped hy Ctesiphon and his fellow- Bishops for Spain ; that the ship, in six days, was 
 directed thither, without pilot or compass, but only by the influence of the corpse that it 
 carried ; that at the landing, the body was taken up into the air, and carried near the 
 place of its burial, twelve miles off j that Ctesiphon and his fellows were led to it by an 
 angel, &c. But, enough. 
 
 t Alban Butler is a bird of the same feather as Surras, and tells us, that the body of 
 the Apostle was interred at Jerusalem, but, not long after, carried by his disciples into 
 Spain, and deposited at Iria Flavia, now called El Padron, upon the borders of Qallicia. 
 The sacred relics were discovered there in the beginning of the ninth century, in the 
 reign of Alphonsus the Chaste, King of Leon. By the order of that Prince they were 
 translated to Compo.stella, four miles distant, to which place Pope Leo III. transferred 
 the episcopal see from Iria Flavia. This place was first called Ad S. Jacobum Aposto- 
 lum, or, Giacomo Postolo, which words have been contracted into the present name 
 Compostella. It is famous for the extraordinary concourse of pilgrims that resort thither 
 to visit the body of St. James, which is kept with great respect in the stately cathedral. 
 Cupar the Bollandist proves the truth of the tradition of the Spanish church, concerning 
 the body of St. James having been translated to Compostella, (that is, to the satisfaction 
 of Butler,) and gives authentic histories of many miracles wrought through his interces- 
 sion, and of several apparitions by which he visibly protected the armies of the Chris- 
 tians against the Moors in that kingdom. The military order of St. James, surnamed 
 the Noble, was instituted by Ferdinand II., A. D. 1175. It is Worthy of record, that 
 Butler's only authority, which he deems it proper to mention, is Father Flores, an 
 Austin Friar, and Rector of the Royal College of Alcala. Vcrbum sat. In the Acts and 
 Monuments of John Foxe, mention is made " how Matilda, or Maud, daughter to King 
 Henry, was married to Henry V., the Kmperor of Germany ; who, after the decease of 
 the said husband, returned about this time, (A.D. 1125,) with the imperial crown to 
 her father in Normandy, bringing with her the hand of St. James ; for joy whereof, the 
 King builded the Abbey of Reading, where the said hand was reposed." (Acts, <fec., 
 vol. ii., p. 180. Seeley'a Edition. 1843.)
 
 152 BOOK II. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Deacon, sealed, at this time, the truth with his blood. Nevertheless, 
 great uncertainty is necessarily connected with all these statements.* 
 
 Soon did Agrippa perceive that the murder of James was highly 
 gratifying to the Jews, who rejoiced that the uncontrolled power of 
 life and death was again restored to one who assumed the character 
 of a national King. They were no longer restrained by the caprice, 
 the justice, or the humanity of a Roman Prefect, who might treat 
 their intolerance with contempt or displeasure ; and they were encou- 
 raged in the hope, that at the same great festival, during which some 
 years before they had extorted the death of Jesus from the reluctant 
 Pilate, their new King would more readily lend himself to their 
 revenge against his more active and powerful follower. Herod 
 therefore determined to add still further to their pleasure by placing 
 Peter within his power. This distinguished leader of the Chris- 
 tians was reserved for a kind of auto da fe, to be exhibited at the 
 close of the passover ; but a more powerful arm than that of Herod 
 rescued Peter from his grasp, and made the tyrant feel that, when 
 Jehovah touches them, the mightiest of the mighty " consume away 
 like a moth." It was not long before divine vengeance overtook 
 him. After the termination of the feast of the passover he 
 returned to Coesarea, for the purpose of celebrating public games in 
 honour of Claudius Caesar, whither he was attended with a splendid 
 retinue, consisting of the most considerable persons of his own 
 court, and also of the surrounding country. He appeared on the 
 second morning of the spectacles at the theatre in a costly robe of 
 silver tissue, artfully wrought, and so bright, that the sunbeams which 
 darted upon it were reflected with such brilliancy as to dazzle the eyes 
 of the gazing throng, and to impress them with a respect more than 
 what was due to a created being. Here we behold him at one moment 
 in a state of high dignity and glory, at another debased even to the 
 dust ! During his residence at Csesarea, the Tynans and Sidonians, 
 whom he had threatened with war for some offence, sent a deputation 
 to him, professing submission, and deprecating his anger. Through 
 the influence of the King's Chamberlain, they obtained the desired 
 reconciliation, and the plan of contemplated hostilities was abandoned. 
 But Herod, for the gratification of his own excessive vanity, by a 
 pompous display of his greatness, gave a public audience to the 
 Ambassadors, and endeavoured to fix deep in their minds an idea of 
 his abilities, magnificence, and power. Thus arrayed, he entered the 
 crowded theatre, and seated himself upon a throne of state, desirous 
 of attracting the general notice, admiration, and applause. He 
 addressed the assembly in a speech probably prepared for the occa- 
 sion, and they were not loth to pay him the deference he wished for. 
 
 * This is occasionally rather indifferent ground to found any assertion upon, as the 
 book of Dorotheas is thus characterized by Miraeus : " Sub nomine Dorothei Tyrii in 
 Biblioth. vet. Patrum extat ' Synopsis de vita et morte Apostolorum, Prophetarum, ac 
 Discipulorum, Christi,' quae plena est fabulis ; ut Molanus, Baronius, Bellarminus, et alii 
 observarunt." (De Script, lllust., p. 5.) Rivet confirms this by several instances, and is 
 surprised, consequently, that Bellarmine (de Pontif. Rom., lib. ii. cap. 4) should attempt, 
 as he does, to support St. Peter's Roman episcopate from such a source. " Dorotheus 
 Presbyter passus est sub Juliauo circa 363." (Foxe, vol. i. p. 95, n.)
 
 MARTYRDOM OF JAMES THE ELDER. 153 
 
 They gave a shout declarative of their high admiration ; aud, as if 
 they were ready to exalt him above the rank of mortals by giving him 
 divine honours, they cried out, " It is the voice of a god, and not of 
 a man." (Acts xii. 22.) The King, too sensible of the people's 
 praise, though convinced that such admiration was impious in the 
 extreme, appeared to approve, rather than to reject, the blasphemous 
 flattery, and tacitly consented to receive that homage which should be 
 paid only to our Almighty Creator.* "He gave not God the glory." 
 An exemplary punishment speedily followed. In the midst of all this 
 splendour, while he was elated with the notion of his own superior 
 excellence, as if he were a god, he felt a mortifying conviction, and 
 exhibited a melancholy proof, of his helplessness and mortality. At 
 that instant he was smitten with a dreadful disease, his knees smote 
 together, much pain was in all his loins, and his face gathered black- 
 ness. (Nahum ii. 10.) Perceiving the attack to be mortal, he rejected 
 the flattery of his sycophants, and told them, that he whom they 
 called immortal was dying. He confessed his folly and wretchedness in 
 the hearing of his idolatrous admirers ; and, after a few days of extreme 
 suffering, became a loathsome corpse. St. Luke, the sacred historian, 
 though himself a Physician, ascribes it solely to the immediate ven- 
 geance of heaven. We ask not for any other explanation ; and we 
 lament that so many in the present day seem determined to ascribe 
 every event to natural principles and second causes, and to be unwilling 
 to acknowledge the first great Cause of all, or to allow the God of 
 nature and of providence any influence in the government of his own 
 universe. "And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, 
 because he gave not God the glory : and he was eaten of worms, and 
 gave up the ghost." (Acts xii. 23.) Dr. E. Burton supposes that 
 James the Elder suffered about the year 44. 
 
 * See Joseph. Antiq., lib. xix., cap. 8, sect. 2 ; Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. ii., 
 cap. 10. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 154 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 PERSECUTIONS WHICH TOOK PLACE AFTER THE DEATH 
 OF JAMES THE ELDER, UNTIL THE CLOSE OF THE 
 FIRST CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Hostility of the Jews to Christianity Awful Punishments inflicted upon the former 
 Calamities brought upon the Church by the Gentiles The Idea of TEN Persecutions 
 examined Its Absurdity It is built upon Error Augustine quoted Treacherous 
 Testimony of Ecclesiastical Historians Notion that all the Apostles suffered 
 Martyrdom not sustained Heracleon, Poly crates > and Tertullian referred to 
 The Origin of this Idea traced Meaning of the Words "Martyr" and (i Confessors" 
 Great Honours rendered to them Cyprian quoted Relics of Martyrs Their 
 supposed Value Numerous flagrant Acts of Superstition with regard to them 
 Optatus quoted Anecdote of Lucilla Caecilian The Donatist Schism Augustine 
 on the Subject of Relics Edict of Thecdosius the Great Martyrium, what ? 
 Bingham quoted Mabillon on the Abuse of Relics Respect speedily degenerated 
 into Adoration Relics a Source of Wealth to the Church And of Extortion and 
 Knavery in the Clergy Bellarmine appeals to Scripture in Support of Relics 
 The Labours of the Apostles Uncertainty of all Documents respecting them., 
 except those of the New Testament Notices of Christianity in Rome. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the persons professing Christianity at this early period 
 of the history of the church, were conspicuous for the exemplary 
 holiness of their doctrines, and the innocence of their lives, never- 
 theless the leading men and Priests of the Jewish nation not only 
 heaped upon the Apostles and their followers the heaviest injuries and 
 insults, but, as far as lay in their power, the infliction of death itself. 
 This was exemplified in the martyrdom of Stephen, of James the son 
 of Zebedee, and also of James the Just, Superintendent of the church 
 at Jerusalem.* The true ground of this hostility, none can doubt to 
 have been the gloomy apprehensions of the Jewish nation, that if 
 Christianity prospered in the world, the system of Judaism could not 
 be maintained. Not only in Palestine, but also in foreign states, the 
 descendants of Abraham used the most strenuous efforts to crush the 
 Christian sect ; and displayed equal, if not greater, inhumanity than 
 their brethren resident in Judea. We learn from the Acts of the 
 Apostles, and from other credible writers, that they spared no pains 
 to instigate the Magistrates and populace in the Roman provinces to 
 harass and destroy the believers in Christ, in which unhallowed work 
 they were encouraged by the Jews in Palestine, who frequently sent 
 messengers, exhorting them, not only to shun the Christians, but to 
 persevere with increased zeal in their sanguinary and cruel efforts, 
 
 * Acts vii. 56 ; xii. 1, 2. Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. 8. Euseb., Hist. Kccles., 
 lib. ii., cap. 2 .
 
 STATE OF THE CHURCH. 155 
 
 to accomplish their destruction.* They were constantly denouncing 
 the Christians as a people hostile to the government of Rome, and 
 Christ as a malefactor, most justly slain by Pilate, having heen called 
 by them King. " These all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, say- 
 ing that there is another King, one Jesus." (Acts xvii. 7.) These 
 diabolical prejudices were eagerly transmitted from father to son, from 
 generation to generation : thus the followers of Christ had no enemies 
 in the known world so rancorous and bitter as the Jews.f 
 
 The Most High ere long inflicted upon this relentless and perfidious 
 nation awful and unheard of punishments, as a righteous, though 
 tremendous, retribution, for the many crimes that had been committed 
 against Jesus and his friends. He suffered Jerusalem, the capital 
 of Palestine, together with the temple, to be razed to their foundation 
 by the Roman Emperor Vespasian, and his son Titus, about forty 
 years after the ascension of our Lord ; an immense multitude of 
 the people were miserably butchered, and most of the survivors sold 
 into slavery. J In every subsequent age, the Jews have been a by- 
 word, and reproach, and the subjects of popular malevolence and 
 envy, on the face of the earth. Throughout the whole history of the 
 human race, we meet with but few, if any, instances of slaughter and 
 devastation equal to this. In contemplating it, amongst various 
 other things which present themselves to our notice, as well as 
 deserving of the most serious attention, it is particularly worthy of 
 remark, that the Jews themselves, rather than the Romans, must be 
 considered as the authors of that great and fearful accumulation of 
 evils which signalized the final desolation of the house of Israel. 
 
 The Gentiles brought upon the church still greater calamities than 
 the Jews, who wanted power. The persecutions of the Christians by 
 the Romans, have for many ages been accounted ten in number. 
 The history of the church does not support the idea. If we enu- 
 merate the more severe and extensive persecutions which took place 
 during the early days, they do not amount to that number : if we 
 include the provincial and more limited persecutions, the number will 
 necessarily be much more than ten. Some Christians of the fifth 
 century were induced to believe, from certain portions of Scripture, 
 and especially from the Apocalyptic vision, that the church would 
 experience ten calamities of some heavy kind ; and to this vague and 
 
 See Justin Martyr, Dial, cum Tryphone. Pp. 61 63, 109, 138,318. Ed. (Jebb.) 
 
 t Passages from early Christian writers, who complain of the Jewish persecutions, are 
 collected by J. A. Fabricius, Lux Evang., toti orbi exoriens, chap, vi., sect, i., p. 121. 
 See al.so the Epist. of the Church of Smyrna, de Martyrio Polycarpi, sect, xii., xiii. 
 
 t See Josephus's History of the Jewish War. Basnoge Histoire de Juifs. torn, i., 
 cap. 17- 
 
 5 See Snlpitius Severus, Historia Sacra, lib. ii., cap. xl., p. 387. Ed. Horn., 1654. 
 Augnstiuus De Civit. Dei, lib. xviii., cap. 62. In the fourth century the number of the 
 persecutions had not been denned. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, reckons 
 only six. Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., does not state their number ; yet we might make 
 out nine from this writer. This is the number given by Sulpitiua Severus, in the fifth 
 century. But in his time originated the opinion of just ten persecutions ; and 
 Sulpitius, to make out that number, includes the persecution of Antichrist at the end 
 of the world. See Mosheim, de Rebus Christ, ante Const. Mag. Dr. Hey considers 
 that eleven persecutions may be made out from Eusebius. (Lectures in Divinity, 
 vol. 1., p. 201. Camb., 1841.) 
 
 X 2
 
 156 BOOK III. CHAPTER I. 
 
 indefinite interpretation they accommodated ecclesiastical history. 
 The notion is confessedly very ancient, and is built upon popular 
 error, without the least shadow of foundation. We have good autho- 
 rity for stating, that, in the fourth century, the number of Christian 
 persecutions had not been correctly ascertained. The Christians of 
 the fifth century who, from their interpretation of some passages 
 of the inspired writings, had been led to anticipate the fulfilment of a 
 definite number of evils, discovered that the persecutions recorded in 
 history did not amount to that number ; therefore they endeavoured, 
 in order to uphold the authority of the sacred volume, to spread the 
 idea, that the completion of the predicted number would not take 
 place until the end of the world, when Antichrist should reign. 
 Others who fully credited the hypothesis that ten persecutions were 
 predicted in the Scripture, but did not imagine that the afflictions to 
 be expected from Antichrist were to be included, strove, by distorting 
 and perverting the history of the church previous to the time of 
 Constantine the Great, to make it exhibit the whole of the troublous 
 times which they conceived were thus prognosticated. For this we 
 have the testimony of Augustine. He declares that he can by no 
 means assent to the opinion, that only ten persecutions of the Chris- 
 tians are foretold in Scripture until the time of Antichrist, and that 
 his shall be the eleventh and the final one.* In the next place, the 
 Bishop of Hippo informs us, respecting the particular portion of 
 divine truth on which this notion of ten persecutions, anterior to the 
 time of Constantine, was established. The plagues of Egypt were in 
 number ten, prior to the exodus, which they supposed prefigured the 
 sufferings of the church ; and the eleventh, or the persecution which 
 the church has to suffer from Antichrist, they imagined to be indi- 
 cated by the Egyptians pursuing the children of Israel into the Red 
 Sea, where the former perished. f A more silly and absurd exposition 
 of holy writ will with difficulty be found. 
 
 In treating of the martyrdom of the Apostles, we cannot but be 
 aware that we tread on treacherous and uncertain ground, owing to 
 the vague and contradictory statements which constantly assail us, 
 while threading the labyrinths of ecclesiastical history. We meet 
 with but little in which we can fully confide, except what is recorded 
 in the books of the New Testament, and a few credible and authentic 
 memorials of antiquity. In this case, as in others of doubt and 
 uncertainty, difference of opinion will prevail with regard to what 
 ought to be received, and what rejected. We might with propriety 
 hesitate to withhold our assent to the testimony of Origen, Eusebius, 
 Gregory Nazianzen, Jerome, Socrates, and others of more ancient date 
 who are cited with approbation by Eusebius, and at the same time 
 
 * " Proinde ne illnd quidem temere puto esse dicendum, sive credendum, quod non- 
 nullis vifeum est, vel videtur, non amplius ecclesiam passuram persecutiones usque 
 ad tempus Antichrist!, quam quot jam passa est, id est, decem, ut undecima, dedemque 
 novissima, sit ab Antichristo." August, de Civil. Dei, lib. xviii., cap. 52. 
 
 t " Plagas enim .fligyptiorum quoniam decem fuerunt, antequam iude exire inciperet 
 populus Dei, putant ad hunc intellectum esse referendas, ut novissima Antichristi 
 persecutio similis videatur undecimae plagae, qua .3gyptii, dum Lostiliter sequerenter 
 Hebrseos, in Man Rubro, populo Dei per siccum transience, perierunt." Ibid.
 
 RESPECT SHOWN TO MARTYRS. 157 
 
 receive with considerable caution and reserve the writings of authors 
 of a later age, unless such were satisfactorily corroborated by genu- 
 ine and indisputable documents. When mercenary scribes were 
 unhappily taken into the service of Ecclesiastics who heeded not the 
 truth, the word of God was corrupted with impunity ; fiction was 
 resorted to ; and it was not long before the arrogance and presump- 
 tion of men carried even forgery and imposition to an almost 
 incredible extent, from which none, perhaps, suffered more than the 
 disciples and Apostles of our Lord. 
 
 That each of the Apostles, with the exception of St. John, suffered 
 capital punishment at the command of the civil Magistrate, is a 
 report that appears to have been regularly handed down from an 
 early day, and has been supported by many various writers. The 
 evidence, however, on which they rest the proof of the fact, is by no 
 means conclusive. That Peter and Paul and James suffered thus, is 
 established on the faith of numerous and respectable authorities ; but 
 there are several considerations which prevent our believing that their 
 colleagues in the apostolate met with a similar fate. Heracleon, an 
 author who flourished during the second century, and quoted by 
 Clement of Alexandria,* positively denies that Matthew, Philip, 
 Thomas, Levi, and some others, were put to death. The Apostle 
 Philip is left out of the category of martyrs by Polycrates, who states 
 that he died and was buried at Hierapolis.f Tertullian, also, who 
 was thoroughly conversant with every part of Christian history, true as 
 well as feigned, enumerates no more than three of the Apostles as 
 coming within the class of martyrs ; namely, Peter, Paul, and James 
 the Elder. J There is reason to believe, that the accounts of the mar- 
 tyrdom of several of the Apostles of our Lord were invented subse- 
 quently to the age of Constantine the Great. At this we are not 
 surprised. The very great veneration and respect in which the 
 martyrs were held in the early days of the church, will go far in 
 accounting for the fact ; and this veneration, during the tranquil- 
 lity which the Emperor restored to the Christian commonwealth, 
 attained a degree surpassing all belief. When the martyrs began 
 to be worshipped almost like the deities of Heathenism, and to have 
 certain honours rendered to them, which the Greeks and Romans 
 paid to their demi-gods and heroes, it was easy to imagine that all the 
 Apostles ought to be included in the catalogue of sufferers, lest they 
 should appear in the estimation of the multitude, as deficient of the 
 most distinguishing and infallible mark of sanctity and honour. 
 This extravagant and unwarrantable proceeding may also be attri- 
 buted to the ambiguity which, in those days, was attached to the 
 
 Clem. Alex., Stromat, lib. iv., cap. 9. 
 
 t Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. v., cap. 24. Baronins, (Annales, torn i., ad. Ann., 35, sect. 
 141,) and others after him, would have us to understand Polycrates as speaking of that 
 I'hilip who was one of the seven Deacons of the chnrch at Jerusalem, and not of Philip 
 the Apostle. But the advocates of this opinion stand confuted by Polycrates himself, 
 who says expressly, that the Philip of whom he makes mention was one of the twelve 
 Apostles. (Mosheim's Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians, vol. i., p. 142. 
 8vo. Kd. London, 1813. 
 
 t Tertulliani Opera. Contra Gnosticos, cap. xv., torn, i., p. 265. 8vo. Wired)., 
 1780.
 
 158 BOOK III. CHAPTER I. 
 
 term " martyr." In the Greek language it signifies any description 
 of witness ; but the meaning affixed to it by the Christians of former 
 days implied a more eminent kind of witness, even such as testified, 
 beyond all contradiction, that Christ was the centre of their affection 
 and hope, by sealing the truth with their blood. The Apostles are 
 denominated " witnesses " in the former sense, by Christ himself. 
 (Acts i. 8.) The term has evidently no higher import annexed to it, 
 when applied, as it afterwards is, by the Apostles themselves, in order 
 to elucidate the nature of their functions. (Acts ii. 32.) It might, 
 however, very easily occur, that unlearned persons, not aware of this 
 distinction, might conceive that the word " martyr," which they 
 discovered thus appended to the Apostles in the writings of the New 
 Testament, was to be understood in the latter sense ; consequently, 
 they with haste adopted the opinion, that they ought to be placed in 
 the same class with those whom the believers were accustomed to 
 style, in the more eminent sense, martyrs.* Those who had never 
 been called to give this last severe proof of their faith and sincerity, 
 but had, nevertheless, at the peril of their lives, and at the hazard 
 of honour, fortune, and every other worldly consideration, made open 
 profession of their belief in Christ in the face of the heathen tribunals, 
 were distinguished by the title of " confessors." The authority and 
 respect which individuals of either class, whether martyrs or confes- 
 sors, enjoyed during life, and the veneration in which their memory 
 was afterwards held by contemporary Christians, were not to be 
 credited. 
 
 Both martyrs and confessors were supposed to be " filled with 
 the Spirit," (Eph. v. 18,) and to act under an immediate and divine 
 inspiration. Whatever they said, was considered as proceeding from 
 " the oracles of God ; " and whatever during their imprisonment they 
 desired, was regarded in the light of a sacred command, to disobey 
 which was the height of recklessness and impiety. When they died, 
 they imagined they were received immediately into heaven, and 
 admitted to share in the celestial councils and administration ; that 
 they took their seats as co-judges with the Most High, with whom 
 they possessed sufficient influence to obtain from him whatever they 
 might make the subject of their supplications. Annual festivals were 
 appointed in commemoration of their death, f their characters were 
 
 Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. i., pp. 144, 145. 8vo. Edit. London, 1813. 
 
 t These festivals were grown so numerous in the time of Chrysostom and Theodoret, 
 that they tell ua it was not once, or twice, or five times in a year that they celebrated 
 their memorials, but they oftentimes celebrated one or two in the same week, which 
 occasioned frequent solemnities. (Chrysost., Horn, xl., in Juvent., torn, i., p. 546. 
 Theodoret, Serm. viii., de Martyr., torn, iv., p. 605.) The church of Smyrna, of which 
 Polycarp was the Bishop, in their Epistle to the church of Philomelium, recorded by 
 Kusebius, (lib. iv., cap. xv.,) informs them, that " they intended, it' God would permit, 
 to meet at his tomb, and celebrate his birth-day, that is, the day of his martyrdom, 
 with joy and gladness, as well for the memory of the sufferer, as for example to 
 posterity." Cyprian orders his Clergy to note down the days of their decease, that 
 a commemoration of them might be celebrated amongst the memories of the martyrs. 
 (" Dies eorum quibus excedunt adnotate, ut commemorationes eorum inter memorias 
 martyrum celebrare possimus." Cypriani Epist., xxxvi., p. 43. 8vo. Edit. Paris, 
 1836.) In another place, he says, " They offered sacrifices for them as often as they 
 celebrated their passions, or days of martyrdom, by an anniversary commemoration."
 
 RESPECT SHOWN TO MARTYRS. 159 
 
 made the theme of public eulogy, monuments were charged with 
 transmitting their names and acts to posterity, and various other 
 distinguished honours were paid to their memories. Those who had 
 acquired the title of confessors were maintained at the public expense, 
 and on every occasion were treated with the utmost respect. The 
 affairs and interests of the different religious assemblies to which 
 they severally belonged, were, in a considerable degree, consigned to 
 their management and care. Advantage was taken of the influence 
 which they possessed, to intercede with the Bishop on behalf of the 
 lapsed. Anciently, the martyrs in prison were allowed this privilege, 
 when any penitent had well-nigh performed his legal penance, and 
 was soon to be restored to communion with the church, to write 
 letters to the Diocesan, requesting that such an one might forthwith 
 regain his fellowship, although his full term of penance was not 
 expired. So far, the petition was generally accepted. Abuses, how- 
 ever, followed. Crafty and designing men, for the lucre of gain, 
 prevailed upon the martyr to intercede for those who had done little 
 or no penance ; and even the martyrs themselves abused the 
 privilege which the church, by common consent, had granted to 
 them, by peremptorily demanding the admission to communion with 
 the people, of such, without any previous examination of their merits : 
 sometimes they required the Bishop not only to admit such a 
 penitent, but all that belonged to him ; which was a very uncertain and 
 obscure sort of petition, and created great prejudice against the Bishop, 
 when occasionally twenty or thirty nameless individuals were included 
 in it. Cyprian complains most bitterly against these practices, " as 
 dissolving the bands of faith, and the fear of God, and the command- 
 ments of the Lord, and the holiness and vigour of the Gospel." * 
 " This occasioned," adds the Bishop, "great seditions and tumults; for 
 in many cities throughout the province of Carthage, the people rose up 
 in multitudes against their Bishops, and, by their clamours, compelled 
 them to grant them instantly that peace which they all said the martyrs 
 and confessors had given them : they who had neither courage, nor 
 strength of faith, to resist them, were terrified and subdued into a 
 compliance." Cyprian, also, had much to do to withstand the people 
 at Carthage : " For some turbulent men, who were hardly governable 
 before, and thought it too severe an infliction of punishment to be 
 excluded from communion until the Bishop's return from exile ; when 
 they had obtained the letters of the martyrs, they were all so excited 
 with the conviction of their great influence and power, that they 
 began to rage immoderately, and in a tumultuous and menacing 
 
 (" Sacrificia pro eis semper ut meministis, offt-riiuus quoties martyrum passionea et dies 
 anniversaria commemorauone celebramus." Ibid., Epist., xxxiii.) These sacrifices 
 were those of prayer and thanksgiving to God for the examples of the martyrs, and the 
 celebration of the eucharist on these days, and the offerings of alms and oblations for the 
 poor, which, together with a panegyrical oration or sermon, and reading the acts or 
 passion of the martyr, if they had any snch recorded, were the exercises and special 
 acts of devotion, in which they spent these days. (Bingham's Christian Antiq., book 
 xiii., chap, ix., sect. 6. 8vo. Edit. Vol. iv., pp. 364, 365. London. 1840.) 
 
 " Qua pene omne vinculum fidei et timor Uei et mandatuni Domini et Evaogelii 
 sanctitas et firmitaa solveretur." Gyp. F.pist., xxil. Ad Clerum Rcnue.
 
 160 BOOK III. CHAPTER I. 
 
 manner demand the peace which they declared the martyrs had 
 already granted." * 
 
 From the high opinion that was entertained of the exalted charac- 
 ter of the martyrs, sprung up the notion that their relics possessed a 
 divine virtue, efficacious in counteracting or remedying any ills to 
 which either our souls or bodies may be exposed. This superstition 
 increased to such a degree, as to induce the more ignorant and covet- 
 ous of the clergy to procure, by fair or unfair means, these earthly 
 remains, to rob graves, and steal the bones of martyrs or any others, 
 that they might secure a sufficient stock of which they might make 
 gain. This superstitious practice, so calculated to encourage venality 
 and crime, religious imposition, or pious frauds, was early in opera- 
 tion in some portions of Christendom. For nearly five hundred 
 years the church interfered not with the relics of the martyrs, but 
 decently to inter them : afterwards they were used for antiscriptural 
 and dangerous purposes. Optatusf says, that Lucilla, the rich found- 
 ress of the Donatist schism, was accustomed, before she received the 
 eucharist, to kiss the mouth of a certain martyr, which, whether true 
 or false, she had procured, and kept for that object. For this she 
 was greatly reproved by Caecilian, Archdeacon of Carthage, which she 
 remembered and resented to such a degree, that when he succeeded 
 to the bishopric, she, being a powerful, rich, and factious woman, 
 caused others to be nominated. Hence the origin of the Donatist 
 schism, which arose from the pride and superstition of a woman 
 indomitably attached to the veneration of relics. Augustine J informs 
 us, that there were in his time a great number of wandering idle 
 Monks, hypocritical men, who, by the instigation of Satan, went 
 about the country selling relics of martyrs, which it was very doubt- 
 ful whether they were the remains of true martyrs or not. To 
 counteract and abolish this disgraceful practice, Theodosius the 
 Great enacted, " That no one should remove any dead body that 
 was buried, from one place to another ; that no one should sell or 
 buy the relics of martyrs : but if any one was minded to build over 
 the grave, where a martyr was buried, a church, to be called a marty- 
 rium, in respect of him, he should have liberty to do it." " This 
 was," says Bingham, " the honour that was paid to martyrs ; to let 
 them lie quietly in their graves, and build churches over them, which 
 were dedicated to God and his service, not to any religious worship 
 of the martyr : only in honour to him the church might be called a 
 
 * Bingham's Christ. Antiq., book xvi., chap, iii., sect. 4. Vol. v., pp. 506, 608. 
 
 t Optati Opera, lib. i., p. 40. (P. 18. Fol. Edit. Paris. 1676.) 
 
 t The language of Augustine is strong: " Callidissimus hostis turn multos 
 
 hypocritas sub habitu monachorum usquequaque dispersit, circumeuntes provincias, 
 nusquam missos, nusquam fixos, nusquam stantes, nusquam sedentes. Alii membra 
 martyrum, si tamen martyrum, venditant : alii fimbrias et phylacteria sua magnificant," 
 &c. August, de Opere Monachor., cap. xxviii. Opera, torn, vi., p. 364. Edit. 
 Benedict. 1700. 
 
 " Humatum corpus nemo ad alium locum transferat ; nemo martyrem distrahat, 
 nemo mercetur : habeant vero in potestate, si quolibet in loco sanctorum aliqnis 
 est conditus, pro ejus veneratione, quod martyrium vocandum sit addant quod voluerint 
 fabricarum." Cod. Theod., lib. ix., tit, 7. De Sepulchris Violatis, leg. vii., torn, iii., 
 p. 152. Lugd., 1665.
 
 SUPERSTITIOUS PKACTICES. 161 
 
 martyrium, after his name ; but beyond this, no honour was to be 
 given to him under any pretence of veneration ; and to take up his 
 body, and make merchandise of his bones, was so far from veneration, 
 that it was reckoned a disturbing of his ashes, and a robbing of 
 graves, which was mere covetousness, hypocritically covered under the 
 name of religion. I question not," he proceeds, "but the law of 
 Valentinian III., which speaks of Bishops, and others of the Clergy, 
 who were concerned in robbing the graves, was levelled against this 
 sort of men, who digged up the bones of martyrs, and sold them 
 as holy relics, to gratify their own lucre at the expense of supersti- 
 tious people, who thought it an honour to a martyr to keep his 
 bones above ground ; whereas all the laws of church and state then 
 reckoned it a sacrilegious robbing of graves, and disturbance of those 
 holy relics, which ought to have lain quiet and unmolested until the 
 resurrection." * 
 
 The abuses of the church of Rome with regard to relics, are fla- 
 grant and notorious. Such was the rage for them at one time, that 
 Mabillon, a Benedictine, justly complains, the altars were laden with 
 suspected relics, numerous spurious ones being constantly, and every 
 where, offered to the piety and devotion of the faithful. He declares 
 thnt bones are often consecrated, which, so far from belonging to 
 saints, probably do not belong to Christians. From the catacombs, 
 numerous relics have been taken ; and yet it is not known who were 
 interred therein. In the eleventh century, relics were tried by fire, 
 and those which did not consume were reckoned genuine, and the 
 rest not. Relics were, and still are, preserved on the altars whereon 
 mass is celebrated, a square hole being made in the middle of the 
 altar, large enough to receive the hand ; and herein is the precious 
 morsel deposited, being first wrapped in red silk, and inclosed in a 
 leaden box.f In process of time this outward respect degene- 
 rated into formal worship ; innumerable processions, pilgrimages, and 
 miracles, from which the Romish hierarchy has derived incredible 
 advantage, followed. In the end of the ninth century, it was con- 
 sidered insufficient to reverence departed saints, to confide in their 
 intercessions and succour, to clothe them with an imaginary power of 
 healing diseases, working miracles, and delivering from all descrip- 
 
 Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church, book xxiii., chap, iv., sect. 8. Vol. 
 vii., p. 455. Straker'* Kdit., 1840. There is an instance, in the third century, of 
 some well-meaning Christians, who, after the martyrs Fructuosus and Eologius were 
 burnt, gathered up their remains, and would have kept them by them, only out of 
 respect and love, not for any religious worship ; but Fructuosus, after hia passion, 
 appeared to them, and admonished them to restore immediately whatever part of the 
 ashes any one out of love had taken to himself, and that, putting them all together, they 
 should bury them in one common grave. The great care of the church, and of the 
 martyrs themselves, in those days, waa not to have their relics kept above ground for 
 worship, but to be decently buried under the earth. And, therefore, when the heathen 
 Judge asked Eulogius the Deacon, who suffered with Fructuosus, his Bishop, " Whether 
 he would not worship Frnctuosus, as a martyr, after death ? " he plainly replied, " I 
 do not worship Fructuosus, but Him only whom Fructuosus worships." (See AcUt 
 Fructuosi, apud Baronii Annalea, Ann. 262. Antvv., 1597* Dallaeus de Objecto 
 Cultus Relig., lib. iv. Euseb., Kccle.s. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 15. See also a \aluablo 
 paragraph in August. Serm. ci., de Diversis, p. 1108. Fol. Edit. Benedict.) 
 
 t Mabillon (de Jjturg. Gallicaua, book i., chap, iz., sect, iv.) owns there were no 
 relics set upon the altar, even to the tenth century. 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 162 BOOK III. CHAPTER I. 
 
 tions of calamity and danger ; their bones, their clothes, the apparel 
 and furniture they possessed during life, the very ground they had 
 touched, or in which their putrid carcases had been deposited, were 
 treated with an ignorant veneration, and supposed to retain the mar- 
 vellous virtue, of healing all disorders, both of body and mind, and 
 of defending such as possessed them against all the assaults and 
 devices of the devil. The consequence of all this was, that every 
 one was eager to provide himself with these salutary remedies ; great 
 numbers undertook fatiguing and perilous voyages, and subjected 
 themselves to all sorts of hardships ; while others made use of this 
 delusion to accumulate riches, and to impose upon the miserable mul- 
 titude by the most impious and shocking inventions. As the demand 
 for relics was prodigious and universal, the Clergy employed the 
 utmost dexterity to satisfy all demands, and were far from being 
 conscientiously particular in the methods which they adopted to 
 secure their object. The bodies of the saints were sought by fasting 
 and prayer, appointed by the Priest, in order to obtain a divine 
 answer, and an infallible direction ; and this pretended impulse never 
 failed to accomplish their desires, and the holy carcase was invariably 
 found. Each discovery of this kind was attended with excessive 
 demonstrations of joy, while it animated the zeal of these devout 
 seekers to enrich the church still more and more with this novel kind 
 of treasure. Many travelled into the eastern provinces, and fre- 
 quented the places which our Saviour and his disciples had honoured 
 with their presence, that with the bones, and other sacred remains 
 of the first heralds of the Gospel, they might comfort dejected minds, 
 calm trembling consciences, save sinking states, and defend the 
 inhabitants from calamity. Nor did these pious travellers return 
 empty. The craft, dexterity, and knavery of the Greeks, found a 
 rich prey in the stupid credulity of the Latin relic-hunters, and thus 
 made a profitable trade of this new, though strange, kind of devo- 
 tion. The latter paid considerable sums for legs and arms, skulls 
 and jaw-bones, several of which were pagan, and others not human, 
 which they supposed belonged to the primitive worthies of the Chris- 
 tian church. It was in this way the Latin church came to the pos- 
 session of those celebrated relics of Mark, James, Bartholome\v, 
 Cyprian, Pantaleon, and others, which they show at this day with so 
 much tclat. Many who were unable to procure these spiritual trea- 
 sures by voyages and prayers, had recourse to violence and theft ; 
 for all kinds of methods, in a cause of this nature, were considered, 
 when successful, as pious, meritorious, and acceptable to the supreme 
 Being. Besides the argument from antiquity, to which the Papists 
 refer, in vindication of their worship of relics, Bellarmine actually 
 appeals to Scripture in its support.* 
 
 * Bellarmine refers to the following : Exod. xiii. 19 ; Deut. xxxiv. 6 ; 2 Kings 
 xiii. 21 ; xxiii. 16 18 ; Isai. xi. 10; Matt. xi. 2022 ; Acts v. 12, 15 ; xix. 11, 12. 
 See Buck's Theological Dictionary, Henderson's edit. Relic Worship : an Address 
 delivered in the Scotch Church, Madras, by the Rev. J. Roherts, (2d,) Weslej-an 
 Magazine, vol. Ixtx., p. 998. And also some valuable papers by the Rev. E. C. Har- 
 rington, M. A., in the British Magazine, vol. xxv., pp. 511, 633 ; xxvi., p. 40. Relics 
 were forbidden to be used or brought into England by several statutes, and Justices of
 
 SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES. 163 
 
 It has been generally supposed that the Apostles travelled through- 
 out the greatest part of the then known and civilized world ; and, 
 either by themselves, or with the assistance of their disciples and 
 co-adjutors, who accompanied them in their journeys, established 
 Christian churches in many of the provinces. On this subject we 
 refuse to have recourse to romantic legends or traditionary tales : the 
 early history of many is lost in the mist which hangs over nearly 
 every part of the primitive days of Christianity, not only preventing 
 us from marking with precision the extent of the Apostles' progress, 
 but also rendering it impossible for us, with any degree of confidence, 
 to name any particular churches as founded by them, except such as 
 are mentioned in the writings of the New Testament.* Throughout 
 the world there is scarcely, not to say a nation or people, but even 
 a city of any magnitude or consequence, in which the religion of 
 Christ may be said to flourish, that does not ascribe the first planting 
 of the church to one or other of the Apostles themselves, or to some 
 of their immediate and most intimate disciples. The Spaniards boast 
 of having had the light of the Gospel communicated to them by two 
 of the Apostles in person ; namely, St. Paul and St. James the 
 Elder, as well as by many of the seventy disciples, and of those who 
 were the companions of the Apostles.f The French, with equal osten- 
 tation and pertinacity, attribute the conversion of their forefathers 
 to the preaching and labours of Crescens, the disciple and companion 
 of St. Paul, of Dionysius of Athens, the Areopagite, of Lazarus, 
 of Mary Magdalene, and others. Throughout Italy there is scarcely 
 a city which does not pretend to have received the first rudiments 
 of Christianity from either Paul or Peter, and that its first Bishop 
 was appointed by one of them. The Germans affirm that Maternus, 
 Valerian, and many others, were sent by the Apostles, and that the 
 persons thus commissioned by Peter and his colleagues, established 
 some considerable churches in that country. The inhabitants of 
 Britain consider Paul, Simon Zelotes, Aristobulus, and particularly 
 
 the Peace were empowered to search houses for Popish books and relics, &c., whicli 
 when found were to be defaced and burnt, &c. (3 Jac. i. cap. 26.) 
 
 The history of the Christian community at Rome is most remarkable. It grew up in 
 silence by some unknown teachers, probably of some of those who were present in Jerusa- 
 lem at the first publication of Christianity by the Apostles. During the reign of Claudius 
 it had made so much progress, as to excite open tumults and dissensions among the Jew- 
 ish population at Rome : these animosities rose to such a height, that the attention 
 of the Government was aroused, and both parties expelled. With some of these 
 exiles, Aquila and Priscilla, St. Paul formed an intimate acquaintance during his first 
 visit to Corinth ; from them he received information of the extraordinary progress of the 
 faith in Koine. The Jews seem quietly to have crept beck to their old quarters when 
 the rigour with which the imperial edict was at first executed had insensibly relaxed ; 
 and from these persons, on their return to the capital, and most likely from other 
 Roman Christians, who may have taken refuge in Corinth, or in other cities where Paul 
 had founded Christian communities, the- first, or at least the more perfect, knowledge 
 of the higher Christianity, taught by the Apostle of the Gentiles, would be conveyed to 
 Rome. (See Milman's History of Christianity, vol. i., p. 462.) 
 
 t The views of Paul, on so remote a province as Spain at no early a period of his 
 journey, appear to justify the notion, that there was a considerable Jewish population 
 in that country. It is not impossible that many of the " Libertines " may have made 
 their way from Sardinia. There is a curious tradition among the Spanish Jews, that 
 they were residents in that country before the birth of our Saviour, and consequently 
 had no concern in his death ! (History of the Jews, vol. Hi-, p. 142.] 
 
 Y 2
 
 164 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, as the founders of their church. That the 
 former of these actually extended his travels to that island, and first 
 preached the Gospel there, is a fact which has been strongly contested 
 by many, who chiefly rely on the authority of a passage in the first 
 epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians. The Russians, with 
 the Poles and Prussians, venerate St. Andrew as the parent of their 
 respective churches. All these, and many others, were considered as 
 indisputable during those benighted ages, when every species of 
 sound learning, divine as well as human, was overwhelmed and trod- 
 den under foot by ignorance and superstition. At present they are 
 regarded in a very different light ; and the wisest and best informed 
 view them as fictitious, invented subsequently to the period of 
 Charlemagne, by illiterate and designing men, who anticipated that 
 by propagating a notion of the great antiquity of their several churches, 
 they should open to themselves a source of profit and honour.* 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SECT. I. NERO His Character The Conflagration of the City of Rome The Public 
 charge the Emperor with being the Incendiary Nero accuses the Christians 
 Tacitus quoted Name of Christian Persecutions they endured Cruelties perpe- 
 trated Juvenal Martial Suetonius State of Christianity in Rome Chris- 
 tianity arid Heathenism are, for the first time, brought into Collision Polytheism 
 A persecuting Spirit may exist when there is no outward Persecution Heathen- 
 ism intolerant Unacquainted with the Rights of Conscience Cicero quoted 
 Cause of the Persecutions from the Heathens Numerous Efforts to prejudice the 
 People against the Christians The Extent of Nero's Persecution The celebrated 
 Portuguese Inscription Terlullian quoted. SECT. II. MATTHEW AND MAT- 
 THIAS Birth and Parentage of MATTHEW His Occupation The Office of Pub- 
 lican noticed Sabinius Why the Office was in bad Repute Zaccheus The 
 Detestation in which the Publicans were held Call of Matthew Bede Travels 
 of the Apostle Socrates quoted Eusebius Simeon Metaphrastes Legendary 
 Tales of Nicephorus Death of Matthew Dorotheus Heracleon Power of 
 Religion exemplified in Matthew Porphyry and Julian Matthew's Character. 
 MATTHIAS One of the Seventy His Apostleship Circumstances connected with 
 this Event Judas His Character And Death Election of Matthias Ancient 
 Custom of Decision by Lot The Manner of it Scripture Instances referred to 
 His Labours And supposed Martyrdom Numerous legendary Accounts con- 
 cerning him. SECT. III. MARK, JAMES THE LESS, AND ANDREW The Con- 
 version of MARK Associate of Peter His Qualifications Writes the Gospel 
 which bears his Name His Travels Bishop of Alexandria Epiphanius Euse- 
 bius Jerome His Martyrdom And Fate of his Remains. JAMES THE LESS 
 His Parentage Scanty Mention of him in the Scriptures Jerome Tradition- 
 ary Anecdote Bishop of Jerusalem His Character Eusebius Hegesippus 
 Epiphanius Clement of Alexandria The Administration of Festus His 
 Death Duplicity of the High Priest His Schemes to destroy James His Mar- 
 tyrdom. ANDREW His relative Situation among the Apostles Obtains the Title 
 of "the First Catted"- His Birth Introduction to Jesus Call of Andrew He 
 is raised to the Apostolate His supposed Travels Scythia of the Ancients noticed 
 Andrew suffers Persecution on Account of the Truth at Patrce " Acts of his 
 
 * Mosheim'a Commentaries, vol. i , pp. 140, 147. 8vo. London, 1813.
 
 N E R
 
 PERSECUTIONS UNDER NERO. 165 
 
 Passion " too legendary to be credited JEgeas, the Proconsul Andrew sentenced 
 to the Death of the Cross Nicephorus Mammilla Hit Martyrdom Bernard, 
 Abbot of Cfairvau*, quoted Supposed Relic of the Cross of Andrew Fabulous 
 Stories concerning it Natalis Alexander Idle Accounts of his Remain* related 
 by Gregory Bishop of Tours, and Alban Butler. 
 
 SECT. I. PERSECUTIONS UNDER N"ERO. 
 
 IN the year 54 Claudius was poisoned by his wife Agrippina, 
 whose sou, Nero, then succeeded to the empire. In the commence- 
 ment of his reign the Christians were not persecuted ; but this arose 
 from the calumnies propagated against them not being generally 
 known, and from no disposition on the part of the Emperor to pro- 
 tect. Although he was but a boy when he ascended the throne, he 
 was full-blown in vice. Before he had bidden farewell to his teens, 
 he was accustomed to go about the city at night committing the most 
 disgraceful excesses ; he showed great vulgarity, as well as licentious- 
 ness, in his amours ; his conduct to his mother was most unnatural, 
 and his relation Britannicus he caused to be poisoned. Such were 
 the precursors of his future villany. It was in Rome where Chris- 
 tianity and Heathenism were first brought into collision, by the 
 assault made by Nero upon the worshippers of the Most High. He 
 was now exhibiting, without reserve or control, all the debased ten- 
 dencies of his nature. A childish admiration of pageantry and 
 shows, the vanity of being applauded as the best performer in every 
 part, an abandonment to every form of licentious indulgence, and the 
 Roman thirst for blood, formed the chief elements of his character. 
 That his inconceivable fooleries and brutalities should have been so long 
 endured, can only be accounted for by the degraded condition of the 
 populace of Rome, whose tastes were similar to his own, and among 
 whom he made himself a favourite, while they saw him seizing the 
 overgrown wealth of the senators, and lavishing away the riches of 
 provinces in gorgeous spectacles, and scenes of riot and debauchery. 
 The people were at last made the victims of his madness. Ten out 
 of the fourteen districts into which Rome was divided, were, within 
 six days, almost entirely destroyed by fire, so swift was the progress 
 of the conflagration. The vigilance of the government appears not 
 to have neglected any of the precautions which might alleviate the 
 sense of so dreadful a calamity. The imperial gardens were thrown 
 open to the distressed multitude ; temporary buildings were erected 
 for their accommodation, and a plentiful supply of corn and provi- 
 sions was distributed at a very moderate price, and every religious 
 ceremony was observed to render the gods propitious. But neither 
 the largesses to the people, nor the show of piety to the tutelar deities 
 of the city, could screen Nero from the infamy of being considered as 
 himself the author of all the evil. Every crime, it is true, might with 
 fitness and propriety be imputed to the assassin of his wife and mother ; 
 nor could the Prince who prostituted his person and dignity on the 
 theatre be deemed incapable of the most extravagant folly : it was 
 therefore gravely asserted, and firmly believed, that Nero, enjoying 
 the calamity which he had occasioned, amused himself with singing
 
 1 66 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 to his lyre the destruction of ancient Troy. To divert a suspicion 
 which the power of despotism was unable to suppress, the Emperor 
 resolved to substitute, in his own place, some fictitious criminals.* 
 We quote from Tacitus, where the name of " Christian " first occurs 
 in his pages, and the reader will be astonished to find that the noto- 
 rious Nero and the followers of Christ stand accused of the same 
 crime. It is plain that the historian, though prejudiced against the 
 Christians, did not in this instance believe them to be guilty ; and 
 their innocence of this atrocious act seems to have been generally 
 allowed ; but still the punishments which they suffered are not stated 
 to have been unpopular ; and their inhuman treatment might seem 
 to have furnished amusement to the citizens of Rome. To " sup- 
 press the reports that were abroad, he turned the accusation against 
 others, and inflicted the most exquisite tortures upon those people 
 who were held in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly 
 known by the name of ' Christians.' They derived this title from 
 Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death as a criminal 
 under the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, 
 though checked for a while, broke out again, and spread, not only 
 over Judea, the source of this evil, but reached this city also, whither 
 flow, from all quarters, all things vile and shameful, and where they 
 find shelter and encouragement. At first those only were appre- 
 hended who confessed themselves of that sect ; afterwards a vast mul- 
 titude was discovered by them, all of whom were condemned, not so 
 much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to man- 
 kind. Their executions were so contrived as to expose them to deri- 
 sion and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild 
 beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs. Some were nailed upon crosses ; 
 and others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were 
 set up as lights in the night-time, and then burned to death. f Nero 
 employed his own garden as the theatre for this dreadful spectacle ; 
 where he also exhibited the diversions of the circus, sometimes stand- 
 ing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer, at 
 others, driving a chariot himself; till at length these men, though 
 really criminal, and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be 
 
 * Gibbon's History of the Decline, &c., vol. ii., p. 405. Milman's edit. 
 
 t This last refinement of wanton cruelty was perpetrated by enclosing the miserable 
 victim, kept upright by a stake under his chin, in a vest smeared with combustible sub- 
 stances, and setting fire to it. Juvenal is thought to glance at Nero's fiend-like play 
 in the well-known lines (Sat. i. v. 155) : 
 
 " Pone Tigellinum : taede lucebis in ilia, 
 Qua stantes ardent, qui fixo guttitre fumaut ; " 
 
 which are thus translated by Gifford, 
 
 " Bnt glance at Tigellinus, and you shine, 
 Chain'd to a stake, in pitchy robes, and light, 
 Lugubrious torch, the deepening shades of night." 
 
 In a note he adds, " The dreadful conflagration which laid waste great part of Rome 
 in the reign of Nero, was found to have broken out in the house of Tigellinus. As his 
 intimacy with the Emperor was no secret, it strengthened the general belief that the 
 city was burned by design. Nothing seems to have enraged Nero so much as this dis- 
 covery ; and to avert the odium from his favourite, he basely taxed the Christians with 
 gett'ng fire to his houte." (Rev. H. Soanies, M. A.)
 
 PERSECUTIONS UNDER NERO. 107 
 
 commiserated, as people who were destroyed, not out of regard to 
 the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man."* 
 
 " Such was the beginning," says Dr. David Welsh, " of the persecu- 
 tion from heathen rulers, to which Christianity was, during a length- 
 ened period, to be subjected, being destined, like its divine Founder, 
 to achieve its triumphs through a baptism of blood. The scene was 
 in a great measure new in the history of the world. Different forms 
 of worship had hitherto scarcely come into collision. Toleration was 
 practically extended by the Romans towards almost every religion. 
 Christianity itself had hitherto received little molestation from the 
 Heathen. Its doctrines had been preached without hinderance in 
 Rome itself; (Acts xxviii. 31;) they had even entered the palace 
 of Caesar, (Phil. iv. 22,) and were advancing in peaceful progress, 
 when in a moment the volcano burst forth. This fearful collision 
 between Christianity and Heathenism, which had thus its commence- 
 ment, had been clearly foreseen by the great Author of our religion, 
 who had indicated the true cause of the violent assaults that were 
 to be made upon his followers, in the peculiar nature of his doctrine, 
 which brought forth into malignant operation elements which for 
 ages had lain in a great measure concealed in the heathen world. f 
 The universal toleration of polytheism has afforded matter for pane- 
 gyric with sceptical writers ; | and Christianity has been represented 
 as chargeable, to a certain extent, with the cruelty of which it was 
 so long the victim. But there can be no greater error than to sup- 
 pose that there is no persecuting spirit where there is no outward 
 persecution. It has often happened that the excess of intolerance 
 has prevented the exhibition of conduct that might call forth the per- 
 secuting act. And from various causes, lengthened periods may 
 elapse where nothing appears to provoke the bigotry which has never 
 been asleep, though it may lurk under the guise of indifference or 
 irreligion. The principles which prevailed among the idolatrous 
 countries of antiquity respecting the worship that should be rendered 
 by each state to its own gods as legally recognised, and which pre- 
 vented the homage rendered to different deities from generating ani- 
 mosities, or kindling the flames of war between nations, were far 
 from being connected with a tolerating spirit. The greatest philoso- 
 
 Tacit. Annal., lib. xv., sect, xliv., torn, ii., p. 285. Grierson, edit. Dab. 1730. 
 The persecution by Nero is alluded to by other heathen writers ; Martial, lib. x., epigr. 
 25, and by Suetonius, in his Life of Nero, cap. xvi. It is supposed to have commenced 
 in the middle of November, A.n. 64, and to have terminated at the death of the Em- 
 peror, who is wen known to have been his own executioner, A.n. 68. For about four 
 years, therefore, the Christians suffered every species of cruelty at his hands. 
 
 t Even the aged Simeon foretold that the victories of the Messiah were not to be 
 won without a struggle that was to display the worst passions of our nature. In this, 
 however, he referred chiefly to the opposition to be made by the Jews. (Luke ii. 34, 35.) 
 But the cause of the opposition was the same with the Jews and the Gentiles ; and it 
 in foreshown with regard to both by our Saviour in such passages as the following, Matt, 
 v. 10, 11 ; x. 34 ; Luke xii. 51 53; the essential principle being expressly laid 
 down in John iii. 20. 
 
 J See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xvi. Hume gives the preference to poly- 
 theism over Theism, a more tolerating in its nature. Vol. ii., p. 436, et seq. See also 
 Van Bynkershoek De Cnltu Rcliyionis peregrines apud Veleres Romanos, and Mon- 
 tesquieu on the Hcligious Policy of the Romans.
 
 168 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 phers of heathen antiquity were altogether unacquainted with the 
 rights of conscience ; the laws of heathen nations were generally 
 intolerant in the highest degree, requiring that the national rites 
 should be observed, and that no new worship should be introduced 
 without the sanction of the state ; * and profane history presents 
 many illustrations of the jealousy with which the people viewed any 
 interference with their religious ceremonies. Accordingly, we find in 
 Rome a scrupulous adherence, among all classes, to every figment 
 of their ritual. On the part of the great proportion of the people, there 
 was a superstitious belief in the efficacy of the services which were 
 thus rendered. Even those who looked upon religion as merely an 
 engine of state, believing all forms of worship to be in themselves 
 equally indifferent, were zealous to maintain the existing form of 
 superstition, from the influence it exerted on the public mind. And 
 experience has shown that the most intolerant of all classes of indi- 
 viduals are those who, sceptical themselves, support religion on 
 grounds of expediency, judging it reasonable that the restraint which 
 they impose upon their own convictions should be exercised, in like 
 manner, by others. In these circumstances it is obvious, that the 
 boasted toleration of heathen antiquity arose merely from the absence 
 of any attack upon the errors which prevailed, and that the religious 
 peace would terminate with the first earnest attempt to introduce 
 another system." 
 
 Hence we discover the fertile cause of the persecutions of Heathen- 
 ism, " Such an attempt was, for the first time, systematically made by 
 the followers of Jesus. They openly proclaimed that < they were not 
 gods which were made with hands ; ' they refused to participate in 
 the established worship ; they called upon all men everywhere to 
 repent, and to turn from dumb idols to the service of the living God. 
 By such proceedings, they at once rendered themselves obnoxious to 
 the existing laws respecting religion ; refusing to conform to the 
 established worship, and endeavouring to introduce a new religion 
 without the sanction of the state. For a time, however, they escaped 
 
 * Cicero De Legibus, cap. viii., sect. 8, gives us the following extract from the most 
 ancient laws of Rome : " Let no one have any separate worship, nor hold any new 
 gods ; neither to strange gods, unless they have heen publicly adopted, let any private 
 worship he offered : men should attend the temples erected by their ancestors." From 
 Livy (book iv., cap. 30) we learn that, about four hundred and thirty years before Christ, 
 orders were given to the ./Ediles to see " that none except Roman gods were worshipped, 
 nor in any other than the established forms." Somewhat more than two hundred years 
 after this edict, to crush certain external rites which were becoming common in the city, 
 it was decreed, " that whoever possesses books of oracle, or prayer, or any written act of 
 sacrifice, deliver all such books and writings to the Praetor, before the Kalends of April ; and 
 that no one sacrifice on public or sacred ground after new or foreign rites." It may seem 
 needless to produce separate instances, when, from the same historian, (book xxxix., 
 cap. 16,) we learn that it had been customary, in all the early stages of the republic, to 
 empower the Magistrates " to prevent all foreign worship ; to expel its ministers from 
 the forum, the circus, and the city ; to search for and bum the religious books (vaticinos 
 libros,) and to abolish every form of worship except the national and established form." 
 That the same principle which had been consecrated by the practice of seven hundred years 
 was not discontinued by the Emperors, is clearly attested by the historian, Dio Cassitis. 
 It appears that Mecaenas, in the most earnest terms, exhorted Augustus " to hate and 
 punish " all foreign religions, and to compel all men to conform to the national worship ; 
 and we are assured that the scheme of government thus proposed was pursued by 
 Augustus, and adopted by his successors.
 
 PERSECUTIONS UNDER NEUO. 169 
 
 the notice of the Magistrates. Their numbers -were too small to 
 excite alarm, or they were considered merely as a sect of the Jews, 
 who enjoyed the protection of the state in the exercise of their reli- 
 gious worship. But as their cause gained ground, suspicion and 
 enmity, on the part of their heathen neighbours, began to be engen- 
 dered. The pride of many took offence at the attack upon the 
 ancient faith ; the superstitious fears of others were awakened ; many 
 became alive to the dangers that threatened their personal interests, 
 and sources of worldly gain ; and the hatred of not a few was 
 inflamed by the reproach which the virtues of their Christian neigh- 
 bours brought upon their profligacy. In such circumstances, a ready 
 credit was given to every calumny that could be circulated to the dis- 
 advantage of the Christians. Reports of this description were propa- 
 gated, in the first instance, by the Jews, who endeavoured to stir up 
 the minds of their brethren by sending emissaries for the very pur- 
 pose of carrying an evil report of the Nazarenes, or to prejudice the 
 Heathen against them, by representing them as men of a seditious 
 and turbulent spirit, who taught doctrines dangerous to the security 
 of civil government. St. Paul experienced the effects of this spirit 
 almost from the commencement of his apostolic labours ; (Acts xiv. 
 2;) the evil gradually increased, (Acts xvii. 1 13,) and when he 
 came to Rome, he was informed by the Jews of that city, that the 
 " sect was everywhere spoken against." (Acts xxviii. 22.) At a sub- 
 sequent period, we learn, from the early Christian writers, that 
 efforts were systematically made, by employing agents throughout all 
 the provinces of the Roman empire to inflame men's minds against 
 the new faith. As the numbers of the Christians increased, those 
 who were interested in the support of the heathen superstitions 
 began to take the alarm, (Acts xix. 24 41,) and endeavoured, by 
 every means in their power, to lessen the credit of the Christians, 
 and to render them obnoxious to the people and Magistrates. They 
 represented them as guilty of detestable crimes, as dangerous mem- 
 bers of society ; and in times of public distress and danger, the evils 
 endured were ascribed to the anger of the gods for the contempt 
 manifested towards them by the new impiety.* 
 
 How far the persecution under Nero extended, is not agreed among 
 the learned. For while the greater number suppose it to have spread 
 over the whole Roman empire, there are not wanting others who 
 confine it to the limits of the capital. The former opinion, which is 
 the ancient one, appearing by far the better supported, we have no 
 hesitation in agreeing with such as think that public laws were 
 enacted against the whole body of Christians, and sent, moreover, 
 into the provinces. To this opinion we are led, says Mosheim, 
 among other reasons, by the authority of Tertullian, who clearly 
 intimates that Nero and Domitian enacted laws against the Chris- 
 tians which Trajan so much mitigated as to render them inoperative. 
 The noted Spanish or Portuguese inscription, in which Nero is coro- 
 
 Elements of Church History. Comprising the external History of the Church 
 daring the first three Centuries. By David Welsh, D.D., &c. Vol. i., p. 226, et teq. 
 Edinburgh. 1844. 
 
 VOL. I. z
 
 170 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 mended for having purged the provinces of the new superstition, 
 being suspected by the Spaniards themselves, is rejected.* But who 
 can suppose that a sect which the Emperor charged with so great an 
 enormity was tolerated by him patiently out of Rome ? The public 
 might very naturally feel apprehensive that the Christians in the dif- 
 ferent provinces were actuated by similar views, and meditated the 
 same attempts, as were imputed to those at Rome ; and it was, there- 
 fore, no more than what the common safety appeared to demand, 
 that the Emperor should direct his severity generally against the 
 whole body of those who professed a religion so dangerous and preg- 
 nant with destruction. Tertullian, who wrote his Apology about the end 
 of the second century, and before the Emperor Severus had enacted any 
 new laws against the Christians, says, the Roman Magistrates were accus- 
 tomed to reply to any who might speak in their defence, that nothing 
 was left to the discretion of the Magistrates ; for, however desirous they 
 might be to spare that unfortunate people, it was impossible, since 
 the laws were peremptory to the contrary. " But since," he remarks, 
 " when the truth of our cause meeteth you at every turn, the autho- 
 rity of the laws is at last set up against it, so that it either is said, 
 that nothing must be re-considered after the laws have decided, or 
 the necessity of obedience is unwillingly preferred to truth; I will 
 first contend with you about the laws, as with the guardians of the 
 laws."f This feeble and futile pretence Tertullian attacks with great 
 force, and exposes its weakness and fallacy by various arguments, 
 of which the following is not the least forcible. Those laws to which 
 you refer, said the orator, as not permitting Christians to exist, were 
 enacted by Princes whose cruelty, impiety, and mad fury cannot but 
 be regarded with detestation. " To treat somewhat of the origin 
 of the kind of laws, there was an ancient decree, that no god should 
 be consecrated by the Emperor, unless approved by the Senate. Wit- 
 ness Marcus JSmilius in the case of his own god, Alburnus. This also 
 niaketh for our cause, that with you duty is measured according to the 
 judgment of man. A god, unless he please man, shall not be a god. 
 Man will now be obliged to be propitious to a god. Tiberius, there- 
 fore, in whose time the name of Christ entered into the world, laid 
 before the Senate, with his own vote to begin with, things announced 
 to him from Palestine in Syria, which had there manifested the truth 
 
 * This "inscription" may be seen in J. Gruterus, Inscriptionum torn, i., p. 138, 
 n. 9. It is thia : " Neroni, ob provinciam latronibus et bis qui novani generi humane 
 superstitionem inculcabant, purgatam." But the best Spanish writers do not venture 
 to defend the authority of this inscription ; because it has not been seen by any one ; 
 and Cyriac of Ancona, who first produced it, is acknowledged by all to be un-vvorthy 
 of credit. I will subjoin the decision of that excellent and judicious historian of Spain, 
 Jo. de Ferreras, Histoire General d'Espayne, torn, i., p. 192. " I cannot refrain from 
 remarking that Cyriac of Ancona was lie first that published the inscription, and that 
 from him all others had derived it. But as the credibility of this writer is suspected in 
 the judgments of all the learned, and as not a vestige, nor any recollection, of this 
 inscription remains, in the places where it is said to have been found, and no one knows 
 now where to find it ; every one may form such opinion of it as he pleases." 
 
 t " Sed quoniam cum ad omnia occurrit veritas nostra, postremo legum, obstruitur 
 auctoritas adversns earn, ut aut nihil dicatur retractandsm esse post leges, aut ingra- 
 tis necessitas obsequii praeferatur veritati : de legibus prius concurram vobiscum ut cum 
 tutoribus legiim." Tertull. Apol., cap. iv.
 
 MATTHEW. 171 
 
 of the divinity of that Person. The Senate, because they had not 
 themselves approved it, rejected it. Csesar held by his sentence, 
 threatening peril to the accusers of the Christians. Consult your 
 annals : there you will find that Nero was the first to wreak the fury 
 of the sword of the Ceesars upon this sect, now springing up, espe- 
 cially at Rome. But in such a first founder of our condemnation we 
 glory. For whoever knoweth him, can understand that nothing save 
 some great good was condemned by Nero. Domitian, too, who was 
 somewhat of a Nero in cruelty, had tried it, but, forasmuch as he 
 was also a human being, he speedily stopped the undertaking, even 
 restoring those whom he had banished. Such have ever been our 
 persecutors ; unjust, impious, infamous, whom even yourselves have 
 been wont to condemn, by whom, whosoever were condemned, ye 
 have been wont to restore. But out of so many Princes, thencefor- 
 ward, to him of the present day, who had any savour of religion and 
 humanity, show us any destroyer of the Christians. But we on the 
 other hand have one to show who protected them, if the letters of that 
 most august Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, be inquired of, wherein he tes- 
 tifieth of that drought in Germany removed by the shower obtained by 
 the prayers of the Christians who chanced to serve in his army. As he 
 did not openly take off the penalty from the men of that sect, so, in 
 another way, he openly made away with it by adding a sentence, and 
 that a more horrid one, against the accusers also. What sort of laws, 
 then, be those which only the impious, the unjust, the infamous, the 
 cruel, the foolish, the insane, execute against us ? which Trajan, in 
 part, foiled by forbidding that the Christians should be inquired 
 after; which no Adrian, though a clear searcher into all things 
 curious, no Vespasian, though a vanquisher of the Jews, no Pius, 
 no Verus, hath pressed against us ? Surely the worst of men, it 
 might be thought, ought to be more readily rooted out by the best, 
 as being their antagonists, than by their own fellows."* Now, if this 
 statement of Tertullian be deserving of credit, (and there is certainly 
 no reason whatever to suspect its accuracy,) there can be no doubt 
 that Nero, as well as Domitian, promulgated edicts against the Chris- 
 tians ; and if such edicts were enforced, not a question can remain 
 of their having been carried into eifect throughout all the provinces. t 
 
 SECT. II. MATTHEW AND MATTHIAS. 
 
 MATTHEW, called also Levi, was, though a Roman officer, a 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews : both his names declare that he was of Jew- 
 ish extraction and origin. He was born at Nazareth, a city in the 
 tribe of Zebulun, famous in history as having been the habitation 
 of Joseph and Mary, and the place where our Saviour was brought 
 up. Matthew was the son of Alphseus and Mary, sister or kinswo- 
 man to Mary the mother of our Lord. His occupation, or manner 
 of life, was that of a publican, or toll-gatherer, to the Romans, 
 
 * Tertull. Apologet., cap. v. 
 t Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. i.. p. 191. 
 
 t This office was usually held by Roman Knights, an order institnted as early as the 
 time of Romulus, and composed of men of great consideration with the Government, 
 
 Z 2
 
 172 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 which probably had been the calling of his father, his name denoting 
 a broker, or money-changer, an office of bad report among the Jews. 
 The profession of publican among the Romans, was one of power and 
 credit, and even of considerable reputation : it was not ordinarily 
 conferred upon any but Roman Knights. T. H. Sabinius, father 
 of the Emperor Vespasian, was the publican of the Asiatic provinces, 
 an office which he discharged so much to the satisfaction of the peo- 
 ple, that they erected statues to him, with the following inscription : 
 " To him that has well managed the publican's office." These 
 persons, being sent into the provinces to gather the tribute, were 
 accustomed to employ natives under them, as best skilled in the 
 affairs and customs of their own country. Two circumstances tran- 
 spired which rendered the office odious to the Jews. The men 
 that usually transacted the business were great exactors ; for, having 
 themselves farmed the customs of the Romans, various methods of 
 extortion were used to raise the rent which they had to pay, and also 
 to secure some advantage to themselves. An instance we have in 
 point, in the case of Zaccheus, one of the chief of these farmers, 
 who, after his conversion, offered fourfold restitution to any man 
 from whom he had fraudulently taken anything. On this account 
 they became infamous even to the Gentiles, who, without hesitation, 
 spoke of them as robbers and thieves, and as more voracious and 
 destructive than wild beasts in the forest ; and, secondly, the govern- 
 ment tax was not only grievous to the Jews with regard to the 
 expense which this impost created, but an insult to the liberty and 
 freedom of the country : they considered themselves a free-born 
 nation, and that they had been invested with this privilege by God 
 himself, and consequently they beheld this constantly-recurring 
 instance of their bondage as not to be endured ; hence, therefore, 
 their numerous unsuccessful rebellions against the Roman power. 
 Add to these, also, that the publicans were not only obliged to have 
 frequent dealing and association with the Gentiles, but, being Jews, 
 they rigorously exacted these dues from their brethren, and thus 
 appeared to conspire with the Romans in entailing perpetual slavery 
 upon the Israel of God. 
 
 The name and profession of a publican, therefore, were extremely 
 odious among the Jews, who submitted with such reluctance to the 
 taxes levied by their conquerors. The Galilseans, or Herodians, the 
 disciples of Judas the Gaulonite, were the most turbulent and rebel- 
 
 the principal men of dignity in their several countries, who occupied a kind of middle 
 rank between the Senators and the people. (Jos. Antiq., lib. xii., cap. 4.) Although 
 these officers were, according to Cicero, the ornament of the city, and the strength of 
 the commonwealth, they did not attain to high situations, nor enter the Senate, so long 
 as they continued in the offices of Knights. They were thus more capable of devoting 
 their attention to the collection of the public revenue. The publicans were distributed 
 into three classes ; the farmers of the revenue, their partners, and their securities, 
 corresponding to the Mancipes, Socii, and Prsedes. They were all under the Quses- 
 tores Miacrii, who presided over the finances at Rome. Strictly speaking, there were 
 only two sorts of publicans, the Mancipes and the Socii. The former, who were gene- 
 rally of the equestrian order, and much superior to the latter in rank and character, are 
 mentioned by Cicero with great honour and respect ; (Orat. pro Plancio. 9 ;) but the 
 common publicans, the collectors or receivers of the tribute, as many of the Socii were, 
 were covered, both by Heathens and Jews, with opprobrium and contempt. (Kitto.)
 
 MATTHEW. 1/3 
 
 lious. (Acts v. 37.) They thought it unlawful to pay tribute, and 
 founded their refusal to do so on their being the people of the Lord, 
 because a true Israelite was not permitted to acknowledge any other 
 Sovereign than God. The publicans were hated as the instruments 
 by which the subjection of the Jews to the Roman Emperor was per- 
 petuated, and the payment of tribute was regarded as a virtual 
 acknowledgment of his sovereignty. According to the Rabbins, it 
 was a maxim that a religious man who became a publican was to be 
 driven out of society. They would not receive their presents at the 
 temple any more than the price of prostitution, of blood, or of any 
 thing wicked or offensive. " Let him be unto thee as an heathen 
 man and a publican." (Matt, xviii. 17.) Many publicans were in 
 Judea during the time of our Saviour. Zaccheus doubtless was one 
 of the principal, inasmuch as he is called "chief among the publi- 
 cans ; " (Luke xix. 2 ;) a phrase supposed to be equivalent to our 
 " commissioner of the customs." Matthew appears to have been an 
 inferior publican, and is described as " sitting at the receipt of cus- 
 tom." * (Luke v. 27.) Jesus was reproached by the Jews as the 
 friend of publicans and sinners, and for eating with them ; (Luke 
 vii. 34 ;) but such was his opinion of the unbelieving and self-righte- 
 ous Chief Priests and Elders who brought these accusations, that he 
 replied unto them, " The publicans and the harlots go into the king- 
 dom of God before you." (Matt. xxi. 31.) The parable of the Pha- 
 risee and the publican, who went up into the temple to pray, (Luke 
 xviii. 10,) is a beautiful illustration of the distinction between hypo- 
 crisy and true piety. When Jesus visited the house of Zaccheus, 
 who appears to have been eminently honest and upright, he was 
 assured by him that he was ready to give one half of his goods to 
 the poor; and if he had taken anything from any man by false 
 accusation, to " restore him four-fold." (Luke xix. 8.) This was in 
 reference to the Roman law, which required that, when any farmer 
 was convicted of extortion, he should return four times the value of 
 what he had fraudulently obtained. There is no reason to suppose 
 that either Zaccheus or Matthew had been guilty of unjust practices, 
 or that there was any exception to their characters beyond that 
 of being engaged in an odious employment. f Matthew either held 
 his appointment at the port of Capernaum, or he collected the cus- 
 toms on the high road to Damascus, which went through what is 
 now called Khan Minyeh, which place, as Robinson has shown, is 
 the ancient Capernaum. J However, from this class of men, our 
 Lord chose an Apostle. 
 
 Jesus, having lately cured a paralytic, afterwards walked out 
 of Capernaum on the banks of the lake of Gennesaret, and saw 
 Matthew at the receipt of custom, whom he called to follow him. 
 The Evangelist is represented as being a wise and prudent man, 
 
 * The Tf\.u>viov, or " custom-honse," or " collectors' booth ; " for such buildings were 
 erected at the foot of bridges, the mouth of rivers, in towns, and at the landing-places 
 along the sea-shore, where the publicans received the imposts on passengers and goods. 
 
 t Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, by John Kitto, D.D., in loco. 
 
 t Robinson's Researches in Palestine, vol. iii., pp. 288295.
 
 174 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 and understood well what his new vocation implied ; hut he 
 overlooked all the considerations of ease and wealth, and forsook 
 every worldly interest to become our Lord's disciple. Being an 
 inhabitant of Capernaum, he had an opportunity of becoming 
 acquainted with our Sariour's person and doctrine. Christ had 
 resided in that city for some time, where he had also preached 
 and worked miracles, so that Matthew was in some degree, at least, 
 prepared to receive the impression which the call of Christ had made. 
 The great secret of his conversion is well and properly disclosed by 
 the venerable Bede, who remarks, that " He who called him out- 
 wardly by his word, at the same time moved him inwardly by his 
 grace ; " and to show that he was not dissatisfied with the change, 
 he entertained our Lord and his disciples in his house, whither he 
 invited his friends, especially those of his own profession, hoping 
 that they might be induced by our Lord's conversation to join his 
 society. The carping and cynical Pharisees, whose eyes were con- 
 stantly evil, suggested that it was unfitting and improper for Christ 
 thus familiarly to associate with the worst of men, such as publicans 
 and sinners, who were infamous even to a proverb. Our Saviour 
 promptly replied, that they were the sick that needed the Physician, 
 and not the healthy and robust ; that his company was most suit- 
 able where the necessity of the soul did most require it ; that the 
 Most High himself preferred acts of mercy and charity, especially 
 those which referred to the recovery of the lost sinner, infinitely 
 before all ritual observances, and the rules of etiquette between man 
 and man ; and that the main design of his coming into the world 
 was, not to bring the righteous, or those who proudly imagined 
 themselves to be so, and, with erroneous views of their own adher- 
 ence to the letter of the law, " despised others," but sinners, modest, 
 humble, self-convinced offenders, to repentance. The vocation of 
 Matthew took place during the second year of the active ministry 
 of our Lord, who, soon after forming the company of his Apostles, 
 adopted Matthew into that holy sodality. 
 
 But little further is recorded of this Apostle, during our Lord's 
 continuance upon earth, though he was doubtless subservient to his 
 will, and equalled the rest of his brethren in holiness and true piety, 
 with whom we find him assembled to praise God, immediately after 
 the ascension, and that he continued at Jerusalem, until the descent 
 of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. When the period arrived 
 that the command of the Saviour, " Go ye therefore, and teach all 
 nations," (Matt, xxviii. 19,) was to be carried into execution, it is 
 unknown, and destitute of any degree of certainty, whither, ulti- 
 mately, he went. For the first eight years, subsequent to that 
 memorable event, he appears to have preached up and down Judea : 
 afterwards but little dependence is to be placed in the accounts 
 recorded of the travels which Matthew undertook for the advance- 
 ment of the Christian faith ; so irrecoverably is truth lost in a crowd 
 of legendary stories. Ethiopia has generally been assigned as the 
 province of his apostolical ministry. Socrates says,* " Matthew was 
 * Socrates, Hist. Eccles., lib. i., cap. 19 ; Rufinus, lib. x., cap. 9.
 
 MATTHEW. 1/5 
 
 allotted Ethiopia : " it is only from writers of the fourth and fifth 
 centuries that this account is taken, and then it is douhtful whether 
 they intended the country of that name in Africa or Asia. Euse- 
 hius * had heard of his travelling beyond Judea ; but he does not name 
 any particular country, and mentions that it was just before his set- 
 ting out on this journey, that he undertook to write his Gospel for the 
 benefit of his countrymen. Simeon Metaphrastes, as contained in 
 Surius, De Probatis Sanctorum,f mentions that he first went to Par- 
 thia, and having successfully planted the Gospel in those parts, he 
 travelled from thence into Ethiopia. Here by preaching and miracles 
 he greatly triumphed over error and idolatry ; convinced and con- 
 verted multitudes ; ordained spiritual guides and Pastors to confirm 
 and build them up in the faith, and then finished his own course. 
 As for what is related by Nicephorus, of Matthew going into the 
 country of the cannibals, constituting Plato, one of his followers, 
 Bishop of Myrmena ; of Christ appearing to him in the form of a 
 beautiful youth, and giving him a wand, which he pitching into the 
 ground, immediately grew up into a tree ; of his strange conversion 
 of the Prince of that country, of his numerous miracles, &c., they are 
 justly to be reckoned among those fabulous reports that have no 
 ground either of truth or probability to support them.J 
 
 With regard to the circumstances attending the death of Matthew, 
 the accounts are varied and contradictory. By many it is supposed 
 that he suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia ; but by what kind of death 
 is altogether uncertain. Dorotheas, in his Synopsis, represents him 
 as being honourably buried at Hierapolis, one of the first places 
 in which he preached the Gospel. The common opinion is, that in 
 the city of Nadabar, in Ethiopia, where he had lived a life of great 
 austerity and abstinence, and had signalized his zeal in propagating 
 the Gospel, he was slain with a halbert. The date of his death can- 
 not be satisfactorily obtained. His festival in the Latin Church is 
 observed on the 21st day of September. Lardner, however, is adverse 
 to this statement. He informs us, that " Heracleon, a learned Valen- 
 tinian, in the second century, as cited by Clement of Alexandria, 
 reckons Matthew among those Apostles who did not die by martyr- 
 dom ; nor does Clement contradict him. It is also observable, that 
 Chrysostom has a commendation of Matthew, consisting of divers 
 articles ; his humility, mercifulness or liberality, piety, general 
 benevolence, writing a Gospel ; finally, fortitude, inasmuch as ' he 
 came from the presence of the Council rejoicing ; ' referring, I sup- 
 pose, to Acts v. 4 1 ; but he says nothing of his martyrdom : which 
 may induce us to think, that there was not any tradition about it 
 among Christians at that time ; or, that it was not much regarded."^ 
 
 We cannot conclude this statement, without observing that Mat- 
 thew presents us with a great instance of the power of religion. 
 If we reflect upon his circumstances while a stranger to Christ, the 
 
 * Ensebius, Hist. Ecclt-s., lib. iii., cap. 24. 
 
 t Surius I)c Probatis Sanctorum, <fec., Sept. 2J, torn, v., p. 32 1. Fol. Colon., 157 I. 
 
 1 Cave's Lives of the Apostles, in lm-/i. 
 
 Gardner's Works, vol. v., pp. 297, 298. 8vo. edit. London, 1831.
 
 176 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 world to him presented great advantages. He was the proprietor 
 of a plentiful estate, he was engaged in a rich and lucrative profes- 
 sion, and supported by the power and favour of the Romans ; and 
 yet, notwithstanding all these, no sooner did Christ call than all 
 were renounced. Had our Saviour been a mighty Prince, it had 
 been no wonder that he should run over to his service ; but when he 
 appeared under all the circumstances of meanness and disgrace, when 
 he seemed to promise his followers nothing but misery and suffering 
 in this life, and to propound no other rewards but the invisible 
 encouragements of another world, his change in this case was the 
 more strange and admirable. " Indeed, so admirable," says Cave, 
 " that Porphyry * and Julian, two subtle and acute adversaries 
 of the Christian religion, hence took occasion to charge him with 
 falsehood or folly ; either that he (Matthew) gave not a true account 
 of the thing, or that it was very weakly done of him, so hastily to 
 follow any one that called him. But the holy Jesus was no common 
 person : in all his commands there was somewhat more than ordinary. 
 Indeed, Jerome conceives that, besides the divinity that manifested 
 itself in his miracles, there was a divine brightness, and a kind of 
 majesty, in our Saviour's looks, that at first sight was attractive 
 enough to draw persons after him. However, his miraculous powers, 
 that reflected a lustre from every quarter, and the efficacy of his doc- 
 trine, accompanied by the Spirit and grace of God, prepared the way 
 for the summons which was sent to Matthew, and enabled him to 
 
 " About a hundred years after Celsus, flourished Porphyry," (whom Socrates 
 speaks of as having been a Christian, Hist. Eccles., lib. iii., cap. 23, but apparently 
 without grounds,) " the bitterest, and perhaps the most formidable, of all the early ene- 
 mies of Christianity. The same remarks, however, may be extended to his works as 
 are justly applied to those of Celsus ; namely, that they only contain speculative reason- 
 ings, and bitter raillery, instead of an examination of the facts which support the 
 Gospel, or an attempt to invalidate their evidence. Porphyry was a Syrian by 
 birth : his name was Melek, which Longinus changed. He was a man of great 
 learning and eloquence. Neander finely characterizes him as having recast an oriental 
 spirit in a Grecian mould. Among his voluminous works, there were fifteen books 
 against the Christians, of which nothing now remain but fragments. Answers were 
 written to this work soon after it appeared, by Eusebius of Caesarea, Methodius, and, at 
 a later period, by Apollonarius. But these replies have also perished. Modern infidels 
 have complained that the Christians suppressed what they could not answer, and an 
 edict of Constantine, commanding the books of Porphyry to be burnt, has been repre- 
 sented as illustrative of the means which the Christians were ready to employ in sup- 
 port of their cause. Such an edict is inserted in the Histories of Socrates and Sozomen ; 
 but there is not wanting reason to suppose that they were imposed upon by a forgery : 
 the heatheu enemies of Constantine, Julian, Zosimus, and others, have not charged him 
 with this instance of false zeal, and there is no allusion to the subject in any contemporary 
 Christian writer. But though there had been such an edict, we cannot ascribe to it the 
 loss of the books by Porphyry, copies of which were in existence after the time of Con- 
 stantine. The truth seems to be, that Porphyry's attack upon Christianity, and the 
 answers to it, fell gradually into oblivion. From the fragments which still remain of 
 the works of this writer, it appears that he argued against the truth of the Gospel 
 history, from the contradictions which it seemed to involve, and from the improbable 
 nature of much that is recorded ; that he endeavoured to show that our Saviour was 
 often actuated by weakness and caprice ; and that, from the differences between Peter 
 and Paul, he sought to show that they could not be men commissioned to teach a reve- 
 lation from heaven ; he also brought forward many objections against the Old-Testament 
 Scriptures, and he devoted a whole book to show that from the plainness of many of the 
 prophecies of Daniel, as to the Kings of Syria and Egypt, they were written after the 
 events." (Welsh's Elements of Church History, vol. i., pp. 333 335.)
 
 MATTHIAS. 177 
 
 overcome all the opposition that stood in the way." 111 We conclude, 
 therefore, that the conduct of Matthew was highly exemplary. It was 
 prompt : it admitted of no delay : to hesitate for one moment between 
 Christ, and sin or the world, is to resist the divine call, and to for- 
 feit the proffered grace. It was courageous : it surmounted all the 
 opposition which an evil heart, and the allurements of time, could 
 throw in the way. It was constant and lasting : Matthew did not 
 go back, he did not even look back, but followed his Master with 
 increasing fervour and devotion, and persevered to the end. 
 
 MATTHIAS was not an Apostle of the first election made by our 
 Lord : consequently a particular and succinct account of him is not 
 to be expected on the sacred page. He appears to have been one 
 cf Christ's disciples ; and Clement of Alexandria supposes him, also, 
 to have been one of the seventy whom our Saviour " sent into every 
 city and place whither he himself would come." Be that as it may, 
 he had attended upon our Lord during the whole course of his ministry 
 on earth ; (Acts i. 21, 22 ;) and, after his death, was elected into the 
 apostleship. The circumstances attending this event were as follow : 
 Judas, who was called Iscariot, was one of the twelve called by 
 the Lord to be one of his intimate disciples, and empowered with the 
 rest to preach and to work miracles. " He was numbered with us, 
 and had obtained part of this ministry." (Acts i. 1 7.) Judas, not- 
 withstanding, was vile and corrupt : lie preached Christ, doubtless, 
 with zeal and fervour, and perhaps with as much success, as the rest 
 of the Apostles ; yet he was a bad man, governed by sordid and mean 
 principles, and easily sacrificed all the interests of religion and pro- 
 priety, to covetousness and the love of gain. His avaricious temper 
 led him to a most fatal end. Neither the honour of the position he 
 held, the admitting him into an open and free fellowship with the 
 Saviour, nor taking him to be one of his peculiar domestics and 
 attendants, could divert Judas from his fell and sanguinary purpose 
 of betraying his Master into the hands of those who he was aware would 
 treat him with cruelty and insult. He knew how desirous the Chief 
 Priests and Elders of the Jewish nation were to obtain possession 
 of the Redeemer, especially at the time of the passover, that he 
 might suffer in greater notoriety and disgrace. Judas engages for 
 a paltry sum to betray the Lamb of God into the fangs of those 
 wolves and lions : in a word, he heads the party, conducts the officers, 
 and sees him delivered into their hands, f 
 
 How troublesome and uneasy is guilt ! It is the death of all peace 
 and serenity of mind, and fills the soul with storm and tempest. 
 The Almighty has placed in the heart of man a powerful and invisible 
 executioner. Whoever rebels against God, and despises the dictates 
 of conscience, bids farewell to tranquillity and repose, and lays him- 
 self open to the resentment of a tormenting mind. By secret arts 
 of wickedness the culprit may be able, for a time, to drown and stifle 
 the voice of conscience ; but every affliction or petty accident will be 
 
 * Cave's Lives of the Apostle*, p 390. 8vo. edit. Oxford, 1840. 
 t Ibid., p. 434. 
 VOL. I. 2 A
 
 178 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 apt to awaken it into horror, and to cause him to realize terror 
 coming upon him like an armed man. Human wrath may be 
 endured ; but the irruptions of conscience are irresistible. A sad 
 instance of this we have in Judas. Overwhelmed with vain regrets, 
 he took the now hateful, though desired, price of his villany, and, 
 seeking the presence of his purchasers, held out to them the money, 
 with the useless confession of the guilt, which was too accordant with 
 their schemes and hopes, for them to think of redeeming him from its 
 consequences. The words of his confession were, " I have sinned, in 
 that I have betrayed innocent blood." This last protestation was received 
 by the proud Priests with as much regard as might have been expected 
 from exulting tyranny, when in the enjoyment of the grand object 
 of its efforts. With a cold sneer, they replied, " What is that to us ? 
 See thou to that!" Maddened with the immovable and remorseless 
 determination of the haughty condemners of the Just One, he flung 
 down the price of his ignominy and \roe upon the floor of the tem- 
 ple, and rushed out of their presence, to seal his crimes and misery 
 by the act that put him for ever beyond the power of redemption. 
 Seeking a place removed from the observation of men, he hurried out 
 of the city, and, contriving the fatal means of death for himself before 
 the bloody doom of him whom he betrayed had been fulfilled, the 
 wretched man saved his eyes the renewed horrors of the sight of the 
 crucifixion, by closing them in the sleep which earthly sights cannot 
 disturb. But even in the mode of his death, new circumstances of 
 horror occurred. Swinging himself into the air,* by falling from a 
 height, as the cord tightened around his neck, checking his descent ; 
 the weight of his body produced the rupture of the abdomen, and his 
 bowels bursting through, made him, as he swung, stiffening and 
 convulsed in the agonies of this doubly hideous death, a disgusting 
 and appalling spectacle, a monument of the vengeance of God on the 
 traitor, and a shocking witness of his own remorse and condemnation.f 
 A vacancy thus occurred in the apostolic company. The first 
 object of the disciples, therefore, on their return from Mount Olivet, 
 where our Lord took his departure from them, was to fill up the 
 hiatus with a proper person. Peter acquainted them that Judas, 
 according to the prophetic prediction, had fallen from the apostolate, 
 and that it was necessary that another should be substituted ; one 
 that had been a companion and disciple of the holy Jesus, and conse- 
 quently able to testify respecting his life, death, and resurrection. 
 (Acts i. 21, 22.) Two were nominated in order to the choice, 
 Joseph, % called Barsabas, and Matthias, both equally qualified and 
 
 * A very striking difference is noticed between the account given by Matthew 
 of the death of Judas, and that given by Luke in the speech of Peter, Acts i. 18, 19. 
 The various modes of reconciling these difficulties are found in the ordinary commenta- 
 ries. With respect to a single expression in Acts i. 18, there is an ingenious conjecture 
 offered by Mr. Grauville Penn, in a very interesting and learned article in the Trans- 
 actions of the Royal Society of Literature, which may be properly referred to here, 
 on account of its originality and plausibility. Vol. I., part ii., pp. 51, 52. 
 
 t Lives of the Apostles of Jesus Christ. By 1). Francis Bacon. 8ro. Pp 460 461 
 New- York, 1846. 
 
 J Joseph bore the honourable sirname Justus, which was most likely given him 
 on account of his well-known probity. He was one of those who had comj.>anied v.-iih
 
 MATTHIAS. 1/9 
 
 eligible for this situation. The mode of election was by lot, a way 
 frequently used among the Jews and Gentiles, for the decision of 
 doubtful and difficult cases, and especially choosing Judges and Magis- 
 trates ; and this plan was adopted in the present instance in compli- 
 ance with an old custom, that in the election of an Apostle they 
 might not seem to depart from the practice that had been followed in 
 the political affairs of the country. Some writers have ventured to 
 assert, that the lot was not used in this case, but that some imme- 
 diate and extraordinary sign from heaven fell upon the candidate, and 
 discovered him to be the individual chosen by the Great Head of the 
 church. But this is directly contrary to the words of inspiration, 
 which declare, " they gave forth their lots ; * and the lot fell upon 
 Matthias." (Acts i. 26.) This course the Apostles rather followed, 
 because the Holy Ghost was not yet given, by whose immediate 
 dictates and inspirations they were afterwards chiefly guided. That 
 the important affair might proceed with greater regularity and suc- 
 cess, in the first place they solemnly offered supplication unto heaven, 
 that the omniscient Being that governed the universe, and perfectly 
 understood the tempers and dispositions of mankind, would guide 
 and direct the choice, and show which of the two he would appoint 
 to fill the vacant office. The lots were put into the urn, the name 
 of Matthias was dra\vn, and the apostolate fell upon him. 
 
 Shortly after, the promised powers of the Holy Spirit were con- 
 ferred upon the Apostles, to prepare and qualify them for the arduous 
 employment which lay before them. Among the rest, Matthias 
 addressed himself to his work and charge. The New Testament is 
 altogether silent with respect to his subsequent career ; for not a fact 
 is recorded concerning him. Nevertheless, the productive imagina- 
 
 tlie Apostles all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst them, beginning 
 from the baptism of John until the ascension. Tradition also accounted him one 
 of the seventy. (Euseb. Hist. Eccles., lib. i., cap. 12.) The same historian relates, 
 (lib. iii., cap. xxxix.,) on the authority of Papias, that Joseph the Just " drank 
 deadly poison, and, by the grace of God, sustained no harm." It has been maintained 
 that he is the same as Joses, surnamed Barnabas, mentioned in Acts iv. 36 ; bat 
 the manner in which the latter is characterized, seems to point to a different person. 
 (Hemrichs, on Acts i. 23. Ullmann in the Theolog. Stud., und Kritik., i. 377.) Kitto. 
 
 * Alfred Barnes says, " that some have supposed that this means, they voted ; but 
 to this interpretation there are insuperable objections. 1. The word ' lots,' K^tjpovs, is 
 not used to express votes or suffrage. 2. The expression, ' the lot fell upon,' is not 
 consistent with the notion of voting. It is commonly expressive of casting lota. 3. 
 Casting lots was common among the Jews on important and difficult occasions ; and it 
 was natural that the Apostles should resort to it in this. Thus David divided the 
 Priests by lot. (1 Chron. xxiv. 6.) The land of Canaan was divided by lot (Num. 
 xxvi. 55; Joshua xv., xvi., xvii., &c.) Jonathan, son of Saul, was detected of having 
 violated his father's command, and bringing calamity on the Israelites, by lot. 
 (1 Sam. xiv. 41, 42.) Achan was detected by lot. (Joshua vii. 16, 18.) In these 
 canes, the use of the lot was regarded as a solemn appeal to God, for his direct inter- 
 ference in case* which they could not themselves decide. Prov. xvi. 33 : ' The lot is cast 
 into the lap ; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.' The choice of an 
 Apostle was an event of the same kind, and was regarded as a solemn appeal to God 
 for his direction and guidance in a case which the Apostles could not determine. The 
 manner in which this was done is not certainly known. The common mode of casting 
 lots was, to write the names of the persons on pieces of stone, wood, &c., and put them 
 in one urn ; and the name of the office, portion, &c., on others. They were afterward* 
 placed in an urn with other pieces of stone, &c., which were blank ; and then were 
 drawn at random, together with the other pieces, and this determined the case." 
 
 2 A 2
 
 182 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 of God in that place. No further circumstances are recorded of 
 Mark in the New Testament ; but it is believed, upon the authority 
 of ancient writers, that, soon after his journey with Barnabas, he went 
 with Peter into Asia, and that he continued with him for some time : 
 perhaps till Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome. 
 
 Epiphanius, Eusebius, and Jerome assert that Mark preached the 
 Gospel in Egypt ; the two latter call him Bishop of Alexandria. He 
 did not, however, confine his preaching to that city, or to the orien- 
 tal parts of Egypt, but removed westward to Libya and the country 
 contiguous, where, though the people were both barbarous in their 
 manners and idolatrous in their worship, yet, by his preaching and 
 his miraculous deeds, he made way for the reception of the Gospel ; 
 and. left them not, says Cave, until he had not only gained them to, 
 but confirmed them in, the profession of it. Returning to Alexan- 
 dria, he preached often, and regulated the affairs of the church, pro- 
 viding suitable Governors and Pastors. But the enemy of souls 
 would not suffer him long to be at rest : it was the time of Easter, 
 when the great solemnities of the god Serapis were to be celebrated. 
 The minds of the people being excited to a passionate vindication 
 of the honour of their deity, they were led to break in upon Mark, 
 then engaged in conducting the service of the Most High, and bind- 
 ing his feet with cords, dragged him through the streets of the city, 
 and the most craggy places, to the Bucelus, a precipice near 
 the sea, and for that night thrust him into prison, where his 
 soul was by a divine vision encouraged, amid the ruins of his 
 shattered body. Early the next morning, the tragedy began again, 
 dragging him about in the same manner, till, from pain and the 
 loss of blood, he expired. Their bigotry and malice did not die 
 with Mark : Simeon Metaphrastes adds, that they burnt his body, 
 and that the Christians decently buried his ashes near to the spot 
 where he was accustomed to hold forth the words of life.* His mortal 
 remains were afterwards, as the account is related, removed with great 
 pomp from Alexandria to Venice, where Mark is adopted as the tute- 
 lar saint and guardian of the state, and where one of the richest and 
 most stately churches has been erected to his memory. He is said 
 to have suffered on the 25th day of April, which period both the 
 Eastern and Western churches have devoted to his memory. f 
 
 * Sim. Metaphrast. Martyr. S. Marc. Apud Sur. ad diem. Apr. 25. Tom. ii. 
 Colon., 1574. 
 
 t A dense mist of error rests upon all the uninspired records concerning Mark. 
 Many of the statements of Eusehius, respecting the Apostle and the church of Alex- 
 andria, can he shown to be erroneous ; but this would lead us beyond the legitimate 
 boundaries of our work : it may be sufficient, however, to advert to the accounts by 
 Kusebiua, Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap, 24 : and Jerome, Cat. Script., on the subject of 
 the bishopric of Mark in Alexandria, and his death in the eighth year of Nero, aa 
 inconsistent with what we learn from 2 Tim. iv. 11. This difficulty can only he sur- 
 mounted, by supposing that there were two of the first Preachers of the Gospel of that 
 name. (Burton's Eccles. Hist., vol. i., sect, x.) The precise time of his martrydom is 
 not determined by the ancients. Dr. Cave says, that Kirstenius, out of the Arabic 
 memoirs of his life, asserts, that it was in the last year of Claudius. Jerome places it in 
 the eighth of Nero. But extravagantly wide is the computation of Dorotheus, who sup- 
 poses that he suffered in the time of Trajan : with equal resemblance of truth, Nicepho- 
 nis affirms that he came into Egypt in the reign of Tiberius. If in so great variety
 
 JAMES THE LESS. 183 
 
 JAMES THE LESS, surnamed the "brother" of our Lord, (Gal. i. 19,) 
 was the son of Cleophas, otherwise called Alphseus, and Mary, sister 
 to the hlessed Virgin ; consequently he was cousin-german to Jesus 
 Christ. By some, doubts have been entertained, whether James the 
 Less was not the Bishop of Jerusalem : others have imagined, that 
 three persons of the name of James are presented to us in the history 
 of the Christian church ; namely, James the Elder, and James the 
 Less, both of whom were Apostles, and a third surnamed the Just, 
 distinct, as they say, from the former two, and Bishop of the metro- 
 polis of Judea. The latter idea is evidently founded on a mistake, 
 inasmuch as the Scripture mentions but two of this name ; one who 
 suffered under Herod, and the other, whom Paul calls our Lord's 
 brother, whom he designates as one of the pillars of the church, 
 presiding among the Apostles, and governing in the Synod of Jeru- 
 salem. Of the place of his birth, the sacred history makes no men- 
 tion. What were his particular way and course of life before he was 
 called to the discipleship and apostolate, we find no intimations in 
 the Gospel record, nor any distinct account of him during our 
 Saviour's life. After the resurrection, he was honoured with a parti- 
 cular appearance of our Lord, which, though silently passed over by 
 the Evangelists, is recorded by the Apostle Paul. Next to the mani- 
 festation of himself to the five hundred brethren, " He was seen of 
 James," (1 Cor. xv. 7,) which is by all understood of our Apostle. 
 Of this interview, Jerome gives the following account : he states, that 
 James had solemnly sworn, that from the time that he had drunk of 
 the cup at the institution of the Lord's supper, he would eat bread 
 no more, until he saw the Lord risen from the dead. It is, there- 
 fore, said, that "very soon after the Lord was risen, he went to 
 James, and showed himself to him. It is added, that the Lord said, 
 " Bring a table, and bread." And afterwards, " He took bread, and 
 blessed, and brake it, and then gave it to James the Just, and said 
 to him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man is risen from 
 among them that sleep."* To him, we find Paul after his conver- 
 sion making his address, (Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 9,) by whom, also, he was 
 honoured with the right hand of fellowship. To him, also, Peter 
 sent the news of his miraculous deliverance out of prison : (Acts xii. 
 17:) "Go show these things unto James, and to the brethren," that 
 is, to the whole church, and especially to James, the Pastor thereof. 
 But he was principally active in the Synod of Jerusalem, in the great 
 controversy about the Mosaic rites ; for, the case being opened by 
 Peter, and more largely debated by Paul and Barnabas, James at 
 length stood up and passed the final and decretory sentence, that the 
 
 of opinions I may interpose my conjecture, says Cave, I should reckon him to have 
 suffered about the end of Nero's reign ; for, supposing him to have come with Peter to 
 Rome, about the fifth or sixth year of that Emperor, he might thence be despatched to 
 Alexandria, and spend the residue of his days in planting Christianity in that part of the 
 world. Irenseus reports, that Mark outlived Peter and Paul, and that after their 
 decease he composed his Gospel out of those things which he had heard Peter preacfc. 
 Be that as it may, it is evident that Ireneeua supposed that Mark survived the martyr- 
 dom of those eminent Apostles. 
 
 * Lardner's Works, vol. vi., p. 163.
 
 184 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Gentile converts were not to be troubled with the bondage of the 
 Jewish yoke, only that, for present accommodation, some few indif- 
 ferent rites should be observed. (Acts xv. 13, &c.) 
 
 Eusebius says, that James was appointed Bishop * of Jerusalem, by 
 the Apostles ; and elsewhere, that he was placed in that metro- 
 polis by Christ himself, and the twelve. Jerome, in his Catalogue 
 of Ecclesiastical Writers, states, that " James, surnamed the Just, was 
 ordained Bishop of Jerusalem by the Apostles, soon after our Lord's 
 passion." In his Commentary upon the Epistle to the Galatians, he 
 speaks as if the Lord had given him this high trust, perhaps imply- 
 ing, that Christ gave it to him by his disciples, or that they acted by 
 divine inspiration. Epiphanius ascribes this appointment to our 
 Saviour himself: so also do Chrysostom, (Ecumenius, Photius, and 
 many others. 
 
 Be that as it may, he administered to the necessities of his pro- 
 vince with diligence and care, performing every duty, as an indus- 
 trious and faithful guide of the souls committed to his charge. f 
 He strengthened the weak, instructed the ignorant, reclaimed the 
 erroneous, reproved the obstinate, and, by the constancy of his preach- 
 ing, conquered the perverseness and stupidity of that stubborn and 
 refractory generation which were around him ; many of whom, 
 of superior character, were brought to the obedience of the faith : 
 so careful, and yet so successful was he, in his endeavours to do good, 
 that he aroused the malignity of his adversaries, a description of men 
 of whom the Apostle has given a true, although humiliating, character : 
 " They please not God, and are contrary to all men." He governed 
 the church in the midst of perpetual danger, and violent persecution 
 from the fury of the people at large ; but his singular probity and 
 general uprightness of conduct secured even the veneration of the 
 Jews themselves. With regard to his sanctity, Eusebius and 
 Jerome give from Hegesippus (a suspicious authority) the following 
 account : " He was always a virgin, and was a Nazarite, or, one con- 
 secrated to God. In consequence of which he was never shaved, 
 never cut his hair, never drank any wine, or other strong liquor ; 
 moreover, he never used any bath, or oil to anoint his limbs, and 
 
 * Though the office of Elder might be wanting, owing to the necessities of the local 
 churches in different towns, it may perhaps he inferred, that the absence of the Apostles in 
 visiting these churches, led also to the creation of a new office, and to an appointment 
 of still greater importance in the church of Jerusalem. The early writers are unani- 
 mous in speaking of James, as the first Bishop of that church. An incidental expres- 
 sion of Paul seems to prove that James was in possession of this authority very soon 
 after his conversion : therefore, the conjecture is confessedly easy, that the rest of the 
 Apostles appointed him to superintend the church at Jerusalem, when they found them- 
 selves so repeatedly called away to distant parts of the country. The term " Bishop " is 
 adopted in accordance with the statement of all the ecclesiastical writers, though it is 
 by no means implied, that this was the title given at first to James ; or that the 
 office which he bore was analogous to that of "Bishop" in later times. (Dr. Edward 
 Burton.) 
 
 t Eusebins says, that the episcopal chair in which James was used to sit, was pre- 
 served to his time, and was had in veneration by the church at Jerusalem. (Hist. Eccles.. 
 lib. vii., cap. 19.) 
 
 t Euseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 23. 
 
 Hieron., in Jovin., lib. ii., cap. 24.
 
 JAMES THE LESS. 18a 
 
 never ate of any living creature, except when of precept, as the 
 paschal lamb ; he never wore sandals, never used any other clothes 
 than one single garment. He prostrated so much in prayer, that the 
 skin of his knees and forehead was hardened like to camel's hoofs." 
 Epiphanius* says, that in a great, drought, on stretching out his 
 arms to heaven, he, by his prayers, instantly obtained rain. His 
 eminent piety made even the Jews style him " a just man ;" an epi- 
 thet which it will be remembered is never used in the New Testament 
 but to the Lord of life and glory : James was so called by many. 
 Eusebius says, that he was called " the Just," on account of the 
 eminence of his virtue. f He is so designated frequently in passages 
 of Clement of Alexandria. HegesippusJ says, he had been called 
 " the Just " by all from our Saviour's time to his own ; and Jerome, 
 in the commencement of his account of him, says, " that James, the 
 Lord's brother, was surnamed the Just." All, therefore, that can be 
 gathered from sacred and other history respecting him, is, that he was 
 sometimes called the Less, the son of Alphseus, and our Lord's 
 brother, either the son of Joseph by a former wife, or a relation of 
 his mother Mary ; and that he was one of Christ's Apostles. We 
 have no account of when he was called to the apostleship ; nor is 
 there anything said of him particularly in the history of our Saviour. 
 But from the Acts, and from Paul's Epistles, we can perceive that he 
 was of note among the Apostles. Soon after the death of Stephen, 
 he was appointed President, or Superintendent, in the church of 
 Jerusalem, where, and in Judea, he resided during the remaining part 
 of his life. 
 
 Under the firm administration of Festus, the Christians in Palestine 
 were comparatively free from persecution ; and the statement is con- 
 firmed by what took place at his decease. He died about the eighth 
 or tenth year of the reign of Nero ; and as soon as the news of his 
 death arrived at Rome, Albinus was appointed to succeed him. 
 Some time, however, elapsed, before the new Procurator reached his 
 government ; and the High Priest took advantage of the interregnum 
 to molest the church. The office of High Priest had been frequently 
 changed about this period. Agrippa, who still resided at Jerusalem, 
 had lately appointed Joseph, and shortly after Ananus, or Annus, 
 the son of the Annas, whose name is connected with the crucifixion of 
 our Saviour. This was the fifth of his sons, beside his son-in-law 
 Caiaphas, who had held the pontifical dignity ; and the present High 
 Priest, being a Sadducee, had, probably, additional motives for show- 
 ing hostility to the Christians. He had not long to wait for an 
 opportunity. The Jews had recently been exasperated at the failure 
 of their sanguinary designs against Paul, by his appeal to Caesar, to 
 whom he had been sent by Festus. The plan of attack which was 
 devised by Ananus, though iniquitous and cruel, was well conceived. 
 The blow was aimed at the head and leader of the party, and the 
 Easter of the year 62 is generally taken to be the period when James 
 the Bishop of Jerusalem was martyred. The atrocious act is alluded to 
 
 * Epiphan. Haeres., 78. f Kuseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 1. 
 
 t Ibid., lib. ii., cap. 23. Lardner'a Works, vol. vi., p. 196. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B
 
 184 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Gentile converts were not to be troubled with the bondage of the 
 Jewish yoke, only that, for present accommodation, some few indif- 
 ferent rites should be observed. (Acts xv. 13, &c.) 
 
 Eusebius says, that James was appointed Bishop * of Jerusalem, by 
 the Apostles ; and elsewhere, that he was placed in that metro- 
 polis by Christ himself, and the twelve. Jerome, in his Catalogue 
 of Ecclesiastical Writers, states, that " James, surnamed the Just, was 
 ordained Bishop of Jerusalem by the Apostles, soon after our Lord's 
 passion." In his Commentary upon the Epistle to the Galatians, he 
 speaks as if the Lord had given him this high trust, perhaps imply- 
 ing, that Christ gave it to him by his disciples, or that they acted by 
 divine inspiration. Epiphanius ascribes this appointment to our 
 Saviour himself : so also do Chrysostom, (Ecumenius, Photius, and 
 many others. 
 
 Be that as it may, he administered to the necessities of his pro- 
 vince with diligence and care, performing every duty, as an indus- 
 trious and faithful guide of the souls committed to his charge. f 
 He strengthened the weak, instructed the ignorant, reclaimed the 
 erroneous, reproved the obstinate, and, by the constancy of his preach- 
 ing, conquered the perverseness and stupidity of that stubborn and 
 refractory generation which were around him ; many of whom, 
 of superior character, were brought to the obedience of the faith : 
 so careful, and yet so successful was he, in his endeavours to do good, 
 that he aroused the malignity of his adversaries, a description of men 
 of whom the Apostle has given a true, although humiliating, character : 
 " They please not God, and are contrary to all men." He governed 
 the church in the midst of perpetual danger, and violent persecution 
 from the fury of the people at large ; but his singular probity and 
 general uprightness of conduct secured even the veneration of the 
 Jews themselves. With regard to his sanctity, Eusebius J and 
 Jerome give from Hegesippus (a suspicious authority) the following 
 account : " He was always a virgin, and was a Nazarite, or, one con- 
 secrated to God. In consequence of which he was never shaved, 
 never cut his hair, never drank any wine, or other strong liquor ; 
 moreover, he never used any bath, or oil to anoint his limbs, and 
 
 * Though the office of Elder might be wanting, ovring to the necessities of the local 
 churches in different towns, it may perhaps be inferred, that the absence of the Apostles in 
 visiting these churches, led also to the creation of a new office, and to an appointment 
 of still greater importance in the church of Jerusalem. The early writers are unani- 
 mous in speaking of James, as the first Bishop of that church. An incidental expres- 
 sion of Paul seems to prove that James was in possession of this authority very soon 
 after his conversion : therefore, the conjecture is confessedly easy, that the rest of the 
 Apostles appointed him to superintend the church at Jerusalem, when they found them- 
 selves so repeatedly called away to distant parts of the country. The term " Bishop " M 
 adopted in accordance with the statement of all the ecclesiastical writers, though it is 
 by no means implied, that this was the title given at first to James ; or that the 
 office which he bore was analogous to that of "Bishop" in later times. (Dr. Edward 
 Burton.) 
 
 t Eusebius says, that the episcopal chair in which James was used to sit, was pre- 
 served to his time, and was had in veneration by the church at Jerusalem. (Hist. Eccles.. 
 lib. vii., cap. 19.) 
 
 t Euseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 23. 
 
 Hieron., in Jovin., lib. ii., cap. 24.
 
 JAMES THE LESS. 185 
 
 never ate of any living creature, except when of precept, as the 
 paschal lamb ; he never wore sandals, never used any other clothes 
 than one single garment. He prostrated so much in prayer, that the 
 skin of his knees and forehead was hardened like to camel's hoofs." 
 Epiphanius* says, that in a great, drought, on stretching out his 
 arms to heaven, he, by his prayers, instantly obtained rain. His 
 eminent piety made even the Jews style him " a just man ; " an epi- 
 thet which it will be remembered is never used in the New Testament 
 but to the Lord of life and glory : James was so called by many. 
 Eusebius says, that he was called "the Just," on account of the 
 eminence of his virtue. f He is so designated frequently in passages 
 of Clement of Alexandria. HegesippusJ says, he had been called 
 " the Just " by all from our Saviour's time to his own ; and Jerome, 
 in the commencement of his account of him, says, " that James, the 
 Lord's brother, was surnamed the Just." All, therefore, that can be 
 gathered from sacred and other history respecting him, is, that he was 
 sometimes called the Less, the son of Alphseus, and our Lord's 
 brother, either the son of Joseph by a former wife, or a relation of 
 his mother Mary ; and that he was one of Christ's Apostles. We 
 have no account of when he was called to the apostleship ; nor is 
 there anything said of him particularly in the history of our Saviour. 
 But from the Acts, and from Paul's Epistles, we can perceive that he 
 was of note among the Apostles. Soon after the death of Stephen, 
 he was appointed President, or Superintendent, in the church of 
 Jerusalem, where, and in Judea, he resided during the remaining part 
 of his life. 
 
 Under the firm administration of Festus, the Christians in Palestine 
 were comparatively free from persecution ; and the statement is con- 
 firmed by what took place at his decease. He died about the eighth 
 or tenth year of the reign of Nero ; and as soon as the news of his 
 death arrived at Rome, Albinus was appointed to succeed him. 
 Some time, however, elapsed, before the new Procurator reached his 
 government ; and the High Priest took advantage of the interregnum 
 to molest the church. The office of High Priest had been frequently 
 changed about this period. Agrippa, who still resided at Jerusalem, 
 had lately appointed Joseph, and shortly after Ananus, or Annus, 
 the son of the Annas, whose name is connected with the crucifixion of 
 our Saviour. This was the fifth of his sons, beside his son-in-law 
 Caiaphas, who had held the pontifical dignity ; and the present High. 
 Priest, being a Sadducee, had, probably, additional motives for show- 
 ing hostility to the Christians. He had not long to wait for an 
 opportunity. The Jews had recently been exasperated at the failure 
 of their sanguinary designs against Paul, by his appeal to Caesar, to 
 whom he had been sent by Festus. The plan of attack which was 
 devised by Ananus, though iniquitous and cruel, was well conceived. 
 The blow was aimed at the head and leader of the party, and the 
 Easter of the year 62 is generally taken to be the period when James 
 the Bishop of Jerusalem was martyred. The atrocious act is alluded to 
 
 * Epiphan. Haeres., 78. f Kuseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 1. 
 
 J Ibid., lib. ii., cap. 23. Lardner's Works, vol. vi., p. 196. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B
 
 186 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 by Josephus,* and is related in much detail by Hegesippus, a Chris- 
 tian historian of the second century. The account of the latter has 
 been rescued from oblivion by Eusebius ; f and though some parts may 
 have an air of fiction, we may, perhaps, believe the following circum- 
 stances substantially true. The High Priest had resolved upon the 
 destruction of James, before the arrival of the new Procurator. The 
 religion of Christ had, for some years, been rapidly spreading in Jerusa- 
 lem ; and many persons of consequence had embraced the true faith. 
 The death of Festus evidently gave to the unbelieving party a greater 
 licence of acting ; and their object was plainly developed, when they 
 applied to James, as a person of great weight and influence, to unde- 
 ceive the people, who were so eagerly running after the new religion. 
 James was placed upon an elevated part of the temple, and was 
 ordered to address himself to the multitude, who were attracted by 
 the festival in the courts below. J Ananus and his party could 
 hardly have hoped, that James would so suddenly retract his opinions : 
 there can be no doubt that they only sought a public opportunity for 
 putting him to death. Their wishes were shortly gratified. Being 
 advantageously situated, the Scribes and Pharisees addressed James as 
 follows : " Tell us, Justus, whom we have all reason in the world 
 to believe, that, seeing the people are thus generally led away with the 
 doctrine of Jesus that was crucified, tell us what is this institution of 
 the crucified Jesus ? " To which the Apostle answered, with an 
 audible voice, " Why do ye inquire of Jesus the Son of man ? 
 He sits in heaven, on the right hand of the Majesty on High, and will 
 come again in the clouds of heaven." The people below hearing it, 
 glorified the blessed Jesus, and openly proclaimed, " Hosanna to the 
 son of David!" His adversaries immediately, perceiving that he was 
 confirming the people in their error, resolved forthwith to despatch 
 him. Suddenly they cried out, that Justus was himself seduced, and 
 
 Festus was now dead, and Albinus was upon the road ; so he, Ananua, assem- 
 bled the sanhedrin of Judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who waa 
 Christ, whose name was James, and some others, some of his companions ; and when he 
 had formed an accusation against them, as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be 
 stoned ; but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as 
 were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done ; they also 
 sent to the King, (Agrippa,) desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no 
 more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified ; nay, some of them 
 went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed 
 him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrin without his consent ; 
 whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, wrote in anger to Ananus, and 
 threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done ; on which King 
 Agrippa took the high priesthood from bun, when he had ruled but three months, and 
 made Jesus, the son of Damnceus, High Priest. (Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. 9., 
 sect. 1.) 
 
 t See Le Clerc., Hist. Eccles., Duorum Primorum Saec., p. 415. 
 
 t " That his death might be carried in a more plausible and popular way, his 
 enemies set the Scribes and Pharisees at work to ensnare him ; who, coming to him, 
 began by flattering insinuations to set upon him. They tell him that they had all a 
 mighty confidence in him, and that the whole nation, as well as they, gave him the 
 testimony of a moat just man, and one that was no respecter of persons ; that, there- 
 fore, they desired he would correct the error and false opinion which the people had 
 of Jesus, whom they looked upon as the Messiah, and would take this opportunity of 
 the universal confluence to the paschal solemnity to set them right in their notions 
 about these things, and would, to that end, go up with them to the top of the temple, 
 where he might be seen and heard of all." Hcgesip. apud Euselt.
 
 ANDREW. 187 
 
 had become an impostor, and threw him. down from the place on 
 which he stood. Though bruised, he was not killed by the fall, but 
 recovered so much strength as to rise upon his knees, and to pray for 
 his murderers. Vexed that they had not completed their purpose, 
 they commenced the attack on the little life which remained, with a 
 shower of stones, until a person out of the crowd despatched him. 
 with a fuller's club.* 
 
 Such was the tragical end of James the Less, the first Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, to the great grief of all good men, and of every sober 
 aud just person among the Jews also, after he had watched over the 
 Christian church in that city for nearly thirty years. It is probable 
 that he was not much employed like the other Apostles in converting 
 distant nations, the Christians of Judea having been committed to 
 his peculiar care ; but he has left full proof of the interest which he 
 took in his brethren of every country, if, as there is the greatest 
 reason to believe, he was the author of the Epistle which bears his 
 name. The Epistle of James is addressed to the twelve tribes dis- 
 persed throughout the world, by which, of course, we are to under- 
 stand the Christians in any of the twelve tribes. James must have 
 seen many of these persons when they attended the festivals ; and 
 the resident head of the Christian church at Jerusalem was a very 
 fit person to send a circular letter to the Jewish Christians in dif- 
 ferent countries.f "He was interred," says Gregory, Bishop of 
 Tours, " upon Mount Olivet, in a tomb erected for himself, and in 
 which he had buried Zacharias and good old Simeon," which relation, 
 with Dr. Cave, we are much more inclined to credit, than the 
 account which is recorded by Hegesippus, and accurately retailed by 
 Eusebius, that he was buried near the temple, J in the place of his 
 martyrdom, where a monument was erected to his memory, which 
 remained for some time. Such was the reputation in which his 
 sanctity was held, that the latter historian, with Jerome and Origen, 
 attributed the destruction of the metropolis of Judea to the martyr- 
 dom of James. 
 
 ANDREW THE APOSTLE. An American writer observes, that " the 
 name of this Apostle is brought in directly after his eminent brother, 
 
 The accounts by Eusebius and Hegesippus seem more apocryphal. The latter, 
 after a very improbable description of the ascetic life led by James, refers to the rapid 
 progress of the Gospel in Jerusalem ; and states, that the Pharisees and Saddncees 
 besought James, in whom the}* had great confidence, to disabuse the minds of the people, 
 placing him upon the battlement of the temple for this purpose. But, instead of this, 
 he made a confession of his faith in Christ, to the assembled multitude ; upon which 
 he was cast down from the temple, and put to death. The severe virtues of Jame*, 
 the respect in which he was held, and his scrupulous observance of the Jewish worship, 
 with his violent death, seem clearly indicated in this legend. (Welsh's Elements.) 
 
 t Tillemont Memoires, torn, i., p. 421. 4 to. Paris, 1693. 
 
 J Alban Butler, who faithfully follows in the wake of Hegesippns and Eusebius, says 
 that James was " buried near the temple, in the place in which he was martyred, 
 where a small column was erected." It will be remembered, however, that the Jews 
 were not ordinarily accustomed to bury with in the city, much legs so near the temple ; 
 and least of all would they suffer him whom, as a blasphemer and impostor, they had so 
 lately put to death. 
 
 Lives of the Apostles of Jesus Christ. By D. Francis Bacon. P. 287. 8vo. New- 
 York, 1846. 
 
 2 B 2
 
 188 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 (Peter,) in accordance with the lists of the Apostles given by Mat- 
 thew and Luke in their Gospels, where they seem to dispose them all 
 in pairs ; and they very naturally in this case prefer family affinity 
 as a principle of arrangement, placing together, in this and the fol- 
 lowing instances, those who were sons of the same father. The most 
 eminent son of Jonas, deservedly taking the highest place on all the 
 lists, his brother might very properly so far share in the honours of 
 this distinction, as to be mentioned along with him, without any 
 necessary implication of the possession of any of that moral and 
 intellectual superiority on which Peter's claim to the first place was 
 grounded. These seem at least to have been sufficient reasons for 
 Matthew in arranging the Apostles, and for Luke in his Gospel ; 
 while, in his history of the Acts of the Apostles, the latter followed 
 a different plan, putting Andrew fourth on the list, and giving the 
 sons of Zebedee a place before him, as Mark did also. The uniform 
 manner in which James and John are mentioned along with Peter, on 
 great occasions, to the total neglect of Andrew, seems to imply that 
 this Apostle was quite behind his brother in those excellencies which 
 fitted him for a leading place in the great Christian enterprise ; since 
 it is most reasonable to believe, that if he had possessed faculties 
 of such a high order, he would have been readily selected to enjoy, 
 with him, the peculiar privileges of a most intimate personal inter- 
 course with Jesus, and to share the high honours of his peculiar reve- 
 lations of glory and power. The occasions on which the name of 
 this Apostle is mentioned in the New Testament, except in the bare 
 enumeration of the twelve, are only four : his first introduction to 
 Jesus ; his actual call ; the feeding of the five thousand, where he 
 said to Jesus, ' There is a lad here with five barley loaves, and two 
 small fishes ; but what are these among so many ? ' and the circum- 
 stance of his being present, with his brother and the sons of Zebe- 
 dee, at the scene on the Mount of Olives, when Christ foretold the 
 utter ruin of the temple. Of these three scenes, in the first only 
 did he perform such a part as to receive any other than a bare men- 
 tion in the Gospel history ; nor even in that solitary circumstance 
 does his conduct seem to have been of much importance, except 
 as leading his brother to the knowledge of Jesus. From the fact, 
 however, of his being specified as the first of all the twelve who had 
 a personal acquaintance with our Lord, he has been honoured by many 
 writers with the distinguishing title of ' the first called,' * although 
 others have claimed the dignity of this appellation for another 
 Apostle." 
 
 Andrew was born at Bethsaida, a city of Galilee, a small town 
 situated on the borders of the lake Gennesaret, and son to John, or 
 Jonas, a fisherman of that place : he, with Peter his brother, was 
 brought up to the same profession, at which he laboured until our 
 Lord called him to be a fisher of men. The circumstances attending 
 
 * Andrew is designated arpom>KA.TjTos by Nieephorns Callistus in his Hist. Eccles., 
 lib. ii., cap. xxxix. ; and also by several of the Greek Fathers, as quoted by Cangius, 
 (Gloss, in voc.,) and referred to by Lainpe. (I'rolegom. in Joannem.) Suieer, however, 
 makes no reference to this term.
 
 ANDREW. 
 
 this latter event are worthy of a brief notice. John the Baptist had 
 but recently appeared in Judea, a person who, for the efficacy and 
 power of his doctrine, and the strictness and austerity of his life, was 
 held in very high repute. He trained up his proselytes under the 
 discipline of repentance ; and, by inculcating upon them reforma- 
 tion of life, he prepared them to entertain the teaching of the Messiah, 
 whose approach he signified was near at hand. Besides the number 
 who flocked to hear him from Judea, and the region round about 
 Jordan, John had, according to the custom of Jewish teachers, some 
 peculiar and select disciples, who constantly attended his lectures, 
 and waited upon his person. In this company was Andrew. It was 
 in one of those perambulatory excursions in which a master was 
 accustomed to indulge, surrounded by his followers, that our Saviour 
 came that way. John immediately informed them that this was the 
 Messiah of whom he had so often spoken, the Lamb of God, the 
 true sacrifice, which was to make reconciliation for the sins of the 
 people. With one accord two of John's hearers left him, who now 
 referred them to a higher source of truth and purity, and followed 
 the footsteps of this wonderful stranger, of whose real character 
 they knew nothing, though their curiosity must have been highly 
 excited by the solemn mystery of the words in which his greatness 
 was announced, " Behold the Lamb of God ! " They hurried after him, 
 the sound of their hasty feet was heard, and the retiring stranger, 
 turning towards his anxious pursuers, mildly inquired, " Whom seek 
 ye ? " The opportunity thus afforded to state their wishes was 
 eagerly embraced ; and thus commenced an acquaintance which con- 
 tinued during life. Andrew being convinced that he whom he called 
 the Messiah was all that he had been declared to be, immediately 
 sought Simon his brother, to whom he said, " We have found the 
 Messiah." This announcement immediately arrested the attention 
 of Simon, who was forthwith conducted to Christ. Long, however, 
 they did not remain, but returned to their own home, and the exer- 
 cise of their calling. 
 
 About twelve months after their return, our Lord, passing through 
 Galilee, and walking by the sea-shore, saw two fishing-vessels, one 
 belonging to Peter and Andrew, the other to James and John ; who, 
 after a toilsome night, without success, were drying their nets on 
 the beach. Jesus, being crowded by the people who had followed 
 him out of Capernaum, stepped into Andrew's vessel, and desired 
 Peter to put off a little from the shore, and from thence he addressed 
 the multitude. Having concluded his discourse, he confirmed his 
 doctrine by a miracle. He commanded Peter to stand yet farther 
 off from the shore, and to cast his net for a draught. Peter replied, 
 that, though they had spent a laborious and fruitless night, neverthe- 
 less, at his bidding, they would try again. He did so ; and took 
 such a quantity of fish, that they were obliged to call their partners 
 in the other boat to come to their aid, and both vessels were filled 
 with the produce. This miracle, so seasonably performed, plainly 
 declared to the fishermen, and to the rest of the multitude, the Divi- 
 nity and Godhead of Christ : our Lord then bade Andrew and Peter,
 
 190 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 with James and John, to follow him, and they left their all and fol- 
 lowed him ; and from thenceforward they became the constant and 
 inseparable disciples and companions of our Saviour. Soon after, 
 Andrew and the rest were raised to the office and character of Apos- 
 tles, appointed to preach the Gospel, and to propagate the faith of 
 Christ throughout the world. 
 
 After the ascension of the Saviour, and the descent of the Holy Ghost, 
 Andrew is supposed to have preached the truth in a variety of places ; 
 but little confidence is to be placed in the several authorities which 
 are adduced. Origen says that Andrew preached the Gospel in 
 Scythia ; and we should be inclined to receive the statement as true, 
 though the expression is a vague one ; and the ancients would have 
 spoken of any part of the north of Europe as Scythia.* Sophro- 
 nius, who wrote soon after Jerome, and translated his Catalogue of 
 Illustrious Men, and some other works, into Greek, says that he 
 preached in the country called Sogdiana, and in the neighbourhood 
 of Colchis, upon the Euxine. A church ia also said to have been 
 founded by him at Byzantium ; but there is no evidence, of any 
 authority, which should incline us to believe it.f There is, perhaps, 
 more room for discussion, whether he did not latterly alter the direc- 
 tion of his travels, and visit different parts of Greece. The testimony 
 though not very early, is at least respectable, for his having preached 
 in Epirus and Achaia.: Paulinus says, this divine fisherman, preach- 
 ing at Argos, put all the philosophers in that city to silence. Phi- 
 
 * Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 1 ; Burton's Lectures on the Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory of the First Century, p. 328. 
 
 t Tillemont Memoires, torn, i., p. 619. 
 
 J Theodoreti Opera, torn, i., pars ii., in Psalmum cxvi., p. 1425. 8vo. Halae, 1769 ; 
 Greg. Nazianz., Opera, fol., p. 426. Antw., 1612. The most rational conjecture, about 
 the subsequent proceedings of Andrew, would be that he moved along with Peter before 
 the destruction of Jerusalem. With this allowable supposition, and also with the gene- 
 ral voice of ancient accounts, respecting the great majority of the Galilean Apostles, the 
 earliest and best- authenticated tradition respecting Andrew agrees perfectly. The original 
 account of him is quoted from one of the most trustworthy and judicious of the 
 Fathers : still, dating as late as the third century, and mixed as it is with known fabu- 
 lous matter, it would be entitled to little respect, except from its striking correspondence 
 with the general facts alluded to. This early statement is, that " at the time when 
 Palestine was disturbed by the seditions of the Jews against the Romans, the Apostles 
 and disciples of Jesus Christ, scattered throughout the world, preached the Gospel." 
 All these facts are referred to ancient tradition ; and, among the rest, on this authority, 
 Andrew is mentioned as having received Scythia as his field of duty. The country 
 thus named, lay on the farthest eastern border of the ancient Parthian and Persian 
 empire, in the northern part of the great valley of the Indus, now occupied by the east- 
 ern part of Affghanistan, or Cabul, and by the provinces of Cashmere and Lahore. 
 This was the true Scythia of the ancients ; it was in this region where the great Per- 
 sian Cyrus lost his life, and where the conquering Alexander met his most determined 
 and dangerous foes ; and all the most ancient accounts, in the same decisive manner, 
 refer to this as the country properly and originally called Scythia, though many who 
 have assumed the task of settling ancient geography have absurdly applied the name 
 to. the ancient Sannatia, corresponding to the modern Russia, west of the Caspian and 
 Volga. The name of Scythia was, by the later Greek and Roman geographers, 
 extended to the vast regions north of Persia and India, and east of the Ural mountains, 
 and the Caspian sea, stretching over the range of Imaus to an unknown distance, north 
 and east, occupying all Little Tartary, south western Siberia, and western Chinese Tartary. 
 A later account of Andrew further particularizes the regions to which he went, as 
 Sogdiana, now Bokhara, and the country of the Sacae, in Little Thibet ; a statement 
 which, coinciding nearly as it does with the earlier accounts, deserves some credit. 
 See Butler's Atlas of Ancient Geography ; Bacon's Lives of the Apostles.
 
 ANDREW. 191 
 
 lastrius tells us, that he came out of Pontus into Greece ; and that, 
 iu his time, the people of Synope were persuaded that they had his 
 true picture, and the pulpit in which he had preached in that place. 
 Tradition informs us, that when at the latter city, he was met by 
 Peter. The same veritable authority also asserts, that the inhabitants 
 of this place, being principally Jews, partly through zeal for the faith 
 of their fathers, and partly through the barbarity of their manners, 
 treated Andrew with great inhumanity and cruelty, attempting to 
 burn the house wherein he dwelt, and dragging his person about 
 the streets : to such a height of atrocity did the malice of some 
 lead them, that they bit off his flesh with their teeth, and then, 
 thinking they had killed him, they threw him out of the city ; but 
 he, miraculously recovering, returned, and by the efficacy and vigour 
 of his preaching, and the number and magnitude of the miracles he 
 performed, brought the people to a better temper, and converted 
 many to the faith. The Muscovites have long gloried that Andrew 
 carried the Gospel into their country as far as the mouth of the 
 Borysthenes, and to the mountains where the city of Kiow now 
 stands, and to the frontiers of Poland. If the ancients mean Euro- 
 pean Scythia, when they speak of the theatre of the Apostle's 
 labours, this authority is favourable to the pretensions of the Musco- 
 vites. The Greeks understand it of Scythia beyond Sebastopolis in 
 Colchis, and perhaps also of the European ; for they say he planted 
 the faith in Thrace. In many of the adjacent places Andrew is sup- 
 posed to have preached and propagated Christianity, and to have con- 
 firmed the doctrine that he taught by signs and miracles and mighty 
 deeds. At length he came to Patrse, a city of Achaia, where he is 
 said to have given his last and great testimony to the truth. 
 
 In giving a description of his martyrdom, we shall follow the 
 account that is recorded in " the Acts of his Passion," * supposed to 
 have been written by the Presbyters and Deacons of Achaia, who 
 were present ; and, although we cannot vouch for the genuineness 
 of that document, it is certainly of great antiquity, being referred to 
 by Philastrius, who flourished in the year 380, and was doubtless 
 written before his time. The substance is as follows : ^Egeas came 
 about this time to Patrse, where, observing that multitudes had 
 fallen off from Paganism, and had embraced Christianity, he endea- 
 voured, by numerous devices, both of favour and cruelty, to reduce 
 the people to their old practices. To him the Apostle resolutely 
 made his address, and calmly put him in mind, that he, being but a 
 judge of men, should own and revere Him who was the supreme and 
 impartial Judge of all ; that he should render to Him the honour 
 which was due, and renounce the impieties of a false and heathen 
 worship. The Proconsul reviled him as an innovator and a propagator 
 of that superstition whose Author the Jews had ignominiously put to 
 
 * " The Acts," &c., have been fully proved to be spurious and apocryphal : they are 
 not found in any of the ancient catalogues of the sacred books, nor appealed to 
 by any Christian writer, nor read in any of their assemblies ; but, on the contrary, 
 expressly condemned as an impious forgery by every one that has mentioned them. 
 There are not, indeed, any fragments of the book now remaining. (Jones on the Canon, 
 vol. i., p. 135. 8vo. Oxford, 1827.)
 
 192 BOOK III. CHAPTER II. 
 
 death upon a cross. Hence the Apostle took occasion to address Trim 
 on the infinite love and kindness of Christ, who came into the world 
 to purchase the salvation of mankind, and for that end did not dis- 
 dain to die upon the cross. To which the Proconsul answered, that 
 he might persuade them so that would believe him ; but for his part, 
 if he did not comply with his mandate, in offering sacrifice to the 
 gods, he would cause him to suffer upon that cross which he had so 
 much extolled and magnified. Andrew replied, that he offered sacri- 
 fice daily unto God, the only true and omnipotent Being, not with 
 incense and bloody offerings, but with spiritual oblations, acceptable 
 to God, through Jesus Christ. The Apostle was committed to prison. 
 At this the people were so enraged, that an insurrection would have 
 been the result, had not Andrew restrained them, and persuaded them 
 to imitate the patience and meekness of the Redeemer, and not by 
 any uproar intercept the crown of martyrdom which appeared to 
 await him. 
 
 The following day he was again brought into the presence of the 
 Proconsul, who endeavoured to persuade him not foolishly to destroy 
 himself, but to live and enjoy the pleasures of this life. The Apostle 
 hesitated not to inform this officer of state, that he should possess 
 with him eternal felicity, if he would renounce his execrable idola- 
 tries, and embrace the religion of the Saviour, which had so success- 
 fully been preached among them. " That," responded ^Egeas, " is 
 the very reason why I am so earnest with you to sacrifice to the 
 gods, that those whom you have seduced may, by your example, be 
 brought back to that religion which they have forsaken ; otherwise, 
 I will cause you, with exquisite tortures, to be crucified." The Apos- 
 tle replied, that now he saw it was in vain any longer to converse 
 with him ; that he was a man incapable of receiving counsel, and 
 hardened in his blindness and folly ; that, as for himself, he might 
 do his worst, and if he had one torment greater than another, he 
 might inflict that upon him ; for the greater constancy he manifested 
 in his sufferings for Christ, the more acceptable it would be to his 
 Lord and Master. JEgeas could not refrain any longer, and imme- 
 diately pronounced upon Andrew the sentence of death.* The Pro- 
 consul first commanded him to be scourged, seven lictors successively 
 whipping his naked body ; and then, witnessing his invincible patience 
 and firmness, he ordered him to be crucified ; and in order to render 
 the death of the martyr more lingering and tedious, he was fastened 
 to the cross, not with nails, but with cords. As he was led to exe- 
 cution, to which he went with cheerfulness and composure, the peo- 
 ple exclaimed that he was an innocent and good man, and unjustly 
 condemned. When he came within sight of the cross,-)- he is said 
 
 * Nicephorus gives a more particular account of the displeasure and rage of the 
 Proconsul. He relates that Andrew had been instrumental in the conversion of Maxi- 
 milla, the wife of Mge&s, and of his brother Stratocles, having cured them of desperate 
 maladies with which they had been afflicted. 
 
 t Besides various fictions which have been published with regard to Andrew, a work 
 entitlod, " The Passion of St. Andrew," of a highly apocryphal notoriety, professing 
 to have been written by the Elders and Deacons of the churches of Achaia, was long 
 extensively received by the Papists as an authentic and valuable book ; and is quoted
 
 ANDREW. 193 
 
 to have saluted it with the following address : " Hail, precious cross, 
 that hast been consecrated by the body of ray Lord, and adorned 
 with his limbs, as with rich jewels ! I come to thee exulting and 
 glad : receive ine with joy into thy arms. good cross that hast 
 received beauty from our Lord's limbs, I have ardently loved thee ; 
 long have I desired and sought thee ; now thou art found by me, 
 and art made ready for my longing soul ; receive me into thy arms, 
 take me from among men, present me to my Master." * Upon read- 
 ing these sentiments, Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, thus writes : 
 " Seeing at a distance the cross prepared for him, his countenance did 
 not change, nor his blood freeze in his veins, nor did his hair stand 
 on end, nor did he lose his voice, nor did his body tremble, nor was 
 his soul troubled, nor did his senses fail him, as it happens to human 
 frailty : out of the abundance of the heart the mouth spoke, and the 
 charity which was hot within, was as though it emitted burning 
 sparks in the voice."f Having prayed, and exhorted the people to 
 fidelity and perseverance in the truths which he had taught them, he 
 was fastened to the cross, J on which he hung two days, and then 
 expired. His body is supposed to have been honourably interred 
 by Maximilla. Gregory, the Bishop of Tours, a great retailer of 
 wonders, declares that on the anniversary of his martyrdom, a most 
 fragrant and precious oil was wont to flow from Andrew's tomb, 
 which, according to the quantity that flowed, indicated the plenty 
 or scarcity of the following year : he also states, that on the sick and 
 infirm being anointed with this oil, they were restored to health. 
 Dr. Cave adds, " I believe it no more than that it was an exhalation 
 of those rich and costly perfumes and ointments with which his body 
 
 by the eloquent and venerable Bernard with profound respect. It abounds in long, 
 tedious harangues, and painfully absurd incidents. The " Menaeon, or Greek Calendar 
 of the Saints," ia also copious on this Apostle ; but it is too modern to deserve any cre- 
 dit whatsoever. All the ancient fables and traditions were collected into one huge 
 volume, by a Frenchman named Andrew de Saussey, who, in 1656, published at Paris 
 (in Latin) a book entitled, " Andrew, brother of Simon Peter ; or, Twelve Books on the 
 Glory of St. Andrew, the Apostle." This book was afterwards abridged, or largely 
 borrowed from, by John Florian Hammerschmid, in a Latin treatise published at Prague, 
 in 1699, entitled, " Cruciger Apostolicns," &c. : " The apostolic Cross-bearer ; or, St. 
 Andrew, the Apostle, described and set forth, in his Life, Death, Martyrdom, Mira- 
 cles, and Discourses." Baillet, " Vie des Saintes," vol. iii., Nov. 30th, contains also 
 a full account of the most remarkable details of these fables. (See Surius, De Probatia 
 Sanctorum, torn, vi., Nov. 30th. Folio.) 
 
 See Acts and Passion of St. Andrew ; Bernardi Sermo De Sancto Andrea Apostolo. 
 
 t Bernardi Opera, torn, ii., De Sancto Andrea, Serm. ii., fol., p. 156. Lugd., 1687. 
 
 t Sophronius, Gaudentius, and Augustine, assure us that he was crucified ; Peter 
 Chrysologns says, it was on a tree ; and Pseudo-Hyppolytus adds, on an olive-tree. 
 
 It was the common opinion, that the cross of Andrew was hi the form of the letter 
 X, and called a cross decussate, composed of two pieces of timber crossing each other 
 obliquely in the middle. There is proof, however, that in the time of Bernard, this 
 idle story was unknown ; for it is evident, that, in the fancifully-figurative language of 
 the Abbot of Clairvaux, the martyr, if such he was, suffered on a cross of the common 
 shape, upright, with a transverse bar, and head-piece. Natalis Alexander affords addi- 
 tional evidence of the modern character of this idle invention. He says, " Crux qua 
 martyril ejus instrumentum fuit, in ccenobio Massiliensi S. Victoris dicitur asservari, 
 ejusdem figurse cum Dominica cruce." " The cross which was the instrument of 
 Andrew's martyrdom, is said to be preserved in the convent of St. Victor, at Marseilles, 
 and to be of the same shape with the cross of our Lord." (Natalis Alexandra Opera, torn, 
 iii., ssec. i., cap. viii., sect. 3. Folio. Paris, 1714. ) This, also, is legendary; but it 
 serves to show that the notice of Andrew's cross being a saltier, is modern. 
 VOL. I. 2 C
 
 194 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 was embalmed after his crucifixion;" though he acknowledges this 
 conjecture to be impossible, if it were true what Gregory says, that 
 in some years the oil flowed in such abundance, that the stream rose 
 to the middle of the church. Jerome informs us, that his body was 
 afterwards removed to Constantinople by Constantine the Great, and 
 buried in the great church which he had erected in honour of the 
 Apostles, which being pulled down some hundred years after by the 
 Emperor Justinian, in order that it might be rebuilt, Andrew's 
 remains were found in a wooden coffin, which were left to repose in 
 a proper place. Thus ftir Cave.* 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Opprobrious Epithets given to the Christians General Testimony in their Favour Ill- 
 Treatment of them, under Nero " Evil-Doers " PETER His Birth and Parent- 
 age His Occupation His Calling by the Saviow Dr. Cave quoted Julian the 
 Apostate Celsus Origen Peter's Character exhibited The Cursing of the 
 Fig-tree Peter's Trial and Fall Scenes of the Day of Pentecost Change 
 which took place in the Apostle The Miracle in Solomon's Porch Peter and 
 John before the Sanhedrim Arc liberated State of the Jewish People with 
 regard to Christ Reason of the Conduct of the Scribes and Pharisees Christ no 
 Object of Envy to the Romans Great Hatred of the Chief Priests Sadducees 
 and Pharisees Remarks on Caiaphas and Annas, the High Priest Apostles 
 imprisoned Miraculously rescued They appear before the Council And are 
 dismissed Punishment of Scourging Gamaliel Traditions respecting him 
 Church is persecuted Saul of Tarsus Philip (he Deacon Samaria Simon 
 Magus Miraculous Powers The Magician is reproved History of Simon 
 Gnosticism Platonism Moses and Plato Doctrines of Simon Danger of the 
 Church Herod Agrippa Persecutes the Church Slays James And arrests 
 Peter He is imprisoned A Roman Guard Castle of Antonio Peter is deli- 
 vered Leaves the City Contradictory Opinions concerning Peter's Destination 
 The persecuted Church at Rome Peter visits that City Encounters Simon 
 Ancient Tradition Peter vanquishes the Impostoi Simon proposes to fly 
 Perishes in the Attempt Rage of Nero Peter apprehended Mamertine Prisons 
 Legendary Tale of the Apparition of the Saviow Peter's Martyrdom 
 Supposed Fate of his Remains Remarks on his Character 
 
 IT was not until a later period of Nero's reign, that a terrific and 
 persevering onslaught was made on the Christian church, with the 
 sanguinary intention of rooting out the name of Christ from the face 
 
 Alban Butler, following in the wake of numerous fanatical writers, says, the body 
 of Andrew was translated from Patrae, to Constantinople, A.D. 357, together with those 
 of Luke and Timothy, and deposited in the church of the Apostles, which Constantine 
 had built a few years before. Paulinus and Jerome mention miracles wrought on that 
 occasion. The churches of Milan, Nola, Brescia, and some other places, were at the 
 same time enriched with small portions of these relics, as we are informed by Ambrose, 
 Gaudentius, and some others. When the city of Constantinople was taken by the 
 French, Cardinal Peter of Capua brought the relics of Andrew into Italy, A.D. 1210, 
 and deposited them in the cathedral of Amalphi, where they still remain. Thomas, the 
 Despot, when the Turks had made themselves masters of Constantinople, travelling from 
 Greece into Italy, and carrying with him the head of Andrew, presented it to Pius II., 
 A.D. 1461, who allotted him a monastery for his dwelling, with a competent revenue, as 
 is related by George Phranze, the last of the Byzantine historians, who wrote in four 
 books the history of the Greek Emperors, after the Latins had lost Constantinople ; 
 with a curious account of the siege and plunder of that city by the Turks, in which 
 tragical scene he had a great share, being Protovestiarius, one of the chief officers in the 
 Emperor's court, and army. (Liven of the Saints.)
 
 1'ETER. 195 
 
 of the earth. Individuals professing the true faith were at this time 
 suffering under an accusation that they were " evil-doers," * malefac- 
 tors and criminals, obnoxious to punishment. This was a state of 
 affairs hitherto unparalleled in history. In all the records which are 
 extant of the attacks made upon them by their enemies, it is evident 
 that no accusation was ever brought or sustained, with reference to 
 moral or legal offences, but they were always recognised as Dissenters 
 and separatists. At Corinth, the independent and equitable Gallio 
 dismissed them from the judgment-seat, with the upright decision, 
 that the Christians were chargeable with no crime whatsoever. (Acts 
 xviii. 12 17.) Felix and Festus, with Agrippa II., alike esteemed 
 the whole procedure against Paul as merely a theological or religious 
 affair, relating to doctrines, and not to deeds. At Ephesus, one of 
 the high authorities of the city declared, unequivocally, in the teeth 
 of a furious and ungovernable mob, who were raging against Paul 
 and his companions, that they were innocent of all crime. (Acts xix. 
 21 41.) Even about the middle of the reign of Nero, the name 
 of " Christian " had so little of an odious and criminal character, 
 that Agrippa did not hesitate to assert, before a great and solemn 
 assembly of Jews and Romans, that he was almost persuaded to be 
 a Christian. (Acts xxvi. 28.) The whole stream of ecclesiastical history, 
 up to this point, shows that, so far from the idea of assailing Christianity 
 en masse, as guilty of criminal offences, and its name indicative 
 of everything that was atrocious and bad, no vestige of such attack 
 can be found, until Nero charged the Christians with his own wretched 
 offence, of causing the dreadful conflagration of the imperial city. 
 Immediately they became objects of scorn and obloquy, and were 
 dragged to trial as thieves and murderers, and as outcasts, who were 
 secretly conspiring against the public peace and safety. Rabanusf 
 says, " Some were slain with the sword, some burnt with fire, some 
 scourged with whips, some stabbed with forks of iron, some fastened 
 to the cross or gibbet, some drowned in the sea, some had their skin 
 plucked off, some their tongues cut out, some stoned to death, some 
 killed with cold, some starved with hunger, some had their hands 
 amputated, and otherwise dismembered." Hence Augustine hesitated 
 not to say, " They were bound, they were imprisoned, they were 
 whipped, they were tortured, they were burnt, they were butchered, 
 they were killed, they were multiplied ; not fighting for life, but 
 undervaluing their lives for the sake of Christ." 
 
 The precise period of the birth of Peter cannot be ascertained : he is 
 supposed to have been about ten years older than our Lord. This idea, 
 his married condition, his settled course of life at his first approach 
 to Christ, together with the authority and respect which the gravity 
 
 " Evil-doers." The passages in which this word occurs, are, 1 Peter ii. 12 ; iii. 
 16 ; iv. 15. The Greek term is KO.KOTTOIOI, which means " malefactors," as is shown in 
 John xviii. 30, where the whole point of the remark consists in the fact, that the per- 
 son spoken of was considered an actual violator of known law ; so that the word is 
 evidently limited throughout to those who were criminals in tbe eye of the law. 
 
 t Rabanus was Ahbot of the monastery of Fulda, near Hesse-Cassel, and afterwards 
 Archbishop of Mentz : he was born in the year 785, and died 856. His works were 
 printed in 1627, in three volumes, folio. 
 
 2 C 2
 
 196 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 of his person secured from among the rest of the Apostles, fully 
 justifies. He was born of a humble family at Bethsaida, near the 
 sea of Galilee, otherwise called the Lake of Gennesaret, where he was 
 brought up in an occupation better suited to innocence of life than 
 most. He obtained a livelihood by the laborious and dangerous 
 occupation of fishing, which probably, in accordance with the here- 
 ditary succession of trades, common among the Jews, was the calling 
 of his father and ancestors before him. The earliest passage in 
 the life of Peter, of which any record can be found, is given in the 
 first chapter of St. John's Gospel. It appears that Peter and Andrew 
 his brother were at Bethabara, a place on the eastern bank of the 
 Jordan, many miles south of Bethsaida, and that they had left their 
 business for a time, and gone thither, for the sake of hearing and 
 seeing John the Baptist, who was then preaching in Judea, and 
 baptizing in Jordan. Andrew enrolled himself among his disciples, 
 and was honoured by him with the revelation of the Messiah in 
 Jesus. He and his brother immediately attached themselves to the 
 Saviour, and were chosen among his Apostles. " And here," says 
 Dr. Cave, "we may justly reflect upon the wise and admirable 
 methods of the divine Providence, which, in planting and propagating 
 the Christian religion, made choice of such mean and unlikely instru- 
 ments ; and that he should hide these things from the wise and pru- 
 dent, and reveal them unto babes, to men that had not been educated 
 in the academy and schools of learning, but brought up to a trade, 
 to catch fish, and to mend nets ; most of the Apostles being taken 
 from the meanest, and all of them, with the exception of Paul, 
 unfurnished with the arts of learning, and the advantages of a liberal 
 education ; and yet these were the men who were designed to run 
 down the world, and to overturn the learning of the prudent. Cer- 
 tainly, had human wisdom managed the business, it would have taken 
 opposite measures, and have chosen from the most profound Rab- 
 bins, the most acute philosophers, and the smoothest orators, those 
 who would have been the best qualified, by strength of art and 
 reason, to have triumphed over the minds of men, by grappling with 
 the stubbornness of the Jew, and baffling the finer notions and specu- 
 lations of the Greek. We find that those sects of philosophers 
 which gained most credit in the heathen world, attained to it by being 
 eminent in some of the arts and sciences, whereby they recommended 
 themselves to the acceptance of the wiser and more ingenious part 
 of mankind. Julian the Apostate thought it a reasonable exception 
 against the JeVish Prophets, that they were incompetent messengers 
 and interpreters of the divine will, because they had not their minds 
 cleared, by passing through the circle of polite arts and learning. 
 Why now," continues the historian, " this is the wonder of it, that 
 the first Preachers of the Gospel should be such rude and unlearned 
 men, and yet so suddenly, so powerfully prevail over the learned 
 world, and conquer so many, who had the greatest parts and abilities, 
 and the strongest prejudices against it, to the simplicity of the Gospel. 
 When Celsus objected that the Apostles were but a company of mean 
 and illiterate persons, sorry mariners and fishermen, Origen quickly
 
 PETER. 197 
 
 returned upon him with the following answer : * ' That, hence it was 
 plainly evident, that they taught Christianity by a divine power, when 
 such persons were able, with such an uncontrolled success, to subdue 
 men to the obedience of the word ; for that they had no eloquent 
 tongues, no subtle and discursive head, none of the refined and rheto- 
 rical arts of Greece, to conquer the minds of men.' In another 
 place, f Origen observes, ' I verily believe that the holy Jesua pur- 
 posely made use of such Preachers of his doctrine, that there might 
 be no suspicion that they came instructed in arts of sophistry ; but 
 that it might be clearly manifest to all the world, that there was no 
 crafty design in it ; and that they had a divine power going along 
 with them, which was more efficacious than the greatest volubility of 
 expression, or ornaments of speech, or the artifices which were used 
 in Greek composition. Had it not been for this divine power,' as he 
 elsewhere argues, J ' the Christian religion must needs have sunk 
 under those weighty pressures that lay upon it ; having not only to 
 contend with the potent opposition of the Senate, Emperors, people, 
 and the whole power of the Roman empire ; but to conflict with 
 those home-bred wants and necessities, wherewith its own professors 
 were oppressed and burdened.' " 
 
 We find that, after Jesus had been rejected at Nazareth, he made 
 the sea of Gennesaret the chief scene of his preaching, and took up 
 his abode in the house of Peter, which was now at Capernaum, a con- 
 siderable town on the northern shore. Hence, he often crossed the 
 lake to go to the other side. It was on one of these occasions that 
 Peter exhibited a very lively mark of his character. Jesus had 
 despatched his disciples forward in the ship on their return to Caper- 
 naum. Himself stayed the evening and night on a lonely mountain, 
 engaged in prayer. In the fourth watch of the night, which would 
 be between three and six in the morning, he followed them, walking 
 on the sea. The disciples were affrighted at the supernatural sight, 
 especially as the sea was now exceedingly rough. They cried out 
 through fear. Jesus exclaimed, sufficiently loud to be heard by them 
 in the boat, " Be of good cheer : it is I ; be not afraid." Peter, 
 whose courage was high, and faith in his Master unbounded, answered 
 and said, " Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water." 
 The Lord bade him, and he walked a little way. But shortly the 
 roughness of the waves, and boisterousness of the winds, frightened 
 him. He lost his resolution and his confidence, and, beginning to sink, 
 cried, " Lord save me." Jesus, gently rebuking his want of faith, 
 caught him, and took him into the boat. This incident was quite a 
 foreshadowing of his denial, and should have taught him how weak 
 he was, and deterred him from those rash professions into which his 
 ardent temper was hurrying him. || 
 
 It cannot be supposed that Peter could readily dismiss this event 
 from his mind, together with that of the transfiguration which subse- 
 
 Origen cont. Celsum, lib. i., sect. 62. 4to. Cantab., 1677. 
 
 + Ibid., lib. iii., sect. 39. 
 
 t Ibid., lib. i., sect. 3. 4to. Cantab., 16/7. 
 
 Cave's Lives of the Apostles, pp. 140, 142. 
 
 || Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 228.
 
 198 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 quently occurred. Its effects are clearly traceable in his future 
 conduct. His rash confidence increased, and in proportion his real 
 faith diminished. He was less able to abide the trial of the contrast 
 of a scene of the deepest humiliation with that of exceeding glory. 
 His Master, who knew the workings of his heart, and who loved him, 
 took occasion to warn him beyond all the rest of his disciples. The 
 triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem lighted up afresh the fiery 
 confidence of Peter, and his Master redoubled his warnings. On one 
 of their daily walks, during the last week of his earthly sojourn, from 
 Bethany, Jesus cursed a barren fig-tree. Next morning, as they 
 passed again that way, Peter beheld it withered. He remarked this to 
 Jesus, who answered, " Have faith in God," and proceeded to show 
 its wonderful efficacy. But Peter appeared to note none of these sig- 
 nificant hints ; and the nearer the period of his trial drew nigh, the 
 more confident he became. That hour now approached. They had 
 finished the last supper which they were to take together, and Jesus 
 walked with his Apostles towards the Mount of Olives. On the way 
 he warned them of the stumbling-block which was now at their very 
 feet. " All ye shall be offended because of me this night," said he ; 
 " for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the 
 flock shall be scattered." Peter would not submit in silence and 
 resignation to this sad prediction. He answered, with the somewhat 
 angry feeling of one whose unshaken fidelity is unjustly distrusted, 
 "Though all shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be 
 offended." Jesus said unto him, " Verily I say unto thee, that this 
 night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." But he 
 spake the more vehemently, " If I should die with thee, I will not deny 
 thee in any wise." Peter had committed the sad mistake which 
 has so often occurred in the church, that his trial would be one of 
 personal courage. He was prepared for a battle, and indeed com- 
 menced one in his Master's defence, wounding with the sword one of 
 the High Priest's servants. But he was not prepared to see that 
 Lord, whom he had beheld in glory, standing as a criminal at the 
 bar of that High Priest, and arraigned before the spiritual head of his 
 nation. What a scene for a zealous believing Jew, Jesus and the 
 High Priest confronted ! What a scene for him that believed in 
 Jesus as the Christ, Jesus, the irresistible, the victorious King of all 
 the earth, awaiting his sentence from the mouth of the High Priest ! 
 It was in this moment of inextricable perplexity, of stupifying amaze- 
 ment, that the enemy tempted Peter before the servants of the 
 High Priest. Thrice was he attacked with the charge, " Thou wast 
 also with Jesus of Galilee ;" and thrice, and each time with greater 
 vehemence, he denied all knowledge of him. And immediately 
 the cock crew. Then it was that the Lord turned, and looked 
 earnestly on Peter. All his affectionate admonition, all his gentle 
 repulsion of his rash protestations, came at once into Peter's mind, 
 and overwhelmed him with sorrow and shame. He went out, and 
 wept bitterly. Such was the first denial of Christ in his church. It 
 took place in one of the most pre-eminent of the Apostles, as if to 
 make the warning the more awful. And it arose from a vain confi-
 
 PETER. 199 
 
 dence, reposing on a carnal view of the blessed Gospel. From the 
 same origin have arisen all the denials of our Lord, which have since 
 taken place.* 
 
 Our Saviour having ascended to " his Father and our Father," the 
 Apostles began to act according to the power and commission which 
 they had received from Him. They first filled up the vacancy which 
 was occasioned by the apostacy of Judas. In process of time, fifty 
 days since the last passover having expired, the feast of Pentecost was 
 at hand when the promise of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, was to 
 be vouchsafed. The Christian community being assembled for reli- 
 gious worship, on a sudden a sound, like that of a mighty wind, 
 rushed in upon them, representing the powerful energy of the Holy 
 Spirit, who was now to be communicated ; after which, there appeared 
 flames of fire, in the shape of cloven tongues, resting upon each 
 of the Apostles, doubtless to denote the continued enjoyment of this 
 gift, when requisite. Hence "they were all filled with the Holy 
 Ghost," and enabled forthwith to speak, in other languages than their 
 own, of the "wonderful works of God," in the grand scheme of 
 human redemption. With these tokens of the divine presence, the 
 feelings and thoughts of the Apostles were raised to the highest pitch 
 of exultation and joy ; they were seized with such a sacred glow of 
 enthusiasm, as to give utterance to their emotions in words, and 
 spake with such effect, that their hearers were pricked in their hearts, 
 and cried, " What shall we do ? " and on that day were gathered the 
 first fruits of the church, in the conversion of three thousand souls 
 to the belief in Jesus as the Christ .f The eyes of Peter were now 
 opened. He knew Christ as he was. The Holy Ghost had enlight- 
 
 Evans's Scripture Biography, pp. 231 233. 
 
 t " We can hardly doubt," says Dr. Burton, " that of the three thousand persons 
 who were baptized on the day of Pentecost, many, if not most, were foreign Jewa. 
 They had come to Jerusalem for the feast, and would now be returning to their several 
 countries. St. Luke enumerates some of the quarters from which they came ; and he, 
 perhaps, mentioned those districts in which the Jews wpre known to be most numerous. 
 Josephus informs us, that there were many myriads of his countrymen beyond the 
 Euphrates, (Antiq., lib. xv., cap. iii., sect. 1 ; lib. xvii., cap. ii., sect. 2,) who had, 
 probably, remained there ever since the captivity, and kept np constant communication 
 with Jerusalem. The Acts of the Apostles will show, that the Jews abounded through 
 the whole of Asia Minor. In the neighbourhood of Alexandria, or rather, in the whole 
 of Egypt, they are computed by Philo at a million ; and with respect to Cyrene, we 
 know of one person who came from that country, and who carried our Saviour's cross. 
 This Simon is described by Mark, as the father of Alexander and Ruftu ; and it LJ 
 worthy of remark, that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, sends a salutation to 
 Rufus and his mother. (Rom. xvi. 13.) If the same Rufus be meant in both places, it 
 is, perhaps, not too much to conclude, that his father Simon was one of the first con- 
 verts to the Gospel ; and he may have been selected to bear the cross of Jesus, as being 
 known to be one of his followers. The Romans, who are said to have been resident in 
 Jerusalem, both Jews and proselytes, may have been the Jews who had been banished 
 from Italy a few years before, by the edict of Tiberius. We know that this edict must 
 have sent several thousand persona to seek an asylum in foreign countries; and there 
 was no place to which they would have looked more naturally, or have been more likely 
 to be kindly received, than Judea. It was about this time that Tiberius revoked his 
 decree, and permitted the Jews to return to Rome ; so that many were, perhaps, waiting 
 in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost to be over, that, having been present at its 
 solemnity, they might return to their former residence in Rome. In this way it id 
 not improbable, that within a few weeks after the feast of Pentecost, some persons 
 would be found, who had been baptized into the name of Christ, in Persia and in 
 Egypt, in Rome and in Cyreniaca." (Lect. on Eccles. Hist.)
 
 200 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 ened and informed his heart. He was no longer the ambitious 
 minion of an earthly throne, but a Preacher of the righteousness of 
 the kingdom of heaven. " He no longer wielded a temporal sword in 
 his Master's cause, but the sword of the Spirit. The sufferings from 
 which he before shrank as uncongenial with the glorious calling of the 
 Messiah, he now most cheerfully embraced as his distinguishing attri- 
 bute. And as he was called upon first to preach, so was he also first 
 to suffer."* 
 
 In the course of their regular religious observances, Peter, accom- 
 panied by John, went up to the temple to pray, at three o'clock in 
 the afternoon, the usual hour of prayer. As they went in at the 
 outer gate of the temple, which, being made of polished Corinthian 
 brass, was for its splendour called, the Beautiful, their attention was 
 directed to an object of compassion, which on days of festivity frequently 
 visited places of public resort. A man, who had been a cripple from 
 birth, was lying in a helpless state at the public entrance, in order 
 to excite the pity of the crowds who were entering into the temple. 
 Seeing Peter and John, he solicited alms from them. They instantly 
 turned their eyes upon him, and said, " Look on us." The cripple, 
 supposing from their manner that they were going to bestow some 
 gratuity, did so. Peter then said, " Silver and gold have I none ; 
 but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of 
 Nazareth, rise up and walk." As he said this, he took hold of the 
 lame man, and raised him. He was immediately restored. This 
 miracle gathered a great crowd around them in Solomon's Porch, 
 which opportunity Peter embraced of preaching Christ unto the 
 people. He declared, that in His name the miracle had been 
 wrought ; that Him whom they had put to death, God had glorified ; 
 that the prophecies of holy writ which referred to Messiah, had been 
 accomplished ; and that unto them, as children of the Prophets and 
 of the covenant, Christ was first sent and preached. So far had the 
 Apostle proceeded in his harangue, when he was interrupted by the 
 officers of the temple, whom the Sadducees, who were alarmed at the 
 preaching of the doctrine of the resurrection, had instigated. The 
 following morning we find Peter and John before the Sanhedrim, 
 before that very High Priest, with whom he had seen his Master con- 
 fronted a short time previous. This great court was the same also 
 whose members had, by unwearied exertions, succeeded in bringing 
 about the death of Jesus, and were therefore little disposed to show 
 mercy to any who were endeavouring to propagate his doctrine and 
 name. The individuals constituting the assembly were arrayed to 
 pass judgment ; the Apostles and the poor healed mendicant were 
 brought forward, and were questioned by what power, and by what 
 name, they had done the thing for which they were summoned. 
 They were charged with having arrogated to themselves the character 
 and office of teachers, and of reformers of the national faith ; of that 
 religion which had been of old received from God, and which the 
 wisdom of a long series of ages had maintained in its sanctity and 
 pureness. Peter being freshly endued with power from on high, and 
 
 K vans'.-) Scripture Biography, p. 236.
 
 I'ETER. 201 
 
 full of that divine influence which had heen so lately shed abroad, fear- 
 lessly announced to the convocation the Gospel of Jesus Christ ; and 
 told them, that the stone which they, the builders, had set at nought, 
 had become the head of the corner ; that in him, and in no other, was 
 there salvation. At such an address from unlearned and ignorant 
 men, the members of the Council were exceedingly astonished. They 
 recognised them as the followers of Jesus ; and, seeing the man whom 
 they had cured, they had nothing to say. They were in much per- 
 plexity, and afraid, lest their harsh conduct should attract the greater 
 attention of the people, to whom it was in vain to deny the miracle : 
 they were obliged to be satisfied with commanding Peter and John 
 to preach no more in the name of Jesus ; but they replied, " Whether 
 it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto 
 God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have 
 seen and heard." (Acts iv. 19, 20.) 
 
 If we glance at the Jewish populace, we shall not fail to discover 
 a strange combination of feeling and action. At one time we find 
 them anxious to make Jesus a King, at another compelling Pilate to 
 put him to death. The former was doubtless their own spontaneous 
 impulse ; to the latter they were driven by the Priests. From both, 
 it may be argued, that their feelings towards Jesus of Nazareth had 
 but little to do with religion. They had witnessed his miracles ; 
 they knew him to be kind and beneficent ; they heard him expose 
 the vices of their superiors, all which raised their curiosity ; and 
 whenever he appeared, they could not fail to listen to him with plea- 
 sure. Many of the people were zealous for political freedom, and 
 might imagine that this was the object which Christ had ultimately 
 in view ; but when he came up to one festival after another, with the 
 same number of obscure followers, when he assumed the headship 
 of no party, and exhibited no resistance to foreign interference, the 
 attachment which many had been inclined to feel towards his person 
 began to subside. If they had felt strongly in his favour, they might 
 now be glad to see him punished, for having raised hopes which he 
 did not realize ; and if they had felt but little, they would be perfectly 
 indifferent about the crucifixion. It was otherwise with the Scribes 
 and Pharisees, and the individuals who composed the Jewish Council. 
 To account for the antipathy which they felt to our Lord, we have 
 only to remember the nature of his preaching. He prepared men for 
 receiving a spiritual religion, by enforcing the necessity of repentance 
 and holiness. Both John the Baptist and himself had dwelt upon 
 the terrors of a future judgment, and had said plainly, that the 
 children of the kingdom, that is, the natural descendants of Abraham, 
 might finally be cast out. This was a hateful doctrine to men who 
 placed the whole of their religion in outward forms, who were looked 
 up to by the people as patterns of sanctity ; and who now heard that 
 publicans and harlots might enter into heaven before them. This 
 will, perhaps, says Dr. E. Burton, be found a sufficient clue to the 
 whole conduct of the Scribes and Pharisees. It might seem strange, 
 that they should punish the teacher of this new doctrine with death ; but 
 it is only strange, if we view the matter according to modern notions. 
 
 VOL. i. 2 u
 
 202 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 In the times to which we refer, and particularly in Jiulea, the shed- 
 ding of blood was an ordinary circumstance ; and the pages of eccle- 
 siastical history will prove to us, sadly too often, that he who silences 
 an adversary by death, persuades himself that he is benefiting the 
 cause of truth. 
 
 We are told expressly, that the Apostles delivered their doctrine 
 daily in the temple. It was there they worked their miracles in the 
 light of day ; and that thousands were converted, is a fact which 
 could not be disputed. The Council which had sat in assize upon 
 " the Holy and Just One," and whom they crucified, could not behold 
 with indifference, that the measure, which they had vainly imagined 
 so successful, was likely to be of no avail. Jesus Christ was not an 
 object of envy to the Roman government. The Procurator sacrificed 
 him to preserve his own character for loyalty to the Emperor ; and 
 had he continued at Jerusalem, it is probable that the Jews might 
 have prejudiced him against the Galilscans. When the Apostles took 
 up the cause of the Redeemer, whose religion was expected to have 
 been extinguished at his death, they revived among the people the 
 same generous and liberal feelings which had been shown to their 
 crucified Master. The miracles which they wrought, independent 
 of the beneficence of their character, and the real good which resulted 
 from them, could not fail to raise the workers of them in the eyes 
 of the people. The Chief Priests were aware of this, and took their 
 measures against the Apostles with extreme caution. On one occa- 
 sion we read of their taking them into custody, but " without 
 violence, for they feared the people, lest they should have been 
 stoned." (Acts v. 26.) More than once the Apostles were im- 
 prisoned, and corporeal punishment was inflicted upon them ; but 
 each of these attempts rather showed the timidity of their opponents, 
 and strengthened the cause which they were intended to depress. 
 To say nothing at present of the Apostles being released from prison 
 by a miracle, they declared openly in the Council, that they intended 
 to proceed ; and the moment of their dismissal saw them once more 
 preaching in the temple, and multitudes crowding to hear them.* 
 
 The High Priest Annas, f who had always been the determined 
 enemy of Christ, belonging to the Sadduccan party, was easily led to 
 employ all his authority against the Apostles. The Evangelist Luke 
 
 Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist. Lect. II. Oxford, 1831. 
 
 t The High Priest at this time was properly Caiaphas, who had been appointed in the 
 year 26, according to some chronologists ; but his father-in-law, Annas, or Ananus, 
 who had himself filled the office for fifteen years, and had influence enough to obtain it 
 successively for five of his sons, appears still to have retained the power in his o\vn 
 hands ; and Luke, who wrote several years after, mentions Caiaphas, by the name which 
 he seems to have held during life, namely, that of Annas the High Priest. Two other 
 persons are named by Luke, who have thus received the distinction of being hiiudinl 
 down among the earliest opponents of the Gospel. These were John and Alexander ; 
 and though it is unsafe to rest upon a mere identity of names, it has been supposed 
 that both of them were persons of celebrity ; that the former, who is here called John, 
 was the Rabbi Jochanan ben Zacai, the first President of the Sanhedrim, after the 
 destruction of Jerusalem; (Biscoe, p. 72 ; Light foot, vol. i., p. 2009 ;) and that Alex- 
 ander was the brother of Philo-Judaeus, who held the office of Alabarch of the Jews in 
 Alexandria. It would seem that all these persons were Sadducees, and particularly 
 active in endeavouring to silence the Apostles. (Dr. Edward Burton.)
 
 PETER. 203 
 
 seems to imagine that party feeling exerted great influence in the 
 proceedings of the Jews against Christianity. He twice speaks of the 
 High Priest and his party being Sadducees ; and though there is evi- 
 dence, that the Pharisees were equally, if not more, enraged against 
 our Lord, for the cutting severity of his reproofs, they were likely to 
 be at utter variance with the Sadducees, when the point of doctrine 
 was considered. The Pharisees, though they were overjoyed to see 
 the Apostles punished, did not wish to see the Sadducees taking the 
 lead, nor to have the doctrine of Jesus condemned by them, because 
 it supported a resurrection ; and there is reason to suspect that this 
 division of sentiment in the Sanhedrim operated for a season in 
 favour of the Apostles. The High Priest was provoked beyond 
 endurance at their steady and unflinching contempt of the repeated 
 injunctions of the Synod, whose president and agent he was, and 
 rose up in all his anger and power, and seized the Apostles, whom he 
 put into the common jail, as disturbers of the peace of the city, and 
 of the religious order of the temple. This imprisonment was 
 intended to be merely temporary, and was to last only until a conve- 
 nient time should be found for bringing them to trial, when the 
 crowd of strangers had retired from the city, and the excitement 
 which had been raised from the preaching and miracles of the Apos- 
 tles had subsided, that the ordinary course of law might be practi- 
 cally observed, and the Apostles be brought to the same fate as their 
 Master. Their scheme, however, was baffled. During the night, the 
 prison-doors were opened by " the angel of the Lord," by whom the 
 Apostles were brought out of confinement, and directed to " go, stand 
 and speak in the temple all the words of this life." According to 
 this divine command, they went to the temple early in the morning, 
 doubtless, before their tyrants had left their lazy pillows. In the 
 course of the forenoon, the Council was called, and the imprisoned 
 offenders were ordered to be produced ; but what was their surprise 
 and perplexity when the officers informed them that their cells were 
 empty ; and yet, the doors locked, and the sentinels before them, 
 unconscious of the escape of the prisoners ! " Now, when the High 
 Priest, and the Captain of the temple, and the Chief Priests heard 
 these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow." 
 (Acts v. 24.) These dignitaries were not long left in perplexity. 
 Some sycophant, whose name is properly buried in oblivion, said, 
 " Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, 
 and teaching the people." (Acts v. 25.) Upon this information, a 
 detachment of officers was sent to bring these delinquents before 
 them. But as it appeared that the criminals were now in the midst 
 of a vast assemblage of their friends, who were too firmly devoted to 
 them and their cause to suffer them to receive any violence, it was 
 agreed to manage the affair as peaceably and with as little outward 
 show as possible. In this they were aided by the Apostles, who 
 manifested no unwillingness to appear before their persecutors. When 
 they were placed before the Council, the High Priest, turning his 
 lately-perplexed countenance into a look of austere dignity, inquiml, 
 " Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this 
 
 2 D 2
 
 204 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 name ? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and 
 intend to bring this man's blood upon us." (Acts v. 28.) Peter, at 
 the head of his colleagues, boldly answered, that they should obey 
 God rather than man, and proceeded fearlessly to preach Jesus as the 
 Saviour, the author of repentance and forgiveness unto Israel. So 
 enraged was the Council at this, that it was proceeding to put them 
 to death, when Gamaliel advised gentler measures. And at his 
 suggestion, having first beaten them,* they let the Apostles go, reite- 
 rating their charge not to speak in the name of Jesus. 
 
 The Sanhedrim was not wholly composed of men who were of the 
 Sadducean party. Gamaliel was a Pharisee, and was held in high 
 estimation among the Jews.f He has been said, upon authority which 
 is entitled to some weight, to have been the son of Simeon, who took 
 the infant Jesus in his arms when he was presented in the temple. 
 By his mother's side, he was of the seed of David ; and was grand- 
 son of Hillel, who was one of the most learned Jewish Doctors of his 
 day. He himself died eighteen years before the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem, having held the office of President of the Sanhedrim for seve- 
 ral years, in which he was succeeded by his descendants for ten gene- 
 rations. The advice which he gave concerning the Apostles (Acts 
 v. 38, 39) was doubtless sincere and salutary ; but it may be ques- 
 tioned whether Gamaliel and his party were not more unwilling to 
 give the Sadducees a triumph by punishing men who maintained the 
 doctrine of a resurrection ; and thus God, who holds all agencies in 
 his hands, and can direct and control them as he sees fit, watched 
 over the infant church, and made the divisions in the assemblies of 
 
 * " Having first beaten them." A scourge was a kind of whip, composed either of 
 cords, leather thongs, or wands. The Jews were prohihited giving more than forty 
 stripes at once ; hut if the crime were reckoned great, the lashes were more severe. 
 (Deut. xxv. 1 3; 2 Cor. xi. 24.) The Rabbins assert, that all crimes, the punish- 
 ment of which is not specified, incurred scourging, and that it was not reckoned dis- 
 graceful. Philo the Jew represents it as no less insupportable to a free-man than 
 death. The persons scourged were stripped, were tied by the hands to a low pillar, and 
 they received the lashes on the bended back. Supposed criminals were sometimes 
 scourged, to oblige them to confess their crimes. (Acts xxii. 24.) Pilate scourged 
 Jesus, in order that he might please the Jews and prevail upon them to withdraw the 
 punishment of crucifixion. (John xix. 1,4, 6.) 
 
 t There are idle traditions about his having been converted to Christianity by Peter 
 and John ; (Phot. Cod., clxxi., p. 199 ;) but they are altogether irreconcilable witli 
 the esteem and respect in which he was held even in later times by the Jewish Rabbins, 
 by whom his opinions are frequently quoted as an all-silencing authority on points 
 of religious law. Neither does his interference in behalf of the Apostles at all show, 
 as some would have it, that he secretly approved their doctrines. He was a dispas- 
 sionate judge, and reasoned in that affair with the tact of worldly wisdom and expe- 
 rience, urging that religious opinions usually gain strength by opposition and persecu- 
 tion, while, if not noticed at all, they are sure not to leave any impression on the minds 
 of tie people, if devoid of truth ; and that it is in vain to contend against them if true. 
 That he was more enlightened and tolerant than his colleagues and contemporaries, is 
 evident from the very fact, that he allowed his zealous pupil, Saul, to turn his mind to 
 Greek literature, which, in a great measure, qualified him afterwards to become the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles ; while, by the Jewish-Palestine laws, after the Maccabaean 
 wars, even the Greek language was prohibited to be taught to the Hebrew youth. Ano- 
 ther proof of the high respect in which Gamaliel stood with the Jews long after his 
 death, is afforded by an anecdote told in the Talmud respecting his tomb, to the effect 
 that Onkelos (the celebrated Chaldean translator of the Old Testament) spent seventy 
 pounds of incense at his grave in honour of his memory. (Kitto.)
 
 PETER. 205 
 
 her adversaries contribute to its prosperity and peace. Some writers 
 have ventured to assert that Gamaliel was in heart a Christian, and 
 that after this period he openly avowed himself. Such a notion 
 appears perfectly unfounded. 
 
 Persecution now became severe. The church had hitherto been 
 tossed with gentle breezes, it was now overtaken by a more violent 
 tempest, by which the disciples were dispersed, and enabled to scatter 
 the good seed of the kingdom wherever they went. The Most High, 
 who frequently brings good out of evil, provided in this way that 
 the Gospel should not be confined to Jerusalem, pent up within the 
 city walls, but propagated among the neighbouring provinces, accord- 
 ing to an ancient prediction, " Out of Sion shall go forth the law, 
 and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isai. ii. 3.) Among 
 the multitude of Stephen's murderers and disputants, there was one 
 only whose name has been preserved from the sepulchral oblivion 
 which hides their infamy. That man has been known to millions, as 
 a bright leader of the ransomed host, and a faithful confessor, who 
 sealed with his blood the testimony which the proto-martyr bore 
 beneath the murderous missiles which destroyed his life. In the 
 synagogue of the Cilicians, which was so active in the attack on 
 Stephen, was a young man who was not behind the fiercest of the 
 sanguinary bigots, in the steady and unrelenting hate which he dis- 
 played towards the heresy of the Christian name. He gave his voice 
 amid the clamours of the mob, to swell the cry for the death of the 
 heretic ; and when the stout murderers hurled the stones at the 
 martyr's head, he took charge of the loose garments which they had 
 thrown off, that they might use their limbs with the greater freedom. 
 Neither the sight of the martyr kneeling unresistingly to meet his 
 bloody death, nor the sound of his voice, rising in the broken tones 
 of his death-struggle in prayer for his murderers, could mitigate the 
 deep and rancorous hatred of Saul of Tarsus. Raging against the 
 faithful companions of the martyred Stephen, he, with most inquisi- 
 torial zeal, sought them out, even in the privacies of domestic life, 
 and, violating the sanctity of home, dragged out the inmates, without 
 any regard to delicacy or decency, and immured them in the public 
 dungeons. As the storm continued to expend its fury on the new 
 converts to Christianity, those who were more apprehensive of assault 
 sought safety in flight, according to the injunction of the Lord, 
 " When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." (Matt. 
 x. 23.) Still the word of God prevailed, and the church grew. 
 
 Among these fugitives was Philip the Deacon. That divine Provi- 
 dence which governs the world, and more particularly superintends the 
 affairs and interests of the church, so that no weapon formed against 
 her might prosper, directed the steps of this messenger of mercy to 
 Samaria, where he preached the Gospel, and confirmed the truth by 
 dispossessing devils, and healing those who were diseased ; and " the 
 people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip 
 spake." (Acts viii. 6.) The Apostles, who yet remained at Jerusa- 
 lem, hearing of the great success of the word in Samaria, thought 
 good to send Peter and John thither, where they prayed with, and
 
 206 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 laid their hands upon, the new converts, who forthwith received the 
 Holy Ghost. It was at this time that Peter's acquaintance with 
 Simon the magician began. This man, by some tricks of legerde- 
 main, had so imposed upon the inhabitants of Samaria, that they 
 were impressed with the notion that he was some great one ; * indi- 
 viduals, both young and old, treated him with the greatest reverence, 
 on account of the consummate ability which he displayed in the arts 
 of sorcery ; and so degraded were their views of miraculous agency, 
 that they actually concluded the performances which he exhibited 
 were marks of divine interposition in his favour, and that he himself 
 was a personification of the mighty power of God. The presence 
 of Peter and John could not fail to produce a still stronger, and far 
 more just, impression of preternatural power. Though Philip was 
 enabled to work miracles himself, he was not able to communicate 
 that gift to others. The baptism which the Deacon administered, 
 conferred the ordinary sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, but 
 not any of the visible and extraordinary gifts.-)- It appears from 
 many passages of the New Testament that the power of communi- 
 cating these gifts was possessed exclusively by the Apostles. This 
 was the effect of Peter and John merely laying their hands upon 
 them and praying ; and no stronger evidence could be borne to 
 the reality of these miracles, than by the fact of Simon offering 
 money that he might possess the power of conferring these miracu- 
 lous powers. When the Apostle Peter beheld his intention, he rejected 
 his impious proposition with indignation and scorn, saying, "Thy 
 money perish with thee ! " He told him that his heart was hypocri- 
 tical and false ; that he could not possibly share in such a privilege, 
 and that he must repent of his atrocious wickedness, and apply to 
 God, who alone could forgive the evil designs of his heart. | The 
 conscience of Simon was so alarmed, that he entreated of the Apos- 
 tles to intercede with the Almighty in his behalf, " that none of 
 those things which they had spoken should come upon him." (Acts 
 viii. 24.) 
 
 It is extremely difficult to separate truth from fiction in the his- 
 tory of Simon Magus ; but the most authentic facts which we know 
 of him being recorded by the historian Luke, and connected with 
 the early propagation of the Gospel, it is impossible to pass them 
 unnoticed, especially as some writers assert, that he had a considera- 
 ble share in that persecution which shed the blood of the Apostle 
 
 * See Irenaei Opera, lib. i., cap. 20, fol., Oxon., 1702 ; Tertulliani Opera ; Apologet. 
 Adversus Gentes, cap. 46, 47, 8vo. edit., Wirceb., 1780. 
 
 t See a Sermon by the author, entitled, The Signs of an Apostle, and the Evidence 
 for the Cessation of miraculous Powers in the Church, considered. 8vo. Oxford, 
 1832. 
 
 t The words of Peter on this occasion, it is justly remarked by Neander, " present 
 the doctrine of the Gospel, which so expressly intimates the absolute necessity of a 
 right state of mind for the reception of all that Christianity conveys, in direct opposi- 
 tion to the Magianism, which denies all necessary connexion between the state of mind, 
 and that which is divine and supernatural, brings down the divine and supernatural 
 within the sphere of ordinary nature, and imagines that divine power may be appropri- 
 ated by means of something else than that which is allied to it in man's nature, and 
 which supplies the only point of union between the two." (Neander. Apost. Zeitalt., 
 vol. i., p. 82.)
 
 PETER. 207 
 
 Peter. Dr. E. Burton, on the testimony of Justin Martyr,* informs us, 
 that " Simon was a native of Gittum, a village in Samaria. Of his 
 education," he continues, " we know nothing for certain ; but in a 
 work which, although spurious, is of considerable antiquity, it is said 
 that he studied at Alexandria, and was well versed in Grecian literature, 
 as well as being a proficient in oratory and dialectics." That he stu- 
 died at Alexandria, is not improbable ; and he would have learnt in 
 that city, what he seems undoubtedly to have professed, the doctrine 
 of the Gnostics. f The name of " Gnosticism " was, perhaps, not 
 yet given to any particular sect of philosophers. But, as is generally 
 the case in the progress of opinions, the thing existed, and had 
 advanced a considerable way, before it assumed a distinctive name. 
 Philosophy had long been verging toward an eclectic character in 
 Alexandria. There had, in fact, never been an exclusive school pre- 
 dominant in that city ; and though the Platonic philosophy was the 
 most popular, it received some important modifications from two dif- 
 ferent quarters. The Jews had been settled in considerable numbers 
 in Alexandria from the foundation of the city. Their language soon 
 became Greek, and many of them had an extensive acquaintance with 
 heathen literature. This produced an important effect upon the phi- 
 losophy of one party, and the religion of the other. The Platouists 
 studied the Jewish Scriptures, and saw in them traces of a pure 
 and sublime theology. The Jews, who endeavoured to remove the 
 prejudices against their peculiar creed, tried, in an evil hour, to 
 show that it harmonized with many of the speculations of Plato. 
 They even asserted that Plato had borrowed from the writings of 
 Moses ; a statement which, if destitute of any just foundation, 
 was implicitly believed by many of the Fathers. J The Platonists 
 
 Just. Mart. Apol. i., cap. 26. 
 
 t Gnostics were ancient heretics, famous from the first rise of Christianity, princi- 
 pally in the East. It appears from several passages of Scripture, particularly 1 John 
 ii. 18 ; 1 Tim. vi. 20 ; Col. ii. 8, that many persons were infected with that heresy in 
 the first century, though the sect did not render itself conspicuous, either for numbers or 
 reputation, hefore the time of Adrian, when some writers erroneously date its rise. The 
 name was adopted hy this sect, on the presumption that they were the only persons who 
 had the true knowledge of Christianity ; accordingly, they looked on all other Christians 
 as simple, ignorant, and barbarous persons, who explained and interpreted the sacred 
 writings in a low, literal, and unedifying signification. At first, the Gnostics were 
 the only philosophers of those times, who formed for themselves a peculiar system of 
 theology, agreeable to the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato ; to which they accommo- 
 dated all their interpretations of Scripture. But afterwards the Gnostics became a 
 generic name, comprehending divers sects and parties of heretics who rose in the first 
 centuries : and who, though they differed among themselves as to circumstances, all agreed 
 in some common principle. They corrupted the doctrine of the Gospel by a profane 
 mixture of the tenets of the oriental philosophy, concerning the origin of evil, and the 
 creation of the world, with its ilium- truths. Such were the Valentinians, Simonians, 
 Carpocratians, Nicolaitans, &c. (Henderson's Theol. Diet.) 
 
 t " Quotations might he given from almost all the Fathers, which would show their 
 firm belief that Plato was indebted to Moses for many of his opinions ; but since any 
 index to the works of these writers will point out the passages, I shall only state gene- 
 rally that nearly all the Christian writers, from Justin Martyr downwards, supposed 
 Plato not only to have agreed with Moses by a coincidence of thought, but to have 
 actually profited hy the Jewish writings. Nor was this notion peculiar to the Christian 
 Fathers. Hermippvw is quoted by Origen as saying that Pythagoras introduced bis 
 philosophy into Greece from Judea ; and Philo Judseus speaks of Zeno having borrowed 
 one of his notions from the Jewish law. Josephus appears to assert the same of
 
 208 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 met this charge by referring to writings much older than the time 
 of Plato, and, as they contended, prior also to Moses. " This was, 
 I believe," says Dr. Burton, " the origin of many of the forgeries 
 which, under the names of Orpheus, Museeus, and other poets of the 
 heroic ages, may be traced to Alexandria as their source." The 
 intercourse with the Jews will also account for many expressions in 
 the spurious oracles which were ascribed to the Sibyls and the Magi, 
 and which were probably written with a view to conciliate the creeds 
 of Moses and Plato. The Alexandrian Jews were not only the cor- 
 rupters of their religion from heathen sources, but their doctrines, as 
 they explained them to the Grecian philosophers, were already 
 debased with a considerable alloy from Babylon and Persia. The 
 conquests of Alexander, and the communication between Egypt and 
 the East which flowed from them, were another means of introducing 
 the Persian doctrines into Alexandria ; and thus, from these three 
 sources, the philosophy of Plato, the religion of Moses, and the theo- 
 logy of the Magi,* a new and heterogeneous system sprang up, 
 which led to the ill-digested, but, in some degree, not irrational, eclec- 
 tic philosophy on the one hand, and to the ravings of Gnosticism on 
 the other, f 
 
 Hence the false doctrine with which Peter had to contend. " These 
 heretics taught that matter was independent of the Deity, and co- 
 eternal with him. This was a fundamental doctrine of Platonism. 
 They believed that several orders of spiritual beings were interposed 
 
 Plato ; and Aristobulus, another countryman of Philo, is quoted by Clement of Alex- 
 andria, as saying that Plato copied the Jewish law, and that Pythagoras took many 
 of his doctrines from the same quarter. Numerius, who was a Platonist of the second 
 century, went so far as to say, ' What is Plato, but Moses Atticising ? ' When we find 
 Jewish and heathen writers expressing themselves in this manner, we must not be too 
 severe upon the Fathers who have held the same opinion. Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, 
 and Augustine have perhaps gone the greatest lengths in tracing the resemblance between 
 Plato and Moses ; and the reader will find much information upon this subject in Brucker. 
 (Vol. iii., p. 332.) It is probable that the Jewish writers, such as Philo and Aristobu- 
 lus, who had already used the same arguments, had been endeavouring to remove a 
 similar prejudice which existed against the Jewish religion ; and the latter Platonists, 
 not being able to deny the greater antiquity of the books of Moses, allowed that there 
 was an agreement between the Legislator and Plato. But there is reason also to think, 
 that they wished to refer both the Jewish and the Grecian philosophy to a common 
 origin in Egypt, or in the East." (Burton's Bampton Lectures, p. 531. Oxford, 1829.) 
 
 * Simon's doctrines were substantially those of the Gnostics, and he is not without 
 reason regarded as the first who attempted to engraft the theurgy and egotism of the 
 Magian philosophy upon Christianity. He represented himself, according to Jerome, 
 as the Word of God, the Perfection, the Paraclete, the Almighty, the All of Deity ; 
 " Multi enim venient in nomine mco, dicentes, &c. Quorum unus est Simon Samarita- 
 nns, quern in Actibus Apostolorum legimus ; qui si magnam dicebat esse Dei virtutem, 
 haec quoque inter caetera in snis voluminibus, scripta dimittens : Ego sum verbum Dei, 
 ego sum Speciosus, ego Paracletus, ego Omnipotens, ego Omnia Dei." (Hieron. Opera, 
 torn, iv., p. 114. Fol. edit. Benedict. Paris, 1706.) Irenaeus tells us, he car- 
 ried with him a beautiful female, named Helena, whom he set forth as the first idea 
 of Deity. " Hie Helenam quandam, quam ipse a Tyro civitate Phoenices quaestuariam 
 cum redemisset, secum circumducebat, dicens hanc esse primam mentis ejus concep- 
 tionem, matrem omnium, per quam in initio mente concepit angelos facere et archangelos." 
 (Irenaei Opera, Adv. Gentes, lib. i., cap. 20. Fol. Oxon., 1702.) If this be not exag- 
 gerated fable on the part of his enemies, we must suppose that such modes of speech 
 and representation were adopted by him, as suited to the highly allegorical character 
 of Orientalism in his day ; for if we suppose him to have meant such utterances to be 
 taken literally, we should be constrained to look upon him in the light of a madman. 
 
 t Burton's Lectures on the Ecclesiastical History of the First Century.
 
 PETER. 209 
 
 between God and the human race, and that the demons of the one 
 being were identified with the angels of the other. The Jews also 
 admitted many innovations in their belief concerning angels, from 
 Babylon. The oriental notion was, that several successive emanations 
 of spiritual beings had proceeded from God ; and the theory of ema- 
 nations became the favourite notion of the Gnostics, and their grand 
 invention for accounting for the origin of evil. They supposed the 
 Deity, by acting upon his own mind, to have produced the first pair 
 of beings, whom they called ^Eons ; and these, by succeeding ema- 
 nations, gave birth to other beings, who gradually deteriorated, and 
 had less resemblance to the great First Cause. One of these later 
 emanations passed the boundaries of the Pleroma, which was the abode 
 of the Deity, and these coming in contact with matter created the 
 world. According to this scheme, the First Cause had nothing to do 
 with creation, nor was even aware of its having taken place. The 
 evil which appeared in the world was inherent in matter itself ; and 
 the Deity was constantly employed in attempting to remedy it. Such, 
 as far as we can penetrate this obscure subject, was the state of one 
 branch of philosophy which Simon Magus would meet with, if he 
 studied in the schools of Alexandria. We can trace another connex- 
 ion with that system, in the pretensions which he made to superna- 
 tural power ; and the Gnostics have always been represented as 
 dealing in magic." That Simon appeared at least to work miracles, 
 cannot be doubted. He had attracted attention in Samaria some time 
 before Philip arrived there ; and all the people looked up to him as an 
 extraordinary character. There is some evidence that Simon was not 
 the first person who introduced these notions into that country. 
 Dositheus * is mentioned as having preceded him. Whether this 
 were the case or not, Simon " gave out that himself was some great 
 one : " (Acts viii. 9 :) soon after he had established this character, 
 Philip the Deacon appeared in the same town, working much more 
 stupendous miracles, and announcing a Teacher sent from God, who 
 would free mankind from the tyranny of sin. The delivery of such 
 a doctrine at this time was critical, and could not fail to make a great 
 impression upon the mind of Simon. Though he was an impostor 
 as to his miracles, he may have been sincere in his philosophy ; and 
 Philip certainly appeared to realize the expectations which Simon had 
 been teaching the whole Samaritan nation to entertain. The reality 
 and overwhelming character of Philip's miracles are, in fact, greatly 
 confirmed by what took place in Samaria ; and the baptism of Simon 
 was a remarkable instance of the testimony which error pays to 
 truth.f 
 
 The state of the Christians in the scattered towns and villages of Judea 
 and Samaria must have proved a source of constant anxiety to the Apos- 
 tles. They would be in danger everywhere from the bigoted adher- 
 ents of the law ; and in Samaria in particular, there was great fear 
 of their corrupting the Gospel by the false philosophy which had 
 
 * See Barton's Bampton Lectures, lect. iv., note xl., p. 369, Oxford, 1829 ; and 
 Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 96, et seq. 
 t Burton's Ecclesiastical History, p. 77, et seq. 
 VOL. I. 2 E
 
 210 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 been preached by Simon Magus. To save them from these perils, 
 and to keep them firm in the true faith, the Apostles appear to have 
 been in the habit of making short journeys from Jerusalem to visit 
 them. Luke only mentions two or three such visits of Peter ; but it 
 appears probable, that all the Apostles were engaged in the same 
 labour, and although the care of the churches was divided among 
 twelve, yet the critical state of them might warrant the observation, 
 that " the harvest truly was plenteous, but the labourers were few." 
 It was about the end of Caligula's reign, when Peter, having termi- 
 nated his visitation of the churches, returned to Jerusalem. Not 
 long after, Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, attained 
 the kingdom. He united in his person the claims of the Herodian 
 and the Asmonean lines, with the blood of the heroic Maccabees ; he 
 was crowned by the imperial Lord of the civilized world, whose 
 boundless power was pledged in his support by the obligations of an 
 intimate personal friendship ; he was received with joy and hope by 
 the subjects of his now consolidated empire, and there seemed 
 nothing wanting to complete the auspices of a glorious reign. In 
 the midst of great outward splendour and kingly magnificence, the 
 attention of the Monarch was directed to a few despised individuals, 
 who were wandering like outcasts from place to place, and seeking 
 supporters only among the unintellectual mass of the community, 
 .who were represented to him as evil-disposed to his government, 
 and dangerous to the prosperity and safety of the religion of 
 the country, by the decided voice of censure from the devout and 
 learned guardians of the purity of the law of God, who invoked the 
 aid of his sovereign power to check, and, if possible, uproot, this 
 heresy, which the unseasonable tolerance of the Roman Government 
 had too long shielded from the righteous visitations of judicial ven- 
 geance. Agrippa manifested no disposition to refuse to gratify the 
 reverend defenders of the Jewish faith and practice ; and therefore, 
 reckless of all consequences, he unhesitatingly stretched out his arm 
 in vindictive cruelty over the church, and singled out the first person 
 whom momentary circumstances might render most prominent or 
 obnoxious to censure : he at once doomed to a bloody death the elder 
 son of Zebedee, the second of the great apostolic three. No sooner was 
 this sentence executed, than, steady in the prosecution of his sangui- 
 nary scheme so grateful to the Jews, he followed the step by seizing 
 upon Peter, the active and successful leader of the heretical company. 
 This occurred during the holy week of the passover ; and such was 
 the tyrant's profound regard for all things connected with the national 
 religion, that he would not violate the sanctity of the sacred festival 
 by the execution of a criminal, however deserving of that fate he 
 might be. The execution of Peter was delayed, and accordingly he 
 was committed to prison, probably to the tower of Antonia ; * and, in 
 
 * For an account of this tower or castle, we refer to the graphic description which 
 Josephus has given respecting it. (Jewish Wars, lib. v., cap. v., sect. 8.) There has 
 heen much speculation as to the place where Peter was confined. The sacred text 
 (Acts xii. 10) makes it plain that it was without the city itself, since after leaving the 
 prison it was still necessary to enter the city hy " the iron gate." Walch, Kuinoel, 
 aad Bloomfield adopt the view that it was in one of the towers or castles that fortified
 
 PETER. '2 \ 1 
 
 order to prevent all possibility of escape, be was confined under the 
 charge of sixteen Roman soldiers, divided into four companies, of 
 four men in each, who were to keep him under constant supervision 
 day and night, according to the established principles of the Roman 
 military discipline, with the perfect understanding, that if, on the 
 conclusion of the passover, the prisoner were not forthcoming, the 
 guards should answer for the failure with their lives. Having thus 
 provided for the safety of Peter, the King, with his gratified friends 
 in the Sanhedrim, and the rabble without, gave themselves up to the 
 enjoyment of the feast, which was in no small degree increased by 
 the prospect of destroying the Christian faith. 
 
 In the mean time the church passed through this anniversary with 
 mournful reminiscences, and painful anticipations. In by-gone years, 
 with unutterable agony and despair, they had parted, as they sup- 
 posed, for ever with their Lord ; and now, after years of devotion to 
 his work, they were called to renew these sorrows in the untimely 
 death of one who had led them forward, through toil and peril, with 
 a holy spirit, and an undaunted zeal : " but prayer was made without 
 ceasing of the church unto God for him." (Acts xii. 5.) At length 
 the solemn passover-rites of the last great day of the feast were 
 over ; the sacrifice, the incense, and the song, rose no more from the 
 sanctuary ; and all the vast extent of the temple was hushed in a 
 silence deep as the ruinous oblivion to which the voice of their God. 
 had doomed them shortly to pass. In the castle of Antonia, the gar- 
 rison had set their nightly watch, each warrior slumbered in his turn, 
 till the round of duty should summon him to relieve guard. The 
 quaternion on duty was divided into two portions ; each half being 
 so disposed and posted as to effect the most complete supervision 
 of which the place was capable ; two men keeping watch outside 
 of the well-bolted door of the cell, and two within, who, not limited 
 to the charge of keeping their eyes on the prisoner, had him fastened 
 to their persons by a chain on each side. In this proximity to his 
 hardy companions, Peter was accustomed to pass the night. In the 
 day time he was freed from one of these chains, and remained 
 attached only to one of the guard. This was an arrangement in perfect 
 accordance with the mode of securing important state-prisoners 
 among the Romans. Peter slept. The close and feverish confine- 
 ment of a noisome cell could not hinder the placid enjoyment of 
 repose ; nor could the certainty of a cruel and shameful death move 
 
 the walls. Wolf and others object to the view, that it was without the walls ; because, 
 as Wolf says, it was not customary to have public prisons outside of the city, since the 
 prisoners might in that case be sometimes rescued by a bold assault from some hardy 
 band of comrades, &c. But this objection is worth nothing against the castle Antonia, 
 which, though it stood entirely separated from the rest of the city, was exceedingly 
 strong, and by its position, as well as fortification, impregnable to any common force ; 
 a circumstance which would at once suggest and recommend it, as a secure place for 
 one who, like Peter, had previously escaped from the common prison. There was alwaj-s a 
 Roman garrison in Antonia. Baronius suggests the castle of Antonia as the most pro- 
 bable place of Peter's confinement. " Juxta templum forta*se in ea munitissima turri 
 qua; dicebatur Antonia." (Eccles. Annales, A.D. 44, sect. 5.) Tbis was the place to 
 which Paul was carried to be imprisoned, when he fell into the bauds of the corps of 
 soldiers which constituted the guard at that time. (Aou vxi. 34, 37; xxii. 24.)
 
 212 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 his noble spirit from its self-possession. From him, however, in 
 whom he trusted, came a messenger of deliverance ; and from the depths 
 of a danger the most appalling and threatening, he was soon brought 
 to serve his Master, through several faithful years, feeding the flock 
 till, in his old age, " another should gird him, and carry him whither 
 he would not." He who had prayed for him in the revelation of his 
 peculiar glories on Mount Hermon, and had so highly consecrated 
 him to the great cause, had yet greater things for him to do ; and to 
 new works and wonders he now called him from the castle-prison of 
 the royal persecutor.* 
 
 The night before his intended execution, God purposely sent an 
 angel from heaven, who, coming to the prison, found him fast asleep 
 between two of his keepers : so soft and secure a pillow, says Dr. 
 Cave, is a good conscience, even in the confines of death, and in the 
 greatest danger. The overwhelmed and still half-slumbering captive 
 was raised from the ground by the power of the mysterious visitant, 
 and, after deliberately resuming his garments, was led out of the 
 prison, freed from his fetters, over the bodies of his unconscious 
 guards, and having passed the first and second watch, they entered 
 through the iron gate into the city. But here the difficulties were 
 not over. During the great feast-days, when large assemblies of peo- 
 ple were gathered at Jerusalem from various quarters, to guard against 
 riots and insurrection, the armed Roman force, as Josephus relates, 
 was doubled and tripled, occupying several new posts around the 
 temple ; and, as the same historian particularly mentions, on the 
 approaches of Castle Antonia, where its foundations descended towards 
 the terraces of the temple, and formed a passage to the great eastern 
 colonnades. On all these places the guard must have been under 
 arms during this passover ; and even at night the sentries would be 
 stationed at all the important posts, as a reasonable security against 
 the numerous strangers of dubious character who now thronged the 
 metropolis. Entering the city, he followed the footsteps of his 
 guide till they had proceeded through the first street, when, all at once, 
 his deliverer vanished, leaving Peter alone in the silent city, but free 
 and safe. " And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I 
 know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath 
 delivered me out of the hands of Herod, and from all the expectation 
 of the people of the Jews." (Acts xii. 11.) He immediately pro- 
 ceeded to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the 
 disciples were accustomed to assemble. Approaching the door, he 
 knocked ; and after some delay, arising from the overjoyed incredu- 
 lity of the damsel Rhoda, and of the brethren who were watching 
 in prayer, the door of the friendly mansion was opened to the liber- 
 ated Apostle, who was received with prayerful congratulation and joy. 
 Peter having briefly related the manner of his extraordinary deliver- 
 ance, and charging them to acquaint the brethren with it, he departed 
 to another place. We need scarcely stay to observe, that on the 
 devoted minions of the baffled King did the rage of his disappoint- 
 ment fall. They all suffered an undeserved and ignominious death. 
 * Bacon's Lives of the Apostles, p. 219, &<?.
 
 PETER. 213 
 
 Thus far, we have had an infallible and divine guide to lead and 
 instruct us respecting the persecutions of Peter : we have now to 
 depend upon the uncertain and contradictory assertions of ancient 
 writers. Passing hy his visit to Antioch, we may observe, in answer 
 to the question, What became of Peter after his deliverance from 
 prison ? that it is unknown : probably he might preach in some more 
 distant parts of Judea, and in the neighbouring countries. After 
 this, it is said, he made a journey to Rome,* and that he arrived 
 about the second year of the reign of Claudius, where he was instru- 
 mental in planting Christianity ; and now it was, says Baronius,f that 
 Peter, being mindful of the churches which he had planted in Pontus, 
 Galatia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Asia the Less, wrote his first Epistle 
 to them, which he, probably, infers from the idea, that Mark being 
 yet with him at the time of the date of this Epistle, it must have been 
 written some time that year, for that now it was that Mark was sent 
 to preach and propagate the faith in Egypt. Next to the planting 
 religion at Rome, proceeds the Annalist, he took care to propagate it 
 in foreign parts. It has also been stated, that after Peter had been 
 several years at Rome, Claudius, the Emperor, taking advantage of 
 some seditions and tumults raised by the Jews, by a public edict 
 banished them from the metropolis. Peter, who by these historians is 
 supposed to have been among the number, departed thence to Jeru- 
 salem, and was present at that great apostolical synod held to decide 
 the question concerning the observance of the Mosaic rites and cere- 
 monies. Romish disputants are very fond of treating the points as 
 settled, namely, that Peter introduced the Gospel in Rome, of which 
 church he was the Bishop for a period of not less than twenty-five 
 years ; and that he bequeathed his full supremacy, whatever it might 
 be, to his successors in that chair. ^ But so far from such being the 
 
 The following are a few of the ancient writers who have advocated this hypothesis . 
 Irenaeus, Dionysius Bishop of Corinth, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian 
 of Carthage, Lactantius, and Jerome. In the latter part of the first century, Clement, 
 Bishop of Rome, (Epist. ad Cor.,) speaks of Peter and Paul as persecuted, and as hav- 
 ing become martyrs ; hut he does not say when or where. In the middle of the second 
 century, Justin Martyr speaks of Simon Magus, his magic, and his deification at 
 Rome, but makes no mention of Peter's going to Rome to combat him. See my edition 
 of Dr. Elliott's Delineation of Roman Catholicism, pp. 497, 630, et seq. London, 1844. 
 
 t Baronii Eccles. Annales, A.D. 46, sect. 16. 
 
 J The Papists, not appreciating any difficulty in the matter, go on crowding one 
 absurdity upon another, which claims the additional merit of being amusing in its folly. 
 We allude to the minute particnlarization of the shape, stuff, and accoutrements of the chair 
 in which Peter sat at Rome in his episcopal character. This identical wooden chair in 
 which he was seated, when exercising the functions of his bishopric, is still, according 
 to high Papal authorities, preserved in the Basilica of St. Peter's at Rome ; and is even 
 now, on certain high occasions, brought out, to bless with its presence the eyes of an 
 adoring people. This chair is kept covered with a linen veil, among the various 
 treasures of the Vatican, and has been eminent for the vast numbers of great miracles 
 which have been wrought by its efficacy. *' The Papists had," says Archibald 
 Bower, " as they thought, till the year 1662, a pregnant proof, not only of St. Peter 
 erecting their chair, but of sitting in it himself : for till that year, the very chair, on 
 which they believed, or would make others believe, he had sat, was shown and exposed 
 to public adoration on the 18th of January, the festival of the said chair. But 
 while it was cleaning, in order to be set up in some conspicuous place of the Vatican, the 
 twelve labours of Hercules unluckily appeared engraven on it. ' Onr worship, how- 
 ever,' says Giacomo Bartolini, who was present at this discovery, and relates it, ' was 
 not misplaced, since it was not to the wood we paid it, but to the Prince of the Apostles,
 
 214 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 case, long and learned arguments have been constructed to show, that 
 the greater probability is, that Peter was never in Rome at all ! * We 
 do not wish, however, to urge a point which cannot now be positively 
 decided, and which concerns all parties very little. We are willing 
 to admit, from the general tenor of those fragments of the history 
 of the early Christian church which are extant among us, that it was 
 most generally believed, in the second and third centuries, that Peter, 
 as well as Paul, visited Rome towards the end of his life, and had 
 been martyred there. It is beyond the object and limits of our work 
 to enter further on this subject, especially when we have considered 
 the question fully elsewhere.^ 
 
 The solemn words in which the Apostle refers, at the commence- 
 ment of his last Epistle, to the nearness of his own death, will 
 doubtless be brought to our minds, when we approach the termina- 
 tion of his earthly career. " Knowing that shortly I must put off 
 this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me," 
 (2 Peter i. 14,) seems to imply a prophetic intimation, that he 
 anticipated his decease speedily following the writing of that Epistle. 
 With the exception of this passage, and another which records the 
 language of our Saviour, in which it is signified by what death Peter 
 " should glorify God ;" (John xxi. 18, 19 ;) the writings of the New 
 Testament are entirely silent with regard to his last days. Towards 
 the latter part of Nero's reign, Peter is supposed to have returned to 
 Rome : if so, it was probably to comfort and encourage the Chris- 
 tian community, who were suffering under unheard of and bitter 
 persecutions. A trembling remnant stealthily met in the name of 
 their crucified Master, expecting every time to be offered after his 
 example. The word of God was hindered indeed. It could be 
 preached but in caves underneath the earth, in cellars, and in cata- 
 combs. The name of Christian was a death-warrant ; the life was in 
 jeopardy every hour ; every hour through which a believer survived, 
 was one redeemed from expected death ; men died daily. In the 
 midst of this outward calamity, Peter would be grieved at witnessing 
 the awful apostacy which had thinned the ranks of the faithful, 
 chiefly induced by the arts and subtleties of Simon Magus, who had 
 strangely bewitched the minds of the people, and hardened them 
 against embracing, or holding fast, the truths of the Gospel. With 
 
 St. Peter.' An author, of no mean character, unwilling to give up the holy chair, 
 even after this discovery, as having a place, and a peculiar solemnity among the other 
 saints, has attempted to explain the labours of Hercules in a mystical sense, as 
 emblems representing the future exploits of the Popes. (Luchesini catedra restituita a 
 S. Pietro.) But the ridiculous and distorted conceits of that writer are not worthy our 
 notice, although, by Clement X., they were judged not unworthy a reward." (Bower's 
 Lives of the Popes, vol. i., p. 7, quarto. London, 1750.) 
 
 In the Acts of the Apostles, no mention is made of Peter after the Council of 
 Jerusalem. But from Gal. ii. 11, it appears that after that Council, he was with 
 Paul at Antioch. He is likewise mentioned by the latter, 1 Cor. i. 12 ; iii. 22 : it is 
 generally supposed, that after Peter was at Antioch with Paul, he returned to Jeru- 
 salem. What happened to him after that time, is not recorded in the Scriptures. 
 Eusebius informs us, that Origen wrote to this effect : Peter is supposed to have 
 preached the Gospel to the Jews of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, 
 Cappadocia, and Asia. 
 
 t Elliott's Delineation of Roman Catholicism, p. 630, ct scq. 8vo. London, 1844.
 
 PETER. _'!.'/ 
 
 him Peter thought fit to encounter,* and endeavoured to undeceive 
 the people by discovering the impostures and delusions of that arch- 
 heretic, notwithstanding he was in high repute, both with the peo- 
 ple and the Emperor, who was avowedly the great patron of magi- 
 cians. That he did so, is affirmed by many of the Fathers, f who 
 relate some particular instances in which he baffled and confounded 
 his adversary. The following which we relate is drawn up evidently 
 by Hegesippus, the younger, whom we quote : he was contemporary 
 with Ambrose. Dr. Burton says, " The story has been embellished 
 by so many marvellous circumstances, that some critics have rejected 
 it altogether ; " but, after having given the subject the most mature 
 consideration, he cannot help concluding that this would be to carry 
 our scepticism too far. J " There was at this time at Rome an 
 eminent young person, and a kinsman of the Emperor, lately dead. 
 The fame which Peter had obtained for raising individuals to life, 
 persuaded his friends that he might be called ; others also prevailing 
 that Simon the magician might be sent for. Simon, glad of the 
 occasion to magnify himself before the people, proposed to Peter, 
 that if he raised the deceased from the dead, then Peter, who had so inju- 
 riously provoked ' the great power of God,' as he called himself, should 
 lose his life ; but if Peter prevailed, he would himself submit to the 
 same sentence and fate. Peter accepted the terms, and Simon began his 
 charms and incantations, on which the dead man appeared to move his 
 hand. The people that stood by presently cried out, that he was 
 alive, and that he talked with Simon, and began to fall foul upon 
 Peter, for daring to oppose himself against so great a power. The 
 Apostle entreated their patience ; told them that all this was but a 
 phantasm and appearance, and that if Simon was but taken from the 
 bed-side, all this pageantry would quickly vanish. Simon was accord- 
 ing removed, and the body remained without the least sign of motion. 
 Peter, standing at a good distance from the bed, silently made his 
 address to heaven, and then, before them all, commanded the young 
 man, in the name of the Lord Jesus, to arise, who immediately did 
 so, spoke, walked, and ate, and by the Apostle was restored to his 
 mother. The people who witnessed this, immediately changed their 
 opinions, and fell upon the magician with an intent to stone him. 
 Peter interceded for his life, and told them, that it would be a suffi- 
 cient punishment to him to live and see, in despite of all his power 
 and malice, the kingdom of Christ flourish and increase." 
 
 " That Simon Magus pretended to work miracles, is stated, not 
 only by the Fathers, but by Luke ; (Acts viii. 9 ;) and when we 
 read of his challenging Peter to a trial of their powers, and of his 
 attempting to fly through the air, I cannot see," says Dr. Burton, 
 " that the story is at all at variance with what we know of this 
 impostor, and of the times in which he lived. It is singular that 
 
 * Eusebina, Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 14. 
 
 t Damasc. in Vit. Petr. Cone., vol. i. ; Const. Apost., lib. vi., cap. 8, 9 ; Arnob. 
 Adv. Gent., lib. ii.,p. 23 ; Epipban. Haeres, lib. xxi., cap. 1 : Sulpitii Severi Opera, 
 lib. ii., p. 137. 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. x., p. 294.
 
 216 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 heathen writers* have preserved an account of a person attempting 
 to fly in the reign of Nero, and being killed in the attempt ; and 
 though I would not," he says,f "connect this story with that of Simon 
 Magus, it at least shows, that there is no improbability in supposing 
 a person to have attempted to fly in the reign of Nero.J We are 
 told that Simon Magus undertook such an exploit. Some, perhaps, will 
 still think that the whole of this narration is to be rejected as a fable ; 
 but I cannot help repeating, that the outline of it is probably true ; 
 and that at some time or other Peter exposed a false miracle of 
 Simon Magus at Rome, and was the cause of his death." The 
 account recorded is as follows : 
 
 The impostor being inwardly disappointed and mortified at the 
 former defeat, and vexed in witnessing the triumph of the Apostle, he 
 screwed up all his innate impudence and audacity to the point, and 
 told the people that he was offended at the Galilseans, having been to 
 that people a protector and guardian ; and, in order to vindicate his 
 claims to supernatural powers, he appointed a day, on which he said, 
 they should behold him fly up into heaven. || At the time appointed, 
 he ascended the mount of the Capitol, and, throwing himself from the 
 summit of the rock, began his flight. He is said to have made use 
 of a fiery chariot for his perilous excursion. The attempt at first 
 appeared as if it would succeed. It was a spectacle towards which 
 the people looked with veneration and wonder, who affirmed that this 
 must be the power of God, and not of man. Peter, standing in the 
 crowd, prayed to our Lord, that the multitude might be undeceived, 
 and that the vanity of Simon might be discovered in such a way, that 
 he himself might be sensible of it. Immediately the wings which he 
 had made began to fail, and the impostor fell to the ground : he 
 broke both his legs ; and, miserably wounded and bruised, he was 
 borne to a neighbouring village, where he soon after died.^f By some, 
 
 * Suetonius, Nero, sect, xii., p. 604, quarto ; Dio. Chrys. Or. xxi., p. 371, edit. 
 1604 ; Juvenal, iii., 79. 
 
 t Barton's Lectures on Eccles. Hist., lect. x., p. 295. 
 
 J The case of Icarus will, doubtless, be familiar to many of our readers. He was 
 the son of Daedalus, who, with his father, fled with wings, made with feathers and wax, 
 and carefully fitted to the body. His flight, being too high, proved fatal to him, and the 
 sun melted the wax which cemented his wings, and he fell into that part of the .SCgean 
 Sea which was called after his name. The flight of Daedalus from Crete, with wings, 
 is explained by observing, that he was the inventor of sails, which in his age might 
 pass at a distance for wings. (Ovid. Metam., viii., v. 178, &c.) 
 
 Burton's Bampton Lectures. Note 41, p. 371. Oxford, 1829. 
 
 || Some writers represent the challenge to have been given by the Apostle, others by 
 the impostor. (Const. Apost., vi. 9.) The Constitutions were, probably, written in 
 the fourth century. See Jortin, Discourse vi., on the Christian Religion, and Remarks 
 on Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 148. 8vo. Edit. London, 1846. Lardner's Works, vol. iv., 
 p. 576. Ittigius, de Pseudepigraphis, cap. xii., p. 190. Turner's Discourses on the 
 pretended Apostolical Constitutions. Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., vol. v., p. 33, cum. aliis. 
 
 IT Arnobius, who did not write till the beginning of the fourth century, is the first 
 person who says anything of Simon's death, at all approaching to this story ; nor does he 
 by any means give it with all the particulars which later writers have supplied. It will 
 be observed, also, that Eusebius, who wote after Arnobius, does not say anything 
 of Simon's extraordinary end ; but merely states, that his credit and influence were 
 extinguished, as soon as Peter began to preach in Rome. It is probable, therefore, that 
 no Greek writer, before the time of Eusebius, had mentioned this story ; but, on the 
 other Land, there is a host of evidence, that the death of Simon Magus was in some
 
 PETER. 217 
 
 it ia stated, that he partially recovered from the effects of his fall, but, 
 overcome by shame and vexation, he afterwards destroyed himself, by 
 falling from the top of a house.* 
 
 Such was the fate of this miserable and unhappy man. The news 
 of which no sooner came to the ears of Nero the Emperor, than it 
 hastened the martyrdom of the Apostle. The tyrant, if the testi- 
 mony of Ambrose is to be credited, had previously been displeased 
 with Peter, not only upon the ground of general disagreement and 
 non-conformity on the subject of religion, but because he had rigidly 
 enforced upon all who heard him, the necessity of temperance and 
 chastity ; and had reclaimed so many in Rome from a dissolute and 
 licentious course of life, that it actually checked that wanton libidi- 
 nous disposition to which the Emperor was a slave and vassal. Being 
 deprived of Simon Magus, his companion and favourite, in revenge, 
 he commanded Peter to be apprehended, and cast into the Mamertine 
 prison. f It has been conjectured, that Paul was imprisoned pre- 
 vious to the arrival of Peter ; and it was, perhaps, not long before 
 the latter shared the same fate. Tradition has assigned to both the 
 Apostles the same miserable confinement in the Mamertine prisons ; 
 and some particulars are added, which partake too much of the mar- 
 vellous, of their having converted the two jailors to embrace Chris- 
 tianity. The fatal stroke was now daily expected. In the mean 
 time, it is stated, that the Christians were importunate in soliciting 
 Peter to make his escape, and thus reserve himself for the future 
 exigencies of the church. On the first proposition, he rejected the 
 scheme with disdain, as reflecting severely upon his courage and con- 
 stancy ; but at last the prayers and entreaties of the people led him 
 to yield. Accordingly, the next night, having prayed with and taken 
 farewell of the brethren, he scaled the prison-wall, and on arriving at 
 the city gate, he is said to have met his Lord and Master. Peter 
 said, "Lord, whither art thou going?" from whom he presently 
 received this answer : " I am come to Rome, to be crucified a second 
 time." By this reply, Peter apprehended himself reproved, that our 
 Lord referred to his own death, and that he was again to be crucified in 
 his servant. He immediately returned to the prison, delivered himself 
 into the hands of the keepers, and manifested a cheerful readiness to 
 acquiesce in the will of the Most High.(| Before suffering, he was 
 
 way or other connected with the presence of Peter at Rome, that we might he carrying 
 our scepticism too far, if we rejected it altogether. (Enseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. ii., cap. 
 13.) Perhaps the relation of Eusebius, so far aa it is supported by Justin Martyr, may 
 enable us to ascertain the truth. (Barton's Bampton Lectures.) 
 
 * TiUemont Memoires, torn. 1., p. 185. Art. xxxiv. 4to. Paris, 1692. 
 
 t For a lucid account of the Mamertine prisons in Rome, see " A Description 
 of the Antiquities and other Curiosities of Rome." By the Rev. Edward Barton, M.A., 
 (D.D.) Pp. 26 32. 8vo. edit. Oxford, 1821. 
 
 t Barium ccles. Annal., ad an. 68, sect. 23. 
 
 " It might be expected, that this part of the history of Peter would be embellished 
 by Roman writers ; and though few stories have been oftener repeated than that of his 
 escaping from prison, and being induced to return by an apparition of his heavenly 
 Master, it can hardly be said to rest upon sufficient authority. In these cases, it ia 
 extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate truth from fiction." (Dr. E. Burton.) 
 
 || Among other foolish and absurd stories which a morbid superstition has produced, 
 ia the following : that in the stone upon which onr Lord stood while he talked with 
 VOL. I. 2 F
 
 218 BOOK III. CHAPTER III. 
 
 doubtless scourged, after the manner of the Romans, who were wont 
 first to whip those malefactors who were condemned to the severe 
 and capital punishments. Having saluted his brethren, he was 
 brought out of the prison, and led to the summit of the Vatican 
 Mount, near the Tiber, the place designed for his execution. The 
 death to which he was adjudged was crucifixion, as of all others the 
 most ignominious and terrible ; nevertheless, he entreated the officer, 
 who superintended his martyrdom, that he might not suffer in the 
 ordinary way, but that he might be crucified with his head down- 
 wards,* affirming that he was unworthy to die in the same posture in 
 which his Lord was crucified before him. Peter had witnessed the 
 glory of his Master on Mount Tabor ; that glory was ever blazing 
 before his mental sight, and into that, as a faithful servant, whose 
 work had been well done, he was now called to enter. He received 
 the crown of martyrdom at Rome,f in the same persecution with 
 Paul, in the year 68 of our Lord. 
 
 With regard to the earthly remains of the Apostle, they are said to 
 have been embalmed by Marcellinus, a Presbyter, after the Jewish 
 manner, and interred in the Vatican, near the Triumphal Way ; and 
 that over his grave a church was subsequently erected, which being 
 destroyed by Heliogabalus, his body was removed to the cemetery in 
 the Appian Way, two miles distant from Rome ; there it remained 
 until the time of Cornelius, Bishop of the church in that city, who 
 reconveyed it to the Vatican, where it quietly remained until the time 
 of Constantine, who, out of his great regard for the Christian faith, 
 caused many churches to be erected in the capital, rebuilt and 
 enlarged the Vatican, in honour of the Apostle, and erected a splendid 
 vault for his remains. | 
 
 Thus lived and died Peter ; ever faithful and diligent in his office 
 
 Peter, he left the impression of his feet : this stone has ever since heen preserved as a 
 sacred relic, and, after several translations, was ultimately fixed in the church of St. 
 Sebastian, the martyr, where it is kept and visited with great expressions of reverence 
 and devotion to this day. 
 
 * The punishments inflicted upon the Christians were varioiis : one way to cracify 
 them was with their heads downwards, a harhatity which was practised in the days of 
 Seneca. " Video istic cruces non unius quidem generis, sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas. 
 Alii capite converses in terrain suspeudere ; alii per obsccena stipitem egerunt ; alii 
 brachia patibulo explicuerunt." (Senecae Opera, Consol. ad Marciam, p. 1 23. Antwerp, 
 1632. Fol.) 
 
 t " On the whole, I should be inclined to listen to the tradition of the two Apostles 
 having suffered martyrdom on the same day ; and though there is this material differ- 
 ence in the accounts, that some suppose a year to have intervened between the two 
 events, yet, the coincidence of their suffering on the same day, is still noticed in almost, 
 every tradition upon the subject. The weight of evidence is certainly in favour of their 
 having suffered on the same day, and in the same year ; and though the precise date is 
 by no means settled by chronologists, we are, perhaps, not far from the truth, if we say 
 generally, that their martyrdom took place in the year 67 or 68." (Dr. E. Burton.) 
 See also Mosheim's Eccles. Hist., vol. i., cent, i., book i., part i., chap, v., p. 70. Note 
 by Mnrdock. Soames's edit. London, 1845. 
 
 J Alban Butler gravely tells us, that the heads of the two Apostles are kept in 
 silver bustoes in the church of St. John Lateran, but that one half of the body of each 
 Apostle is deposited together in a rich vault in the great church of St. Paul, on the 
 Ostian road, and the other half of both bodies in a more stately vault in the Vatican 
 church, which place is called, from primitive antiquity, " the confession of St. Peter 
 and Limina Apostolorum," and is resorted to by pilgrims from all parts of Christendom.
 
 PAUL. 
 
 to instruct the ignorant, reprove the erroneous, strengthen the weak, 
 confirm the strong, reclaim the vicious, and to turn many to righte- 
 ousness. Not only did he perform the duty which pertained to him- 
 self, but, as one of the principal superintendents of the church, and 
 as one who was sensible of the value and worth of souls, he was care- 
 ful to remind others of theirs, earnestly persuading and entreating 
 the Pastors and Governors of it, " to feed the flock of God," to take 
 upon them the rule and inspection of it freely and willingly, not 
 having some sinister end in view, but from a sincere desire to benefit 
 the children of men, and to glorify God. In these the holy Apostle 
 was " steadfast and immovable," and " always abounding in the 
 work." Therefore, of all the Apostles of Jesus Christ, Peter pre- 
 sents to us a life the most instructive. Its detail is ample, his cha- 
 racter is thrown prominently forward, and is distinctly marked. 
 Simplicity of mind, and ardour of temper, are its chief features. 
 Hence resulted both his devotion to his Master, and his abandonment 
 of him : an abundance of courage of the heart, but a deficiency of 
 that of the mind. His unsuspecting impetuosity hurried him into 
 professions which he could not keep, and his frankness and good 
 feeling prompted a ready and sincere repentance. He is a character, 
 the very frailties of which win us over. They excite our sympathy, 
 while they command our respect.* He suffered for Christ : he now 
 " rests from his labours, and his works follow him." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 State of the Church at Stephen's Death The Rev. Richard IFatson Saul of Tarsus 
 His Character and Conversion His Birth-place and Parentage His Name- 
 Education And Trade Leaves Damascus on account of Persecution His- 
 tory of that City Paul visits Jerusalem Suspicions of the Church Barna- 
 bas Is introduced to the Apostles Peril from the Hellenist Jews /* taken to 
 Ctesarea Tranquil Slate of the Church Dr. Lardner Petronius Philo 
 Cause of the Cessation of Persecution The Call of Paul to the Gentiles Visits 
 Antioch Agabus Famine Liberality of the Antiochian Christians Paul and 
 Barnabas visit Jerusalem Are set apart by the Holy Ghost Asia Minm 
 Description of the Country Seleucia Cyprus Plan pursued by the Apostles in 
 preaching the Gospel Mark Paphos, its Character Sergius Paulus Elymas 
 Antioch of Pisidia Opposition to the Word Iconium Paul cures a Cripple 
 Idolatrous Homage about to be rendered by the Inhabitants They are restrained 
 by the Apostles Change of Affairs Public Opinion Paul returns to Antioch 
 Controversy on Mosaic Rites Dissension between Paul and Barntbas Timothy 
 Phrygia Galaiia Vision of Paul Philippi Persecution Its Cause Dr. 
 A. Clarke The Apostles are cast into Prison, and commanded to be scourged 
 The Earthquake Its Effects The Magistrates alarmed Paul claims the Privi- 
 lege of a Roman Citizen Propriety of so doing Paul visits Thessalonica 
 Opposition of the Jews Berea The Success of the Gospel Are again assailed 
 by the Jews Athens Character of the Hearers of the Apostle in that City 
 Stoict and Epicureans Dionysius Corinth Banishment of Jews from Rome 
 Aquila and Priscilla Fabulous Accounts of Zacchaiut The ministerial La- 
 
 ' Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 226. 
 
 2 F 2
 
 220 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 hours of Paul at Corinth Persecution at Corinth Lucius Junius Gallio Paul 
 is brought before the Proconsul And is acquitted Revisits Antioch State of 
 Judca at this Period Journeys of Paul Apollos Riot at Ephesus Diana of 
 the Ephesians Effects of the Gospel in the City Revisits Philippi and the 
 neighbouring District Journeys towards Jerusalem Prophetic Intimations 
 Agabus The Inspiration of Paul Arrives at Jerusalem Perilous Situation of 
 the Apostle Means of Conciliation Trophimus Disturbance in the Temple 
 Claudius Lysias Paul is rescued Addresses the Multitude The Tumult is 
 resumed Sicarii Injustice of Claudius Lysias Paul is brought before the San- 
 hedrim Insolence of Ananias Paul's Defence Dissension between the Sad- 
 ducees and Pharisees Desperate Conduct of the Jews Conspiracy to hill Paul 
 Nephew of Paul The Apostle is sent to Caesarea Felix Paul's Defence 
 Venality of the Governor Festus Schemes of the Jews Paul claims the Right 
 of a Roman Appeals to Nero Agrippa Paul is sent to Rome His Condition 
 in that City Reason of his long Residence there Progress of the Gospel Nar- 
 cissus Pomponia Gr&cina Torpetes Poppaea Sabina Paul is liberated His 
 subsequent Journeys His Return to Rome Melancholy State of the Church 
 Paul arrested And beheaded Clemens Romanus Death of Nero. 
 
 WHEN Stephen fell, a great luminary in the Christian world was 
 extinguished. " He was a burning and a shining light ; " but men 
 refused to walk in it, and it was quenched amidst the sighs of the 
 church, and the boisterous exultations of her persecutors. An event 
 so ominous and mournful filled the whole company of the believers 
 with alarm. Devout men, who " carried Stephen to his burial, made 
 great lamentation over him." The members of the despised, but 
 sacred, community at Jerusalem hastened from the storm at this sig- 
 nal, "and were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea 
 and Samaria, except the Apostles." " But," says the Rev. Richard 
 Watson, " whilst the church was crying, ' Help, Lord, for the godly 
 man ceaseth,' Almighty God was preparing to assert his own cause, 
 not in vengeance, but in mercy. He was about to supply the place 
 of Stephen with one of still greater character ; to despatch truth with 
 her arms of light, to seize in the very camp of the enemy a man, 
 whose learning, eloquence, and boldness should elevate the Gospel 
 before the eyes of all the world, and who should equally confound 
 Jew and Gentile with the fact of his conversion and the force of his 
 appeals. That man was Saul of Tarsus, whose name is now not less 
 dear to us, than it was terrible to the first Christians. He is first 
 introduced to our notice by the death of Stephen ; and he, with whom 
 we converse daily, and seem to have contracted a holy and tender 
 friendship, to that death was consenting. More than this, from that 
 moment he became a persecutor himself. In the strong language of 
 the Scripture, 'he made havoc of the church;' he spared neither 
 men nor women, in his merciless bigotry ; and, by the bitterness of 
 his ungodly zeal, the church was scattered as a flock of sheep before 
 the wolf. It was in one of these cruel excursions, that f Saul, yet 
 breathing out threatenings and slaughter,' was arrested, not by judg- 
 ment, but by mercy. His destination was Damascus, and his sanguin- 
 ary commission against all ' of this way.' He was approaching the 
 scene of his anticipated triumphs over the followers of the Nazarene ; 
 but, ' Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther/ was the decision of
 
 PAUL. 221 
 
 one stronger than he. A light from heaven suddenly arrests his 
 attention, and the supernatural brightness prostrates liim to the earth. 
 He hears the voice of Jesus, whom he had been persecuting, and is 
 convinced that He was both Lord and Christ. He is led blind and 
 humbled to Damascus ; the proud scholar of Gamaliel receives 
 instructions from Ananias, and his convictions, operating on an 
 honest, but heretofore mistaken, mind, make him hasten to repair the 
 injuries he had done ; and, at the hazard of his life, he preaches the 
 once-detested name of Jesus, acknowledging, with love unspeakable, 
 that he had obtained mercy, ' who was before a blasphemer, and a 
 persecutor, and injurious.'"* 
 
 Paul was born at Tarsus, the metropolis of Cilicia, a city both rich 
 and populous ; but what contributed to its honour and celebrity, it 
 possessed an academy, or college, furnished with schools of learning, 
 where the scholars were accustomed to apply themselves so closely to 
 their studies, that Strabo informs us, they excelled in all the arts 
 of polite h'terature, and philosophy, so as to surpass other seminaries, 
 even those of Athens and Alexandria. It was a Roman municipium, 
 or free corporation, having been invested with many privileges and 
 immunities by Julius Caesar and Augustus. His parents were Jews, 
 and of the ancient stock, not entering into that community by the 
 gate of proselytism, but originally descended from that nation : this is 
 evidently what he meant, when he represented himself as " an 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews," signifying that either both his parents 
 were Jews, or that all his ancestry had been so. They pertained to 
 the tribe of Benjamin, whose founder was the youngest son of the 
 patriarch Jacob. From his receiving the name of Saul it has been 
 supposed that he was the first-born son of his parents : that he was 
 not their only child, appears from the mention made of his " sister's 
 son." (Acts xxiii. 16.) Whether Andronicus, Junia, and Herodion, 
 whom he terms, <ruyyevs jtxou, (Rom. xvi. 7, 11,) were of the num- 
 ber of his relations by hlood, or only belonged to the same tribe with 
 himself, is a question on which the learned have differed in opinion. 
 We find him described by two names in Scripture, one of Hebrew, 
 and the other of Latin, derivation ; probably referring to his Jewish 
 origin, and to his Roman connexions. Saul was a frequent and com- 
 mon name in the tribe of Benjamin, ever since the first King of 
 Israel, who was so called, was chosen out of that tribe ; and 
 in memory of that event parents gave their children this name at 
 their circumcision. His other name was Paul, which some imagine 
 was assumed at the time he embraced Christianity ; others say that 
 it was adopted in remembrance of the conversion of Sergius Paulus, 
 the Roman Governor, in imitation of the custom generally followed 
 by Emperors and Generals, who took the name of the cities and 
 countries which they had subdued in war, as conferring additional 
 honour and title to themselves ; as Scipio Africanus, Caesar Germani- 
 cus, Parthicus, Sarmaticus, &c. This interpretation is not only too 
 far-fetched to merit any claim to plausibility, but it is utterly iucon- 
 
 * Watson's Works, vol. iii., pp. 3638. 8vo. edit. London, 1834.
 
 222 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 sistent with Paul's character and mission. The conjecture of Origeii * 
 comes nearer the truth ; namely, that this double name was given to 
 him at his circumcision : Saul, relating to his Jewish original, and 
 Paul, referring to his birth-place, a free city of the Roman empire. 
 This idea seems to be countenanced by the Scripture ; where we 
 read, " Saul, who is also called Paul." f (Acts xiii. 9.) This is pro- 
 bably the reason why Luke, when he speaks in connexion with the 
 Jews of Syria, invariably designates him " Saul ; " but subsequently, 
 when he left those parts, and laboured among the Gentiles, he terms 
 him, " Paul," as a cognomen more frequent and familiar. This name 
 is also affixed to his Epistles which were addressed to the Gentile 
 churches ; and, finally, if it were chosen by himself when he entered 
 the Christian community, it was in perfect accordance with the man- 
 ners and customs of the Hebrews, who, on solemn and momentous 
 occasions, and more especially when they embraced a more strict and 
 ascetic mode of life, often changed their names, and assumed one 
 which they had not before. 
 
 In his youth Paul was brought up in the schools of Tarsus, and 
 instructed in those liberal arts and sciences with which the people at 
 that day were conversant. Attempts have been made to show from 
 his writings that he was familiar with Greek literature ; and Dr. Bent- 
 ley has not hesitated to affirm, that " as Moses was learned in all the 
 wisdom of the Egyptians," so it is manifest in this chapter alone, 
 (Acts xxvii.,) if nothing else had been now extant, that St. Paul was 
 a great master in all the learning of the Greeks 4 An authority 
 like that of Bentley, in a question of Greek literature, is not to be 
 lightly set aside ; yet, on referring to the evidence which has been 
 furnished both by himself and others in support of the opinion to 
 which he has lent his sanction, it will not be found to justify the 
 strong and decided language which he has employed. This evidence 
 consists chiefly of a few supposed references, in the discourse alluded 
 to by Dr. Bentley, to certain dogmas of the Greek philosophers ; 
 but even supposing the Apostle to have had these in his eye, it will 
 not follow that he must have studied the writings in which these 
 dogmas were unfolded and defended, because he might have learned 
 enough of them to guide him to such references, from those contro- 
 versial encounters with the philosophers of the Epicureans and Stoics, 
 which we are told he had in the market-place at Athens, previous to 
 the delivering of his oration on the Areopagus ; of allusion to three 
 
 Origen. Praefat. in Epist. ad Romanes. 
 
 t Lightfoot says, that he had a double name, according to his double relation ; the 
 Hebrew name, " Saul," as he was a Hebrew ; the Roman name, " Paul," as a Roman. 
 It was common in the Jewish nation, that, among the Jews, they went by a Jewish 
 name ; but among the Heathens by another ; that is, either by the same name turned 
 into the heathen language ; as Tabitha to the Jews, was Dorcas to them that spake 
 Greek ; and Thomas to the Hebrews, was Didymus to the Greeks ; and perhaps Silas 
 to the Jews, was Tertius to the Romans, (Rom. xvi. 22,) from tinbttJ "three ;" and 
 Jason was Secundus : compare Rom. xvi. 21, with Acts xx. 4. Or they went by some 
 different name ; as Herod, in Luke iii. 1, is Agrippa in Josephus ; and John is also 
 Mark. (Acts xii. 12.) (Works, vol. xii., p. 455. Pitman's edit. 8vo. London, 1825. 
 See Tholuck's Life and Writings of St. Paul. Bib. Cabinet, vol. xxviii., p. 34.) 
 
 t Boyle's Lecture Sermons, vol. i., folio ; Bentley's Confutation of Atheism, Serm. 
 iii., p. 22. London, 1739.
 
 PAUL. 22.3 
 
 quotations made by him from Greek poets, one from the Phenomena 
 of his countryman Aratus, (Acts xvii. 28,) one from a lost play of 
 Menander, (1 Cor. xv. 33,) and one from Epimenides ; (Titus i. 12;) 
 all of which, however, bear the general character of gnomes, or pro- 
 verbs, and might consequently find their way to the Apostle merely 
 as part of the current coin of popular conversation, without his hav- 
 ing once visited the treasury where they were originally drawn ; and 
 also, of certain similarities of idea and expression between some pas- 
 sages of the Apostle, and some that are found in classic authors,* 
 but none of which are of such a nature as necessarily to lead to the 
 conclusion that the coincidence is more than purely accidental. It 
 must be allowed, however, that the mere circumstance of having spent 
 his early years in such a city as Tarsus, could not but exert a very 
 powerful influence on the mind of such a man as Paul, in the way 
 of sharpening his faculties, refining his taste, and enlarging the circle 
 of his sympathies and affections. f Being destined to the pursuits 
 of a Doctor of the Jewish law, he was well instructed from his ear- 
 liest years in the elements of Rabbinical lore. 
 
 Paul was also brought up to a particular trade, according to the 
 great maxim and principle of Jewish law, that " he who teaches not 
 his son a trade, teaches him to be a thief." They thought it not 
 only fitting, but an important part of education, for their wisest and 
 most learned Rabbins to be taught a manual trade. J It is there- 
 fore not at all improbable that when in the schools of Tarsus, he 
 acquired his skill in that handicraft by which, in later years, he fre- 
 quently supported himself. (Acts xviii. 3 ; 1 Cor. iv. 12.) This occu- 
 pation is described by Luke as that of a <rxyjvo7roof, a word regarding 
 the meaning of which there has been no small difference of opinion. 
 Luther makes it a " carpet-maker," and others, " maker of mats 
 or mattrasses ; " Michaelis and Haenlein, " tool-maker ;" Chrysostom 
 and others, " worker in leather ; " Hug and Eichhorn, " maker of 
 tent-cloth ; " but most critics agree with our translators in rendering 
 it " tent-maker." Paul was a student under Gamaliel, a distinguished 
 teacher of the law, who is supposed to be the person, who, under 
 that name, was celebrated in the writings of the Talmudists, as 
 one of the seven teachers to whom the title " Rabban " was given ; 
 he was a member of the Sanhedrim in the early days of Christianity, 
 who by his favourable interference saved the Apostles from an igno- 
 minious death ; and is also said to have occupied a seat in the San- 
 hedrim, if not the presidency, during the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, 
 and Claudius. 
 
 Home's Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, 
 vol. iv., p. 343. Ninth edit. London, 1846. 
 
 t Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, in foe. 
 
 t Nothing was more common in their writings, than to term their learned men from 
 the calling in which they had been brought up ; Rabbi Jose, the tanner ; Rabbi Jocha- 
 nan, the shoemaker ; Rabbi Juda, the baker, <fcc. ; a custom which was taken up by the 
 Cliristians, especially the Monks and ascetics of primitive times, who, with their strict 
 profession, anil almost incredible exercise of devotion, took upon themselves a particular 
 trade, at which they daily wrought, and by their manual labour maintained themselves. 
 (Dr. Cave; see also Tholuck on the Life and Writings of Paul j Bib. Cabinet, vol. 
 xxviii., p. 32.)
 
 224 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Confessedly, Paul possessed great advantages in his character and 
 early history, for the enterprise in which he had engaged ; but, 
 beyond this, his preparation was not of man ; (Gal. i. 12;) he con- 
 ferred not with flesh and blood ; and supernatural sight was vouch- 
 safed for his guidance. Immediately after his conversion, he went 
 from Damascus,* to the neighbouring districts of Arabia, when he 
 probably associated, with the occasional duties of preaching and teach- 
 ing, such exercises of soul in solitude, as might prepare him for 
 entering upon a still wider field of usefulness. From Paul's own 
 showing, he did not stay long in Damascus. He had, as yet, many 
 things to learn. The whole doctrine of remission of sins through 
 faith in the atonement of Christ was novel to him ; and so far from 
 being at present fit for the office of an Apostle, the humblest disciple 
 in Damascus was his superior in knowledge. If the conversion of 
 Paul had been an ordinary circumstance, his obvious course was to 
 have stayed in that city, till he was more fully instructed in the new 
 faith. Ananias was at hand, who would have opened the eyes of his 
 mind, as he had restored his bodily sight ; or he might have returned 
 at once to Jerusalem, and obtained instruction from the Apostles 
 whose lives he had so recently sought ; but he acted under a higher 
 power, which directed all his steps. It pleased God to reveal to him 
 the elements of the Gospel by special illumination ; and as the oppor- 
 tunity occurred, he doubtless endeavoured to extend the knowledge 
 of the truth to others. For the greater part of three years he 
 remained in Arabia and Damascus ; but from the surprise which his 
 presence caused in Jerusalem, it may be naturally inferred that he 
 could not have been long in the latter place, where he certainly 
 preached the Gospel, or the sincerity of his conversion would have 
 been generally known, On his return thither, he went immediately 
 into the synagogues, and publicly proclaimed his belief in Jesus 
 Christ, boldly maintaining him to be the Son of God. " But Paul 
 increased the more in strength," became too powerful a disputant 
 for the most skilful defenders of the ancient faith, " and confounded 
 the Jews which dwelt at Damascus." This people, provoked to the 
 utmost by their oft-repeated dismay, took counsel to put him to 
 death as an apostate from the faith of which he had been the zealous 
 advocate, as well as the commissioned minister of its vengeance on 
 the heretics whose cause he was now defending. In contriving their 
 sanguinary scheme, they procured the support of the government of 
 the city. Damascus being then not in the possession of the Romans, 
 but of Aretas, the father-in-law of Herod Antipas, whose daughter 
 Herod had married, but whom he afterwards repudiated, which event 
 led to a war between those two Princes ; the King of Arabia had 
 selected a Governor, who had jurisdiction over the whole of that part 
 of Syria, and who resided constantly in Damascus. To him the 
 
 * Damascus was a place not more venerable for its antiquity, than it was considerable 
 for strength, stateliness, and situation. If it were not erected by, it gave a title to, 
 Abraham's steward ; and it was the noblest city of all Syria, situated in a most healthy 
 country, and fruitful soil, watered with numerous fountains and streams, rich in mer- 
 chandise, adorned with splendid buildings, magnificent temples, and fortified with strong 
 garrisons ; so that Julian termed it, " the holy and great Damascus." (Dr. Cave.)
 
 PAUL. 225 
 
 Jews addressed themselves ; they probably endeavoured to represent 
 Paul as an offender, or a spy, or otherwise disaffected towards the 
 existing order of things, especially as there was war between that 
 country and Home on account of the affair above referred to. The 
 Governor did not hesitate to assist the Jews, but, with a detachment 
 of the city garrison, kept watch at the gates to apprehend the sus- 
 pected person. The Christians determined to remove Paul from the 
 danger which threatened him ; and, accordingly, one night they placed 
 the future Apostle of the Gentiles in a basket ;* and through the 
 window of one of their houses, contiguous to the high wall which 
 surrounded the city, they let him down on the outside. (Acts be. 21, 
 &c. ; 2 Cor. xi. 32.) 
 
 Paul was cradled in persecution, and rocked by the storm. Having 
 made his escape from Damascus, he took refuge in Jerusalem. Three 
 years had nearly elapsed since the period of his conversion before he 
 had held any communication with the leaders of the church; and 
 this interview he now sought. With all the assurance of Christian 
 faith, and ardent love towards those to whom his religious sympathies 
 led him to cleave, he " assayed " to mingle in a familiar and friendly 
 way with the apostolic company, and also offered himself to their 
 sacred fellowship as a Christian brother and friend. What singular 
 feelings must have attended this visit ! He was returning to it from 
 a spiritual, as Ezra had from a bodily, captivity. What an emotion must 
 have smitten his heart at the first distant view of the temple, that 
 house of sacrifice, that edifice of prophecy ! Its sacrifices had been 
 realized, the Lamb of God had been offered. As he approached the 
 gates, he might have trodden on the very spot where he had assisted 
 at the death of Stephen. When he entered the city, what thoughts, 
 doubtless, were suggested by the haunts of his youth, and by the site 
 of the spots where he had so eagerly sought that knowledge which he 
 had now for ever abandoned ! But the memory of his former state 
 was not more vivid in his own bosom than in those who suffered per- 
 secution at his hands ! His attempts to obtain a hearing from the 
 church were at first abortive. The brethren would not believe, with- 
 out further evidence, a fact so incredible as his conversion. They 
 repulsed his advances, as being some new scheme to involve them in 
 
 * Mr. Addison, a modern traveller, says, that, winding round the walls on the out- 
 skirts of the city, he and his companions came to a point where they were broken at 
 the top, at which Paul is said to have been let down in a basket to escape the indigna- 
 tion of the Jews. From hence, passing on through some pretty lanes, they came to an 
 open green spot, surrounded by trees, over the tops of which were seen the distant 
 summits of Mount Hermon. At this place, they were informed, Saul had arrived, 
 when as he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about 
 him a great light from heaven. These localities are pointed out with the greatest con- 
 fidence by the Damascene Christians of all sects, and are held in great veneration ; nor 
 is it difficult to suppose that the true spots have been handed down by tradition among 
 the followers of the cross. The street which is called Straight (Acts is. 11) is still 
 found in Damascus, or at any rate a street bearing that name. Mr. Addison says it is 
 a mile in length, and so called because it leads direct from the gate to the castle or 
 palace of the Pasha. The house of Judas, also, to which Ananias went, is still pointed 
 out, as well as that of Ananias himself. How much credulity may have had to do in 
 fixing on and perpetuating the recollection of these localities, it ia probably easier to 
 suspect than to ascertain. (See Addison, C.G., Damascus and Palmyra, vol. ii., p. !'-', 
 et seq. ; Kitto's Bib. Cyclop.) 
 
 VOL. I. 2 G
 
 226 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 difficulties, and perhaps render them liable to a punishment which 
 their prudence had hitherto enabled them to escape. " They were 
 all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple." (Acts 
 ix. 26.) In this painful dilemma, to be answered by silence, aversion, 
 and suspicious looks, by men whose bosoms he knew were full of 
 frankness and charity ; to be cast out as a hypocrite by the Apostles 
 of that faith for which he had sacrificed all earthly prospects ; to be 
 kept at a distance by his partners in everlasting life, and to be hin- 
 dered by past evil from accomplishing present good; Paul suffered 
 not himself to be disheartened. Providentially, he was found by 
 Barnabas, who being, like Paul, a Hellenist Jew, and not unlikely 
 acquainted with him, naturally felt some sympathy with an indivi- 
 dual whose country was only a few miles distant from his own. Bar- 
 nabas soon found in Paul the indubitable signs of a real convert, and 
 of a regenerated and sanctified mind, and hesitated not to introduce 
 him to the Apostles, Peter, and James the Lord's brother, for with 
 these alone did Paul commune : the rest of the Apostles were probably 
 absent from Jerusalem at that time. " And he was with them coming 
 in and going out at Jerusalem." (Acts ix. 28.) Imitating the spirit of 
 the proto-martyr, whose death he had himself been instrumental in effect- 
 ing, " he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed 
 against the Hellenists," doubtless the same persons among whom he 
 had himself formerly been enrolled as a violent and uncompromising 
 opposer of that faith which he was now advocating. By these peo- 
 ple he was received with all that vindictive hate which their carnal 
 and depraved hearts could stir up, and he was at once denounced to 
 the Jewish community as a vile apostate. To prove, that, although 
 Paul might see proper to alter his views, and embrace the truth, they 
 had not done so ; forthwith these Hellenists resolved to punish the bold 
 disowner of his father's faith, by a martyrdom similar to that of Ste- 
 phen ; but the disciples heard of his danger, and provided for his 
 escape. The civil authority, also, was held at present with too tight 
 a hand for these bigots to settle the question with Paul in the same 
 summary manner as they had done with Stephen, although their 
 rage must have been much more furious against an open apostate 
 from their party. Their secret machinations were fully as dan- 
 gerous as those of their brethren of Damascus. Paul was therefore 
 withdrawn from the perilous ground, and conducted by the disciples 
 to Csesarea, whence he sailed for his native town of Tarsus, probably 
 the first visit he had made to it since the day on which he departed 
 from his father's house to go to Jerusalem as a student of Jewish 
 theology. 
 
 Luke, in a few words, gives a delightful picture of the period 
 which followed the conversion of the man of Tarsus : " Then had 
 the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and 
 were edified ; and, walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the com- 
 fort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." (Acts ix. 31.) The Evan- 
 gelist does not specify to what particular period of time he meant 
 this description to apply ; but he adds nothing which would hinder 
 us from extending it to the whole interval of time between the con-
 
 PAUL. 227 
 
 version of Saul, and his being subsequently brought to Antioch by 
 Barnabas : nevertheless several reasons have been assigned for this 
 cessation of open hostilities from without. In the first place, the 
 individual who had been the most active in exciting the persecution, 
 who was, in short, its leader, and who was the best qualified to carry 
 it on, had been converted to the truth as it is in Jesus ; he had not 
 only ceased his opposition, but had been removed from Judea, so 
 that his presence in the metropolis no longer excited the ani- 
 mosity and displeasure of the populace. But, in the second place, 
 it is not improbable that the civil state of things in Judea contri- 
 buted much to direct the attention of the Jews to affairs which 
 related to themselves, in a manner which excited the deepest interest. 
 Dr. Lardner gives the following account of this event : " Soon 
 after Caligula's accession, the Jews at Alexandria suffered very 
 much from the Egyptians in that city, and at length their oratories 
 were all destroyed. In the third year of that Emperor's reign, 
 Petronius was sent into Syria, with orders to set up the statue of 
 Caligula in the temple at Jerusalem. This was to the Jews a thun- 
 der-stroke. They must have been too much engaged after this to 
 mind anything else, as may appear from the accounts which Philo 
 and Josephus have given us of this affair. Josephus says, ' That 
 Caligula ordered Petronius to go with an army to Jerusalem, to set 
 up his statue in the temple there; enjoining him, if the Jews 
 opposed it, to put to death all who made any resistance, and to make 
 all the rest of the nation slaves. Petronius, therefore, marched from 
 Antioch into Judea with three legions, and a large body of auxiliaries, 
 raised in Syria. All were hereupon filled with consternation, the 
 army being come as far as Ptolemais.'" * Philo gives the same 
 account of the alarm as Josephus. He describes the Jews, " as aban- 
 doning their cities and villages and open country, as going to Petro- 
 nius in Phoenicia, both men and women, the old, the young, the 
 middle-aged ; as throwing themselves on the ground before Petronius 
 with weeping and lamentation." ) An industrious commentator has 
 well observed, | the effect of this movement in diverting the 
 minds of the persecutors from the Christians can be easily con- 
 ceived. The prospect that the images of the Roman Emperor 
 were about to be set up by violence in the temple, or that, in case of 
 resistance, death or slavery was to be their portion, together with the 
 advance of a large army to execute that purpose, all tended to throw 
 the country into alarm. By the providence of God, this event drew 
 aside the attention of the bloody-minded persecutors from a feeble and 
 a bleeding church. Anxious for their own safety, the Jews ceased to 
 afflict the Christians ; and thus by the conversion of the main instru- 
 ment in persecution, and by the universal alarm for the welfare of the 
 nation, the trembling and infant church was permitted to obtain 
 repose. 
 
 It was during the continuance of Paul at Tarsus, that the first 
 
 Lardner's Works, vol. 1., pp. 101, 102. London edit., 1829. 
 t Philo De Legat. ad Cai., pp. 1024, 1025. 
 I Barnes's Notes on the Acts, <fee., in loco. 
 
 2 G 2
 
 228 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 great call of the Gentiles had been made through the instrumentality 
 of Peter. Divine wisdom was manifest in this event. Though the 
 twelve evidently were not intended to labour to any great extent in the 
 Gentile field, it was nevertheless most fitting that the first entrance 
 into it should be achieved by those who had been directed and per- 
 sonally commissioned by the Saviour himself, and who, on account 
 of having enjoyed his bodily presence for so long a time, were most 
 qualified to judge of the propriety of a movement which was at once 
 novel and unprecedented. This attempt having been made, and 
 proved to be cheering and successful, and the controversy resulting 
 thereupon having been decided, the way was now fully open for the 
 complete extension of the glorious Gospel among the Gentiles. The 
 Apostles, hearing in Jerusalem of the happy effects which had fol- 
 lowed the attempt of some Hellenistic refugees from the perse- 
 cution at the time of Stephen's martyrdom, who had dih' gently 
 proclaimed the tidings of salvation in Antioch, despatched Barnabas 
 to confirm the good work. Arriving in that city, his heart was 
 glad at witnessing the prosperity which had crowned the labours of 
 those who, in the midst of a fiery persecution which had driven them 
 from Jerusalem, had notwithstanding dropped a seed, the result 
 of which was now white unto harvest. Barnabas soon saw and felt the 
 want of zealous, indefatigable, and efficient labourers ; of those whose 
 education and habits would fit them, not only to labour among the 
 professors of the Jewish faith, but also to communicate the doctrines 
 of Christ to the Greeks. His eye was immediately fixed upon Paul, 
 whose daring zeal and masterly learning had been so signally dis- 
 played among the Hellenistic adversaries of the cross at Jerusalem, 
 and with whom he had formerly been united. He was invited, and 
 the invitation was cordially accepted. They immediately returned to 
 Antioch, and earnestly devoted themselves to their interesting and 
 important duties. 
 
 After Paul had been labouring some time in Antioch, there came 
 down to that city from Jerusalem certain persons endued with the 
 spirit of prophecy ; among whom was one named Agabus, who, 
 under the influence of inspiration, made known that there was speed- 
 ily approaching a great famine.* This prediction was fulfilled in the 
 positive infliction of the calamity in the days of Claudius Csesar. 
 The Christian society of Antioch resolved upon assisting their bre- 
 thren in Judea ; and all having contributed according to their abi- 
 lity, Paul and Barnabas were commissioned to convey their bounty to 
 the metropolis. On their return, they continued to labour at Antioch, 
 in company with several other Prophets and Teachers, of whom are 
 mentioned Simeon, who had the Roman surname of Niger, Lucius the 
 
 Some writers suppose that the famine was general ; hut most modern commentators 
 uoite in understanding that the large terms of the original apply not to the whole world, 
 nor even to all the Roman empire, but, as in Luke ii. 1, to Judea only. Statements 
 respecting four famines, which occurred in the reign of Claudius, are produced by the 
 commentators who support this view ; and as all the countries put together would not 
 make up a tenth part of even the Roman empire, they think it plain that the words 
 must be understood to apply to that famine which in the fourth yeaj of Claudius over- 
 spread Palestine. (Kitto.)
 
 PAUL. 229 
 
 Cyrenian, and Manaen, a foster-brother of Herod the Tetrarch, until, 
 during one of their common ministrations, the Holy Spirit revealed 
 his will to certain brethren, that Paul and Barnabas should be conse- 
 crated for the work to which he had called them. The work was, 
 of course, well understood ; it was that for which Paul had already 
 received a commission ; namely, " to open the eyes of the Gentiles, 
 to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan 
 unto God." The brethren, therefore, understanding the nature and 
 object of the command, consecrated both Paul and Barnabas for their 
 missionary tour ; and, after fasting and prayer, in which they supplicated 
 the blessing of God upon them and their labours, they " laid their 
 hands on them," and " sent them away." The province designed for 
 them by the Spirit was Asia Minor. Its ancient and wealthy cities 
 abounded with Jews, and from long civilization the Gentiles were in 
 such an advanced state as to be ashamed of their childish and comfort- 
 less idolatry. On its eastern part it was open to unlimited communica- 
 tion with the rest of Asia ; on its western it had intercourse, not only 
 with Greece, but even with the distant west of Europe, where, in no 
 long time after this, the earliest Gallic Churches founded along the 
 course of the Rhone, looked hitherward for their origin. Thus, the soil 
 was not only fertile in itself, but so situated, that the seed of the word 
 might hence be flung far and wide over the rest of the earth.* The Most 
 High had, doubtless, wise reasons for laying the foundations of the 
 Gospel deep in Palestine, and for not extending it into other coun- 
 tries, till it was firmly established in Judea. If we could dive into 
 the divine counsels, we should see, that the time did not arrive earlier 
 for the Gentiles to be converted ; we should see, that if the Apostles 
 had left the Jews to their prejudices, and gone at once into distant 
 countries, their success would not have been the same. We may not 
 at present see the reason of this, and human wisdom might have 
 expected a different course ; but when the conclusions of reason are 
 different from the ways of Providence, we want no farther argument 
 to tell us, that reason is wrong, but that the counsels of God must be 
 right.f 
 
 In this first great missionary tour of the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
 he descended from Antioch, in company with Barnabas, and set sail 
 for Seleucia, and from thence to Cyprus. It might have been 
 expected that Paul's first care would have been to visit his country- 
 men in Cilicia, more especially as it lay on his road to the places 
 where he ultimately preached. He, however, went by sea, which 
 confirms the notion, that he had previously planted the Gospel in the 
 neighbourhood : this fact is still more apparent, when we con- 
 sider that he commenced his second journey by confirming the 
 churches in Syria and Cilicia; (Acts xv. 41 ;) an expression which 
 implies that this was not the first time of his visiting them. It is 
 probable, that this line of route was suggested by Barnabas, who was 
 a native of Cyprus ; and as the Gospel had been introduced into the 
 island shortly after Stephen's death, the way was, probably, prepared 
 
 Evans's Scriptnre Biography, p. 341. 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist, of the First Century, p. 146.
 
 230 BOOK III. CHAPTER *.. 
 
 and open for these messengers of the truth.* Landing at Salamis, 
 on the south-western part of the island, they first preached in the 
 synagogue of the Jews, who were very numerous, and constituted a 
 large proportion of the population of the isle. The method observed by 
 the Apostles in all the places to which they came, was the same with 
 that which continued to be pursued by Paul throughout the whole 
 of his apostleship. Wherever there were Jews, in conformity with 
 the divine procedure, and the injunction of the Saviour, they went 
 into their synagogues, and made known the purposes of their mission. f 
 Those of the Jews who received the Gospel, formed the connecting 
 link for addressing the proselytes of the gate, and the idolatrous 
 Gentiles ; and when the members of the synagogues rejected the word 
 of reconciliation which was offered, the Apostles, agreeably to the 
 spirit of the revelation made to Paul, lost no time in ineffectual dis- 
 putations, but forthwith turned to the Gentiles. Here it appears 
 they were joined by Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, who was, pro- 
 bably, staying upon the island at that time, and who now accompanied 
 them as an assistant in the apostolic ministry. Traversing the whole 
 island from east to west, they came to Paphos, a splendid city, famed 
 for the magnificent temple and licentious worship of the Paphian 
 Venus, a deity to whom the whole of Cyprus was consecrated, from 
 which the goddess is said to have derived one of her most numerous 
 designations ; Cypris being a name under which she was frequently 
 worshipped. The females of the island were so completely devoted to 
 her service, not merely in the temple-worship, but also in domestic 
 manners, that, throughout the world, the name " Cyprian woman " 
 is but another word for one who is abandoned to every species of 
 voluptuousness. The worship of this deity the Apostles came 
 avowedly to destroy, and to establish in its place a faith, whose lead- 
 ing principle was purity of heart and life. In this city resided 
 Sergius Paulus, the Proconsul of the island ; a man of considerable 
 wisdom and prudence, but miserably seduced by the wicked artifices of 
 Bar-Jesus, a Jewish impostor, who called himself Elymas. This man, 
 apprehending the nature of the doctrines taught by the Apostles to 
 be in no degree advantageous to his schemes of self-aggrandizement 
 
 * This remark is not intended to give any countenance to the tradition of Lazarus 
 having gone to Cyprus after the martyrdom of Stephen, and having been Bishop of the 
 church at Cytoeum for thirty years. Epiphanius has preserved a tradition of Lazarus 
 having lived thirty years after his resurrection ; (Haer., Ixvi. 34, p. 652 ;) hut he saya 
 nothing of his residence in Cyprus, though he was likely to have heard of it, having 
 been himself the metropolitan Bishop in that island. See Tillemont's Memoiros, torn. 
 ii., p. 59. Natalia Alexander, Saec. I., Dissert, xvi., p. 608. 
 
 t To the Jews, in the first instance, were committed the oracles of God. Our 
 Saviour himself was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; and in commanding 
 his disciples to go forth to preach the Gospel, he suhjoined, " beginning at Jerusalem." 
 In agreement with these indications of the divine will, the Apostle Paul describes (Rom. 
 i. 16) the Gospel as the power of God to salvation, " to the Jew first ;" and in the 
 fulfilment of his office, his attention was directed first to his own countrymen. These 
 particulars are interesting as matters of history, and as illustrative of the character of the 
 divine dispensations ; and, taken in connexion with the remarkable distinction, in the 
 commission of the Apostles, between, the circumcision and the uucircumcision, (Gal. ii. 
 9,) they seem to impose an obligation upon Christian churches in all ages, to direct their 
 collective wisdom for the benefit of the Jews, in imitation of the apostolic model. 
 (Welsh's Elements.)
 
 PAUL. 231 
 
 and favour, saw with alarm, that they were taking hold of the mind 
 of the Proconsul, and endeavoured to frustrate their influence. 
 Beholding this, Paul fixed his eyes on the miserable impostor, and, 
 with hallowed indignation, denounced an awful punishment. (Acts 
 xiii. 10, 1J.) Sergius professed faith in Jesus; and his name is 
 deserving of record, as being the first idolatrous Gentile who was 
 admitted to the Gospel.* 
 
 From Cyprus, after a voyage of about two hundred miles, they 
 reached Perga in Pamphylia : here they parted company with Mark, 
 who appears to have abandoned Paul and Barnabas at the very thres- 
 hold of their mission. The prospect was undoubtedly one of toil and 
 danger ; but, undismayed, they pushed into the interior, and arrived at 
 the Pisidian Antioch. The history of their proceedings in this city 
 is a specimen of the course of their ministry in most of the towns 
 through which they passed. They opened their commission with 
 preaching in the synagogue to the Jews. Among these they made a 
 certain number of converts, and laid the foundations of a church. 
 They continued in the city throughout the week : in the mean time, 
 the fame of their doctrines and their eloquence extended far and near, 
 so that when the next Sabbath arrived, almost the whole city swarmed 
 around the synagogue, to hear " the word of this salvation." The 
 unbelieving Jews were filled with envy, so that when Paul renewed 
 his discourse, they openly disputed with him, denied his conclusions, 
 abused his doctrine, and resisted with violence and blasphemy any 
 further preaching of the truth among them. The Apostles then 
 quitted the synagogue, and betook themselves to the Gentiles, who 
 heard and received the word with joy. But as the means of admission 
 into the kingdom of God which they preached, was the sanctification 
 of the Spirit, and not the circumcision of the flesh, the bigoted Jews, 
 considering this as proclaiming the abrogation of the law of Moses, 
 were filled with greater rage than before, which increased in propor- 
 tion to the progress of the faith of Christ ; a great disturbance was 
 raised, the result of which was, the Apostles were driven out of the 
 city. " But they shook off" the dust of their feet against them, and 
 came unto Iconium." (Acts xiii. 51.) 
 
 Iconium was the capital of Lycaonia, and is mentioned by several 
 classical writers as a place of considerable importance ; but nothing 
 definite is known at the present day of its former size and character. 
 At first, the Apostles were received with cordiality and joy, Almighty 
 God affixing his seal to the doctrine they delivered, by " many signs 
 and wonders ;" but Jewish malice speedily was displayed, tumult and 
 sedition were excited, and the Apostles compelled to escape for their 
 lives to Lystra, where they not only preached the Gospel in the city, 
 and in its immediate vicinity, but also throughout the neighbouring 
 towns and country. A single miracle, wrought by Paul, opened the 
 
 * Concerning the subsequent history of Sergius, we know nothing authentic. If he 
 continued in the island, he had the opportunity of seeing Barnabas again in the following 
 year ; but we have no account of Paul having again visited Cyprus ; and the story of 
 his taking Sergius with him, when he went several years after into Spain, and appoint- 
 ing him Bishop of Narbonne, in entitled to no credit.
 
 232 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 way before these messengers of glad tidings. In the course of their 
 ministry at Lystra, an object of distress presented itself in the person 
 of an impotent man, who had been a cripple from his birth. He 
 believed the word which the Apostles preached. Paul said to him, 
 with a loud voice, " Stand upright on thy feet : " instantly the man 
 sprang up, and walked. When the multitude saw this wonderful 
 interposition on the man's behalf, they cried out in the Lycaonian 
 dialect, " The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men." 
 (Acts xiv. 11.) Arrested with this idea, they sought to designate the 
 individual deities who had honoured Lystra with their presence, and 
 at once recognised in the stately form and solemn silent bearing of 
 Barnabas, a personification of Jupiter; and Paul, who was the spokes- 
 man, having interested the people by his vivid, burning eloquence, they 
 termed Mercurius, or, by the Greeks, Hermes. Captivated by this 
 conceit, and anxious to testify their gratitude to the gods for this 
 great condescension, the populace formed a solemn sacrificial proces- 
 sion, with oxen and garlands, headed by the Priests of Jupiter, and 
 were proceeding to offer sacrifice to these supposed divine personages, 
 who had veiled their dignity in human shape, when the Apostles, 
 alarmed at this degrading exhibition of that idolatrous spirit, against 
 which they had waged an eternal war, ran in among the people 
 and addressed them. With no little difficulty, the outrageous folly of 
 the inhabitants was stayed. But how soon did the wind change ! 
 Certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who had been following, 
 blood-hound like, the track of the Apostles, came shortly to Lystra, 
 and by the representation which they gave of Paul and Barnabas, 
 the besotted inhabitants were easily persuaded to crown their former 
 absurdity by imbruing their hands in the blood of him they a few 
 moments previous had adored ! Seizing Paul, before he could escape 
 out of their hands, they hurled the stones at him with such effect, 
 that he fell down as if dead ; and then, with considerable alacrity, 
 they dragged him out of the city as a mere carcass. No sooner had 
 the mob dispersed, than the believers gathered around him, probably, 
 for the purpose of interring his remains, when he rose up, to their great 
 joy, and went back with them into the city. Never was there a more 
 clear illustration of the real value and moral force of public opinion, 
 unless we find a similar instance in the case of the Saviour when 
 in Jerusalem, a few hours before the transactions of Gethsemane and 
 Calvary. The crowds rent the air one day with the acclamations of 
 " Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is he that cometh in the 
 name of the Lord ! " on the next, the city rang with the diabolical impre- 
 cations, the unearthly screams, and blood-thirsty shouts of, " Not this 
 man, but Barabbas !" " His blood be upon us and upon our chil- 
 dren !" "Crucify him! crucify him." One moment the men of 
 Lystra exalted the Apostles to the names and honours of the gods ; 
 the next, they were pelted through the streets, and driven out of the 
 city as a nuisance ! So much for the vaunted sagacity, right-minded- 
 ness, benevolence, integrity, and stability, of PUBLIC OPINION ! 
 After visiting Derbe, where they preached the Gospel and instructed 
 many, they returned, and re-visited the cities in which they had
 
 PAUL. 233 
 
 been so shamefully treated, in order to strengthen the faith of the 
 disciples, and to organize the churches. Then, directing their steps 
 to Attalia, a great city south of Perga, on the coast of Pamphylia, 
 founded by Attains Philadelphus, King of Pergamos, they embarked 
 for the coast of Syria, and soon arrived at Antioch, from whence 
 they had been commended to God in this adventurous journey. On 
 their arrival the whole church was gathered together to hear the 
 account of their labours, successes, and prospects. 
 
 After arranging the controversy which had arisen in the church on 
 the subject of the Mosaic rites and ceremonies, Paul resolved with 
 Barnabas to revisit the churches which they had been instrumental in 
 planting ; the latter resolving to take his nephew Mark in company : 
 to this Paul would not consent, on account of Mark having left them 
 in the preceding journey. The dissension between these good men 
 rose high, so that they separated from each other : Barnabas, in com- 
 pany with his nephew, went to Cyprus, his native land ; and Paul 
 made choice of Silas as his companion, and forthwith proceeded on 
 his journey. After confirming the churches in Syria and Cilicia, he 
 went to Derbe and Lystra, where he entered upon the ground of 
 his former labours. This place was rendered remarkable in the 
 history of the church, by supplying the Apostle, in Timothy, with 
 a fellow-labourer whose services were efficient and whose person 
 was dear to him beyond all others, and whom, at his death, 
 he left still carrying on the work of the Gospel in this neigh- 
 bourhood. With this accession to his company, Paul proceeded 
 through the cities of that region which he had before visited ; 
 and then extended his journey far north of his former route, 
 through Phrygia and Galatia, a province which had never before been 
 blessed with the presence of a Christian Missionary. After labouring 
 in his high and holy vocation there, he was inclined to go westward, 
 to the Ionian, or true Asian, shore of the ./Egean, but was withheld by 
 an impulse which he could not resist. " Now when they had gone 
 throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of 
 the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come 
 to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia : but the Spirit suffered 
 them not." (Acts xvi. 6, 7.) Consequently, they continued their 
 westward journey to the shore of the Hellespont and the ^Egean, 
 arriving within the classic region of the Troad, at the modern city 
 of Alexandria Troas, some miles south of that glorious scene of 
 Grecian poetical antiquity, where, thirteen hundred years previous, 
 "Troy was."* Here they rested: while undecided as to the course 
 which they ought to pursue, Paul had a remarkable vision, which con- 
 tained a summons too distinct to be doubted ; there appeared to him 
 a vision in the night, which seemed to utter in a supplicating mood, 
 " Come over into Macedonia and help us ! " This voice was enough 
 to rouse the ardent spirit of the Apostle, and he forthwith warned his 
 attendants of his projects. Here also Luke f joined his company ; 
 
 Bacon's Lives of the Apostles, p. 535. 
 
 t Here they were joined by Luke, as appears from the change in the phraseology, 
 (Acts xvi. 10,) who accompanied them to Philippi, (Acts xvi. 16, 40,) where he proba- 
 VOL. I. 2 H
 
 234 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 for it will be observed, that the historian of the Acts of the Apostles 
 now speaks in the first person of the apostolic band ; and the party, 
 by way of the island of Samothrace and Neapolis, arrived at Philippi. 
 Thus did Europe receive for the first time upon her soil, the impress 
 of the foot of an Apostle of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Jews in this city do not appear to have been numerous ; at 
 least, they had no synagogue in the town : it is here also we meet 
 with the first instance of the heathen authorities offering any serious 
 opposition to the Gospel. Here Paul and his companions stayed 
 several days. Seeking on the Sabbath some place where they could 
 in quietude worship the God of their fathers, they wandered from the 
 busy hum of a pagan city, to a retired place on the banks of a small 
 stream which flowed by the town ; and here, in this quiet place, a 
 few Jewish residents resorted for prayer.* Those who frequented 
 this place of worship are represented as being women. Here Paul 
 and his companions met them, and preached unto them the word of 
 salvation, sent unto all the scattered race of Israel ; and not to them 
 only, but also unto the Gentiles. Among these auditors of " glad 
 tidings of great joy," was a Jewess, named Lydia, who appears to 
 have emigrated from Thyatira, in Lydian Asia, and now carried on in 
 Philippi a trade in the purple dye, for which the region from which 
 she came was celebrated, even from the time of Homer, f While 
 listening to the " truth as it is in Jesus," her heart was opened ; she 
 professed faith, in Christ, and herself was baptized with all her house- 
 hold. She invited the Apostles to her house, where Paul, Silva- 
 nus, Timothy, and Luke, continued during their stay in Philippi. 
 Christianity, thus auspiciously introduced, very shortly had to 
 encounter a storm. An incident soon occurred which brought these 
 messengers of the cross into great notoriety. In their occasional 
 attendance at the place of prayer, they were greatly disturbed by a 
 young woman, who had a spirit of divination, and was maintained 
 by some persons of that city, to whom she brought considerable gains 
 by her " soothsaying : " this woman continually followed the Apos- 
 
 bly remained till Paul visited Macedonia, a third time ; (Acts xx. 36 ;) after which he 
 appears to have accompanied Paul till he came to Rome, (Acts xxviii. 16,) where he was 
 when the Epistles to the Colossians, (Col. iv. 14,) and Philemon, (Phil. 24,) were written, 
 He is not mentioned in the Epistle to the Philippians ; but he was with Paul at Rome, 
 when he wrote the second Epistle to Timothy ; (2 Tim. iv. 11;) after which we have no 
 farther notice respecting him in the sacred volume. From a comparison of Col. iv. 10, 
 11, 14, and Acts i. 19, it appears that he was not a Jew. See Paley's Horse Paulina-, 
 p. 148. Tate's edition. (Welsh's Elements.) 
 
 The Jews had three sorts of places for their public worship : the temple at Jerusalem, 
 which was like the cathedral, or mother-church, where all sacrifices and oblations were 
 offered, and where all males were bound three times a year personally to pay their devo- 
 tion ; their synagogues, many of which they had almost in every place, not unlike our 
 parochial churches, where the Scriptures were read and expounded, and the people taught 
 their duty. (Acts xv. 21.) And then they had their proseuchce, or oratories, which were 
 like chapels of ease to then- temple and synagogues, where the people were wont to 
 come solemnly to offer up their prayers unto heaven. They were erected without the 
 city, in the open air, and uncovered, being large, spacious places, after the manner 
 of fora, or market-places. (Dr. Cave.) See also Lardner's Works, vol. i., p. 115. 
 8vo. edit. London, 1831. 
 
 t See an elaborate article on dye in Kitto'a Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, sub 
 voce, Purple.
 
 PAUL. 235 
 
 ties, saying, "These are the servants of the Most High God, which 
 show unto us the way of salvation." All this was strictly true ; but it 
 was a testimony very suspicious in such a case, and was given with 
 that subtilty and cunning which are peculiar to the great deceiver, 
 who never bears, says Dr. A. Clarke, witness to the truth, but 
 when he designs to injure it. He well knew, that in the Jewish 
 law, all magic, incantations, magical rites, and dealings with familiar 
 spirits, were strictly forbidden : he therefore bore, what was in itself, 
 a true testimony, that he might ruin the credit of the Apostles. By 
 such a declaration, from such a quarter, the Jews would be led to 
 believe that the Apostles were in compact with these demons ; and 
 that the miracles which they worked, were performed by the agency 
 of these wicked spirits ; and that the whole was the effect of magic, 
 and this would necessarily harden their hearts against the preaching 
 of the Gospel. On the other hand, the Gentiles, finding that their 
 own demon bore testimony to the Apostles, would naturally consider 
 that the whole was one system ; that they had nothing to learn, 
 nothing to correct ; and thus, to them, the preaching of the Apostles 
 must be useless. 
 
 In such circumstances as these, continues Dr. Clarke, nothing 
 could have saved the credit of the Apostles, but their dispossessing 
 this woman of her familiar spirit, and that in the most incontestable 
 manner : for what could have saved the credit of Moses and of Aaron, 
 when the magicians of Egypt turned their rods into serpents, had not 
 Aaron's rod devoured them ? And what could have saved the credit 
 of these Apostles, but the casting out this spirit of divination ; with 
 which, otherwise, both Jews and Gentiles would have believed them 
 in compact ? Paul, being grieved, and probably on these accounts, 
 turned to the spirit, and commanded him, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
 to come out of her ; * and he came out in the same hour ; and from 
 thenceforward the young woman was rendered totally incapable of 
 acting the part she had before done ; and the source whence her 
 masters had derived so much gain, was now most evidently closed up. 
 This inflamed them to madness : therefore, violently seizing the 
 Apostles, they dragged them before the Magistrates, and accused them 
 of turbulent and seditious designs. The Magistrates, without 
 acquainting themselves with the merits of the case, ordered their 
 
 The believer hopes and expects to discover a beantiful propriety in every part of 
 the Christian scheme ; and when he does not perceive it, still he infers its existence. 
 Thus, observing that of the two kinds of demoniacal possession, onr Saviour frequently 
 exerted his power over those afflicted with the malady so characterized, while the 
 exercise of a similar power over those visited by a spirit of divination was reserved for 
 his Apostle to the Gentiles ; one is naturally prompted to look for some mark of propriety 
 and consistency in the arrangement. Such may, perhaps, be found by contemplating 
 the difference of character in the ministry of Christ and of his Apostles, guided by his 
 Spirit. It was the business of the former to do the work of redemption, of the latter 
 to instruct men in it. The ministry of Christ, therefore, would be directed generally 
 against all the evil and hurtful agency of the devil ; the ministry of the Apostles more 
 particularly against the propagation of falsehood. The former would naturally counter- 
 act the works of Satan, the latter his words, as conveyed through agents, such as was 
 the rescued Pythoness. (Hiuds's History of the Rise and Karly Progress of Christianity, 
 p. 211. Second Edit. London, 1846.) 
 
 2 H 2
 
 2.)<) BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 clothes to be torn off,* and them to be scourged. When this was done, 
 (and it appears to have been executed with as little mercy as justice,) 
 they were thrust into prison ; and the jailer, receiving the strictest 
 charge to keep them safely, put them into the dungeon,f and made 
 their feet fast in the stocks. J A good man can turn a prison into a 
 sanctuary, and a den of thieves into a house of prayer. 
 
 At midnight the Apostles were overheard by their fellow-prisoners 
 praying and singing hymns to God, who had counted them worthy to 
 suffer thus for his name. In the midst of their joyous celebration of 
 this persecution, while their astonished fellow-prisoners, awoke from 
 their slumbers by this strange and unheard-of concert, were listening 
 in amazement to this manifestation of the manner of spirit with 
 which their new companions were disposed to meet their distresses, a 
 mighty earthquake shook the city, and heaved the whole prison-walls 
 on their foundations, so that all the firmly-barred doors were burst 
 open, and, what was still more remarkable, all the chains fell from 
 the prisoners. The jailer, awaking in the midst of this tremendous 
 crash, concluded with himself that the prisoners had fled ; and, to 
 prevent the sentence of public justice, was going to lay violent hands 
 upon himself in a fit of vexation and despair, || had not Paul, who had 
 witnessed through the darkness the tremulous and frenzied actions 
 of the miserable man, called out to him, in a clear and distinct voice, 
 amid the dreadful noise, confusion, and dust, " Do thyself no harm, 
 for we are all here !" The Apostles embraced this opportunity of 
 preaching Christ, in answer to the jailer's question, " What must I 
 do to be saved?" ^[ and the result was most satisfactory. He who 
 
 * When persons were ordered to be scourged, it was customary for those who were to 
 inflict the punishment, to pull off their clothes with violence, not minding even if they 
 were torn in the operation. This seems to have been customary among the Jews themselves. 
 
 t See a Sermon by Dr. Adam Clarke, entitled " Salvation by Fakh." Sermons, vol. 
 iii., p. 238. 8vo. edit. London, 1830. 
 
 j The word "stocks" with us denotes a machine made of two pieces of timber, 
 between which the feet of the criminals are placed, and in which they are thus made 
 secure. The account here does not imply necessarily that they were secured pre- 
 cisely in this way, but that they were fastened, or secured by the feet, probably by 
 cords, to a piece or beam of wood, so that they could not escape. It is supposed 
 that the legs of the prisoners were bound to large pieces of wood, which not only 
 encumbered them, but which often were so placed as to extend their feet to a consider- 
 able distance. In this condition it might be necessary for them to lie on their backs : 
 and if this, as is probable, was on the cold ground, after their severe scourging, their 
 bufferings must hare been great. 
 
 Milites si amiserint custodias, ipsi in periculmu deducuntur, 1. sdi., ff. De Custod. 
 et Exhib. reor., tit. iii. It was customary to hold a jailer responsible for the safe keep- 
 ing of his prisoners, and to subject him to the punishment due to them if he suffered 
 them to escape. 
 
 || It was common and approved among the Greeks and Romans for a man to commit 
 suicide when he was encompassed with dangers from which he could not escape. Thus 
 Cato was guilty of self-murder in Utica ; and thus, at this very place, at Philippi, Brutus 
 and Cassius, and many of their friends, fell on their own swords, and ended their lives 
 by suicide. The custom was thus sanctioned by the authority and example of the great : 
 and we are not to wonder that the jailer, in the moment of alarm, should also attempt 
 to destroy his own life. It is not one of the least benefits of Christianity, that it has 
 proclaimed the evil of self-murder ; and that it has done so much to drive it from tho 
 world. (A. Barnes's Notes.) 
 
 If Does this strong inquiry refer to personal or eternal safety ? Is it the body or the 
 soul that is in a state of danger ? " The jailer had seen, notwithstanding tJie prisou
 
 PAUL. 237 
 
 had just before tyrannized over these men of God with merciless and 
 cruel usage, now treats them with kindness and charity ; he brought 
 them out of the dungeon, and washed their stripes and wounds ; and 
 being more fully instructed in the principles of the Christian faith, 
 the jailer and all his family were baptized. 
 
 When it was day, the Magistrates sent the officers of justice, the 
 Serjeants, or literally, those having the rods, the Lictors, who went 
 before the Magistrates in procession, bearing the emblems of autho- 
 rity, with a verbal order for the release of the two prisoners, of whose 
 shameful treatment they appear, after a night's reflection, to be fully 
 convinced, and also heartily ashamed. Their apparent repentance 
 might also have been induced by the terrors of the night ; for both 
 the Greeks and the Romans were accustomed to consider an earth- 
 quake an expression of the anger of an offended Deity : conscience, 
 therefore, would not hesitate to reproach these men in authority for 
 this flagrant mal-usage of two friendless strangers. Paul was in- 
 dignant at such an insult being added to so much deep-seated injury, 
 and replied to these myrmidons of the law, " They have beaten us 
 openly uncondemned, being Romans,* and have cast us into pri- 
 son ; and now do they thrust us out privily ? nay, verily ; but let 
 them come themselves and fetch us out. And the Sergeants told 
 these words unto the Magistrates : and they feared, when they heard 
 that they were Romans." (Acts xvi. 37, 38.) And well they might ! 
 
 doors had been miraculously opened, and the bands of all the prisoners loosed, that not 
 one of them had escaped ; hence he could not feel himself in danger of losing his life 
 on that account ; and consequently it cannot be his personal safety about which he 
 inquires. He could not but have known that these Apostles had been for some time 
 preaching at Philippi what they called the doctrine of salvation ; to this the Pythoness had 
 alluded : ' These are the servants of the most High God which show unto us the way 
 of salvation.' And he knew that it was for casting the demon out of this woman, that 
 they were delivered into his custody : all this is sufficiently evident. The Spirit of God 
 appears to have convinced his heart that he was lost, was in a state of the most imminent 
 spiritual danger, and needed salvation ; and therefore his earnest inquiry was, how he 
 should obtain it. The answer of the Apostles shows that his inquiry was not about his 
 personal safety, as his believing on the Lord Jesus could have had no effect upon that in 
 his present circumstances ; for as none of the prisoners had escaped, and he saw that 
 this was the case, neither he nor his family could have been in personal danger ; and 
 if they had, the answer of the Apostles would have been as impertinent on that ground 
 as his question was, had it referred to personal danger, when he must have been con- 
 vinced that nothing of the kind existed. I conclude, therefore, from the circumstances 
 of the Apostles, the circumstances of the jailer, his question, and their answer, that his 
 inquiry concerned the salvation of the soul, and not the safety of his body ; and, being 
 taken in this point of view, it is the most momentous that can interest or arrest the 
 attention of man." 
 
 * " The act of the Magistrates at Philippi was a sudden thing. The order was given 
 without a hearing ; and as soon as it was light the next morning, they sent their 
 officers with directions that the prisoners should be released. They soon repented of 
 what they had done ; and notwithstanding the specious pretences and obnoxious charges 
 of the masters of this damsel, that Paul and Silaa had taught customs which were 
 not lawful for them to observe, they were sensible they had gone beyond their commis- 
 sion, and were apprehensive of being called to an account by a higher authority to 
 which they were subject. This order of release was sent before they had heard that 
 these men were Romans, and whilst they knew no better than that they were mere 
 Jews, and defended by no other privileges than those that belonged to all of that 
 nation. When these Magistrates knew that Paul and Silas were Romans, their concern 
 was still increased, and their own interest obliged them to render all the farther conde- 
 scensions which Paul demanded." (Lardner's Worki, vol. i., pp. 189, 190. 8vo. edit.)
 
 238 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 These corrupt and mercenary conservators of the peace * had violated 
 the sacred privilege of Roman citizenship, a privilege which always 
 shielded its possessor from irregular tyranny, and required, through- 
 out the Roman world, that he should never be subjected to punish- 
 ment, without the most open and formal investigation of the charge ; 
 a privilege, too, the violation of which would bring down upon them 
 the most remorseless vengeance of the Roman power, f Paul, therefore, 
 demanded that their delivery out of prison should be as notorious as 
 the insult, and an open vindication of their innocency. Luke the 
 Evangelist gives a very condensed, but comprehensive, account of the 
 injury that had been inflicted. There were three aggravating circum- 
 stances of which the Apostle bitterly complained. First, they had 
 been beaten, contrary to the Roman law : secondly, this was public ; 
 the disgrace had been in the presence of the people, and the 
 reparation ought to be as extensively made : and, thirdly, all had 
 been perpetrated without a trial, and while they were uncondemned. 
 Paul was well acquainted with the privileges of a Roman citizen ; 
 and at proper times, when the interests of justice and religion de- 
 manded, he did not hesitate to assert them. In all he understood 
 and accorded with the Roman law. The Valerian statute declared, 
 that if a citizen appealed from the Magistrate to the people, it should 
 not be lawful for the officer to beat him with rods, or to behead him. 
 By the Porcian law, it was expressly forbidden that a citizen should 
 be beaten. Cicero did not hesitate to say, that the body of every 
 Roman was inviolable, and that the Porcian edict has removed the 
 rod from every citizen of Rome. In his celebrated oration against 
 Verres, he has the following passage : " A Roman citizen was beaten 
 with rods in the forum, Judges ! where, in the mean time, no 
 groan, no other voice of this unhappy man was heard, except the cry, 
 ' I am a Roman citizen ! ' Take away this hope," says the orator, 
 " take away this defence from the citizens of Rome ; let there be no 
 protection in the cry, ' I am a Roman citizen ! ' and the Praetor can 
 inflict any punishment." Of this immunity the Apostles availed 
 themselves, to the great chagrin and terror of the magistracy, who 
 came to the prison, brought out their mal-treated victims, and respect- 
 fully requested them to depart. All this was fitting and proper : the 
 
 It is not at all unlikely that the Magistrates of cities and towns, who possibly were 
 but a few degrees above the common people, might sometimes approve of those out- 
 rages, and act a part in them : but the Presidents and Proconsuls, men of a larger 
 genius, who had been educated at Rome, and served offices there, who were better 
 acquainted with the Roman Constitution, had a greater charge, and were more imme- 
 diately accountable to the Emperor and Senate for the observation of the edicts, and 
 the peace of the provinces, never, or very rarely, entered into these measures ; but 
 punished such disorderly practices when they happened, and by fresh precepts endea- 
 voured to prevent them for the future. (Lardner's Works, vol. i., p. 189.) 
 
 t The Magistrates had, by their conduct in this matter, violated three important 
 laws, the infraction of which was in general treated with so much severity by the Roman 
 government, that these colonial Magistrates had ample cause for the alarm with which 
 they received the Apostle's message. 1. In punishing them without a trial, they had 
 violated the law, which strictly forbade any citizen to be punished unheard. 2. They 
 had also infringed the Valerian law, which forbade that any Roman citizen should be 
 bound. And, 3. They had acted against the Sempronian, or Porcian law, which 
 exempted a citizen from being punished with rods.
 
 PAUL. 239 
 
 Apostles had been illegally imprisoned, and the injustice of the Magis- 
 trates ought to be condemned ; the law had been violated, and the 
 majesty of the Roman people insulted, and honour ought to be shown 
 to both ; wrong had been done to Paul and Silas, who might justly 
 demand satisfaction and protection ; this public recognition of the 
 injury inflicted would strengthen the new converts, and convince 
 them and the populace, that the Apostles had not been guilty of any 
 violation of law ; it would also tend to the furtherance of the Gospel, 
 by giving a public and an undeniable proof of the innocence and 
 good conduct of its propagators. When the cause of truth requires 
 it, and where submission to injury might be followed by the cause 
 of religion being degraded, we are laid under paramount obligation 
 to seek the vindication and defence of the law, as far as such law throws 
 its shield around the injured and the unprotected. The name and 
 character of the Apostles belonged to the church. Laws are designed 
 to protect an injured name, violated property, or an endangered per- 
 son or life ; and when that protection can only be had by an appeal, 
 as in the case of Paul and Silas, such is neither vindictive nor impro- 
 per. The two prisoners accordingly retired, and, after comforting the 
 brethren, they departed from the city. 
 
 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy went through Amphipolis and Apol- 
 lonia to Thessalonica, which was the largest and most important 
 city they had yet visited in Greece. They stayed here some weeks. 
 In Thessalonica, where the Jews were sufficiently numerous to have a 
 synagogue, we find the usual consequence, that they were the princi- 
 pal opponents of the Apostle's preaching. This scene, indeed, was 
 so invariably acted during Paul's journey through that country, that 
 the statement we have already made, is yet more abundantly corro- 
 borated, that the Jews, on the persecution which arose after Ste- 
 phen's death, sent messengers from Jerusalem, who prejudiced their 
 countrymen everywhere against the Christians. Great numbers, 
 especially of religious proselytes, were converted by the preaching of 
 Paul. Their conceptions of the religion which the Apostles taught, 
 were far more rational than the notions of the Israelites, which led 
 them to picture the Messiah as a mere Jewish conqueror, who should 
 restore the ancient dominion of the long-humbled Judah. Therefore, 
 while the Greeks readily and joyfully accepted the Saviour which the 
 Apostles proposed, the Jews scornfully rejected him, and, " moved 
 with envy," they resorted to their old practice of stirring up a mob : 
 they " took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and 
 gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted 
 the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people." 
 (Acts xvii. 5.)* Paul, both as the chief of the mission, and from the 
 
 " This is precisely the way that persecution against the truth and followers of 
 Christ is still carried on. Some wicked man in the parish gets a wicked Attorney and 
 a Constable to. head a mob, which they themselves have raised, and, having committed a 
 number of .outrages, abusing men and women, haul the Minister of Christ to some 
 Magistrate, who knows as little of his office as he cares for the Gospel : they there 
 charge the outrages which themselves have committed on the Preacher and his peace- 
 able hearers ; and the peacemaker, appointed by a good King, according to the wise 
 and excellent regulations of a sound constitution, forgetting whose minister he if),
 
 240 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 accounts which were industriously circulated among the Jews of his 
 former history, was the butt of their persecution. Having eluded 
 the search of the rioters, they fell upon his host, Jason, and other 
 believers who were in his house, and dragged them, before the Magis- 
 trates, crying, " These that have turned the world upside down are 
 come hither also ; whom Jason hath received : and these all do con- 
 trary to the decrees of Csesar, saying that there is another King, one 
 Jesus." * (Acts xvii. 7.) A more malignant and diabolical accusation 
 could not have been made : it represented the Apostles as the enemies 
 of Caesar ; and it amounted to a distinct charge of a treasonable con- 
 spiracy against the peace and prosperity of the Roman empire, which 
 could not fail to bring down the most disagreeable consequences on 
 the city. The whole of the proceedings against Jason were conducted 
 with a moderation worthy of better and more enlightened times : 
 the Magistrates inflicted no personal restraint, but simply took secu- 
 rity}" of Jason and his companions, that the peace would be preserved, 
 and nothing treasonable attempted, and quietly let them go. In the 
 stillness of the following night, Paul and Silas were conducted by the 
 disciples to Berea. 
 
 After what has been related, it is evident that nothing effective 
 was apparently accomplished at Thessalonica. Berea was also a city 
 in Macedonia, about fifty miles from the former place, exactly west, 
 being on the same line of latitude, and situated on the south of the 
 river Astrseus. On their arrival they visited the synagogue, and 
 found the Jews of a superior character to those mean and mercenary 
 Israelites of Thessalonica, and better able to appreciate the evangelical 
 doctrines inculcated by Paul and Silas. They not only gave the 
 Preachers of the Gospel a patient hearing, but, when the usual refer- 
 ences were made to the Jewish Scriptures, they diligently and prayer- 
 fully examined the various passages, and tested their alleged coinci- 
 
 neither administers justice nor maintains truth ; but, espousing the part of the mob, 
 assumes, ex qfficio, the character of a persecutor. The Preacher is imprisoned, his 
 hearers fined for listening to that Gospel which has not only made them wise unto salva- 
 tion, but also peaceable and orderly citizens ; and which would have had the same effect 
 upon the unprincipled Magistrate, the parish Squire, and the mob, had they heard it with 
 the same reverence and respect. Had I not witnessed," says the writer, " such scenes, 
 and such prostitution of justice, I could not have described them." (Dr. A. Clarke.) 
 
 * " It is evident that there was no disposition, in either the people or the Rulers, to 
 persecute the Apostles. But these wicked Jews, by means of the unprincipled wicked 
 Lawyers, those lewd fellows of the baser sort, (they were, probably, a low kind of 
 Lawyers, what we would call pettifoggers, or Attorneys without principle, who gave advice 
 for a trifle, and fomented disputes and litigations among the people. The Itala 
 Version of the Codex Bezse, calls them quosdam forenses, ' certain Lawyers,') threw 
 the subject into the form of law, making it a state question, in which form the Rulers 
 were obliged to notice it. But they showed their unwillingness to proceed in a matter 
 which they saw arose from malice, by letting Jason and his companions off, on 
 bail." (Dr. A. Clarke.) 
 
 t This is an expression taken from courts, and means, that Jason and the other gave 
 satisfaction to the Magistrates for the good conduct of Paul and Silas, or became respon- 
 sible for it. Whether it was by depositing a sum of money, and by thus giving bail, is 
 not quite clear. The sense is, that they did it in accordance with the Roman usages, 
 and gave sufficient security for the good and peaceable deportment of the Apostles. 
 Henman supposes that the pledge given was, that they should leave the city. Michaelis 
 thinks, that they gave a pledge that they would no longer harbour them ; but that, if 
 they returned, they would deliver them to the Magistrates. (A. Barnes.)
 
 PAUL. 241 
 
 dence with the person and work of Jesus Christ. The result of this 
 candid and patient investigation was, that many of the considerate 
 and pains-taking Jews of Berea professed their faith in the Messiah. 
 But the heralds of the cross were not long suffered to enjoy an unmo- 
 lested and tranquil possession of the field. When the news of the 
 success of the Gospel in Berea reached Thessalonica, those inveterate 
 enemies of all righteousness, the Jews, journeyed to Berea, for the 
 express purpose of ferreting out the Apostles, by a new mob. In 
 this they unhappily succeeded : Paul was sent by the brethren to 
 Athens, Silas and Timothy for a time remained at Berea. 
 
 While the -Apostle of the Gentiles remained in this city, he had to 
 contend with more formidable and novel adversaries. Athens was 
 the principal seat of learning, and of those arts which furnished the 
 chief attraction of idolatry. It was the university of the Roman 
 empire and of the world. At Athens, therefore, it might be expected, 
 that argument, not force, would be opposed to the efforts of the 
 Christian orator ; and that on his part, as dealing with a people 
 accessible in a high degree through their reasoning powers, the words 
 more than the works of the Spirit were employed. Paul appears to 
 have been literally alone ; and, though avowedly a Jew, and the bearer 
 of doctrines directly hostile to polytheism, he went to brave it in its 
 strongest hold, and to challenge discussion in the most learned and 
 philosophical city of Greece. Paul first preached to the Jews and 
 devout Gentiles of the place : his discourses were so much noised 
 abroad, as to attract the attention, not of the magistracy, but of the 
 philosophical idlers. " Idlers," says Dr. Hinds, " because at Athens 
 these speculators formed a body of literary loungers, and presented in 
 the porches, and other places of public resort, a whimsical scene of 
 fashionable relaxation, of which the amusements and conceits were 
 metaphysical and moral discussions. Surrounded by company like 
 this, and possibly unable, from the variety and number of questions 
 addressed to him, to make his meaning understood, Paul was con- 
 ducted, not as a criminal, for of this there is no intimation, but as 
 the promulgator of a new system, to Mars' Hill, and was there desired 
 publicly to explain his views. His speech accordingly bears no marks 
 of a defence, nor was it followed up either by acquittal or condemna- 
 tion, by sentence from a court, or violence from the multitude. At 
 his mention of a resurrection from the dead, the doctrine seems to 
 have struck his audience as so monstrous and preposterous, that he 
 could no longer proceed for the jests and witticisms which it 
 occasioned. His speech is doubtless, therefore, only a part of what 
 he intended to say unto them, and what might thus have proved 
 more generally effectual, had his auditors 'had ears to hear' him 
 out." * The Stoics and Epicureans, f the most popular sects of the 
 
 Hinds's History of the Rise and Early Progress of Christianity, p. 213. Second 
 edition. London. 1846. 
 
 t Stoics were heathen philosophers, who took their name from a Greek word which 
 signifies a porch, or portico, because Zeno, their founder, kept his school in a porch 
 of the city of Athens. It is supposed that Zeno borrowed many of his opinions from 
 the Jewish Scriptures ; but it is certain that Socrates and Plato had taught much of 
 them before. The Stoics generally maintained, that nature impels every man to pursue 
 VOL. I. 2 I
 
 242 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 day, the one recommending itself to the vain-glorious pride of human 
 virtue, the other to the blind sensuality of a degenerate age, and both 
 to its superficial views, as well as to the unrefined and practical 
 character of the Roman, listened in contempt to what this babbling 
 vagabond, as they called him, had to say ; while others, from his 
 preaching Jesus to them, called him an introducer of new gods. 
 Others, perhaps, had their curiosity roused by what had been said, 
 probably thinking the doctrine of the resurrection might in some 
 way be reconciled with their doctrine of metempsychosis, and not 
 as yet prepared to admit the conclusion, said, " We will hear thee 
 again of this matter." (Acts xvii. 32.) The clamour raised by the 
 majority was so violent, that the Apostle was obliged to desist and 
 depart. The word, however, did not return void. Some, arrested 
 by the former part of the discourse, and impressed with the reason- 
 ableness of the latter, became disciples. Among these was Dionysius, 
 in whom the Gospel, thus exposed in all the weakness to which 
 it could possibly be reduced by the absence of every worldly help 
 or recommendation, achieved its proudest conquest over the humaa 
 mind on the philosophic soil of the fellow-countrymen of Socrates, 
 Plato, and Aristotle.* 
 
 From Athens the Apostle went to Corinth, and, as usual, opened 
 his mission in the synagogue, where at first he met with considerable 
 success. The Corinth of which we read in the New Testament was 
 comparatively a modern city, having been rebuilt and established as a 
 Roman colony, and peopled with freedmen from Rome, by the dic- 
 tator Csesar, a little before his assassination. Although the soil was 
 
 whatever appears to him to be good. According to them, self-preservation and 
 defence is the first law of animated nature. All animals necessarily derive pleasure 
 from those things which are suited to them ; hut the first ohject of pursuit is not plea- 
 sure, hut conformity to nature. Every one, therefore, who has a right discernment of 
 what is good, will he chiefly concerned to conform to nature in all his actions and pur- 
 suits. This is the origin of moral obligation. With respect to happiness or good, 
 the Stoical doctrine was altogether extravagant : they taught that all external things 
 are indifferent, and cannot affect the happiness of man ; that pain, which does not 
 belong to the mind, is not evil ; and that a wise man will be happy in the midst 
 of torture, because virtue itself is happiness. Of all the sects of the ancient philoso- 
 phers, it is said that the Stoics came nearest to the Christians ; and that, not only with 
 respect to their strict regard to moral virtue, but also on account of their moral princi- 
 ples : insomuch that Jerome affirms, that in many things they agree with us. They 
 asserted the unity of the divine Being, the creation of the world by the Ao-yoj, or 
 " Word," the doctrine of providence, and the conflagration of the universe. They 
 believed in the doctrine of fate, which they represented as no other than the will and 
 purpose of God, and held that it had no tendency to looseness of life. Epicureans 
 were the disciples of Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, who flourished about A.M. 3700. 
 This sect maintained, that the world was formed, not by God, nor with any design, hut 
 by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. They denied that God governs the world, or in 
 the least condescends to interfere with creatures below ; they denied the immortality of 
 the soal, and the existence of angels ; they maintained that happiness consisted in 
 pleasure ; but some of them placed this pleasure in the tranquillity and joy of the 
 mind, arising from the practice of moral virtue, and which is thought by some to have 
 been the true principle of Epicurus j others understood him in the gross sense, and 
 placed all their happiness in corporeal pleasure. His system found many followers in 
 Rome, among whom Celsns, Pliny the Elder, and Lucretius were the most eminent. 
 The word " Epicurean" is used, at present, for an indolent, effeminate, and voluptuous 
 person, who only consults his private and particular pleasure ; and especially one who 
 is devoted to the enjoyments of the table. (Dr. Henderson's Theol. Diet.) 
 Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 284.
 
 PAUL. 243 
 
 too rocky to be fertile, and the territory very limited, Corinth again 
 became a great and wealthy city in a short time, especially as the 
 Roman Proconsuls made it the seat of government for southern 
 Greece, which was now called the province of Achaia. In earlier 
 times, Corinth had been celebrated for the great wealth of its temple 
 of Venus, which had a gainful traffic of a most dishonourable kind, 
 with the numerous merchants resident there, supplying them with 
 harlots under the form of religion. The same phenomena, no doubt, 
 reappeared in the late and Christian age. The little which is said in 
 the New Testament, seems to indicate a wealthy and luxurious com- 
 munity, prone to impurity of morals : nevertheless, all Greece was so 
 contaminated, that we may easily overcharge the accusation against 
 Corinth.* 
 
 While at Corinth, the Apostle was rejoined by Timothy, whom he 
 had despatched from Athens to Thessalonica, that he might comfort 
 the brethren who were then in much conflict and trouble. Timothy 
 brought him such a melancholy account of their sufferings, as induced 
 Paul to write a letter to that church. It is remarkable that the 
 Apostle addresses the Christian community in that city, as converted 
 Heathens ; a plain proof that the Jews who had embraced the truth 
 were but few in number, and destitute of influence. The brethren 
 were also suffering at the hands of the Heathen, whom, together with 
 the civil authorities, the Jews had incited against them. The Apos- 
 tle delivered to these Thessalonian Christians, that word of comfort f 
 which is efficacious and salutary in proportion to the severity of 
 that affliction which has called it forth, and probably, while consoling 
 the spirits of others, he was enabled also to derive consolation himself. 
 Paul, therefore, was alone at Corinth ; but an event had lately hap- 
 pened in Rome, which provided him with an active and able assist- 
 ant. The Emperor Claudius had lately ordered all Jews to quit 
 the capital ; and there is some evidence that the edict was caused by 
 the increasing progress of Christianity. The government was always 
 extremely jealous of what is called foreign superstitions. It is more 
 than probable, that the Jews in Rome would put themselves forward 
 to suppress the new doctrines ; and the Romans, who looked upon 
 the whole nation with scorn, would see nothing in this opposi- 
 tion but a dispute between two sects of a contemptible religion. 
 If the Jews had recourse to the same turbulent measures in Rome, 
 which we have seen them practise in Thessalonica and Berea, it was 
 quite necessary for the government to interfere ; aiid a succession 
 of disturbances of this kind, coupled with the dissemination of 
 Christianity, would best illustrate the expression of Suetonius, J where 
 
 Kitto's Cyclopcedia of Biblical Literature. 
 
 t " It was now that he wrote the first of those apostolical Epistles, which the church 
 for eighteen centuries has valued among her richest treasures ; and it is no small 
 honour to the Thessalonian converts that they were selected to receive the communica- 
 tion." (Dr. E. Burton.) 
 
 J " Jndseos impulsore CHRESTO assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit." (Suet. 
 Claud., sect. v., p. 469. Edit. Oraev., 1708.) This edict is not mentioned hy Jose- 
 phus, but is recorded as above by Suetonius, the Roman historian. Who this Ckrttlo* 
 was, is not known. It Might have been a foreign Jew, who raised tumults on some 
 occasion of which we have no knowledge ; ns the Jews, in all heathen cities, wwe 
 
 2 i 2
 
 244 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 he speaks of the expulsion of the Jews. Those of them who had 
 embraced Christianity, would of course be involved in the same sen- 
 tence ; and perhaps the former decrees against foreign superstitions 
 would now be directed specially against the Christians. It is pos- 
 sible, that this may have been the meaning of the charge brought by 
 the Jews of Thessalonica, that Paul and his companions were acting 
 contrary to the decrees of the Emperor ; (Acts xvii. 7 ;) and if Greece 
 were at this time more than usually filled by Jews, who had been 
 forced to leave Rome, they would be particularly bitter against the 
 Christians, who were in some measure the cause of the edict being 
 passed.* Among those who had thus been obliged to leave Rome 
 was Aquila. His history has given rise to many inventions among 
 the early writers, and perhaps we ought to receive nothing concerning 
 him, except what we learn from the pen of Luke and Paul. Some 
 represent him as having been a disciple of Simon Magus, who had 
 probably spread his doctrines in Rome before that period. The 
 sequel of the story, which represents Aquila as having been converted 
 to Christianity by Zacchseus, is utterly unworthy of attention. We have 
 no authentic account of the publican subsequent to the crucifixion 
 of our Lord ; and it is obvious, that his name very early became a fruit- 
 ful source of apocryphal absurdity and superstition. It is unknown 
 whether Aquila was a Christian when he took shelter in Corinth, or 
 whether he was converted by the Apostle after his arrival. He suf- 
 fered for the faith which he professed ; and, according to Theophy- 
 lact, he, together with his wife Priscilla, was martyred in the reign 
 of Nero.f 
 
 For a time the ministry of Paul was pursued without hinderance. 
 With regard to the necessaries of life, the Apostle " was chargeable 
 to no man," but "laboured with his own hands" to procure them. 
 The diligent pursuit of his own vocation by no means prevented him 
 from appearing on the Sabbath in the synagogue, as a teacher of the 
 word. " He persuaded the Jews and the Greeks." It appears, how- 
 ever, that Paul did not, during the first part of his ministrations, 
 
 greatly prone to excitements and insnrrections. Or, it may be, that Suetonius, little 
 acquainted with Jewish affairs, mistook this for the name of " Christ," and supposed 
 that he was Leader of the Jews. This explanation has much plausibility ; for, 
 (1.) Suetonius could scarcely be siypposed to be intimately acquainted with the affairs 
 of the Jews. (2.) There is every reason to believe, that before this, the Christian 
 religion was preached at Rome. (3.) It would produce there, as everywhere else, great 
 tumults and contention among the Jews. (4.) Claudius, the Emperor, might suppose 
 that such tumults endangered the peace of the city, and resolve to remove the cause at 
 once, by the dispersion of the Jews. (5.) A Roman historian might easily mistake the 
 true state of the case ; and while they were contending about Christ, he might suppose 
 that it was under him, as a Leader, that these tumults were excited. All that is material 
 here, however, is the fact in which Luke and Suetonius agree, that the Jews were 
 expelled from Rome during his reign. (A. Barnes.) " Veteres Gentiles per contume- 
 liam Chrestum et Chrestianos pro Christum et Christianos dixerunt." (P. Pithseus.) 
 
 Burton's Lectures on the Eccles. Hist, of the First Century. 
 
 t Aquila was a native of Pontus. We meet him first at Pontus after leaving Rome. 
 Then he goes to Ephesus ; (Acts xviii. 18, 19 ;) afterwards we again find him at 
 Rome ; (Rom. xvi. 3 ;) and, finally, at Ephesus. (2 Tim. iv. 19.) Paul speaks of the 
 kindly feeling entertained for them by " all the churches of the Gentiles." (Rom. xvi. 
 4.) All which particulars are important, as illustrative of the facility and frequency 
 of communication that might be enjoyed among the early Christians.
 
 PAUL. 245 
 
 very fully and energetically proclaim the leading doctrines of the 
 Gospel ; but when Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, he 
 " was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was 
 the Christ." The presence of his associates animated him, and the 
 certainty of help in his great and hallowed work, urged him onward 
 in enterprise and zeal, in making Christ known. The unbelieving 
 Jews speedily raised their wonted opposition ; and what they could not 
 overcome by argument and force of reason, they endeavoured to carry 
 by noise and clamour, mingled with blasphemy and reviling, the last 
 refuge of an impotent and sinking cause. Paul, as he had already done 
 at Pisidian Antioch, formally renounced all further connexion with 
 them, and, shaking his garments, the expressive gesture of an Oriental, 
 as if to free himself from their very dust, he exclaimed, " Your blood 
 be upon your own heads ; I am clean : from henceforth I will go unto 
 the Gentiles." (Acts xviii. 6.) Thus he abandoned them to that 
 judgment of God, which their blindness of unbelief was bringing 
 upon them ; and, after a scanty harvest, which, however, included one, 
 some say two, Rulers of the synagogue, he quitted the field of the 
 circumcision, and betook himself to the uncircumcision. Accord- 
 ingly he left the Jews, and went to the house of Justus, a religious 
 friend, " whose house joined hard to the synagogue," and there he 
 abode. Not all the Jews were involved in this condemnation. One 
 of the most eminent men among them, Crispus,* either at that time 
 or formerly, the ruling Elder, professed his faith in Jesus, notwith- 
 standing the unpopularity of the new doctrine. Along with Crispus, 
 liis whole family were baptized. Gaius and Stephanas also, with 
 their several households, embraced the truth and were baptized ; and, 
 to encourage the Apostle, amid the frequent ebullitions of malice 
 and ingratitude with which he was annoyed, and the restless attempts 
 and incessant machinations of these enemies of all righteousness to 
 impede and render abortive the efforts of Paul, our Lord appeared 
 to him in a vision, and told him that, notwithstanding the compara- 
 tively small success which had followed his ministry, there was a 
 great harvest forthcoming, that he had " much people in that city ; 
 and that he was not to be afraid of his adversaries, for that he him- 
 self would stand by and protect him." (Acts xyiii. 9, 10.) 
 
 The Jews did not long confine their opposition to the Apostle to 
 simple a^.ts of verbal hostility and abuse. Witnessing the hated 
 heresy making rapid advances, notwithstanding the contempt in 
 which it was generally held, they resolved that more violent measures 
 should be adopted to resist its progress. Deprived of political 
 power, and unable to meet the exigencies of the case by physical 
 violence, they were compelled to proceed under forms of law. They 
 were aware, that any attempt on the part of the Jews to raise a 
 popular commotion against the strangers, would only bring upon 
 them the overwhelming and unsparing vengeance of their Roman 
 Rulers, who hesitated not to punish severely all who defied their 
 forms of laws for the sake of persecution, or to accomplish any private 
 
 According to tradition, Crispus was afterwards Bishop of /Egina. (Constitut. 
 Apoat., vii. 16.)
 
 246 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 end. Least of all would a class of people so peculiar and so disliked 
 as the Jews, be allowed to perpetrate such acts with impunity, espe- 
 cially as the whole nation had so recently been swept out of the 
 imperial city, by the besom of regal displeasure. All these cir- 
 cumstances suggested to the persecutors the necessity of caution. 
 They therefore apprehended Paul as a violator of religious order, and 
 took him before the highest Roman tribunal, that of the Proconsul. 
 
 The Proconsul of Achaia, holding his supreme seat of justice in 
 Corinth, the capital of that Roman province, was Lucius Junius 
 Gallic, who is supposed to have been the brother of the celebrated 
 Seneca. The name by which he is known to Roman writers, as well 
 as in the apostolic history, was not his original family designation, 
 and therefore gives the reader no idea of that relationship. His 
 patronymic was Marcus Annseus Novatus Seneca, which appellation 
 he exchanged for his later one, on being adopted by Lucius Junius 
 Gallio, a noble Roman, who, being destitute of children, adopted, 
 according to a common custom of the imperial city, one of a family 
 that had already given promise of a reward to those who should take 
 its offspring as theirs. Gallio is mentioned by his brother in terms 
 of high commendation : his character, however, is not treated so 
 favourably by other writers.* Though the Proconsul gave no proof 
 that he was impressed with the doctrines of the Gospel, his govern- 
 ment was perhaps not unfriendly to their propagation. In almost 
 every case of opposition with which the Apostles had to contend, we 
 have hitherto found the Jews to have been the first and principal 
 movers ; and the Roman authorities either refused to interest them- 
 selves in such matters, or gave a tacit consent to the Jews indulging 
 their malice. The Apostles would, therefore, be safer in a Roman or 
 Grecian town, than in one which was more immediately subject to 
 Jewish influence ; and Corinth, which was the capital of a province, 
 and the residence of a Proconsul, was, perhaps, less likely than any 
 other town in Greece to tolerate disturbances excited by a foreign 
 religion. This may be one reason why Paul stayed so much longer in 
 Corinth than he had hitherto done in any other place upon his 
 travels. He remained there not less than eighteen months. f 
 
 * Taciti Annales, lib. vi., cap. 3 ; lib. xv., cap. 73. It was to this Gallio, that Seneca 
 dedicated his books, De Ira, and De Vita Beata ; he is also described by the philosopher, 
 as a man of the most amiable mind and manners : " Quern nemo non parum amat, 
 etiam qui amare plus non potest ; nemo mortalium uni tarn dulcis est, quam hie omni- 
 bus : cum interim tauta naturalis boni vis est, uti artem simulationemque non redoleat." 
 (Vide Senec., Praefat. ad Natural., quaest. 4.) Statius composed an ode on the birth- 
 day of Lucan, in which, in a few words, he says much in his praise : 
 
 " Lucanum potes imputare terris : 
 Hoc plus quam Senecam dedisse mnndo, 
 Aut dulcem generasse Gallionem." 
 
 Stat. Sylvar., lib. ii., cap. 7, vers. 30. 
 
 " You may consider nature as having made greater efforts in producing Lucan, than it 
 has done in forming Seneca, or even the amiable Gallio." According to Eusebius, he 
 committed suicide before the death of Seneca. (Junius Gallio, frater Senecae, egregius 
 declamator, propria se manu interfecit.) But Tacitus certainly speaks of him as being 
 alive after that event ; (Annal., xv., cap. 73 :) and Dion. Cassius states, that he was put 
 to death by order of Nero. 
 
 t Burton's Lectures on the Eccles. Hist, of the First Century, p. 187.
 
 PAUL. 247 
 
 No sooner had Gallio entered upon his proconsulate, than lie was 
 addressed by the Jewish residents of the place in behalf of their plot 
 against Paul, naturally supposing that this would be the best time for 
 them to endeavour to influence the new Governor, when he was 
 commencing his administration, and doubtless anxious to please the 
 numerous classes of his subjects. But they wofully mistook their 
 man. Gallio had no disposition to curry favour with the populace 
 by any such abuse of power. When the Jews brought Paul before 
 his tribunal, with the accusation, " This fellow persuadeth men to 
 worship God contrary to the law," (Acts xviii. 13,) the Proconsul, before 
 Paul could open his mouth in reply, answered, " If it were a matter 
 of wrong or wicked lewdness, ye Jews, reason would that I should 
 bear with you : but if it be a question of words and names, and of 
 your law, look ye to it ; for I will be no judge of such matters." * 
 (Acts xviii. 14, 15.) With this reply he commanded his officers to 
 clear the court. But certain of the townspeople, vexed at the scan- 
 dalous proceeding of the Jews, seized upon Sosthenes, f one of the 
 rulers of the Jewish consistory, a man active and busy in this insur- 
 rection, inasmuch as he was the regular legal chief of the Jews, and 
 gave him a beating in the court. Gallio took no notice of the action, 
 though confessedly a violation of the dignity of his tribunal ; a plain 
 proof that he was indignant at the Jews, and disposed to sympathize 
 with the Apostle. Not long after this, Paul quitted Corinth, leaving 
 behind him a flourishing church, the peace of which was secured by 
 the presence of the Roman Governor, keeping, as it did, the Jews 
 under too strict control for raising those persecuting riots of which they 
 were guilty in other places. He proceeded on his way to Syria, touch- 
 ing at Ephesus, where he promised a second visit, and again at 
 Ceesarea, whence he went up and saluted the church, and arrived 
 at Antioch, after a tour of about four years, during which, at the 
 expense of much personal peril and suffering, he had spread the 
 
 As if he had said, " The Roman laws give religions liberty to Jews and Greeks ; 
 bat if controversies arise among you on these subjects, decide them among yourselves, 
 or dispute about them as much as you please." A better answer could not be given 
 by man ; and it was highly becoming the acknowledged meekness, gentleness, and 
 benevolence of this amiable person. He concluded, that the state had no right to con- 
 trol any man's religious opinion; that was between the object of his worship and his 
 own constience ; and therefore, he was not authorized to intermeddle with subjects of this 
 nature, which the law left to every man's private judgment. Had all the Rulers of the 
 people in every country acted as this sensible and benevolent Roman, laws against 
 liberty of conscience, concerning religious persecution, would not be found to be, aa 
 they now are, blots and disgraces on the statute-hooka of almost all the civilized, nations 
 of Europe. (Dr. A. Clarke.) 
 
 f As Sosthenes is termed the Chief Ruler in the synagogue, it is probable that ho 
 succeeded Crispus in that office, and that he subsequently embraced Christianity, 
 though at present he was adverse both to its doctrines and faith. Doubts by some 
 have been entertained whether Sosthenes appeared upon this occasion as a friend or 
 enemy of the Apostle. If he were the former, it is probable that he was the Sosthenes 
 who was afterwards the companion of Paul, (Tillemont Memoires, torn, i., p. 586,) and 
 who appears as taking an interest in the Corinthian church, so that, during the resi- 
 dence of Paul at Corinth, two presidents of the Synagogue were converted by his 
 preachiug. Cains, also, who, as well as Stephanas and Crispus, was baptized by Paul 
 himself, was probably a person of suiue note, or he would not have been so distin- 
 guished ; but it is uncertain whether he is the same with Caius the Macedonian, who, 
 according to some traditions, was Bishop of Thessalouicu.
 
 248 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 word of the Gospel through the most civilized part of the world, 
 and had founded churches, which had already multiplied into others. 
 Thus terminated the second great missionary tour of the Apostle of 
 the Gentiles. 
 
 The state of Judea at this period is worthy of attention. A person 
 was now rising into importance, who might have excited in the Jews 
 some feelings of national attachment, and who lived to see the final 
 misfortunes of his unhappy country. Agrippa the younger, son of 
 Herod Agrippa, who was recently dead, came into notice. The 
 Emperor Claudius, though well disposed towards him, did not choose 
 to bestow upon him any of his father's territories. It was not long 
 before his uncle Herod died, who was Sovereign of a small district 
 called Chalcis, and Agrippa, who was now twenty-one years of age, 
 obtained this from the Emperor : this sovereignty also gave him the 
 superintendence of the temple, with its treasury, and the power 
 of appointing the High Priests. The dates and successions of the 
 Roman Procurators, at this period, are involved in considerable 
 obscurity : it is probable, however, that when Tiberius Alexander was 
 removed, (an exceedingly unpopular Procurator, under whom the 
 Jews were very turbulent, and the city of Jerusalem, and the whole 
 country of Judea, a scene of disorder and bloodshed,) the three dis- 
 tricts of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee were committed to two Govern- 
 ors, Cumanus and Felix.* The usual consequences of a divided 
 Government, jealousy, rapacity, and oppression, followed. The two 
 officers, who rivalled each other in pillaging their subjects, either 
 overlooked the crimes which were committed, or suffered the criminals 
 to proceed, that they might fall upon them with more signal severity. 
 We read of twenty thousand Jews being killed in a riot by Cuma- 
 nus.-f- Every part of the country was infested with robbers and assas- 
 sins ; and when Luke despatches the visit of Paul to Jerusalem J in 
 a few words, we can easily explain why the visit itself, as well as the 
 description, occupied but a short time. (Acts xviii. 22.) The aspect 
 of Judea must have caused great pain to the Apostle, even without 
 reference to that spirit of prophecy by which he probably foresaw the 
 still greater evils which were impending over his unhappy country. 
 Fortunately his mind had sufficient occupation without dwelling upon 
 these misfortunes ; and when he once more took leave of his coun- 
 trymen, it was to resume those labours to which he now felt his life 
 was to be devoted. 
 
 From Jerusalem, Paul went down to Antioch ; and here he would 
 find consolation for the trials he had recently undergone. Under the 
 government of Quadratus, who about this time was appointed Presi- 
 dent, the province of Syria enjoyed comparative rest. The presence 
 
 Tacit. Annal., lib. xii., cap. 54 ; Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. 6, 7 ; Joseph, de 
 Bell. Jud., lib. ii., cap. 12. 
 
 t Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. v., sect. 3. 
 
 t Jerusalem is not mentioned in the authorized version ; but this is a common form 
 of speech in the Evangelists, Jerusalem being always meant when the phrase " go up " 
 is adopted. The word cu>acuv<a, "to go up," is often used absolutely to signify, " to 
 go up to Jerusalem." See John vii. 8, 10-; xii. 20 ; Acts xxiv. 11. 
 
 Burton's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, &c., p. 194.
 
 PAUL. 249 
 
 of a Roman force kept the Jews at Antioch in peace, and the Chris- 
 tians were unmolested. Here the Gospel prospered. Roman Catho- 
 lic writers attribute its success to the long residence of Peter, who, 
 they assert, not only founded it, but occupied the episcopal chair for 
 some years : this assertion is untrue, and has no support whatever 
 from holy writ. After remaining some time in Antioch, he went in 
 regular order over the regions of Galatia and Phrygia confirming the dis- 
 ciples : he then went down to the western shore, and visited Ephesus, 
 according to the promise which he had previously made. Events import- 
 ant to the weal of Christianity had taken place during his absence. 
 An Alexandrine Jew, named Apollos,* of eminent biblical learning, and 
 endued with great powers of eloquence, had arrived in Ephesus, where 
 he distinguished himself as a teacher. His evangelical training had been 
 very deficient. He knew something of the doctrines which John the 
 Baptist had taught, but nothing of the leading truths of Christ and his 
 Apostles. He was brought under the notice of Aquila and Priscilla, 
 whom Paul had left in Ephesus during his former visit, from whom 
 Apollos heard, with deep interest and satisfaction, of the "glorious 
 Gospel of the blessed God," which he cordially embraced, and dili- 
 gently taught. After Paul had preached three months in the syna- 
 gogue, he was obliged, as at Antioch and Corinth, to abandon the 
 Jews to their fate, and, withdrawing his disciples, he held disputations 
 on the word of God in the school of a Sophist, named Tyrannus. 
 The whole province of Asia, both Greeks and Jews, were thus for two 
 years instructed in " words whereby they might be saved." Nume- 
 rous circumstances of an interesting character occurred during Paul's 
 long residence in Ephesus, the result of which was, that the word 
 of God mightily grew and prevailed. 
 
 Having been a resident at Ephesus upwards of two years, Paul 
 began to think of revisiting former fields of missionary enterprise, 
 especially those Grecian cities of Europe, which presented scenes to 
 him so eventful and glorious. He contemplated a journey into Mace- 
 donia and Achaia, and then to see Jerusalem ; and when communi- 
 cating these plans to his friends at Ephesus, he remarked, in conclu- 
 sion, " And after that I must also see Rome." He sent before him 
 into Macedonia his former assistant, Timothy, and another helper not 
 before mentioned, Erastus, subsequently alluded to as the Treasurer 
 of the city of Corinth. Paul remained for a time in Ephesus, until 
 some other preliminaries might be adjusted. During this delay, an 
 incident occurred which threatened for a time to terminate both his 
 work and his life. 
 
 The success which attended the preaching of the Gospel in Ephe- 
 sus gave rise to enemies of another kind, whose assaults were even 
 more lasting and fatal than those of the Jews. The Ephesians were 
 exceedingly jealous of the honour of their tutelar deity, and their 
 
 Apollos, a name contracted for Apollonius, as Epaphras for Epaphroditus, nd 
 Artemas for Artemoniua. Of this Apollonius mention is made in 1 Cor. i. 12, and 
 iii. 5; where Paul speaka of the labour he underwent iu the instruction of the 
 Corinthiana. (1 Cor. iv. 6; xvi. 12.) The Jews of Alexandria were eminent lor 
 biblical knowledge. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 K
 
 250 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 national religion : consequently a powerful feeling came into opera- 
 tion, when the rapid and mighty encroachments of Christianity 
 caused a manifest diminution in the number of pagan worshippers. 
 From the architect and the sculptor, whose temples and statues 
 became the wonder of the world, down to the lowest shopkeeper, who 
 supplied materials for sacrifice, there was a long catalogue of inter- 
 ested persons, more or less important individually, but numerically 
 of the greatest moment, whose fame and livelihood depended upon 
 the maintenance of polytheism. The idolaters of Ephesus heeded 
 not a rush whether Diana or Apollo were worshipped : Christianity 
 was ruinous to them all. The preaching of the Apostle struck an 
 awkward blow at the foundation of a very thriving business, which 
 was carried on in manufacturing certain curious images or shrines of the 
 goddess Diana of the Ephesians,* which became of no value to those 
 who believed the doctrines which Paul taught, " that they be no gods 
 which are made with hands." (Acts xix. 26.) Demetrius, therefore, 
 spake truly, and unfolded the just cause of the tumult, when he said, 
 " Ye know that by this craft we have our wealth." He showed the 
 silversmiths that their " craft was in danger," who with one accord 
 raised a great outcry in the usual form of commendation of the 
 established idolatry of their city, " Great is Artemis of the Ephe- 
 sians ! " This noise attracting attention, every one who distinguished 
 the words was led, by a kind of patriotic impulse, to join in the cry, 
 and swell the clamour. The whole city was in an uproar. The 
 demagogues, who have nothing to lose in popular outbreaks, doubt- 
 less reaped a harvest in Ephesus. The general facts of the case 
 would be known to few, save that the great object of the tumult was 
 to inflict some injury upon the Christians : the interested party cared 
 only for the money which they earned by making silver shrines ; 
 and because these men were in danger of losing their gains, the 
 Apostles and their associates must be put to death. The mob fell 
 upon Gaius and Aristarchus, two travelling companions of Paul, and 
 dragged them to the theatre, whither the whole multitude rushed at 
 once, as a desirable arena for any act of confusion and folly they 
 might choose to commit. Paul proposed to enter and address the 
 assembly ; but his friends, exercising more prudence and practical 
 wisdom, knowing that such a concourse is no more under the control 
 of reason than so many ramping lions, prevented him, where he 
 would doubtless have been torn to pieces before he could have opened 
 
 The Diana of the Romans is a goddess known tinder various modifications, and 
 with almost incompatible attributes. As the tutelar deity of Ephesus, in -which character 
 alone she concerns us, she was undoubtedly a representative of the same power presiding 
 over conception and birth, which was adored in Palestine under the name of " Ashtoreth." 
 Her earliest image, which was said to have fallen from heaven, was probably very rude ; 
 and, to judge from its representation on ancient coins, little more than a head with a 
 shapeless trunk, supported by a staff on each side. The later image, with the full 
 development of attributes, is a pantheon of Asiatic and Egyptian deities. Some of 
 the most significant are, the turreted head, like that of Cyhele, the nimbus behind it 
 representing the moon ; the zodiacal signs of the bull, the twins, and the crab on her 
 bosom ; below them, two garlands, one of flowers and the other of acorns ; the numerous 
 breasts ; the lions, stags, and cows iu various parts ; the bee* and flowers on the sides 
 &c. (Kitto.)
 
 PAUL. % J5I 
 
 his mouth.* Some of the "chief" Magistrates of the province, 
 who were amicably disposed towards him, hearing of his rash inten- 
 tions, requested that he woidd not adventure himself in the theatre. 
 The outcry continued. " Some cried one thing, and some another ; 
 for the whole assembly was confused, for the more part knew not 
 wherefore they were come together." The Roman Government had 
 not taken up the question ; and a popular insurrection, from whatever 
 quarter it came, was always a thing to he repressed. The Recorder 
 of the city came forward, and, having hushed the people, who had 
 some reverence for the lawful authorities, he reminded them, that, 
 since no one doubted the respect of the citizens of Ephesus for the 
 goddess Artemis, there was no occasion for such a disturbance to 
 demonstrate a fact which every one knew. He told them that the 
 men, against whom they were raising this tumult, had been neither 
 robbers of temples, f nor blasphemers of the goddess ; so that 
 if Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen had anything justly to urge 
 against these men, they had a remedy at hand, in a proper 
 course of law ; and that all of them were liable to be called to 
 account for this manifest breach of Roman legislation, and this open 
 defiance of the majesty of the imperial Government. This hint 
 appears to have had due weight ; for they dreaded the thought of giving 
 any occasion to the remorseless Government of the province to 
 impose a fine upon them, an act of retributive justice which would 
 most unhesitatingly have been enforced. All quietly dispersed. We 
 cannot, however, close the affair of the Ephesian riot, without recall- 
 ing to remembrance the wicked malignity and indomitable hatred 
 of the Jews against their fellow-worshippers of the one true God. 
 They actually joined the Gentiles, and took part with the idolaters. 
 Thus did they throw away the mask of their horrible hypocrisy, and 
 in the blindness of their rage discover to the whole world that their 
 vaunted zeal for God was nothing more than a base worldly-minded 
 ambition ; that the setting up his glory was a mere pretence to set 
 up themselves. The guilt of this unnatural and impious confederacy 
 was augmented by the great and public miracles which Paul wrought 
 in attestation of the authority of his mission. Even handkerchiefs 
 
 " It has been disputed whether Paul were not at this time made to fight with beasts 
 in the amphitheatre at Ephesus; and his own words, (1 Cor. xv. 32,) as well as eccle- 
 siastical traditions, have been qnoted to maintain the affirmative. On the whole, I am 
 inclined to reject the story. Had the attempt been made, he would probably have 
 pleaded his Roman citizenship ; and Luke, who has described the riot with some detail, 
 would hardly have omitted such an interesting narrative. We have, however, his own 
 evidence for saying, that the latter part of his residence in Ephesus was attended with 
 personal danger. (1 Cor. xv. 30; 2 Cor. i. 8, 10 ; Rom. xvi. 4.)" (Dr. Burton.) 
 
 t Without controversy, this is one of the most unfortunate passages in our English 
 translation : (Acts six. 37 :) where the original Itp6ffv\oi is expressed by " robbers of 
 churches." Whoever thought of applying the English word " church " to anything but 
 a Christian assembly, or Christian place of worship ? Why is this phrase put' in the 
 mouth of a heathen officer, addressing a heathen assembly about persons charged with 
 violating the sanctity of heathen places of worship ? Such a building as a church, 
 devoted to the worship of the true God, was not known till more than a century after 
 this time, in the reign of Constantino, who first erected buildings consecrated especially 
 to the worship of the Christians' God ; and the Greek word, which enters into the com- 
 position of the term in the sacred text, was never applied to a Christian place of wor- 
 ship. (Bacon.) 
 
 2 K 2
 
 252 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 and tunics were taken from his body to the sick, and they were 
 healed. But the wicked and adulterous generation which demanded 
 a sign, would not believe it when it was given. So mightily, how- 
 ever, in despite of interested opposition, prevailed the effect of these 
 wonders among the Gentiles, that many who in this city of the 
 goddess of necromancy had practised that infernal art, came forward 
 and publicly burnt their magical books.* 
 
 Soon after the tumult, Paul took solemn leave of the church at 
 Ephesus, and pursued his missionary tour by way of Troas to Phi- 
 lippi, where he appears to have resided some time, and from which, 
 as his head-quarters, he made extensive excursions into the surround- 
 ing districts, penetrating even to Illyricum on the eastern shore of the 
 Adriatic sea. (Rom. xv. 19.) From Philippi he went to Corinth, 
 where he abode three months, and then returned to the former place, 
 having been frustrated in his design of proceeding through Syria to 
 Jerusalem by the malice of the Jews. Sailing from Philippi, he came 
 to Troas, where he joined his companions whom he had sent before. 
 These were youthful Ministers who rallied round the Apostle, by 
 whom they were taught to become laborious and useful Pastors of 
 the New Testament. The school of Paul was well fitted to train intel- 
 ligent and hardy Christian soldiers. The constant teaching of him who 
 was well acquainted with labours, with stripes, with imprisonments, 
 with deaths ; who had been scourged, stoned, shipwrecked ; who was 
 in continual danger on every side, and in hunger and thirst, in watch- 
 ings, in fastings, in cold and nakedness ; (2 Cor. xi. 23, &c. ;) who, 
 on the other hand, was rapt to the third heaven, and had unutterable 
 things revealed to him ; could not fail to foster habits of hardihood, 
 and promote spiritual intelligence. The names of most of them 
 appear again on occasions of service to the church ; and Timothy and 
 Titus, Mark and Luke, shine conspicuous among her first and great- 
 est master-builders. 
 
 From Troas he journeyed on foot to Assos, and from thence he 
 proceeded by sea to Miletus.f Not having time to go to Ephesus, 
 he invited the Elders of the church to meet him there, which meeting 
 would not fail to be a sorrowful one, from the assurance which Paul 
 gave them that they would never see his face again. His farewell 
 charge was of a most tender and energetic character. Having com- 
 mended them to God, they accompanied him to the vessel, and he 
 left them. At Tyre another affecting scene took place. After a 
 week's sojourn, he was escorted out of the city by men, women, and 
 children to the sea-shore, where all knelt down and prayed, and, after 
 giving the last embrace, Paul returned on board. No sooner had 
 he set his face to go to Jerusalem, than his approaching imprison- 
 
 Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 352. 
 
 t The Apostle had intended to take the direct course for Jerusalem ; hut the discovery 
 of a secret design against him among the Jews, led him to proceed hy this circuitous 
 route. By land through Macedonia, then by sea from Philippi to Troas ; (Acts xx. 
 3 6;) then to Assos on foot; (xx. 13 ;) and from Assos to Mytilene, (xx. 14,) and 
 then to Miletus, (xx. 15.) From Miletus he proceeded by sea to Tyre, (xxi. 3,) then to 
 Csesarea, (xxi. 8,) and from thence to Jerusalem, (xxi. 17,) where he arrived during th 
 feast of Pentecost, (xx. 16.)
 
 PAUL. 253 
 
 ment there, as an event momentous to her interests, was announced 
 to the church by the Spirit. As he proceeded from city to city, the 
 Prophets of the several churches intimated to him, that bonds and 
 afflictions were awaiting him in Jerusalem. " And now, behold, I go 
 bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the thii.gs that shall 
 befall me there : save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth i i every city, 
 saying that bonds and afflictions abide me." (Acts xx. 22, 23.) When 
 he arrived at Caesarea, he lodged in the house of Philip the Evange- 
 list, one of the seven Deacons that were first set apart by the Apos- 
 tles, who had four daughters all endued with the gift of prophecy. 
 During his stay in this place, Agabus, a Christian Prdphet, came from 
 Judea, who, taking Paul's girdle, bound with it his own hands and 
 feet,* and asserted that by this external symbol, the Holy Ghost did 
 signify and declare, that Paul would be thus treated by the Jews at 
 Jerusalem, and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. (Acts xxi. 
 11.) All passionately besought him that he would direct his course 
 to another place ; but he, being grieved at their affectionate dissua- 
 sives, inasmuch as they added to the poignancy of his sorrow, declared 
 that he was willing, and, if needs be, resolved, not only to be impri- 
 soned, but also to die, at Jerusalem for the sake of Christ. Finding 
 his resolution immovably fixed, they importuned him no further. At 
 length he reached the fatal scene of the fulfilment of the prediction. 
 
 The prediction of Agabus, Dr. Burton justly observes, is worthy 
 of being remarked, because it appears plain from other passages, that, 
 though gifted to a high degree with the spirit of prophecy, Paul had 
 not yet received a clear revelation of what was awaiting him. He 
 had been able to foretell to his disciples at Thessalonica and Ephesus, 
 the grievous errors which would, in a few years, and after his own 
 decease, be productive of great evils in the church. He even knew 
 that his converts at Ephesus would never see his face again ; and yet 
 it was plain, that it was not till his arrival in Judea that he knew 
 the full extent, and the immediate approach, of the trial which he 
 was to undergo. When he wrote to the Romans, he fully expected 
 that he should see them shortly, and that after having been to Jeru- 
 salem, he should be at liberty to travel in any direction. But if there 
 could be any doubt upon this point, it would be removed by the lan- 
 guage which he used to the Ephesian Elders. (Acts xx. 22, 23.) The 
 fact is curious, as illustrating the nature of these preternatural illu- 
 minations ; and so far from making us think less of the Apostle's 
 inspiration, it ought greatly to strengthen our conviction, that there 
 was no delusion in these spiritual gifts, and that Paul spake accord- 
 ing to truth when he said, " There are diversities of operations, 
 
 It was common for the Prophets to perform actions which were emblematic of the 
 events which they predicted, to render such prediction, if possible, more forcible and 
 impressive. Thus Jeremiah was directed to bury his girdle by the Euphrates, to denote 
 the approaching captivity of the Jews. (Jer. xiii. 4.) Thus he was directed to make 
 bands and yokes, and to put them around his neck, as a sign to Edom and Moab, fec. 
 (xxvii. 2, 3.) Thus the act of the potter waa emblematical of the destruction that 
 was coming upon the nation of the Jews, (xviii. 4.) So Isaiah walked naked and 
 barefoot, as a sign of the captivity of Egypt and Ethiopia. (Isai. xx. 3, 4, compare 
 Ezek. iv., xii., &*.-.)
 
 254 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 but it is the same God which worketh all in all ; and all these work- 
 eth that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally 
 as he will." (1 Cor. xii. 6, 11.) An impostor would never have laid 
 claim to imperfect inspiration. If the whole had been a contrivance, 
 Paul, and not Agabus, would have been the principal Prophet. He 
 would never have acknowledged that he was ignorant of the fate that 
 awaited him ; nor would he have left it to inferior pretenders in the 
 different towns through which he passed, to disclose by degrees what 
 personally concerned himself.* Those individuals who are surprised 
 that Paul's foreknowledge was limited, can have paid but little atten- 
 tion to the quartion of prophecy. Inspiration cannot be separated 
 from the notion of a superintending and controlling power ; if it 
 could, or if the extent of the foreknowledge depended upon the will 
 of the person possessing it, it would cease to be inspiration : and 
 if we proceed to say that Paul was not inspired because he did not 
 know everything, we are, in fact, deciding what is best for God to 
 do ; and we are judging by ordinary and human rules of that which 
 by the very hypothesis is extraordinary and superhuman. If a per- 
 son deny the existence of prophecy, he must be met by other argu- 
 ments ; but if he allow it to be possible, it bespeaks not only a more 
 humble, but a more philosophical, mind, to judge of prophecy by 
 what is revealed. Inspiration would not be given at all, but for wise 
 and good purposes ; and he who thinks that Paul's foreknowledge 
 ought to have exceeded that of Agabus, should be prepared to prove, 
 that the counsels of God would have succeeded better, if this had 
 been the case.f 
 
 The day after Paul's arrival in Jerusalem, he and his company 
 went to the house of James the Apostle, where the Elders of the 
 church were gathered together. The brethren hailed his arrival with 
 great joy, to whom he gave a particular account of the manner in 
 which God had blessed his ministry among the Gentiles. This very 
 success rendered it necessary that they should suggest to him mea- 
 sures of caution. They told him that he was now come to a place 
 where there were many thousands of Jewish converts, who all 
 retained great zeal and veneration for the law of Moses, who had been 
 informed, that he had instructed those of the Jews who had embraced 
 Christianity to renounce circumcision and other ceremonies of Juda- 
 ism ; and that, as soon as the people hear of his arrival, they will 
 doubtless hasten to learn what he had to say for himself. The fact 
 is, Paul's fundamental doctrine of justification by faith only, had 
 been partly misunderstood through ignorance and carelessness, but 
 much more generally misrepresented through malice, as requiring 
 from the Jews the abandonment of the law of Moses. The Asiatic 
 Jews, who had come up in great numbers to the feast of Pentecost, 
 would at the sight of him immediately take fire, and industriously 
 spread far and wide against him a report with which they had already, 
 
 " This is another proof that the prophetic spirit was not at his command, but dealt 
 out to him by measure ; and its suggestions perfectly distinguishable from other, even 
 the strongest impressions on the mind." (Dr. Hinds.) 
 
 t Burton's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, p. 242.
 
 PAUL. 255 
 
 on previous occasions, infected the ears of the members of the pro- 
 vincial churches. It was therefore highly necessary, in order to pre- 
 vent disturbance, that the minds of the people should be disabused 
 of this error. James, therefore, proposed that Paul should join 
 himself to four others, who had taken a vow upon themselves,* and 
 should make the public exhibition of his adherence to the law still 
 more conspicuous by undertaking the expenses of the requisite sacri- 
 fices. To this plan Paul could not reasonably object, inasmuch as 
 there was nothing in it at all inconsistent with his strenuous main- 
 tenance of that great evangelical doctrine which declared the utter 
 inefficacy of the law towards justification. By this act, he made a 
 public declaration of his adherence to the law of his forefathers, 
 which all his Gentile converts were aware he had not abandoned. In 
 them, confessedly, such an act would, on his own principles, have 
 been an avowal of apostacy from the Gospel. But what had the 
 performance by a Jew of a rite of the Jewish law to do with the 
 question of the circumcision of the Gentiles ? 
 
 At the close of the seven days allotted by the Mosaic ritual for 
 purposes of purification, some of the Asiatic Jews, who had known 
 Paul when on his missionary tours through their own country, seeing 
 their old disputant in the midst of the temple, against whose worship 
 they understood that he had preached to the Gentiles, immediately 
 raised a great outcry, and fell upon him, dragging him along, and 
 shouting to the multitude, " Men of Israel, help : this is the man 
 that teacheth all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and 
 this place : and further brought Greeks also into the temple, ) 
 and hath polluted this holy place. For they had seen before with 
 him in the city Trophimus an Ephesian, whom they supposed that 
 Paul had brought into the temple." $ (Acts xxi. 28, 29.) The sanc- 
 tuary, or court of the Jews, could not be crossed by an uncircum- 
 cised Gentile, and the transgression of the holy limit was punishable 
 with death. Within this holy court the scene now described took 
 place, and as the whole sanctuary was then crowded with Jews who had 
 
 Joseph. De Bello Jud., lib. ii., cap. xv., sect. 1 ; Antiq., lib. six., cap. 6., sect. 1. 
 
 t The J ewa were always most anxious to keep their temple from being defiled by the 
 presence of Gentiles. They might enter within the limits of the "mountain of the 
 house ; " that is, within as much of the whole site as lay between the outer wall aud 
 the enclosure before the temple courts ; but they might not enter into any of these 
 courts, nor even into the enclosure, before them. Before the entrance to this 
 were pillars, on which were inscriptions in Greek and Latin, giving notice that no 
 strangers were allowed to enter, under pain of death. (Joseph. Antiq., lib. XT., cap. xi., 
 sect. 6.) 
 
 t " This," says Alfred Barnes, "is a most striking illustration of the manner in 
 which accusations are often brought against others. They had xren him with Paul io 
 the city ; they inferred, therefore, that he had been with him in the temple. They did 
 not even pretend tkat they had teen him in the temple ; but the inference was enough 
 to inflame the angry and excitable passions of the multitude. So in the accusations 
 which men now ofteu make of others. They tec one thing, they infer another ; they 
 could testify to one thing, but they conclude that another thing will also be true, and 
 that other tiling they charge on them as true. If men would state facts as they are, no 
 small part of the slanderous accusations against others would cease. An end would be 
 made of most of the charges of falsehood and error and heresy and dishonesty and dou- 
 ble-dealing and immorality. If a statement be made, it should be made of the thing a* 
 it was. If we attempt to state what a man has done, it should not be what we suppose 
 he has done."
 
 256 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 come from all parts of the world, to attend the festival in Jerusalem, 
 the hubbub raised against Paul speedily drew thousands around him. 
 Hearing the complaint that he was an apostate Jew, who in other 
 countries had used his utmost endeavours to pour contempt on his 
 own nation, and to bring their worship into disrepute, and had now 
 not only the presumption to appear in the holy place, which he had 
 publicly blasphemed, but also the audacity to profane it by introduc- 
 ing into its sacred precincts one of those Gentiles for whose company 
 he had abandoned the fellowship of Israel, all joined in the rush 
 which was made upon the Apostle, and drew him out of the temple, 
 the gates of which were immediately closed by the Levites on duty, 
 lest in the riot that was expected to ensue, the consecrated pavement 
 should be polluted with the blood of Paul.* It was doubtless a pre- 
 concerted act, that Paul should have been dragged out of the temple 
 and put to death in the confusion ; thus terminating his ministry and 
 persecutions by the brilliant crown of martyrdom. Now commenced 
 the fulfilment of the prophecy which had attended the Apostle 
 throughout his journey. 
 
 The temple, however, was overlooked by the tower of Antonia. The 
 troops which the Romans always kept in the city were quartered here ; 
 and during the festivals, which frequently led to a riot, the soldiers 
 remained under arms, and were ready, at a moment's notice, to 
 descend by two flights of steps to the porticos of the temple.f The 
 Commander at this time was Claudius Lysias,| who, probably think- 
 ing of a rebellion against the Romans, instantly ordered a detach- 
 ment of several companies under arms, and hurried down with them 
 to the scene of riot, and rescued Paul, who had already received 
 several blows. The throng continued so great, that, as soon as he 
 was fastened by chains to two soldiers, Lysias ordered him to be 
 taken to the tower. He then demanded, what all this riot meant. 
 To his inquiry, the mob replied with a variety of statements : some 
 cried one thing, and some another. As the Captain was making his 
 way with the prisoner up the steps, Paul asked whether he might 
 have the liberty to speak with him. The Captain, astonished 
 at hearing himself addressed in the Grecian tongue, said, " Canst 
 thou speak Greek? Art not thou that Egyptian, which before 
 
 * Bacon's Lives of the Apostles, p. 596. 
 
 t Joseph. De Bell. Jud., lib. v., cap. v., sect. 8. 
 
 t In the tower of Antonia a guard of Roman soldiers was stationed to secure the 
 temple, and maintain the peace. The commander of this cohort is here termed " the 
 Chief Captain." Reference is made to this guard several times in the New Testament. 
 (Matt, xxvii. 65, 66 ; John xviii. 12 ; Acts v. 26.) The word translated " Chief Cap- 
 tain," denotes, properly, one who commanded a thousand men. The " hand " was the 
 tenth part of a legion, and consisted sometimes of four hundred and twenty-five soldiers ; 
 at others, of five hundred ; and at others, of six hundred, according to the size of the 
 legion. 
 
 Impostors frequently appeared in Judea, taking advantage of the national expecta- 
 tion of the Messiah, and drawing after them great multitudes, who frequently fell under 
 the severity of the Government, as being guilty of riot. Theudas promised to divide 
 Jordan, and seduced many to follow him ; but he was killed by the Roman troops 
 before he could perform Ms miracle. (Watson's Works, vol. ix., p. 226. 8vo. edit.) 
 We are told that this Egyptian came to Jerusalem, declaring that he was a Prophet, 
 and advising the multitude of the common people to go with him to the Mount of 
 Olives. He said, moreover, that he would show them from thence how the walls of
 
 PAUL. 257 
 
 these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilder- 
 ness four thousand men that were " (cnxapiay) * " murderers ? " (Acts 
 xxi. 37, 38.) But Paul immediately said, " I am a man which am a 
 Jew of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia ; a citizen of no mean city." It 
 was not long before the arrival of Paid, that an Egyptian deluded as 
 many as thirty thousand persons, who followed him to the Mount 
 of Olives, and threatened to enter Jerusalem. The inhabitants, tur- 
 bulent as they were, and impatient of their yoke, willingly assisted 
 the Governor in checking such formidable invaders ; and the Roman 
 garrison, quartered in Jerusalem, quickly dispersed the ill-organized 
 rabble, whom fanaticism and a love of plunder had united in this 
 hopeless enterprise. It was, perhaps, an intentional falsehood of 
 some of the rioters which led the chief Captain to mistake Paul for 
 the Egyptian impostor ; but being answered by him in Greek, and 
 hearing him declare himself a citizen of Tarsus, he allowed him to 
 address the multitude from the steps on which they were standing, 
 who by this time had become more calm and composed. The Apos- 
 tle gave the people a short account of his birth and education, of his 
 zeal for the rites and customs of the Jewish religion, and with what 
 earnestness he formerly put to death all the Christians he could dis- 
 cover. He next gave them an exact but succinct relation of the way 
 and manner of his conversion, and how that he had received an 
 immediate command from God himself to depart from Jerusalem, and 
 preach unto the Gentiles. When he mentioned that his commission 
 extended thus far, the people could no longer restrain their impa- 
 tience ; they received it as a positive confession of the charge of hav- 
 ing desecrated and degraded his national religion, and simultaneously 
 interrupted him with the ferocious cry, " Away with such a fellow 
 from the earth ! it is not fit that he should live," they cried out, and 
 cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air. (Acts xxii. 22, 
 23.) The chief Captain, finding that this discussion was not likely 
 to accomplish any good purpose, instantly put a stop to it, and " com- 
 manded Paul to be brought into the castle." 
 
 An atrocious act of flagrant injustice now awaited the Apostle from 
 the hands of the military Captain. The rapacity and extortion which 
 characterized the Roman Governors dictated the policy of conciliating 
 
 Jerusalem would fall down ; and promised to them an entrance through those wall*, 
 when they were fallen down. His object was to take the city by force, seize the 
 Roman garrison, and assume the government of the people. But the Roman Governor, 
 Felix, marched his forces to meet them, and falling upon them, dispersed them with 
 great ease. Four hundred were killed, and two hundred taken prisoners ; hut the 
 Egyptian fled with a few of his more attached followers. As he was still alive, Lysias 
 supposed he had got into the city, and had raised the commotion which he witnessed. 
 That the Jews were beating Paul, was not calculated to undeceive him, as the people 
 of Jerusalem before had shown themselves very adverse to the designs of the Egyptian 
 impostor. (Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. viii., sect. 6 ; De Bell. Jnd., lib. ii., cap. 
 xiii , sect. 5.) 
 
 Sicarii, " assassins." So called from tica, " a short dagger or poiguard." Josephna 
 eays, that, at one time, Jndea, and particularly the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, was 
 infested with a set of villains, called " sicarii," who murdered people in the day-time, 
 and in the midst of the city, with daggers which they concealed under their garments. 
 (Antiq., lib. xx., cap. viii., sect. 5, 6, 10 ; and De Bell. Jud., lib. ii., cap. xiii., aect 
 3,5.) 
 
 VOL. I. 2 L
 
 258 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 the most powerful and clamorous party. On this principle Lysias 
 acted. Instead of confronting him with one or more of his accusers, 
 he proceeded on the presumption, that Paul had given just cause of 
 offence, and resolved to extort from him the reason of the tumult by 
 means of the scourge.* While the guard were binding him with 
 thongs to the pillar, and before the instrument of punishment was 
 applied, Paul said to the Centurion, who was superintending the 
 operation, " Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and 
 uncondemned ? " This question put a stop to all the proceedings at 
 once. The Centurion immediately let the thongs fall, and, running 
 to the Tribune, exclaimed, " Take heed what thou doest, for this man 
 is a Roman." Lysias then came to Paul, and, in great trepidation, 
 said, " Tell me, art thou a Roman citizen ? " desirous of ascertain- 
 ing the manner in which the prisoner had obtained this most sacred 
 of all privileges ; remarking that, in order to procure that right for 
 himself, he had to produce a large sum of money, probably doubting 
 whether a man of Paul's poverty-stricken appearance were able to pur- 
 chase the immunity ; to whom Paul replied, that it was his birthright. f 
 The Tribune, J being startled that he had chained and bound a denizen 
 of Rome, kept the Apostle with great care in the castle, as a place 
 of safety from his Jewish persecutors ; and what had been denied 
 to justice was granted through fear. The officer now did what he 
 should have been content to do in the first instance. He referred 
 the case, which he could not understand, it being " a question of 
 words and names and of their law," (Acts xviii. 15,) to the Sanhe- 
 drim ; in the presence of which body he resolved to have a full investi- 
 gation of his character, and the charges which were brought against 
 him. On the following morning, the Sanhedrim was convened, and 
 Paul placed before them. 
 
 Before this tribunal, where his heavenly Master and Peter and 
 John had already stood for sentence, Paul was now placed. He 
 opened his defence in a very appropriate and self-vindicative style. 
 
 * Scourging was a method of examination used by the Romans, and other nations, 
 to force such as were supposed guilty to confess what they had done, what were their 
 motives, and who were their accomplices. Thus Tacitus tells us of Herennius Gallua, 
 (Tacit. Hist., lih. iv., cap. 27,) that he received several stripes, that it might be known 
 for what price, and with what confederates, he had betrayed the Roman army. It is to 
 be observed, however, that the Romans were punished in this wise, not by whips 
 and scourges, but with rods only ; and therefore it is that Cicero, (Orat. pro Rabirio.) 
 speaking against Labienus, tells his audience, that the Porcian law permitted a Roman 
 to be whipped with rods ; but he, like a good and merciful man, (speaking ironically,) 
 had done it with scourged ; and still further, neither by whips nor rods could a citizen 
 of Rome be punished, until he were first adjudged to lose his privilege, to be unciti- 
 zened, and declared to be an enemy to the commonwealth ; then he might be scourged, 
 and put to death. Cicero (Orat. in Verr.) says, " It is a foul fault for any Praetor to 
 bind a citizen of Rome, a piacular offence to scourge him, a kind of parricide to kill 
 him. What shall I call the crucifying of such an one ? " 
 
 t "Gdebatur vivgis in medio foro Messanse civis Romantis, cum interea nullus 
 gemitus, nulla vox alia istius miseri audiebatur, nisi hsec, Civis Romanus sum. Hac 
 se commemoratione civitatis omnia verbera depulsnrum arbitrabatur. O nomen dvdce 
 libertatis ! O jus eximium nostne civitatis ! O lex Porcia, legesque Sempronise ! " 
 (Cic. in Verr., lib. vii.) 
 
 \ Xt\iapxos, " a Roman military tribune,'' or " commander of a cohort ; " of which 
 there were six to a legion. (John xviii. 12 ) Joseph us and Plutarch use die word in 
 this technical sense.
 
 PAUL. 259 
 
 " Men and brethren," said he, " I have lived in all good conscience 
 before God until this day." Ananias the High Priest, provoked at 
 the language of the Apostle, ordered the bystanders to strike him in 
 the face.* Paul, indignant at this wanton insult, and the high- 
 armed tyranny of this outrageous attack, answered in honest wrath, 
 accompanied with a prophetical allusion to the violent death which 
 Ananias ultimately underwent, " God shall smite thee, thou whited 
 wall ! f For sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest 
 me to be smitten contrary to the law ? And they that stood by said, 
 Eevilest thou God's High Priest ? Then said Paul, I wist not, bre- 
 thren, that he was the High Priest : J for it is written, Thou shalt 
 
 It is still usual in the East, and particularly iu Persia, for a person in authority to 
 order an offender who appears before him to be smitten on the month, if he make an 
 answer or remark which is not approved. This is on the old oriental principle of punish- 
 ing the offending part. The blow ia usually inflicted with the heel of a shoe, and is 
 very severe, often breaking the teeth and causing the blood to flow. 
 
 t About five years after this, during the government of Floras, Eleazar, a son of 
 Ananias, placed himself at the head of a party of turbulent persons, who took posses- 
 sion of the temple, and would allow no sacrifices to be offered for the Emperor ; and 
 these being joined by a party of (sicarii) assassins, every person of note was obliged 
 to seek for safety in vaults and sewers. Ananias sought safety in the royal palace ; 
 and when it was assaulted and forced by the assassins, he retreated, with his brother 
 Hezekiab, to an old aqueduct, from which they were exultingly dragged, and slain upon 
 the spot. (Joseph. De Bell., lib. ii., cap. xvii., sect. 2, 6, 9.) 
 
 t Ananias, the son of Nebedaeus, was High Priest at the time that Queen Helena 
 supplied the Jews with corn from Egypt, (Jos. Ant., lib. xx., cap. v., sect. 2,) during 
 the famine which occurred in the reign of Claudius. Paul therefore, who took a 
 journey to Jerusalem at that period, (Acts xv.,) could not have been ignorant of the 
 elevation of Ananias to that dignity. Soon after the holding of the first Council, as it 
 is called, at Jerusalem, Ananias was dispossessed of his office, in consequence of cer- 
 tain acts of violence between the Samaritans and the Jews, and sent prisoner to Rome, 
 (Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. vi., sect. 2,) where he was afterwards released, and 
 returned to Jerusalem. Now, from that period he could not be called High Priest, in 
 the proper sense of the word ; though Josephus (Antiq., lib. xx., cap. ix., sect. 3 ; and 
 De Bell. Jnd., lib. ii., cap. xvii., sect. 9) has sometimes given him the title of, apxitpevs, 
 taken in the more extensive meaning of a " Priest " who had a seat and voice in the 
 Sanhedrim ; (apxifpis, in the plural number, is frequently used in the New Testament, 
 when allusion is made to the Sanhedrim ;) and Jonathan, though we are not acquainted 
 with the circumstances of his elevation, had been raised, in the mean time, to the 
 supreme dignity in the Jewish Church. Between the death of Jonathan, who was 
 murdered (Joseph. Antiq. Jnd., lib. xx., cap. viii., sect. 5) by order of Felix, and the 
 high priesthood of Ismael, who was invested with that office by Agrippa, (Joseph. 
 Antiq. Jud., lib. xx., cap. viii., sect. 8,) elapsed an interval in which this dignity continued 
 vacant. Now it happened precisely at this interval, that Paul was apprehended ia Jeru- 
 salem ; and the Sanhedrim, being destitute of a President, Ananias undertook, of his 
 own authority, the discharge of that office, which he executed with the greatest tyranny. 
 (Joseph. Antiq. Jud., lib. xx., cap. ix., sect. 2.) It ia possible, therefore, that Paul, 
 who had been only a few days in Jerusalem, might be ignorant that Ananias, who had 
 been dispossessed of the priesthood, had taken upon himself a trust to which he was 
 not entitled. He might therefore very naturally exclaim, " I wist not, brethren, that 
 he was the High Priest 1 " Admitting him, on the other hand, to have been acquainted 
 with the fact, the expression must be considered as an indirect reproof, and a tacit 
 refuisal to recognise usurped authority. (Michaelis'a Introd. to the New Test., vol. i., 
 pp. 52, 63. 8vo. edit. London, 1823.) 
 
 The violent death of Jonathan has been alluded to. He endeavoured to assume the 
 appearance of a friend of Felix, and, like the Christian Apostle Paul, would reason 
 with him on temperance and righteortsness. His remonstrances, if at the time they 
 produced the same effect, and made Felix tremble, were fatal to himself. Felix, weary 
 with Li.s importunity, entered into a secret conspiracy with some of the sicarii, or 
 assassins, the most extravagant of the school of Judas the Galilean. These were men, 
 Kouie fanatics, some unprincipled desperadoes, who abused the precepts of the Mosaic 
 law, as authorizing the murder of all on whom they might affix the brand of hostility 
 
 2 L 2
 
 260 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." (Acts xxiii. 3 5.) He 
 then adopted a mode of defence on which he reckoned upon dividing 
 the counsels of his adversaries. Nor was he disappointed. Perceiv- 
 ing that the Sanhedrim was composed partly of Pharisees, and partly 
 of Sadducees, he determined to avail himself of the mutual hatred 
 of the two great sects, by making his own persecution a kind of 
 party question : he therefore cried out in the Council, " I am a Pha- 
 risee, the son of a Pharisee ; of the hope and resurrection of the 
 dead, I am called in question!" This quickly divided the assembly. 
 Instantly all the violent feeling between the two parties broke out in 
 full force ; and the Scribes, who belonged to the order of the Phari- 
 sees, declared, " We find no evil in this man ; but if a spirit or an 
 angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God." This last 
 remark was throwing the gauntlet at the Sadducees, who, denying 
 absolutely the existence of either angel or spirit, could, of course, 
 believe no part of Paul's revelation from on high. The strife grew 
 so hot, that Paul was near being " pulled in pieces of them ; " and 
 the officer, seeing that they could not come to any conclusion on the 
 prisoner's case, withdrew him, and thus Paul escaped that condemna- 
 tion which would have been pronounced upon him had they remained 
 unanimous. In the course of the night, the Lord appeared to him, 
 who bade him be of good courage, and as he had testified of him at 
 Jerusalem, so also should he bear witness of him at Rome. This 
 was a comfortable assurance to the Apostle. He discovered that all 
 he had undergone was of divine appointment ; that the " Keeper of 
 Israel " was his safeguard and tower ; and that he needed not to fear 
 what man could do unto him. On the next morning the fulfilment 
 of this heavenly announcement commenced. The furious Jews, now 
 cut off from all possibility of doing any violence to Paul, either by 
 unlawful acts, or by a judicial murder, determined to set all modera- 
 tion aside. Up to this period, according to the representation of 
 the Jewish historian, the Pontificate had remained almost entirely 
 uncontaminated by the general licence and turbulence which dis- 
 tracted the nation. The Priests were, in general, moderate and 
 upright men, who had endeavoured to maintain the peace of the city. 
 The evil now extended to the sanctuary, and feuds rent the family 
 of Levi. Even the worst excesses of the sicarii seem to have been 
 authorized by the priesthood for their own purposes. We are not 
 therefore surprised that the diabolical iniquity of the wretched Ana- 
 nias should develope itself in a plot, of which he was the promoter, 
 that was intended to terminate all future aggressions on the part of 
 the Apostle. Forty of the most desperate of the Jews, the sicarii, 
 bound themselves by a solemn oath, neither to eat nor drink until 
 
 to their country, and their God. Having bribed Doras, the intimate friend of Jonathan, 
 through his means Felix sent a party of these wretches into the temple. With their 
 daggers under their cloaks, they mingled with the attendants of the High Priest. They 
 pretended to join in the public worship, and suddenly struck dead the unsuspecting 
 Pontiff, who lay bleeding on the sacred pavement. From this period, says the indig- 
 nant Josephus, God hated his guilty city ; and, disdaining any longer to dwell in his 
 contaminated temple, brought the Romans to purify with fire the sins of the nation. 
 (Milman's History of the Jews, vol. ii., p. 206.)
 
 PAUL. 261 
 
 they had slain Paul.* In the arrangement of the manner in which 
 this sanguinary vow was to be performed, it was agreed that the 
 High Priest should send a request to the Tribune, that Paul should 
 be brought once more before the Council, that some further inquiries 
 might be made which were necessary to their final and more complete 
 satisfaction ; in the mean time these assassins were so to station them- 
 selves that they might rush upon the Apostle, and despatch him 
 before the guards had presence of mind to discern the assailants, or 
 to rescue Paul. But " a bird of the air carried the voice, and that 
 which hath wings told the matter." (Eccles. x. 20.) The plot 
 reached the ears of the nephew of Paul ; a young man nowhere else 
 mentioned in the New Testament, and of whose character and situa- 
 tion nothing is known. He came instantly to his uncle, who sent 
 the informant to the chief Captain. As soon as Lysias received this 
 information respecting the desperate character of the opposition to 
 Paul, he resolved no longer to risk the prisoner's life in Jerusalem, 
 guarded as it was by the powerful defences of Antonia. He dis- 
 missed the young man, after having enjoined profound secrecy, and 
 immediately made preparations to send Paul to Csesarea, as a prisoner 
 of state. He directed two Centurions to draw out a detachment, 
 including two hundred heavy-armed soldiers, ninety horsemen, and 
 two hundred lancers, to convey him beyond the reach of the Jerusa- 
 lem sicarii. These warriors, accompanied by their prisoner, set out 
 from Jerusalem, and, after forty miles of hard riding, reached Antipa- 
 tris before day ; and as all danger from the Jerusalem assassins was 
 out of the question, four hundred of the guard returned to the 
 metropolis, leaving Paul seventy soldiers as an escort, with which 
 he journeyed to Csesarea, where he was presented by the Commander 
 of the detachment to Felix, the Roman Governor, who, learning that 
 Paul was of Cilicia, committed him to an apartment of the great 
 palace, until his accusers from Jerusalem should arrive. 
 
 The Sanhedrim pursued their hated adversary to the tribunal of the 
 Governor. Ananias went down in person, and an advocate was hired 
 to give more weight to the accusation. The Jews had again recourse 
 to the forms of justice ; but they were again disappointed. Tertullus 
 charged the Apostle with sedition, heresy, and with profanation of the 
 
 * It appears from many passages in the Talmud, that it was usual for the Jews to 
 vow that they would not eat for a particular time, or till some design which they enter- 
 tained were accomplished. Sometimes they only hound themselves to abstinence from 
 particular tilings, and then others were lawful to them. But the present TOW was abso- 
 lute ; and it appears to have been no unusual thing for certain zealots thus to bind 
 themselves to alay those whom they believed to be worthy of death, but whose destruc- 
 tion could not be effected by any legal process. Josephus mentions an instance in 
 which ten Jews bound themselves, by an oath, to destroy the first Herod, because he 
 had violated the ancient customs of the nation. They were discovered before they could 
 effect their intention ; and, being brought before the King, were so far from betraying 
 any fear or compunction, that they gloried in the act they had meditated ; and, holding 
 up their daggers, avowed that they believed the conspiracy to which they had sworn 
 was a holy and pious action ; and that what they had purposed to do was not for any 
 gain or honour to themselves, nor for any indulgence to their passions, but in behalf 
 of the customs of their country, which every Jew was bound to observe, or die for. 
 They received their deaths with great constancy, amidst the sympathy of the people, 
 who manifested their approbation of the design by tearing limb from limb the sjiy who 
 had revealed the plot, and throwing his remains to the dogs. (Illustrated Commentary.)
 
 262 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 temple ; and complained that Lysias, the Tribune at Jerusalem, had 
 violently interposed to prevent them from judging him according to 
 their law. These accusations Paul satisfactorily answered ; and chal- 
 lenged the Chief Priests themselves to bring forward any misde- 
 meanor he had committed before the Sanhedrim, except his declara- 
 tion " concerning the resurrection of the dead," which might indeed 
 have offended the Sadducees, his enemies ; but which the Roman 
 Judge would not term a crime. His masterly defence satisfied Felix 
 of his innocence, who understood more about " the way," as the 
 Gospel was then called, than was usually known to Roman Governors : 
 nevertheless, being unwilling to displease the Jews, and looking for a 
 bribe from Paul himself, he would not dismiss him, but postponed 
 the decision of the trial, under the pretext that he must wait for the 
 testimony of Lysias, in order to gain full information respecting the 
 case. The Centurion was directed to keep Paul in easy confinement, 
 to allow him relaxation, and not to prevent his friends from assisting 
 and visiting him. In this state of imprisonment he continued two 
 years, at the termination of which Felix was superseded by Porcius 
 Festus ; and, " willing to show the Jews a pleasure, he left Paul 
 bound." * 
 
 The Jews lost no time in endeavouring to secure the person of 
 Paul. With the High Priest at their head, they renewed their bloody 
 designs ; and their last failure having been in wresting justice, they 
 now returned to a plan of violence. Festus, immediately after his 
 accession to his government, went up to Jerusalem from Ceesarea : 
 there the High Priest and chief of the Jews renewed their complaints 
 against Paul, praying that Festus would send for him to Jerusalem, but 
 plotting to kill him by the way. The Procurator, however, having 
 received some notification of the mischievous design, from the friends 
 of the Apostle, positively refused to bring the prisoner to Jerusalem ; 
 and also required the presence of the accusers in the proper seat of 
 the supreme provincial administration of justice at Csesarea. After 
 remaining in Jerusalem ten days, he returned to the civil capital ; and 
 with a commendable activity in his judicial proceedings, on the next 
 day after his arrival in Csesarea, summoned Paul and his accusers 
 before him. The Jews, of course, repeated their oft-told tale, 
 " and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which 
 they could not prove." (Acts xxv. 7.) As the trial proceeded, 
 in which they egregiously failed to establish these charges, Festus, 
 having been in some way influenced to favour the designs of the 
 Jews, urged Paul to go up to Jerusalem, there to be tried by the supreme 
 religious court of his own nation. The Apostle, well understand- 
 ing the consequences of that proposal, replied by a bold and distinct 
 
 * This scheme of Felix to ingratiate himself with the Jews did not answer. He 
 had disgraced the office which he held by perpetual acts of tyranny, rapine, and murder : 
 therefore, as soon as he was gone, some of the principal Jews of Caesarea followed him 
 to Rome to accuse him to the Emperor ; and he would at length have suffered for his 
 many years of misrule, if his hrother Pallas, who was in high favour with Nero, had 
 not befriended him, and exerted his powerful influence to secure him from the Monarch's 
 displeasure, (Burton's Lectures, &c., p. 253 ; Milman's History of the Jews, vol. ii., 
 p. 210.)
 
 PAUL. 263 
 
 assertion of his rights as a Roman citizen, alleging that he had done 
 nothing to deserve to he delivered up to the Jewish Sanhedrim ; that 
 he was entitled to be tried by a Roman tribunal ; and since he could 
 not get justice at the provincial court of Csesarea, he appealed to 
 the bar of Caesar at Rome. " I stand," said the Apostle, " at 
 Caesar's judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged : to the Jews 
 have I done no wrong, as thou very well knowest. For if I be an 
 offender, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not 
 to die : but if there be none of these things whereof these accuse 
 me, no man may deliver me unto them. I APPEAL UNTO CAE- 
 SAR." * (Acts xxv. 10, 11.) This solemn formula placed the 
 Apostle far beyond the reach of all inferior tyranny : no Governor 
 on earth durst interfere with an appellant Roman citizen, when he 
 flung himself before this grand palladium of Roman law. Festus, though 
 evidently displeased at the course which events had taken, could not 
 breast the torrent, and, after conferring with his Council, replied to 
 Paul, " Hast thou appealed unto Caesar ? unto Caesar shalt thou go." 
 
 But before he could be sent off, and within a few days after the 
 trial, Agrippa, with his sister Bernice,f came to Caesarea, to wait 
 
 By the Valerian, Porcian, and Sempronian lawn, it had been enacted, that if any 
 Magistrate should be about to beat, or put to death, any Roman citizen, the accused 
 could appeal to the Roman people, and this conveyed the cause to Rome. The law 
 was so far changed under the Emperors, that the cause should be carried before 
 them, instead of the people. Every citizen had the right of an appeal; and when it 
 was made, the accused was sent to Rome for trial ; the inferior Magistrate, or distant 
 Governor, had no further power in the case ; and it became highly penal for him 
 to take any further measures in the affair, save that of sending to Rome, with all 
 convenient speed, the person who had appealed to the tribunal of the Emperor. 
 This privilege of a Roman citizen was highly valued, particularly in the distant 
 provinces, where it afforded the persona who enjoyed it a very enviable protection 
 from the tyranny and arbitrary conduct into which provincial Governor.-", remote 
 from the immediate cognizance and control of the supreme power, were but too 
 apt to fall. Many readers will recollect that the younger Pliny, in his letter to the 
 Emperor Trajan concerning the Christians, after mentioning that he had ordered 
 those persons to be led forth to execution, who persisted, before his tribunal, in avow- 
 ing that they were Christiana, adds, that there were others infected with the like 
 insanity, whom, because they were citizens of Rome, he had directed to be sent thither. 
 (The Letters of Pliny, by Melmoth, vol. ii., book x., letter xcvii., p. 672. Fourth edit. 
 London, 1757.) 
 
 t Tliis celebrated woman was the sister of Agrippa, and consequently of Drosilla, the 
 wife of Felix. When her father died, she was sixteen years of age, and the wife of her 
 uncle, Herod of Chalcis. After his death, a proposal was, with her concurrence, made to 
 Polemou, King of Pontus and part of Cicilia, that she would marry him, on condition 
 of his being circumcised ; and to this, her extreme beauty, and still more her great 
 wealth, induced him to consent. They did not, however, live long together ; and when 
 she left her husband, she went to her brother Agrippa ; and Polemou testified his 
 iv-rntment, by abandoning the religion which he had adopted ouly for her sake. The 
 manner in which Bemice and Agrippa, after this, lived together, was exceedingly 
 criminal, and became the common talk of society. It is even noticed by the Roman 
 satirist, when speaking of a rich diamond in her possession : 
 
 Hune dedit olim 
 
 Barbarus incestte, dedit hunc Agrippa sorori. Sat. vi. 
 
 She, with her brother, followed Titua to Rome. That conqueror himself became 
 violently attached to her, and she lived for a while in criminal intercourse with him. He 
 would fain have married her, but the idea of their Emperor's marriage to an alien and a 
 .Ir\M : , was HO revolting to the people, that he durst not execute his intention ; and 
 Dudiug that the people murmured to see him so enslaved to a foreign beauty, one of the 
 fir. -i iictH of his reformed cnmhict, when ho became sole Emperor, was to dismiss her, 
 u nd to oblige lier t.) depart, not ouly from Rome, but even from Italy.
 
 264 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 upon the new Governor with their congratulations on his arrival. 
 This Agrippa was King of Iturea, Trachonitis, Abilene, and other 
 northern regions of Palestine, and the son of that Herod Agrippa 
 whose character and actions were so closely connected with some of 
 the incidents of Peter's life. During their stay at Csesarea, Festus 
 related to the King the case of Paul, as one with which he would 
 doubtless be interested, connected as it indisputably was with the 
 civil and religious affairs of that people to whom Agrippa himself 
 belonged ; and in the minutice of whose law and theology he had 
 doubtless been well instructed. Agrippa's curiosity was excited, and 
 he expressed a wish to hear him. Festus, not knowing what to state 
 concerning his prisoner in his letter to Caesar, and wishing, therefore, 
 to avail himself of Agrippa's knowledge, gladly complied. On the 
 next day, preparations were made for this audience, in the presence 
 of which Paul was placed. The King, as the highest authority pre- 
 sent, requested the Apostle to speak for himself. He gave an account 
 of his former life, and of his conversion, and was stating that 
 his doctrine was agreeable to what Moses and the Prophets had 
 taiight, which was, that Christ was to suffer, and, having risen the 
 first from the dead, was to be a light to the people and to the Gen- 
 tiles ; when Festus, to whom as a Heathen all this was foolishness, 
 cried out, " Paul, thou art beside thyself. Much learning doth make 
 thee mad!" So admirably, however, did the Apostle conduct his 
 defence, that, in spite of the sneer of the Governor, Agrippa paid the 
 prisoner as high a compliment as could be expected, when he pro- 
 nounced him guiltless of the charges which had been brought against 
 him ; and then, with Bernice and his train, left the court, suggesting, 
 that Paul might have been set at liberty, had he not appealed to 
 Caesar. The voyage to Rome was now decided upon, and early in 
 October, when the season had become unfavourable, he set sail, hav- 
 ing been consigned, along with other prisoners of state, to the care 
 of a Roman officer, Julius, a Centurion of the Augustan cohort. 
 Luke and Aristarchus accompanied him, not as prisoners, but 
 as the voluntary companions of the Apostle. After suffering ship- 
 wreck, and exhibiting the " signs of an Apostle," at Malta,* he reached 
 Italy, and had the comfort, almost as soon as he landed, of meeting 
 with brethren in Jesus Christ, with whom he stayed a week at Puteoli. 
 We may form some idea of the numbers and zeal of the Christians 
 then at Rome, when we find, that in these few days they heard of 
 Paul being at Puteoli, and that some of them came even as far as fifty 
 miles from the city to meet him on his way. Entering the city, he 
 was delivered into the custody of the Praetorian Prefect, f who allowed 
 him to reside in a private lodging, under the eye of an attendant 
 soldier. This post was held at present by Burrus, who was, ex 
 
 * We are, perhaps, warranted in supposing that Christianity was at that time 
 introduced into the island ; and the miraculous cures performed by Paul, would alone 
 have been sufficient to make many converts. But when we read in ancient Martyr- 
 ologies, that Publius was made Bishop of Malta, and afterwards succeeded Dionysius, 
 the Areopagite, in the bishopric of Athens, and subsequently suffered martyrdom, 
 we must bear in mind that these lists of early Bishops are deserving of very little credit. 
 
 t The Letters of Pliny. By Melmoth. Vol. ii., epist. 66, p. 641. London, 1757.
 
 PAUL. 265 
 
 officio, the keeper of all prisoners of state brought from the provinces 
 to Rome, and one of the few persons, whose characters relieve the 
 depravity of the reign of Nero. In Rome, the Apostle was free to 
 every purpose of the service of the Gospel, which could be accom- 
 plished within the walls of the city. So far from his labours being 
 intermitted, they were greater than ever. First of all, he took 
 measures to correct the misrepresentations which were then on their 
 way, and obtained a conference with the principal Jews at his lodg- 
 ings. The Jews in Rome appear to have been less illiberal and 
 bigoted than those in the countries nearer to Asia, which Paul had 
 hitherto visited. They had heard some of the general calumnies 
 spread against the Christians ; but their countrymen in Judea had 
 not taken the same pains to prejudice them against Paul, which they 
 had used in Greece and Asia Minor. While he was at Ceesarea, they 
 hoped to put him to death, and thus hinder his further exertions ; 
 and he arrived at Rome so early in the year, that they had not had 
 time during the winter months to send their usual emissaries, who 
 might spread their calumnies against him. Many of the Jews in 
 Rome had received the Gospel ; and Paul's first attempt, on arriving 
 there, was the conversion of his unbelieving countrymen. They 
 listened to him with patience ; some were persuaded by his arguments, 
 and others manifested the usual obstinacy. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that Luke did not continue the Acts of 
 the Apostles beyond the arrival of Paul at Rome. He tells us 
 indeed, that " he dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and 
 received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, 
 and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with 
 all confidence, no man forbidding him ;" (Acts xxviii. 30, 31 ;) but 
 this is all the information which he has left us ; and what we know 
 of these two years, is scantily gathered from expressions in Paul's 
 own Epistles, and from the few traditions preserved by ecclesiastical 
 writers. " We should wish particularly to know," says Dr. Burton, 
 " whether he pleaded his cause before the Emperor in person. Fes- 
 tus had professed himself at a loss as to the terms of the accusation, 
 which he was to send with him to Rome ; and we are not informed 
 under what description of prisoners he would be classed, when he 
 arrived in that city. It is the opinion of Baronius, that he would 
 have to appear, not only before the Emperor, but before the Senate, 
 and the Pontifical College ; in which, he seems to have considered, 
 that the case would have been treated as one affecting religion. But 
 this is very uncertain. The persons in authority at Rome would have 
 felt, like Festus, that the question between Paul and the Jews merely 
 involved ' certain questions of their own superstition ; ' and if the 
 Apostle's long confinement at Rome was caused at all by the machi- 
 nations of the Jews, they would not have been likely to press those 
 points which concerned their own religion. It is difficult, however, 
 to account for the length of time that elapsed before Paul was 
 released, except that such delays appear to have been not infrequent 
 in the hearing of causes which came from distant provinces. He 
 certainly made a defence, because he speaks of it in one of his own 
 
 VOL. i. 2 M
 
 20U BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 letters ; (Phil. i. 7 ;) but we are not told that he addressed it to 
 Nero himself ; and it seems certain, that he made it not long before his 
 release. We might, perhaps, conject\ire, that the Jews were instru- 
 mental in keeping him so long a prisoner. At least, we know, that 
 the wish would not be wanting ; and though they might not be able 
 to allege any specific crime, their object was so far gained, if they 
 could check for a time his more active exertions. It is stated, that 
 soon after the removal of Felix, the Jews sent a deputation to accuse 
 him to the Emperor ; and these men may, perhaps, have insinuated, 
 that he had favoured a person who was opposed to the Roman 
 Government. Felix himself was probably in Rome, when Paul 
 arrived there ; and it is difficult to say what account he would have 
 given the Emperor of his extraordinary prisoner. His own opinion 
 would certainly have been favourable : but, at this time, he would 
 wish to conciliate the Jews, who were come to accuse him, and he 
 may have helped to throw delays in the way of Paul making his 
 defence. We have stated, that Felix was screened from punishment 
 through the influence of Pallas ; and though this favourite of fortune 
 was no longer at the head of affairs, as he had been in the former 
 reign, he may have contrived to keep Paul from obtaining a 
 hearing." * 
 
 Notwithstanding, the word was not bound. It is evident, that the 
 very bonds of Paul helped, rather than hindered, the cause of the 
 Gospel, both by confirming by his example the endurance of the 
 brethren within the church, and by making him notorious to those 
 without, even in the very palace and household of Csesar. Christ was 
 thus publicly proclaimed ; and although some published his name, not 
 with any view to the truth, but, on the contrary, to bring his Preacher 
 Paul into trouble, ascribing false and mischievous doctrines unto him, 
 yet others, taking courage by his example, and resolved to clear his 
 character, knowing that he was set for the defence of the Gospel, 
 preached Christ through sincerity and love. One main point of 
 resistance which had been so formidable elsewhere, was here much 
 abated. In the plundered and impoverished provinces of Greece and 
 the East, the Jews, as under the same circumstances at this day, en- 
 grossed the wealth of the country ; and, therefore, under a govern- 
 ment which respected their religion as being a national one, their 
 power of persecuting the Christians, whom they represented as apos- 
 tates, was almost equal to their will. But here, in the enormous 
 wealthy capital, filled with all the rank of the empire, they were lost, 
 were sunk in the very dregs of its populace, objects of derision and 
 contempt. Such too of the Heathen, as were likely to raise opposi- 
 tion, had not as yet deigned even to hear of the rising sect. At 
 present, all went on prosperously : the faith was working silently and 
 surely, and the church at Rome soon became more wealthy and more 
 numerous than any other in Christendom. f Paul did not obtain a 
 hearing until he had been a prisoner nearly two years : in the mean 
 time the Gospel made its way among the individuals connected with 
 
 * Bnrton's Lectnres on Eccles. Hist, of the First Century, pp. 2G2 264, 
 t Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 280.
 
 PAUL. 2G7 
 
 the court. If the Narcissus who is mentioned by Paul, (Rom. xvi. 
 11,) was the celebrated freedman of Claudius, Christianity had found 
 its way into the Emperor's household, three years before the arrival 
 of the Apostle ; and some of these converts were, probably, people 
 of rank. But the identity of these two persons must be considered 
 a very doubtful point. It is more satisfactory to find Paul sending a 
 salutation from those of "Caesar's household." (Phil. i. 12, 13; iv. 
 22.) Tacitus has supplied us with the name of one lady of rank, 
 who embraced Christianity while Paul was a resident in Rome. This 
 was Pomponia Grsecina, the wife of Plautus, the conqueror of Britain ; 
 who, in the second year of the Apostle's imprisonment, is stated to 
 have been "accused of embracing the rites of a foreign supersti- 
 tion;"* and the expressions of the historian have generally been 
 taken to indicate that she had embraced Christianity. The Martyr- 
 olcgies mention Torpetes, who was attached to the Emperor's house- 
 hold ; but we know nothing more concerning him, except that he is 
 said to have suffered martyrdom. -f Much less credit is due to the 
 notion, that Poppsea Sabina, one of the earliest of Nero's mistresses, 
 was converted to the Gospel. Josephus J speaks of her as a woman 
 of piety, because she sometimes had shown a disposition to favour 
 the Jews ; but such a feeling was not unlikely to prejudice her against 
 the Christians ; and it is impossible to read the character given of 
 her by Tacitus, without seeing that there was no period in her dis- 
 graceful life, when the Gospel could be said to have made an impres- 
 sion on her mind. Much has been said with regard to Paul's inter- 
 course with Seneca : all, however, seem now to be of one opinion, 
 that the letters which are extant, and which professed to have been 
 interchanged between Paul and that philosopher, are spurious. In 
 the mean while Paul had made his defence ; and though his sentence 
 had not been pronounced when he wrote to the Philippians, he seems 
 to have known that the issue would be favourable. || In a short time 
 he was fully restored to liberty. 
 
 After the release of Paul, we have only uncertain tradition for our 
 guide, respecting the brief remaining period of his life.^[ It seems proba- 
 ble that he revisited some of the Grecian and Asiatic churches : whether 
 he ever was enabled to fulfil his purpose of proceeding to Spain, 
 remains a subject of controversy.** Dr. Hinds imagines, that on hia 
 
 * Taciti Annales, lib. xiii., cap. 32. 
 
 t MartjTolog. Roman. Mali 1 7. Theodorus Metochita, a writer of the thirteenth 
 century, mentions a cupbearer and a mistress of Nero, who were converted by Paul. 
 
 t Joseph. Antiq., lib. xx., cap. 8, sect. 11. 
 
 Taciti Annales, lib. xiii., cap. 45. 
 
 || Burton's Lectures on Eccles. History, p. 272. 
 
 Tf See Niceph. Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 34. The hopelessness of constructing a 
 satisfactory account of the life of Paul after his first imprisonment, sufficiently appears 
 from the inconsistent views entertained by different writers, upon grounds that in them- 
 selves all appear plausible. Compare, for example, Paley's Horae Paulina-, p. 176; 
 Lardner, Works, vol. v., p. 529, et teq. ; and Neander, vol. i., p. 399, et seq. 
 
 Among the latest writers upon the subject, Neander supposes that the Apostle was 
 in Spain, while Tate takes a different view. (Continuons Hist., p. 173, et seq.) Cle- 
 mens Romauus expressly asserts, that he preached iu the west, and that to its utmost 
 bounds, which must at least include Spain. (Epist. i. ad Corinth., cap. 5.) And 
 Theodoret adds, that he went to the islands of the sea, and numbers Gaul and Britain 
 
 2 M 2
 
 268 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 release, he continued his ministry from Rome to other parts of Italy ; 
 but as to the precise object, or the result of his labours there, we 
 have no certain account ; and it is not desirable to mix the traditional 
 records which do exist with his authentic history. It is a scruple, 
 indeed, which the historian, who is passing the line which separates 
 the one from the other, the inspired from the uninspired records, 
 cannot be too cautious not to violate.* Ultimately he returned to 
 Antioch. From this city he commenced his fifth and last apostolical 
 journey, purposing, no doubt, to visit those places in which, during 
 the preceding tour, he had planted the faith. The Colossians 
 and Philippians he might be induced to visit, if it were only to 
 express his sense of their kindness during his late imprisonment. 
 From Troas he sailed into Italy. 
 
 The state of feeling had undergone a lamentable change. Rome 
 was no longer to the Apostle that Rome which it had been before : 
 the wild boar had broken into the vineyard of the church ; its former 
 cheerfulness was turned into mourning. Perhaps the Jews had been 
 busy in his absence, spreading, as was their custom, calumnies against 
 Christianity and Paul. Perhaps the Gnostic heresy, which by this 
 time had made considerable progress, might have generated or aided 
 the prejudice. From whatever cause, he found the Christians treated, 
 according to the representations of Suetonius,-)- and Tacitus, J as an 
 abominable sect, and deserving the hatred of all mankind. The 
 Christian name now challenged general notice. The Magistrates 
 regarded with jealousy a secret society, as it seemed to them to be. 
 The people hated it for a thousand reasons. Some loathed it as a 
 viler sect of vile Judaism. Some felt rebuked by the unblemished 
 lives of its maintainers. Some were shocked at its rejection of all 
 the rites which their superstitious idolatry thought essential to reli- 
 gion. Some abhorred its gloominess, which revolted from their shows 
 and spectacles. It had scarcely reached the notice of the philoso- 
 pher, who as yet was content to despise it at a distance ; but it was 
 known to be making sensible progress, and many a head of a family 
 discovered, to his amazement and horror, that it had obtained foot- 
 ing in his own house. It was at once despised and dreaded. Nero, 
 
 among the disciples of the tent-maker. But there is great reason to doubt these 
 reports : for, (1.) His long imprisonment of four years at Caesarea, aud at Rome, must 
 have broken his measures, and circumscribed his travels. (2.) The interval between his 
 first and second risit to Rome, seems to have been too short to afford time for a visit 
 to Syria eastward, and afterwards in an opposite direction to Spain and Britain, the 
 extremities of Europe westward. (3.) There is no notice taken of these western 
 travels in Paul's last Epistle to Timothy, but only of his eastern. (4.) An ancient Greek 
 writer of the travels of Peter and Paul, brought over by Petty, the skilful collector 
 of the Arundel marbles, observes, that " Peter spent some days in Britain, and 
 enlightened many by the word- of grace ; and having established churches (in the 
 west), and elected Bishops, &c., came again to Rome in the twelfth year of Nero, 
 when, having found Linus dead, he elected Clemens Bishop in his room ; who, with 
 great reluctance, accepted the station, and was afterwards spared in the ensuing perse- 
 cution, because he was a kinsman of Nero." (See Cotelerius's Patres Apostolici, vol. i., 
 p. 148, note 39. Kale's Analysis of Chronology, vol. iii., p. 546. London, 1830.) 
 
 * Hinds's History of the Rise and Early Progress of Christianity, p. 261. Second 
 edition. London, 1846. 
 
 t Sueton. in Nerone, cap. xvi. 
 
 J Taciti Annales, lib. xv., cap. 44.
 
 PAUL. 269 
 
 therefore, could not have chosen a more fit subject for the odious charge 
 of having lighted that dreadful conflagration which . consumed the 
 best part of Rome. The word of God was now hindered indeed. It 
 could be preached but in caves underneath the earth, in cellars, 
 and in catacombs.* Paul, therefore, hastened to Rome, not reck- 
 lessly to rush into the lion's mouth, but to encourage and comfort the 
 church now in " the hour and the power of darkness." 
 
 Soon, very soon, was Paul arrested,f and thrown into the gloomy 
 Mamertine dungeons. He was now in a very different kind of 
 custody from his last. He was closely imprisoned, and found out 
 only by such as, like Onesiphorus, made diligent inquiry. When he 
 was placed for the first time to make his defence, at the tribunal of 
 the Praetorian Prefect, so great was the danger of any connexion 
 with him, that he found himself quite deserted. " At my first answer 
 no man stood with me, but all men forsook me." (2 Tim. iv. 16.) 
 It was here that he wrote his Second Epistle to Timothy, in which he 
 solemnly expresses his full conviction, that the time of his departure 
 was at hand. Having given this faithful disciple an affectionate 
 charge, in which he shows how much his concern for the church of 
 Christ absorbed any consideration of himself, and that the heresies and 
 corruptions which should invade it were much more in his thoughts 
 than his approaching sufferings, he concludes his testimony in terms 
 of hallowed resignation, worthy an Apostle of Christ : " I am now ready 
 to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought 
 a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : hence- 
 forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the 
 Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day : and not to me 
 only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." How long Paul 
 remained in prison, we know not ; what his preparatory treatment 
 was, we are not informed ; no historian has stated whether Paul were 
 scourged, as malefactors were accustomed to be, previous to their suf- 
 fering. As a Roman citizen, by the Valerian and the Porcian law, 
 Paul was spared this infliction, though, by the law of the twelve 
 tables, notorious malefactors, condemned by the centuriate assemblies, 
 were first to be scourged and then put to death. Baronius the 
 
 * Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 283. 
 
 t Tacitus informs us, that this persecution was attended by supernatural tempests 
 and pestilence : " A year polluted by so many crimes, was marked by tempests and 
 diseases, inflicted by the gods. The Campania was laid waste by a hurricane, which 
 demolished villas, plantations, and fruits, everywhere, and extended its ravages to the 
 vicinity of the city of Rome, where all descriptions of people were wasted by the 
 violence of pestilence, without any perceptible inclemency of the weather. The 
 houses were emptied of inhabitants, the highways filled with carcases. No age nor 
 sex escaped the danger. Slaves and free alike were rapidly extinguished, amid the 
 lamentations of their wives and children ; who, during their attendance, while weeping 
 over them, were often upon the same funeral pile themselves. The destruction 
 of Roman Knights and Senators, however promiscuous, was less lamented ; as if, in the 
 common mortality, they only anticipated the cruelty of the Prince." (Taciti Annalea, lib. 
 xv., cap. 13.) These are curious and valuable records of professed enemies to Chris- 
 tianity, uudesignedly vouching the divine vengeance upon the atrocious murderers of 
 his chosen saints. 
 
 1 See a valuable sermon, entitled "St. Paul at the Bar of Nero." By the Rev. 
 Thomas Jackson, Theological Professor at the Wesleyan Institution, Richmond. 
 Wesleyan Magazine, vol. Ixviii., p. 953, rt teq.
 
 270 BOOK III. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Annalist informs us, that in the church of St. Mary, beyond the 
 bridge in Rome, the pillars are yet extant to which both Peter and 
 Paul are said to have been bound and scourged.* As he was led to 
 execution, tradition states, that he was instrumental in the conversion 
 of three of the soldiers who were appointed to conduct him to, and 
 guard him at, the place of execution ; who, within a few days, by the 
 command of the Emperor, became martyrs also for the truth. Arriv- 
 ing at the place which was called Aquae Salvianse, three miles from 
 the imperial city, he surrendered his neck to the fatal sword.f As a 
 Roman, he could not be executed on the cross : this was a death which 
 was reserved only for the slave, and the worst of malefactors. J He 
 was beheaded ; and hence arose the custom of pictorial representa- 
 tions of the Apostle with a sword in his right hand. He is said to 
 have been buried in the Via Ostiensis, about two miles from the city, 
 over whose grave Constantine the Great, at the instance of Sylvester, 
 Bishop of Rome, erected a stately church. He adorned it with mar- 
 ble columns, and most exquisite workmanship. In the time of Theo- 
 dosius, the church was considered beneath the dignity of the Apostle : 
 he therefore directed it to be taken down, and a more noble 
 structure raised in its place. It was further beautified by Placidia, 
 the Empress of Rome, at the desire of Leo, the Bishop. 
 
 Clemens Romanus, the intimate friend of these illustrious Apostles 
 and fellow-labourers in the Lord, Peter and Paul, thus pronounces the 
 panegyric of both. " But not to insist upon ancient examples, let 
 us come to those worthies that have been nearest to us, and take 
 the brave examples of our own age. Through (false) zeal and envy, 
 the most faithful and righteous pillars of the church have been per- 
 secuted even to the most grievous deaths. Let us set before our eyes 
 the holy Apostles : Peter by unjust envy underwent not one or two, 
 but many, sufferings ; till at last, being martyred, he went to the 
 place of glory that pertained unto him. For the same cause did 
 Paul, in like manner, receive the reward of his patience. Seven times 
 he was in bonds : he was whipped, was stoned ; he preached both 
 in the east and in the west, leaving behind him the glorious report of 
 
 * Baronii Eccles. Annal., A.D. 69. 
 
 t Chrysostom and Ambrose report, that when he was beheaded, a liquor, more like 
 milk than blood, flowed from his veins, and spirted upon the clothes of his executioner : 
 the former authority observes, that this became the means of converting his executioner, 
 and many more to the faith. (Ambrosii Opera, torn, v., Senn. In Festo, S S. Petri et 
 Pauli, fol., p. 141. Paris. 1661. Chrysostomi Opera. Serm. in Petr. et Paul, torn, 
 viii., p. 10. Inter spuria.) 
 
 t Xenophon, De Exped. Cyri., lib. ii., in finem. Servi sunt in crucem sublati, 
 militibus cervices abscissae. (Hist. De Bell. Hispan., p. 460.) 
 
 On this subject the reader may consult Euseb. Eccles. Hist., lib. ii., cap. 25. 
 Lactantius De Mort. Persecut., cap. ii., Ed. Vesont. 8vo. 1838. Ulric. Valenus, in a 
 book, " Quo Petrus Romain non venisse demonstratur," 1660, 4to., p. 40, denies that 
 Peter or Paul suffered at Rome, and endeavours to prove, that their martyrdom was at 
 Jerusalem : this, with regard to Peter, Bale endeavours to maintain. (Centur. Scriptor. 
 Brittan., p. 16.) This opinion is confuted by various writers, who are mentioned 
 in Walch's Biblioth. Theol. Selecta, torn, iii., p. 458. (See Cave's Lives of the Apos- 
 tles. 8vo. Edit. Life of Paul, chap, vii., sect. 9, p. 301. Oxford, 1840. TiUemont's 
 Memoires, torn, i., p. 324. 4to. Paris, 1693.) On the fabulous circumstances relative 
 to Paul's martyrdom, J. G. Walch'a Hist. Eccles., Novi Test., part i., may be 
 consulted.
 
 PAUL. 271 
 
 his faith ; and having taught the whole world righteousness, and for 
 that end travelled even to the utmost bounds of the west ; he at last 
 suffered martyrdom, by the command of the Governors, and departed 
 out of the world, and went unto his holy place ; being a most eminent 
 pattern of patience unto all ages.* 
 
 Nero was not permitted long to survive the martyrdom of Paul. 
 The course of licentiousness, extravagance, and tyranny which he 
 followed, arrived at its termination. The people were roused. Nume- 
 rous conspiracies were formed against him ; but they were gene- 
 rally discovered, and the persons implicated suffered the severest 
 punishments. The most dangerous one was that of Piso, from which 
 he was saved by the confession of a slave. The conspiracy of Galba 
 proved more successful, who, when he learned that his design was 
 known to Nero, immediately declared himself Emperor. The unpo- 
 pularity of the tyrant favoured his cause, and the disaffection of the 
 troops in Spain, where Galba was, and in Germany, with those in the 
 metropolis, soon became universal. The Senate followed. Nero was 
 desperate, and sought in vain for Spicillus, a gladiator, who could put 
 him to death. Being disappointed in this, he ran out in a fit of 
 frenzy, as though he would plunge in the Tiber ; but his resolution 
 failed. Desiring some private place in which he might collect his 
 reason and his fortitude, Phaon, his freedman, tendered his house, 
 four miles distant in the country, which Nero accepted ; and, accom- 
 panied by four attendants, he fled, meanly apparelled and worse 
 mounted. In this expeditious but short journey, Nero was terri- 
 fied by a violent shaking of the earth, with vivid flashes of light- 
 ning which occurred ; and on passing the Praetorian camp, he heard 
 the fearful curses of the soldiers, and the shouts of good fortune and 
 prosperity to the conspirator Galba. To prevent discovery, the 
 fugitive party forsook the highway, and went through briers and 
 bushes into a thicket of reeds, at the back of Phaon's house, where a 
 hole was broken in the wall, through which Nero crept like a hedge- 
 hog, throwing himself on a wretched bed in one of the miserable 
 apartments of the building. In the meanwhile the Senate assembled, 
 and, pronouncing him an enemy to the state, condemned him to death, 
 more majorum ; and immediately despatched officers to discover his 
 haunt, and to bring him alive. Hearing of his doom as declared by 
 the Senate, he asked what more majorum meant, and what sort of 
 punishment it was. On being informed that he was to be stripped 
 naked, his head fixed in a pillory, and in that position scourged to 
 death, after which his mangled remains were to be thrown from the 
 Tarpeian rock, like the meanest malefactor ; alarmed at his situation, 
 he seized a couple of daggers, but, after examining their points, he 
 coolly laid tlu-m on one side, pretending "that his fatal hour was 
 not yet come." Now he intreated some one who was present to 
 instruct him how to die, by killing himself first ; and then, he con- 
 demned his own pusillanimity and want of courage ; at length, hear- 
 
 * Clem. Rom. Epist. ad Corinth., sect. 5. Arclibiahop Wake's Translation. Fourth 
 edit. 8vo., p. 5. London, 173?.
 
 272 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 ing of the arrival of soldiers, under the orders of the Senate, he placed 
 a dagger to his throat, with which, being assisted by his Secretary 
 Epaphroditus, he inflicted a fatal wound. Such was the miserable 
 end of Nero, who, by his iniquitous life, had brought upon himself all 
 the misfortunes that could befall a Prince ; and upon the state, all 
 the calamities that could arise from unjust tyranny and internal con- 
 vulsion. Never was satisfaction more unalloyed and complete than at 
 the death of Nero. All persons congratulated each other on being 
 delivered from a monster in human form ; and the citizens, more 
 strongly to indicate their joy, wore caps such as were generally used 
 by slaves who had received their freedom. He reigned upwards of 
 thirteen years, and was taken off in the prime of life, being in the 
 thirty-second year of his age.* 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JUDE His Parentage Tradition of Eusebius Abgarus Interview of Jude with 
 him Testimony of Jerome Identity between Thaddeus and Jude His Labours 
 and Death Grandchildren of Judas brought before Domitian, and why 
 Examined concerning their Views of Christ Are despised by the Emperor The 
 Persecution ceases Hegesippus Tertullian's Statement respecting Domitian 
 BARTHOLOMEW The same as Nathanael His Birth and Discipleship His 
 Attempts to propagate the Faith Socrates Sophronius Panttenus The Story 
 of the Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew being found in India Eusebius Origin 
 of the Legend Is said to have visited Arabia Reasonableness of this Idea 
 Escapes Martyrdom at Hierapolis But is crucified at Albanople Horrid Cruelty 
 said to have been perpetrated at his Death Parysatis Fabulous Character of a 
 Gospel bearing his Name, and repudiated THOMAS His Call to the Apostolate, 
 and subsequent Labours The Account of Thomas being the Apostle of India, con- 
 sidered His Martyrdom The Nestorians Uncertainty of all Accounts respect- 
 ing Thomas BARNABAS His Name and Parentage His Conversion and Dis- 
 cipleship How he, a Levite, held Possessions His Sphere of Labour An 
 Associate of Paul Afterwards they separated His subsequent Success And 
 Martyrdom LUKE His Birth Description of Antioch His Education 
 Applies himself to Physic The Profession of Physician among the Ancients 
 Luke a Jewish Proselyte Is converted to the Faith, and attends upon Paul 
 His subsequent History, and supposed Martyrdom SIMON His Name Account 
 of the Jewish Zealots Their dangerous Character His Labours And Death 
 The Coadjutors of the Apostles suffer Philemon and his Wife Appia Vitalis 
 and Valeria Theodoret The despotic Character of Nero's Reign Beneficial 
 Effects of the Neronian Persecution DOMITIAN His Character Both perse- 
 cuted the Christians on the same Principle Slanders and false Accusations of 
 Edict against them Compelled to accuse themselves Various Modes of Torture 
 Testimony of Justin Martyr Flavius Clemens His Character Cause of his 
 Offence His honourable Situation /* put to Death, and his Wife banished 
 Descendants of David still persecuted JOHN the beloved Disciple His Views 
 and Prospects Report of his having been immersed in boiling Oil Doubts 
 respecting the Fact His Banishment Patmos Description of the Island 
 
 * Tillemont's Hist, des Empereurs, torn, i., p. 329. Quarto. Paris, 1700 ; Echard's 
 Roman History, vol. ii., pp. 149, 160. 8vo. London, 1719. Taciti Annal., lib. xvi., 
 Append., cap. 14. Suetonius, in Nerone, sect. 49.
 
 /* released, and resides at Ephesus DIONYSIUS the Arropagite Eusehiut quoted 
 Athens Areopagus Dionysius heart the Gospel Paul the Apostle It 
 instrumental in the Conversion of the Athenian Dionysius is chosen Itishnp of 
 Athens Fabulous Records of his subsequent History Hit Martyrdom TIMO- 
 THV His early Training And Usefulness The Attention of Paul By whom 
 he is addressed in two Epistles Character of the People among tehum he laboured 
 Hermodorus Their idolatrous Festivals In one of which Timothy is martyred 
 The Rebuke of the Ephetian Church in the Apocalypse NICOMEDES Hit 
 Martyrdom Circumstances leading to Domitian's Death Hit Suspicions And 
 Assassination Indignities offered to his Remains Nerva His Character and 
 Death Is succeeded by Trajan. 
 
 OF JUDE little is recorded : with regard to his descent and parentage, 
 he was of our Lord's kindred. Nicephorus recognises him as the son 
 of Joseph, and brother to James, Bishop of Jerusalem. That there was 
 a Jude in the number, is evident : " Is not this the carpenter's son ? 
 is not his mother called Mary ? and his brethren, James, and Joses, 
 and Simon, and Judas?" (Matt. xiii. 55.) We are not informed as 
 to the time of Jude's calling to the apostleship ; and the only word 
 that has been preserved, as having proceeded from his lips, is recorded 
 in John's account of the parting discourses of our Lord to his disci- 
 ples, on the eve of the day of crucifixion. Jesus was assuring his 
 audience that the love of God should be the sign and reward of all 
 who faithfully keep his commandments. " Judas saith unto him, 
 not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, 
 and not unto the world ? " (John xiv. 22.) Jesus answered and said 
 to him, " If a man love me, he will keep my words : and my Father 
 will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with 
 him." (Verse 23.) A natural inquiry, happily suggested, and satis- 
 factorily answered. 
 
 Eusebius * relates that, soon after our Lord's ascension, Thomas 
 despatched Thaddeus the Apostle to Abgarus, the Governor of 
 Edessa ; where he healed diseases, wrought miracles, expounded the 
 doctrines of Christianity, and converted Abgarus and his people to 
 the faith ; for all which pains, when the Governor offered him gifts 
 and presents, he refused them with a noble scorn, telling him, the 
 Apostles had little reason to receive from others what they had so 
 freely relinquished themselves. A large account of this whole affair is 
 extant in Eusebius, translated by him out of Syriac, from the records 
 of the city of Edessa. This Thaddeus Jerome f expressly makes 
 to be the Apostle Jude, though his bare authority is not in this case 
 sufficient evidence ; especially since Eusebius makes him no more than 
 one of the seventy disciples, which he would scarce have done, had 
 he been one of the twelve. He calls him, indeed, an Apostle ; but 
 that may imply no more than, according to the large acceptation of 
 the word, that he was a disciple, a companion and an assistant to them, 
 as we know the seventy eminently were. Nor is anything more com- 
 mon in ancient ecclesiastical writers, than for the first planters and 
 
 * Enseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. i., cap. 13. 
 
 t Hieron., Opera, torn, iv., Comment, in Matt. cap. x. Fol. Paris. 
 VOL. I. 2 N
 
 274 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 propagators of the Christian religion, in any country, to be honoured 
 with the name and title of " Apostles." But, however this may be, at 
 his first setting out to preach the Gospel, he is said to have gone up 
 and down Judea and Galilee, then through Samaria into Idumea, and 
 to the cities of Arabia, and the neighbouring countries, and, after, 
 Syria and Mesopotamia. Nicephorus * says, that he came at last to 
 Edessa, where Abgarus was Governor, and where the other Thaddeus 
 had been before him. Here he perfected what the other had begun, 
 and having, by his sermons and miracles, established the religion 
 of our Saviour, died a peaceful and quiet death, though Dorotheus f 
 makes him to be slain at Berytus. Many Greeks say that he was 
 shot to death with arrows whilst he was tied to a cross. J 
 
 That he was one of the married Apostles, appears from his grand- 
 children, of whom Eusebius speaks, and of whom Hegesippus gives 
 the following account : " There were yet living, of the family of our 
 Lord, the grandchildren of Judas, called the brother of our Lord, 
 according to the flesh. These were reported as being of the family 
 of David, and were brought to Domitian by Evocatus. For the 
 Emperor was as much alarmed at the appearance of Christ as Herod. 
 He put the question whether they were of David's race, and they 
 confessed that they were. He then asked them what property they had, 
 and how much money they owned. And both of them answered, that 
 they had between them only nine thousand denarii, and this they had 
 not in silver, but in the value of a piece of land, containing only 
 thirty-nine acres ; from which they raised their taxes and supported 
 themselves by their labour. Then they began to exhibit the hard- 
 ness of their bodies, and the callosity formed by incessant labour 
 on their hands, as evidence of their own industry. When asked, 
 also, respecting Christ and his kingdom, what was its nature, and 
 when and where it was to appear, they replied, that it was not a 
 temporal nor an earthly empire, but celestial and angelic ; that 
 it would appear at the end of the world, when, coming in glory, he 
 would judge the quick and dead, and give to every one according 
 to his works. Upon which Domitian, despising them, made no 
 reply ; but, treating them with contempt as simpletons, com- 
 manded them to be dismissed ; and, by a decree, ordered the per- 
 secution to cease. Thus delivered, they ruled the churches, both as 
 witnesses and relatives of the Lord. When peace was established, 
 they continued living even to the time of Trajan." Such is the state- 
 ment of Hegesippus. Tertullian has also mentioned Domitian thus : 
 "Domitian had once attempted the same against him, who was, in 
 fact, a limb of Nero for cruelty ; but I think, because he had as yet 
 some remains of reason, he very soon suppressed the persecution, 
 even recalling those whom he had exiled. But after Domitian had 
 reigned fifteen years, and Nerva succeeded to the government, the 
 Roman Senate decreed that the honours of Domitian should be 
 revoked, and that those who had been unjustly expelled should 
 
 Niceph., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 40. 
 
 t Doroth. Synops. de Vit. et Mort. Apost. 
 
 j Cave's Lives of the Apostles. 8vo. edit. Oxford, 1840.
 
 BARTHOLOMEW. 275 
 
 return to their homes, and have their goods restored." * But more 
 of him anon. 
 
 BARTHOLOMEW or NATHANAEL. Bartholomew is generally sup- 
 posed to be the same individual who, in the Gospel according to 
 John, is termed "Nathanael." The reason of this opinion is, that, 
 in the first three Gospels, Philip and Bartholomew are constantly 
 named together, and Nathanael is nowhere mentioned ; whilst in the 
 fourth, the names of Philip and Nathanael are similarly associated, 
 and nothing is said of Bartholomew. Nathanael is therefore consi- 
 dered to be his real name, and Bartholomew indicative only of his 
 filial relationship. Very brief notices are recorded of this Apostle. 
 He is said to have been of Cana, in Galilee, a small town which stood 
 about mid-distant between the lake of Gennesaret and the Mediter- 
 ranean ; but the circumstances of his call show that he was then 
 with Philip at or near Bethabara. Philip, after having been sum- 
 moned by our Lord to the discipleship, sought to introduce Nathanael 
 to an enjoyment of like honours, and invited him to become a fol- 
 lower of the Messiah, foretold by Moses and the Prophets. On hear- 
 ing that Nazareth was the place of his nativity, Nathanael sneeringly 
 inquired, " Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " To 
 this question Philip answered by the simple proposition, " Come and 
 see ; " wisely judging, that no answer would be able to remove the 
 prejudice of his friend so well as a personal observation of the cha- 
 racter and proceedings of the Nazarene himself. The words with 
 which our Saviour greeted the visitant, even before a personal intro- 
 duction had taken place, furnish us with a most exalted testimonial 
 of the excellency of his character, and one of the most distinguish- 
 ing traits of his qualifications as an Apostle : " Jesus saw Nathanael 
 coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in 
 whom is no guile!" (John i. 47.) Surprised at this address from 
 one whom he had never seen, Nathanael inquired, " Whence knowest 
 thou me ? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip 
 called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." The fig- 
 trees of Palestine, presenting a very umbrageous appearance, were 
 often used in the warm season as places of retirement either in com- 
 pany for conversation, or in solitude for meditation and prayer ; f 
 and doubtless it was in the latter occupation Nathanael was employed, 
 removed, as he supposed he was, from all external observation, when 
 Jesus beheld him. The eye that could pierce the shades of dark- 
 ness on the boisterous waves of Galilee, that can penetrate appear- 
 ances, however plausible, and move through mazes, however myste- 
 rious, could easily look through the thick, leafy veil of the fig-tree, 
 and observe the secret actions of this guileless Israelite, who, struck 
 with sudden and absolute conviction, tendered our Lord an unhesitat- 
 ing and sincere allegiance and service. 
 
 Enseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 20. 
 
 t That conversation, meditation, reading, prayer, <fec., were carried on nnder fig-treet, 
 is certain from the numerous examples produced from die Rabbinical writers by Light- 
 foot und Schoettgen. 
 
 2 N 2
 
 276 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 With regard to the attempts which were made by Bartho- 
 lomew to propagate the faith of the Redeemer, feeble and scanty 
 are the records extant on which we can rely. Socrates * informs 
 us, that he travelled as far as India, bordering on Ethiopia, mean- 
 ing, no doubt, the Asian Ethiopia. Sophronius asserts the same ; 
 and, also, that he left behind him a copy of the Gospel of Mat- 
 thew in Hebrew, of which report Eusebius, the father of eccle- 
 siastical history, gives a full relation. He states that Pantsenus, 
 a man of great learning, and indefatigable zeal in the cause of 
 truth, was constituted a herald of the Gospel to the nations of the 
 east, and penetrated as far as India, where he found many who were 
 acquainted with the doctrines of Christianity, having been instructed 
 therein from the Gospel of Matthew, which Bartholomew, years 
 before, had left among the natives.f Notwithstanding these tradi- 
 tional accounts, it is, after all, very problematical whether Bartholo- 
 mew ever was in India. Eusebius does not name that Apostle in his 
 account of the division of the heathen nations to which Socrates 
 refers ; and it is only incidentally that he alludes, in a subsequent 
 part of his history, to the journey in question. Socrates also men- 
 tions it without reference to any authority for his assertion, and 
 states, at the same time, that India was not enlightened with the 
 doctrines of Christianity before the reign of Constantine the Great. 
 The whole appears to have originated in the rumour of the discovery 
 of the manuscript of Matthew's Gospel, about tte commencement 
 of the third century. Eusebius, it will be observed, does not attempt 
 to corroborate the report ; Du Pin | and others speak of it as 
 unworthy of notice ; and Milner,> though he deemed it worth men- 
 tioning as a current tradition, doubted its truth. Such a statement, 
 however, would be received without hesitation in a credulous age ; 
 and those who believed it would find little difficulty in imagining, or 
 crediting, the story of Bartholomew's visit to India, || in order to 
 account for this alleged discovery.^]" 
 
 Some scarce vestiges of history, floating in the atmosphere of eccle- 
 
 Socratis Hist. Eccles., lib. i., cap. 19. 
 
 t Euseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 10. 
 
 t Du Pin, Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 77. Folio. Dublin edit., 1723. 
 
 Milner's Church History, cent, iii., chap, iii., vol. i., p. 313. 8vo. edit. York, 
 1794. 
 
 || The title of " Indians " is applied by ancient writers to so many different nations, 
 that it is difficult to determine the seat of Bartholomew's labours. Mosheim, with 
 whom Neander agrees, is of opinion that it was part of Arabia Felix, inhabited by 
 Jews, to whom alone a Hebrew Gospel could be of any service. If any be at the 
 pains of comparing the testimony of olden authors respecting that India, to which a 
 knowledge of Christ and his word was first imparted by Bartholomew, not a shadow 
 of doubt can remain, says Mosheim, as to its having been Arabia Felix, which, we well 
 know, was one of these countries included under the title of India by the ancients. 
 (Mosheim' s Commentaries, vol. ii., pp. 6 8; Tillemont Memoires, torn, ii., p. 381. 
 4to. Paris, 1693.) " Bartholomew is said to have preached in India ; and if Eusebius 
 gave this anecdote on the authority of Pantaenus himself, it is certainly entitled to some 
 credit, since Pantaenus visited the same country after an interval of not more than one 
 hundred years ; but the evidence of later writers would rather incline us to understand by 
 India, the country south of Persia, and perhaps Arabia Felix." (Burton's Lect. on the 
 Eccles. Hist, of the First Century, p. 331 .) 
 
 IT Hough's History of Christianity in India, vol. i., p. 32. 8vo. edit. London, 1839.
 
 BARTHOLOMEW. 2/7 
 
 siastical tradition, record, that, after the dispersion of the Apostles, 
 Bartholomew went to Arabia, where he preached till nearly the close 
 of his life. In this account there rests some probability. It is well 
 known that many of the Jews, and especially after the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, located along the eastern coast of the Red Sea, where 
 they continued for centuries. Nothing can be more reasonable than 
 to suppose, that after the fury of war had desolated their fatherland, 
 many of the Christian Jews sought an asylum in the peaceful regions 
 of Arabia Felix ; and that, in company with these refugees, the 
 " Israelite, in whom was no guile," journeyed, in order to devote the 
 rest of his life to apostolic labours in that distaut country, where 
 those of his fellow-wanderers, who had believed in Christ, would 
 need the support and counsel of one of the divinely-commissioned 
 Ministers of the Gospel. The Israelites, who still rejected the truth, 
 would present objects of great importance in the estimation of the 
 Apostle. The visible glories of the ancient covenant had departed, 
 and the dogmatic influence of the teachers of the law had lost much 
 of its persecuting and bigoted spirit : it might reasonably be 
 expected, that the Jews would be led more justly to appreciate, and 
 more readily to embrace, a spiritual faith, and a simple creed. 
 
 After having been some time engaged in Arabia Felix preaching the 
 word, he went to the north-western parts of Asia. At Hierapolis, 
 in Phrygia, he is supposed to have been a coadjutor of Philip, 
 instructing the inhabitants in the principles of Christianity. It was 
 in this city, we are told, that the enraged magistracy doomed him 
 and Philip to martyrdom, and that Bartholomew was literally fastened 
 to the cross ; but a sudden impression coming upon the murderers, that 
 the vengeance of heaven would ere long revenge the death of the Apos- 
 tle, he was taken down, and dismissed. From thence he is said to 
 have travelled into Lycaonia, where he instructed and taught the 
 people the truths of the Gospel. His last journey was to Albanople, 
 in Armenia, " a city wholly given to idolatry : " he was arrested by 
 the Governor of the place, and commanded to be crucified,* a punish- 
 ment which he patiently suffered, comforting and confirming the Gen- 
 tile converts to the last moment of his life. Some of the accounts 
 state, f that he was crucified with his head downwards ; others, that 
 he was flayed, and his skin first taken off; which might consist with 
 the idea of his crucifixion, excoriation being a punishment not only 
 common in Egypt, but also in Persia ; J and Plutarch records the 
 instance of Mesabates the Persian Eunuch, who, " as soon as he 
 was in the power of Parysatis, and before the King had the least 
 suspicion of the vengeance she designed, was delivered up to the 
 executioners, who were commanded to flay him alive, to fix his body 
 upon three stakes, and to stretch out his skin separately from it." 
 
 The manner, as well as the date, of this Apostle's death, though many different 
 statements are given in the Martyrologies, must, on these accounts be looked upon as 
 altogether uncertain. (Dr. Burton.) 
 
 t Hippolyt. de Apost. apud Baron, in Not. ad Martyr. Ad August. 25. Quarto. 
 Colon., 1603. 
 
 t Ammiani Marcellini lih. xxviii., cap. 6. Folio. Paris, 1681. 
 
 Plutarch's Lives. In Vit. Artaxerx., vol. vi., p. 128. Edinburgh, 1795.
 
 2/8 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 From these barbarians such, a piece of horrid cruelty, as was inflicted 
 upon Bartholomew, might have been derived. Heretics hesitated not 
 to persecute his memory after death, as much as Heathens during his 
 life-time, by fabricating and propagating a fabulous Gospel which, 
 they affirmed, had been written by himself. Gelasius,* the Bishop 
 of Home, justly stigmatized the production as apocryphal, and 
 unworthy the name of that Apostle. f 
 
 THOMAS, the Apostle, otherwise called " Didymus," must be 
 placed in nearly the same category as Bartholomew. The history 
 of the Gospel takes very little notice either of his country or kindred. 
 He appears to have been a Jew, and, in all probability, a Galilean ; 
 and, in company with the rest, was called to be an Apostle. When 
 our Saviour ascended on high, he partook of those miraculous gifts 
 which were vouchsafed unto the companions of our Lord ; and hav- 
 ing, it is said, received some divine intimation, despatched Thaddeus 
 (whom many suppose to have been the Apostle Jude) to Abgarus, the 
 Governor of Edessa, to heal him of an inveterate disease, and to con- 
 vert him to the faith. J The apostolical province assigned to Thomas, 
 according to Eusebius, was Parthia ; after which he is said to have 
 preached the Gospel to the Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians, and Bac- 
 trians ; and though at first he was the most weak and incredulous 
 of all the apostolic company, he became, in the end, one of the most 
 powerful, fervent, and successful Ministers of the cross. He is said 
 to have found his way into India, where, we are told by Nicephorus, 
 that at first he was unwilling to go, on account of the rude and 
 barbarous manners of the inhabitants ; but being encouraged by the 
 Lord in a vision, he took up his cross, and went.|| He is supposed, 
 by those who credit this account, to have travelled a great way into 
 the East ; and by gentleness and mild persuasions, he calmly 
 instructed the people in the principles of Christianity, and brought 
 them from the grossest errors to the cordial belief of the religion 
 of Christ.^f 
 
 Such is the traditional record which attributes to Thomas the 
 introduction of Christianity into India. It is undoubtedly of early 
 
 Corpus Juris Canonici, a Petro Pithceo et Franc. Pithoeo, torn i., part i., distinct. 
 xv., cap. iii., sect. 27. Colon., 1779. 
 
 t The tales which, have heen told with regard to the remains of Bartholomew are as 
 veritable as the account of his martyrdom. It is stated that they were removed to 
 Daras, a city on the borders of Persia ; then to Liparis, one of the ^Eolian isles ; then 
 to Benevento in Italy; and, last of all, to Rome. Since which time they have been, 
 according to Alban Butler, deposited in a monument of porphyry, under the high altar 
 in the church of Bartholomew, in the isle of the Tiber, at Rome. An arm of this Apos- 
 tle's body is said to have been sent as a present by the Bishop of Benevento to Edward 
 the Confessor, and by him bestowed on the cathedral church of Canterbury. Among 
 the statues which adorn the cathedral at Milan, none is so much admired as one of this 
 Apostle having been flayed alive, representing the muscles, veins, and other parts with 
 an inimitable softness. 
 
 t The Syrian Churches ; their early History, Liturgies, and Literature. With a 
 literal Translation of the Four Gospels, &c. By the Rev. J. W. Etheridge, pp, 3639. 
 12mo. London, 1846. 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 1. 
 
 || Turner's Anglo-Saxons, voL ii., p. 147. 8vo. edit. London, 1828. 
 
 IT Cave's Lives of the Apostles, 8vo. edit. Oxford, 1840.
 
 THOMAS. 279 
 
 date ; but unworthy of support. Eusebius does not mention it : he 
 says, that tradition assigns to Thomas the region of Parthia, but he 
 nowhere alludes to this Apostle travelling and preaching in India. 
 Socrates is also equally silent ; and the same may be said of 
 all the early historians of the church. Cave takes his account 
 of the journeys of Thomas in the East from Nicephorus, a Greek 
 historian of the fourteenth century, and also from the Portu- 
 guese, " in want," as he acknowledges, " of better testimony from 
 antiquity." La Croze,* the Benedictine, has drawn up the following 
 account of this tradition from all the authorities he could collect ; 
 but declares, at the same time, that it does not appear to be worthy 
 of credit. " In the division of all the parts of the world, which 
 was made among the holy Apostles, India fell to the lot of St. Tho- 
 mas, who, after having established Christianity in Arabia Felix, and 
 in the island of Dioscoride, now called Socotora, arrived at Cranga- 
 nore, where the principal King of the coast of Malabar resided. It 
 was there that the fabulous adventures happened, of which we read 
 in this Apostle's life, written by the pretended Abdias, King of Baby- 
 lon. The holy Apostle, having established many churches at Cran- 
 ganore, passed to Coulan, (Quilon,) a celebrated town of the same 
 coast, where he converted many persons to Christianity. Having 
 departed to the other coast, now known by the name of Coromandel, 
 he stopped at Meliapore, a town which the Europeans call St. Thome", 
 where he is said to have converted the King and all the people. He 
 went from thence to China, and remained in a town called Camballe*, 
 where he made numerous conversions, and built many churches. St. 
 Thomas returned from China to Meliapore, where the great success 
 that attended his labours among the Heathen excited against him the 
 hatred and envy of two of the Bramhans, the Priests of the idola- 
 trous superstition of India. These two men stirred up the people, 
 who combined to stone the holy Apostle. After his execution, one 
 of the Bramhans, observing that he still breathed, pierced him with 
 a lance, which put an end to his life. I shall not lose time," says 
 this historian, " in refuting this narration of the death of the holy 
 Apostle, which is not apparently less fabulous, than the coming of St. 
 Thomas into India." f 
 
 The assertion of La Croze will, by many, be considered of a too 
 general and sweeping character. The tradition, that he travelled 
 into India, had appeared to receive some support in modern times 
 by the interesting researches J which have brought to light some 
 Christian inhabitants on the coast of Malabar ; and we are told 
 that these persons appeal to the Apostle Thomas as their founder. 
 Nevertheless, there is reason to doubt the accuracy of this opi- 
 nion. Theodoret speaks of Thomas as a disciple of Manes, who 
 
 Histoire du Chriatianisme des Indes. 
 
 t Hongh'a Christianity in India, vol. ii., pp. 3335. 
 
 J Christian Researches in Asia : with Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures 
 into the Oriental Languages. By the Rev. Claudius Buchanan, D.D. Fourth rdii. 
 8vo. London, 1811. 
 
 " Hahuit autem hie Manes ab initao discipulos tree, Aldara, Thomam, et Hermam. 
 Kt Aldain qnidcm ad prsedicandum misit in Syriam, ad Indos vero Thomam." (Thoo-
 
 280 BOOK 111. CHAPTER V. 
 
 carried his Master's doctrines into India ; and since the religion 
 of Christ always formed part of Manicheism, it is possible that this 
 Thomas may have been confounded with the Apostle. There is also 
 evidence of another Thomas having been sent, about the year 800, 
 by the Patriarch of Babylon, to carry the Gospel into India ; and 
 since the Christians who have lately been discovered in that country 
 are Nestorians, it is not improbable that the Nestorian patriarchs 
 of Babylon were the original founders of their church.* There is, 
 therefore, very little evidence of the Apostle Thomas having pene- 
 trated as far as India, if we take that term in its literal signification ; 
 but the tradition which Origen had heard in the third century may, 
 perhaps, incline us to believe that the Gospel was carried by this 
 Apostle into the interior of Asia. A tradition, however, floating 
 down, unwritten, for fifteen centuries, cannot be received as good evi- 
 dence ; and the more minute such stories are, the more suspicious 
 are they in their general character for truth. On the same principle 
 we feel inclined to receive with hesitation the somewhat earlier tradi- 
 tion preserved by Clement of Alexandria, that Thomas the Apostle 
 did not suffer martyrdom ; and the stories which are related of his 
 having been put to death in India, do not rest upon any authority. 
 
 BARNABAS. The original name of this Apostle, for with this title 
 Luke and many of the ancients honour him, was Joses. It was 
 given, doubtless, at his circumcision, in honour of Joseph, one of the 
 great patriarchs of the Jewish nation, to which, having embraced 
 Christianity, the Apostles added the name of Barnabas, signifying 
 " the son of prophecy," being eminent for prophetic gifts and 
 endowments ; or, " the son of consolation," as denoting his admirable 
 skill in " binding up the broken hearted," and in " comforting those 
 that mourn." He was born in Cyprus, a celebrated island in the 
 Mediterranean, lying between Cilicia, Syria, and Egypt. He was 
 descended from the tribe of Levi, and the line of the priesthood, which 
 rendered his conversion to Christianity the more remarkable, as all 
 surrounding interests concurred to increase his prejudices against the 
 faith of Christ. He is said to have been brought up in the know- 
 ledge of the law at the feet of Gamaliel, together with Paul, and thus 
 laid the foundation of that acquaintance which existed in after-life 
 between them. He was a constant spectator of our Saviour's miracles, 
 and among the rest witnessed him cure the paralytic at the pool of 
 Bethesda, by which he was fully convinced of the power and Godhead 
 
 doreti Opera, torn, iv., part i., Hseret. Fabul. Compend., lib. i., De Manete, p. 321, 
 Edit. 8vo. Halae.) 
 
 Much valuable testimony bas been given by Dr. Buchanan, who, in modern tiroes, 
 has traced out all these traditions on the spot, and has given a full account of the 
 " Christians of St. Thomas," in his " Researches." It is, however, manifest from the 
 statements of the indefatigable author, that these Christians derived their faith from 
 some other than an apostolic source. The fact that they maintain the Nestorian heresy 
 gives strong reason for supposing that Christianity was not propagated among them 
 till after the time of that heresiarch. They also have, in all their churches, the picture 
 of the Virgin Mary, and the child Jesus, a circumstance which still further condemns 
 their pretensions ; for what Protestant is willing to believe that an apostolic founder 
 could have countenanced a superstition so nearly approaching to idolatry ?
 
 BARNABAS. 281 
 
 of the Redeemer, and induced to become a fervent and sincere disci- 
 ple. Clement of Alexandria expressly affirms that he was one of the 
 seventy ; and that after the ascension of our Lord, when the neces- 
 sities of the church so greatly increased, and stood in need of extra- 
 ordinary supplies, he, according to the free and generous spirit of 
 the primitive church, having goods, " sold them, and laid the money 
 at the Apostles' feet." * 
 
 The sphere of Barnabas was very soon to be much enlarged. The 
 persecution in which Stephen fell, scattered Preachers of the Gospel 
 far and wide. Paul and Barnabas were constantly employed, and, 
 as companions, they cordially and successfully laboured for the hope 
 of Israel. After they had continued for some time teaching and 
 preaching the word, Paul proposed to Barnabas that they should 
 revisit the churches which they had founded. The hitter gladly con- 
 sented ; but when he proposed to take Mark with them, who had 
 deserted them on a former occasion, he was met with a direct refusal. 
 Without doubt, he would not have made the proposal, had he not 
 been assured of Mark's sincere repentance : he therefore was anxious 
 to afford the defaulter an opportunity of repairing his error. Both 
 Paul and Barnabas were men of ardent temperament, open-hearted 
 and generous ; they concealed neither thought nor feeling from 
 each other ; consequently, the debate ran high between them. 
 The circuit of visitation was divided. Paul took the upper 
 part, having with him Silas, going through Syria and Cilicia, and 
 northward still, and on new ground, through Phrygia and Gala- 
 tia, until he had commission from the Holy Ghost to pass into 
 Greece. Barnabas, taking with him Mark, sailed, as before, for 
 Cyprus, and thence probably visited the sea-coast of Pamphylia ; but 
 there the narrative of Scripture leaves him. If he returned to 
 Antioch, it was not for any permanent abode ; since it is evident, from. 
 Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, (1 Cor. ix. 6,) that Barnabas, like 
 himself, was journeying, arid founding or visiting churches ; and 
 still maintained a practice which he had begun with him, of earning 
 his livelihood by the work of his own hands. According to tradition, 
 he testified to the faith of Jesus Christ by his death. f 
 
 All is doubtful that is henceforward said of Barnabas. Dorotheus, 
 and others, suppose that he visited Rome, and first preached the 
 Gospel there. Of this, however, the Romish annalist, Baronius, will 
 not hear, inasmuch as the assertion militates against the oft-repeated 
 tale of Peter having originally proclaimed the truth in that city. 
 The Grecian writers say that he went to Alexandria, and thence into 
 various parts of Judea, and ultimately into Cyprus, where he was 
 instrumental in the conversion of many from darkness unto light ; 
 until some Jews, arriving in Salamis from Syria, attacked him while 
 
 If it be inquired how a Levite came by lands and possessions when the Mosaic law 
 allowed them no particular portions but what were made by public provision, it needs no 
 other answer than to suppose that this estate was his patrimonial inheritance in Cyprus, 
 where the Jewish constitutions did not take place ; and surely an estate it was of consider- 
 able value, and the parting with it a greater charity than ordinary, otherwise the sacred 
 hi* tori :n i would not have made such a particular remark concerning it. (Dr. Cave.) 
 
 t Kvaus'ti Scripture Biography, p. 356. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 O
 
 282 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 he was disputing in the synagogue, confined him for the night in 
 some secure part of the sacred place, and when the morning came, 
 they drew him forth and slew him with stones. Thus, it is stated, 
 Barnabas suffered ; the only instance given in the Gospel of one of 
 the tribe of Levi becoming its Minister. He, like unto Bartholomew, 
 was " an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile." He was 
 worthy of being the friend and companion of Paul ; and the title 
 he obtained from the Apostles, shows that he had a mouth and wis- 
 dom which the adversary could neither gainsay nor resist. 
 
 LUKE was born at Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, eminent in 
 history for the salubrity of its situation, the fertility of the soil, and 
 the wealth of its commerce, but above all, in the estimation of the 
 church, because it was here the disciples were first called Christians. 
 In Antioch existed an university, replenished with schools of learning, 
 and favoured with teachers in the several branches of science and 
 art, so that Luke had every opportunity of receiving an ingenuous 
 and liberal education. It is said, that he studied not only at Anti- 
 och, but also in the various schools of Egypt and Greece ; and being 
 thus furnished from the numerous preparatory institutions of philo- 
 sophy, he more particularly applied himself to physic, for which 
 the Grecian schools were celebrated. Physicians of that remote 
 period were not accustomed to rise to that eminence in society as in 
 the present day ; frequently they held no higher rank in society than 
 a servant or slave, great men keeping one or more of this profession 
 in their house : hence, therefore, many have imagined that Luke, not- 
 withstanding all his accomplishments, was but a slave in Rome, 
 where he professed medicine and practised it, and being subsequently 
 manumitted, returned into his own country. The higher ranks of 
 Roman society were disinclined to the practice of medicine, which 
 they generally left to their freedmen.* Besides his abilities in physic, 
 he is said to have been skilful in painting ! This is perhaps one 
 of the most wretched fictions which the most wild and romantic genius 
 of Popery could possibly have invented ! -j* Luke was a Jewish prose- 
 
 * " Medicinam factitasse, mannmissum." (Quint. Instit. vii. 2, 27.) " Mitto 
 prseterea cum eo ex servis meis medicum," &c. ; " Besides, I sent with him a Physi- 
 cian from among my servants." (Suet. Caliy., sect. 8.) Since Luke was a Physician, 
 we must suppose that he was a man of education. Only such slaves as had some 
 talent were taught the artes ingenues, H liberal arts." The freedman Antonius Musa, 
 having worked a cure upon Augustus, was raised to the equestrian order, and a statue 
 was erected in honour of him in the temple of ./Esculapius. From the time of Anto- 
 ninus Pius, and perhaps earlier, there was in every city a Collegium Archiatroncm, u a 
 college of Physicians," to whom was intrusted the examination of medical men, and 
 who, prohably, required of them some knowledge of the writings of Hippocrates. 
 (Kitto.) 
 
 t Dr. Cave appears disposed to credit the legends which speak of the pictorial genius 
 of the Evangelist. He says, " There are no less than three or four several pieces still 
 in being, pretended to have been drawn with his own hand : a tradition which Gretzer, 
 the Jesuit, endeavours to defend ; though his authors, in respect of credit or antiquity, 
 deserve very little esteem or value. Of more authority with me," says the biographer, 
 " would be an ancient inscription found in a vault near the church of St. Mary, 
 in via lata at Rome, supposed to have been the place where St. Paul dwelt, wherein 
 mention is made of a picture of the blessed Virgin," unu ex vii. ab Luca depictis, 
 " being one of the seven painted by St. Luke."
 
 SIMON. 983 
 
 lytc, and brought to the knowledge of the truth through the instrumen- 
 tality of Paul, with whom he was afterward a constant companion and 
 fellow-labourer. He was with the Apostle at his several arraignments 
 iu Jerusalem, accompanied him in his dangerous voyage to Rome, in 
 which city he still attended on him, administering to his necessities, 
 and supplying those ministerial offices which the confinement of Paul 
 did not allow him to perform himself. While he continued in Rome 
 attending on the Apostle, he wrote the Gospel which bears his 
 name, which he dedicated to Thcophilus, some distinguished Roman 
 or Greek, who had embraced the truth, and who requested an account 
 of the facts which are therein related. 
 
 After Paul was set at liberty, Luke again accompanied him in the 
 rest of his travels, and returned with him to Rome, where he was a 
 mournful spectator of the Apostle's martyrdom. What became of 
 the Evangelist after the death of the Apostle, we know not : some 
 are of opinion that he returned into the East, and converted many to 
 the faith ; others imagine that he travelled into Galatia, Dalmatia, 
 Italy, and Macedonia, where he laboured in the midst of great peril 
 and difficulty to discharge the trust which was committed to him. 
 Ancient writers manifest great uncertainty, with regard to the time 
 and manner of his death ; some asserting that he died in Egypt, 
 others in Greece, the Roman martyrology* in Bithynia, and Doro- 
 theus at Ephesus. Some declare that he died a natural, and others a 
 violent, death. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome notices his decease at 
 all. Nicephorus Callistus, with a few others, expressly certify his 
 martyrdom. The former relates, f that, arriving in Greece, he 
 successfully preached, and baptized many who made profession of 
 faith in Christ, until a party of infidels attacked him, and dragged 
 him forth to put him to death : being in want of a cross, they hanged 
 him on an olive-tree, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. His body 
 was subsequently moved, it is said by Constantine, or by his son 
 Constantius, to Constantinople, and interred in the church which had 
 recently been erected to the memory of the Apostles. 
 
 SIMON, surnamed Zelotes, one of the twelve Apostles. (Luke vi. 
 15 ; Acts i. 13.) Matthew and Mark, in giving the names of the 
 Apostles, the only occasion on which they mention him, term him 
 " Simon the Canaanite." (Matt. x. 4 ; Mark iii. 18.) This, how- 
 ever, is not, as is usually the case, to be taken for a Gentile name, 
 but is merely an Aramaic word, signifying " zeal," and therefore of 
 the same meaning as "Zelotes." This name may be faithfully 
 translated by its English derivative " zealot," and has an interpreta- 
 tion deeply involved in some of the most bloody scenes in the history 
 of the Jews, down to the days of the Apostles. Josephus speaks 
 of them as forming "the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy," | and as 
 distinguished from the Pharisees chiefly by a quenchless love of 
 
 * Baronii Martjrol. Rom. Oct 18. 
 
 t Nicephori Callisti Eccles. Hist., lib. ii., cap. 43, torn, i., p. 210. Fol. Pri, 
 1630- 
 
 J Joseph. Antiq., lib. xvlii., cap. i., sect. i. 
 
 2 o 2
 
 284 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 liberty, and an utter contempt of death. Their leading tenet was 
 the unlawfulness of paying tribute to the Romans, as being a violation 
 of the theocratic constitution. They viewed themselves as the suc- 
 cessors of Phinehas, who did immediate execution upon Zimri and 
 Cozbi : (Num. xxv. 11 13:) in imitation of whom, these men 
 assumed the office of inflicting judgment in all extraordinary cases, 
 and that not only by the connivance, but with the permission, of both 
 rulers and people, till in after-times, under a pretence of this, their 
 zeal degenerated into all manner of licentiousness and extravagance, 
 so that they became the pests of the commonwealth, and by constantly 
 prompting the people to throw off the Roman yoke, and to vindicate 
 their native liberty, they induced that power to break in upon them 
 to their utter and irrecoverable ruin. The Jewish historian gives a 
 full account of them, and bewails the great devastation which they 
 occasioned.* He says, that they did not scruple to kill any, even the 
 prime of the nobility, under the pretence of corresponding with the 
 Romans, and betraying the freedom of the country. In a word, 
 during the last days of the Jewish polity, the zealots were lawless 
 brigands or guerrillas, the scourge and terror of the land. This 
 party, we have reason to believe, if it were in existence during our 
 Saviour's sojourn on earth, had not arrived at this state of insubordi- 
 nation, and less reason is there for supposing that Simon derived his 
 surname from any connexion with that party. It was either charac- 
 teristic of his general conduct, or had reference to some particular 
 occasion in which he manifested diligence and ardour in some righ- 
 teous cause. 
 
 Having been invested with the apostolical office, no further men- 
 tion is made of him in the inspired volume. He remained with the 
 Apostles until the dispersion, and then zealously applied himself to the 
 duty which lay before him. He is said to have directed his journey 
 towards Egypt, Gyrene, and Africa. Here he preached and wrought 
 miracles, and, after surmounting numerous difficulties, suffered mar- 
 tyrdom for the sake of Christ. f Some of the Martyrologies extant 
 say, that Jude and Simon went together into Mesopotamia, where 
 they both received the martyr's crown. 
 
 In the meanwhile the indefatigable and self-denying coadjutors of 
 the Apostles did not remain unscathed in the midst of the storm 
 which raged around. Anxious to follow the example of Christ, and 
 the footsteps of those who had bee-n the instruments of their conver- 
 sion from sin to holiness, they had trials also of cruel mockings, and 
 of bonds and imprisonment. Very few of the names of the martyrs 
 who suffered immediately before or after the execution of Peter and 
 Paul have been handed down to posterity : sufficient it is for them 
 that their judgment is with the Lord, and their reward with their 
 God. (Isai. xlix. 4.) Among these, we notice Ananias of Damascus, 
 
 Joseph. De Bello Jud., lib. iv., cap. 36 ; lib. vii., cap. 8. 
 
 t Niceph. Callist. Eccles. Hist., lib. ii., ca,p. 40. The Greek Menology asserts, 
 that Simon went ultimately into Britain, and, having enlightened the minds of many 
 with the doctrines of the Gospel, he was crucified by the infidels, and buried there.
 
 PHILEMON. 285 
 
 who obtained the crown of martyrdom in that city ; Erastus, the 
 Chamherlain of Corinth, is said to have been left by Paid in Macedo- 
 nia, and to have suffered martyrdom at Philippi ; Aristarchus, a native 
 of Thcssalonica, who was with Paul in the disturbance raised by 
 Demetrius the Silversmith, in which he suffered numerous insults 
 from the populace, and was a partaker of the labours and perils of 
 the Apostle in Ephesus, accompanied Paul into Greece, and from 
 thence into Asia and Judea, and finally went with him to Rome, 
 where it is stated he also was beheaded at the command of Nero ; 
 Trophimus, also, constantly accompanied his preceptor. It was upon 
 his account that the Jews raised the riot in the temple against the 
 Apostle, whom they would have killed, had not Lysias the Captain of 
 the guard come to his rescue. His name does not again occur till 
 after the first imprisonment of Paul. In one of the ensuing journeys 
 of the Apostles, he remained behind at Miletus sick. (2 Tim. iv. 20.) 
 This circumstance is regarded as furnishing a strong fact to show, 
 that Paul was twice imprisoned at Rome ; for Trophimus, in his first 
 passage to Miletus, (Acts xx. 15,) was not left behind, but proceeded 
 to Judea ; after which we do not lose sight of Paul for one day, and 
 know that he was not again at Miletus before his first imprisonment 
 at Rome. Trophimus followed him to the imperial city, and, shortly 
 after the death of Paul, suffered martyrdom at the command of Nero. 
 Philemon was a person of some distinction in the city of Colosse, 
 who, during Paul's stay in Ephesus, heard him preach, and became 
 a zealous and consistent disciple. Immediately after his conversion, 
 he became a fellow-labourer in the cause of truth, and turned his house 
 into a place of prayer, where the Christians were accustomed to meet 
 for devotional purposes : it was under the roof * of Philemon, also, 
 the Apostle resided when he visited Colosse. After having edified the 
 church by his public ministrations, as well as by his unbounded 
 charity, he, with his wife Appia, toward the latter end of Nero's 
 reign, suffered martyrdom on a day that was dedicated to Diana, hav- 
 ing fallen victims to the rage of the popular fury. Among the early 
 martyrs, the names of Vitalis and Valeria have frequently been men- 
 tioned. The former lived in the reign of Nero, and had a command 
 in the Roman army. He concealed his profession of Christianity for 
 some time, that he might be more serviceable to the church during the 
 heat of the persecution. On witnessing one of the victims of cruelty 
 
 * Theodoret speaks of having had this house pointed out to him so late a<* 
 the fifth century. " Quinetiam domus ejus mansit usque in hodieraum diem." 
 (Theod. Oper., torn, iii., Pref. ad Philem., p. 711.) It has been said, that Philemon 
 was made Bishop of Colosse by Paul, an office which is ascribed by others to Epaphras ; 
 and this fact as well as the subsequent martyrdom of himself and wife at Colosse, are, 
 perhaps, deserving of little belief. We know also the name of Archippus, who was a 
 Deacon in the Colossian church ; and if ecclesiastical traditions may be followed, OnesU 
 inns was raised to a still higher station in the church. A person of this name waa 
 certainly Bishop of Ephesus in the time of Ignatius; (Epist. ad K plies., sect. 6 ;) and 
 some writers have stated, that Timothy was succeeded by the former slave of Philemon ; 
 but this must be considered uncertain ; and unless Onesimus was extremely young 
 when converted by Paul, he could hardly have been Bishop of Ephesus at the com- 
 mencement of the second century. Other accounts have represented him as Bishop 
 of Berea in Macedonia : and they add, that he suffered martyrdom in the reign of 
 Dornitian.
 
 286 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 and superstition tremble at the approach of death, he made an open 
 confession of his attachment to the faith, and encouraged the suffer- 
 ing Christian so effectively, that he courageously laid down his life. 
 Vitalis was speedily called to account for the declaration which he 
 had made ; and was forthwith condemned to the rack, his bones were 
 broken, and he was buried alive. After the death of her husband, 
 Valeria quitted Rome. While travelling on the road to Milan, she 
 was stopped by a company of peasants, who were celebrating some 
 festival in honour of a heathen deity ; and, she refusing to comply 
 with these superstitious ceremonies, was murdered. 
 
 During the first part of the reign of Nero, the government, although 
 it still held in respect the old republican institutions, was in its 
 administration perfectly despotic. The state centred in the person 
 of the Emperor. This kind of hereditary autocracy is essentially 
 selfish : it is content with averting or punishing plots against the 
 person, or detecting and crushing conspiracies against the power, 
 of the existing Monarch. To those more remote or secret changes, 
 which are working in the depths of society, eventually, perhaps, 
 threatening the existence of the monarchy, or the stability of all the 
 social relations, it is blind or indifferent. It has neither sagacity to 
 discern, intelligence to comprehend, nor even the disinterested zeal, 
 for the perpetuation of its own despotism, to counteract such distant 
 and contingent dangers. Of all innovations it is, in general, sensi- 
 tively jealous ; but they must be palpable and manifest, and directly 
 clashing with the passions, or exciting the fears of the Sovereign. 
 Even these are met by temporary measures. When an outcry was 
 raised against the Egyptian religion as dangerous to public morality, 
 an edict commanded the expulsion of its votaries from the city. 
 When the superstition of the Emperor shuddered at the predictions 
 of the mathematicians, the whole fraternity fell under the same inter- 
 dict. When the public peace was disturbed by the dissensions among 
 the Jewish population of Rome, the summary sentence of Claudius 
 visited both Jews and Christians with the same indifferent severity. 
 So the Neronian persecution was an accident arising out of the fire 
 at Rome, no part of a systematic political plan for the suppression of 
 foreign religions. It might have fallen on any other sect or body of 
 men, who might have been designated as victims to appease the 
 popular resentment. The provincial administrations would be actu- 
 ated by the same principles as the central government, and be alike 
 indifferent to the quiet progress of opinions, however dangerous to 
 the existing order of things. Unless some breach of the public peace 
 demanded their interference, they would rarely put forth their power ; 
 and, content with the maintenance of order, the regular collection of 
 the revenue, the more rapacious with the punctual payment of their 
 own exactions, the more enlightened with the improvement and 
 embellishment of the cities under their charge, they would look on 
 the rise and propagation of a new religion with no more concern 
 than that of a new philosophic sect, particularly in the eastern part 
 of the empire, where the religions were in general more foreign to the 
 character of the Greek or Roman polytheism. The popular feeling
 
 DOMITIAN. 287 
 
 during this period would, only under peculiar circumstances, outstrip 
 the activity of the government. Accustomed to the separate worship 
 of the Jews, to them Christianity appeared at first only as a modifi- 
 cation of that belief. Local jealousies or personal animosities might, 
 in different places, excite a more active hostility : in Rome, it is evi- 
 dent that the people were only worked up to find inhuman delight in 
 the sufferings of the Christians, by the misrepresentations of the 
 government, by superstitious solicitude to find some victims to 
 appease the angry gods, and that strange consolation of human misery, 
 the delight of wreaking vengeance on whomsoever it can possibly 
 implicate as the cause of the calamity.* 
 
 The spent wave of the Neronian persecution recovered sufficient 
 force to sweep away those who were employed in reconstructing the 
 shattered edifice of Christianity in Rome. But the Gospel ultimately 
 advanced, and spread extensively among the inferior and middle 
 orders of society. In many quarters, the strong revulsion of the 
 public mind against Nero created great commiseration towards his 
 innocent victims, so that the Christians were acquitted by the popular 
 feeling of any real connexion with the fire at Rome.-j* Mr. Milman 
 justly remarks, that "this persecution had the effect of raising the 
 importance of Christianity, so as to force it upon the notice of many, 
 who might otherwise have been ignorant of its existence ; the new 
 and peculiar fortitude with which the sufferers endured their unpre- 
 cedented trials, would strongly recommend it to those who were dis- 
 satisfied with the moral power of their old religion ; while, on the 
 other hand, it was yet too feeble and obscure to provoke a systematic 
 plan for its suppression." 
 
 From the death of Nero to the period in which Trajan ascended 
 the throne of the Roman empire, the larger portion of time was 
 occupied by the reign of Domitian. His father, Vespasian, from the 
 comprehensive vigour of his mind, and his knowledge of the Jewish 
 character and religion, was qualified in no small degree to estimate 
 aright the present bearings and future prospects of the Christian 
 faith. But having subdued Judea and destroyed the temple, he had 
 reduced the forefathers of Christianity to such an enfeebled condition, 
 as to lead all to anticipate either their entire extinction, by being min- 
 gled with the general population of the empire, and, in process of time, 
 becoming absorbed, or, like the smoking flax, consumed in its own 
 ashes. The name of Domitian is handed down, as that of the second 
 persecutor of the Christians after Nero ; and though the greater 
 part of his reign was marked by cruelties, it seems to have been in 
 his later years that his attention was turned to the professors of the 
 Gospel. Eusebius speaks of this persecution forming a kind of sequel 
 to the executions, banishments, and confiscations, which Domitian had 
 practised against numbers of people of rank ; and the statement, 
 perhaps, may be taken, not only as marking the time, but as serving 
 in some degree to explain the cause, of the persecution. Nero tor- 
 
 * MiliiKiii's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 62. 
 
 t Taciti Aimitliv, lib. xv., cap. 44. 
 
 J Ku.-ii.-li., Ki-rltv. Hi.->t., lib. iii., cap. 17.
 
 288 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 lured the Christians that his own conduct might not be scrutinized. 
 Domitian -was influenced by a similar principle. While his cruel 
 jealousy caused Rome to be saturated with patrician blood, it was desir- 
 able that some measure should be adopted to stifle the public indig- 
 nation. Like his predecessor, he attacked the exitiabilis superstitio, 
 and speedily secured the favour of a large and influential body of his 
 subjects. His persecution of the Christians is referred to with suffi- 
 cient plainness by several of the heathen historians. Suetonius and 
 others allude to heavy contributions being levied upon the Jews, and 
 upon those who professed that religion. There can be little doubt 
 but those persons were Christians.* 
 
 The slanders and false accusations which were adduced against the 
 Christians, exceed all manner of belief. They were accused of 
 being enemies to the state, and especially to the Emperor, which was 
 founded on their refusal to pay him divine honours, and to render 
 adoration to his statue which he had erected in the capitol. What- 
 ever crimes their malice could invent, or their suspicions conjecture, 
 were imputed to the Christians. They charged them with offences 
 of the most impious description, with " vile affections," with killing 
 their own children, and eating men's flesh : many, in expectation of 
 securing the possessions and goods of the accused, were ready falsely 
 to charge them with any delinquency ; and in order that such might not 
 escape, the following was enacted: "That if any Christian were brought 
 before the Magistrates, let the crime be what it may, and the prisoner 
 guilty or not guilty, he should not be discharged, unless he renounced 
 his religion ; " and, to render assurance doubly sure, they endeavoured 
 to make the Christians their own accusers, by first imposing upon 
 them an oath to speak the truth, and then interrogating them. The 
 regard which they had for the sanctity of an oath, compelled them to 
 speak the truth, their confession was held as sufficient evidence, and 
 they were condemned to the torture and to death. The Magis- 
 trates were not satisfied with taking away the lives of the accused : 
 the art of tormenting was in active requisition, to augment their 
 misery, loathsome and tedious imprisonments, scourging, tearing 
 the nails and flesh from the hands and feet, stoning, burning in vari- 
 ous ways, laying some on plates of iron red-hot, roasting some, 
 broiling others on large gridirons, impalement, racks, throwing 
 them to be devoured by wild beasts made hungry and fierce to worry 
 them, tossing them on the horns of bulls, frying them on iron chairs, 
 sawing them asunder, and many other kinds of cruel death, both 
 lingering and severe : to others they were more merciful, by stran- 
 gling them in the dungeon, or submitting them to the sword or the 
 axe, the gibbet or the spear. Even after death the animosity of the 
 persecutor was not satiated : frequently were their mangled remains 
 thrown in heaps to be devoured by the dogs, rather than allow their 
 
 * Dio Cassius confirms tliis remark, when he is speaking of Acilius Glabrio, who was 
 put to death in the fifteenth year of Domitian. His crime, according to the historians, 
 was atheism ; which, as we have seen, was equally alleged against Jews and Christians ; 
 and he states, that Glahrio, together with several other persons, about this time, 
 had adopted Jewish manners.
 
 DOMITIAN. 289 
 
 friends to inter them. To all these Justin Martyr alluded in his 
 address to Trypho the Jew : " None can terrify or move us from our 
 faith in Christ ; and it is daily seen, that when we are crucified, slain, 
 cast to the wild beasts, or into the fire, or put to the greatest tor- 
 ments, yet we depart not from our faith ; but the more cruelty is used 
 against us, the more there are that come to piety, and faith in 
 Christ ; for as men cut the branches of the vine to make them fruit- 
 ful, so is the vine planted by God and our Saviour, the church." 
 
 Christianity, however, forced itself upon the knowledge and fears 
 of Domitian, in a quarter the least anticipated, the bosom of his own 
 family.* Of his two cousins-german, the sons of Flavius Sabinus, 
 the one fell an early victim to his jealous apprehensions. The other, 
 Flavius Clemens, is described by epigrammatic biographers of the 
 Caesars, as a man whose indolence of character rendered him contempt- 
 ible ; and we know from later apologists, that one of the calumnies 
 against the Christians was taken from their paying but little atten- 
 tion to public affairs.f This charge, in some respects, may be a true 
 one ; for, when an individual embraced the Gospel, he was compelled 
 to abstain from many acts which were more or less connected with 
 the rites and superstitions of Paganism. Clemens had given some 
 offence of this kind ; his relationship to the Emperor emboldened 
 him also to speak his sentiments with freedom, which would also have 
 a tendency to excite the too sensitive mind of the irascible Monarch. 
 Enemies would not be wanting to urge Domitian to rid himself of 
 such a troublesome friend ; and hence the transition was compara- 
 tively easy to represent all the Christians as dangerous to the state. 
 Clemens, instead of exciting the fears, enjoyed for some time the 
 favour, of Domitian. He received in marriage Domitilla, the niece of 
 the Emperor, his children were adopted as heirs to the throne, and 
 himself obtained the Consulship ; and if the tyrant had been sooner 
 cut off, a Christian Prince might have been seated upon the throne 
 of the Caesars at the end of the first century. On a sudden, how- 
 ever, these harmless kinsmen became dangerous conspirators ; they 
 were arraigned on the unprecedented charge of atheism and Jewish 
 manners ; the husband, Clemens, was put to death ; the wife, Domi- 
 tilla, banished to the desert island either of Pontia or Pandataria. 
 The crime of atheism was afterwards the common popular charge 
 against the Christians, the charge to which in all ages those are 
 exposed who are superior to the vulgar notion of the Deity. But it 
 was a charge never advanced against Judaism : coupled, therefore, 
 with that of Jewish manners, it is unintelligible, unless it refer to 
 Christianity. Nor is it improbable that the contemptible want of 
 energy, ascribed by Suetonius to Flavius Clemens, might be that 
 unambitious superiority to the world which characterized the early 
 Christian. Clemens had seen his brother cut off by the sudden and 
 capricious fears of the tyrant ; and his repugnance to enter on the 
 same dangerous public career, in pursuit of honours which he de- 
 
 * Suetonius in Domit., cap. 15. Dion. Caesium, lib. Ixvii., cap. 14. Euaeb. Eccles. 
 Hist., lib. iii., cap. 18. 
 
 t Tertull. Apologet., cap. xlii. 
 VOL. 1. 2 P
 
 290 BOOK til. CHAPTER V. 
 
 spised, if it had assumed the lofty language of philosophy, might have 
 commanded the admiration of his contemporaries ; but connected 
 with a new religion, of which the sublimer notions and principles 
 were altogether incomprehensible, only exposed him to their more 
 contemptuous scorn. Neither in his case was it the peril apprehended 
 from the progress of the faith, but the dangerous position of the 
 individuals professing the religion, so near to the throne, which was 
 fatal to Clemens and Domitilla. It was the pretext, not the cause, of 
 their punishment.* 
 
 We have no means of judging, whether the search after the de- 
 scendants of David, alluded to above, f was accompanied by any mea- 
 sures of cruelty against the Christians of Palestine ; for the Emperor 
 had heard, some way or other, that a man would arise from the rela- 
 tives of Christ, bent upon revolution and political disturbance. There 
 is, however, positive evidence, that the example which was set by 
 Domitian in the capital, was followed in distant parts of the empire. 
 The Christians of Asia Minor were exposed to severe trials. The usual 
 alternative was offered them of sacrificing to an idol, or submitting to 
 torture : and, while their heathen enemies threatened them on the 
 one side, the Nicolaitans and different Gnostic sects were tempting 
 them on the other, by teaching them that in such cases compliance 
 was not a sin. This doctrine seduced many from the faith. The 
 Apostle John witnessed, if he did not partake of, these sufferings. 
 " He was the last whom the world beheld with the rays, as it were, 
 of Christ's earthly presence remaining upon him. His death, there- 
 fore, forms an important epoch in the history of the church. And his 
 Master blessed him ere he died, with an earnest of the promised victory 
 of the Gospel. He who had stood at his cross, one of a little band 
 of bewildered mourners, lived to see its opprobrious title, ' Jesus, the 
 King of the Jews,' become a name of glory and holy boasting in the 
 mouths of thousands and ten thousands. He lived to hear the sounds 
 of the Gospel re-echoed to him from the farthest corners of the earth, 
 while it sounded around him in the most celebrated city of Asia, 
 in the very head-quarters of Heathenism, in the most sacred cell of 
 its superstition. There, in its very capital, which was daily thronged 
 and enriched by pilgrims to the great Diana, the pillars of whose 
 temple were the gifts of Kings ; in Ephesus itself, he beheld the 
 church of Christ gradually extending its circle of conquest, and he 
 
 * Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 60. 
 
 t See page 274. In the account given by Kusebina, Mosheitn sees nothing that can 
 be deemed difficult of belief. From beginning to end it has all the appearance of a 
 simple, unvarnished narrative. The fact, therefore, seems to have been, that some one, 
 an enemy alike both to the Jews and the Christians, had suggested to the Emperor, 
 that the Jews looked daily for a King to arise from amongst the posterity of David, who 
 should give law to the whole earth ; that the Christians in like manner expected that 
 Christ would soon return, and establish for himself a graud and extensive dominion ; 
 and that, consequently, both Christians and Jews were to be regarded with a jealous 
 eye, as persons harbouring views dangerous to the state, and only awaiting their oppor- 
 tunity to break out into open revolt. Insidious whispers of this kind would naturally 
 prompt the tyrant to order, as we are told he did, that all the posterity of David should 
 be sought after, and put to death ; and that measures should be taken to give an equally 
 effectual blow to any designs which might be entertained against him by the Christians. 
 (Commentaries, vol. i., p. 191.)
 
 JOHN. 291 
 
 himself was blessed with the charge of directing the energy of its 
 administration. The beholder of the revelation in spirit was blessed 
 with a sight in body too, more magnificent than ever Prophet's eye 
 was allowed to see before. Under his own eyes the tabernacle of the 
 church was daily spreading farther her curtains, and daily setting her 
 stakes more strong. The Prophets, to whom had been vouchsafed 
 a more distant prospect of the same end, (and such were Isaiah and 
 Ezekiel and Daniel,) lived not to see the least trace of the beginning 
 of the accomplishment of their predicted blessings. On the contrary, 
 the porch-way of the temple of the future was dark indeed, and 
 filled with a ghastly throng : desolation, captivity, famine, and the 
 demons of plague, fire, and sword, sate there. But John's eye of 
 flesh was advanced within the door, and saw the inner brightness. 
 He beheld, indeed, the sword raised against the church ; he saw it de- 
 scend upon it. But it clave it, as it would water. A wave or two 
 was raised, and then all was smooth and continuous again. The axe 
 and brand were furiously wielded; but the temple of the church 
 stood. Amid the devouring rage of the conflagration around, amid 
 the blood flowing about it, still it was seen standing in tranquil 
 majesty, still the blaze of the indwelling glory was seen illumining its 
 windows, still the voices of thanksgiving and hosannas of victory 
 were heard proceeding from within, unassailable by the powers with- 
 out."* 
 
 In the persecution which now raged, JOHN did not remain entirely 
 unharmed. He is reported to have been sent to Home by the Pro- 
 consul of Asia, where he was thrown into a vessel of boiling oil, and 
 came out unhurt. If local tradition were allowed to have any weight, 
 we might believe, that some such event befell John at Rome ; and 
 Tertullian, who wrote at the end of the second century, does not 
 appear to have entertained any doubt of the fact.-f Mosheim, also, 
 does not treat the story with contempt. The testimony of Tertullian, 
 however, gives us a very brief and incidental notice of the circum- 
 stance : he was born within about fifty years of its occurrence, which 
 is, after all, but feeble evidence in favour of the truth of such a fact. 
 
 The banishment of John to the Isle of Patmos by the command of 
 Domitian, is too well authenticated to be disputed. The event is 
 recorded by the unerring pen of revelation. The precise year in 
 
 * Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 261. 
 
 t All that Tertullian saya on the subject is this : " Apoatolus Johannes, posteaqnam 
 In oleum igneum demersus, nihil passus est, in insulam relegatur." (De Prescript. 
 Haeret, cap. 36.) For nearly two hundred years, none of the fathers refers to this 
 circumstance. Jerome speaks of it in two places ; (Adv. Jovin., lib. i., cap. 14 ; and in 
 his Comment., Matt. xx. 23 ;) and from these two sources, the other narrators of the 
 account have taken it. Of the modern critics and historians, together with the great 
 mass of Papists, several Protestants are quoted by Lampe, who strenuously defend the 
 story : many who do not absolutely receive the statement as true, hesitate in deciding 
 against it. The Magdeburg Centuriators represent it aa being " very doubtful," incer- 
 tissimum est. Irenueua and Sulpitiua Severua are utterly silent on the subject, and 
 Kusi'liius ia aa still aa the grave in his Ecclesiastical History ; but in his Demonstratio 
 Evangelica, speaking of the suffering of the Apostles, of the death of Stephen, of James 
 the brother of John, of Jamea the brother of Christ, of Peter, and of Paul, he only aays 
 of the beloved disciple, " John ia banished and sent into an island." 
 
 2 p 2
 
 292 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 which it transpired is unknown : it is, however, ascertained, with 
 some degree of certainty, to have occurred towards the close of the 
 Emperor's reign. The place selected for his exile was a dreary, desert 
 isle in the ^Egean Sea, about twenty miles from the Asiatic coast, and 
 thirty or forty south-west of Ephesus. It is at this day known by the 
 observation of travellers to be a most singularly desolate place, exhi- 
 biting scarcely anything but bare rocks. On approaching the island 
 the coast is found to be high, and to consist of a succession of capes 
 which form so many ports, some of which are excellent. The only 
 one in use is a deep bay, sheltered by high mountains on every side 
 but one, where it is protected by a projecting cape. The town 
 attached to this port is situated upon a high rocky mountain, rising 
 immediately from the sea ; and this, with the Scala below upon the 
 shore, consisting of some shops and houses, forms the only inhabited 
 site of the island. There is still shown a natural grotto in the rock 
 where it is said John saw his visions,* and wrote "the Revelation." 
 In this isolated spot the aged Apostle was doomed to pass lonely 
 months, at a distance from all the enjoyments of social intercourse 
 and Christian communion. Later writers have asserted that he waa 
 condemned to work in the mines or quarries, a punishment which we 
 are aware was frequently inflicted upon the Christians ; but, probably, 
 the great age of John at this period exempted him from that toil. 
 There are also traditions, that he converted the inhabitants of the 
 island to Christianity ; a fact which in itself is not improbable, but 
 which does not rest on sufficient authority. John's imprisonment, 
 probably, terminated when Domitian died. He appears to have 
 returned to Ephesus. For many years the church in that city had 
 the benefit of his superintendence ; but Clement of Alexandria speaks 
 of his taking journeys into the neighbouring district to appoint 
 Bishops, and to settle the constitution of churches, &c. The senility 
 of John unfitted him for active duties of this kind. Among the 
 Bishops appointed by the Apostle about this period, must be placed 
 Polycarp, who filled the see of Smyrna ; but although the date of his 
 appointment is uncertain, we have the testimony of Ireneeus, that the 
 Apostle and Polycarp were personally known to each other.f The 
 latter years of John's life appear to have been spent in comparative 
 peace, free from all molestation by his heathen adversaries. 
 
 Among those who suffered during the sanguinary reign of Domi- 
 tian, was DIONYSIUS the Areopagite. All that we know of him on 
 
 * " We saw the peaks of its two prominent hills ; but our course did not lie very near 
 it. Still it was intensely interesting to get even a glance of that remarkable spot 
 where the beloved disciple saw the visions of God, the spot, too, where the Saviour was 
 seen, and his voice heard, for the last time till he come again. It is the only spot in 
 Europe where the Son of man showed himself in his humanity. John's eye often 
 rested on the mountains and islands among which we were now passing, and on the 
 shores and waves of this great sea ; and often, after the vision was past, these natural 
 features of his place of exile would refresh his spirit, recalling to his mind how ' he 
 stood on the sand of the sea,' and how he had seen that ' every island fled away, 
 and the mountains were not found.' " (Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews, 
 vol. ii., p. 100.) 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., p. 3/2.
 
 DIONYSIUS. 293 
 
 any credible authority, beyond the short notice of Scripture, amounts 
 to all that Eusebius seems to have known, who tells us, on the autho- 
 rity of Dionysius of Corinth, who flourished about the second cen- 
 tury, that he was first Bishop of Athens. He was an Athenian, and 
 that title alone gives him a claim upon our interest and curiosity. 
 But he was thrown upon days when that city had ceased to dwell in a 
 halo of intellectual glory, when she was shorn of her boasted splendour 
 and freedom, and when she was quietly reposing, as a provincial town, 
 under the wing of Roman dominion. Her schools of philosophy yet 
 survived, and inherited all the contentiousness, though not the genius, 
 of olden time. Among these the court of Areopagus * retained much 
 of its former reputation, and the situation of an Areopagite Judge was 
 esteemed the most prized among civil offices. Among the latter may 
 be classed Dionysius. One day, as he was on the Hill of Mars, where 
 his court was held, and where also was the great resort of the upper 
 class of citizens and foreigners, he beheld a crowd coming up from 
 the lower part of the city. They brought with them a person, whom, 
 after having placed within the centre of the spot, they called 
 upon to speak. Moved by curiosity, Dionysius joined the throng, 
 which he found to contain the better sort, including philosophers with 
 their disciples ; and on inquiring who the speaker might be, was told 
 that he was a teacher of new gods. This was none other than Paul, 
 the Apostle of the Gentiles. In a neat and eloquent discourse, de- 
 livered not with greater freedom of mind than strength of reason, 
 he plainly demonstrated the folly and absurdity of those many vain 
 deities whom they blindly worshipped ; explained to them that infi- 
 nite and eternal Being who made and governed the world, and the 
 obligations he had laid upon all mankind to worship and adore Him ; 
 and especially how he had increased all the former obligations to gra- 
 titude and obedience, by sending his Son to procure and proclaim so 
 glorious a scheme of salvation to a ruined world. Whilst many 
 received the testimony of Paul with laughter and scorn, others were 
 convinced of the reasonableness and divinity of the Christian faith. 
 The attention of Dionysius was deeply engaged. He had never heard 
 man speak like this man. The orator delivered himself with the 
 authority of an Ambassador from the Most High. He announced 
 the truth in all simplicity, as if he believed what he said. When the 
 Preacher arrived at the touchstone of belief and unbelief, of those 
 who were to be saved, and of those who were to perish, a change 
 came over the heart and understanding of Dionysius, and repentance 
 was already begun. He sought and found the Saviour. New thoughts 
 and new feelings possessed him. The heathen rites, with which 
 his office of Areopagite was necessarily connected, were forthwith 
 abandoned. He became an outcast from all those whom he had here- 
 tofore known, and loved, and honoured, " choosingrather," like Moses,
 
 29-4 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 "to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the plea- 
 sures of sin for a season ; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater 
 riches than the treasures of Egypt : for he had respect unto the recom- 
 pence of the reward." (Heb. xi. 25, 26.) 
 
 His fidelity and diligence as a Christian are fully proved by 
 his having been chosen first Bishop of Athens ; and that he exe- 
 cuted this difficult charge to the satisfaction of the church, appears 
 from the fact that Paul addressed no epistle to that community. Its 
 peace was uninterrupted, and its purity unsullied. Much of the sub- 
 sequent life of Dionysius is involved in fable. He has been named 
 as taking a principal share in the conversion of the Gauls. The 
 scene of his preaching is not confined to the Romanized provinces 
 of Narbonne and Aquitaine ; but he is stated to have penetrated even 
 as far as Paris : whatever may be the truth of his history, many 
 French writers have believed their patron saint to be the Athenian who 
 was converted by Paul ; others, however, have advanced good reasons 
 for believing, that Dionysius, the first Bishop of Paris, did not visit 
 that country till the reign of Decius. Aristides, an Athenian philo- 
 sopher, asserts, that he suffered martyrdom ; a fact generally admitted 
 by historians, but the precise period of his death they do not deter- 
 mine. Others say, that, having settled his affairs at Athens, and 
 substituted a successor in his see, he went to Rome, whence he was 
 despatched by Clemens into France, where he planted the faith, and 
 founded an episcopal see at Paris ; after some time, about the nine- 
 tieth year of his age, he returned into the East to converse with the 
 Apostle John at Ephesus, and from thence he returned to Paris, 
 where he is said to have suffered martyrdom.* As Paul reaped in 
 Sergius Paulus the first-fruits of the harvest of rulers and govern- 
 ors which was to be brought into the garner of the church, so he did 
 in Diouysius of the men of education. Born and nursed up in a 
 religion and manners most adverse to the spirit of Christianity, 
 he accepted conviction, and cheerfully followed the consequences, 
 whithersoever they might lead him. What an example is he to the 
 educated classes of the church ! 
 
 Under the reign of Domitian the blood of TIMOTHY is also sup- 
 posed to have been shed. He was a person in whom the Jew, the 
 Gentile, and the Christian met. His father was a Greek, by religion 
 a Gentile, or, if he professed Judaism, he was " a proselyte of the 
 gate:" his mother, Eunice, was daughter to the devout and pious 
 Lois, who, together with her daughter, was among the first who were 
 
 * " Among infinite other miracles reported of him, he is said to have taken up his 
 head, after it had been cut off by the executioners, and to have carried it in his hands, 
 (an angel going before, and a heavenly chorus attending him all the way,) for two miles 
 together, till he came to the place of his interment, where he gently laid it and himself 
 down, and was there honourably buried." (Dr. Cave's Lives of the Fathers.) " Aristides 
 quoted by Usuard, and Sophronius of Jerusalem, styled him a martyr. The Greeks in 
 their Menologies tell us, that he was burnt alite for the faith at Athens. His name oc- 
 curs in ancient calendars on the 3d of October. The cathedral at Soissons is in pos- 
 session of his head, (!) which was brought thither from Constantinople hi 1205. Pope 
 Innocent III. sent to the abbey of St. Denis near Paris, the body of this saint, which 
 had been, translated from Greece to Rome." (Alban Butler.)
 
 TIMOTHY. 295 
 
 converted to the Christian faith. It was on his second round of visit- 
 ation and preaching in Asia, that Paul came to Derbe, a city of 
 Lycaonia, where he found the young disciple, named Timothy, whose 
 high character had received the testimony of the churches of Iconium 
 and Lystra. On his second visit, he selected Timothy to be his assistant, 
 and the companion of his travels. He assisted Paul in the foundation 
 of the churches of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. At the first 
 two places he had a proof of the trials which awaited the Preachers 
 of Christ crucified, more especially at the hands of the Jews, to whom 
 the doctrine was much more generally a stumbling-block than it was 
 foolishness to the Greeks ; but the persecution does not appear to 
 have descended lower than the two principals, Paul and Silas. At 
 Berea they found acceptable hearers and peace, until the Jews of 
 Thessalonica came to disturb them there also. This produced a short 
 separation of the party. It was necessary to the safety of Paul that 
 he should quit the place. The brethren conducted him to Athens, 
 while Timothy remained with Silas behind. How he was employed 
 during this interval appears from Paul's two letters to the Thessalo- 
 nians, the first of which he wrote from Corinth after Timothy had 
 rejoined him. From this we find that Paul, on leaving Berea, had 
 charged him to go to Thessalonica, and confirm the brethren there. 
 This was a charge both of difficulty and danger : the persecution set 
 on foot by the Jews, at the very first preaching of the Gospel, con- 
 tinued to rage there, insomuch that Paul, upon the hearing of it, 
 began to fear lest they should be overcome by the trial, and all his 
 labour prove vain. How must the neophyte have won the confidence 
 of the keen-sighted, the watchful, the spiritual Paul, that, being so 
 young, he should be selected for such a high office as instructing, 
 comforting, and supporting an infant church, as yet staggering in 
 weakness of members, and subjected to persecution ! * The Apostle 
 of the Gentiles and Timothy were constantly together, until the latter, 
 endued with extraordinary powers, was sent to govern the church at 
 Ephesus. 
 
 It was during his residence and supposed episcopate at Ephesus, 
 that Timothy received his two epistles from Paul. In the first he 
 gives various directions on public prayer, instructions on the ordina- 
 tion of Ministers of the word, cautions against heretics, with much 
 advice on several points of his commission, concluding with a most 
 solemn charge before God and Jesus Christ, that he should keep the 
 commandment without spot, and unblamable. Timothy shortly 
 received his second and last epistle from the same Apostle. It was 
 penned with all the solemnity of one who was on the point of depart- 
 ure, and with all the prophetic spirit of a dying saint. He gave 
 affecting hints of his approaching martyrdom. He stated that the 
 company of zealous persons who had all along adhered to him in his 
 adversity, had been sadly scattered ; some having voluntarily forsaken 
 him, and others having been sent by himself on an apostolical errand. 
 " Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me : for Demas hath for- 
 saken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto 
 
 * Evans's Scripture Biography, p. 268.
 
 296 HOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 Thessalonica ; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke 
 is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee : for he is profit- 
 able to me for the ministry. And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus." 
 (2 Tim. iv. 9 12.) The whole epistle is exquisitely pathetic, and must 
 have moved the affectionate spirit of Timothy. Whether he arrived 
 in Rome in time to see Paul alive, does not appear. The Ephesians 
 were a people of great laxity of morals and impiety : their manners 
 were licentious and effeminate, profane and prodigal : it is said that 
 they banished Hermodorus,* because he was more sober and thrifty 
 than the rest of the inhabitants, and actually passed a decree to the 
 effect, " Let none of ours be thrifty." They were strangely intoxi- 
 cated with the study of magic, and the arts of sorcery and divina- 
 tion ; the whole country was overrun with idolatry ; the temple and 
 the worship of Diana were notorious throughout the world. Among 
 the numerous idolatrous festivals which amused, and at the same time 
 degraded, the city of Ephesus, was one which they termed Kara- 
 ycoyiov, and celebrated -after the following manner : Clothing them- 
 selves in some fantastic dress, and hiding the face in a mask that the 
 person might not be recognised, with clubs in the hands, they carried 
 idols, in a wild and frantic manner, through the most conspicuous 
 parts of the city, singing songs and verses prepared for the occasion ; 
 and then, as if they possessed a licence to commit every kind of 
 injury with impunity, they attacked all that came in their way, with- 
 out respect to age or sex, and beat out their brains, viewing such 
 atrocities as an honour rendered to their deities. This sanguinary and 
 execrable custom gave serious cause of offence to all good and pious 
 men. The spirit of Timothy was " stirred in him," to see the Most 
 High so dishonoured, and humanity so prostrate and in the dust, at 
 the instigation of the murderer of souls. Frequently did he endeavour 
 to bring the people to a better mind by mild entreaty and persuasion ; 
 but all was of no avail. He, therefore, on the festival in question, 
 boldly appeared amongst the idolaters, and reproved them with 
 sharpness and severity. Impatient of control, and too headstrong 
 quietly to submit to opposition, they fell upon the holy man with 
 their clubs, and left him on the ground for dead. Some of the ter- 
 rified Christians, perceiving him to breathe, took him up and lodged 
 him without the gate : he expired on the third day.f Mr. Milner 
 says, " If any credit is to be attached to this story, it is in the high- 
 est degree probable, that Timothy was the presiding Minister through 
 whom the church is addressed. On the other hand it is argued, that 
 
 * " An Ephesian, and friend of the sage Heraditua, whom his fellow-citizens had 
 banished, because he filled them with shame, and they desired to be all on an equal 
 footing in profligacy of conduct." (Lempriere.) " Qui Henuodorum viruru inter eos 
 frugi ejecerunt, dicentes, Nemo nostrum frugi esto, alioqui cum aliis ejiciatur." (Strabo, 
 Geog., lib. xiv., p. 611. Fol. Basil., 1549.) 
 
 t In the Apocalyptic vision, which is supposed to have been written at the conclusion 
 of the first century, the Angel of Ephesus is reproved, because he had fallen from his 
 "first love ; " and is exhorted to "repent, and do the first works." Calmet says, this 
 Angel, or Bishop, was none other than Timothy. Many learned men agree with him 
 in this opinion ; and that he had fallen into some remissness of duty, in not reprehend- 
 ing the vices of those around him with sufficient rigour. If go, this fault was abun- 
 dantly repaired, so as to give occasion for his martyrdom.
 
 N1COMEDE9. 297 
 
 the relation is very uncertain ; and that it ia not likely that one so 
 highly commended hy Paul, in his Epistles, should receive so severe 
 a censure as that dictated in the Apocalypse. (Rev. ii. 4, 5.) But 
 this last objection is at once removed by the consideration, that the 
 Angels or Presidents are not addressed personally ; and that their 
 particular state is not described, but the communities committed to 
 their care. Upon the whole, we must leave the opinion adverted to 
 involved in uncertainty, though the weight of evidence undoubtedly 
 inclines in its favour." * 
 
 Mention has also been made of NICOMEDES, who was converted to 
 the faith through the instrumentality of the Apostles. During the 
 persecution which raged under Domitian, he rendered good service 
 to the Christian church by fearlessly attending the martyrs in their 
 imprisonment, encouraging and supporting them when called to suffer, 
 and afterwards in securing to their mangled remains a decent inter- 
 ment, notwithstanding the malice and bigotry of the persecutors, 
 who endeavoured, by disfiguring the lifeless forms of the sufferers, to 
 prevent them from being recognised, that they might be confounded 
 with the worst malefactors. While prosecuting these " labours of 
 love," Nicomedes was apprehended, and beaten with rods until he 
 expired under the hands of the executioners. 
 
 The career of Domitian was soon to close. The commencement 
 of his reign promised tranquillity to the people ; but their expectations 
 were soon " cut off." He became cruel, and gave way to incestuous 
 and unnatural indulgences. The last part of his reign is represented 
 by Tacitus as most miserable and insupportable, in which Domitian 
 endeavoured to ruin the state, and, by successive schemes of villany 
 and oppression, to entail wretchedness upon the people. Rome had 
 learned the fatal secret how to rid herself of monsters and tyrants 
 in the shape of men. Nothing tended so much to expedite the fate 
 of the Emperor, as the unjust death of Flavius Clemens, and the 
 subsequent banishment of Domitilla. But the circumstance which 
 brought the sanguinary affair to a crisis, was the discovery, by his 
 own wife Domitia, who, prying into his table-book, to her inexplica- 
 ble dismay, found her own name among the number doomed to 
 be slain, together with some of his principal friends, particularly 
 Stephauus the steward, Norbanus, and Patronius, to whom she showed 
 the document, and with whom she forthwith concerted measures to 
 effect the prompt destruction of the tyrant. The conspiracy was 
 formed with secrecy and despatch ; and nothing was wanting but an 
 opportunity to put the fatal project into execution. 
 
 For some time Domitian had become very suspicious, and his 
 anxieties were increased by the predictions of astrologers, but still 
 more poignantly by the stings of remorse. He was so distrustful 
 when alone, that round the terrace where he usually walked, he 
 erected a wall, inlaid with bright stones which reflected the figure 
 of any person who might be on the parade, that he might discern 
 who was following him. All these precautions proved unavailing. 
 
 Milner's History of the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 151. 8vo. London, 1832. 
 VOL. I. 2 Q
 
 298 BOOK III. CHAPTER V. 
 
 Roman writers speak of many omens which preceded his death, par- 
 ticularly numerous and vivid flashes of lightning, which terrified the 
 Emperor to such a degree, as caused him to exclaim, "Let Jove 
 strike whom he pleases." It is said that some astrologer gave him 
 notice of the day and hour of his death ; and that, on the pre- 
 ceding one, he directed some fruit, which he had ordered, to be 
 reserved, emphatically adding, " Tf it be my fortune to partake of 
 it." At midnight he was so affrighted as to leap out of his bed ; and 
 when the morning dawned, he sent for a soothsayer, who came out 
 of Germany, and condemned him to instant execution for declaring 
 that the late awful lightning portended some fearful revolution in the 
 state. During the evening of this fatal day, his fears were great. 
 On inquiring of his attendants the hour, they falsely gave him to 
 understand that it was midnight, an hour later than the real time. 
 Domitian at this was overjoyed ; and, thinking he had passed the 
 Eubicon, and that the dreaded day had expired without harm, immedi- 
 ately hastened to the bath. His chief Chamberlain with considerable 
 earnestness led him another way, pretending that he had a person 
 in his chamber who had business of the greatest importance to lay 
 before him, which could not with safety be deferred. There he was 
 met by Stephanus, who, feigning to disclose a conspiracy, placed in 
 the hands of the Emperor a list of persons represented as being 
 concerned in the plot : while he was reading with astonishment and 
 horror the deep-laid scheme, Stephanus inflicted a deadly wound. 
 Domitian crying out, closed upon the assassin, and with great violence 
 threw him on the ground : in the midst of this struggle, Parthe- 
 nius, Clodianus, Maximus, Saturius, with other conspirators, ran 
 furiously upon and despatched the tyrant. The judgment of Heaven 
 was even more exemplary in the indignity which was offered to his 
 person and memory after death. His body was left in the open air, 
 without the honours of a funeral. The joy of the Senate was so great 
 on account of his decease, that, having assembled in haste, they reviled 
 his character in terms the most opprobrious and contemptible ; and 
 even ordered ladders to be brought forthwith to remove every statue 
 and image of the Emperor, which were destroyed in their presence ; 
 and, finally, they enacted a decree, " That no more honour should be 
 shown at his funeral than was allowed to a common ruffian ; that all 
 his inscriptions should be totally erased ; that his name should be 
 struck out of the registers of fame, and his memory abolished for 
 ever ; that his acts should be rescinded, and all his exiles recalled." * 
 Domitian was succeeded by Nerva, who, as soon as the ceremonies 
 connected with his installation were closed, diligently applied him- 
 self to the affairs of the public, and carried into prompt and vigor- 
 ous execution the decree of the Senate which rescinded the acts of his 
 predecessor. The banished followers of Christ were recalled, and 
 
 See a Relation of the Death of the primitive Persecutors. Written originally in 
 Latin by L. C. F. Laetantius, englished by Gilbert Bnrnet, D.D. To which he hath 
 made a large Preface concerning Persecution. 12 mo. Amsterdam. Printed for J. S., 
 1687- " Liber De Mortibus Persecutorum, ad Donatum Confessorem, Lucii Cacilii 
 Firmiani Lactantii." Suetonixis in Domitianum.
 
 NJCOMEDES. 299 
 
 permitted the full exercise oi' their religion ; * and although we know 
 little or nothing of the affairs of the Christians within his short 
 reign, we may hope that, under the protection of the above law, they 
 escaped persecution, and their numbers continued to increase. We 
 have no reason to conclude that personally Nerva felt any inclination 
 to Christianity ; but he probably saw the injustice of punishing 
 men for their opinions, and, having himself been banished by Domi- 
 tian before he was taken into favour, he perhaps felt less inclined 
 to listen to the advice of those who would have urged him to imitate 
 the tyrant. His conduct would naturally lead to the spreading 
 of the Gospel in the capital. Persons of rank, such as the widow 
 of Flavius Clemens, would now have no fear of professing their opi- 
 nions ; and among the evils of the late persecution there would be 
 sure to be this benefit, that it purified the faith of those who still 
 had courage to maintain their sentiments.f The Emperor had nei- 
 ther physical nor mental energy for his place : harassed by constantly- 
 recurring anxieties, he was seized with fever, which put an end to 
 his reign and life, after having wielded the sceptre one year, four 
 months, and nine days. Nerva was succeeded by Trajan, who is 
 supposed to have pursued the mild policy of his immediate prede- 
 cessor, until the close of the first century. 
 
 " The accession of Nerva changed the aspect of affairs. Pardon was extended 
 to the Christians who had heen condemned under the former reign ; the banished were 
 recalled, the impost upon the Jews was remitted, and accusations on account of impiety 
 and Judaism were prohibited. A law also was passed, forbidding slaves to bear testimony 
 against their masters, the operation of which could not bnt be favourable to the Chris- 
 tians." (Welsh's Elements.) 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist, of the First Century, p. 378. 
 
 Q '2
 
 300 
 
 BOOK TV. 
 
 PERSECUTIONS WHICH TOOK PLACE FROM THE CLOSE 
 OF THE FIRST TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE 
 FOURTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 State of the Church Political Aspect of Affairs General Character of the Emperors 
 Trajan His History Placidus Apparent conciliatory Character of the 
 Emperor His persecuting Spirit Hatred to the Christians His Edict against 
 Informers Delatores Deification of Nerva Christians molested Clement His 
 History His Difficulties in Rome Simon Magus Domitian Afflictive Condition 
 of the Church at Rome Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians Perilous Condition of 
 the Christians Traditionary Accounts of Clement's Death Evaristus Alexander 
 Holy Water Christians harassed in the East Symeon Bishop of Jerusalem 
 His Origin Persecuting Spirit of the Jews Awful Condition of that People 
 Destruction of Jerusalem Rffuge of the Church Return to the holy City Tra- 
 jan's Suspicions Symeon is arrested and martyred Pliny the Younger^ Cir- 
 cumstances in which he was placed His Letter to Trajan Reply of Trajan to 
 Pliny Uncertain State in which the Church was left Tumultuous Proceedings 
 against the Christians Artful and wicked Schemes of the pagan Priesthood 
 Character of Pliny Gibbon and Moshcim Tertullian on the Edict of Trajan 
 Persecution general Dacian War Parthia Trajan visits Antioch State of 
 the Antiochian Christians Ignatius Priority of the Church at Antioch Heresies 
 Ignatius is brought before Trajan The Interview Sentence pronounced Rev . 
 John Gambold Why Ignatius was sent to Rome Fondness of the Romans 
 for Shows Journey of Ignatius to Rome /* visited by the Asiatic Church 
 Writes to the Roman Christians And other Churches Character of the 
 Epistles of Ignatius He arrives at Rome His Interview with the Church Is 
 led to the Amphitheatre Where he suffers Sanguinary Nature of the public 
 Spectacles Remains of Ignatius Hit Character Phocas Sulpitius Servilianus 
 Onesimus and other Martyrs Remarks on the ten thousand Martyrs of Armenia 
 Insurrection of the Jews The Cause of it Horrid Atrocities committed Sup- 
 pression of the Insurrection Death of Trajan Character of his Reign. 
 
 WHEN Trajan found himself fairly seated on the imperial throne, 
 the Christian faith had struck its roots deep in the hearts of the 
 better part of the inhabitants of the empire, and the grain of mus- 
 tard-seed was sending forth branches that were beginning to over- 
 shadow the world. From the Tiber to the Euphrates, from mount 
 Hsemus to lake Mceris, in all the most famous cities of the world, in 
 towns and scattered villages also, and among the population of rural 
 districts, converts to the new system were to be found, and in many 
 places there were flourishing communities.* The astonishing success 
 
 * " It has been too much taken for granted," says Dr. Welsh, "by church-historians, 
 that the Gospel was uniformly, in the first instance, preached in cities, and that from 
 them it was derived and distributed among the surrounding towns and villages and
 
 STATE OF THE CHURCH. 301 
 
 of the Christian cause can only be accounted for by the faithfulness 
 of the great Head of the church in fulfilling the promise he had 
 made to his Apostles, and by the fidelity and zeal with which they 
 discharged the trust committed to them. The purity of their lives 
 afforded evidence of their sincerity ; they referred to what they had 
 personally witnessed ; their words, accompanied by a divine energy, 
 were confirmed by the miraculous works which were performed. 
 The zeal which animated the Apostles was communicated to the 
 minds of other holy men, who proceeded in the same course as their 
 divine teachers, delivering the truths which they had received from 
 them, and carrying along with them the writings which they had left 
 behind them, and which proved one of the most important means 
 for confirming the brethren, and for diffusing to others the know- 
 ledge of the truth. The churches established by the Apostles were 
 placed upon a basis that was favourable to their continuance ; the 
 converts in every city being formed into a community, and placed 
 under the government of a senate of their own choosing, who might 
 manage the affairs of the body. The different societies were all 
 connected together by common interests and common dangers, and, 
 above all, by love to one Lord, and hope in one inheritance. They 
 were thus mutually encouraged, directed, and established. They had 
 all an obvious interest in adding to their numbers, as they were 
 prompted by the Spirit they had received to communicate to others 
 the blessings they enjoyed ; those who were without the Gospel were 
 considered worthy of compassion ; the monstrous and soul-destroying 
 superstitions which prevailed around them kindled their zeal ; and 
 preparation was thus made for effectually extending, to surrounding 
 districts, and other lands, " the Gospel of our salvation." * 
 
 It will be observed that the second century of Christianity wit- 
 nessed the commencement of the reign of another race of Emperors. 
 Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines were men of larger minds, more 
 capable of holding the sceptre over a vast empire, and of regarding 
 the interests, manners, and opinions of the multitude who formed the 
 Roman people. Unlike the first Caesars, who were, in fact, the 
 Monarchs of Rome, governing other parts of the world as dependent 
 provinces, they were the Sovereigns of the western world, which had 
 gradually and almost imperceptibly arisen into one majestic and 
 harmonious system. Under the military sway of Trajan the empire 
 assumed strength, and its defences were so solid and durable as to 
 impress all her adversaries with the highest notion of the Roman 
 arms, and the Roman discipline. Hadrian directed his attention to 
 
 hamlets." This, no doubt, was frequently the case ; and ultimately the Bishops and 
 churches in large towns were careful to send out Presbyters throughout the adjacent 
 country to make converts. (See Mosheim'a Commentaries, vol. i., p. 234.) But from 
 the very beginning the Gospel was preached in the country. Our Saviour himself gave 
 the example. (Matt. ix. 35 ; Mark vi. 34 ; Luke atiii. 22.) He taught his Apostles to 
 follow his steps ; (Matt. x. 11 ;) and we find that they were carefully observed. (Acts 
 adv. 6 ; xviii. 23 ; xxvi. 20.) The accounts of the nature of the labours of Paul in Asia 
 Minor, (Acts xviii. 23,) prepare us for the statement in the celebrated letter of Pliny, 
 that " the contagion of the superstition had not seized cities only, but the lesser towns 
 also, and the opeii country." 
 
 * Wc-lfh's Elements of Clinrch History, vol. i., p. 2l7.
 
 302 BOOK IV. CHAPTER 1. 
 
 the internal affairs of the state ; and by the general spirit of juris- 
 prudence which pervaded all the acts of the Antonines, they united 
 under one general system of law the various members of a great 
 political confederacy. It was therefore next to impossible, that, to 
 minds so occupied with the internal as well as external affairs of the 
 whole empire, the progress of a new religion should escape their 
 notice. " Christianity itself," to use the language of an able writer, 
 "was just in that state of advancement in which, though it had 
 begun to threaten, and even to make most alarming encroachments 
 on the established polytheism, it had not so completely divided the 
 whole race of mankind, as to force the heads of the polytheistic 
 party, the official conservators of the existing order of things, to 
 take violent and decisive measures for its suppression. The temples, 
 though perhaps becoming less crowded, were in few places deserted ; 
 the alarm, though perhaps in many towns it was deeply brooding in 
 the minds of the priesthood, and of those connected by zeal or by 
 interest with the maintenance of Paganism, waa not so profound, or 
 so general, as imperiously to require the interposition of the civil 
 authorities. The milder or more indifferent character of the Emperor 
 had free scope to mitigate or to arrest the arm of persecution. The 
 danger was not so pressing, but that it might be averted ; that which 
 had arisen thus suddenly and unexpectedly (so little were the wisest 
 probably aware of the real nature of the revolution working in the 
 minds of men) might die away with as much rapidity. Under an 
 Emperor, indeed, who should have united the vigour of a Trajan, 
 and the political forethought of a Hadrian, with the sanguinary 
 relentlessness of a Nero, Christianity would have had to pass a tre- 
 mendous ordeal. Now, however, the collision of the new religion 
 with the civil power was only occasional, and, as it were, fortuitous ; 
 and in these occasional conflicts with the ruling powers, we con- 
 stantly appear to trace the character of the reigning Sovereign. Of 
 these Emperors, Trajan possessed the most powerful and vigorous 
 mind, a consummate General, a humane, but active, ruler ; Hadrian 
 was the profoundest statesman ; the Antonines the best men. The 
 conduct of Trajan was that of a military Sovereign, whose natural 
 disposition was tempered with humanity, prompt, decisive, never 
 unnecessarily prodigal of blood ; but careless of human life if 
 it appeared to stand in the way of any important design, or to hazard 
 that paramount object of the government, the public peace. Hadrian 
 was inclined to a more temporizing policy : the more the Roman 
 empire was contemplated as a whole, the more the co-existence of 
 multifarious religions might appear compatible with the general tran- 
 quillity. Christianity might, in the end, be no more dangerous than 
 the other foreign religions, which had flowed, and were still flowing, 
 in from the East. The temples of Isis had arisen throughout the 
 empire ; but those of Jupiter and Apollo had not lost their votaries : 
 the eastern mysteries, the Phrygian, at a later period the Mithraic, 
 had mingled very little to their prejudice into the general mass of the 
 prevailing superstitions. The last characteristic of Christianity 
 which would be distinctly understood, was its invasive and uncom-
 
 TRAJAN. 303 
 
 promising spirit. The elder Antonine may have pursued from mild- 
 ness of character the course adopted by Hadrian from policy. The 
 change which took place during the reign of Marcus Aurelius may 
 be attributed to the circumstances of the time ; though the pride 
 of philosophy, as well as the established religion, might begin to take 
 the alarm." * 
 
 Trajan was by birth a Spaniard, whose life had hitherto been 
 spent in various military services in different parts of the world. 
 We know but little concerning his early years, and nothing that 
 could have brought him into contact with the Christians. His father 
 served under Vespasian and Titus in the Jewish war, and held the 
 rank of Tribune during part of those campaigns ; f but the son, who 
 was only sixteen years old at the time of the taking of Jerusalem, was 
 not likely to have interested himself in questions of religion, even 
 if his father had related to him any facts of Jewish or Christian 
 superstition. Baronius | supposes that another officer, who served 
 in the Jewish war, and who afterwards suffered martyrdom as a 
 Christian, was personally known to Trajan. This was Placidus, who 
 commanded under the Emperor, and gained much distinction in the 
 first Dacian campaign, in the year 101 ; but whether he was the 
 same person who was martyred in the first year of Hadrian, must be 
 considered doubtful. Nerva probably adopted Trajan as his suc- 
 cessor, because of some congeniality in the mind of the latter with 
 his own. Nerva was not disposed to cruelty ; and if Trajan followed 
 the example of his predecessor in his political measures, he doubtless 
 hesitated to encourage those around him who would have employed 
 force against the Christians. In the interval between the death of 
 Nerva and the arrival of Trajan at Rome, the Emperor wrote to the 
 Senate, and among other declarations, he promised that no com- 
 mand of his should inflict death or disgrace upon any person of good 
 character. With the Christians this manifesto would not fail to be 
 considered as a miserable subterfuge, inasmuch as they were ever 
 viewed by the Heathen as most impious. The historian, Dion Cas- 
 sius, it is true, says, that Trajan kept this promise inviolate through 
 the whole of his reign ; but every one acquainted with ancient his- 
 tory is aware, that a pledge of this kind would by no means have 
 restrained a Roman Magistrate from punishing a Christian ; and the 
 expression which has been so much extolled by the historian, as hav- 
 ing proceeded from Trajan, and as being indicative of his benevo- 
 lence and justice, may doubtless be traced to the sentence which is 
 recorded by Dion Cassius : || " Juravit in senatu, nullum e senatoribus 
 suo jussu interfectum iri ; " implying that no Senator should be put 
 to death. Notwithstanding these declarations of "good- will toward 
 men," the Christians suffered severely under the reign of this mild and 
 pacific Prince : we therefore inquire into the cause. Among the numerous 
 
 Milman'a History of Christianity, vol. ii., pp. 138, 139. 
 
 t Joseph. De Bello Jud., lib. iii., cap. vii., sect, xxxi., cap. is., sect. 8. 
 
 j Baronina, ad An. 103, sect. iv. 
 
 { Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xiii., p. 11. 
 
 || Diouis. Cassii Cocoei Nervae His tori a, lib. Ixviii., p. 770. F->1. Hanov., 160G.
 
 304 BOOK IV. CHAl'TEH I. 
 
 letters which Trajan addressed to the Senate, none was more likely to 
 lead to direct attacks upon the professors of Christianity, than one in 
 which he expressed himself strongly attached to the national religion, as 
 handed down from their ancestors ; and a person in office, who acted 
 upon this principle, might have felt it a duty to persecute Christianity, 
 although not naturally inclined to be cruel. We have no account 
 of any persecution of the Christians having taken place in the 
 absence of Trajan during the first year of his reign. Baronius 
 adverts to a persecution which some writers have mentioned, in which 
 Flavia Domitilla, and the other exiles who had been recalled by the 
 edict of Nerva, are said to have suffered martyrdom. The evidence 
 which has been adduced in support of this assertion is utterly desti- 
 tute of foundation. 
 
 In addition to the above, it must be observed, that soon after 
 Trajan visited the metropolis, a severe law was enacted against persons 
 who were convicted of bringing an unjust accusation. The trade 
 of an informer, (delatoris,*) or spy, had frequently received marks 
 of public disapprobation and infamy ; and it would appear from the 
 present statute, that the odious offence had been perpetrated with fre- 
 quency. It is not probable that the Emperor or his advisers intended 
 by this measure to protect the Christians : it had, nevertheless, in some 
 degree, that effect, and the enemies of the faith were induced to 
 indulge but seldom in that vexatious system of persecution. Among 
 other acts of Trajan, upon his taking possession of the empire, we 
 find him giving to his predecessor Nerva, a place in the list of deities ; 
 but the policy was so obvious, and the custom so regularly estab- 
 lished, that we cannot charge it upon the Emperor as a special act 
 of superstition ; nor can we say whether he would be more likely to 
 persecute the Christians, because he paid this attention to the estab- 
 lished religion of his country. It is possible, that the introduction 
 of a new deity may have exposed the Christians to some molestation, 
 since their refusal to sacrifice in the name of the Emperor was a 
 common ground of complaint against them, and one which was likely 
 to be put forward at the commencement of a new reign. We 
 
 The delator**, under the Emperors, were a class of men who gained their liveli- 
 hood by informing against their fellow-citizens. (See Suetonius in Tib., sect. 61 ; in 
 Domit., sect. 12 ; Taciti Anuales, lib. iv., cap. xxx. ; lib. vi., cap. 47.) They con- 
 stantly brought forward false charges to gratify the avarice or jealousy of the different 
 Emperors, and were consequently paid according to the importance of the information 
 which they gave. In some cases, however, the law specified the sums which were to he 
 given to informers. Thus, when a murder had been committed in a family, and any 
 of the slaves belonging to it had run away before the quisstio, whoever apprehended 
 such slaves received for each a reward of five aurei from the property of the deceased. 
 In the Senatus-consultum, quoted by Frontinus, the informer received half of the 
 penalty in which the person was fined who transgressed the decree of the Senate. 
 There seems also to have been a fixed sum given to informers, by the lex Papia, since 
 we are told that Nero reduced it to a fourth. (Suet, in Neron., sect. 10.) The number 
 of informers, however, increased so rapidly under the early Emperors, and occasioned 
 so much mischief in society, that many of them were banished and punished in 
 other ways by Titus, Domitian, and Trajan. (Suet, in Tit., sect. 8 ; in Domit., sect. 9 ; 
 P.lin. Panegyr. 34 ; Brissonius, Ant. Select., lib. iii., cap. 17.) Trajan "utterly exter- 
 minated those insufferable vermin, the delators, informers, and pettifoggers, who, in 
 former reigns, had made incredible advantages by fomenting all kinds of private quarrels 
 arid dissensions." (Echard's Rom. Hist., vol. ii., p. 270. 8vo. London, 1719.)
 
 CLEMENT. 305 
 
 are told also, that earthquakes, famines, and pestilences were felt at 
 this period in several parts of the world ; and this furnished another 
 topic of invective against the Christians, who were supposed to call 
 down the anger of heaven by their apostacy from the national faith. 
 It appears, therefore, that there were circumstances in the first two 
 years of Trajan's reign, which were likely to excite opposition to the 
 Gospel.* 
 
 Among those who were called to experience reproach and suffering 
 for the sake of Christ during the reign of Trajan, Clement has been 
 named. He was a fellow-worker with Paul in the Gospel of Christ ; 
 and the church at Philippi, among others, was the scene of those 
 services which were ultimately to be transferred with benefit to the 
 church at Rome. But the veil which obscures the history of the 
 early church, and particularly shrouds that of the origin of the Chris- 
 tian community in Rome, hides from our observation all the facts 
 which pertain to Clement, from his sojourn at Philippi, to his resi- 
 dence in the imperial city. About three-and-twenty years had elapsed 
 since Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom, and two Bishops, Linua 
 and Anacletus, had successively discharged the pastoral office, when 
 Clement was summoned to the episcopate. As a companion of the 
 Apostles, he would be held in reverence, and his authority would be 
 appealed to, as of one whose information was drawn from the 
 fountain head,f " having their preaching still sounding in his ears, 
 and their traditions before his eyes." But not being an Apostle, he 
 had to contend with numerous difficulties, from unreasonable and 
 mischievous men, who reluctantly submitted to his authority. "We 
 may gather some idea of the opposition with which he had to con- 
 tend, from the earnestness with which Paul urges Timothy and Titus, 
 and from the character which he draws of the persons who were 
 likely to dispute their apostolical call and influence. (1 Tim. iv. 12, 
 13; 2 Tim. iii. 2 ; Titus ii. 7, 8.) If Simon Magus had withstood 
 Peter at Rome, there would not be wanting some of his heretical 
 progeny to contend with Clement on the same ground. Notwith- 
 standing, however, the difficulties which, presented themselves, the 
 prospects of Clement were bright and cheering, inasmuch as he 
 beheld the church rising from every fresh assault with increased 
 vigour and strength. The severity of the times frequently called 
 upon him to be ready to lay down his life for his flock. Domitian 
 vexed the church. The Jews, unsubdued by the fall of the temple, 
 and their subsequent dispersion, were still in continual expectation 
 of the coming of their Christ, whose name they vociferated in the 
 midst of seditious uproar and tumult. The reigning tyrant became 
 alarmed, and the Christian was involved in the crimes of the Jew. 
 The church in Rome received the first and heaviest strokes of Domi- 
 
 * Barton's Lect. on the Eccles. Hist., &c., lect. xiii., p. 13. 
 
 t See the frequent reference which Irenseus makes to the testimony of men who 
 were in the same succession with Clement. The passages are brought together in Dr. 
 Routh's Reliquiae Sacra, vol. i. 
 
 J " Qui et vidit Apostolos, et contulit cum eis, et cum adhuc insonantem prwdica- 
 tionem Apostolorum, et traditionem ante oculos haberet." (Irenaeus, Adv. Heron., lib. 
 iii , cap. 3.) 
 
 VOL. I. 2 R
 
 306 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 tian's scourge. The false and horrible charges, which had been pro- 
 pagated against the Christians in gone-by days, were repeated, and the 
 imputation of membership at once subjected the accused to the 
 dungeon. Here was enough to try the piety, fortitude, and zeal of 
 one who possessed more calculating policy and temporizing sagacity 
 than Clement could claim ; but he was indefatigable in confirming the 
 wavering, cheering the desponding, preparing the martyr for his suf- 
 fering, administering comfort to the bereaved, combating the expostu- 
 lations of those who wished to drop some badge of their profession, 
 the importance of which they thought light compared with the 
 danger to which it exposed them, or to adopt the screen of some 
 observance which they were unwilling to consider sinful under such 
 pressing necessity ; calming the terrors of the weaker brethren, and, 
 amid this distraction of the crew, directing, like a good helmsman, a 
 steady look-out upon the course of the labouring vessel : * these were 
 the cares of Clement, and he weathered the storm.-)- 
 
 Though the accession of Nerva extinguished the flames of the perse- 
 cution which raged so fiercely during a portion of Domitian's days, 
 the fire remained, concealed, it is true, but smouldering in the ashes, 
 waiting only for fuel and a breeze, to break forth in its former inten- 
 sity and vigour. The situation of the Christian was at all times 
 perilous. He was surrounded by idolatry, the usages of which met 
 and thwarted him in almost every occurrence of daily life, exposing 
 him to the scoff and ill-treatment of those around. His principles 
 were recognised when he refused to join a party of friends in the 
 amusements of the circus, when he declined the office of the Magistracy, 
 when he omitted to set up lights and laurel at his door in honour of 
 Caesar, when, in executing a contract, he was required to swear, or 
 was understood to swear, by the name of some heathen god ; when, 
 if a carpenter, he refused an application to make an image, or some 
 appendage to heathen worship ; if, when a smith, he was called to 
 gild a statue ; if, when a druggist, he refused to sell frankincense for 
 sacrifice ; if, when a schoolmaster, he appointed no holidays for the 
 festival of Saturn. The Christian, in a word, walked on volcanic 
 ground : every day furnished fresh scenes of vexation and persecu- 
 
 It was during the episcopate of Clement in Rome, that a griavoiis schism arose in 
 the church at Corinth, in which some turbulent persons attacked the Clergy, and 
 excited the laity against them. This was the occasion of great evil : many professing 
 Christianity began to entertain doubts with regard to its truth ; while infidels failed not 
 to take advantage of this state of things, and to asperse the whole church for the 
 faults of a few. Clement was induced to write an epistle to that community ; which 
 production of the early church approaches so near the apostolic writings, in the union 
 of devout feeling with justness and sobriety of thought, that it was frequently read in 
 the churches, though never received into the sacred canon. Ensebius terms it a " great 
 and wonderful " writing ; and Irenaeus designates it as " most powerful." The main 
 object of the epistle was to allay the dissensions which had arisen in the Corinthian 
 Church, and especially to repress the unruly spirit shown by many against their 
 Teachers. He then recommends charity, lauding it in terms similar to those of Paul ; and 
 having stirred them up with examples of faithful devotion among the Gentiles, concludes 
 with renewed exhortations to subordination, winding up with a solemn prayer to God, the 
 all-seeing Ruler, the Master of spirits, and Lord of all. The spirit of this letter is 
 remarkably mild and unassuming, and the style unpretending. 
 
 f Evans's Biography of the Early Church, p. 21.
 
 CLEMENT. 307 
 
 tion.* It was in one of these outbreaks, that tradition says, Clement 
 suffered. f It is stated that he was sent into banishment by Trajaii 
 beyond the Euxiiie, with two thousand Christians, when he opened a 
 spring of water to those in the wilderness, who were condemned to 
 the mines. Afterwards, being accused to the Emperor, he was thrown 
 into the sea with a millstone fastened about his neck ; and not long 
 after his body was cast up, and buried at the place where the well 
 was miraculously made. This account is rejected by Foxe.| The 
 fact is, we are destitute of all authentic records of a persecution so 
 early in Trajan's reign as this ; and the story of the banishment and 
 subsequent martyrdom of Clement, is by no means credibly sup- 
 ported. Before the treatment of the Christians had undergone any 
 change in the councils of the Emperor, Clement had breathed his 
 last. 
 
 Clement was succeeded by Evaristus, of whom nothing is recorded 
 on the pages of history worthy of being remembered. In certain 
 decretal epistles which are imposed upon the world as the production 
 of the apostolical Fathers, are found two, which are said to have pro- 
 ceeded from the pen of Evaristus, and that he himself suffered mar- 
 tyrdom ; but how he suffered, and with what constancy he died, and 
 what was the general conduct of his earthly career, we are not told. 
 Alexander was his successor, who is said to have converted many of 
 the Senators of Rome to the faith of Christ ; amongst whom was 
 Hermes, a man of influence in the imperial city, whose son being 
 
 * This enumeration is taken from a list of grievances and stumbling-blocks given by 
 Ti-rtullian in his curious and interesting Treatise De Idololatria. (Evans's Biography.) 
 
 f Butler says, that Ruffinus and Pope Zosimus recognise Clement as a martyr. In 
 the ancient Canon of the Romish mass, he is ranked also in that category : " But Teles- 
 phorus, the seventh Bishop of Rome, is the first who was acknowledged as such by 
 Irenaeus, whose authority is of far greater weight than that of Ruffiuus or Pope Zosi- 
 mus, who suppose him to have died for the confession of the faith. In the Act* 
 of Clement, to which Gregory of Tours gives entire credit, and after him many others, 
 especially the two credulous Annalists, Baronius and Alford, in his Annals of the 
 British Church, we read, that Clement was banished by Trajan, into the Chersonesus, 
 beyond the Euxine ; that there he caused a fountain to spring up miraculously, for 
 the relief of the Christians confined to the same inhospitable region ; that he con- 
 verted the whole country to the faith, which provoked the Emperor to such a degree, 
 that he ordered him to be thrown into the sea, with an anchor fastened to his neck : it is 
 added, that on the anniversary of his death, the sea retired to the place where he had 
 been drowned, though three long miles from the shore ; that upon its retiring, there 
 appeared the most magnificent temple, all of the finest marble ; and in the temple a 
 stately monument, in which was found the body of the saint ; that the sea continued 
 thus retiring every year on the same day, not daring for the space of seven days to 
 return to its usual bounds, that the Christians might, at their leisure, and without 
 apprehensions of danger, perform their devotions in honour of the saint. To crown the 
 whole, they add, that one year, a mother, having heedlessly left her young child in the 
 temple, upon her return the following year, she found it not only alive, but in perfect 
 health." (Bower's Lives of the Popes, vol. i., p. 17-) 
 
 t " Forasmuch as I find of his martyrdom no firm relation in the ancient authors, 
 but only in such new writers of later times, which are wont to paint out the lives and 
 histories of good men with feigned additions of forged miracles, therefore, I count the 
 game of less credit : as I do also certain decretal epistles, untruly (as may seem) 
 ascribed and entituled to his name. Eusebius, in his third book, writing of Clement, 
 giveth no more of him, but this : ' In the third year of the above-mentioned reign, 
 (Trajan,) Clement, Bishop of Rome, committed the episcopal charge to Evaristus, and 
 departed this life, after superintending the preaching of the divine word nine years.'" 
 (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 34.) Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. i., p. 111. 
 Seeley's edition. London, 1K-J3. 
 
 2 R 2
 
 308 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 dead was raised to life by Alexander.* This Prelate lias the credit 
 of being the first inventor of the holy water in universal use by the 
 Church of Rome.f The Greek Church, also, has introduced it into 
 their ceremonies. Water which has been consecrated by prayer, and 
 other rites, is employed to sprinkle the faithful, and things which are 
 used during divine service. It is placed in vases at the doors of churches 
 and chapels, and also within the sacred edifices, from whence the con- 
 gregation may asperse themselves. | Platina, in his " Lives of the 
 Popes,"' following the authority of the celebrated Decretals of the 
 Romish hierarchy, unhesitatingly attributes the invention of this 
 Popish device to Alexander, much to the chagrin of Baronius, inas- 
 much as he thereby deprives the Apostles of an honour which the 
 Annalist declares is due to them. The Roman Martyrologies inva- 
 riably adorn Alexander with the martyr's wreath. Florilcgus, the 
 author of " Flores Historiarum," affirms, that Alexander, Bishop of 
 Rome, was beheaded seven miles out of the city ; but with this 
 account none of the chronicles agree. That nothing of any moment 
 attended the death of this man, is evident from the simple statement 
 of Eusebius : " In the third year of Hadrian's reign, Alexander, 
 Bishop of Rome, died, having completed the tenth year of his minis- 
 trations." 
 
 There is reason to believe, that not many years of Trajan's reign 
 had passed away, before a series of attacks was made upon the Chris- 
 
 * Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. i., p. 113, 
 
 t At least, such is the language of the Roman Decretals. But very little is recorded 
 of the acts and monuments of Alexander, or any other Bishop of Rome, of this period. 
 Notwithstanding, documents are thrust upon us, crowded with iajunctious, laws, 
 and pompous decrees, which are far morn becoming the policy of the Papal Church in 
 the present day, than the simplicity and godly sincerity which pervaded the Christian 
 community during the times of the holy Apostles. Alexander is represented as giving 
 publicity to the following decree : " Aquam sale conspersam populis henedicimus, ut 
 ea cuncti aspersi sanctificentur, et purificentnr. Quod et omnibus Sacerdotibus 
 faciendum esse mandamus. Nam si cinis vitulae sanguine aspersus," &c. (Corp. Juris 
 Canon., torn. i. Decret. iii., Paris. De Consecrat., Dist. iii., cap. 20, p. 467. 
 Colon., 1779.) " We bless the water mixed with salt, upon the people, that all men 
 being sprinkled therewith may be sanctified and purified ; and this we command all 
 Priests to do. For if the ashes of an heifer sprinkled with blood sanctified and cleansed 
 the people, how much more does water mingled with salt, and consecrated by divine 
 prayer, sanctify and cleanse ! And if the unfruitfulness of the water were healed by the 
 salt thrown in by Eliseus the Prophet, how much more shall salt, rendered sacred by 
 holy prayer, take away the unfruitfulness of other things, sanctify, and cleanse, and 
 purge those which are polluted, multiply all good, turn away the snares of the devil, and 
 defend men from the artifices of evil spirits '. '' 
 
 t " Holy-water is often found in the bed-rooms of the Papists, and is used before 
 prayer, particularly before going into bed. The Romanists consider it an effectual 
 exorcism. In Rome, animals are also sprinkled, on a certain feast, with holy water, 
 to keep them healthy and thriving. The same thing is done at Moscow, where there is 
 a particular church to which the horses are annually driven for this purpose. It does not 
 appear that vessels were placed at the doors of churches for washing the hands till the fourth 
 century, or that the water was blessed or consecrated till the sixth." (Henderson's Theol. 
 Diet.) Popery, we have seen, disputes the latter opinion. " If we trace up this ' holy 
 water ' to the fountain-head, we shall find that it arises from an unhallowed spring, 
 from the lustral water of the Pagans : peace being restored to the church by Constan- 
 tine, the Christians began, as a modern writer well observes, to adopt the ceremonies 
 of the Gentiles." (Bower's History of the Popes, vol. i., p. 22. Quarto. London, 1750. 
 See also Le Sueur's Histoire del'Kglise et de 1' Empire, vol. i., p. 219. Quarto. Amster- 
 dam, 1730. 
 
 Euseb., Higt. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 4.
 
 SYMEON. 309 
 
 tians in the eastern part of the empire. The first Dacian campaign 
 of the Emperor was not fully completed, until the country was sub- 
 dued by the defeat and death of Decebalus. The martyrdom of 
 Symeon, the second Bishop of Jerusalem, is generally supposed to 
 have taken place in the year 104. Symeon was the son of Cleopaa, 
 who was brother of Joseph. Thus he was reputed cousin-german to 
 the Lord. His mother was Mary, sister of the Virgin. He was in 
 the vigour of ripe manhood when the long-expected Saviour revealed 
 himself to the world in one of the members of his own family. In 
 what position Symeon stood as a disciple of our Lord, is not known. 
 He might have been one of the seventy, since we may reasonably 
 suppose that his Master, who intended to place him hereafter in so 
 conspicuous a situation in his church, would give him this earnest 
 and foretaste of its duties, and mark him out to the church by this 
 token of his approbation. Be that as it may, the Christian commu- 
 nity in Jerusalem had to endure much suffering and peril. In one 
 of the murderous riots with which the Jews assailed the flock of 
 Christ, they threw its Bishop, James, the brother of the Lord, down 
 from the battlements of the temple, and then stoned him until he 
 expired.* Symeon was elected by the church in the place of James, 
 who M r as frequently called upon to withstand fearful perversions of the 
 truth, and the unholy falsehoods, and audacious forgeries of many, 
 who, in this infant church, jeopardized the eternal salvation of the 
 flock. In process of time, a succession of iniquitous and rapacious 
 Governors goaded the Jews onward to their fatal rebellion. The 
 attention of these great persecutors was too fully absorbed with their 
 own concerns, to heed the condition of the church. The prophecy 
 of Christ was rapidly unfolding itself. The portentous signs which 
 he had bidden the Jews to expect, were already blazing in the 
 sky. What must have been the feelings of Symeon, when the 
 fiery sword hung in the atmosphere over his dying country for a 
 whole year ! -f Now his vigilance was put to the severest proof. 
 Symeon had to preach righteousness, and to win over, and save, as 
 many as possible of the unconverted. But as it was in the days 
 of Noah, so it was in these. The Jews were accustomed to hor- 
 rors ; and hence the small probability of their listening to the words 
 of the heaven-taught teacher. They kicked against the pricks : all 
 warnings, whether from a human or a divine source, were alike 
 unavailing. They yielded to the suggestions of the evil one, until they 
 rushed to the brink of the precipice, and plunged down headlong. 
 
 During this momentous period, the household of faith were calmly 
 waiting the, end. The first signal had already been given : Jerusalem 
 was encompassed with armies. (Luke xxi. 20.) Christian hymn and 
 prayer ascended amid the execration of the doomed. The temple, 
 where murderers, and no longer righteousness, lodged, had, without 
 doubt, ceased to be frequented by the flock of Christ. What an 
 awful interval of suspense was this, when all the haunts of their 
 devotion, all the monuments of the religion of their fathers, all the 
 
 * Kuseb., Eccleo. Hint., lib. ii., cap. 23. 
 
 t Joseph. De Bello .hid., lib. vi., cap. v., sect. 3.
 
 .310 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 spots consecrated by the Lord's presence, yea, their own places of 
 assembly for prayer, were shortly to be mingled with blood, smoke, 
 and fire, in one undistinguished ruin ! At length the signal of the 
 Lord came. Symeon and the church were warned to quit the 
 devoted city, and take refuge in Pella, a city in the mountainous 
 country beyond Jordan.* An interruption in the siege afforded them 
 free passage, and there they heard of their country being wiped out 
 from the tablet of nations, and of unnumbered myriads of their 
 countrymen being slain or sold. We have no means of ascertaining 
 the length of time in which the church sojourned at Pella : doubt- 
 less, it returned when the troubles of Judea were composed, and the 
 axe and mattock had done their work in Jerusalem. At Pella, 
 the Christians dwelt among the Heathen. Jerusalem, desolate as it 
 was, would furnish them with some retreat.f Roman vengeance had 
 not destroyed the Mount of Olives, nor Mount Calvary, nor the 
 Mounts Zion and Moriah, however they might have rooted up the 
 Garden of Gethsemane, and the streets through which the Redeemer 
 had ridden in triumph to the temple. Symeon was instrumental 
 in re-establishing the church on her ancient locality.^ 
 
 We know but little of the civil history of the Jews during this 
 period. They had ceased to give any uneasiness to the Romans, and 
 many who had escaped the siege and its consequences, were allowed 
 once more to settle among the ruins of the city, or in the neighbour- 
 ing towns. This indulgence may, in some degree, be attributed 
 to Agrippa, whose good fortune did not leave him after the ruin 
 of his country. The insignificance of the Jews as a people did not 
 fail to advance the interests of the church at Jerusalem. Profound 
 peace prevailed. But we are unacquainted how far the Emperor 
 Domitian's cruelty affected the Christians at Jerusalem. The same 
 jealousy which characterized him, concerning the persons descended 
 from David, influenced Trajan, and was the cause of Symeon's 
 martyrdom. As the population of Jerusalem increased, after being 
 re-occupied, probably the jealousy and suspicions of the Roman 
 government revived ; and as the Jews were still eager in their expec- 
 tations of a leader sent from heaven, they found it expedient to turn 
 the attention of their conquerors to the Christians, who were con- 
 stantly confounded with the Jews. It was also well, nay, universally, 
 known, that the Christian would rather die, than renounce his belief 
 in the Son of David ; and the person who was acknowledged as the 
 head of the Christian world was a descendant of David. Symeon 
 was charged at the tribunal of Atticus, the Proconsul of Syria, both 
 with being of the seed of David, and a Christian. In consequence 
 of this, he was put to the torture for many days, and bore the long 
 
 * Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 5. 
 
 t Epiphanius, De Mens. et Pond., cap. 14, says, that in Hadrian's time, the Chris- 
 tians had a church erected on the site of the upper chamber, to which the Apostles 
 retired after the Lord's ascension. If so, -we must understand Josephus's account of 
 the erasing of the city, (Bell. Jud., lib. vii., cap. i., sect. 1,) with some trifling excep- 
 tion. (Evans's Biography.) 
 
 1 Evans's Biography of the Early Church, p. 47. 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 20, 32.
 
 PLINY THK YOUNGER. 311 
 
 and sharp agony with such fortitude, as to excite the surprise of the 
 Governor and the spectators, who wondered how an old man of a 
 hundred and twenty years could endure it.* At length, he was 
 condemned to be crucified. Mr. Evans has justly observed, that 
 " with the death of Symeon, a thick veil descends upon the history 
 of the church at Jerusalem for many successions." f 
 
 Christianity had spread with unequal success in numerous quarters ; 
 but in no country had it advanced with greater rapidity than in the 
 northern provinces of Asia Minor, where the inhabitants were of very 
 mingled descent, neither purely Greek, nor essentially Asiatic, with a 
 considerable portion of Jewish colonists, chiefly of Babylonian or 
 Syrian, not of Palestinian, origin. It was here, in the province of 
 Bithynia, that polytheism first discovered the deadly enemy which 
 was undermining her authority. It was here also that the first cry of 
 distress was uttered, and complaints of deserted temples, and less 
 frequent sacrifices, were brought before the tribunal of the govern- 
 ment. The memorable correspondence between Pliny and Trajan, is 
 the most valuable record of the early Christian history during this 
 period. Paganism claimed the alliance of power to maintain its 
 decaying influence.. Christianity proceeded in its silent course, im- 
 perfectly understood by those who were around, of manifesting con- 
 tumacious repugnance to the common usages of society. This con- 
 tumacy, according to the recognised principle of passive obedience to 
 the laws of the empire, was viewed as deserving the severest punish- 
 ment. Pliny had but recently been intrusted with the government 
 of Bithynia and Pontus. He soon found himself at a loss to deter- 
 mine by what rule of justice or of law he should direct his conduct in 
 the execution of an office the most repugnant to his humanity. No 
 sooner had he entered upon his duties, than his attention was called 
 to the spread of Christianity in those provinces. The temples were 
 deserted, the rites of Paganism neglected, purchasers were no longer 
 found for the sacrifices, and multitudes were brought before his 
 tribunal charged with being Christians. Pliny had never assisted 
 at any judicial proceedings, in his character of Advocate, against this 
 people, and he was totally uninformed with regard to the nature 
 of their guilt, the method of their conviction, and the degree of their 
 punishment. Similar accusations had been made before this time to 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 32. 
 
 t " I Lave placed," says Dr. Burton, "the death of Symeon in 104. Lloyd and 
 Dodwell place it as late as 116 ; but the more usual date is 107, the only authority for 
 which is the Chronicon of Eusebius. This work certainly seems to mention the death 
 of Symeon hi the tenth year of Trajan : but it is generally acknowledged, that Euse- 
 bius connects different events together, without intending to assert that they happened 
 at the same time ; and in the present instance he, perhaps, meant to speak of the death 
 of Symeon as the first transaction of importance in the persecution which happened 
 under Trajan. Pearson places the death of Symeon earlier than 107. (De Success., 
 p. 9.) Ruiuart and Baratier assign it to 104; and the latter (p. 73) quotes Dio as 
 saying, that Pahnas was Governor of Syria in 105, 106, and 107-" (See Tillemont's 
 Memoires.) 
 
 t The conjecture of Pagi, that the attention of the Government was directed to the 
 Christians by their standing aloof from the festivals on the celebration of the Quinde- 
 cenalia of Trajaii, is extremely probable. (Milman.) 
 
 5 Milraan's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 140.
 
 312 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 other provincial Governors, during tlie reign of Trajan, and multitudes 
 of Christians had been put to death. Pliny was not of a temper to 
 yield to the wishes of the multitude, in carrying into effect a bar- 
 barous policy, without full consideration. In this perplexity the Pro- 
 consul had recourse to his usual expedient of submitting to the 
 Emperor an account of the new superstition, requesting him to solve 
 his doubts, and instruct his ignorance. The following is the epistle : 
 "It is an inviolable rule with me, Sir, to make reference of all 
 those things, wherein I doubt, to you ; for who is better able either 
 to direct my judgment, or instruct my ignorance ? I have never yet 
 witnessed any of the proceedings against the Christians ; and, there- 
 fore, I am quite at a loss what punishment ought to be administered, 
 and to what extent ; and how far it is proper that any inquiry 
 should be made after them. Nor am I at all clear, whether any dif- 
 ference should be made for age, or whether those of tender years 
 should be treated with the same severity as adults ; also, whether 
 repentance should entitle to a pardon, or whether he who has 
 once been a Christian should gain nothing by ceasing to be one ; also, 
 whether the bare profession, unaccompanied by any criminal conduct, 
 should be visited with punishment, or only crimes which may be con- 
 nected with the profession. In the mean time, I have adopted this 
 course with those who have been brought before me as Christians : I 
 ask them, whether they are Christians : if they confess to it, I repeat 
 the question a second and a third time, accompanied with threats : 
 if they persist, I order them to be led to punishment ; * for of this 
 I never doubted, that, whatever their opinions might be, a contuma- 
 cious and inflexible obstinacy deserved correction. Some of those 
 infected with this infatuation, being citizens of Rome, I have reserved 
 as privileged persons to be sent thither. But the crime spreading 
 (as is usually the case) while it was actually under prosecution, more 
 cases soon occurred. An anonymous libel was presented to me, con- 
 taining the names of many persons, who yet denied that they were, 
 or ever had been, Christians, and repeated after me an invocation of 
 the gods, and offered worship with wine and incense to your image, 
 (which, for this purpose, I ordered to be brought with the images of 
 the deities,) and they even cursed Christ ; things which, I am told, 
 no real Christian can be prevailed on to do : on this account, I 
 thought proper to discharge them. Others, on being accused by an 
 open informer, have allowed that they were Christians, but presently 
 after denied it ; alleging, that once indeed they were Christians, but 
 that they ceased to be such, some three years ago, others more, some 
 even twenty years back : these, likewise, all worshipped your image 
 and the images of the gods, and even cursed Christ : but the whole 
 account they gave of their crime or error (whichever it is to be 
 called) amounted only to this, namely, that they were accustomed, on 
 a stated day, to meet before day-light, and to repeat together a set 
 form of prayer to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by an obli- 
 gation, not, indeed, to commit wickedness, but, on the contrary, 
 never to commit theft, robbery, or adultery, never to falsify their 
 * See Lardner's Works, vol. vii., p. 26, et seq. 8vo edit. London, 1831.
 
 PLINY THK YOUNGER. 313 
 
 word, never to defraud any man : after which it was their custom to 
 separate, and re-assemble to partake in common of a harmless meal, 
 from which last practice, however, they had desisted, in consequence 
 of my edict, in which (agreeably to your command) I forbad such 
 societies. This being the whole of their statement, I judged it quite 
 necessary to examine two young women, who were said to be Deacon- 
 nesses, by torture, in order to get at the real truth ; but I found out 
 nothing except absurd and raving superstition. I had thought pro- 
 per, therefore, to suspend all further proceedings, in order to consult 
 you. For it appears to me a matter which calls for serious deliber- 
 ation, especially on account of the great number of the persons 
 involved, many of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes, being already 
 under prosecution, and more will soon be in the same situation. Not 
 that I think it impossible to check and master the evil : this at least is 
 certain, that the temples which were nearly deserted have begun to 
 be frequented, and the sacred solemnities which had been intermitted 
 are again attended ; and victims, which lately were very scarce, owing 
 to the scarcity of purchasers, are now selling everywhere. Whence 
 it is easy to conjecture, that crowds might be reclaimed from their 
 error, if only pardon should be promised to such as repent." 
 
 Trajan, in reply to the above, says,* " You have followed just the 
 course which you ought, my dear Secundus, in dealing with the 
 Christians who have been brought before you ; for no specific rule 
 can be framed so as to be of universal application. These people, 
 however, must not be purposely sought after : if they be brought 
 before you, and convicted, they must be punished ; yet with this 
 restriction, that if any declares that he is not a Christian, and shall 
 prove that he is not by the fact of supplicating our gods, however 
 suspected for the past, let him be pardoned on his repentance." 
 
 The result of this correspondence is obvious. Trajan fixed the law 
 that the mere fact of being a Christian was a capital offence, but with 
 these restrictions, that offenders were not to be sought out, that ano- 
 nymous charges were not to be received against them, that it was 
 only when an open accuser appeared that any case was to be proceeded 
 in, and that even then pardon was to be extended to those who 
 recanted. The state of the church was left in very great uncer- 
 tainty, and the condition of the Christians would be different in dif- 
 ferent places, according to the character, and number, and relative 
 position of Heathens and Christians. In some parts of the empire 
 the church was undisturbed ; in others, accusations were openly 
 lodged against the professors of Christianity, and many were put to 
 death. The edict of the Emperor, which required the formality of an 
 accuser before the courts of law, threw the shield of protection over 
 the injured party. The benevolent intention of which was, however, 
 defeated by the enemies of righteousness, who incited the people to 
 
 " Trajan writes like an honourable soldier, not like a philosopher or a lawgiver 
 studying the good of mankind. His approbation of Pliny's general conduct was harsh 
 and severe. His saying that Christians were not to be searched for, shows an opinion 
 of their innocence, and also some fear of them: his adding that they were to be 
 punished, if brought before him, was scarcely just. Tertullian is eloquent upon this 
 Inconsistency." (Vide infra.) (Key's Lectures, vol. i., p. 202.) 
 vot. I. 2s
 
 314 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 avail themselves of their privilege at public assemblies of demanding 
 of the Magistrates what they wished.* In a riotous and tumultuary 
 manner they were induced to insist that punishment should be 
 inflicted upon the Christians. It was seldom safe to refuse demands 
 made in such circumstances, and the Magistrates generally yielded 
 to the clamours of the multitude. Some, however, were sensible 
 of the injustice thus perpetrated ; and, in consequence of a remon- 
 strance from Serenus Granius to the Emperor Hadrian, an expla- 
 natory imperial rescript was addressed to Minutius Fundatus, the 
 successor of Serenus, by which tumultuary proceedings were prohi- 
 bited, and regular indictments and formal proof exacted before the 
 infliction of punishment."!" Doubtless, the main object of Pliny 
 in writing to Trajan, was, that he might receive his sanction for 
 extending pardon to all those who were willing to renounce the pro- 
 fession of Christianity, and to return to their former religion. He 
 satisfied himself, after minute inquiry, that there was no charge that 
 could be substantiated against the new sect apart from their religion 
 itself ; that their proceedings at their private meetings were eminently 
 favourable to good morals ; and that so far from there being any 
 appearance of a seditious spirit, they had discontinued their feasts of 
 charity after they found them disagreeable to the Government. Their 
 only crime, therefore, was their religion, so that when they abandoned it, 
 nothing remained deserving of punishment. Besides, he shows that there 
 was policy as well as justice in holding out the prospect of pardon in 
 every case of retractation. He mentions, that when the persecution was 
 at the severest, the cause of Christianity prospered. On the other hand, 
 when milder measures were resorted to, when none were punished 
 but those who persisted in their attachment to Christ, and when 
 clemency was shown to all who ceased to be Christians, then many 
 were found willing to return to the religion of the country, for the 
 sake of safety, so that purchasers were again found for sacrificial 
 victims, and the temples were once more filled with worshippers. 
 Therefore, the conclusion is obvious ; that if the method which Pliny 
 had adopted received the sanction of the Emperor, there was every 
 reason to suppose that a check would be put to the new superstition. 
 
 * Nothing could be more artful than the contrivance of the Priests to enervate and 
 elude the law of Trajan respecting the mode of accusing the Christians. For the 
 Presidents did not dare to regard with an inattentive ear the demands of the united 
 commonalty, lest they might give occasion to sedition. Moreover, it was an established 
 privilege of the Roman people, grounded either on ancient right or custom, of the 
 exercise of which innumerable instances are to be found in the Roman history, that 
 whenever the commonalty were assembled at the exhibition of public games and specta- 
 cles, whether it were in the city or provinces, they might demand what they pleased of 
 the Emperor or the Presidents, and their demands thus made must be complied with. 
 Properly this privilege belonged to the Roman people alone, whose united will possessed 
 all the force of a law, inasmuch as the supreme Majesty of the empire was supposed to 
 be resident therein ; hut by little and little the same thing came to be assumed as a 
 right by the inhabitants of most of the larger cities. When the multitude, therefore, 
 collected together at the public games, united in one general clamour for the punish- 
 ment of the Christians at large, or of certain individuals belonging to that sect, the Pre- 
 sidents had no alternative but to comply with their demand, and sacrifice at least 
 several innocent victims to their fury. (Mosheim's Commentaries.) 
 
 t Welsh's Elements of Church History, vol. i., p. 267.
 
 PLINY THE YOUNGER. 315 
 
 Notwithstanding the attempts of Gibbon and Mosheim * to charac- 
 terize Pliny as a man exceedingly moderate and candid in his temper, 
 and from whom flowed, in one perennial stream, the milk of human 
 kindness, he was a bitter, an uncompromising, and cold-blooded per- 
 secutor. Out of his own mouth will we judge him. Because Pliny 
 had never assisted at any judicial proceedings against Christians, and 
 because he knew of no precedent for his conduct as a Magistrate 
 when Christians were brought before him, are we warranted in saying, 
 that there were no general laws or decrees of the Senate in force 
 against the Christians ? Though the Proconsul had never been pre- 
 sent at any examinations of these persons before coming to Bithynia, 
 the way in which he speaks of such investigations shows that he had 
 often heard of them : and whether there were general laws or decrees 
 of the Senate in force against the Christians, or no, is a subject of 
 little importance ; for Pliny knew that men were to be put to death 
 for being Christians ! He expresses no doubt upon this question ; he 
 asks for no instructions. He knew his duty, and he acted upon it ; 
 for he put many to death simply for this reason. The main point on 
 which he wished for information, was, whether he might not pardon 
 those who repented. He does not object to the practice of receiving 
 anonymous charges ; he expresses no sorrow on account of the multi- 
 tudes who were likely to be subjected to punishment. He views the 
 question solely as one of state, or rather of religious policy ; and his 
 object is not so much to save the shedding of human blood, as to 
 preserve the interests of those who were connected with the heathen 
 worship, and to maintain the honours of the ancient religion. The 
 fact that such a Magistrate sentenced to death all those brought to 
 his bar who persisted in their adherence to Christianity, and that he 
 did not find himself warranted to extend final pardon to those who 
 retracted without the sanction of the Emperor, speaks volumes as 
 to the condition of the Christians at that period, as to the state of the 
 laws, and as to what might have been endured in other quarters, 
 where there were Governors less considerate. From the whole tenor 
 of Pliny's letter, it is obvious that the general understanding was, 
 that the mere fact of being a Christian inferred the punishment of 
 death, f 
 
 Well might Tertullian exclaim, with reference to this rescript of 
 the Emperor, "0 sentence necessarily confounding itself! He for- 
 
 Mr. Gibbon remarks, " The life of Pliny had been employed in the acquisition of 
 learning, and in the business of the -world. Since the age of nineteen, he had pleaded 
 with distinction in the tribunals of Rome, filled a place in the Senate, had been invested 
 with the honours of the Consulship, and had formed very numerous connexions with every 
 order of men, both in Italy and the provinces. From Aw ignorance, therefore, we may 
 derive some useful information. We may assure ourselves, that when he accepted the 
 government of Bithynia, there were no general laws or decrees of the Senate in force 
 against the Christians ; that neither Trajan nor any of his virtuous predecessors, whose 
 edicts were received into the civil and criminal jurisprudence, had publicly declared their 
 intentions concerning the new sect ; and that, whatever proceedings had been carried 
 on against the Christians, there were none of sufficient weight and authority to establish 
 a precedent for the conduct of a Roman Magistrate." (Decline and Fall, vol. ii., p. 419. 
 Milman's Edition. 8vo. London, 1838. See also Mosheim's Kccles. Hist. Edit. 
 Soames, vol. i., p. 132. 8vo. London, 1845; Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 48.) 
 
 t Welsh's Elements of Church History, vol. 1., p. 452. Note KK. 
 
 2 s 2
 
 316 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 biddeth that they should be inquired after, as though they were inno- 
 cent ; and commandeth that they should be punished, as though 
 guilty ! He spareth and rageth, winketh and punisheth ! Why, O 
 sentence, dost thou overreach thyself? If thou condemnest, why 
 dost thou not also inquire? If thou inquirest not, why dost thou 
 not also acquit ? For tracking robbers through all the provinces, 
 military stations are allotted. Against men accused of treason, and 
 public enemies, every man is a soldier. The inquiry is extended to 
 the accomplices, even to the accessaries. The Christian alone may 
 not be inquired after, but may be brought before the court, as though 
 inquiry had any other object than to bring him thither ! Ye con- 
 demn him, therefore, when brought before you, whom none would 
 have inquired after, who, I suppose, hath already deserved punish- 
 ment, not because he is guilty, but because, when not to be inquired 
 after, he was found ! So then, neither in this do ye act towards ua 
 according to the rule of judging malefactors ; namely, that to others 
 ye apply tortures, when they deny, to make them confess ; to the 
 Christians alone, to make them deny : whereas, if it were a sin, we 
 should indeed deny it, and ye by your tortures would compel us to 
 confess it. Nor could you think that our crimes were, therefore, not 
 to be inquired of by examinations, because ye were assured by the 
 confession of the name, that they have been committed, seeing that to 
 this day, from one who hath confessed himself a murderer, though 
 ye know what murder is, ye, nevertheless, extort the whole train of 
 circumstances touching the act. Wherefore, it is with the greatest 
 perverseness that, when ye presume our guilt from the confession of 
 our name, ye compel us by tortures to go back from our confession, 
 that by denying the name, we may of course equally deny the crimes 
 also, of which ye presumed us guilty from the confession of the name. 
 But, I suppose, ye do not wish us, whom ye deem the worst of men, 
 to die ! For thus, doubtless, ye are wont to say to a murderer, 
 'Deny the fact;' to order the sacrilegious person to be torn with 
 scourges if he persevere in his confession. If ye act not thus towards us 
 as criminals, ye therefore judge us to be most innocent, since, as 
 though we were most innocent, ye will not have us persevere in that 
 confession, which ye know must be condemned by you of necessity, 
 not of right. One crieth out, ' I am a Christian.' He sayeth what 
 he is ; thou wouldest hear what he is not. Sitting in authority to 
 draw out the truth, from us alone do ye labour to draw out falsehood. 
 ' I am,' saith he ' that which thou askest. If I am, why torture me 
 to unsay it ? I confess, and thou torturest me : what wouldest thou 
 do, if I denied?' Certainly ye do not easily lend credit to others 
 when they deny : us, if we deny, ye forthwith credit. Let this 
 perverseness be cause of suspicion to you that there may be some 
 power lurking in secret, which maketh you its ministers against all 
 rule, against the very nature of judicial trial, against even the laws 
 themselves. For, if I mistake not, the laws command, that malefac- 
 tors be hunted out, not concealed ; prescribe that such as confess be 
 condemned, not acquitted. This the acts of your Senate, this the man- 
 dates of your Princes, this the Government, whose servants ye are,
 
 IGNATIUS. 317 
 
 determineth. Your rule is civil, not despotic. For with tyrants tor- 
 tures were used for punishment also : with you they are attempered 
 down to the examination alone."* 
 
 \Ve have the authority of Eusebius for stating, that at this time 
 the people were excited in many different places to persecute the 
 Christians ; f but hitherto there has been little or no reason for con- 
 necting the Emperor with these scenes of cruelty. The curtain has 
 fallen, and other acts, and fresh scenes, are in progress. Trajan was 
 now engaged in conquering Dacia, and had neither time nor inclina- 
 tion to attend to the affairs of religion. The date of his return to 
 Rome after the second Dacian war has not been determined by chro- 
 nologists ; and there is some disagreement as to the year in which he 
 commenced a still greater undertaking, the subjugation of Parthia 
 and Armenia. The first place at which Trajan stayed for any length 
 of time was Antioch, being the Roman capital of Syria, and a war 
 with Parthia or Armenia made it naturally the head-quarters of an 
 army invading either of those countries. The foe was an ancient and 
 formidable rival of Rome, and it ia not unlikely that Trajan accom- 
 panied his human preparations with every means of procuring the 
 divine favour. Many individuals about his court would not hesitate 
 to prejudice his mind against the Christians ; and we are told that 
 the victories of Trajan in Dacia had excited him to seek for further 
 fame in subduing the Christians. Seasons of public rejoicing, when 
 the temples and amphitheatres were crowded in honour of the gods, 
 were generally attended with some acts of cruelty towards the Chris- 
 tians. The religious ceremonies with which he prepared for his 
 expedition to the East may have furnished him with numerous 
 instances of annoyance and complaint. Nothing was more easy for the 
 adversaries of Christianity than to persuade the Emperor, that persons 
 who would not pray to the gods for his success, could not be faith- 
 ful subjects. If Trajan therefore entered Antioch with preposses- 
 sions of this description, he was not likely to judge impartially when 
 he had to interpose between the Christians and the Heathen. 
 
 Ignatius was Bishop of Antioch. J The early triumphs of the 
 Gospel in this city were remarkable, inasmuch as they were gained 
 over the most bitter enemies, on the most disadvantageous ground. 
 Here Peter and Paul commenced those labours which terminated 
 only with their martyrdom. Here the followers of Christ first 
 received the appellation of " Christians : " so that if any church 
 
 Tertull. Apologet., cap. ii. 
 
 t Euseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. iii., cap. 32, 33. 
 
 1 Ignatius, sornamed Theophorns, was one of the earliest martyrs of whom any 
 authentic record remains. Nora, in Sardinia, has been mentioned as the place of his 
 birth ; but it does not seem to possess any real claim to that honour. His parentage is 
 equally uncertain ; and little that is entitled to credit has reached us respecting his 
 early history. There was a current tradition that he was the child whom our Saviour 
 set before him as a pattern of humility ; (Matt, xviii. 3 ;) hut the legend seems to have 
 originated in a signification of which the name Qto<popos, if accented on the antepenul- 
 timate, admits, rather than the name to have been derived from this circumstance in 
 question. Indeed, Ignatius himself, when brought before Trajan, explained the desig- 
 nation to mean & Xptffrov f^iav ffrtpvots, " one who carried Christ in his bosom j" and 
 rbrysodtom says expressly, that he had never seen the Lord. (Jortin.)
 
 318 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 could set up the lofty claim of mother of all the Gentile churches, 
 it was she ; and Rome must be content to rank among her daughters. 
 Ignatius was probably a citizen of Antioch, whose education and 
 endowments admirably fitted him for the duties he had to discharge. 
 Having been a disciple of John, he was fully prepared to resist the 
 artful insinuations and open avowals of the heretics with whom that 
 Apostle had to contend. " The latter times" were indeed come,* and 
 the churches of Asia were not exempt from the troubles predicted 
 to Ephesus. The Jewish leaven was still fermenting in the Christian 
 mass ; f and a worse corruption still (if it did not go hand in hand 
 with the other) was the introduction of principles which afterwards 
 became but too notorious, as maintained by the Gnostic heresy. 
 These denied the reality of Christ's body ; and asserted that the 
 birth, baptism, crucifixion, and resurrection had been undergone by 
 a mere phantom.^ Whence their espousers were called Docetce, or 
 " Phantomists." Consistency obliged them to reject all Scripture, 
 both of the Old and New Testament ; to withdraw from the eucharist 
 of the church, which implied the reality of Christ's body ; and 
 of course to deny the cardinal doctrines of the atonement, and 
 the resurrection. The fruit was worthy of the tree, and their 
 morality is accused of being as corrupt as their doctrine, at 
 least in the mass of persons. They dealt not in works of charity, 
 but in works unworthy of God. Ignatius, full of the Holy Spirit, 
 detected and refuted this false doctrine. Such were the trials which 
 the church had to endure from within. But those from without 
 were sufficiently perplexing and sanguinary. The persecution under 
 Domitian extended to Antioch, and the Bishop was in continual 
 anxiety concerning the weaker members of his flock. When Trajan, 
 elated with his victories on the Danube, resolved to renew them on 
 the Euphrates, his army collected at Antioch, and he and Ignatius 
 were soon brought in contact. 
 
 The Emperor was in no humour to bear opposition from the Chris- 
 tians. During his stay at Antioch he had nearly lost his life by a 
 terrible earthquake which spread dreadful consternation through the 
 city, crowded as it was with soldiery. A heavy persecution descended 
 as usual upon the Christians. Ignatius, as the Bishop, would be 
 eagerly sought after ; or, rather, he sought an interview with Trajan. 
 The conference between these two men appears to have been short 
 and expressive. Ignatius freely told the Monarch that he was wrong 
 in worshipping the gods of the Gentiles, and declared to him the 
 one God, and his only Son Jesus Christ. The conversation termi- 
 nated in the following decree of the Emperor : || " We give orders 
 
 * Acts xx. 29 ; 1 Tim. iv. 1. Ignat. Epist. ad Ephes., sect. 11. 
 t Ignat. Epist. ad Magnes., sect. 8, 9, 10. Epist. ad Philad., sect. 6. 
 t See the whole strain of Ignatius's Epistles. The opening of those to the Smymiana 
 and Trallians may serve as a specimen. 
 
 See Ignatii Epist. ad Smyrnaeos, sect. 5, 6, 7. Evans's Biography of the Early 
 Chun-h, p. 67. 
 
 || TRAJAN. What art thon, wretch ! push'd en by thy ill genius. 
 Not only to oppose my will, nor own 
 The gods of Rome, but other simple souls 
 Inveigle to their ruin !
 
 IGNATIUS. 319 
 
 that Ignatius, who asserts that he carries about within himself the 
 Crucified One, be put in bonds under the custody of soldiers, and 
 carried to the great Rome,* to be food for the wild beasts, and to 
 make sport for the people. "f On hearing this, Ignatius exclaimed, 
 
 IGNATIUS. Noble Emperor, 
 
 I bear (and not in vain, through grace divine) 
 A name of better import than to be, 
 Or wretched, or daemouiac. No, the man 
 Who ia Theophorus can ne'er want joy ; 
 Is raised above the reach of misery, 
 Is freed from daemon's power ; nor only freed, 
 But able to control and scourge the foe. 
 As I with ease their every snare dissolved, 
 Sustained by Christ the heavenly King. 
 TRAJAN. Explain, 
 
 What mean'st thon by the name Theophorus ? 
 IGNATIUS. 'Tis he, whose soul is ever full of God ; 
 
 'Tis he, who carries Christ within his breast. 
 TRAJAN. And think'st thou that ia us no gods reside, 
 
 Enjoying as we do their aid in battle ? 
 IGNATIUS. Whom you call gods, and misinform'd adore, 
 Are daemons of the nations. One alone 
 True God there is, who made the earth and sky, 
 And all things in them ; and one Jesua Christ, 
 Son of his love, whose kingdom be my portion ! 
 TRAJAN. Thou mean'st the same whom Pilate crucified ? 
 IGNATIUS. Him I do mean, who crucified my sin, 
 Together with its author ; and subdued 
 The realm of darkness, (gladly I repeat 
 What I on this occasion prove and feel,) 
 Under their feet who carry Him in heart. 
 TRAJAN. So then the Crucified lives yet in thee ? 
 IGNATIUS. He does ; for thus the gracious promise runs : 
 
 . " In them I'll walk, and in their hearts I'll dwell." 
 TRAJAN. Thus, therefore, I conclude : Since this fond man 
 Affirms with frantic phrase, that still in him 
 The criminal lives, whom to the cross we doom'd, 
 Let him be carried to imperial Rome, 
 And, worried by wild beasts, divert the people. 
 Ten of our soldiers guard him ; and just now 
 Put on his chains. We'll haste to higher cares. 
 From quell'd opinions pass to conqtier lands. 
 Works of the late Rev. John Gambold, M.A. 12mo., p. 48. Bath, 1789. 
 
 * It may justly seem strange, and it was that which puzzled the great Scaliger, why 
 he should be sent so vast a way from Antioch in Syria, to be martyred in Rome. First, 
 It was usual with the Governors of provinces, where the malefactors were more than 
 ordinarily eminent, either for the quality of their persons, or the nature of their crimes, 
 to send them to Rome, that their punishment might be made exemplary in the eye of 
 the world. Secondly, His enemies were not willing he should suffer at home, where he 
 was too much honoured and esteemed already, and where his death would but raise him into 
 a higher veneration witli the people, and settle their minds in a firmer belief of that faith 
 which he had taught them, and which they saw him sealing with his blood. Thirdly, 
 By so long a journey, they hoped that in all places where he came, men would be more 
 effectually terrified from embracing that religion, which they saw so much objected to, 
 and resented by the Emperor, and when the profession thereof could not be purchased but 
 at BO dear a rate ; besides the probability, that by this usage, the constancy of Ignatius 
 himself might be broken, and he forced to yield. 
 
 t " Tacitus," says a modern writer, " could have described this event with a cool- 
 ness which Gibbon might applaud. The Roman people's fondness for these shows was 
 encouraged by their rulers, we believe, to divert their attention from the vices of the 
 internal government, as well as for the purpose of keeping tip that fierce spirit which 
 made them the conquerors of the world. We have proof enough in the Annals of Taci- 
 tus, that no criminals thrown to the lions afforded the spectators a delight equal to the 
 avage joy with which they gloated on the destruction of the Christians. When there-
 
 320 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 " I thank thee, Master, that thou hast deigned to honour me with 
 perfect love towards thee, binding me thus with iron bonds in fellow- 
 ship with thy Apostle Paul." He put on the chains joyfully ; and 
 having prayed for the Antiochean church, he commended it with 
 tears to the divine care and protection, and surrendered himself to 
 the custody of his guard.* 
 
 Accompanied by his Deacons, Philo and Agathopus, he was con- 
 veyed down to Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and thus entered upon 
 that track of Paul, so much of which he followed with joyful recog- 
 nition on his way to Rome. Here he was put on board a ship which 
 was to coast the southern and western parts of Asia Minor. Why 
 this route was determined upon, consisting of so many circuitous move- 
 ments, as preferable to a more direct passage from Seleucia to Rome, 
 we know not. Providence overruled the event for good, by adminis- 
 tering comfort and edification to the churches in the course of the 
 journey. They landed for a period at Smyrna, where Ignatius had 
 the gratification of meeting with Polycarp, who was Bishop of that 
 see, and who, like himself, had enjoyed a personal acquaintance with 
 John. They were now to meet for the last time, after many years 
 of separation. One was on his appointed road to the death by which 
 he was to glorify the Lord, and the other, perhaps, was already con- 
 scious that himself was destined to follow. His arrival at Smyrna 
 produced a lively emotion throughout the Asiatic churches ; and the 
 principal of them sent to pay due reverence to the holy Bishop by 
 
 fore a venerable Bishop from the East, where Trajan was rivalling the glories of Pom- 
 pey and of Coesar, was sent to be exposed, it seemed as though the hated religion was 
 led a captive to grace the triumph of the conqueror, to swell the pride of the Romans, 
 and to conciliate the favour of the gods. We do not sympathize in the wonder of Sca- 
 liger, and other scholars, that Trajan should remove Ignatius from Antioch, where hia 
 virtues had made him popular, to Rome. The punishment was more terrible at Rome 
 than it could be at Antioch. The dangers and troubles of the journey seemed likely to 
 bend the spirit and to shake the faith of an aged man ; his absence from Antioch would 
 weaken the Christian cause in that city ; while his death at Rome would strike terror 
 into his party throughout the empire. Trajan, in common with all the heathen Empe- 
 rors, regarded the religion of the capitol as the foundation of Roman greatness. We 
 learn from Cicero, from Valerius Maximus, from the frequent consultation of oracles, 
 from the Latin poets and historians, from votive tablets and inscriptions, from the 
 appeals of the Christian Apologists, and from the confession of those who abandoned the 
 pagan for the Christian faith, that belief in the religion of Rome was, generally, both more 
 sincere and stronger than Gibbon would lead his readers to imagine. There are many 
 traces of this in the Epistles of Pliny : in his panegyric on Trajan, he praises him for 
 his ' praecipua sanctitas,' eminent devotion to the gods of Rome. How mild soever the 
 directions sent by Trajan to Pliny for the treatment of Christians in his province, we 
 cannot read the commentaries of Vossius on those Epistles, nor, indeed, the Epistles 
 themselves, without perceiving that this was the coolness of a politician, believing it to 
 be the best mode of quenching a dangerous superstition, rather than the liberality of a 
 philosopher disposed to tolerate a religion which, with all other religions, he despised." 
 (Brit. Quart. Review, vol. iv., p. 392.) 
 
 * Dr. Burton conjectures that Ignatius being sent to Rome was owing to some per- 
 sons who had attended the Emperor from thence, and who wished to gratify their friends 
 at home, by sending to them the man, who was more looked up to than all the Chris- 
 tians in the East. The punishment to which he was condemned, was generally 
 reserved for culprits of the lowest condition ; and the Christians were, perhaps, viewed 
 in this light by the Heathen. It was also inflicted upon persons convicted of magic or 
 sacrilege, both of which crimes were laid to the charge of the Christians ; and it seems 
 to have been a common thing, in the second century, to put them to death by exposure 
 to wild beasts. (Lectures oil Eccles. Hist.)
 
 IGNATIUS. 321 
 
 deputations of the most honourable men among them. Ephesus, 
 who had seen him advance in wisdom and grace as the disciple of the 
 beloved Apostle, sent her Bishop, Onesimus, with his Deacons, Barrhus 
 and Crocus and Euplus and Pronto. The Magnesians came represented 
 in their Bishop, Damas, with Bassus and Apollonius and Sotion. The 
 Trallians deputed their Bishop, Polybius, and the Philadelphians their 
 Bishop also. To this assembly Ignatius preferred a fervent request 
 for the co-operation of their prayers to support him in the fight of a 
 good confession, while he bestowed upon them a solemn charge to 
 beware of heresy which, like ill weeds, was growing rank around 
 them.* Ignatius took the opportunity of writing from Smyrna to 
 the churches over which these Bishops presided ; and his Epistles to 
 the Ephesians, Trallians, and Magnesians, are still extant. Hearing 
 of some Ephesians who were going to Rome, and who were likely to 
 arrive there more expeditiously than himself, he addressed a letter 
 to the church in that city. His principal object in writing was to 
 prevent any attempt which the Roman Christians might have made 
 to procure a reprieve from the death which was awaiting him. He 
 expresses himself not only willing, but anxious, to meet the wild beasts 
 in the amphitheatre ; and there never, perhaps, was a more perfect 
 pattern of resignation than that which we find in this epistle. He says, 
 " I write to the churches, and signify to them all, that I am willing to 
 die for God, unless you hinder me. I beseech you that you show 
 not an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to be food to 
 the wild beasts, by whom I shall attain unto God. For I am the 
 wheat of God, and I shall be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, 
 that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather encourage the 
 beasts, that they may become my sepulchre, and may leave nothing 
 of my body ; that, being dead, I may not be troublesome to 
 any." f 
 
 From Smyrna he proceeded to Troas, where he was met, as before, 
 by some of the neighbouring Bishops ; and the Bishop of Philadel- 
 phia became the bearer of a letter which he wrote to the Christians 
 in that city. He also wrote from the same place to the church of 
 Smyrna ; and the personal regard which he had for Polycarp, the 
 Bishop of that city, will explain why he also wrote to him, and made 
 it his dying request, that he would attend to the church of Antioch. 
 The military guard must have treated Ignatius with great harshness 
 to have wrung from him the complaint which he makes. They had 
 little or no consideration for the age of their prisoner, and were eager 
 to take him to Rome in time for the games of a great festival. 
 " From Syria even unto Rome, I fight with beasts both by sea and 
 laud, both night and day ; being bound to ten leopards, that is to 
 say, to such a band of soldiers, who, though treated with all manner of 
 kindness, are the worse for it." Those who had accompanied Igna- 
 tius from Smyrna left him ; and, with his two Deacons, he sailed to 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iii., cap. 36. 
 t Ignatii Epist. ad Romanes, sect. 4. 
 I Igndtii Epiat. ad Romanes, sect. 6. 
 VOL. I. 2 T
 
 322 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 Greece, and landed at Neapolis.* Their journey by land, through 
 Macedonia, appears to have been rapid. The churches which Paul 
 had founded in Europe now lay in his road, and must have deeply 
 engaged the curiosity and study of one who was so eager in following 
 upon his track. At Philippi he received numerous tokens of affec- 
 tion and respect. At length he quitted the Grecian continent at 
 Epidamnus. 
 
 Ignatius and his company embarked once more on the western 
 coast of Epirus, and, crossing the Adriatic, shortly arrived at Rome. 
 Some delay was occasioned by their being baffled by the wind in an 
 attempt to land at Puteoli, and considerable disappointment to the 
 Bishop, who wished to enter Italy at the same point as Paul, and 
 pursue the track of his journey to the imperial city. They made 
 land, however, at the port which was at the mouth of the Tiber. 
 The soldiers hurried him hence, since they feared the festival was 
 fast running to its close ; and Ignatius, with equal eagerness, accom- 
 panied them.f On reaching Rome, he was immediately surrounded 
 by the brethren, " who were full of fear and joy. For they rejoiced 
 that God had vouchsafed them the company of Theophorus ; but 
 were afraid, when they considered that such a one was brought 
 thither to die." J Some of the brethren, notwithstanding the ear- 
 nest entreaty contained in his letter, eagerly demanded to interpose 
 for his life. But he zealously repelled the proposal, not only urging 
 the expressions of his epistle, which we have already quoted, but 
 also urging others : " May I enjoy the wild beasts that have been 
 prepared for me, which I wish may exert all their fierceness upon 
 
 * The seven, epistles which were written by Ignatius from Smyrna and Troas, are 
 still extant, and have frequently been published. Next to the writings of the Apostles, 
 they are perhaps the most interesting documents which the church possesses. They are 
 the writings of a man who was contemporary with the Apostles, and who had certainly 
 received more than the ordinary influence of the Holy Spirit. We must not expect in 
 seven short letters, written by a man who was on his way to execution, to meet with 
 anything like an argumentative exposition of the Christian faith. But they are filled 
 with expressions of the most sincere and affecting piety ; and the question of church 
 government cannot be discussed, as far as relates to primitive customs, without the 
 perusal of the epistles of Ignatius. It is said that other epistles are extant, which the 
 Bishop is supposed to have written as he passed through Philippi. They are said to be 
 addressed to the churches of Antioch and Tarsus, and to Heros, who was then a Dea- 
 con in the church of Antioch, and succeeded Ignatius in the bishopric. There is also 
 said to be an epistle which the martyr wrote to the Christians at Philippi, and another 
 which was addressed to a woman of the name of Mary. It is now generally acknow- 
 ledged that these five epistles are spurious. Two epistles to St. John, and one to the 
 Virgin Mary, which only exist in Latin, do not deserve even to be mentioned. (Dr. 
 Burton.) 
 
 t There are accounts which speak of his being put to various tortures, and of some 
 days having elapsed before he was exposed in the amphitheatre. But this seems to 
 have been an invention of later times. (See Surius, De Probatis Sanctorum. Sim. 
 Metaphrast., Febru. 1.) The authentic narrative leaves no room for such an occur- 
 rence. Subsequent to the original interview with Trajan, it has been stated, that " he 
 was cast into prison, where he was subjected to the most merciless torments, being cru- 
 elly scourged, and obliged to hold fire in his hands, while his sides were burning with 
 papers dipped in oil, hia feet set upon live coals, and his flesh torn with red-hot pincers." 
 In reference to all such and similar statements, we are bound to say, " Non probantur." 
 J " Obviamus fratribus, timore et gaudio repletis ; gaudentibus quidem in quibus dig- 
 nificabantur eo quod Theophori consortio ; timentibus autem quod ad mortem talis duce- 
 batur." (Acta Sancti Ignatii.)
 
 IGNATIUS. 323 
 
 me ; and for which end I will encourage them, that they may be 
 sure to devour me, and not serve me as they have some, whom out 
 of fear they have not touched. But, if they will not do it willingly, 
 I will provoke them to it. Pardon me in this matter : I know what 
 is profitable for me. Now I begin to be a disciple ; nor shall any 
 thing move me, whether visible or invisible, that I may attain to 
 Christ Jesus. Let fire and the cross, let the companies of wild 
 beasts, let breaking of bones and tearing of members, let the shat- 
 tering in pieces of the whole body, and all the wicked torments 
 of the devil come upon me ; only let me enjoy Jesus Christ." * 
 Such were the strong expressions of this honest and ardent martyr. 
 After having embraced them all, they knelt down, and he in the 
 midst of them besought the Son of God in behalf of the churches, 
 for the ceasing of the persecution, and for the mutual love of the 
 brethren. 
 
 The Bishop was forthwith led to the amphitheatre. " There, inso- 
 lent with revelling, and maddened to cruelty by the sight of the 
 blood of dying gladiators, the people of Rome were expecting the 
 appearance of the old man, and raised, no doubt, a shout when he 
 was produced before them. For the first time in his life he beheld 
 the interior of an amphitheatre, a sight forbidden to the eyes of a 
 Christian. He beheld the assembled majesty of the Lords of this 
 world, their Senate, their Magistrates, and, strange and impious 
 spectacle ! their women and consecrated virgins ; ) looking upon 
 death's shocking and varied agonies with composed countenances, 
 and almost drinking in the streams of blood with their eyes, amid 
 savage delight. It was truly the temple of the Prince of this world. 
 Can we wonder that in such a place generally began the first cry 
 for persecution ; that there resided his peculiar inspiration ; that 
 there the sight of a helpless and venerable old man, of blameless 
 life, and yet brought to suffer the death of the worst malefactors, 
 moved no pity, but rather provoked rage ? How little did the 
 mighty ones of that day imagine that the obscure sufferer who stood 
 before them would leave behind him an everlasting name, to their 
 
 Ignatii Kpist. ad Romanes, sect. 5. 
 
 t " The Heathens, with whom there is no perfection of truth, because God ia not 
 their Teacher of truth, define good and evil according to their own will and pleasure, 
 making that in one case good, which in another is bad ; and that in one case bad, 
 which in another is good. Thus, therefore, it has come to past), that the very man who 
 would hardly lift up his cloak in public for his bodily necessity, cannot in the circus 
 disport himself in any other way than by obtruding all his shame upon the eyes of all ; 
 and he who guardeth the ears of his virgin daughter from every lewd word, doth him- 
 self carry her to the theatre to such words and actions ; and the very man who, in the 
 streets restraineth or protesteth against one that carrieth on a quarrel by blows, doth 
 in the race-course give his voice in favour of more serious battles ; and he who shud- 
 dereth at the corpse of a man that hath died in common course, doth in the amphithea- 
 tre bend down most enduring eyes upon bodies mangled and torn in piece*, and 
 begrimed with their own blood ; nay, he who cometh to the show to testify his approval 
 of the punishment of a murderer, doth himself, with whips and rods, urge on the gla- 
 diator to murder against his will ; he, too, who demandeth the lion for each more nota- 
 ble murderer, demandeth for the atrocious gladiator the staff and the hat ; while he 
 sendeth for him back again who is slain, for a near view of his countenance, mora 
 pleased to examine him closely whom he wished to be put to death at a distance.* 
 (Tertull., De Spect., cap. xxi.) 
 
 2x2
 
 324 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 shame, and to his Master's glory ; and that the blood of the saints, 
 with which they were now drunken, should be the means of making 
 many like him, until their whole empire should be full of them ! 
 Some few hearts, perhaps, at that moment were pricked with the 
 first entrance of God's grace. They pitied, they admired, they 
 loved, and they believed. They who began with the amphitheatre, 
 ended with the church. But the vast multitude, with shouts, beheld 
 the preacher of love and peace placed upon the spot which was 
 assigned to assassins and murderers, and cheered the beasts as they 
 were loosed upon him. The agony of the blessed martyr was short. 
 The beasts quickly despatched him ; and so ravenously, that only the 
 harder and more rugged bones were left. Thus was fulfilled his 
 desire, that the beasts might be his tomb, and leave nothing of his 
 body. So should he give trouble to none in collecting his 
 remains." * 
 
 The faithful Deacons of Ignatius who had accompanied him from 
 Antioch to Rome, doubtless collected those relics of him which 
 remained, and conveyed them to the place over which he had pre- 
 sided. It appears from a letter of Pliny,-}- that if the friend of a 
 deceased person wished to remove his remains, he was to apply for 
 leave to the College of Priests : such permission was probably 
 obtained before the persons who had journeyed with Ignatius from 
 Antioch, could venture to gather up his bones, and carry them back 
 to their own city. If we did not know that this was the case, we 
 might have thought that the indulgence would neither have been 
 asked nor granted in the present excited state of public feeling. But 
 the spectators in the amphitheatre had had their gratification ; their 
 thirst for blood had been satisfied ; and the Priests would perhaps 
 be glad that the bones of the martyr should be carried to Antioch, 
 rather than continue at Rome, where they might serve to animate 
 the Christians to further resistance. Not a word is to be found con- 
 cerning anything like religious worship being paid to his remains. 
 We read of their being carried to Antioch, and being received on the 
 road with nearly the same honours which were paid to the holy 
 martyr himself, when he visited the different cities. But no trace of 
 superstition appears in any of these demonstrations of piety and 
 affection. J The friends of Ignatius speak of his remains as being 
 invaluable, and that they were deposited in the cemetery near one 
 of the gates in the suburbs of Antioch. Nearly three hundred 
 years after the decease of Ignatius, a panegyric, splendid in all the 
 ornaments of human eloquence, was pronounced over him from " the 
 golden mouth" of one of his fellow- citizens, and Minister of hia 
 own church, who could boast, and was worthy of, a spiritual lineage 
 directly derived from him. But the simple and apostolical spirit of 
 the martyr would have been equally astonished and dissatisfied at the 
 oratorical flourish of Chrysostom, and his sight would not have been 
 
 * Evans's Biography of the Early Church, p. 69. 
 
 f Pliny's Letters. Melmoth's edition, vol. ii., hook x., letter 73. 
 
 1 Burton's Lectures on Eccles. Hist., vol. ii., p. 32. Edit. 8vo. Oxford, 1833. 
 
 5 Hieron. De Viris Illustrious", cap. xvi.
 
 OTHER MARTYRS DURING TRAJAN'S REIGN. 325 
 
 less pained than his ears, could he have beheld the pompous decora- 
 tion and ceremony of the place where it was delivered.* 
 
 In the persecution which continued to rage, even subsequent to 
 the death of Ignatius, numerous individuals sealed the truth with 
 their blood. Among these, historians mention Phocas, the Bishop 
 of Pontus, who, because he would not sacrifice unto Neptune, was 
 cast into a burning lime-kiln, and afterwards into a scalding bath, 
 where he expired : Sulpitius and Servilianus, two Romans, whose 
 wives are said to have been Euphrosyne and Theodora, whom 
 Sabina was instrumental in converting to the faith of Christ, were 
 also martyred during Trajan's reign. Onesimus also is said to have 
 been stoned to death at Rome, together with Barsimoeus, the Bishop 
 of Edessa, in Mesopotamia. The former was a native of Phrygia, 
 and servant to Philemon, of Colosse, from whom he had absconded ; 
 but meeting with Paul at Rome, was induced to return. His master 
 voluntarily gave him his freedom, and recommended him to Paul as his 
 spiritual father, who constantly employed him as a messenger to the 
 churches : subsequently he was raised to the bishopric of Ephesus. 
 The chronology of this portion of the reign of Trajan is involved in 
 very great perplexity ; but if, as is supposed, the Emperor marched 
 from Antioch in the year 107, he probably finished the war in 110 
 or 111, and returned to Rome. In the course of these years he 
 conquered the Armenians and Parthians, beside less civilized nations, 
 and took the capitals of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Babylon. It is 
 stated that after taking these cities, Trajan, according to ancient 
 custom, purified his army, and sent into Armenia ten thousand 
 of his troops, who refused to join in the sacrifices, as being Chris- 
 tians. It is added, that Romulus, who was high in the Empe- 
 ror's household, remonstrated with him upon the imprudence of this 
 act, and avowed himself a Christian ; in consequence of wlu'ch, he 
 was beaten by order of the Emperor, and then beheaded. The ten thou- 
 sand soldiers are reported to have been afterwards crucified in the moun- 
 tains of Armenia. The story is to be found in the Martyrologies,'f 
 
 Evans's Biography of the Early Church, p. 70. " Ignatius is better known (by 
 one party venerated, by another discarded) as the advocate of Episcopacy, than as a 
 humble and suffering believer of the Gospel. Whatever might be his reasons for so 
 strongly urging the episcopal authority, whatever the extent may be in which his anx- 
 iety on this head was a departure from the tone of earlier days, whatever mischiefs to 
 the church have arisen from the use which other men have made of what he wrote, we 
 confess that the repeated study of his Epistles has raised our admiration of his practical 
 prudence, his glowing spirit of devotion, his strong attachment to the Gospel, his fer- 
 vent charity to Christians, his matchless courage, his constancy even to a dreadful death. 
 In our coolest moods we blame him for some excess, both in his zeal for his office, and 
 in bis desire for martyrdom ; but happy are they who can pierce through these imper- 
 fections to lay hold of the glorious principles, and the divine affections, which made 
 Ignatius what he was in such a country, and at such a tune. We raise no shrines for 
 martyrs. We observe no festivals to their honour. We light no lamps at their tombs. 
 We chant no litanies at their anniversaries. We expect from them no intercession. 
 Yet we envy not the insensibility that is neither touched by the memory of their graces, 
 nor edified by the record of their sufferings. The ' martyrs of science ' are remem- 
 bered by the studious, and the martyrs of liberty by the free : why should the martyr* 
 of religion be forgotten by the saints? " (Brit. Quart. Rev., vol. iv., p. 394.) 
 
 t Baronii Martyrol. Roman., Sept. 5. Simon Metaphrast. apud Snrium, De Pro- 
 t'iiti- Sanctorum, Sept. 5. Tillemont Memoires, torn, i., art. \i., p. 194. Koxe says,
 
 326 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 and is adopted by Baronius ; but though scenes of this sort were 
 not unlikely to happen when the whole army was called upon to 
 join in sacrifice, it is difficult to believe that Trajan would have so 
 weakened his forces by sending away ten thousand soldiers, or that 
 so large a body was put to death by crucifixion. To some it will 
 perhaps appear incredible that so many Christians should have been 
 found in the army, and we may at least conclude that the numbers 
 have been exaggerated ; but the martyrdom of Romulus, and the 
 circumstances which led to it, may not be altogether devoid of foun- 
 dation.* 
 
 The sun of Trajan set in blood. The Rabbinical writings at this 
 period are crowded with accounts of the sufferings of the Jews ; f 
 but at the same time they are so intermingled with that which is 
 fabulous, that it is difficult to decide how far they rest on the foun- 
 dation of truth. Before the conclusion of the war, and the final settle- 
 ment of the East, the Jews, who had been dispersed into various parts, 
 excited a fearful rebellion in several of the provinces of the Roman 
 empire, taking occasion, from certain earthquakes J with which that 
 
 that " it is signified in the histories that in the time of Hadrian, Zeno, a nobleman of 
 Rome, with ten thousand two hundred and three, was slain for Christ. (Baronii Martyr. 
 Rom. July 9th.) Henry de Herford and Bergomensia make mention of ten thousand 
 as being crucified in the day of this Hadrian, on Mount Ararat, adorned \\ith crowns 
 of thorn, and thrust into the sides with sharp darts, after the example of the Lord's 
 passion." The editor of the new edition of the Acts and Monuments, says that Foxe 
 Confounds the Zeno just mentioned with another Zeno whose martyrdom is celebrated 
 in Baronius's Martyrology, on Sept. 5th. Baronius there states, that he was one of a 
 number of soldiers, one thousand one hundred and seven in all, others say eleven thou- 
 sand, who, for professing Christ, were martyred at Melitene, in Armenia. A surmise 
 has arisen whether the two stories are not founded on the same occurrence. 
 
 Burton's Lectures on Eccles. Hist., lect. xiv. 
 
 t " It is related," says Milman, (Hist, of the Jews, vol. iii., p. 109,) "' that unfortu- 
 nately the birth- day of a Prince fell on the anniversary of the fatal 9th of August ; and 
 while the whole Roman empire was rejoicing, the Jews alone were bewailing, in ill-timed 
 lamentations, the fate of their temple. Again, while the imperial family were in the 
 deepest mourning for the loss of a daughter, the unlucky Jews were celebrating, with 
 noisy mirth, their feast of lamps. The indignant Empress exclaimed, ' Before you 
 march against the barbarians, sweep this insolent people from the face of the earth. 1 
 Trajan surrounded a vast number of Jews with his legions, and ordered them to he 
 hewn down. He afterwards offered their wives either to share the fate of their hus- 
 bands, or to submit to the embraces of his soldiery. ' What thou hast done to those 
 beneath the earth, do to those who are upon it.' Such was the answer of the women. 
 Their blood was mingled with that of their husbands ; and the sea that broke upon the 
 shores of Cyprus was tinged with the red hue of carnage. If there he any truth in 
 tliis legend, it recoiled before long from those shores in a tide which showed still more 
 visible signs of unrelenting vengeance. But independent of the improbability of the 
 whole story, and its inconsistency with the character of the Emperor, the family of 
 Trajan make a great figure in this as in other Jewish legends; yet it is almost certain 
 that he had no children." 
 
 J Trajan was certainly in Antioch during a tremendous earthquake, probably subse- 
 quent to the martyrdom of Ignatius, which, according to gome writers, happened in the 
 year 115, while others have placed it in the end of 110. Great part of Antioch was 
 destroyed by this earthquake, and by fires which accompanied it. Famine, also, and 
 pestilence were added to these dreadful visitations ; and since the Christians were often 
 accused of bringing down these signs of anger from the gods, it is possible that they 
 suffered upon this occasion. Trajan is described as seeking to avert the evil by no com- 
 mon remedies ; which seems to allude to some kind of religious expiation ; and if he 
 listened to the popular notion concerning the Christians, he might have thought himself 
 justified in appeasing the wrath of heaven by the blood of the Christians. Nicephorus 
 certainly speaks of a persecution at Antioch, while Trajan was staying there, and he
 
 INSURRECTION OF THE JEWS. 327 
 
 part of the country had recently been visited, and which they cor- 
 dially believed betokened the speedy downfal of the Roman influence 
 and power ; or, what is still more probable, during the war of Trajan 
 with Parthia, when the Roman legions were almost entirely withdrawn 
 from the African provinces, and a few feeble garrisons only remained 
 to maintain the peace, intelligence was received that the Jews of 
 Egypt and Cyrene had taken arms, and were perpetrating the most 
 dreadful atrocities against the inhabitants of those districts, both 
 Greeks and Romans. The cause of this insurrection is not known ; 
 but when we remember the implacable animosities of the Jew and 
 Gentile, which had been handed down as an inheritance for centuries, 
 it is by no means surprising that, directly the coercive authority of 
 the Roman troops was removed, a violent collision would take place. 
 Nor is it improbable that the Greeks, who had been suffering grievous 
 exactions from a rapacious Roman Governor, might take up their old 
 quarrel, and, in the absence of the Romans, endeavour to indemnify 
 themselves by the plunder of their more industrious, perhaps more 
 wealthy, neighbours. On which side hostilities began, we know not ; 
 but the Jews, even if they only apprehended an attack, had horrible 
 reminiscences of recent disasters or traditions not very remote of the 
 days of Caligula ; and might, not unnaturally, think that there was 
 wisdom in endeavouring to be the first in the field, and that it was 
 better to perish with arms in their hands, than stand still, as in 
 former times, to be tamely pillaged and butchered. All Egypt, 
 both Alexandria, and the Thebais, with Cyrene, arose at once. In 
 Egypt the Jews had at first some success ; but the Greeks fell 
 back on Alexandria, mastered the Jews within the city, and murdered 
 the whole race. Maddened by this intelligence, as well as by the 
 memory of former cruelties, the Jews of Cyrene, headed by Lucuas 
 and Andrew, by some supposed to be, though improbably, two names 
 of the same individual, swept all over Lower Egypt, where they were 
 joined by a host of their countrymen, and penetrated into the The- 
 bais, or even farther, and exacted the most dreadful retribution for 
 the present and the past. Horrid tales were told of the atrocities 
 they committed, some of their rulers they sawed asunder from head 
 to foot ; they flayed their bodies, and clothed themselves with their 
 skins ; twisted their entrails, and \rore them as girdles, and anointed 
 themselves with blood. We are even told that this people, so scru- 
 pulous in the refusal of all unclean food, nevertheless feasted on the 
 bodies of their enemies. With barbarity for which they could quote 
 higher precedent, they are said to have thrown them to the wild 
 beasts, and forced them to fight on the theatres as gladiators : two 
 hundred and twenty thousand fell before their remorseless vengeance. 
 Whether these cannibal atrocities were true or not, that they should 
 be propagated and credited shows the detestation in which the race 
 was held. Lupus, the Roman Governor, meanwhile, without troops, 
 sat an inactive spectator of this devastation ; while Lucuas, the 
 
 describes it in some detail ; but this writer, when unsupported by other authority, la to 
 be read with great caution. (Burton's Lectures.) The Jews beheld these portents as 
 indicative of other events.
 
 328 BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. 
 
 Jewish leader, is reported to have assumed the style and character of 
 King. 
 
 The flame spread to Cyprus, where the Jews were numerous and 
 wealthy. One Artemio placed himself at their head, they rose and 
 massacred two hundred and forty thousand of their fellow-citizens ; 
 and the populous city of Salamis became a desert. The revolt in 
 Cyprus was first suppressed : Hadrian, afterwards Emperor, landed 
 on the island, and marched to the assistance of the few inhabitants 
 who had been able to act on the defensive. He defeated the Jews, 
 expelled them from the island, to whose beautiful coasts no Jew was 
 ever after permitted to approach. If one were accidentally wrecked 
 on the inhospitable shore, he was instantly put to death. Martius 
 Turbo was sent by sea, for the purpose of expedition, with a consi- 
 derable force of horse and foot, to the coast of Cyrene. As far as 
 the campaign can be traced, it seems that he marched against 
 Andrew, and, after much hard fighting, suppressed the insurrection 
 in that province, and then turned upon Egypt, where Lucuas still 
 made head. This insurgent, according to a tradition preserved by 
 Abulfharagi, attempted to force his way by the Isthmus of Suez ; 
 and some, at least, of his followers found their way to Palestine. 
 The loss of the Jews, as might be expected, was immense : their own 
 traditions report, that as many fell in this disastrous war, as origin- 
 ally escaped from Egypt under Moses, six hundred thousand men. 
 Cyprus was scarcely subdued, and the war was still raging in Egypt, 
 when tidings arrived that the Jews of Mesopotamia were in arms. 
 Probably the eastern Jews had found that, by the conquests of Tra- 
 jan, they had changed masters for the worse. Under the Parthian 
 Kings they had lived in peace, unmolested in their religion, some- 
 times making proselytes of the highest rank, (in the case of Izates,) 
 of Kings themselves ; and they were oppressed by no exclusive taxa- 
 tion. The Jews of Africa and Syria might have looked with repining 
 envy on their more prosperous brethren in Babylonia : the scene 
 of the great captivity was now become the only dwelling of Jewish 
 peace, and Jewish independence ; while the land of milk and honey 
 flowed with the bitter streams of servitude and persecution. Even 
 if the Babylonian Jews did not, as gratitude and policy would equally 
 have urged, during the war between Rome and her eastern rival, 
 manfully take arms in favour of their protectors against the enemies 
 and oppressors of their race ; if they left the armies of Parthia to 
 fight their own battles, and quietly waited to be transferred to the 
 conqueror ; yet when they were included, by the victories of Trajan, 
 within the pale of Roman oppression, visited in their turn by that 
 fierce soldiery which had trampled on the ruins of Jerusalem, made 
 liable, perhaps, to a capitation tax for the maintenance of a heathen 
 temple, it was by no means surprising if they endeavoured to shake 
 off the galling and unwonted yoke. Their insurrection was soou 
 suppressed by the vigour of Lucius Quietus, a man of Moorish race, 
 and considered the ablest soldier in the Roman army. The commis- 
 sion of Quietus was not only to subdue, but to expel, the Jews from 
 the whole district. The Jews defended themselves with obstinate
 
 CLOSE OF TRAJAN'S REIGN. 329 
 
 courage, and, though overpowered, still remained in Mesopotamia.* 
 In the midst of this bloodshed Trajan died, not without suspicion 
 of having been poisoned ; a Prince of great ability, either for the 
 command of an army, or the government of an empire ; and, had 
 not his actions been stained with his severity towards the Christians, 
 he might with propriety have been recognised as the greatest Emperor 
 in the pagan world. His numerous excellences rendered his memory 
 valuable to the Romans ; so that, among the many and divine honours 
 which were awarded to him after his demise, it became customary, in 
 succeeding reigns, when blessings were invoked upon an Emperor 
 recently chosen, to desire that the fortune of Augustus, and the good- 
 ness of Trajan, might descend upon him, as the greatest benefit 
 of which he could possibly be the partaker. 
 
 " We are perhaps justified in concluding," says Dr. Burton, " from 
 a general review of the reign of Trajan, that the progress of Chris- 
 tianity was not impeded during that period by any systematic oppo- 
 sition of the government. The Emperor's attention was directed 
 to the new religion by Pliny ; but, like many other subjects which 
 were mentioned in letters from the provinces, this, perhaps, did not 
 dwell long upon his mind ; and we may infer from the correspond- 
 ence itself, that neither Trajan nor Pliny had troubled themselves 
 about Christians before. It has been mentioned, that the Empe- 
 ror's answer formed a precedent which was often acted upon with 
 great cruelty in the course of the present century ; but we do not 
 meet with any other instance in the course of the late reign. We 
 shall see reason to think, that a time of peace was more injurious 
 to the disciples than war, as giving the Heathen more leisure and 
 opportunity to notice their proceedings ; and the late Emperor 
 was so constantly engaged in military expeditions, that, if such a 
 circumstance were favourable to the Christians, it may account, in 
 some measure, for their religion making such a rapid advance. That 
 this was the case in the former part of the second century, cannot 
 be doubted. The martyrdoms of Symeon and Ignatius arrest our 
 attention on account of the rank and the fortitude of the sufferers, and 
 the iniquity of their sentence. But we are not told, in either case, 
 that they had many companions in death ; and the perpetrators of 
 such cruelties are apt to forget, that a party does not become less 
 attached to its opinions, or less zealous in support of them, by seeing 
 its leaders suffer martyrdom with firmness. The death of Ignatius 
 caused the loss of one individual to the church ; but their ene- 
 mies were not aware that, by leading him in a kind of triumph from 
 Antioch to Rome, and allowing him to touch at several intermediate 
 places, they were doing the greatest service to the cause which they 
 were wishing to destroy." f 
 
 * Milman's History of the Jews, vol. iii., p. 114. 
 
 t Burton's History of the Christian Church, p. 187- 12mo. Sixth edition. London. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 U
 
 330 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Accession of Hadrian His Birth And Qualifications Abandons a Portion of tn 
 Roman Territory Trajan and Hadrian contrasted The Empire is consolidate 
 Achievements in Britain Hadrian's personal Character And Versatility in 
 respect of Religion The unsettled State of the Jewish Nation Hadrian's Treat- 
 ment of that People Condition of the Christian Church at Jerusalem Is persecuted 
 Swift Succession of Bishops Alexandria Position of Christianity in that 
 City Heresies Hadrian visits Alexandria Quinquennalia Palilia Fatal 
 Character of these Feasts Symphorosa and her Sons The Mother is brought 
 before the Emperor, and undergoes Martyrdom Her Sons suffer on the following 
 Day Eustachius and his Family are put to Death Faustinus and Jovita suffer 
 General Order of Hadrian with regard to the Christians Catacombs Their 
 Origin And Description Were Places of Refuge and Worship to the ancient 
 Church And also of Interment Dr. Maitland quoted Martyrdom suffered in 
 them Travels of Hadrian Pullius Quadiatus Aristides Apologies of Per- 
 secution of the Church Influence of the Populace The pagan Priesthood avaH 
 themselves of it Serapia and Sabina are brought before Berillus Serapia is 
 threatened with Violation Tortured and beheaded Sabina, is martyred Serenus 
 Granius His Appeal to Hadrian The Emperor's Answer to Minutius Funda- 
 nus Effects of this Rescript The Deification of Antinous The imperial Edict 
 of Hadrian Dr. Burton quoted Effect of the Edict >on the Christians Barco- 
 chebas His Cruelty toward the Christians Insurrection of the Jews Their tem- 
 porary Success Rufus the Prefect Julius Severus The Jews are vanquished, 
 and experience unheard-of Cruelties Hadrian's Plan of annihilating the Jews 
 JElia Capitolina State of the Church at the Close of Hadrian's Reign Celsus 
 the Epicurean, attacks Christianity Is replied to by Origen Description of the 
 Work of Celsus Dr. Doddridge and Leland quoted Death of Hadrian His 
 Character, 
 
 HADRIAN was at Antioch when he succeeded to the empire upon 
 the death of Trajan. He was by descent a Spaniard, and of Italica, 
 the same city where Trajan was born ; his mother's name was Domitia 
 Paulina, of Gales in Spain. He was nephew to Trajan by his 
 mother, others say by his father ; though some assert, that he was 
 the son of his cousin-german, and was married to Sabina, Trajan's 
 sister's daughter. When he entered upon the empire he was about 
 forty years of age, and of popular talents, having in the last reign 
 sustained the highest offices, both of a civil and military character, 
 with great honour to himself, and usefulness to the commonwealth. 
 His reign commenced with what would be considered by many a dis- 
 reputable act, the abandonment of the country to the east of the 
 Euphrates ; but it might be doubted whether the empire were really 
 weakened by its limits being contracted. It is true that, shortly 
 after the death of Trajan, and before Hadrian had left the East, the 
 Parthians, and some of the nations recently conquered, resumed their 
 former courage, and revolted ; insurrections also took place in the 
 distant isle of Britain. All these Hadrian might with little difficulty 
 have subdued, as he stood in need of neither courage nor force. Tra- 
 jan insatiably thirsted after honour and fame, and seized every oppor-
 
 HADRIAN. 331 
 
 tunity to enlarge the boundaries of the Roman arm ; Hadrian's prin- 
 cipal care was to preserve the ancient limits entire, without grasping 
 after extended conquests : he therefore relinquished a considerable 
 part of the territories in the East, judging Parthia, Media, Mesopo- 
 tamia, and other distant provinces, greater inconvenience to the 
 Roman empire than advantage ; and for the better security of con- 
 tiguous places, he made the Euphrates the boundary and barrier, and 
 placed his legions upon its banks. The active genius of Hadrian was 
 withdrawn from all warlike enterprises and foreign conquests : its 
 whole care was centred on the consolidation of the empire within its 
 narrower and uncontested limits, and on the internal regulation of 
 the vast confederacy of nations which were gradually becoming more 
 and more assimilated as subjects or members of the great European 
 empire. The remotest provinces, for the first time, beheld the pre- 
 sence of the Emperor, not at the head of an army summoned to 
 defend the insulted barriers of the Roman territory, or pushing for- 
 ward the advancing line of conquest, but in more peaceful array, 
 providing for the future security of the frontier by impregnable for- 
 tresses ; * adorning the more flourishing cities with public buildings, 
 bridges, and aqueducts ; inquiring into the customs, manners, and 
 even the religion, of the more distant parts of the world ; encourag- 
 ing commerce, promoting the arts ; in short, improving, by salutary 
 regulations, this long period of peace to the prosperity and civiliza- 
 tion of the whole empire.")- 
 
 The personal character of Hadrian was a strange amalgamation 
 of versatility and ambition. He was by turns an excellent Prince, a 
 ridiculous sophist, and a jealous tyrant. J The general tenor of his 
 conduct deserved praise ; but in the first days of his reign he put to 
 death four consular Senators, his personal enemies, and men who had 
 been judged worthy of empire ; and the tediousness of a painful 
 illness rendered him at last peevish and cruel. " On the frontier," 
 says Milman, " at the head of the army, he put on the hardi- 
 hood and simplicity of a soldier ; disdained any distinction either 
 of fare or of comfort from the meanest legionary, and marched on 
 foot through the most inclement seasons. In the peaceful and 
 voluptuous cities of the South, he became the careless and luxurious 
 Epicurean. Hadrian treated the established religion with the utmost 
 respect : he officiated with solemn dignity as supreme Pontiff, and at 
 
 # " In a short time," says Lingard, " the state of Britain had become so precarious, 
 as to require the presence of the Emperor Hadrian. Of his exploits, history is silent; 
 but on the testimony of medals and inscriptions, we may believe that he expelled the 
 barbarian*, and recovered the provinces which had been lost. If, however, his victories 
 have been forgotten, his memory has been preserved by a military work, which was 
 executed under his direction, and has hitherto defied the ravages of time. Convinced 
 by experience, that the pratentura thrown up by Agricola could not confine the northern 
 tribes, he resolved to oppose a second barrier to their incursions, by drawing a ditch and 
 rampart across the island from the Solway Frith on the western, to the mouth of the 
 Tyne on the eastern, coast. This mighty fortification measured in length more than 
 sixty of our miles ; and strong bodies of troops were permanently stationed at short 
 intervals on the whole extent of the line." (History of England, vol. i., p. 37, 12mo. 
 edit. London, 1837.) 
 
 t Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 152. 
 
 t Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i., p. 131, Milman's edit., 8vo. 
 
 2 TJ 2
 
 332 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Rome affected disdain or aversion for foreign religions. But his 
 mind was essentially imbued with a philosophic spirit : * he was 
 tempted by every abstruse research, and every forbidden inquiry had 
 irresistible attraction for his curious and busy temper. At Athens 
 he was in turn the simple and rational philosopher, the restorer of 
 Jupiter Olympius, and the awe-struck worshipper in the Eleusinian 
 mysteries. f In the East, he aspired to penetrate the recondite secrets 
 of magic, and professed himself an adept in judicial astrology. In the 
 midst of all this tampering with foreign religions, he at once honoured 
 and outraged the prevailing creed by the deification of Antinous, in 
 whose honour quinquennial games were established at Mantinea ; a city 
 built, and a temple, with an endowment for a priesthood, founded 
 and called by his name, in Egypt : his statues assumed the symbols 
 of various deities. Acts like these, at this critical period, must have 
 tended to alienate a large portion of the thinking class, already 
 wavering in their cold and doubtful polytheism, to any purer or more 
 ennobling system of religion. 
 
 The new Emperor was not likely to entertain very favourable sen- 
 timents towards his Jewish subjects. He had been an eye-witness 
 of the horrible scenes which had desolated the island of Cyprus ; he 
 had seen the Idalian groves reeking with blood, or unwholesome with 
 the recent carnage of their inhabitants, and the gay and splendid 
 cities reduced to the gloomy solitude of the grave. It is not impro- 
 bable that the same mischiefs might be brooding in Palestine, and 
 that the turbulent disposition of the Jew was one of the reasons why 
 Hadrian, after having visited Antioch and Phoenicia, travelled into 
 Judea. The Jews submitted very reluctantly to the sway of the con- 
 queror ; they were only kept down by a strong military force ; and 
 the Emperor constantly treated them as a vanquished people. Many 
 were openly sold as slaves. An edict was issued tantamount to the 
 total suppression of Judaism : the Jews were forbidden to circumcise 
 their children ; while the reading of the law, and the observance 
 of the Sabbath, were interdicted ; and, as if to insult them in their 
 subjection, rather than to strengthen his power against them, he 
 erected a town, with buildings after the Roman fashion, on the 
 ancient site of Jerusalem. It is generally stated that jElia Capito- 
 lina was built several years later, when Hadrian had suppressed the 
 more formidable revolt of the Jews under Barcochebas. The town, 
 however, was then newly built and colonized, and the name of Mli& 
 substituted for that of Jerusalem ; but it is satisfactorily proved, that 
 the erection of heathen buildings on the sacred site was the cause, 
 rather than the consequence, of that revolt. Though amidst the 
 
 " Les autres sentiments tie ce prince sent tres difficiles a connaitre. II n'embrassa 
 aucun secte, et ne fat ni Academicien, ni Stoicien, encore moius Kpicurien ; il parut 
 constamment livre a cette incertitude d'opinions, fruit de la bizarrerie de son caractere, 
 et d'un savoir superficiel ou mal digere." (M. St. Croix.) 
 
 t The Apology of Quadrat us was presented on Hadrian's visit to Athens, when he 
 was initiated in the mysteries ; that of Aristides, when he became Epoptes, A.D. 131. 
 Warburton connects the hostility of the celebrators of the mysteries to Christianity 
 with the Apology of Quadratus, and quotes a passage from Jerome to this effect. 
 
 J Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 8. 
 
 Milman's History of Christianity, p. 153.
 
 STATE OF THE JEWS. 333 
 
 ruins there dwelt a respectable population of Jewish and Christian 
 inhabitants, Jerusalem had not become a place of any considerable 
 importance since its complete destruction by Titus. It was utterly des- 
 titute of walls and fortifications, and no attempt had been made to 
 restore the temple, or any of the public buildings. Hadrian erected 
 a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus on the very site of the national sanc- 
 tuary, and the inhabitants whom he introduced were almost entirely 
 Greeks and Romans. This was a wanton insult on the part of the 
 Emperor, which plainly announced his intention to annihilate at once 
 all the hopes of the Jews as to the restoration of the holy city. A 
 town had probably risen by degrees out of the ruins ; but the formal 
 establishment of a colony implied the perpetual alienation of the soil, 
 and its surrender to the stranger. The Israelite looked on with die- 
 may and with anguish, mingled with thoughts of revenge and deli- 
 verance. It was an idea firmly rooted in the heart of the faithful 
 sons of Abraham, that, in the darkest hour of tribulation and woe, 
 when his children were at the extremity of degradation and wretched- 
 ness, then the arm of the Lord would be revealed, and the antici- 
 pated Messiah make his long-expected appearance. The Jews ima- 
 gined that lower in the scale of misery they could not fall : their 
 race was well-nigh extinct ; their city was not merely a heap of 
 unsightly ruins, but the Pagans were about to make their permanent 
 residence on the hill of Zion, and to cause a Gentile idol to usurp the 
 place of the holy of holies. They anxiously, and in hope, waited for 
 the signal of revolt. 
 
 In the meantime, when measures of severity were adopted toward 
 the Jews, the Christians were not likely altogether to escape. There 
 is some reason to imagine that the Church at Jerusalem was exposed, 
 during this period, to considerable persecution. The succession of 
 Bishops was extremely rapid, and might naturally lead to the con- 
 clusion, that their deaths had been hastened by some calamity : 
 Justus succeeded Symeon in 107, and he appears himself to have 
 been succeeded by Zaccheeus in 112. Between that year, and 125, 
 which is a period of only thirteen years, Eusebius mentions five other 
 Bishops, whose names were Tobias, Benjamin, John, Matthias, and 
 Philip, which forms a singular contrast with the thirty years in which 
 the see was occupied by James, and the forty-five years in which it 
 was filled by Symeon. The Christians would indeed be likely to 
 suffer more than the Jews if the common test of loyalty were 
 pressed with stringency and vigour, and they were required to offer 
 sacrifice and homage to an effigy of the Emperor. No Jew could 
 listen to this mandate without abhorrence ; and if converted to Chris- 
 tianity, his scruples would become more refined and strong. From 
 Jerusalem the Emperor proceeded to Alexandria, where again he 
 would be convinced of the necessity of keeping the Jews in a state 
 of servile subjection. The late contest with this nation commenced 
 in Africa, and in no place was it so violently prosecuted as in Alexan- 
 dria. The struggle had reduced the greater part of the city to ruins. 
 The Christian community suffered, not merely from without, but also 
 from internal foes. The immediate successor of Simon Magus was
 
 334 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Menander, who was doubtless in existence previous to the death of 
 John, and flourished during the reigns of Domitian and Trajan. He 
 made a great impression upon the people by his magical skill, and even 
 persuaded many of his followers that they should not " see death." 
 The monarch of the grave was, however, too powerful for him, and 
 he left two successors, Basilides * and Saturninus ; the former of 
 whom distinguished himself in Alexandria, and the latter in Antioch. 
 Basilides rose to much greater eminence than Saturninus : he 
 gathered around him a much greater party, and his theories in reli- 
 gion were far more extravagant. He is charged with denying the 
 necessity of martyrdom, and with allowing his followers to escape it 
 by partaking of meats which had been offered to idols. The leading 
 feature of his theology was to acknowledge the divinity of Christ, but 
 not of Jesus. Christ, who was an emanation from God, was said to 
 become united with Jesus at his baptism ; but that he neither became 
 incarnate at his birth, nor expired with him on the cross. This doctrine, 
 therefore, though it confirms in a remarkable manner the pre-exist- 
 ence and divinity of Christ, entirely destroyed the notion of his 
 atonement. Jesus Christ was merely a Preacher of righteousness, 
 sent into the world to reveal the knowledge of the true God, and to 
 free mankind from the tyranny of the evil principle.f Here we have 
 a clue to the whole mystery of Gnosticism, and the various modifica- 
 tions of it, as taught in this century by Basilides, Cerdon, Marcion, 
 and Valentinus : it consisted in the number and arrangement of suc- 
 cessive emanations which were supposed to proceed from the First 
 Cause. The name of Basilides, more than that of any of the Gnos- 
 tics, has been connected with the use of magical charms and incanta- 
 tions. He believed in the doctrine of metempsychosis, which he 
 had probably imbibed in the Platonic schools of Alexandria. He has 
 also been charged with maintaining an indifference to human actions ; 
 a principle which Carpocrates, and other Gnostics, unquestionably 
 entertained : it is also stated, that there were several Basilidians in 
 Alexandria, who indulged without restraint in the grossest impurities. 
 The laxity of manners which was thus countenanced among his 
 followers, became fearfully detrimental to the prosperity and good 
 repute of the Christian cause, and would not escape the notice of a 
 mind so inquiring as that of Hadrian, who was by no means blind to 
 the ultimate bearing of the religion of the Saviour on the social 
 condition of the empire. 
 
 We have no means of ascertaining how long Hadrian continued in 
 Alexandria, or whether he returned to Rome in the following year. 
 He was in his capital in 121, when he celebrated the Quinquennalia, 
 or fifth anniversary of his accession to the empire ; on which occa- 
 sion the feast called Palilia,J in honour of the foundation of Rome, 
 
 See Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alexandria, by 
 John, Bishop of Lincoln, p. 263, etseq., 8vo. London, 1835. 
 
 t Burton's Lectures on the Eccles. Hist, of the first three Centuries, lect. xv. 
 
 t Palilia, a festival celebrated at Rome every year on the 21st of April, in honour 
 of Pales, the tutelary divinity of shepherds. Some of the ancient writers called this 
 festival " Parilia," deriving the name from Pario, because sacrifices were offered on 
 that day pro partu pecoris. The 21st of April was the day on which, according to the
 
 SYMPHOROSA. 335 
 
 was observed with particular splendour, and the Emperor dedicated 
 a temple to the Fortune of the city. These festivals were generally 
 fatal to the Christians ; and there is strong proof that they were at 
 this time exposed to persecution which, for a period at least, was severe 
 and dreadful. The martyrdom of Symphorosa and her sons, which 
 seems to rest on credible authority, is supposed by most writers to 
 have taken place at this crisis. Symphorosa was the wife of Getu- 
 lius,* an officer in the Roman army under Trajan and Hadrian ; but 
 upon his conversion to the faith, he relinquished his commission, and 
 retired into the country of the Sabines. His brother Amantius was 
 equally zealous for the truth with himself, but retained his station 
 of Tribune of a legion in the military service of the empire. The 
 Emperor commanded Cerealis to apprehend Getulius in the country ; 
 but that officer was won over by the influence of the two brothers to 
 the profession of Christianity. Enraged at this intelligence, Hadrian 
 ordered Licinius to condemn them to death, unless they promptly 
 apostatized : by the sentence, therefore, of this individual, these 
 three, with a fourth, named Primitivus, after suffering a painful 
 imprisonment at Tivoli, were beheaded. Symphorosa, the wife of 
 Getulius, was thus left with seven children, whom she resolved to 
 educate in a way worthy of the parent from whom they had 
 descended. She lived, therefore, in great privacy. She had not 
 been long in her retreat, when Hadrian erected a stately palace in her 
 neighbourhood, the ruins of which may still be seen, near Tivoli ; 
 and the dedication was accompanied, as usual, with sacrifices, and 
 other invocations of the gods. The oracle, or rather the Priests, 
 returned for answer, " that the deities of the empire could have no 
 rest, so long as Symphorosa and her sons were so near them, and 
 allowed to call daily upon their God ; but that they were inclined to 
 favour the Emperor, provided that family could be induced to sacri- 
 fice to and worship them." 
 
 This answer could not fail in having its desired effect : Hadrian, 
 who was renowned for his piety towards the heathen deities, and 
 alarmed at the answer which had been returned to his invocations, 
 commanded this pious woman and her sons to be seized, and brought 
 before him. She approached with joy on her countenance, praying for 
 herself and her children, that the Most High would grant to her and 
 
 early traditions of Rome, Romulus had commenced the building of the city, BO that the 
 festival was at the same time solemnized as the dies nalalitius of Rome ; and some 
 of the rites customary in later times, were said to have been first performed by 
 Romnlus when he fixed ponuerium. Ovid gives a description of the rites of the Palilia, 
 which clearly shows that he regarded it as a shepherd festival, such as it mast origin- 
 ally have been when the Romans were real shepherds and husbandmen, and a* it must 
 have continued to be among country people in his own time, as is expressly stated by 
 Dionysiu.4 ; for in the city itself it must have lost its original character, and have been 
 regarded only as the dies nalalitius. The connexion, however, between these two charac- 
 ters of the festival is manifest, as the founders of the city were, as it were, the Kings 
 of shepherds, and the founders of a religion suited to shepherds. (Diet, of Greek and 
 Roman Antiquities.) 
 
 * " This Oetulns or Oetulius," says Foxe, " was a Minister or teacher (as witness 
 the Martyrology and Chronicle of Ado) in the city of Tibur ; which Oetulus, with 
 Ccrialis, Amautius, and Primitivus, by the commandment of Hadrian, were condemned 
 to the fire ; wherein they were martyred, and put to death." (Vol. i., p. 120. 8vo. edit.)
 
 336 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 to them grace to confess his name with constancy. At first, the 
 Emperor endeavoured by persuasion to induce her to comply with his 
 demands ; to which she replied, " My husband Getulius, and his 
 brother Amantius, being your Tribunes, suffered divers torments for 
 the name of Jesus Christ, rather than sacrifice to idols ; and they 
 have vanquished your demons by their death, choosing to be 
 beheaded, rather than to be overcome. The death they suffered drew 
 upon them ignominy among men, but glory among the angels ; and 
 they now enjoy eternal life in heaven, and I am ready to follow their 
 example." The Emperor, changing his voice, said to her, in an 
 angry tone, " Either sacrifice to the most powerful gods, with thy 
 sons, or thou thyself shalt be offered, with thy children, to them, to 
 appease their incensed powers." To which Symphorosa heroically 
 answered, "Your deities cannot receive such a sacrifice, and should 
 you slay me for the sake of Christ my God, those demons whom you 
 adore will be the more miserably tormented. But can I hope for so 
 great a happiness as to be offered, with my children, a sacrifice to the 
 Most High ? " This reply incensed the tyrant still more, and he imme- 
 diately ordered her to choose her death, or yield to his commands ; 
 adding, " Either comply with my request, or you shall all miserably 
 perish." To which Symphorosa said, " Do not imagine that fear will 
 make me change : I am desirous of being at rest with my husband, 
 whom you put to death for the name of Jesus Christ ;" and, further, 
 without hesitation, assured him, " that she desired nothing more than 
 to be united to her husband, and to follow the path which he before 
 had trodden." Hadrian, finding Symphorosa thus resolved, ordered 
 her to be carried to the temple of Hercules, where she was first buf- 
 feted on the cheeks, then cruelly scourged, and afterwards hung up 
 by the hair of her head. The tyrant, finding that these torments, 
 and further threatenings, were unable to shake her invincible soul, 
 gave orders that she should be thrown into the river with a great 
 stone fastened about her neck. They were immediately executed ; 
 and her brother Eugenius, who was one of the chief of the Council 
 of the Tiber, took up her body, and buried it on the road near that 
 town. 
 
 On the following day, the Emperor summoned the seven sons of 
 Symphorosa before him, to whom he appears to have been very 
 liberal in his promises, but as violent in his threats ; exhorting them 
 forthwith to sacrifice to the gods, and not to imitate the obstinacy 
 of their mother. Finding them proof against all he had to say, he 
 gave directions for seven posts to be planted around the temple of 
 Hercules, to which pulleys and ropes were to be adjusted ; upon each 
 one of the pious youths was to be bound, and their limbs stretched 
 until they were dislocated. The young men, far from yielding under 
 the violence of their tortures, were encouraged by each other's example, 
 and appeared more eager to suffer, than the executioners were to 
 inflict, pain. At length Hadrian, finding all his efforts unavailing to 
 lead them to alter their resolution, commanded them individually to 
 be slain, and each in a different manner. The throat of Crescentius, 
 the eldest, was cut ; Julian, the second, was stabbed in the breast ;
 
 EUSTACHIUS, AND OTHER MARTYRS. 337 
 
 Nemcsius, the third, was pierced with a lance through the heart ; 
 Primitivus, the fourth, was wounded in the belly ; Justin, the fifth, 
 received his death-wound in the back ; Stacteus, the sixth, in the 
 side ; and Eugenius, the youngest, was cleft asunder, from his head 
 downwards. Hadrian is said to have visited the heathen temple the 
 day after this tragical event, and to have given orders for the bodies 
 of these noble martyrs to be interred in one common grave. For 
 a short period only the persecution ceased ; and we are told, 
 that during this interval of peace, the Christians exhumed these 
 sufferers, and buried them with honour, midway between Tivoli and 
 Rome. 
 
 In a few months, EUSTACHIUS, a Roman Captain, was called to 
 bear his testimony to the truth, by martyrdom. He had been sent by 
 Hadrian on some important expedition, which he had accomplished 
 with great success ; and the Emperor, in order to express his grati- 
 tude to his officer, met him on his return to the capital, and desired 
 him to sacrifice to Apollo, for having obtained the victory. The 
 hero promptly refused, and would, neither by persuasion nor threat, 
 be induced to comply. He was taken into custody, and conveyed to 
 Rome, where, together with his wife Theopista, and his two sons 
 Agapetus and Theopistus, he was condemned to death. With Eusta- 
 chius, we enumerate, among those who " loved not their lives unto the 
 death," FAUSTINUS and JOVITA, brothers, nobly born, and zealous 
 professors of the Christian faith, which they preached without fear in 
 their native city of Brescia, whilst the Bishop of that place lay con- 
 cealed during the persecution. The ardour with which they endea- 
 voured to propagate the truth, excited the animosity of the Heathen, 
 and procured for them a severe, though glorious, death. Julian, 
 a heathen noble, apprehended them ; and the Emperor passing 
 through Brescia at the time, they were brought before him, who con- 
 demned them to suffer, provided they refused to abandon the Chris- 
 tian profession. Torture of the most aggravated character was in- 
 flicted upon them ; but, it not producing the effect which was expected, 
 they were beheaded. An individual beholding the constancy which 
 they displayed, and the wonderful patience with which they endured 
 the trial, concluded that they were favoured with supernatural and 
 divine power, and, to the astonishment of the spectators, cried out, 
 " Great is the God of the Christians !" This involuntary speech was 
 fatal to him who uttered it : he was immediately seized, and con- 
 demned to partake of the same fate and honour. He was crowned 
 with martyrdom. 
 
 Hadrian appears to have been led by curiosity, as well as by 
 motives of policy, to visit in person the remote parts of the empire, 
 and he travelled with considerable rapidity. He traversed Gaul 
 and Britain, returned to Gaul, and passed the winter in Spain. In his 
 progress, he was met by Italicus, the Governor of Rhsetia, who com- 
 plaining on account of the obstinacy of the Christians in refusing to 
 sacrifice to the gods, Hadrian ordered, that if they continued to 
 refuse, they should invariably be put to death. Hence the martyrdom 
 of Faustinus and Jovita at Brescia. There is every reason to believe, 
 
 VOL. i. 2 x
 
 338 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IJ. 
 
 that many Christians suffered in the cause of truth while the Emperor 
 was passing through that country. Some of them are said to have 
 suffered at Milan ; and others to have been sent to Rome, where they 
 would not fail to observe traces of the persecution which had lately 
 harassed the church in that city. It was, doubtless, beginning to 
 subside ; but Xystus, the Bishop of Rome, and some of his flock, 
 were still concealing themselves in the catacombs : and, whatever we 
 may think of the martyrdoms in the north of Italy, there is evidence 
 that these excavations in the neighbourhood of Rome were used as 
 hiding-places by the early Christians. The Papal Church has pre- 
 served many marvellous and incredible particulars concerning these 
 catacombs ; * and, although it is not necessary to believe that all 
 the bones, which had been found in them, are Christian relics, the 
 places are open for inspection, and afford indisputable evidence, that 
 they were used for ordinances of religion, as well as for concealment. 
 These vaults commence under the church of St. Sebastian, and extend 
 a considerable way ; some assert as far as Ostia, a distance of about 
 sixteen miles. This, and many other stories told of these catacombs, 
 throw an air of suspicion over their history, and make us inclined to 
 disbelieve the traditions concerning them. When it is asserted that 
 fourteen Popes, and one hundred and seventy thousand Christian 
 martyrs, were buried here, we may reasonably ask, How were the 
 numbers ascertained with such accuracy ? But this should not make 
 us doubt the story altogether, of the Christians having first retired 
 into these caves as a place of refuge, and having subsequently used 
 them as cemeteries. The origin of the catacombs at Rome and at 
 Naples was, most probably, the samef with those at Paris, which 
 
 These subterranean works first attracted general notice during the time of Augus- 
 tus, when their extent rendered them dangerous. They then obtained celebrity as the 
 scene of a domestic tragedy, referred to by Cicero in his oration for Cluentius. The 
 riches of Asinius, a young Roman citizen, had excited the avarice of Oppianicus, who 
 employed an accomplice to personate Asinius, and to execute a will in his name. The 
 pretended Asinius having bequeathed the property to Oppianicus, and obtained the 
 signatures of some strangers, the true Asinius was inveigled to the gardens of the 
 Esquiline, and precipitated into one of the sand-pits. (In arenarias quasdam extra 
 Portain Esquilinara.) It was in similar caverns that Nero was afterwards advised to 
 conceal himself, when terrified by the sentence of an enraged Senate : on which occa- 
 sion he made answer to his freedman Phaon, that he would not go under-ground while 
 living. The circumstance is related by Suetonius. (Maitland's Church in the Cata- 
 combs, p. 17.) 
 
 t To the Italian traveller, and to those especially who have examined the ruins of 
 ancient Rome, or visited the classic shores of Naples, and its enchanting environs, the 
 fame of the ancient cement, made from a ferruginous sand of volcanic production, called 
 pozzolana, must be well known. Not only the site of Rome itself, but the whole of the 
 circumjacent campagna abounds inpoxzolana, and in alight hard substance, called by the 
 Italian*, tvfo. To procure these materials on the spot, or at the least possible distance, for 
 the construction of their gigantic edifices ; and, at the same time, not to break up and spoil 
 the surface of the ground, but to reserve it for building, or for ornamental cultivation, 
 the Romans opened excavations in a way very much resembling our mode of working 
 coal-mines in England. They sank shafts of some depth, whence they extracted the 
 pozzolana, and the tufo. Many of these shafts still remain unclosed and visible in 
 various parts of the ground, in the more immediate neighbourhood of Rome ; nor have 
 they escaped the notice of ancient writers. The ancients selected and exhausted 
 the most copious veins, or rather strata, of the sand, which they wrought in such a 
 manner, that the excavation, by the number of its wide and narrow galleries and pas- 
 sages, which sometimes diverged from, and at other times intersected, one another, very 
 much resembled a subterranean city, with its streets and alleys ; and still recalls to our
 
 THE CATACOMBS. 339 
 
 were undoubtedly excavations for the purpose of procuring stone. 
 The material at Rome is much softer than the free-stone of Paris, and 
 supplied the ancient Romans with the earth called poezolana. This, 
 which is so abundantly diffused over the neighbourhood of Rome, is 
 generally said to be of volcanic origin, and is used very largely for 
 making cement. It was known to the ancients, and was called 
 pulds Puteolanus, from the circumstance of its being found in great 
 quantities near Puteoli. Vitruvius mentions it ; and it seems to be 
 his opinion, as it is that of the moderns, that the same cause which 
 produces volcanoes, is instrumental in forming this earth." * 
 
 There appears to be evidence enough, that these subterraneous 
 excavations were used by the Christians, in which to hide themselves 
 from their persecutors. Eusebius, speaking of the troubles in Egypt, 
 represents the Governor JEmilianus as saying, " Neither you, nor any 
 others, shall in any wise be permitted, either to hold conventions, 
 or to enter what you call your cemeteries." j- He mentions, also, 
 the same prohibition as being enforced by Maximinus.J Fabian 
 ordered several buildings to be constructed in the cemeteries ; and 
 from Cyprian we learn that Sextus and Quartus suffered martyrdom 
 in them. The Christians appear never to have adopted the Roman 
 custom of burning the dead. Macrobius says, that in his time, at 
 the end of the fourth century, the custom of burning the dead was 
 entirely left off; and as burial within the walls was prohibited, they 
 naturally had recourse to those places which had served as a retreat 
 and refuge for the living. Jerome has left us a lively picture of their 
 state during the early part of his life-time, that is, about the middle 
 of the fourth century. " When I was at Rome," says the Monk of 
 Palestine, " still a youth, and employed in literary pursuits, I was 
 accustomed, in company with others of my own age, and actuated by 
 the same feelings, to visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the Apostles 
 
 remembrance what ancient authors have written, and modern travellers have verified, 
 concerning the appearance of the Cretan and other classic labyrinths. That these 
 subterranean corridors were commenced by the ancient Romans, and the greater part 
 of them the work of that people anterior to the preaching of the Gospel, is certain ; 
 though it is equally well attested, that they were arranged, enlarged, and rendered avail- 
 able to the several purposes of sepulture, of religious worship, and of occasional resi- 
 dence, by the persecuted Christians. (Rock's Hierurgia, p. 797. See also Lumisden'a 
 Remarks on the Antiquities of Rome, 4to., p. 96 ; De Urbis ac Roman! olim Imperil 
 Splendore, Opus Eruditionibus, Historiis, ac Animadvemonibus, tarn sacris quam pro- 
 fanis, illustratum, Auctore Joanne Baptista Casalio, Romano, Romae Anno Jubilei, 
 cap. xv., p. 56, fol., 1050; Sketches of the Institutions and Domestic Manners 
 of the Romans, second edition, 12mo., p. 397 ; Roman Antiquities, or an Account 
 of the Manners and Customs of the Romans, by Alexander Adam, LL. D., seventh 
 edition, 12mo., p. 408, el seq. ; Itinerario Instruttivo di Roma Antica e Moderna, ovvero 
 Descrizione Generate Dei Monumenti, &c., e delle sue Adiacenze, di Mariano, Vasi, 
 torn, ii., p. 270, Roma, 1812 ; Burton's Description of the Antiquities of Rome, 8vo. 
 edit., p. 480, 1821. 
 
 * Burton's Description of the Antiquities and other Curiosities of Rome. 8vo. Edit, 
 p. 480. London, 1821. 
 
 t Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vii., cap. 11. The Christians called their burial-places 
 cemeteries, Koijurjr^pia, " dormitories," because death in the light of the Gospel is a 
 " sleep." Well may Christianity be pronounced the only true philosophy, when she 
 arrays our greatest terrors in such a light ! 
 
 t Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. ix., cap. 2. 
 
 5 Cypriani Opera, Epist. Ixxxi. Ad Successum. 
 
 2x2
 
 340 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 and martyrs ; and often to go down into the crypts dug in the 
 heart of the earth, where the walls on either side are lined with the 
 dead ; and so intense is the darkness, that we almost realize the 
 words of the Prophet, 'They go down alive into hell ;' and here and 
 there a scanty aperture, ill-deserving the name of window, admits 
 scarcely light enough to mitigate the gloom which reigns below : and 
 as we advance through the shades with cautious steps, we are forcibly 
 reminded of the words of Virgil, ' Horror on all sides ; even the 
 silence terrifies the mind.'" * 
 
 Dr. Maitland, in his interesting work, entitled, "The Church in 
 the Catacombs," has proved, by historical evidence, that these excava- 
 tions were originally dug by the Pagans as sand-pits or quarries ; and 
 then proceeds to show the manner in which the Christians became 
 connected with them.f The arenarii, or " sand-diggers," were per- 
 sons of the lowest grade ; and, from the nature of their occupation, 
 probably formed a distinct class. There is reason to suppose, that 
 Christianity spread very early among them : for in time of persecu- 
 tion, the converts employed in the subterranean passages, not only 
 took refuge there themselves, but also put the whole church in 
 possession of these, otherwise inaccessible, retreats. When we reflect 
 upon the trials which awaited the church, and the combined powers 
 of earth and hell, which menaced its earliest years, it is impossible 
 not to recognise the fostering care of a heavenly hand in thus pro- 
 viding a cradle for the infant community. Perhaps to the protection 
 afforded by the catacombs, as an impregnable fortress from which 
 persecution always failed to dislodge, the church in Rome owed much 
 of the rapidity of its triumph, and the preservation of its sanc- 
 tuaries. " It appears," he further observes, " from a number of testi- 
 monies, not, perhaps, of any great value individually, though of some 
 weight when combined, that the early confessors were at times sen- 
 tenced to work in the sand-pits. This species of punishment is referred 
 to in many Acts of the Martyrs, and especially in those of Marcellus, 
 
 * Hieron., Comment, in Ezekiel., cap. xl. Opera, torn, iii., col. 980. Ed. Bene- 
 dict. Fol., Paris, 1699. 
 
 t From various reasons, the caves near the present Basilica of St. Sebastian, are 
 considered by antiquarians as having been the first occupied by the Christians. To these, 
 in particular, were applied the expressions, ad arenas, cryptte arenaria:, and cryptte ; 
 to which the Christians added the Greek form, ad catacumbas. The term "catacombs," 
 therefore, signified originally, the pits about that part of the Appian Way ; and we find 
 the phrases in calacurnbas, of the seventh century 5 and juxta, catacumbas of the 
 thirteenth, limited to a space extending from the church of St. Sebastian, to the circus 
 of Romulus, and the tomb of Cecilia Metella. Anastasius, in the Liber Pontificalis, 
 must have used the words in cemeterio catacumbarvm, to designate this particular spot, 
 as some manuscripts read, in cemeterio Callisti. Lastly, the phrase, locus gui dicitur 
 catacumbas, is used by Gregory, in the thirtieth Epistle of the fourth book, as indi- 
 cating a spot two miles distant from Rome, that is, the Sebastian catacombs. To sum 
 up the history of the word, which, though of Greek form, claims no early origin, it is 
 nowhere found in inscriptions belonging to the ancient cemeteries ; nor does it occur in 
 history before the time of Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, from which to the 
 thirteenth, it generally signified a part of the country near Rome. Still later it was 
 applied, in a limited sense, to a chapel underneath the Basilica of St. Sebastian, 
 as observed by Raoul Rochette ; and, in our own times, it has become a generic term 
 for all subterranean passages of a certain length and tortuosity, whether they lie 
 beneath the pyramids of the desert, or undermine the site of a modern metropolis. 
 (Maitland's Church in the Catacombs.)
 
 THE CATACOMBS. 341 
 
 where we are told, that the Emperor Maximian 'condemned all 
 the Roman soldiers who were Cliristians, to hard labour ; and 
 in various places set them to work, some to dig stones, others sand.' 
 He also ordered Ciriacus and Sisinnus to be strictly guarded, con- 
 demning them to dig sand, and to carry it on their shoulders. 
 Marius and his companions were sentenced to the same employment. 
 There is, also, a tradition in Rome, that the baths of Diocletian were 
 built from the materials procured by the Christians." The objec- 
 tions which have been raised to the catacombs having been em- 
 ployed as a place of refuge from persecution, founded upon the 
 narrowness of the passages, the difficulty of supporting life, and the 
 risk of discovery, scarcely apply to a temporary residence under- 
 ground in times of danger. Under other circumstances, we have 
 reason to believe the catacombs were not employed. " In the exca- 
 vations at Quesnel, not only persons, but cattle, contrived to support 
 existence ; added to which, we have the direct testimony of several 
 writers. Had the intricacies of the catacombs been well known to 
 the heathen authorities, or the entrances limited in number to two or 
 three, they would, doubtless, have afforded an insecure asylum. But 
 the entrances were numberless, scattered over the campagna for 
 miles ; and the labyrinths below so occupied by the Christians, and 
 so blocked up in various places by them, that pursuit must have been 
 almost useless. The Acts of the Martyrs relate some attempts made to 
 overwhelm the galleries with mounds of earth, in order to destroy those 
 who were concealed within ; but, setting aside these legends, we are 
 credibly informed, that not only did the Christians take refuge there, 
 they were also occasionally overtaken by their pursuers. The cata- 
 combs have become illustrious by the actual martyrdom of some noble 
 witnesses to the truth. Xystus, Bishop of Rome, together with Quar- 
 tus, one of his clergy, suffered below ground in the time of Cyprian. 
 Stephen the First,* another Bishop of Rome, was traced by heathen 
 soldiers to his subterranean chapel: on the conclusion of divine 
 service, he was thrust back into his episcopal chair, and beheaded. 
 The letters of Christians then living, refer to such scenes with a sim- 
 plicity that dispels all idea of exaggeration ; while their expectation 
 of sharing the same fate affords a vivid picture of those dreadful 
 times. Chrysostom, who lived not long after the days of persecu- 
 tion, alludes to the concealment of a lady of rank below ground. In 
 an indignant remonstrance against the festivities held over the graves 
 
 An authentic history of Stephen, daring his long residence in the catacombs, 
 would be surpassed in interest by few narratives in the ecclesiastical archives. Some 
 instances have been handed down to ns. From time to time he was consulted by his 
 Clergy, who resorted to him for advice and exhortation. On one occasion, a layman 
 named Hippolytus, himself a refugee, songht the Bishop's cell to receive instruction 
 regarding a circumstance that preyed upon his mind. Paulina, his heathen sister, 
 together with her husband Adrian, were in the habit of sending provisions by their tw 
 children to Hippolytus, and his companions. The unconverted state of these relations, 
 by whom his bodily life was supported, weighed heavily upon him, and, by the advice ft 
 Stephen, a plan was laid for detaining the children, so that the parents were forced 
 to seek them in the cavern. Every argument was used by Stephen and Hippolytus to 
 induce their benefactors to embrace the faith, and though for the time ineffectual, the 
 desired end was at length accomplished. Tradition adds, that they all suffered martyr- 
 dom, and were buried in the catacombs. (Maitland's Church in the Catacombs.)
 
 342 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 of martyrs in his dissipated city, he compares with the luxurious 
 revels into which the agapse had degenerated, the actual condition of 
 those whose sufferings were celebrated in so unbefitting a manner. 
 'What connexion,' he asks, 'is there between your feasts, and the 
 hardships of a lady unaccustomed to privations, trembling in a vault, 
 apprehensive of the capture of her maid, upon whom she depends 
 for her daily food ?' These circumstances prove sufficiently the gene- 
 ral habit of taking refuge in the cemeteries on any sudden emer- 
 gency ; and it is not difficult to understand how the concealment 
 became practicable. On the outbreak of a persecution, the Elders of 
 a church, heads of families, and others particularly obnoxious to the 
 Pagans, would be the first to suffer; perhaps, the only individuals 
 whose death or exile was intended by the imperial officers. Aware 
 of their danger, and, probably, well versed in the signs of impending 
 persecution, they might easily betake themselves to the catacombs, 
 where they could be supported by those whose obscure condition left 
 them at liberty." * 
 
 The accounts which are extant of Hadrian's travels for the next 
 three years, throw but little light upon the history of the church. He 
 traversed nearly the whole of Asia Minor, visited Egypt, and, pro- 
 bably, Judea. In all these countries he, doubtless, witnessed many 
 superstitions, especially in Egypt ; and he was a close observer of 
 these peculiarities. He spent a considerable time in Greece ; and in 
 the year 125, he again visited Athens, when he was initiated into the 
 Eleusinian mysteries : during the whole of this period, there is reason 
 to believe that the Christians were exposed to great persecution. 
 The individual whom we meet with as the successor of Dionysius the 
 Areopagite, is supposed to have been Publius, who is said to have 
 suffered martyrdom,j- and to have been succeeded by Quadratus. There 
 is, however, positive evidence that the church suffered great molesta- 
 tion during the visit of Hadrian ; and that Quadratus embraced 
 the opportunity of presenting $ to the Emperor a defence of Christi- 
 anity. Aristides, also, another Christian of Athens, and a philoso- 
 pher, composed a similar work about the same period, which he 
 dedicated to Hadrian ; and we may suppose that, from these two 
 works, the Emperor would form a different notion of Christianity 
 
 * Maitiand, The Church in the Catacombs, a Description of the Primitive Church of 
 Rome, illustrated by its Sepulchral Remains, p. 30. 8vo. London, 1846. 
 
 t The date of the death of Publius is uncertain : some place it at the time of Hadri- 
 an's visit to Athens, and others much, later, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Some 
 ascribe to this event a much earlier date. Le Sueur placed it A.n. 113. "Nous 
 avons dit en 1'an 91, qu'a la place de Denis 1' Areopagite Publius fut etable Eveque de 
 1'Eglise, d'Athenes. 11 y exerca dignement sa charge jusqu'a cette annee, oil la 
 persecution etant redoublee, il souffrit constamment le martire pour la foi qu'il avoit 
 enseignee." (Le Sueur Histoire de 1'Eglise, et de i'Empire, torn, i., p. 222. 
 
 J It is nowhere expressly stated, that the Apology was put into the hands of the 
 Emperor by the author, or read in his presence. Jortin remarks, that -arpofftpiaveiv 
 means to " dedicate a book," which may be done without presenting it in person. At 
 the same time, from the character of the work, and from the interest excited respect- 
 Ing the subject, he is disposed to think the book was certainly known to the Emperor. 
 
 " Aristides, also, a man faithfully devoted to the religion we profess, like Quadra- 
 tus, has left to posterity a defence of the faith addressed to Hadrian." (Euseb., Hist. 
 Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 3. See also Hieron., Liber De Viris Illustrious, cap. xx.)
 
 GENEBAL PERSECUTION. 343 
 
 from that which he had collected from its interested enemies. Both 
 these Apologies are lost, although Eusebius has preserved a small 
 fragment of that of Quadratus ; from which we learn, that the writer 
 had seen persons who had been miraculously cured by our Saviour ; or, 
 at least, that some of these persons had lived to what might be called 
 his own times.* These appear to have been the first of those inter- 
 esting works, which, under the name of Apologies, f or defences, were 
 addressed by the more learned of the Christians to their heathen 
 Governors. Although Hadrian does not seem to have repelled the 
 respectful homage of these apologists, persecution was still indulged, 
 and the clamour of the people was recognised as the language of .the 
 imperial throne. In many of the Asiatic cities, the apparently 
 sullen and unsocial absence of the Christians from the public assem- 
 blies, from the games, and from other popular exhibitions, provoked, 
 or, at least, gave occasion for the latent animosity to break out 
 against them. A general acclamation frequently demanded their mar- 
 tyrdom. " The Christians to the lions !" was again the general outcry ; 
 and the names of the most prominent or obnoxious of the commu- 
 nity would be denounced, with the same sudden and uncontrollable 
 hostility. A weak or superstitious Magistrate trembled before the 
 tumultuous cry, and generally became the willing and obsequious 
 instrument of the popular fury. It was an established privilege of 
 the Roman people, of the exercise of which innumerable instances are 
 to be found in the Roman history, that, whenever the commonalty 
 were assembled at the exhibition of public games, whether it were in 
 the city or in the provinces, they might demand what they pleased of 
 the Emperors or the Presidents ; and their demands, thus made, must 
 be complied with. When the multitude, therefore, collected together at 
 the public games, united in one general clamour for the punishment of 
 the Christians at large, or of certain individuals belonging to that sect, 
 the Presidents, as before stated, had no alternative but to comply with 
 their demand, and sacrifice, at least, several innocent victims to their 
 fury. The heathen priesthood availed themselves of this custom, in order 
 to evade the rescript of Trajan. Finding that few individuals could 
 be induced to take upon themselves the unthankful and perilous 
 office of accuser, they made it their business, on every favourable 
 occasion, to excite the lower orders of the people to join in one 
 disorderly clamour. To general and public accusations of this 
 kind, no degree of hazard was attached ; whilst, on the other hand, 
 it was a thing of no ordinary danger amongst the Romans to turn a 
 deaf ear to them, or treat them with disrespect. J Under the reign 
 
 * " The deeds of our Saviour were always before you, for they were true miracles ; 
 those that were healed, those that were raised from the dead, who were seen, not only 
 when henled, and when raised, but were always present. They remained living a long 
 time, not only whilst our Lord was upon earth, but likewise when he had left the 
 earth : eo that some of them have also lived to our own times." Such was Quadratus. 
 (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 3.) 
 
 t The word airo\<ryia, which we translate " answer," signifies a defence : from this 
 we have our word " apology," which did not originally signify an excuse for an act, hut 
 a defence of that act. The defences of Christianity, by the primitive fathers, are called 
 Apologies. (Dr. A. Clarke.) 
 
 t Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. li., pp. 52 fi4.
 
 344 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 of Hadrian, it was comparatively easy for the heathen priesthood to 
 lead the multitude to unite in one universal cry for the destruction of 
 the Christians ; for, as Eusebius records, the Gnostic sects, which 
 seem to have been made up in part of evil-designing persons, and in 
 part of madmen and fools, were at that time continually obtruding 
 themselves on the attention of the world ; and the crimes and infa- 
 mous practices of which these were guilty, being indiscriminately 
 imputed to the Christians in general, the public prejudice was in no 
 small degree increased against the whole body.* " They taught that 
 the basest deeds should be perpetrated by those that would arrive 
 at . perfection in the mysteries, or rather that would reach the 
 extent of their abominations. So that, as they were accustomed to 
 speak, one could in no other way escape the rulers of the world, 
 unless by performing his part of obscenity to all. By the aid of such 
 coadjutors, it happened that the spirit of wickedness enslaved those 
 that were led astray by them to their own destruction ; whilst to the 
 unbelieving Gentiles they afforded abundant scope to slander the 
 truth of God ; as the report proceeding from them extended, with its 
 infamy, to the whole body of Christians. In this way it happened, 
 therefore, for the most part, that a certain impious and most absurd 
 superstition was spread abroad among the unbelievers respecting us, 
 as of those who had unlawful commerce with mothers and sisters, 
 and made use of execrable food. These artifices, however, did not 
 continue to advance far, as the truth nevertheless established itself, 
 and in process of time shed abroad its own light more and more. 
 Indeed, the machinations of its enemies were almost immediately 
 extinguished by the power of truth ; one sect rising after another, the 
 first always passing away, and one in one way, and another in ano- 
 ther, evaporating into speculations of many modes, and as many 
 forms." f 
 
 In the mean time, persecution against the Christian church was 
 prosecuted with animosity and vigour, as recorded in the history 
 of Serapia and Sabina. The former was a native of Antioch, in Syria, 
 where she had been educated in the principles of the Christian faith. 
 When young, she visited Italy, and providentially became acquainted 
 with Sabina, a widow lady, the relict of an officer of some distinction in 
 the army of Vespasian. Serapia, by her judicious and godly conversa- 
 tion and example, so influenced the mind of Sabina, that she embraced 
 the truth, and subsequently, with her preceptress, retired to a small 
 town called Vendina, where they lived, employing their time in acts 
 of devotion and charity, until the persecution which occurred iu the 
 reign of Hadrian, after he had been initiated into the Eleusinian mys- 
 teries. Berillus, the Governor of that part of the country, knowing 
 that Sabina and the whole of her family were Christians, commanded 
 them to be brought before him. Sabina, on receiving the summons, 
 sent an apology, and desired to be excused ; declaring, at the same 
 time, that not one of her family should have her consent to leave the 
 house. Serapia, apprehending what might be the consequences of 
 
 p. 54. 
 
 Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 5< 
 t Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 7.
 
 SUKAFIA AND SAIUNA. 34J 
 
 exasperating the Magistrate, desired that she might be permitted to 
 appear alone, hoping that the Most High would not forsake her in 
 this her hour of trial. Sabina, sensible of the danger to which such 
 an act would expose her, endeavoured to dissuade her from it ; but, 
 finding she could not prevail, she resolved to accompany her. When 
 they appeared before Berillus, he manifested too great respect for the 
 rank and station of Sabina to treat her with rudeness ; and therefore, 
 with apparent concern, informed her that he was surprised that a 
 lady of her character and station should so far degrade herself as to 
 embrace Christianity at the suggestion of a vile witch, a term which 
 he unceremoniously applied to Serapia. To this Sabina promptly 
 replied, that she heartily wished she could see him in the power 
 of that witch, who would teach him to renounce idolatry, and acknow- 
 ledge the only true God. The Governor, after further remonstrating, 
 permitted them to return home. 
 
 Three days after, Berillus sent his officers to seize Serapia, and 
 bring her before him. Sabina, alarmed, accompanied her, and em- 
 ployed various entreaties in her favour ; but finding the Magistrate 
 deaf to all that she urged, she returned to her house overwhelmed 
 with anxiety and sorrow. The Judge forthwith proceeded to inform 
 Serapia, that she must sacrifice to the gods of the empire. She 
 replied, that her religion would not allow her to adore such false divi- 
 nities ; that she worshipped God in her heart ; and that her body, as 
 long as she kept that pure and undefiled, was the temple of the living 
 God, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, but in the hearts 
 of the faithful and undefiled. Upon this, Berillus asked whether, 
 if her body were violated, it would cease to be the temple of her God. 
 To which she answered in the affirmative ; and, at the same time, 
 denounced a curse against any who might attempt sucli violation. 
 The Governor, in no degree affected by these threats, ordered her to 
 be conveyed to a common brothel, and surrendered into the hands 
 of two miscreants, who were ordered to use her as they thought fit. 
 But, earnestly calling upon God, Serapia obtained deliverance ; for 
 we are told, that when these wretches entered the apartment, they 
 fell into a swoon, from which they did not recover until all around 
 were convinced that her prayer was heard. The Heathens imputed 
 her deliverance to her magical powers ; and the Governor forthwith, 
 with considerable gravity, required the sufferer to disclose her art. 
 To which she declared, that she detested all such charms, inasmuch 
 as they proceeded from the devil ; but that her trust was in the 
 living God. Berillus then renewed his solicitations that she should 
 sacrifice to the pagan deities ; suggesting to her, in terms not to be 
 misunderstood, that if she refused, her life should pay the penalty 
 of her disobedience. Her reply was, that she would never adore 
 demons ; when the Governor directed a flaming torch to be applied 
 to her side, repeating, at the same time, his assurance that nothing 
 but compliance with his commands should save her life. She was 
 invincible. Finding, therefore, that he could prevail nothing, and 
 that she was steadfast in the faith, he delivered her to the execution- 
 ers, by whom she was cruelly scourged and tortured, and ultimately 
 
 VOL. i. 2 Y
 
 346 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 beheaded. Sabina took care of her remains, providing for them a 
 decent interment. 
 
 It was not long before Sabina was subjected to a similar ordeal. 
 Berillus, from respect to her person and station, hesitated to proceed 
 against her ; but Elpidius, by whom he was either succeeded in his 
 office, or who held jurisdiction independent of him, did not prove so 
 generous and mild. By his mandate she was apprehended, and 
 treated far beneath her rank. He inquired how she could so far 
 forget herself as to embrace the religion of the Christians, the 
 life of whom was no better than death. She replied, that she 
 returned thanks to Jesus Christ her Lord, who by means of Serapia 
 had delivered her from the power of demons.* This declaration, 
 with others to the same effect, so enraged the Magistrate, that he 
 swore by all the gods, if she did not immediately offer sacrifice to 
 them, he would revenge the affront by her death. After trying 
 various methods of persuasion and torture to induce her compliance, 
 all of which proved iueffectual, he sentenced her to be beheaded, and 
 her property confiscated. We are informed that she suffered on the 
 same day as Serapia, but in the following year.-j- 
 
 In the midst of the cruelty and oppression which were in nume- 
 rous provinces exercised towards the Christians, Serenus Granius, the 
 Proconsul of Asia, wrote a letter to Hadrian, which is unfortunately 
 lost ; but in which he solicited instructions as to the mode of treating 
 the Christians. He appears to have been a humane and equitable 
 Magistrate, and utterly averse to the apparent injustice of putting the 
 followers of Christ to death, merely to gratify the clamours of the 
 populace, and for no actual crime. There is also too much reason to 
 conclude that the order which was given by Trajan, in his reply to 
 Pliny, was acted upon with a strictness and severity which were not 
 originally contemplated. Trajan had allowed the Christians to be 
 punished, merely as Christians. All that he required was the name 
 
 " Serapie (Sainte), vierge et martyre ea Italie, dans le second siecle, convertit, & 
 ce que portent les actes de sa vie, une dame de la province d'Ombrie, nominee Sabine, 
 chez laquelle elle demeuroit. Elle fut arretee par ordre du Juge, declara qu'elie etoit 
 Chretienne, et fut condamnee a etre raise dans un lieu infame, pour etre abandonnee a 
 deux Egyptiens. Dieu permit que ces deux hommes en entrant dans ce lieu fussent 
 saisis d'un etourdissement, qui les empecha d'atleuter a la pudicite de Serapie. Le 
 Juge 1'ayant fait veuir de nouveau a son tribunal la sollicita a sacrifier aux dieux ; et 
 coinme elle persista a le refuser, il lui fit donner des coups de baton, et la condamna a 
 avoir la tete trancb.ee. On tient que Sabine fut aussi condamnee a mort un an apres. 
 On fait leur memoire au troisieme de Septembre ; et des le cinquieme siecle il y avoit a 
 Rome une eglise qui portoit le nom de Sainte Sabine ; mais les actes de ces deux 
 saintes ne sont pas authentiqnes. A eta apud Mombricium et Balusium, torn, ii., Mis- 
 cellanea, Le Nain de Tillemont, Memoires pour 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique, Baillet, Vies 
 des Saintes, Moreri." Alban Butler is very chary in the account which he has given 
 of these supposed Martyrs. (Surius De Probatis Sanctorum, Aug. 29.) 
 
 t " Adrian! Imperatoris anno septimo Serapia virgo Autiochena Romam venit, et 
 dominam suam Sabinam, viduam Valentini, patricii Romani, ad udem Christi convertit. 
 Ea de causa accusata apud Praesidem Berillum cum diis sacrificare nollet, capite truncata 
 est. Sabina verd domina ejus ciim virginis Serapiae corpus honestae sepulturae mandas- 
 set, apud Praefectum Helpidium accusata, et in praetorium adducta, Christum constanter 
 et masculo animo confessa, et in idolomamam Ethnicam graviter invecta est. Qua- 
 propter gladio percussa est : et facilitates ejus aerario publico cesserunt ; ipsa verd laeta, 
 et cum invocatione nomiuis divini martyrium est perpessa." (Osiand., Epit. Hist. Eccles., 
 cent, ii., lib. i., cap. 13, torn, i., quarto, p. 24. Tiibing, 1592.)
 
 RESCRIPT OF HADRIAN. 34" 
 
 of the accuser, aud an admission of the fact ; and nothing more was 
 wanting to gratify the malice of the heathen Priests and their depend- 
 ents. It was easy to raise the cry of the people on their side. The 
 rabble in a Roman or Grecian city could not be better pleased, than 
 to have a supply of victims always ready for the wild beasts in the 
 circus. The Christians were condemned to this savage butchery ; and 
 if any public calamity had happened, the multitude was persuaded 
 that the wrath of heaven would be appeased if the Christians were 
 put to death.* The Magistrates who succeeded Pliny had perhaps 
 made themselves popular by yielding to the shouts of the people, and 
 giving up the Christians to amuse them in the amphitheatre ; but 
 Granius felt scruples in acting upon such an edict, which was so 
 manifestly cruel and unjust. f Hadrian was in no haste to return an 
 answer : it was addressed, not to Grauius, who shortly after he had 
 written the epistle quitted his command, but to Minutius Fundanus, 
 his successor. The answer is preserved by Justin Martyr, which may 
 be considered the second positive edict or rescript of an Emperor 
 concerning the Christians, and is as follows : 
 
 "THE LETTER OF HADRIAN THE EMPEROR, TO THE PROCONSTJL 
 MINUCIUS FUNDATUS. 
 
 " I HAVE received a letter written to me by the very illustrious 
 Serenius Granius, your predecessor in office. The subject is one 
 which I feel bound to inquire into, both that these people may not 
 be vexatiously disturbed, and that base informers may not be encou- 
 raged in their vile occupation. To the matter, then : if the people 
 of the province will appear openly to support their charges against 
 the Christians, so as to give them opportunity of answering for them- 
 selves before the tribunal, let them keep to this alone, and not pro- 
 ceed by rude demands, and vain clamours ; for it is much more 
 becoming, if any one wishes to accuse, that you should take regular 
 cognizance of the matter. If, then, any one shall accuse them, and 
 show that they are breaking the laws, do you determine according to 
 the degree of their offence. But if, by Hercules, the charge prove to 
 be a calumny, do you estimate the enormity of such calumny, and 
 take care to punish it." 
 
 * " But, on the contrary, the name of ' faction ' must be applied to those who are 
 banded together in enmity against the good and the honest, who join together then- cry 
 against the blood of the innocent ; pretending, forsooth, in defence of their enmity, that 
 vain excuse also, that they think the Christians to be the cause of every public calamity, 
 of every national ill. If the Tiber come up to the walls, if the Nile come not up to the 
 fields, if the heaven have stood still, if the earth hath been moved, if there be any 
 famine, if any pestilence, ' The Christians to the lions ! ' is forthwith the word-. Before 
 the age of Tiberius, that is, before the coming of Christ, how many calamities, I 
 pray, afflicted the world and the city ? We read that Hiera, Anaphe, and the islands 
 Delos, and Rhodes, and Cos, were, with many thousand men, utterly destroyed. Even 
 Plato relateth that a land larger than Asia and Africa was snatched away by the 
 Atlantic Ocean. An earthquake, moreover, hath drained the Corinthian sea ; and the 
 force of the waves hath separated Lucania from Italy, and banished it, to bear the name 
 of Sicily. Surely these things could not happen without harm to the inhabitants. But 
 where were, I will not say the Christians, the despisera of your gods, but your god 
 themselves, at that time ?" (Tertull., Apologet. 40.) 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xri. 
 
 2 Y 2
 
 348 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 There is, however, reason to believe that this edict of the Emperor, 
 moderate as it confessedly was, experienced numerous evasions, owin* 
 to the different construction which Magistrates would put upon it; 
 but the Christians could not now, as formerly, be thrown to the lions 
 because the people were impatient, and clamoured for blood. Hadrian 
 began to reprobate wanton and malicious informations ; and an accuser 
 for a time ran no little risk, who summoned a Christian to meet him 
 in a court of judicature. Some writers assert that persecution did 
 not cease until after a period of three years, under the impression 
 that the edict occupied this time in persuading the Priests and people 
 that the Christians could only be punished for some definite crime : 
 be this so ; several of the despised and suffering church began to 
 defend themselves in writing ; and the numerous absurdities and 
 vagaries 01 polytheism were rendered justly and with ease assailable 
 by the ridiculous, but zealous, endeavours of Hadrian to support it. 
 The deification of his favourite Antinous,* who was drowned in the 
 Nile, about the year 129, supplied the Christian apologists with the 
 powerful weapon, sarcasm ; and it must not be overlooked, that 
 amidst all the efforts of the heathen Priests to excite hostility towards 
 the church of Christ, there were but few who ventured to meet them 
 in the arena of argument. 
 
 It was about this period that Hadrian passed a law which could 
 not fail materially to affect the Christians. It was designated the 
 " Imperial Edict," j- and was drawn up by Salvius Julianus, a lawyer 
 of some celebrity, who, with some others of the same profession, was 
 consulted by the Emperor. " It enacted," says Dr. Burton, " that 
 all cities and towns throughout the empire should follow the laws and 
 customs of Rome, instead of their own local regulations, which used 
 to be published at the beginning of each year, and ceased to be in 
 force when the year was ended. Hadrian must have seen the incon- 
 venience of this system in the course of his travels ; and the perpe- 
 
 "Antinous is represented as having been an extremely beautiful youth, which 
 induced Hadrian to take him as his page and companion in all his journeys. He was a 
 native of the town of Bithynum, also called Claudiopolis, in Bithynia. While Hadrian 
 was staying in Egypt, Antinous was drowned in the Nile, by accident ; but Dion Cas- 
 sius thinks it more probable that he threw himself into the river, with the view of avert- 
 ing some danger which threatened his master. The Emperor's grief knew no bounds. 
 On the spot where his favourite had perished he built a city, which was called Antino- 
 opolis, or Antinoea. Temples were raised to him in Egypt and several parts of 
 Greece, and the number of his statues was immense. The constellation which bears 
 the name of Antinous, to the present day, was declared by the soothsayers to be the 
 soul of that individual, and to have come into existence on the day on which he died. 
 In some places, as at Bithynum, and at Mantinea in Peloponnesus, Antinous was wor- 
 shipped as a god ; and in the latter place mysteries were celebrated in honour of him 
 every year, and games every fifth year." (See Pausanias, lib. viii., cap. ix., sect. 4 ; 
 Dion Cassins. lib. Ixix., p. 793, fol., Hanoviae, 1606 ; Spartianus in Hadrian., cap. 
 xiv.) 
 
 t " I do not conceive that this law of Hadrian, in its import, differed very materially 
 from that of Trajan ; but that the punishment of death continued still to be inflicted, 
 under the imperial sanction, on all such Christians as were convicted of professing a 
 contempt for the gods, and persisted in refusing to alter their opinion. ' Si quis ergo 
 accuset et ostendat quidpiam contra leges ab iis factum, tu pro gravitate delicti statue.' 
 The form of expression is at least ambiguous, and left to the Presidents the most ample 
 power of punishing the Christians, since the worship of the gods was enjoined by die 
 laws." (Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 65.)
 
 BARCOCHEBAS. 349 
 
 tual edict, in a civil point of view, was a great improvement. It is 
 supposed to have been promulgated in the year 131 or 132, at which 
 time the Emperor appears to have been principally in Greece ; and 
 there is no evidence that he intended it to operate to the prejudice 
 of the Christians. It may, however, have had this tendency, when 
 executed by persons who were enemies of the Gospel. The rule, that 
 all places should follow the laws and customs of Rome, might be con- 
 strued to mean, that there should be an uniformity in religious, as 
 well as in civil, institutions ; and thus the perpetual edict might be 
 made a direct means of harassing the Christians, who certainly did 
 not adhere, in matters of religion, to the laws and customs of Rome." 
 This edict remained in force until the death of Hadrian, though 
 attempts were frequently made to evade the difficulty which it threw 
 in the way of the enemies of Christianity, by charges of impiety and 
 atheism. Tranquillity was doubtless restored to the church at large ; 
 but in Judea it was broken by the frantic proceedings of an impostor 
 named Barcochebas, who inflicted the most cruel tortures upon the 
 followers of the Redeemer in that country, who refused to recognise 
 his character as a Prophet, or to unite with him against the Romans. 
 Hadrian also found employment which effectually drew his atten- 
 tion from the Christian church, at least for a time. 
 
 For some time the Jews had manifested symptoms of discontent, 
 and bore with great impatience the introduction of heathen practices 
 into the holy city. They durst not have recourse to arms while the 
 Emperor was in their neighbourhood ; and so long as his travels kept 
 him in Syria and Egypt, they concealed their intentions. The insur- 
 rection occurred about the year 132, when Jerusalem was not merely 
 a mass of ruins inhabited by the stranger, but when the Pagans were 
 about to make their permanent residence upon the site of Sion, and a 
 temple to a Gentile idol to usurp the place which was once filled with 
 the glory of the Schekinah. At this momentous crisis, when the 
 expectations of the Israelites were trembling between alternate hope 
 and fear, it was announced that the Messiah had appeared. He had 
 come in power and in glory, and his name was said to have fulfilled 
 the prophecy of Balaam. Barcochebas,* or Barochab, the son of the 
 star, was foolishly asserted to be that luminary which was to arise out 
 of Jacob. Wonders attended upon his person, he breathed flames 
 from his mouth,f which no doubt would burn up the strength of the 
 proud oppressor, and wither the armies of the tyrannical Hadrian. 
 He was a man of no common vigour and ability. At the first threat- 
 ening of the revolt, Rufus, who was then Prefect in Palestine, poured 
 all the troops he had into the disturbed districts ; he seized and 
 imprisoned Akiba, the second in command ; but either his forces 
 
 Little is known of his previous history. According to report, ho had at one time 
 been a robber, and his conduct shows, that he must have been a man thoroughly con- 
 versant with scenes of blood and rapine ; while the devotedness of his followers, and the 
 vigorous, and, for a time, successful, resistance he made to the Romans, evince him a 
 man of talent and energy. (Basnage's History of the Jews.) 
 
 t He had learned a trick of keeping lighted tow, or straw, in his mouth, which was 
 the secret of his breathing flames, to the terror of his enemies, and the unbounded con- 
 fidence cfhis partisans. (Mtlman's History of the Jews, vol. iii., p. 118.)
 
 350 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 or his ability were unequal to the crisis. The Romans could not 
 believe that, with the former war still vivid in the memory of the 
 fathers of the present generation, the Jews would provoke the danger 
 of a second exterminating conflict. But for some time the insurgents 
 had been busily employed in laying up stores of arms. By degrees 
 they obtained possession of all the strong heights, raised walls and 
 fortifications, dug or enlarged subterranean caverns and passages, 
 both for retreat and communication, and contrived, by holes from 
 above, to let light and air into those secret citadels, where they depo- 
 sited their arms, held their councils, and concealed themselves from 
 the vigilance of the enemy. Multitudes crowded openly, or stole in 
 secret, to range themselves under the banner of the insurgents. The 
 whole Jewish race was in commotion. Those who could not assist in 
 person, contributed their treasures ; so that Barcochebas, if we may 
 credit the Rabbins, found himself, ere long, at the head of two hundred 
 thousand men.* The Christians alone stood aloof, and would lend 
 no ear nor pay any respect to the claims of another Messiah, a man 
 of robbery and bloodshed, of earthly pretensions, and the aspirant 
 founder of a temporal kingdom : consequently, the insurgent sub- 
 jected those whom he could place within his power to the most cruel 
 tortures, and put all such to death without mercy as refused, in spite 
 of the various torments which were inflicted upon them, to abjure the 
 faith of Christ. 
 
 The first expedition of Barcochebas was to make himself master 
 of the ruins of Jerusalem, upon which his banner was first unfurled, 
 and where he assumed the name of King, and issued coins with hia 
 superscription. f The Jews, however, shrunk from a battle in the 
 open field. The Roman Commander, Turnus Rufus, revenged him- 
 self with the most unrelenting cruelties on the defenceless. Accord- 
 ing to Eusebius,! he put to death thousands of men, women, and 
 children. But the obstinate courage and activity of the Jews were 
 unbroken ; they pursued their deliberate system of defence ; so that 
 on the arrival of the celebrated Julius Severus, who was sent to 
 supersede Rufus, to take the command, they were in possession 
 of fifty of the strongest castles, and nine hundred and eighty-five 
 villages. Severus had learned the art of war against desperate 
 savages in Britain. He turned their own policy against the insur- 
 gents. He ventured on no general battle with an enemy now, per- 
 haps, grown to an overwhelming force ; but he attacked their strong- 
 holds in detail, cut off their supplies, and reduced them to the great- 
 est distress by famine. At length the discipline of the Roman 
 troops, and the consummate conduct of Severus, brought the war 
 nearly to a close. The strong city of Bitthera alone remained, the 
 metropolis and citadel of the insurgents. It was not long before 
 Barcochebas alienated and dispirited his followers by his brutal and 
 
 * Milman's History of the Jews, vol. iii., p. 120. 
 
 t There is no historical account of this event, though there seema little doubt of the 
 fact. Tychsen and others have concluded, from extant coins, that he was in possession 
 of Jerusalem for three years : if so, it was from 132 to 135. The coins, however, are 
 of very doubtful date and authority. (Milman.') 
 
 I Euselj., Ecclea. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 6.
 
 SUBJECTION OF THK JEWISH NATION. 351 
 
 sanguinary conduct. The city was at length stormed, the insurgent 
 was slain, and his head was carried in triumph to the Roman camp. 
 Of the subsequent massacre, the Rabbins tell frightful stories ; but 
 their horror is mitigated by their extravagance. More are said to 
 have fallen at Bitthera than escaped with Moses from Egypt. The 
 horses waded up to their bits in carnage. Blood flowed so copiously, 
 that the stream carried stones weighing four pounds into the sea, 
 according to their account, forty miles distant. The dead covered 
 eighteen square miles, and the inhabitants of the adjacent region had 
 no need to manure their ground for seven years. A more trustwor- 
 thy authority, Dio Cassius, states, that during the whole war, the 
 enormous number of five hundred and eighty thousand fell by the 
 sword, not including those who perished by famine, disease, and fire. 
 The whole of Judea was a desert ; wolves and hyenas went howling 
 along the streets of the desolate cities. Those who escaped the 
 sword were scarcely more fortunate : they were reduced to slavery by 
 thousands. There was a great fair held under a celebrated Terebinth,* 
 which tradition had consecrated as the very tree under which Abra- 
 ham had pitched his tent. Thither his miserable children were 
 brought in droves, and sold as cheap as horses. Others were carried 
 away, and sold at Gaza ; others transported to Egypt. The fate 
 of Akiba, the herald and forerunner of Barcochebas, was dreadful. 
 He was summoned before Rufus. In the midst of his interrogations, 
 he remembered that it was the hour of prayer. He fell on his 
 knees, regardless of the presence of the Roman, and of the pending 
 trial for life and death, and calmly went through his devotions. In 
 the prison, while his lips were burning with thirst, he nevertheless 
 applied his scanty pittance of water to his ablutions. The barbarous 
 
 * Hadrian, more effectually to evacuate the city of its old inhabitants, caused a great 
 part of them to be sold at the fair of Terebinth. Hegesippus says, that the Terebinth was 
 a tree, that had continued from the creation of the world, under which they met to traffic : 
 it was said to be the place where Abraham pitched his tent, and received the angels, which 
 made it venerable. The Jews were exposed to sale there at the price of horses ; and 
 those that could not be sold were carried to another fair, which was kept at Gaza. In 
 Jerome's time, they applied to this misery these words : " A cry was heard in Kamah, 
 Rachel weeping for her children ;" because their misery and affliction were excessive. 
 This Father also applied to the mineries that happened under Hadrian the following pro- 
 phecy of Zechariah : " I will feed the flock of slaughter," (Zech. xi. 7,) because that he 
 had learned from tradition, and the history of the Jews, that this Prince had put a great 
 number to death without being punished by God, and that afterwards he sold them at 
 Terebinth, or carried them into Egypt. He also acquaints us with three things: 
 1. That he had read the traditions and history of the Jews concerning their calamities, 
 and therefore there must have been such at that time. 2. That Terebinth fair still con- 
 tinued ; but that the Jews were ashamed to be present at it, because of the usage 
 of their fathers. He adds, in another place, that the Jews assembled and came in his 
 time to buy of the soldiers the liberty of seeing Jerusalem. They could not weep with- 
 out paving for it ; and those who had bought the blood of our Saviour, purchased their 
 very tears. The women and old men, laden with tatters and years, were seen with, 
 tears in their eyea repairing to the Mount of Olives, and bewailing the destruction of the 
 temple. The soldiers made for a long time advantage of the veneration of the Jews for 
 the rubbish of the holy city, and also of Hadrian's severity in forbidding their entrance 
 for ever ; for they sold at a dear rate the sight of the place, and the liberty of strewing 
 perfumes upon a stone. And, finally, Jerome assures us, that Hadrian conveyed part 
 of these prisoners to Egypt, where their number was considerably augmented. (Bas- 
 nage's History of the Jews, book vi., chap, is., sect, xxviii., p. 619. Folio. London, 
 1708.)
 
 352 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 Roman ordered the old man to be flayed alive, and then put to death. 
 The most furious persecution was commenced against all the Rabbins, 
 who were considered the authors and ringleaders of the insurrection. 
 Chanania, the son of Theradion, was detected reading and expound- 
 ing the law : he was burned with the book which he was reading. 
 It was forbidden to fill up the number of the great synagogue, or 
 Sanhedrim ; but Akiba, just before his death, had named five new 
 members ; and Judah, the son of Bavah, secretly nominated others in 
 a mountain-glen where he had taken refuge. Soldiers were sent to 
 surprise Judah : he calmly awaited their coming, and was transfixed 
 by three hundred spears.* 
 
 To annihilate for ever all hopes of the restoration of the Jewish 
 kingdom, Hadrian accomplished his plan of founding a new city on 
 the site of Jerusalem, peopled by a colony of foreigners. He is said 
 to have built a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus on the spot which had 
 been occupied by the Jewish temple. A statue of Jupiter was placed 
 over the sepulchre of our Saviour, and another of Venus on Mount 
 Calvary. The worship of Adonis was established at Bethlehem ; and 
 it was now that the name of Jerusalem gave way to that of 2Elia 
 Capitolina, in honour of the Emperor, who bore the name of Julius. 
 An edict was issued prohibiting any Jew from entering the new city 
 on pain of death, or approaching its environs, so as to contemplate 
 even at a distance the sacred spot. Still more effectually to deter 
 their approach, the image of a swine was placed over the gate leading 
 to Bethlehem ; and thus terminated the campaign of Hadrian against 
 the Jewish nation. 
 
 Hadrian was now fast verging towards the end of his earthly career, 
 which took place in the year 138, after he had nominated Antoninus as 
 his son and successor, who received the surname of Pius. Christianity 
 at this period was generally spreading. It had been recognised in 
 the most civilized portions of the empire, and carried into districts 
 comparatively barbarous. The reign of Hadrian was the first in 
 which the works of Christian writers made their appearance. We 
 have alluded to the Apologies of Quadratus f and Aristides ; but 
 Agrippa Castor wrote against the doctrines promulgated by Basilides, 
 and, according to Eusebius, he was not the only author who engaged 
 in this controversy. The celebrity of the Gospel, and the advances 
 it was making upon the strongholds of Heathenism, were manifest by 
 the pains which were taken to confute it. One of the most elaborate 
 treatises which was ever written against the Gospel, was composed by 
 Celsus, in the reign of Hadrian. The work itself has long since perished, 
 and only a few fragments of it are preserved by Origen, who published 
 his celebrated reply to the treatise in the middle of the third cen- 
 
 Milman's History of the Jews, vol. iii., p. 124. 
 
 t Quadrants is mentioned with great respect by Eusebius and Jerome, and was the 
 first who ventured to address the Roman Emperors in behalf of the persecuted church 
 of Christ. We are told hy some, that" owing to the violence of the enemies of the 
 church, he was obliged to leave his charge in Athens, and flee to Magnesia, a city 
 of Ionia, in Asia Minor, where he preached the Gospel, and there " he suffered martyr- 
 dom about the end of Hadrian's reign, being first tormented with various punishments. 
 This account, however, is destitute of any authority upon which we can rely.
 
 CELSUS. 353 
 
 tury, from whence we are enabled to form an accurate idea respecting 
 its nature : he minutely examines all the arguments of his oppo- 
 nent in the order they are brought forward, and in his own words. 
 There is no work at present extant of which we have more consider- 
 able remains : in effect, it is the same, says Dr. Welsh, as if we had 
 the entire work of Celsus. The objections against Christianity, 
 which were adduced by this writer, are those in the main that are 
 urged by infidel writers of the present day. He searched the Gospel 
 for arguments against the Gospel. He attacks several of the princi- 
 ples of the New Testament, and attempts to prove by ridicule and 
 argument that they are inconsistent with one another, and with the 
 doctrines of a sound philosophy ; he labours to lower our idea of the 
 miracles which are recorded in the New Testament, by showing that 
 as wonderful works had been performed by magicians ; he assails the 
 character of our Saviour, ridicules the idea of his being considered as 
 a God, and endeavours to show that higher virtues were exhibited by 
 different philosophers.* Celsus, however, makes no attempt to exhi- 
 bit the spuriousness of the writings of the disciples, or to bring for- 
 ward facts inconsistent with their statements : on the contrary, he 
 takes the books of the New Testament as he finds them, he quotes 
 from them as the acknowledged writings of those who were the 
 followers of Jesus, he bears testimony to many of the leading facts 
 contained in these books, f and he never speaks of any writings as 
 existing in his time which could be brought forward to invalidate 
 what the Scriptures contain. In this way, Celsus has been justly 
 considered by many writers as a witness in favour of Christianity. 
 There are many respects in which his testimony is invaluable. Dr. 
 Doddridge says, " There are in Celsus about eighty quotations from 
 the books of the New Testament, or references to them, of which 
 Origen has taken notice. And whilst he argues from them some- 
 times in a very perverse and malicious manner, he still takes it for 
 granted, as the foundation of his argument, that whatever absurdities 
 
 * A single example is sufficient to show the manner in which Celsus misrepresented 
 the principles of the Christians. " That I," observes the philosopher, " say nothing 
 more severe than truth obliges me to say, is manifest hence : when others invite to the 
 mysteries, they invite men after this manner : ' Whoever has clean hands and a good 
 understanding ;' or, ' Whosoever is pure from nee, whose soul is conscious of no evil, 
 and lives according to the law of righteousness, let him come hither.' Now, let us see 
 whom they (the Christians) invite, ' Whoever,' they say, ' is a sinner, whoever is 
 ignorant, whoever is silly, and, in a word, whoever is miserable, these the kingdom 
 of God receives.' Whom do you mean by ' sinners ? ' Do you not thereby intend 
 thieves and robbers, prisoners, sacrilegious, and the like ? And what else would men 
 say who aim to form a society of the worst of men ? " (Orig. contra Celsum, lib. iii., 
 p. 147. Quarto edit. Cant., 1677.) The reply of Origen is as follows : " It is one 
 thing to invite sick souls to come to be healed, and another thing to call such as are 
 cured to partake of higher mysteries. We who know the difference of these two things, 
 first invite men to come and be healed, and we exhort sinnera to attend to those who 
 teach men not to sin ; and the ignorant and unwise we exhort to hearken to those who 
 will teach them wisdom : the weak we exhort to aim at manly wisdom, and the miser- 
 able we invite to accept of happiness, or, to speak more properly, blessedness. And 
 when they whom we have admonished have made some progress, and have learned to 
 live well, then they are initiated by us." (Welsh's Elements.) 
 
 t So fully, indeed, does he bear this testimony, that " an abridgment of the life 
 of Christ may be found in hia writings." (Doddridge. See Lardncr's Works, vol. vii., 
 p. 270.) 
 
 VOL. I. 2 Z
 
 354 BOOK IV. CHAPTER II. 
 
 could be fastened upon any words or actions of Christ, recorded in 
 the Evangelists, it would be a valid objection against Christianity ; 
 thereby in effect assuring us, not only that such a book did really 
 exist, but that it was universally received by Christians in those times 
 as credible and divine. Who can forbear adoring the depth of infi- 
 nite wisdom in laying such a firm foundation for our faith in the 
 Gospel history, in the writings of one who was so inveterate an 
 enemy to it, and so indefatigable in his attempts to overthrow it ? 
 Celsus does not appear to have founded any single objection against 
 Christianity upon any of the spurious Gospels, Acts, or Revelations, 
 which, considering his malice on the one hand, and the many foolish 
 and exceptionable things to be found in them on the other, seems to 
 be a good argument that he never saw them. Else he had hardly 
 candour enough to forbear pleading such arguments as they might 
 have afforded him ; even though he had known that the Christians 
 did not esteem them of equal authority with those which he has so 
 furiously, but at the same time so impotently, assaulted." * 
 
 Another summary of the argument of Celsus has been given by 
 Dr. Leland, which he concludes by observing, " The use that I would 
 make of all this, is as follows : That it appears, with an uncontested 
 evidence by the testimony of one of the most malicious and virulent 
 adversaries the Christian religion ever had, and who was also a man 
 of considerable parts and learning, that the writings of the Evan- 
 gelists were extant in his time, (which was in the next century to 
 that in which the Apostles lived,) and that these accounts were writ- 
 ten by Christ's own disciples, and, consequently, that they were 
 written in the very age in which the facts there related were done, 
 and when, therefore, it would have been the easiest thing in the 
 world to have convicted them of falsehood if they had not been 
 true." f As a writer, Celsus does not appear to have been either 
 acute or profound : his opinions upon the subjects of philosophy and 
 religion seem to have been unsettled, and are often contradictory ; 
 and his objections to Christianity are such as would present them- 
 selves to almost any mind that takes up the Bible with a determina- 
 tion to explain it in a way inconsistent with the idea of its divine 
 origin. Accordingly we find that many of his arguments have been 
 repeated by infidels age after age ; and after being a thousand times 
 refuted, they are still advanced with apparently undiminished confi- 
 dence in their force and originality. Celsus undertook to effect by his 
 pen what Magistrates and Emperors had failed to do by the torture 
 and the sword. He fancied that the new religion could be over- 
 thrown by sarcasm and invective ; but he little thought that his 
 own philosophy was then hastening to its decay ; and that the only 
 memory of himself and his writings would be preserved in the pages 
 of the Christians who confuted him. 
 
 * Doddridge apud Lardner's Works, vol. vii., p. 274. 8vo. edit. London, 1831. 
 t Leland's " Answer to a Book intituled, ' Christianity as old as the Creation,' " part 
 ii., chap, v., vol. ii., p. 124. Second edit. London, 1/40. 
 t Welsh's Elements of Church History, vol. i., p. 333. 
 5 Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xvi., p. 94. 8vo. edition., 1833.
 
 DEATH OF HADRIAN. 355 
 
 In the course of the year 138, an inveterate malady carried 
 Hadrian off the stage of life. He caused himself to be conveyed to the 
 city of Baiae, in the hope of obtaining some relief, but in vain. His 
 pain was at times excruciating, by which he was frequently thrown 
 into strong convulsions. Frequently he attempted self-destruction; 
 and, failing to effect his purpose, he exclaimed, " How miserable it is 
 to seek Death, and not to find him!" He made use of gifts and 
 promises, and even threatenings, to induce his attendants to kill him : 
 some, however, alleged pity, some piety, and others fear, as a reason 
 why they refused to comply with his request, until, by the advice 
 of his Physicians, he voluntarily, and with a doggedness which 
 became a better cause, abstained from all kinds of food, which 
 brought him to a speedy end. Thus died Hadrian, a Prince of some 
 excellency, but stained with many vices and imperfections. Notwith- 
 standing his active and inquisitive mind, and the ability of his gene- 
 ral policy, few persons were, perhaps, less qualified to judge of the 
 real nature of the new religion, or to comprehend the tenacious hold 
 which it would obtain upon the mind of man. His character wanted 
 depth and seriousness, to penetrate or to understand the workings 
 of a high, profound, and settled religious enthusiasm. The graceful 
 verses * which he addressed to his departing spirit, contrast with the 
 solemn earnestness with which the Christians were teaching mankind 
 to consider the mysteries of another life. But, on the whole, the 
 long and peaceful reign of Hadrian allowed free scope to the progress 
 of Christianity ; the increasing wealth and prosperity of the empire 
 probably raised in the social scale that class among which it was 
 chiefly disseminated ; while the better part of the more opulent 
 would be tempted, at least, to make themselves acquainted with a 
 religion, the moral influence of which was so manifestly favourable to 
 the happiness of mankind, and which offered so noble a solution 
 of the great problem of human philosophy, the immortality of the 
 soul.f 
 
 * Aniuiula, vagula, blandula, 
 Hospes, comesque, corporis, 
 Quae mine abibis in loca, 
 Pallidula, rigida, nudula, 
 Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos ? 
 
 The above has been beautifully translated into English by Matthew Prior, with all the 
 pirit of t'uo original : 
 
 " Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing, 
 Must we no longer live together ? 
 And dost thou prune thy trembling wing, 
 
 To take thy flight thon know'st not whither ? 
 
 " Thy pleasing vein, thy humorous folly, 
 
 Lies all neglected, all forgot ! 
 And pensive, wavering, mekncholy, 
 
 Thon hop'st, and fear'st, thou know'st not what." 
 
 1 Milmau's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 166. 
 
 2 z 2
 
 356 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Hadrian and Antoninus Pius compared Character" of the latter -Hostility to the 
 Christians And to the Jews Telesphorus Irenaus and Eusebius quoted 
 Arrius Antoninus Persecuting Spirit of the Pagans Edict of Antoninus Its 
 Object Its Authenticity suspected Apollonius The Heretics Cerdon, Valentinus, 
 and Marcion First Apology of Justin When presented Antoninus unable to 
 protect the Christians from Persecution His Death. MARCUS AURELIUS Who 
 associates with himself, in the Empire, Lucius Verus Character of Marcus In 
 what Sense he was a Persecutor Fate of Lucius Verus Marcus is designated 
 Philosopher Position of Pagan Philosophy with regard to Christianity Hostility 
 of Marcus and his Government towards the Christians How excited Tertullian 
 vindicates their Usefulness in Society The Religion of Christ raises the Jealousy 
 of the Pagans Intemperate Language of many of the Teachers Sibylline 
 Verses Superstitious Feelings of Marcus From which the Christians suffei 
 Delatores of a disgraceful character The Church given to the fury of Persecu- 
 tion False Charges against the Christians Cruelties inflicted True Cause of the 
 Enmity of the Emperor to Christianity The Martyrdom of Felicitas and her 
 Children Plumbatae Praxedes Ptolemceus and Lucius Are martyred 
 Cause of the Second Apology of Justin Notices of other Martyrs Situ- 
 ation of the Church at this Period Conjectures respecting the Date of the 
 Second Apology The supposed Edict of Marcus Aurelius, in the Acta Sympho- 
 riani, considered Justin His Birth and Education His Travels His Search 
 after Knowledge And Disappointment His Conversation with the old Man 
 Which ends in his Conversion to the Truth Writes on behalf of the Church His 
 Address to the Greeks Visits Rome Confutes the Marcionites And defends 
 the Faithful Justin's philosophic Garb He Returns to the Provinces Disputes 
 with Trypho the Jew The perturbed State of the Church calls Justin again to 
 Rome He is brought into contact with Crescens The Character of this Man 
 The Condition of the Cynic School at this period Its Decline and Fall Justin's 
 Vindication of Christianity Crescens an inveterate Enemy to Justin By whom 
 Evil is foreboded from his Machinations Justin is thrown into Prison 
 Junius Ruslicus The Examination of Justin and his Companions And their 
 
 -. subsequent Martyrdom. 
 
 THE restless spirit of Hadrian was remarkable, when compared 
 with the gentle repose of his successor, the Emperor Antoninus Pius. 
 The life of the former was almost a perpetual journey ; and, to adopt 
 the language of Gibbon, as he possessed the various talents of the 
 soldier, the statesman, and the scholar, he gratified his curiosity in 
 the discharge of his duty. Careless of the difference of seasons and 
 of climates, he marched on foot, and bare-headed, over the snows 
 of Caledonia, and the sultry plains of Upper Egypt ; nor was there 
 a province of the empire which, in the course of his reign, was not 
 honoured with the presence of the Monarch. But the tranquil life 
 of Antoninus Pius was spent in the bosom of Italy ; and, during the 
 twenty-three years that he directed the public administration, the 
 longest journey of that Prince extended no farther than from his 
 palace in Rome, to the retirement of his Lanuvian villa. Notwithstand- 
 ing this difference in their personal conduct, the general system
 
 ANTONINUS PIUS. 357 
 
 of Augustus was equally adopted and uniformly pursued by Hadrian, 
 and the two Antonines. They persisted in the design of maintaining 
 the dignity of the empire, without attempting to enlarge its limits. 
 By every honourable expedient they invited the friendship of the 
 barbarians ; and endeavoured to convince mankind that the Roman 
 power, raised above the temptation of conquest, was actuated only by 
 the love of order and justice. During a long period of forty-three 
 years, their labours were crowned with success ; and, if we except a 
 few slight hostilities, that served to exercise the legions of the fron- 
 tier, the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius presented the fair pro- 
 spect of universal peace.* The Roman name was revered among the 
 remote nations of the earth. The fiercest barbarians frequently 
 submitted their differences to the arbitration of the Emperor ; and we 
 are informed by a contemporary historian,f that he had seen Ambas- 
 sadors who were refused the honour which they came to solicit, 
 of being admitted into the rank of subjects.}: 
 
 The character of Antoninus was, doubtless, deeply tinged with 
 superstition. If he were really attached to the religion of his coun- 
 try, he could not fail to be hostile to the Christians ; and the situ- 
 ation which he held in the state, before he assumed the purple, must 
 have convinced him that Christianity was rapidly spreading. Nothing 
 but the general disposition of the Emperor can enable us to judge of 
 his religious sentiments. At the conclusion of the late Jewish war, 
 the Israelites were forbidden to exercise circumcision upon proselytes 
 and their own offspring : Antoninus so far relaxed this severity, that 
 he allowed it to be performed on the latter, but not upon the former. 
 According to the almost indisputable authority of Irenseus, Teles- 
 phorus, the Bishop of Rome, suffered martyrdom in the early part 
 of his reign ; and, if so, it is not improbable that other Christians 
 also suffered for the sake of Christ : the games and other solemnities, 
 which were intended to celebrate the commencement of a new reign, 
 would, doubtless, remove impediments from the path of those who 
 not only cherished hostility to the Gospel, but were determined, 
 
 * We must, however, remember, that, in the time of Hadrian, a rebellion of the Jews 
 raged with religious fury, though only in a single province. Pausaniaa (lib. viii., cap. 
 43) mentions two necessary and successful wars, conducted by the Generals of Pins : 
 1. Against the wandering Moors, who -were driven into the solitudes of Atlaa. 2. 
 Against the Brigantes of Britain, who had invaded the Roman province. 
 
 t Appian of Alexandria, in the preface to his History of the Roman Wars. 
 
 t Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i., p. 12. Milman's Edit. 
 8vo. 1838. 
 
 Tertullian speaks of an Arrius Antoninus, who persecuted the church with great 
 severity in Asia ; and when all the Christiana in the place came to him in a body, offer- 
 ing themselves to be put to death, he is reported to have said to them, contemptuously, 
 " Miserable men ! if yon wish to die, are there no precipices nor baiters ? " There is 
 little ground for the supposition, that this individual ultimately became the Emperor ; and 
 the story may he referred with greater probability to Arrius Antoninus who was Pro- 
 consul of Asia in the reign of Commodua. There were two Proconsuls of Asia of this 
 name ; the one under Hadrian, maternal grandfather to Antoninus Pius, twice Consul. 
 Capitolinus calls him, "vir aanctus:" he publicly compassionated Nerva for having 
 come to a throne. The other lived under Commodus, who, having put him to death on 
 false accusation, was obliged to give up his accuser to popular justice. See Tertulliani 
 Opera, torn. ii. Ad Scapulum, cap. v. Edit. Wirceb., 1781. Library of the Fathers. 
 Tertullian. Vol. i., p. 148.
 
 358 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 whenever an opportunity presented itself, to impede its progress, and 
 to persecute to death those who propagated it. Ireneeus says, with 
 regard to the Bishop, " Telesphorus, qui etiam gloriosissime marty- 
 rium fecit;" and Eusebius records, " In the first year of this reign, 
 and in the eleventh year of his episcopate, Telesphorus departed this 
 life, and was succeeded in the charge of the Roman church by 
 Hyginus." Irenaeus, indeed, relates, that Telesphorus was rendered 
 illustrious by martyrdom.* More of him, we know not. 
 
 Notwithstanding the boasted clemency and authority of Antoninus, 
 he experienced great difficulty in suppressing the persecuting inclina- 
 tions which infected the minds of his pagan subjects. He is said to 
 have addressed to the assembly of Asia, an edict, -f which was intended 
 to operate favourably on behalf of the persecuted, which is found extant 
 in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. " I am convinced," says 
 the Emperor, " that it is for the gods themselves to take care that men 
 of this kind should not escape ; for it is much more fitting that they 
 should punish those who refuse to worship them, than that you 
 should. But while you accuse them as impious, you, in many 
 instances, confirm the opinions and sentiments of those against whom 
 you rise so tumultuously. It is, in fact, much more desirable for 
 them to be condemned, and to seem to suffer death for their God, 
 than to remain safe ; for thus they become victors, proving that they 
 prefer sacrificing their lives to doing those things which you com- 
 mand. Concerning the earthquakes which have occurred, or are even 
 now taking place, it is not improper to admonish you, who lose your 
 fortitude when such things occur, and yet compare your principles 
 with theirs. They, in such circumstances, place a greater confidence 
 in God, while you, failing through want of knowledge, as it seems to 
 me, neglect the gods and your other duties, and the service of the 
 immortals. But the Christians, who worship Him, you expel and perse- 
 cute unto death. Many of the Governors of provinces formerly addressed 
 our most sacred father concerning them ; and he wrote in reply, that 
 they were not to exercise force against them, unless they appeared to 
 be undertaking anything against the Roman government. And 
 many persons have also brought information to me respecting them, 
 and the informants I have answered according to the decision of my 
 father ; but if any one should still be determined on troubling these 
 persons on account of their profession, let the accused be set free, 
 although he sho\Ud be proved a Christian, and the accuser pu- 
 nished." || Considerable uneasiness was experienced by the Christians 
 
 Irenaei Opera, lib. iii., cap. 3. Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 10. 
 
 t Many attribute this edict to Marcus Aurelius, the successor of Antoninus; but 
 Mosheim and others as strenuously ascribe it to the present Emperor. Dr. Welsh, in 
 his " Elements of Church History," \vithout any hesitation, says, it " is obviously a 
 forgery." 
 
 J Enseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 13. 
 
 " Adversa," says Capitolinus in his Life of Antoninus, " ejns temporibus haec pro- 
 venerunt : fames de qua diximus, circi ruina. Terras motus quo Rhodiorum et Asias 
 oppida coHciderunt , quae omnia mirifice instauravit." 
 
 || Notwithstanding the issuing of the edict by Antoninus was unquestionably pro- 
 ductive of considerable advantage to the Christian cause, and imposed a restraint upon 
 the officious forwardness of evil-disposed persons, yet the interests of Christianity
 
 HERESIES. 359 
 
 in Rome, by the appearance of several notorious and distinguished 
 heretics, among whom were Cerdon, Marcion, and Valentinus.* It 
 was in this city that Polycarp, the celebrated Bishop of Smyrna, came 
 in contact with Marcion, and publicly rebuked his errors. He was 
 by no means favourably received by the church, inasmuch as they 
 had, probably, heard of the crime which had ejected him from his 
 own country. In the midst of these conflicts within, the Christians 
 were far from being free from trials without, which is proved 
 by an interesting document which is still extant, the first Apology or 
 Defence presented by Justin Martyr to the Emperor Antoninus. The 
 date of its presentation has led to much discussion ; and while some 
 would place it as early as 139, others would make it as late as 148, 
 or 150. Dr. Burton observes, that a strong argument is found 
 in the fact of Lucius Verus, who was afterwards Emperor, being 
 mentioned in terms of panegyric ; and since he was born in 131, he 
 would have received this compliment at the age of eight years, if 
 Justin's Apology were written in 139. We are, therefore, inclined to 
 agree with those writers who adopt the later date. We are not 
 aware what was the effect of the Apology on the mind of the 
 
 would Lave been benefited in a much higher degree, had he repealed that law of 
 Trajan which awarded the punishment of death to all such Christiana as should be con- 
 victed of having abandoned, and refused to return to, the religion of their ancestors. 
 The law of Trajan was, however, suffered to remain in full force ; and yet, at the same 
 time, the edict of Antoninus, of a nature altogether repugnant to it, was introduced 
 into the forum. Iniquitous and cruel Judges might, therefore, if they thought proper, 
 cause both the accuser and the accused to be put to death ; the former under the edict 
 of Antoninus Pius, the latter under that of Trajan, which none of the Emperors had 
 thought it proper to repeal. Of a case of this kind, a very notable example ia 
 recorded by Eusebius. (Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 21.) Apolloniua, a man respectable 
 for his gravity and learning, was, under the reign of Commodus, accused of being a 
 Christian. The Judges forthwith condemned his accuser to have his legs broken, and 
 to be put to death ; for by the edict of Antoninus it was ordained, that capital punish- 
 ment should be inflicted on all accusers of this sort. But by these same Judges was 
 Apollonius himself also, after he had publicly rendered an account of the religion that he 
 professed, and openly acknowledged himself to be a Christian, adjudged to suffer death. 
 For, by an ancient law, says Eusebius, it was enacted, that if any Christians should be 
 once regularly brought before the public tribunal, they should on no account be dis- 
 missed with impunity, unless they would repudiate their religion. Now what other 
 ancient law could this he, that was so directly repugnant to the edict of Antoninus, than 
 the rescript of Trujan to Pliny ? By thus artfully having recourse to ancient laws that 
 had not been expressly repealed, did the iniquity and injustice of the Roman Magistrates 
 frequently find means to deprive the Christians of every benefit to which they were 
 entitled under enactments of a more recent date. (Mo.-dieim's Commentaries.) 
 
 * Cerdon appears at one time to have been a Christian. Ireuicus speaks of his con- 
 fessing his errors more than once, and finally withdrawing from the church in conse- 
 quence of the rebuke which he received for his doctrines. He \vaa a follower of Satur- 
 ninus, and the leader of a Gnostic sect at Antioch. Valentinus is said to have been an 
 Egyptian, who studied at Alexandria, and was partial to the doctrines of Plato. He 
 is supposed to have been of some note ; and if it be true that be aspired to a bishopric, 
 he probably fell into heresy through disappointment at the election of a rival. The 
 scene of his apostacy is laid in Cyprus. Marcion was a native of Sinope in Pontns ; and 
 Tertullian applies to him a term which might signify that he was a sailor, or ship- 
 owner. (De Pncscript. Haertt., cap. xxx.) Other accounts say, that his father was a 
 Christian Bishop, and that Marciou's earlier days were spent in a kind of monastic or 
 ascetic retirement. The sequel of his history is very disgraceful. Having seduced a 
 young woman, he was expelled from the church by his own father, whose principles are 
 represented as particularly strict, and Marcion tried in vain to soften him into forgive- 
 ness. He went immediately to Rome, and publicly professed heretical notions. It was 
 on a visit to the imperial city that Polycarp was brought into contact with Marcion.
 
 360 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 Emperor : a letter appears at the end of the document, and is 
 preserved by Eusebius, which the historian represents as an edict 
 addressed by Antoninus Pius to the cities of Asia, and is decidedly in 
 favour of the Christians ; but that is the edict to which we have 
 already alluded. One writer asserts, that he treated the Christians 
 with kindness in consequence of this Apology ; and another goes so 
 far as to say, that he gave no trouble to the Christians, but treated 
 them with respect, and even showed them honour. The Emperor, 
 however, was not able to protect them from their enemies. During 
 his reign, they were in the same situation with regard to the laws as 
 in the days of Hadrian ; but this negative clemency of the Emperor's 
 did not screen the believers in Christ from private malice, or from 
 acts of popular violence ; and the Apology of Justin, though it may 
 show that Antoninus was willing to hear reason, proves that perse- 
 cution was carried on even in his own capital. He died in the year 
 161, and was succeeded by Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 The death of Antoninus Pius was greatly regretted throughout the 
 empire, but especially in Rome, where, with great pomp and solem- 
 nity, divine honours were awarded him, funeral orations were spoken 
 by his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and a magni- 
 ficent column was erected to his honour. At the same time Marcus 
 Aurelius, who was without contradiction recognised as Emperor by the 
 Senate, took his adopted brother Lucius, as his associate and equal. 
 This was the first time that Rome witnessed two Sovereigns wielding 
 the same sceptre, who formerly had shed some of her bravest and 
 most noble blood in the election of one. Antoninus Marcus was the 
 son of Annius Verus, of an ancient and illustrious family, who, 
 by the father's side, claimed an origin from Numa the second King 
 of Rome. Verus was the son of Lucius Commodus, whom the 
 Emperor Hadrian had adopted, but death prevented his succession to 
 the empire. Marcus Aurelius was of a more lofty and active charac- 
 ter than his predecessor. He appeared on the stage of public affairs 
 as the last effort of Paganism, or rather of Gentile philosophy, to raise 
 a worthy opponent to the triumphant career of Christianity. He was 
 a passive disciple in the severest school of stoical philosophy,* and 
 thoroughly imbibed all its prejudices and predilections. Toward 
 Christianity he was a violent and intolerant persecutor. Not, indeed, 
 that he devised or followed any general and systematic plan for its 
 extirpation, but he withdrew the ambiguous protection which former 
 Emperors had thrown around it, and left it exposed to the excited 
 passions, the wounded pride, and the jealous and interested feelings 
 of its adversaries, neither discountenancing the indomitable determi- 
 nation of some haughty and cruel Governor, to subdue what he con- 
 sidered a contumacious resistance to his authority, nor the vociferous 
 and sanguinary outbreak of popular fury, which sought to appease 
 
 Marcus was a Prince of eminent virtues and accomplishments, and a renowned 
 Stoic philosopher, for which he is distinguished from his predecessor by the name 
 of Philosophus. His excellencies were so transcendant, that Eutropius tells us, he was 
 more to be admired than commended ; and it may be said, that Providence proportioned 
 the wisdom of this Emperor to the calamities of his reign. (Echard's Roman History, 
 vol. ii., p. 314.)
 
 PHILOSOPHIC SECTS. 361 
 
 the offended gods by the sacrifice of all who bore the Christian name. 
 Lucius Verus was destitute of whatever moral qualifications Marcus 
 might possess : he was passionate and extravagant, licentious and 
 dissolute ; and the greatest of his excellencies consisted in that he 
 was free from those horrible crimes which lead a ruler to degenerate 
 into a tyrant. After reigning joint-Emperor with Marcus for about 
 nine years, he died, not without suspicion that poison was the cause 
 of his death, which some have attributed to the Empress Faustina, 
 and others to his own wife Lucilla, on account of a criminal passion 
 which he entertained toward his own sister Fabia : an end which 
 fully coincided with his iniquitous and abandoned life. 
 
 Christianity had assumed, at this period of its history, sufficient 
 importance to attract the attention of the learned, and philosophers 
 were led to contemplate and investigate it. In considering the quarter 
 from whence an attack was now to be anticipated, we must be careful 
 not to be misled by a name. Many have represented the philoso- 
 phical opponents of the first Christians as men of a calm tempera- 
 ment, guided solely by their reason, to which they subjected all their 
 feelings, and looking upon the religion of Jesus with the same 
 scepticism as that in which they viewed the superstitions of their own 
 countrymen. In reality, however, nothing can be more erroneous. The 
 great body of the heathen philosophers, if not themselves credulously 
 superstitious, were the basest flatterers of the popular prejudices ; 
 abandoned in their own morals ; and finding their success in courting 
 the people, by rendering themselves subservient to their most 
 unworthy views. There were, no doubt, some of a superior charac- 
 ter. But these either gave themselves up to the pride of intellectual 
 pre-eminence, with an utter indifference to all that bore practically 
 upon the interests of the species, or in their systems cherished 
 dogmas irreconcilable with the pure and humbling doctrines of the 
 Gospel. The idea of a revelation that superseded all the speculations 
 of human ingenuity, and placed the learned and the unlearned upon 
 a level, with regard to all the questions for attaining a superiority to 
 which they devoted their whole lives, could not but be repugnant to 
 the followers of Plato ; while the Stoics found the doctrines of the 
 dependent and fallen condition of man incompatible with their most 
 dearly-cherished principles.* 
 
 Numerous circumstances conspired to excite the hostility of Marcus 
 Aurelius and his government against the Christian faith. Mr. Mil- 
 man adverts particularly to the change which had taken place in the 
 relative position of Christianity with the religion of the empire. It 
 had spread into numerous quarters of the Roman dominions. The 
 western provinces, Gaul and Africa, rivalled the east in the number, 
 if not in the opulence, of their Christian congregations : in almost 
 every city had gradually arisen a separate community, seceding from 
 the ordinary habits and usages of life, at least from the public religious 
 ceremonial, governed by its own laws, acting upon a common prin- 
 ciple, and bound together in a kind of latent federal union through- 
 out the empire. A new kind of literature had arisen, propagated 
 
 Welsh's Elements of Church History, vol. i., p. 272. 
 VOL. I. 3 A.
 
 362 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 with the utmost zeal of proselytism, among a numerous class of 
 readers, who began to close their ears against the profane fables, and 
 unsatisfactory philosophical systems, of Paganism. While the Empe- 
 ror himself condescended, in Greek of no despicable purity and 
 elegance for the age, to explain the lofty tenets of the Porch,* and to 
 commend its noble morality to his subjects, the minds of a large por- 
 tion of the world were pre-occupied by writers, who, in language 
 often impregnated with foreign and Syrian barbarisms, enforced still 
 higher morals, resting upon religious tenets altogether new and 
 incomprehensible, excepting to the initiated. Christians were to be 
 found in the court, in the camp, in the commercial market ; they 
 discharged all the duties, and did not decline any of the offices, 
 of society. Tertullian indignantly repels the charge of their being 
 useless to the commonwealth : " We are not Brachmans, or the naked 
 philosophers of the Indians, dwelling in the woods, and outcasts from 
 life. We remember that we owe gratitude to God, our Lord and our 
 Maker. We put not away from us any enjoyment of his works. 
 Certainty we refrain from using them immoderately or wrongfully. 
 Wherefore we live with you in this world, not without a forum, not 
 without shambles, not without your baths, taverns, shops, inns, 
 markets, and other places of traffic. We voyage, moreover, with you, 
 serve in your armies, labour with you in the fields, and trade with 
 you. Besides this, we join our crafts with yours. Our acquirements, 
 our services, we lend to the public for your profit. How can we be 
 thought to be unprofitable to you in your concerns, you with whom, 
 and by whom, we live ?" f 
 
 This was not all. As Christianity became more influential, the 
 apprehensions of many were excited by the idea, that the decline 
 and fall of the old religion would speedily be followed by the disrup- 
 tion of the state. The language of some of the Christian teachers 
 went far to justify these forebodings : consequently, the disciples 
 
 * Marcus Aurelius is represented as having been a laborious student. His qualifi- 
 cations were the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient 
 lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years, he embraced 
 the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his 
 passions to his reason ; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all 
 things external as things indifferent. His Meditations, composed in the tumult of a camp, 
 are still extant ; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy, in a more public 
 manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of a sage, or the dignity of an 
 Emperor. Before be went on the second expedition against the Germans, he read 
 lectures of philosophy <o the Roman people, during three days. He had already done 
 the same in the cities of Greece and Asia. (Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i., p. 135. 
 8vo. Milmair's edit.) 
 
 t Tertull. Apologet., cap. xlii. 
 
 J Some considered the Apocalypse as referring, not to the fall of a predicted 
 spiritual Rome, but of the dominant pagan Rome, the visible Babylon of idolatry and 
 pride and cruelty. Many forged prophetic writings belong to the reign of the Anto- 
 nines, and could emanate from no quarter but that of the more injudicious and 
 fanatical Christians. The doctrine of the millennium added to the general panic. 
 The visible throne of Christ was to be erected on the ruins of all earthly empires : the 
 nature of such a kingdom would, doubtless, be unintelligible to the Heathen ; and all 
 that he would comprehend would be a vague notion that the government of the world was 
 to be transferred from Rome, and that this extinction of the majesty of the empire was, 
 in some incomprehensible manner, connected with the triumph of the new faith. The 
 terror, indignation, and contempt of the Pagan, would induce fierce and implacable
 
 FANATICISM. .363 
 
 of Christ were calumniated as guilty of treasonable disloyalty to the 
 Emperor. The state of the times, also, was calculated to foster this 
 growing alienation and hostility. The public mind was agitated with 
 gloomy rumours from the frontier, and foreign and civil wars, inun- 
 dations, earthquakes, and pestilences, awoke the affrighted empire 
 from its slumber of tranquillity and peace. It was at this crisis of 
 calamity and terror, that superstition, which had slumbered in 
 Epicurean forgetfulness of its gods, awoke ; and when it fled for help 
 to the altar of the tutelar deity, the temple was found deserted, and 
 the shrine forsaken. In the estimation of the Heathen, whether of 
 ancient or modern times, no sacrifice is sufficiently costly wherewith 
 to propitiate the gods, except human life. Paganism, and offering the 
 life-blood of the Creator's noblest work, are almost universally syno- 
 nymous. The Christians were the open and recognised enemies of 
 the gods, whom it was said they had offended by their pertinacious 
 apostacy ; and by their blood only could their wrath be appeased. It 
 would appear that the presentation of a hecatomb of Christians was 
 no longer the clamour of personal or party dislike, or the craving of 
 individuals who delighted to gratify a sanguinary and brutal appetite 
 in the exhibition of human victims in the arena of an amphitheatre : 
 it was nothing less than the deep and universal cry of fanatical 
 terror, demanding the propitiation of the incensed gods by the sacri- 
 fice of the Christian believer, on whose head the guilt of all the cala- 
 mities brooding at this period over the world, the misguided populace 
 imagined ought to fall. 
 
 The boasted philosophy of Marcus Aurelius did not render him 
 
 animosity. The Sibylline verses, also, did much to increase the general consternation. 
 A certain Prophet writing at this crisis, in the name of a Sibyl, dares to connect 
 together the approaching fall of Rome and the gods of Rome : " O haughty Rome, the 
 just chastisement of heaven shall come down upon thee from on high ; thou shalt stoop 
 thy neck, and be levelled with the earth ; and fire shall consume thee, razed to thy very 
 foundations ; and thy wealth shall perish ; wolves and foxes shall dwell among 
 thy ruins, and thou shalt be desolate an if thon hadst never been. Where then will be 
 thy Palladium ? Which of thy gods of gold, or of stone, or of brass, shall save thee ? 
 Where then the decrees of thy Senate ? where, the race of Rhea, of Saturn, 
 or of Jove ; all the lifeless deities thou hast worshipped, or the shades of the deified 
 dead ? When thrice five gorgeous Caesars," (the twelve Caesars, usually so called, with 
 Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,) " who have enslaved the world from east to west, shall 
 be, one will arise silver-helmed, with a name like the neighbouring sea" (Hadrian and 
 the Hadriatic sea). The poet describes the busy and lavish character of Hadrian, his 
 curiosity in prying into all religious mysteries, and his deification of Antinous. 
 " After him shall reign three, whose times shall be the last. Then from the uttermost 
 parts of the earth, whither he fled, shall the matricide " (Nero) " return. And now, O 
 King of Rome, shalt thou mourn, disrobed of the purple laticlave of thy rulers, and clad 
 in sackcloth. The glory of thy eagle-bearing legions shall perish. Where shall be thy 
 might ? What land, which thou hast enslaved by thy vain laurels, shall be thine ally ? 
 For there shall be confusion on all mortals over the whole earth, when the Almighty 
 Ruler comes, and, seated upon his throne, judges the souls of the quick and of the dead, 
 and of the whole world. There shall be wailing and scattering abroad, and ruin, when 
 the fall of the cities shall come ; and the abyss of earth shall open." In another passage, 
 the desolation of Italy, the return of Nero, the general massacre of Kings, are 
 portrayed in fearful terms. The licentiousness of Rome is detailed in the blackest 
 colours. " Sit silent in thy sorrow, O guilty and luxurious city ; the vestal virgins shall 
 no longer watch the sacred fire ; thy house is desolate." Christianity is afterwards 
 represented under the image of a pure and heaven-descending temple, embracing the 
 whole human race. Words could not be more obnoxious to the Heathen than these, 
 exciting at once their general indignation and hate ! 
 
 3 A 2
 
 364 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 superior to the vulgar superstition. It has probably been asked, 
 " Did he authorize, by any new edict, a general and systematic perse- 
 cution, or did he only give free scope to the vengeance of the awe- 
 struck people, and countenance the timid or fanatic concessions 
 of the provincial Governors to the riotous demand of the populace for 
 Christian blood ? Did he actually repeal or suspend, or only neglect 
 to enforce, the milder edicts of his predecessors, which secured to the 
 Christians a fair and public trial before the legal tribunal?"* An 
 answer will be found in the sequel. For the vulgar arts of magic, 
 divination, and vaticination, the Emperor openly declared a sovereign 
 contempt, yet, in times of calamity, when the public mind was 
 excited and alternately depressed, besides having recourse to certain 
 temple ceremonies, he had intercourse with dealers in the secrets of 
 futurity, and lent a listening ear to the prognostications of the Chal- 
 deans, and to calculations of astrology. From the time of Domitian, 
 the clemency of the Emperors had occasionally led them to interpose 
 in some degree between the Christians and the rage of their enemies ; 
 but under the philosophic Marcus the affairs of the church assumed a dif- 
 ferent aspect. There is but little doubt that the Emperor speedily issued 
 an edict by which the Christians were again exposed to all the denun- 
 ciations of common informers, whose zeal was now whetted by some 
 share, if not by the whole, of the confiscated property of the accused. 
 The much-applauded provision in the rescript of Trajan, which, 
 if inconsistent, was at least humane in its inconsistency, was in effect 
 disregarded : the Christians were now sought after, encouragement 
 was given to every description of delatores, the evidence of slaves and 
 of children f was taken against them, and unheard-of measures were 
 adopted to compel them to abjure the faith of Christ. Many of the 
 most distinguished Christians of the east were sacrificed to the basest 
 passions, of the lowest and most degraded of mankind, by the 
 Emperor, who, with every moral qualification to appreciate the new 
 religion, doggedly closed his ears, either in the stern apathy of Stoical 
 philosophy, or in the more popular, yet more engrossing, hallucina- 
 tions of heathen bigotry. From one writer, part of whose produc- 
 tion is extant on the pages of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, 
 
 * Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 175. 
 
 t " During the continuance of the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, many of the 
 Christians were thrown into prison ; but owing to few coming forward as accusers, and 
 proving them to have committed some sort of crime, the hands of the Magistrates were 
 completely tied up with regard to them. By way, therefore, of obtaining an ostensibly 
 legal sanction for the gratification of their malice, the soldiers and other enemies of 
 the Christians prevailed, by means of threats, on certain of the servants of those whom 
 they had apprehended, to become accusers of their masters. But what these wretches 
 charged their masters with, was not sacrilege, or the contempt of the public religion, 
 but actual crimes, and those identical crimes too, which, under the reign of Marcus, 
 were, by slander, attributed to the Christians ; namely, the celebrating of Thyestean 
 banquets, and incestuous sexual intercourse. To this testimony of servants against 
 their lords the Judges gave credit, or rather pretended to give credit ; and, in defiance 
 of the order of proceeding prescribed by the law, put the Christians to the rack ; 
 endeavouring, by torments of various kinds, to extort from them a confession of what- 
 ever they were thus charged with. In vain was it that these unfortunate people per- 
 sisted, with the utmost constancy to the last, in asserting themselves innocent : their 
 fate had been predetermined on ; they were pronounced guilty, and were in consequence 
 consigned over to various kinds of death. '(Mosheim'g Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 66.)
 
 CHARACTER OF MARCUS AURELTUS. 365 
 
 we learn, that so entirely had Marcus withdrawn the protection of the 
 laws from the Christians, that their enemies, taking advantage of his 
 decrees, attacked them both by day and by night, and robbed, and 
 otherwise injured, the most inoffensive persons. " If we are thus 
 treated," says he, " by your command," (Marcus Aurelius,) " let these 
 things be done rightly ; for a just Monarch should counsel nothing 
 unjustly ; and we willingly bear the gift of such a death. This only 
 we beg of thee, that you would yourself first examine the men who 
 appear endowed with such a life of strife, and that you would justly 
 determine whether they are worthy of death and persecution, or 
 of safety and tranquillity. But if this counsel and new decree, which 
 ought not to have been issued even against hostile barbarians, be not 
 yours, much more we do beseech you not to suffer us to be exposed 
 any longer to daily violence."* 
 
 The student in Ecclesiastical History cannot fail to discover some 
 difficulty in reconciling the professedly humane character of Marcus 
 Aurelius toward others, and his high character as a philosopher, with 
 the violent animosity which marked the proceedings of his government 
 with regard to the Christians. The difficulty is not insuperable. 
 Like other philosophers of that day, the Emperor was the victim of a 
 superstition, which the example and instruction of his mother fostered, 
 and which no philosophy removed. He considered the observance 
 of pagan rites absolutely needful to secure national prosperity, as well 
 as victory in the field ; and, therefore, philosopher as he was, he 
 observed the practices of the heathen worship with a minuteness 
 which excited the ridicule and contempt of the Heathen themselves. 
 The conjecture is not unreasonable, that, from the representation of 
 the philosophers, to whose guidance he appears to have surrendered 
 himself, he was led to regard the Christians as a race of absurd, 
 irrational, and conceited men ; and, therefore, on the principles 
 of that severe and rigid system of moral discipline which he had 
 embraced, he considered it expedient to destroy, rather than to tolerate, 
 them. The true reason, we imagine, Jjies deeper. The nature of the 
 Gospel is not only separate and distinct from the careless and licen- 
 tious vice, but also from the whole religion, of the pagan philosophers, 
 by which we imply the religion which has been framed from natural 
 and self-devised sources, either in opposition to, or in neglect of, the 
 revealed word of God, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, applying 
 that word to the heart of man. In all ages it will be found, that the 
 more strenuously men support such a religion, the more vehemently 
 they oppose Christianity. Their religion is that of pride and 
 self-importance : it denies the fallen condition of man, the provision 
 and efficacy of divine grace, the work of the Redeemer, and the glory 
 of God. The enmity that is forthwith occasioned is obvious, in 
 which Marcus Aurelius fully participated. He carried his self- 
 sufficiency to the highest points ; he fancied that he had God within 
 him : like most of the philosophers, he held the doctrine of the To ev, 
 but he held it in all its detestable impiety and arrogance. With 
 him, to be good and virtuous was the easiest thing in the world : it 
 * Melito, Bishop of Sanlis. Quoted by Euseb., Hist. Ecele*., lib. iv., cap. 2G.
 
 3G6 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 was only to follow nature, and to obey the dictates of the deify, 
 man's own soul, which was divine and self-sufficient. He could not 
 with these views be humble, nor pray earnestly, nor feel his own 
 internal wickedness and misery, nor discover the necessity of a Saviour 
 and a Mediator. Had he contented himself with imitating the con- 
 duct of Antoninus Pius, who made no great pretensions to the religion 
 of the Pagans, the benevolence of his nature, especially if aided by an 
 equally sound understanding, might have led him to have respected 
 the excellent character and virtues of his Christian subjects, and, 
 instead of inflicting pains and penalties upon them, have thrown 
 around them the imperial shield of powerful protection. But the 
 pride of Stoical philosophy had received a wound, not easily healed. 
 Whoever has marked the spirit which breathes throughout his " Medi- 
 tations,"* and compared them with the doctrines of the Gospel, 
 must acknowledge, that they are utterly distinct, and will not 
 be surprised to learn, that the Christians experienced, from a serious 
 and indomitable Stoic, what might only have been inflicted by an 
 abandoned and flagitious Nero.f If this be the true state of the 
 case, the philosophic spirit, however differently modified in different 
 ages, will always be inimical to the Gospel ; and the best of moralists, 
 so called, will generally be found in co-operation with the most 
 heartless and cruel. J 
 
 Marcus Aurelius had not long been seated on the throne, before 
 the demon of persecution stalked throughout the empire, scattering 
 desolation and blood. The idol-Priests, the proud but cruel philoso- 
 phers of the Portico, and the clamours of the multitude for adequate 
 propitiation to the tutelar deities, to assuage and remove the fearful 
 calamities which had spread through the length and breadth of the 
 land, in the estimation of the Emperor, seemed to demand a sanguin- 
 ary offering ; and he was not long in presenting it. Among those 
 who suffered for the name of Christ, was Felicitas, a Roman lady of 
 illustrious birth, and of great Christian fortitude : she was a widow, 
 and, when called to give testimony to her faith, she had seven sons, 
 all of whom had embraced the truth, and were ornaments to the 
 Christian profession. She had for some time anticipated martyrdom ; 
 and by her conversation with her children, led them also to expect it. 
 As the empire had been severely visited with earthquakes, famine, 
 
 * Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the Roman Emperor. His Meditations concerning 
 himself : treating of a natural Man's Happiness : wherein it consisteth, and of the Means 
 to attain unto it. Translated out of the original! Greeke, with Notes. By Meric 
 Casaubon, B. of D., and Prebendaire of Christ Church, Canterbury. 4to. London, 1634. 
 
 t " Marcus Antoninus the philosopher, whom most writers extol immoderately for 
 his wisdom and virtue, did not indeed repeal the decree of his father, and the other laws 
 of the preceding Emperors ; but he listened too much to the enemies of the Christians, 
 and especially to the philosophers, who accused them of the most horrid crimes, 
 and particularly of impiety, of Thyestean feasts, and CEdipodean incest. Hence 
 no Emperor, after the reign of Nero, caused greater evils and calamities to light 
 on Christians than this eminently wise Marcus Aurelius ; nor was there any Emperor, 
 under whom more Apologies for the Christians were drawn up, of which those by Justin 
 Martyr, Athenagoras, and Tatian are still extant." 
 
 J The History of the Church of Christ. By the Rev. Joseph Milner. Vol. i. 
 Containing the first Three Centuries. Cent, ii., cap. iv., pp. 223, 224. 8vo. York, 
 1794.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF FELICITAS. 367 
 
 war, and inundations, the idolatrous Priests, hating the Christians 
 and their religion, and especially Felicitaa,* on account of her rank 
 and station in society, represented to the Emperor, that they were 
 the cause of all the disasters, and that the gods would not be 
 appeased unless she and her sons were compelled to abjure Christi- 
 anity, and sacrifice to the national idols. This was sufficient to 
 arrest the attention of the philosopher. The Emperor immediately 
 commanded them to be seized, and ordered Publius, the Governor, to 
 take those proceedings by which the anger of the deities might be 
 softened, either by the change of their religion, or by their death. 
 The Magistrate resolved first to interrogate Felicitas, judging, that if 
 he could exercise an influence over her, her example would influence 
 her children : therefore, on the day previous to their trial, he sent 
 for the matron, and endeavoured by civil speeches, and a feigned 
 concern for the consequences which a refusal of the Emperor's pro- 
 posals might probably induce, to engage her compliance ; but finding 
 her inexorable, he altered his tone, and, in unmistakable language, 
 gave her to understand, that she must either obey or die. Unintimi- 
 dated by the fear of death, ehe assured him that the Holy Spirit 
 would not suffer her to be overcome by the power of the devil. 
 For, said she, " If I survive this trial of my constancy, I shall be 
 victorious ; but I shall conquer still more gloriously if I perish under 
 your hand." Publius, staggered at the resolution she displayed, 
 mentioned her children, and requested her to consider their situation, 
 if she had no regard for her own. To which she replied, "That 
 they would certainly live if they persevered in the worship of the 
 true God, and an abhorrence of idolatry ; but the crime to which 
 they were solicited would assuredly bring upon them eternal death." f 
 She was then removed. 
 
 On the following morning Publius ascended the tribunal, and 
 commanded Felicitas and her sons to be brought before him. He 
 then addressed the mother in the presence of the young men, and 
 told her, that if she were then as indifferent to life as she appeared 
 to be on the preceding day, she ought at least to exercise some com- 
 passion for her offspring, whose, youth and rank promised future 
 service in the commonwealth. To which she answered, that what 
 he urged as a mark of her affection, was the strongest proof that 
 she could give of the want of it ; and that the compassion which he 
 recommended would entitle her justly to the character of the most 
 cruel of parents. Then, looking upon her sons, she exhorted them 
 
 * Ruinart in " Acta Primorum Martyrum sincera et selects," supposes that these 
 martyrs suffered under Antoninus Pius, A.D. 160, and in the thirteenth year of his 
 reign, who, as Tertullian certifies, put several Christians to death whilst he waa 
 Governor of Asia. We prefer adopting the chronological data of Tilleraont. 
 
 t Publius itaque Praefectus Urhis jussit earn privation adcluci ; et blando colloquis ad 
 sacrilicinm earn pro<wans, minabatur poenarum interitum. Cui Felicitas ilixit ; Nee 
 blttudimentis tuis resold potero, nee terroribus tuis frangi. Haheo enira Spiritum Sanc- 
 tum, qui me noil penuittit vinci a diaholo ; et ideo secura sum, quia viva te superabo ; et 
 si interfecta fuero, melius te vineam ocdsa. Publiua dixit, Misera, si tibi suave est 
 mori, vel Olios tuoa fac viyere. Felicitas respondit : Vivent filii mei, si non sacrifica- 
 verint idolis : si veto hoc tantum scelus admiserint, in aeternum ibunt interitum. (Rui- 
 nart, Acta Martyr.)
 
 368 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 to direct their eyes to heaven, where the Lord Jesus was waiting to 
 receive them, to contend boldly for the faith, and to maintain their 
 integrity. Indignant at this proceeding, Publius directed one of the 
 bystanders to strike her on the face, at the same time reproving her 
 temerity for talking thus to him, and for daring to encourage her 
 children to disobey the Sovereign. Placing her on one side, he com- 
 menced interrogating the young men. To the eldest, Januarius, he 
 offered promises of reward, and immediate preferment in the state, if 
 he would abjure Christianity, and threatened most cruel torments 
 if he refused. The young man assured him that his offers were 
 useless, and hoped that God would give him grace to endure to the 
 end. For this reply, he was scourged and cast into prison. The 
 second son, whose name was Felix, was called, who, following the 
 example of his elder brother, met with a similar fate. Philip, the 
 third, was then brought to the bar, and told, that it was the Empe- 
 ror's order, that he should sacrifice to the gods of the empire. He 
 replied, that those deities were no gods, but empty idols void of all 
 understanding. Publius would now be able to form an opinion of 
 the remaining four,* whom he concluded, by similar investigation, 
 to possess the same principles, and equal firmness in maintaining 
 them. They were then remanded until the Emperor's pleasure should 
 be known. 
 
 This was not delayed. Publius took the first opportunity of laying 
 the examination of Felicitas and her sons before Marcus Aurelius, 
 who, like a Stoic and a philosopher, immediately ordered them all to be 
 put to death. With refined cruelty, he committed them to four dif- 
 ferent Judges, who should subject them to different tortures. Janua- 
 rius, the eldest, was beaten to death with plumbatce, f or whips, 
 laden with plummets of lead : Felix and Philip had their brains 
 beaten out with clubs. Silvanus was cast headlong from a precipice. 
 Alexander, Vitalis, and Martial, were beheaded ; and, finally, Felici- 
 tas suffered the same fate by the same sword. Well, indeed, has 
 Gregory I. observed, with regard to this martyr, that " having seven 
 children, she was as much afraid of leaving them behind her on 
 earth, as other mothers are of surviving theirs. She was more than 
 a martyr ; for seeing her seven children martyred before her eyes, she 
 was in some sort a martyr in each. She was the eighth in order 
 of time, but was from the first to the last in pain, and began her 
 martyrdom in the eldest, which she only finished in her own death. 
 She received a crown, not only for herself, but likewise for all her 
 children. Seeing them in torments, she remained constant, feeling 
 their pains by nature as their mother, but rejoicing for them in her 
 
 * Ruiuart, Acta Martyr, smcera et selecta, fol. p. 27. 
 
 t The plurnbatce consisted of balls of lead or brass, connected by chains of iron ; and 
 are often mentioned as instruments of torture in the Theodosian code, and also by 
 Prudentius : 
 
 Tundatur, inquit, terga crebris ictibus, 
 Plumboque cervix verberata extuberet. 
 
 Hymn. x. S. Romani, v. 116. 
 
 Some were discovered in the tomb of a martyr, in the pontificate of Benedict XIII., 
 nd are preserved in the museum of the Vatican. (Prudent. Arevel, torn, ii., p. 1073.)
 
 PTOLEMjfcUS AND LUCIUS. 369 
 
 heart by hope. Let us be covered with shame and confusion, that 
 we should fall so far short of the virtue of this martyr, and suffer our 
 passions still to triumph over faith in our hearts. Often one word 
 spoken against us disturbs our minds ; at the least blast of contradic- 
 tion we are discouraged or provoked ; but neither torments nor death 
 were able to shake her courageous soul. We weep without ceasing 
 when God requires of us the children he hath lent us ; and she 
 bewailed her children when they did not die for Christ, and rejoiced 
 when she saw them die." * 
 
 It was also in the early part of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, that 
 Ptolemaeus and Lucius suffered on account of their Christian confes- 
 sion. The details are related in one of the Apologies of Justin. "A 
 certain woman had a husband that was intemperate. She herself had 
 also previously led a dissolute life ; but after she was made acquainted 
 with the doctrines of Christ, she became modest, and endeavoured to 
 persuade her husband also to lead a virtuous life, presenting to his 
 mind the truths of Christianity, and the punishment of eternal fire 
 awaiting those that would not live soberly, and according to right 
 reason ; but he still continuing in the same lascivious habits, wholly 
 alienated his wife's affections by his practices. Finally, the woman 
 considering it wicked to live with one who, contrary to the law of 
 nature and propriety, was intent upon every course to gratify his 
 lusts, contemplated a divorce. But when she was advised by her 
 friends to remain with him, in hope of his reformation, she did vio- 
 lence to herself, and remained. Afterwards, however, her husband, 
 who had gone to Alexandria, was reported to be acting much worse. 
 Fearing, therefore, lest she should become a sharer in his unrighte- 
 ousness and impieties, if she continued united to him, and should be 
 his companion, she sent him what is called the bill of divorce, and 
 was separated. This man, however, who ought to have rejoiced that 
 his wife, who had formerly delighted in debauchery, and all manner 
 of vice, had now ceased from those deeds in which she had formerly 
 wantonly engaged with servants and hirelings, and that she now 
 wished him, also, to cease from the same things, not only refused to 
 do thus, but brought an accusation against her, asserting that she 
 was a Christian. And, she delivered," says Justin, "to you, the 
 Emperor, a petition, requesting that she might first be permitted to 
 regulate her domestic affairs, and then she would make her defence 
 in reference to the accusation. And this you granted. But he, who 
 had formerly been the husband of the woman, not being able to say 
 anything against her now, turned upon a certain Ptolemy, whom 
 Urbicius had punished, and who had become her instructor in the 
 principles of Christianity, in the following manner : 
 
 To the above account is also to be added : " Praxedes, a blessed virgin, the 
 daughter of a citizen of Rome, who was so brought up in the doctrine of Christ, and so 
 affected to his religion, that she, with her sister Patentiana, (Baronius says, Puden- 
 tiana, Ann. 166, sect. 3,) bestowed all her patrimony upon the relieving of poor Chris- 
 tians, giving all her time to fasting and prayer, and to the burying of the bodies 
 of martyrs. And after she had made free all her family, with her servants after the 
 death of her sister, she also departed, and was buried in peace." (Foxe'a Acte and Mo- 
 numents, vol. i., p. 127- 8vo. edit.) 
 
 VOL. i. SB
 
 3/0 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 " He had persuaded the Centurion to seize Ptolemy his friend, and 
 cast him into prison, and to ask him only this, whether he were a 
 Christian ? Ptolemy, who was a lover of truth, and averse to all 
 deceit and falsehood, confessed himself a Christian ; in consequence 
 of which, he was incarcerated, and punished by the Centurion in this 
 way for a long time. At last when the man came before Urbicius in 
 like manner, only this one thing was asked, whether he were 
 a Christian ? And as he was conscious of deriving every happiness 
 and blessing from the doctrine of Christ, he again professed the prin- 
 ciples of divine virtue : for he that denies that he is a Christian, 
 either denies because he despises, or because he is conscious that he is 
 unworthy of this religion, and a stranger to its excellency ; and thus 
 avoids the confession. Neither of these things can apply to the true 
 Christian. Urbicius, however, having commanded him to be led 
 forth 'to torture and to death,' a certain Lucius, who was also a 
 Christian, seeing the judgment so unjustly passed, says to Urbicius, 
 ' What charge is this, that you should punish one who is neither an 
 adulterer, nor fornicator, nor a murderer, nor a thief, nor a robber, 
 nor convicted, indeed, of any crime, but simply confessing the name 
 of a Christian ? Urbicius, you do not judge what becomes our 
 pious Emperor, nor the philosophic son of Csesar, nor the sacred 
 Senate.' But, without any other reply, he said to Lucius, 'Thou 
 appearest also to be one such as these ;' and as Lucius answered, 
 ' By all means,' he in like manner commanded him to be led forth. 
 But he, Lucius, said, he thanked him ; ' for now,' he added, ' he was 
 liberated from wicked masters, and was going to the good Father and 
 King, even God.' A second and a third coming up, were punished 
 in the same way." * 
 
 The tragical event thus recorded stimulated Justin to write his 
 second Apology. The date of this document, like that of other 
 events connected with the history of Justin, has been much con- 
 tested ; but Eusebius expressly states it to have been addressed to 
 M. Aurelius, and L. Verus, by which he may have meant that it was 
 written during their reign; and since Justin appears to address only 
 one Emperor, we may perhaps ascribe his second Apology to the 
 period when Verus was absent on his eastern campaigns ; that is, to 
 some time between the years 161 and 165.f From a contemporary 
 
 * Enseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 17. Henry of Herford, says Foxe, recordeth, 
 out of the Martyrology of Isuardus, of one Concordius, a Minister of the city of 
 Spoleto, who, in the reign of this Antoninus Verus, because he would not sacrifice unto 
 Jupiter, but did spit in the face of the idol, after divers and sundry punishments sus- 
 tained, at last with the sword was beheaded. Isuardus and Bede, Vincentius and 
 Henry of Herford, with other authors more, make relation of divers martyrs that, 
 by sundry kinds of torments, were put to death under the aforesaid Emperor ; the names 
 of whom be Symmetrius, Florellus, Pontian, Alexander, Caius, Kpipodius, Victor, 
 Corona, Marcellns, and Valerian. The cause of whose martyrdom was the reprehend- 
 ing of idolatry, and because, at the Emperor's commandment, they would not sacrifice 
 to idols. Many sorts of punishment and miracles are told of them ; but at length the 
 end of them all is this, that they were beheaded. (Acts and Monuments, vol. i., p. 129.) 
 
 t We cannot form an opinion with certainty respecting the date of the second or 
 shorter Apology. But no well-founded doubt exists, that this document was prepared 
 under the reign of the Emperors Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, and therefore, 
 between years 161 166. Eusebius, with whom Jerome, Photius, and others, agree,
 
 JUSTIN. 371 
 
 document we learn that edicts were issued about this time in different 
 countries, by which the Christians were ordered to sacrifice to the 
 gods, or to suffer capitally. The edict is said to have been issued by 
 the Emperor ; * but Tertullian says, that no law was enacted against 
 the Christians by Marcus Aurelius. This appears contradictory ; 
 nevertheless, the philosophers, the Priests, or an excited rabble, 
 might all, in their turn, be the cause of much cruelty. Occasion- 
 ally they would unite their efforts ; and in such cases there was but 
 little need of an Emperor's edict or permission to shed the blood 
 of men who were accused of disrespect to the gods, as well as to the 
 Emperor. Crescens, a Cynical philosopher, was able to gratify his 
 malice by putting many Christians to death ; and this was, perhaps, 
 only one instance, out of many, where the philosophers stood up as 
 defending the national religion against the inroads of Christianity. 
 Justin appealed in his Apology to the Emperor against these barba- 
 rities ; and though it cannot be denied, that the laws had been vio- 
 lated without the Emperor taking any notice, Dr. Burton infers, that 
 Justin did not suspect him personally of originating the persecution. 
 When applied to in particular cases, he may have allowed a Magis- 
 trate to act with severity, or he may have sent an answer which was 
 construed more harshly than he intended ; but at this time he had 
 probably published no general edict by which the Christians were 
 placed in a worse condition than before ; and the fact of his allowing 
 them, under certain restrictions, to hold office, is a proof that at 
 some period at least he was inclined to do them justice. Political 
 privileges were not what the Christians wanted. They desired immu- 
 nity from atrocious calumnies, and from the fury of the people, who 
 clamoured for their blood. The Emperor either could not, or would 
 not, protect them from these outrages. Such at least was the situa- 
 tion in which the Christians were placed.^ 
 
 The first thing that arrests our attention, that is peculiar in the 
 nature of the persecutions of this time, is, that inquisition for Chris- 
 tians was ordered by the laws, although the fury of the populace fre- 
 quently outstripped the legal proceedings of public functionaries. 
 According to the edict of Trajan, no such inquisition was to be made ; 
 but now, on the contrary, the Christians were eagerly sought for, 
 and were often obliged to escape by hiding themselves, as appears 
 from the several accounts of the persecutions, and from the expres- 
 sions of Celsus, one of the most inveterate adversaries with whom 
 Christianity has had to contend. Up to this time the treatment 
 they had experienced was this : the Christians who were accused, and 
 
 distinctly asserts thia ; and the grounds on which Valerius, Dodwell, and Neander think 
 themselves justified in placing the composition of this Apology in the reign of the 
 Emperor Autoniuus Pius, are either unimportant, or are in favour of the contrary opi- 
 nion. After all, the precise date of the second Apology must remain undetermined. 
 (Semisch's Life, Writings, and Opinions of Justin Martyr, vol. i., p. 81 ; Biblical Cabi- 
 net, vol. xli.) 
 
 The Acts of Justin's Martyrdom. The edict is given at length in the Passio S. 
 Symphoriani Martyria, Rninart, Acta Martyr, sincera et selecta, p. 79, et stq. Fol. 
 
 t Burton's Lectures on Eccles. Hisi., lect. xviii., vol. ii., p. 129. 8vo. edit. Oxford, 
 1833. 
 
 3 B 2
 
 372 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 would not, after repeated requests, abjure their faith, were executed 
 with the application of torture. It was now attempted to force the 
 Christians to recant by the same means. The edict to which we 
 have already referred, and is still extant under the name of the 
 Emperor Aurelian,* which, as Pagi and Ruinart suspect, stands for 
 Aurelius, coincides exactly with this account ; and, as it bears every 
 mark of genuineness in its language and matter, it is not improbable 
 that it may be the very edict sent by this Emperor to the Governors 
 of the provinces. It runs thus : " We have heard that the lavs 
 are violated by those who, in our times, call themselves Christians. 
 Seize these people ; and if they refuse to sacrifice to our gods, punish 
 them with various kinds of torments, in such a manner, however, 
 that justice be mingled with your severity, and that the vengeance 
 of the law remain satisfied with extirpating the crime." This last 
 addition suits exactly the character of Aurelius : the Governors were 
 to look steadfastly at the aim he had in view ; namely, to crush 
 Christianity, which was at variance with the state religion, and to 
 lead back the people to the worship of the Eoman gods ; but they 
 were not to give themselves up to the dictates of blind passion. The 
 caution might be humane enough ; but it was totally insufficient to 
 restrain men from cruel and arbitrary measures. f 
 
 Justin was not long permitted to survive the appearance of his 
 second Apology. He was a remarkable man. To him the whole 
 extent of Heathenism was familiar, both in its depth and height, in 
 its mythological superstition, and in its refined and lofty speculations ; 
 for he was both a scholar and a philosopher. He was born at Flavia 
 Weapon's, a town which occupied the place of Sichem, the old capital 
 of Samaria. It received its name in honour of Flavius Vespasian, 
 the Emperor, who colonized it with Greeks, and thus made it one 
 of those heathen towns with which both the Romans and the Heroda 
 had found it expedient to bridle that ever-restless country. His 
 father's name was Priscus, a Gentile ; and, according to Scaliger, one 
 
 * This edict which is preserved in the A eta Symphoriani, is thus expressed in the 
 original : " Aurelianus imperator onmihus administratoribus suis atque rectorihus. 
 Comperimus ah his, qni se temporibus nostris Christianos dicunt, legum praecepta vio- 
 lari. Hos comprehensos, nisi diis nostris sacrificaverint, diversis punite cruciatibus, 
 quatenus habeat distinctio prolata justitiam et in resecandis ultio terminata jam finem." 
 (Ruinart, Acta Martyr, selecta, &c. Fol. p. 80.) No aim appears likely to he 
 answered by the forgery of such an edict : its language is the official language of the 
 day, and its whole spirit breathes the Roman statesman, so that an unprejudiced person 
 can scarcely believe it spurious. If it belong to the time of Aurelianus, whose name 
 it bears, the martyr, in whose history it stands, must have died in his reign. But it is 
 difficult to believe,, that under this Emperor they proceeded to shed Christian blood. 
 Also the manner in which it speaks of Christians, as not then being an old sect, appears 
 to suit the time of Aurelius better than that of Aurelianus, in which the Christian sect 
 had so long openly existed. Also the accusation against the Christians, that the exer- 
 cise of their religion was a violation of the laws of the state, could hardly be brought 
 forward under the Emperor Aurelian ; for Christianity, in that case, had been recognised 
 as a religio licita fifteen years when this edict appeared. Most undoubtedly, therefore, 
 we must read " Aurelius," instead of " Aurelianus," two names which are constantly 
 interchanged. Lucius Aurelius Commodus was favourable to the Christians, and, 
 therefore, he is out of the question : it suits no one but the Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
 Antoninus. (Neander's History.) 
 
 t Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. i., p. 105.
 
 JUSTIN. 373 
 
 of those Greeks who were transplanted to that colony, and who was 
 careful, with religion, to educate his son in all the learning and philo- 
 sophy of the Gentile world. In his younger years he travelled into 
 foreign parts for the benefit of his studies, and particularly into 
 Egypt, the theatre of all the more mysterious and recondite parts 
 of polity and religion, and therefore constantly visited by all the more 
 grave and sober philosophers among the Heathen. That he visited 
 Alexandria, we know from his own writings,* where he informs us 
 of the statements he received concerning the translators of the Sep- 
 tuagint, and that he was shown the cells where they accomplished 
 that elaborate and renowned work : it was in that city he also 
 became acquainted with the principal systems which then engaged the 
 attention both of scholars and theologians. At the commencement 
 of his " Dialogue with Trypho the Jew," he describes the hopes 
 which he entertained from the study of philosophy, and the disap- 
 pointments in which his highly-raised expectations issued, till, in the 
 Christian faith, he found that certainty and truth which had been the 
 constant aim of his inquiries. Justin, therefore, had to choose his 
 party, as Josephus had his sect. Consequently, with the generality 
 of the young men of his age, he ran the round of the principal schools, 
 not only without finding satisfaction, but also with the experience 
 of no little disgust. He sought his first instructor in a master of 
 the Stoic school ; but after staying with him a long time, and finding 
 that he made no advance toward the knowledge of God, he left him, 
 and betook himself to a Peripatetic ; but this professor of superior 
 wisdom within a few days sickened him by an exhibition of earthly 
 prudence in impatiently asking him to settle the terms.f Justin 
 left him, and went to a noted Pythagorean, to see if he could pro- 
 cure from him the peculiar and excellent gift which philosophy 
 promises. But. alas ! our inquirer found himself unqualified at the 
 outset : he had failed to bring with him that knowledge of music, 
 astronomy, and geometry, which this system considered as funda- 
 mental. Again Justin was, emphatically, at sea. He then deter- 
 mined to attach himself to a Platonic, with whose intellectual notions 
 he was highly enraptured ; and resolved for some time to give himself 
 up to solitude and contemplation. 
 
 Numerous instances now took place which operated in leading 
 Justin to judge favourably of Christianity. Palestine was cruelly 
 
 Jnstini Ad Diognetum Epistola. Folio, cap. xi. 
 
 t Covetousness was a crying sin among the philosophers. Tatian, in his address to 
 the Greeks, says, " So far are your philosophers from practising the self- contentment 
 which they recommend to others, that some of them receive from the Emperor a 
 yearly pension of six hundred aurei, for no hetter reason than they may be well paid 
 for the length of their beards." Lucian gives a fearful description of the corrupt morals 
 of the philosophers of his day, and paints them to the life : " A race of men have 
 lately made their appearance, idle, contentious, vain, irritable, lickerish, empty-headed, 
 inflated, overflowing with insolence, appropriating the honourable name of virtue, rais- 
 ing their eye-brows, and stroking their beards, they gad about, concealing their abomina- 
 ble propensities under this assumed garb. Before their disciples they are for ever landing 
 self-restraint and temperance, and pouring contempt on wealth and pleasure ; but alone, 
 and in their own practice, who can describe their voracity, their lewdness, their eager- 
 ness to lay hold of every dirty obolus that comes in their way ? " (Lucian, Icaromenip, 
 cap. xxix.)
 
 374 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 ravaged by the rebellion of the impostor Barcochebas. The Chris- 
 tians suffered much from the pretender, in not acknowledging him 
 to be their Christ, and from the heathen populace as his supporters. 
 He had an opportunity of seeing the singular and calumniated class 
 of men who " had turned the world upside down." When he saw 
 them fearless against death, and all other terrors, he thought it impos- 
 sible that they could lead a vicious and a sensual life. For what 
 man that was a lover of pleasure, licentious, and a feeder on human 
 flesh, would welcome death, so as to be deprived of his enjoyments ? 
 Would he not rather endeavour, by all means, ever to live this life, 
 and escape the notice of the Magistrate ? Justin was acquainted 
 with the fearful punishment which was inflicted upon the Jews by 
 the Romans, and must have been deeply affected with the novel and 
 horrible spectacle at the great annual fair at Terebinth, when a whole 
 nation was sold into slavery like beasts ! The disturbed state of 
 affairs probably led him to remove to Caesarea, the head-quarters 
 of the Roman Governor. Wrapt in contemplations, to which the 
 Platonic philosophy had conducted him, he wandered to a spot not 
 far from the sea. His solitude was interrupted by the appearance 
 of a venerable old man,* of meek, but dignified, deportment. A 
 conversation commenced, in which Justin speedily displayed the self- 
 ish and worthless spirit which ever inspires the " wisdom of this 
 world." The old man warned him against the fallacy of resting his 
 hopes on any system taught by the philosophers, and directed him to 
 study the Hebrew Prophets, and the doctrines of Christianity, and to 
 pray with earnestness, that light might be given him to understand 
 these things, which could only be comprehended by the assistance 
 of God himself, and the Saviour. Having thus spoken, the stranger 
 went his way, and Justin saw him no more. His words, however, 
 were as " a nail " fastened "in a sure place :" they kindled a flame 
 in his heart which nothing could extinguish. He attentively revolved 
 the information he had received ; he seized with eagerness the writ- 
 ings of the Prophets ; he anxiously sought the acquaintance of those 
 persons who were known by him to be the friends of Christ ; and 
 the result of this threefold effort was, his passing over to the Chris- 
 tian church. f The quickness with which this transition was made, 
 cannot be thought strange, if we consider that his attachment to 
 Heathenism depended almost entirely on his faith in the truth and 
 rectitude of certain philosophical tenets, especially of Platonism. 
 This illusion once broken up, the last ties were snapped asunder, 
 which had hitherto kept him from joining the Christian community. 
 
 * Numerous conjectures have been entertained respecting this venerahle personage. 
 Halloix is doubtful whether this aged man might not he an incarnate angel, but at last 
 decides in favour of the opinion, that he might he one of the saints living at that time, 
 who was brought to this interview with Justin by a divine impulse, or, rather, by the 
 actual guidance of an angel. Tillemont considers the first supposition highly probable. 
 Ziegler supposes that the old man was a hermit. Zastran thinks he must have been a 
 philosophically educated Jewish Christian ; and Fabricius, that he was Polycarp of 
 Smyrna. 
 
 t It is worthy of notice that the study of the Old Testament, and especially of the 
 Prophets, was the means of leading to the Christian faith, Tatian, Theophilus of 
 Antioch, and Hilary.
 
 JUSTIN. 3/5 
 
 For some time before, Christianity had exerted a silent influence over 
 him, and had been imperceptibly winning his heart. The intrepidity and 
 cheerfulness with which Christians maintained their faith under all the 
 tortures which the rage and cruelty of their heathen adversaries were 
 ready to inflict upon them, the ready determination with which 
 they met death itself, for their profession, had impressed him with 
 the conviction that it could not consist with the secret vices and 
 crimes of which the Christians were accused ; since self-indulgence, 
 and joy in the prospect of death, form the most direct antipodes.* 
 
 The church in Csesarea probably had the privilege of receiving 
 into her bosom this convert. He was by no means backward in 
 exhibiting the fruits of her instruction. He addressed the Gentiles 
 in a written oration ; and " could we be sure," says Mr. Evans, " that 
 this is the same with that which has come down to us under the title 
 of ' A hortatory Address to the Greeks,' there would not be a more inter- 
 esting document in the whole range of ecclesiastical literature. It 
 would be the first address extant that was made to the Heathen, after 
 the speeches of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles ; and would dis- 
 cover to us the points in which Justin felt dissatisfaction with hea- 
 then philosophy, as also wherein he knew the pagan system to be 
 most assailable. Thus it would bear a very diflerent character from 
 any previous Christian writing. After having been all along in the 
 company of saints, Prophets, and Apostles, we feel a sudden surprise 
 at being thus introduced to an assembly of heathen gods and philo- 
 sophers ; and some have even recoiled as at the entrance of a pagan 
 temple, not considering that our guide is leading us not to worship, 
 but to disperse and destroy." -f It appears that the wiser and more 
 considerate part of the Gentiles were not a little perplexed at the 
 loss of so useful and eminent a person, and professed great astonish- 
 ment at the change which had taken place. For their satisfaction 
 and edification, he wrote the Exhortation alluded to, and in the very 
 first words addresses them thus : " Think not, ye Greeks, that I 
 have rashly, and without any judgment or deliberation, departed from 
 the rites of your religion ; for I could find nothing in it really sacred, 
 and worthy of the divine acceptance. The matters among you, as 
 your poets have ordered them, are monuments of nothing but mad- 
 ness and intemperance ; and a man can no sooner apply himself, 
 even to the most learned among you for instruction, but he shall be 
 entangled in a thousand difficulties, and become the most confused 
 individual in the world." He then proceeds, with a considerable 
 degree of wit and eloquence, to expose the folly and absurdity of the 
 foundation of the pagan creed, and concludes his address as follows : 
 "Come hither, ye Greeks, and partake of a most incomparable 
 wisdom, and be instructed in a divine religion, and acquaint your- 
 selves with an immortal King. Become as I am ; for I sometime was 
 as you are. These are the arguments that prevailed with me ; this 
 
 Semisch's Life, Writings, and Opinions of Justin Martyr. Translated by J. K. 
 Rjland ; Biblical Cabinet, vol. xli., p. 17. 
 
 t Evans's Biography of the Early Chnrch, p. 137. 
 
 J Ju.stiui Opera, Oratio ad Gnecos, p. 3". Folio. Paris, 1G36.
 
 376 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 the efficacy and divinity of the doctrine, which, like a skilful charm, 
 expels all corrupt and poisonous affections out of the soul, and 
 banishes that lust which is the fountain of all evil, whence enmities, 
 strifes, envy, emulations, anger, and such-like mischievous passions, 
 do proceed ; which being once driven out, the soul presently enjoys 
 a pleasant calmness and tranquillity. And being delivered from the 
 yoke of evils that before lay upon its neck, it aspires and mounts up 
 to its Creator ; it being but suitable that it should return to that 
 place from whence it borrowed its original." * 
 
 Justin did not suffer himself to be hidden in provincial obscurity. 
 \Ve have to follow him to the capital of the empire, where he arrived 
 clad in his philosopher's garb,f which he retained to the last ; consi- 
 dering himself still a philosopher, but of the only true philosophy, 
 and professing himself a teacher, not of human wisdom, but of the 
 divine word. The new faith, to which in so remarkable a manner he 
 had been led, from this moment became the mainspring and centre- 
 point of all his efforts. To the edification of the church of Christ, 
 both inwardly and outwardly, his life was henceforward dedicated. 
 It was his desire that the light which had risen on his own mind 
 should shine also on others ; that the repose and peace which he had 
 found, might also make others happy. Justin considered himself 
 laid under a religious obligation to devote himself to the immediate, 
 incessant propagation of the Gospel. He expressly declares, " that he 
 that can speak in defence of the truth, and does not, shall receive 
 the sentence of condemnation."! " It is, therefore, through fear 
 
 Justini Opera, Oratio ad Graces, p. 40, folio, 1636 ; Cave's Lives of the 
 Fathers, vol. i., p. 235, edit. 8vo., Oxford, 1840. 
 
 t " Though he laid aside his former profession, he still retained his ancient garb, as 
 Eusebius, and after him Hierom reports, preaching and defending the Christian religion 
 under his old philosophic habit, which was the pallium, or ' cloak,' the usual badge of 
 the Greek philosophers, (different from that which was worn by the ordinary Greeks,) 
 and which those Christians still kept to, who before their conversion had been professed 
 philosophers. So Hierom tells us of Aristides, the Athenian philosopher, contemporary 
 with Qnadratus, that under his former habit he became Christ's disciple ; and Origen 
 of Heraclas, afterwards Bishop of Alexandria, that, giving up himself to the more 
 strict study of philosophy, he put on the philosophic habit, which he constantly wore, 
 even after he became Presbyter of that church. This custom continued long in the 
 Christian community, that those who did entei upon an ascetic course of life, and a 
 more severe profession of religion, always wore the philosopher's cloak ; and he tells us 
 of Silvanus, the rhetorician, that when he became Christian, and professed this ascetic 
 life, he was the first that laid aside the cloak, and, contrary to custom, put on the com- 
 mon garb. Indeed, it was so common, that it became proverbial among the Heathen, 
 when any Christian ascetic passed by, ' There goes a Greek impostor ; ' because of their 
 being clad after the same manner, and professing a severer life than ordinary, like the 
 philosophers among the Grecians, many of whom notwithstanding were mere cheats and 
 hypocrites ; and Hierom notes of his time, (Hieron. Opera, torn, iv., Epist. ad Marcellam. 
 xix., p. 51, folio,) that if such, a Christian were not so fine and spruce in his garb as 
 others, presently the common saying was clapped upon him, ' He is an impostor, and a 
 Greek.' This habit, it seems, was generally black, and sordid enough. Whence the 
 Monks, who succeeded in this strict and regular course of life, are severely noted by 
 the Gentile writers of those times under this character. Libanins calls them ' black- 
 coat Monks,' and says of them, that the greatest demonstration of their virtue was, ' to 
 walk about in mourning garments.' Much at the same rate Eunapius describes the 
 Monks of Egypt, that they were clad in black, and were ambitious to go abroad in the 
 most slovenly and sordid garb." (Cave's Lives of the Fathers, vol. i., p. 234, 8vo.) 
 
 t Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, sect Ixxxiii. Translated by Henry 
 Brown, M. A. P. 183. 8vo. Cambridge, lb'46.
 
 JUSTIN S APOLOGY. 3/7 
 
 that we seek to converse with and convince men out of the Scrip- 
 tures ; and not for the love of money, or glory, or pleasure ; for no 
 one can justly accuse us of these vices." While at Rome, in the reign 
 of Antoninus Pius, he undertook a confutation of the Marcionites, 
 and others, who were then disturbing the peace of the church ; and 
 afterwards he addressed his celebrated Apology to the Emperor. 
 The situation of the Christians, even in the days of the so-called 
 benevolent Antonine, was by no means an enviable one. Pestilence 
 and famine were desolating the empire, and the people, with the 
 Priests and philosophers at their head, discovered the cause in the 
 anger of the gods at the toleration of such enemies to them as the 
 Christians. They were charged with awful crimes, and persecuted 
 both by the sentence of the Magistrate, and by the riots of the mob. 
 Justin boldly advanced to ward off the blow. The presentation of 
 his defence of the church to the Emperor involved great personal 
 danger, inasmuch as he professed himself a Christian to the Empe- 
 ror's face, when the law of Trajan was still in force, which, though it 
 forbade the Christians to be purposely sought after, yet inexorably 
 adjudged them to death when they allowed themselves to be such. 
 Good effect was produced. The pagan part of the population were 
 by no means uninfluenced ; and many waverers, who were on the 
 point of passing over to the church, were confirmed in the truth ; 
 an object of greater importance in the estimation of Justin than any 
 direct influence upon the higher powers. This useful service retained 
 him some considerable time in the capital. 
 
 In the course of time Justin returned to the provinces. Having 
 already contended for the faith with the Heathen and the heretic, he 
 now entered the lists against the Jew. Hence his celebrated Dia- 
 logue with Trypho, a most learned man of that nation. This confer- 
 ence is supposed to have occupied two days ; after which he sailed 
 from Ephesus. How long he abode in the provinces, does not appear : 
 it was not long before his duty called him to Rome. There the 
 church was in sackcloth. Although Marcus Aurelius had issued no 
 new edict against that hallowed community, he put them under a 
 virtual excommunication, or outlawry. He withdrew his protecting 
 arm, and left them, without defence, to the tender mercies of the 
 tribunals, and of the people. These usual instruments of persecu- 
 tion were unfortunately put into dreadful energy from the rage and 
 fear excited by the calamitous series of war, pestilence, and earth- 
 quake which pervaded his reign. The hostility of the Emperor's 
 philosophy was also aggravated by that of his superstition. Misera- 
 ble, indeed, was now the situation of the Christians. Their lives 
 and their property were in jeopardy every moment throughout the 
 empire. Other persecutions, if not local, had not been universal at 
 one and the same moment, and a refuge was open, if not to the 
 power, yet to the hope, of the sufferer. But now the whole empire was 
 one place of execution, and cries for mitigation of their sufferings 
 arose from every quarter.* 
 
 On the return of Justin to Rome he found an abundance of 
 
 Evans's Biography of the Early Church, p. 162. 
 VOL. I. 3 C
 
 3/8 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 employment prepared for him. He had frequent contests with Cres- 
 cens,* a philosopher, and of considerable notoriety at that time in 
 the metropolis. " He was a Cynic, and, according to the genius 
 of that sect, was proud and conceited, surly and ill-natured, a philo- 
 sopher in appearance, but a notorious slave to all vice and wicked- 
 ness. Tatian, the scholar of Justin, who saw the man at Rome, 
 and despised him on account of his childish and trifling, his wanton 
 and effeminate, manners, gives him this character, that he was the 
 traducer of all their gods, the epitome of superstition, the accuser 
 of generous and heroic actions, the subtle contriver of murders, the 
 prompter of adultery, a pursuer of wealth even to rage and madness, 
 a tutor of the vilest sort of lust, and the great engine and instigator 
 of persons being condemned to execution ; he tells us, that, when at 
 Rome, he was, above all others, miserably enslaved to unnatural 
 crimes, and covetousness ; and though he pretended to despise death, 
 he abhorred it ; to which, as the greatest evil, he sought to betray 
 Justin and Tatian, for their reproofs of the vicious and degenerate 
 lives of those philosophical impostors. This was the adversary of 
 
 * The Cynic school in the second century of the Christian era was in the last 
 stage of its decline. The various noble traits by which the earlier advocates of 
 this philosophy, notwithstanding all their singularities, had been honourably distin- 
 guished, had almost entirely vanished in the later adherents of the school : the Cynics 
 of the second century had barely retained the public side of their philosophy, and 
 reduced even this to a caricature. Their outward appearance had in it something fright- 
 ful. The pallium was carelessly thrown over one shoulder, and left one half of the 
 body naked, their hair hung down long and shaggy, their nails were like the claws of 
 wild beasts. Begrimed with dirt, girt with a large knapsack, in one hand a formidable 
 cudgel, and in the other a book written on the back ; they wandered about in swarms 
 through the most frequented parts of populous cities. But this sordid, uncouth exterior 
 was nothing in comparison with the internal abominations which went along with it. A 
 fawning servility to gain the favour of the powerful, immeasurable vanity, an unre- 
 strained fondness for detraction, a gluttonous appetite, insatiable avarice, and the most 
 shameless unchastity, were the characteristic features of most Cynics. Religion and 
 morality had in general, for them, only a relative value, as vehicles of vanity and self- 
 interest. What wonder, then, if, to people of this class, the quiet dignity of the Christian 
 conduct, the holy seriousness of Christian men and women, gave peculiar offence ? 
 What wonder, if, with all the irritation of a caste threatened in their reputation and 
 influence, with all the turbulence of a conscience violently aroused, they attacked the 
 professors of a new faith so dangerous to themselves ? The philosopher Crescens at 
 Rome was a microcosm of this degenerate Cynicism. Faithful to the character of his 
 party, he made the Roman Christians the objects of his calumnies and slanders. Him- 
 self without religion, he indulged, to the delight of an applauding multitude, in hypo- 
 critical lamentations over the irreligiousness of Christians. It was natural that 
 Justin, when, during his second residence at Rome, he became acquainted with the 
 proceedings of this abandoned philosopher, should feel compelled to defend the Christians, 
 by showing that the charges brought against them were utterly unfounded. He forced 
 this boastful and hypocritical philosopher to a tacit admission of his ignorance and dis- 
 ingenuousness. He showed that Crescens was either totally unacquainted with the Chris- 
 tian doctrine which he slandered, or that, if made acquainted with it, he understood it 
 not ; or that, if he not only knew it, but had a perception of its excellence, he had been 
 deterred by the fear of man from avowing this conviction. In every possible view, he 
 satisfactorily proved that Crescens had no right to the title of a philosopher ; that he 
 was no more than an aspiring charlatan, to whom the praise of men was everything, 
 and truth nothing. This bold language, of course, exasperated the Cynic to the high- 
 est degree, and Justin had everything to fear from his malice ; for the revenge of a 
 Cynic was as insatiable as his vanity. (Semisch's Life, Writings, and Opinions of Justin. 
 See also Professor Tholuck, on the Nature and moral Influence of Heathenism, especially 
 among the Greeks and Romans, viewed in the Light of Christianity ; Student's Cabinet 
 Library of useful Tracts, No. 40.)
 
 THE SECOND APOLOGY OF JUSTIN. 379 
 
 Justin, a lover of popular applause, not of true wisdom and philoso- 
 phy ; and who, by all the base arts of insinuation, endeavoured to 
 traduce the Christians, and to represent their religion under the most 
 infamous character. But in all his disputes Justin found him wretch- 
 edly ignorant of the affairs of the people whom he maligned, and 
 strongly biassed by malice and envy, which he offered to prove in a 
 public disputation in the presence of the Emperor and the Senate, 
 assuring them that either he had never considered the doctrines 
 of Christianity, and then he was worse than the meanest idiots, who 
 are not wont to bear witness and pronounce sentence in matters 
 whereof they have no knowledge ; or, if he had taken notice of 
 them, it was plain that either he did not understand them, or, if he 
 did, out of a base compliance with his auditors, dissembled his know- 
 ledge and approbation, for fear of being accounted a Christian, and 
 lest, freely speaking his mind, he should fall under the sentence and 
 the fate of Socrates ; so far was he from the excellent principle 
 of that wiae man, that ' no man was to be regarded before the truth:' 
 which free and impartial censure did but more exasperate him, the 
 sooner to hasten aud promote his ruin."* 
 
 There are recorded not less than six defences, or Apologies, which 
 were put forth by the Christians during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, 
 four of which survive the ravages of time to tell us the story of the atro- 
 cious calumnies and ill-treatment which they experienced. No sooner 
 had Justin entered the city of Rome, than he, with a boldness worthy 
 of the cause which he had espoused, placed himself in the front 
 of danger, and presented a second Apology. The blood of three 
 martyrs, put to death merely because they confessed themselves 
 Christians, had recently been shed. It commences with a detailed 
 example of the cruelties which the followers of Christ were suffering ; 
 and, in reply to certain unfeeling taunts which were cast upon the 
 confessors as to " why God did not interfere to deliver the Christians, 
 if he were indeed their helper ? and why, if death were the way to 
 God, they did not kill themselves, and save others the trouble ? " 
 he nobly vindicates the Most High, and his devoted followers. After 
 showing the superior excellence of the Christian teaching, and illus- 
 trating the proof which their fortitude in torment and death gave to 
 the innocence of their lives, by the effect which it had in his own 
 conversion, he concludes. It is a mournful document. The sword 
 and rack of persecution come before our eyes as we read it ; and, 
 like Paul's last letter, it contains a melancholy foreboding of his 
 fast-approaching death. His notorious exertions in teaching, and 
 the fame of his writings, had marked him out. But, above all, his 
 having quitted the ranks of the philosophers roused the ven- 
 geance of that malignant class of men. Foremost of these was 
 Crescens. He wallowed in iniquity. He was prepared both from 
 heart and head to do his worst against the Christians. He had been 
 most industrious in propagating calumnies against them, charging 
 them with atheism and impiety. Justin had especially incurred his 
 hatred, because he had publicly interrogated, and convicted him of 
 
 Cave'a Lives of the Fathers, vol. i., p. 241. 8vo. edit. Oxford. 
 
 3 c 2
 
 380 BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. 
 
 utter ignorance of the question ; and such an adversary was likely 
 enough to be lashed into greater fury by the severe terms in which 
 he was mentioned in Justin's last Apology. His machinations, his 
 vain-glory, his ignorance, his viciousness of character, are there pro- 
 claimed to the whole empire. Under the philosopher Marcus Aure- 
 lius, the artifices of Crescens had full scope, and Justin soon found 
 how speedily his purposes were accomplished.* 
 
 Justin was not unacquainted with the inveterate malice of Cres- 
 cens, and frequently declared that the pride of the mortified philoso- 
 pher would probably require his blood as an atonement ; and, with 
 somewhat of prophetic feeling, said, in his second Apology to the 
 Emperor, " I expect to be plotted against, and fastened to the stake, 
 by some one of those whom I have named, or, at least, by Crescens, 
 that lover of noise and braggadocio, for the man is not worthy the 
 name of philosopher." Crescens did not suffer Justin to be long 
 in a state of suspense : he had constant access to Marcus Aurelius, 
 whom it was no difficult task to prejudice against Justin, especially 
 as he was so successful in promoting the interests of the religion 
 of Christ. Crescens caused him to be cast into prison.f He was 
 brought in company with five others before the tribunal of Rusticus,J 
 the Praetorian Prefect. On being commanded, in the usual form, to 
 worship the gods and obey the Emperors, he answered with a distinct 
 profession of Christianity, which the interrogations of the Magistrate 
 only caused him to repeat in greater detail. His companions were 
 next questioned, and they made the same bold profession. The 
 Prefect then turned to Justin, and asked, in what kind of learning and 
 discipline he had been brought up. He said, that he had endea- 
 voured to understand all kinds of discipline, and tried all methods of 
 learning, but had finally taken his rest in the Christian discipline, 
 how little soever it was esteemed by those who were led by error 
 and false opinions. " Wretch that thou art," said Rusticus, " art 
 thou then taken with that discipline ? " "I am," replied the 
 martyr ; " for with right doctrine do I follow the Christians." And 
 when asked what that doctrine was, he answered with simplicity and 
 comprehensiveness, " We believe in one God, the original Creator and 
 framer of all things, visible and invisible, who is not inclosed in any 
 space, but, invisible as He is, fills heaven and earth ; and in Jesus 
 Christ the Son of God, whom the Prophets announced beforehand, as 
 a teacher of truth, and herald of salvation. Of his eternal Godhead 
 
 * Kvans'a Biography of the Early Church, p. 154. 
 
 t It is not improbable, though not absolutely certain, that Crescens was the prime 
 instigator of Justin's martyrdom. Several of the Fathers have asserted that he was so. 
 (See Euseh. Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 16; Bieron. de Viris Illust., cap. xxiii.) 
 
 \ Q. Junius Rusticus, a man, says Cave, famous both for court and camp, a wise 
 statesman, and great philosopher, peculiarly attached to the sect of the Stoics. He 
 was tutor to the Emperor M arcus Aurelius ; and what remarkable rules and instructions 
 he had given him, Antoninus himself sets down at large. Above all his masters, he had 
 a particular reverence and regard to him, communicated to him all his public and private 
 counsels, showed him respect before all the great officers of the empire ; and after his 
 death required of the Senate that he might be honoured with a public statue. He had 
 been Consul in the second year of Hadrian, and again in the second of the present 
 Emperor, and was now Prefect of Rome. (See Julius Capitolinus in Vit. Marc. Aurel. 
 Philosoph.)
 
 THE EXAMINATION AND MARTYRDOM OF JUSTIN. 381 
 
 I am not able in my weakness to speak satisfactorily : this is the 
 function of a prophetic power, as likewise in truth Prophets in 
 former ages prophesied of his becoming man." The Magistrate then 
 inquired, where the Christians were accustomed to assemble. " Where 
 they wish, and where they can," was Justin's firm and prudent 
 reply : " do you think we always assemble in the same place ? The 
 God of the Christians is not confined within an enclosure ; but as He 
 is invisible, and fills heaven and earth, the faithful praise and adore 
 him in every place." The Prefect then asked in what place Justin 
 was accustomed to instruct his disciples ; who forthwith gave him 
 an account of the place where he dwelt, and that there he preached 
 the truth to all that resorted to him. Rusticus then turned to those 
 who had been apprehended with Justin, and their replies tending to 
 the same end, he said to the martyr : " Hark, thou that hast the repu- 
 tation of eloquence, and thinkest that thou boldest the truth ; 
 if thou shalt be scourged and beheaded, art thou persuaded that thou 
 wilt go up into heaven?" He answered, that although he should 
 suffer what the other had threatened, yet he hoped that he should 
 enjoy the portion of all true Christians, well knowing that the 
 divine grace and favour were laid up for all such, and should be as long 
 as the world endured. To the jeering observation of the Magistrate, 
 " Thou believest, then, in thy ascension to heaven when I have caused 
 thee to be scourged and beheaded ?" Justin answered with the dis- 
 tinctness of a soul full of faith, " I hope that I shall receive the gift 
 of Christ's grace, when I have suffered that." The fresh inquiry of 
 the Governor, whether he really thought that he should go to 
 heaven, and be rewarded there, was met by Justin with a still more 
 decisive declaration : " I not only think so, but I know it with a 
 certainty that does not admit of a doubt." The patience of Rusticus 
 was now exhausted ; and seeing that it was to no purpose to argue any 
 longer, he brought the matter to a conclusion, by saying, " Sacrifice, 
 then, and obey, or I will order you to be tormented without mercy." 
 This threatening, so far from daunting the accused, only made his 
 courage rise higher. " No reasonable man," he replied, " will abjure 
 godliness, and embrace impiety. It is through a cruel death that 
 we hope and pray to be saved, for the sake of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, since this will be our salvation, and means of confidence 
 before the terrible and the universal tribunal of our God and 
 Saviour." To the same purpose was the answer of the rest of the 
 martyrs ; adding, " Do what you will : we are Christians, and do not 
 sacrifice to idols." Rusticus immediately pronounced the following 
 sentence : " They who refuse to sacrifice to the gods, and to obey the 
 imperial edict, let them first be scourged, and then beheaded, accord- 
 ing to the laws." * This blessed company of faithful witnesses was 
 
 * Tillemont's Memoires Ecclesiastiques ; Cave's Lives of the Primitive Fathers. 
 These authors have collected with great care the notices of the life of Justin to be 
 found in his works. His literary labours, as enumerated by EusebiuB, (lib. iv., cap. 
 1] 18,) are certain treatises against Marcion, Apologies to the Emperor Antoninua 
 Pius, and his successor ; two books against the Gentiles ; a Discourse on the Monarchy 
 of Ood ; another, On the Soul ; and the celebrated Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. 
 Others are alluded to, but not named.
 
 382 BCOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 then led off to the place of execution, and received the crown of mar- 
 tyrdom. Some of the brethren privily obtained their bodies, and 
 buried them in a suitable spot.* 
 
 Thus Justin obtained that title which has ever since been so 
 honourably affixed to his name. He exchanged the appellation of 
 philosopher, for that of martyr. There can be little doubt but that 
 he greatly contributed to bring the doctrines of Christianity under the 
 notice of persons who had before regarded them with contemptuous 
 indifference. Doubts have been justly entertained, whether he did 
 not allow his habits of philosophising to interfere sometimes with that 
 simplicity of doctrine, which it was of the utmost importance to pre- 
 serve uninjured. In his style, on the contrary, he was remarkably 
 free from the slightest tendency to affect wisdom of speech; and 
 it has been observed of him, that though he was perfectly skilled 
 in various kinds of knowledge, he took no care to adorn the natural 
 beauty of philosophy with the artificial ornaments of eloquence ; and 
 that his discourses, in consequence, though very learned, have little 
 eloquence or grace, f 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Tatian Suffered for the Sake of Christ Persecutions multiplied Quadra tut 
 Dionysius His " Embassy on behalf of the Christians" Dr. Burton quoted 
 Persecutions in Asia Minor Martyrdom of Papias His Character Broached the 
 Notion of the Millennium Its Fallacy Polycarp Place of his Birth Magni- 
 ficence and Celebrity of Smyrna Present State of that City Stoa Early Life 
 of Polycarp Pionius Bucolus Education of Polycarp Church of Smyrna 
 Her Character Polycarp constituted Bishop of that Church Archbishop Ussher, 
 who supposes he was the Angel of the Church mentioned in the Apocalypse 
 Character of the Bishop His early Privileges Story of the Bandit Captain 
 Polycarp is visited by Ignatius Polycarp and Ignatius compared Persecution 
 of Trajan Polycarp visits Rome Cause for this Journey Marcion disputes 
 concerning the Time of the Observance of Easter Amicable Settlement of the 
 Question State of the Church in the early Part of the Reign of Aurelius Marco- 
 manni Severe Persecution in Asia Minor Statius Quadratus, Proconsul Quin- 
 tus of Phrygia Circumstances which increased the Severity of the Persecution 
 Dreadful State of Smyrna Epistle of the Smyrntean Church Martyrdom of 
 Germanicus Polycarp is called for Retires from the City His singular Vision 
 And Apprehension Herod and Nicetes Irenarch Polycarp appears in the 
 Stadium Is interrogated by the Proconsul A mysterious Voice heard Remarks 
 upon it Polycarp replies to the Proconsul Philip the Asiarch Polycarp is 
 condemned to the Flames His Prayer Strange Appearance of the Flames 
 Fragrant Smell Remarks on these Traditions Death of Polycarp Thraseas is 
 martyred, and others Apollinarius His Defence of Christianity State of the 
 Churches in Asia Minor The Thundering Legion Remarks on this Narrative 
 The Christian Churches at Lyons and Vienne Their Origin State of Religion among 
 them Commencement of the Persecution at Lyons Epistle of the Lyonese Disciples 
 Mai-treatment Vettius Epagathus His Martyrdom Many failed in the Hour 
 
 * Ruinart, Acta Martyr. Sincera et Selecta. Acta Sancti Justini Philosopbi, et 
 Sociorum ejns. 
 
 t Stebbing's History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 73. 12mo. London, 1833.
 
 TATIAN, PAPIAS, AND OTHERS. 383 
 
 of Trial Banquets of Thyestes Rfv. Robert Turner Testimony of Sir David 
 Dfilrymple The Charge of Incest against the Christians examined Sanctut Ma- 
 tunif Attalus Blandina Her Fortitude Severe Tortures inflicted on Sanctut 
 Case of Biblias Various Kinds of Punishments Pothinus Is martyred Contrast 
 between the Apostates and the Faithful Malurut, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attains, 
 tortured in various ways Thrown to the Beasts The iron Chair Maturus and 
 Sanctus slain Blandina and Attalus again tortured Marcus Aurelius appealed 
 to frho encourages the Persecution Alexander Submits to the Torture Ponticut 
 is martyred Blandina expires Remains of the Martyrs intuited Three Descrip- 
 tions of Heathens who persecuted the Church Popish Fable respecting the Relic* 
 of these Martyrs Symphorianus Hit Martyrdom Irenaeus Testimony of 
 Joseph Addison, Esq. Apollonius the Tutor of Marcus Aurelius Superstition 
 in the Church Alcibiades Character of the Lyonese Epistle Rev. Joseph Milner 
 Iren&us Alexander andEpipodius Are examined Their undaunted Bearing 
 And manly Address Epipodius is beheaded Martyrdom of Alexander Gre- 
 gory of Tours Marcellus and Valerian suffer Torture and Death Their supposed 
 Relics Other Martyrs Marcus Aurelius engages in a second Campaign against 
 the Marcomanni Temple of Bellona in Rome Superstitious Observances Hit 
 Victories He meditates a third Campaign Arrested in his Progress by an alarm- 
 ing Illness Character of his Son and Successor Commodus not favourable 
 The Emperor's dying Address to his Attendants His Death Character of his 
 Reign Dr. E. Burton Commodus His Character Reason of the Cessation of 
 Persecution Marcia Exercises Kindness toward the Christians Apolloniuf 
 Irenteus John Foxe, the Martyrologist Julius suffers Martyrdom The aban- 
 doned Conduct and Assassination of Commodus. 
 
 SUBSEQUENT to the martyrdom of Justin, we read of Tatian, a 
 native of Assyria, who had travelled in various countries, and at 
 length visited Rome. Here he met with the martyr, and became his 
 disciple. He was converted by reading the books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and suffered in the persecution which was fatal to his master. 
 He appears to have been a voluminous writer ; and in his Oration 
 against the Gentiles, attacks the Heathen so openly and unsparingly, 
 that it is difficult to say how he contrived to preserve his life, when 
 his teacher was put to death. He afterwards fell into fearful heresy. 
 Rome, however, was by no means the only place in which the Chris- 
 tians were treated with cruelty at this time. The middle of the 
 second century appears to have been marked by persecutions in 
 various parts of the world, which probably arose from the increasing 
 progress of the Gospel. The church in Athens received its full share 
 of obloquy and suffering ; it was exposed to danger in being placed 
 among men who boasted because of their learning. But the pride of 
 erudition was by no means confined to the Heathen. Quadratus, 
 the Apologist, was the successor of Publius, the Bishop of this see, 
 who suffered martyrdom at a time when the persecution was 
 extremely violent. Dionysius, the Bishop of the neighbouring 
 church of Corinth, was a man of great piety and learning, though 
 none of his writings are extant ; he lived in trying times, when the 
 doctrines, as well as the lives, of his fellow-Christians were in danger, 
 both from open and from secret enemies, and contrived, not only to 
 provide for the safety of his own immediate flock, but for the mem- 
 bers of other and distant churches. Athenagoras flourished about 
 this period, and presented his work, entitled, "An Embassy in behalf
 
 384 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 of the Christians," at a time when the Emperors celebrated their 
 triumph for the victories in Parthia, and before they set out for their 
 war with the Marcomanni. " We are not informed," says Dr. Bur- 
 ton, " whether he succeeded in improving the condition of the Chris- 
 tians. His work acquaints us with the horrid calumnies which were 
 spread against them, and the iniquitous sufferings which they were 
 made to undergo. The Governors of provinces are stated to have 
 been unequal to the number of cases which were brought to their 
 tribunals ; and though this may show that the forms of justice were 
 observed, and the more favourable decrees of Hadrian and Antoninus 
 were still in force, there is abundant proof that the enemies of the 
 Christians were able to carry their point ; and that on some pretence 
 or other, either by a forced construction of the laws, or by the over- 
 powering clamours of the mob, the believers in Christ were exposed 
 on all sides to sufferings and death."* 
 
 In the churches of Asia Minor, there is abundant reason to believe 
 that the persecution against the Christians was prosecuted with great 
 vigour. Those persons who remembered the beloved disciple during 
 his residence in Ephesus, must have been comparatively few. Among 
 these, however, Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, and Papias, the Bishop 
 of Hierapolis, survived, both of whom suffered martyrdom. The death 
 of Polycarp is well authenticated ; that of Papias rests upon less certain 
 evidence. The only authority which we have for the martyrdom of the 
 Bishop of Hierapolis, fixes its date to the year 1 63, and states that he 
 was put to death at Pergamos, and that he was succeeded by Abercius. 
 The character of Papias has been attacked and defended by many 
 writers. Eusebius speaks of him in one place as extremely learned ; 
 and in another, as having very little judgment ; which expressions may 
 be reconciled, and exhibit his true position. His proximity to the 
 apostolical times, if not his personal acquaintance with some of that 
 sacred community, would put him in possession of facts which 
 it would have been interesting for us to know. Probably Philip 
 passed his later years at Hierapolis ; and Papias may have seen per- 
 sons who remembered his residence in that city. Many have sup- 
 posed, that Papias was the first to propagate in the church some strange 
 notions respecting a millennium. This was doubtless the case. He 
 believed that, previous to the final judgment, there would be a resur- 
 rection of the just, who would have dominion with the Saviour upon 
 earth for a thousand years. " Eusebius," says Dr. Burton, " who 
 acquaints us with this fact, is probably right, when he says that 
 Papias misinterpreted the apostolical declarations, and misunderstood 
 their figurative expressions. But the extensive reading of this simple- 
 minded man may also have contributed to form his belief upon this 
 point. There is evidence that the Gnostics expected a millennium ; 
 and Gnosticism, which was compounded of Platonism, the Oriental 
 doctrines, and the Jewish Cabbala, might have found in all those 
 systems some mystical allusions to a future period of terrestrial 
 enjoyment. There is no doubt that Justin Martyr believed that Jeru- 
 salem would be rebuilt, and that Christians would rise again to enjoy 
 
 * Button's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xviii.

 
 SMYRNA. 385 
 
 the society of their Redeemer for one thousand years : he, however, 
 does not hesitate to state, that there were many Christians, of sound 
 and religious minds, who did not agree with him in this notion. It was 
 also entertained by Irenseus, at the end of the second century, who 
 refers to Papias, as having preceded him in this belief; and according 
 to Jerom, there had been a personal acquaintance between Papias and 
 Irenoeus. Tertullian defended the doctrine in his writings, which he 
 was bound to do after he became a Montanist, as it formed a part of 
 the creed maintained by that party, though wholly unsupported by 
 the Scripture. Papias and Polycarp were friends. The distance 
 between Hierapolis and Smyrna was not great. Their lives were 
 greatly protracted ; and Polycarp accompanied his venerable friend to 
 the same termination of his earthly sufferings.* 
 
 POLYCARP was born toward the close of the reign of Nero, and it 
 is generally supposed in Smyrna, a city of Proconsular Asia, eminent 
 for the wealth of her citizens, the magnificence of her buildings, 
 and the beauty of her situation. She was the first among the 
 seven cities that entered their claim of being the birth-place of 
 Homer, in memory whereof they had a library, and a portico called 
 Homerium, with a temple, and the statue of the poet, adjoining ; they 
 also circulated a kind of brass coin, which they called after his name. 
 It was a place of considerable honour and renown ; it not only had 
 many magnificent titles imposed upon it by contemporary historians, 
 but in several ancient inscriptions, set up by order of the Senate, it is 
 styled, " the chief city of Asia, both for beauty and greatness, the most 
 splendid, the metropolis of Asia, and the ornament of Ionia." Smyrna 
 was a very ancient city ; but having been destroyed by the Lydians, it 
 lay waste four hundred years to the time of Alexander the Great. It 
 was rebuilt at the distance of twenty stadia from the ancient city ; and 
 we soon find it flourishing greatly, in the time of the first Roman Em- 
 perors. It was at this time that it became the seat of a Christian church, 
 which is noticed in the Apocalypse, as one of the seven churches of 
 Asia, addressed by the Apostle John, and shares with Philadelphia his 
 unalloyed commendation. It was destroyed by an earthquake A.D. 
 177; but the Emperor, Marcus Antoninus, caused it to be rebuilt 
 with even more than its former splendour. It afterwards, however, 
 suffered greatly from earthquakes and conflagrations, and must be 
 regarded as having declined much from its ancient importance, 
 although from the convenience of its situation it has still maintained 
 its rank as a great city, and the central emporium of the Levantine 
 trade ; and seeing the terrible decay which has fallen upon the 
 numerous great and beautiful cities of Asia Minor, its relative rank 
 among the existing cities of that region is probably greater than that 
 which it anciently bore.f " Few of the Ionian cities have furnished 
 more relics of antiquity, or of greater merit, than Smyrna ; but the 
 convenience of transporting them, and the number of investigators, 
 have exhausted the mine : it is, therefore, not at all wonderful, that 
 
 Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xviii. 
 t Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, vol. ii., p. 777, in loco. 
 VOL. I. 3D
 
 386 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ' of the stoas * and temples, the very ruins are vanished,' and it is 
 now extremely difficult to determine the sites of any of the ancient 
 buildings, with the exception of the stadium, the theatre, and the 
 temple of Jupiter Acreeus, which was within the acropolis. "-f- 
 
 The Greeks assert, that Polycarp was educated at the charge of a 
 certain noble matron, whose name, we are informed, was Callisto, a 
 woman of great piety and chastity, who, when she had exhausted all 
 her granaries in relieving the poor, had them replenished in answer to 
 the prayers of Polycarp. The circumstances which attended this sin- 
 gular report, have been recorded by Pionius, to the following effect : 
 Callisto, being warned by an angel in a dream, sent and redeemed 
 Polycarp, then but a child, of some who had purchased him : she took 
 him to her house, furnished him with the means of education, and 
 finding him a youth of promising talents, made him the steward of 
 her household, whose alms he distributed so freely, that her store- 
 houses were literally emptied : at this his fellow-servants complained ; 
 and CaUisto, doubting the testimony which he gave of the application 
 of her goods, demanded the keys, and required the resignation of 
 his trust. On entering the stores, as the account states, she found 
 them filled with food, and in as good condition as could be desired. 
 
 In his younger days, Polycarp is said to have been instructed in the 
 faith by Bucolus, whom John had consecrated Bishop of Smyrna ; 
 but for this we have not sufficient authority ; authors, however, of 
 more unquestionable credit, and ancient date, tell us, that he was 
 John's disciple, and not his only, but, as Irenseus, who was his scholar, 
 assures us, he was taught by the Apostles, and familiarly conversed 
 with many who had seen our Lord in the flesh. 
 
 The church of Smyrna did not in any degree emulate the city in 
 outward splendour and magnificence, but she excelled in the beauty 
 and brightness of internal holiness. She was poor, as the world 
 understands that expression ; but she was rich, in the estimation of 
 
 * 2ro&, " portions," a walk covered with a roof, which is supported by columns, at 
 least on one side. A portions was either attached to temples and other public buildings, 
 or it was built independent of any other edifice. Such shaded walks and places of 
 resort are almost indispensable in the southern countries of Europe, where people live 
 much in the open air, as a protection from the heat of the sun and from rain. They 
 were originally intended as places for persons to assemble and converse in, who visited 
 the temple for various purposes. The Stoic school of Philosophy derived its name from 
 the circumstance, that the founder of it used to converse with his disciples in a ffroa. 
 
 t Discoveries in Asia Minor, including a Description of the Ruins of several ancient 
 Cities, and especially of Antioch of Pisidia. By the Rev. F. V. J. Arundell, British 
 Chaplain at Smyrna. 8vo. Vol. ii., p. 407. London, 1834. 
 
 t Pionius was a Priest of Smyrna, and martyr. He was arrested on the great Sab- 
 bath of the Jews, A.D. 250, and in company with Sabina and Asclepiades, was led to 
 Polemon, the protector of the idolatrous temple, where he delivered a discourse on 
 religion to the persons who were gathered together on the occasion. He, with the 
 other two, was then conducted to prison. When the Proconsul arrived at Smyrna, 
 Pionius, after having undergone the torture, was condemned to be burnt, with oneMetro- 
 dorus. He suffered the cruelty, with wonderful patience and fortitude, on the 12th day 
 of March according to some, on the 22d according to others. (Moreri, Le Grand Diction - 
 naire.) The account of the miraculous supply of food is not supported by any compe- 
 tent authority. Cave mentions the fact ; but Ruinart, (Acta Martyrum,) Eusebius, 
 (Hist. Eccles.,) Tillemont, (Memoires pour 1'Hist. Eccles.,) and Butler, (in his Lives of 
 the Saints,) are all silent on the subject. 
 
 Iren. adv. Hseres., lib. iii., cap. 3, sect. 4 j Euseb., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 14.
 
 THE CHURCH OF SMYRNA. 387 
 
 the kingdom of heaven. Ill her infancy she was much harassed, 
 both by the avowed and insidious attacks of the Jews, as appears 
 from the testimony of holy writ : " I know thy works, and tribula- 
 tion, and poverty ; (but thou art rich ;) and I know the blasphemy of 
 them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue 
 of Satan." (Rev. ii. 9.) These adversaries, as will appear in the 
 sequel, were only introductory to the more serious assaults of the 
 Pagan, who openly came against her with the sword, and, what was 
 even more to be dreaded, secretly under the guise of philosophy. 
 We have no direct information of the introduction of the Gospel into 
 Smyrna ; but ecclesiastical history attributes, upon the authority 
 of ancient tradition, the formation of the church to the Apostle 
 John. The proximity of the city to Ephesus, and the easy access to 
 it as a maritime place, favour the conclusion that at an early period it 
 was a scene of apostolic labour. The whole eastern coast of the ^Igean 
 was navigated by St. Paul : his course from Mitylene to Miletus lay 
 by the entrance of the Smyrnsean gulf ; his ministry at Ephesus was 
 doubtless extended to the benighted districts around it ; so that it is 
 not improbable, that from the lips of St. Paul himself the Sinyrnaeans 
 had the first intelligence of the communications of revealed truth. 
 
 At the period of John's exile in Patmos, a church, distinguished 
 for its spirituality and zeal, existed in Smyrna ; and so had Polycarp 
 recommended himself to that inspired discerner of spirits, that he 
 ordained him with his own hands * as Bishop of that community. 
 Archbishop Ussher argues, also, and there is strong presumptive evi- 
 dence in favour of his opinion, that Polycarp was the " angel," or 
 Pastor, upon the occasion of the beloved disciple addressing the church. 
 The objections that are urged against this supposition, chiefly rest upon 
 his youth at the time of the Apostle's banishment ; but from his own 
 statement of his age, at the period of his martyrdom, A.D. 167, it 
 does not appear that he was too young to have then exercised the 
 important office of the ministry. He had been for " eighty and six 
 years," at his death, a servant of Christ ; and supposing him to have 
 been fourteen at his conversion, his birth is brought down to the 
 year 67, which makes him nearly thirty years of age at the era of the 
 Apocalypse. There is strong presumptive evidence in the Epistle 
 itself, that Polycarp was the presiding Minister of the Smyrnceans ; 
 for the prophetic intimation of trouble and persecution is in close 
 agreement with his history ; and, applying the address to him who 
 was ere long awaiting the horrors of martyrdom, there is something 
 extremely significant in the exhibition of a " crown of life," and in 
 the exhortation to " be faithful unto death." f " Behold, the devil 
 
 Tertullian, with the ancients generally, states this : " Hoc enim modo ecclesiaa 
 apostolicae CI-H.-.US suos deferunt, sicnt Smyrn<eoruni ecclesia Poljcarpum ab Johanne 
 coulocatum refert : sicut Romanoruin Clementem a Petro ordiuatum." (De Prescript. 
 Haerct., cap. xxxii.) In this ordination probably some other Apostle assisted, who had 
 alxo aided in hid education. (See Iren. adv. Hucres., lib. iv., cap. 3, 4, who is also 
 quoted by Euseb., Hist. Kccles., lib. iv., cap. 14.) 
 
 t History of the Seven Churches of Asia ; their Rise, Progress, and Decline ; with 
 Notices of the Churches of Trallea, Magnesia, Colosse, Hierapoliu, Lyons, and Vienne. 
 Designed to show the Fulfilment of Scripture Prophecy. By the Rev. Thomas Milner, 
 M.A. 8vo., pp. 202, 203. London, 1832. 
 
 3 D 2
 
 388 BOOK iv. CHAPTER iv. 
 
 shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall 
 have tribulation ten * days : be thou faithful unto death, and I will 
 give thee a crown of life." (Rev. ii. 10.) 
 
 Polycarp possessed all the qualifications of a good shepherd : he 
 constantly exhibited before his flock the brilliant example of the 
 Lord's Apostles, and with zeal and fidelity did he discharge his 
 onerous and responsible duties so as to obtain the esteem and affec- 
 tion of that church. His privileges had been confessedly great : that 
 word which we read in inanimate letters, or hear through the voice, 
 he received from the lips of the writer, accompanied with the living 
 language of features and gestures. The application of it which we 
 make to daily life by meditation, he made by the daily, and even 
 hourly, instruction which he was receiving. All that he heard in the 
 way of advice or injunction was a portion of the word. It was 
 around him, like the air in which he lived and breathed ; while to us 
 it is like the water which we must purposely apply. He was witness 
 also to a daily practical comment upon it by its inspired deliverer, 
 full both of the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost. He looked on 
 no picture of the imagination framed by inadequate study and 
 imperfect practice. Before his eyes was the living body, were the 
 living actions, were the living words, of the Apostle. He could not 
 see the whole breadth and depth of the prospect of the future 
 church, which has become our astounding retrospect. He would 
 have been overpowered with fright at the giddy height on which he 
 stood. The veil of futurity hid it immediately from his eyes. Yet 
 prophecy would tell him enough to warn him of his peculiar respon- 
 sibility. He knew that himself was appointed to be one of a few 
 main links of Christian testimony, on each of which would depend 
 a multitude of others to the end of time. His conduct in the minis- 
 try was in accordance with these reflections, and he was severely 
 tried.f 
 
 A circumstance is related of the Apostle John, in which Polycarp 
 of Smyrna was in some degree implicated. The former had occasion 
 to visit a city not far from Ephesus. Here he became acquainted 
 with a youth, whose outward bearing, and seemingly good disposition, 
 greatly interested him. His stay, however, could not be prolonged. 
 Whereupon, at his departure, turning to the individual whom he had 
 appointed Bishop of Smyrna, he solemnly, in the attesting presence 
 of Christ and his church, committed to his charge the young man 
 whom he had deemed so promising a subject. The Bishop accepted 
 the charge ; and, after conducting him through the regular course 
 of catechetical instruction, finally, believing him to be sincere and 
 
 * " Ten days." The prophecy evidently indicates a time of great and fierce perse- 
 cution ; a definite period is put for an indefinite, and intended to denote frequency and 
 abundance, when Smyrna shall be stained with the blood of martyrs, giving her Bishop 
 to the fires, and having her Christian profession and fidelity tried even unto death. 
 " Thou hast changed my wages ten times ; " that is, frequently changed them. (Gen. 
 xxxi. 7, 41.) "Those men have tempted me now these ten times." (Num. xiv. 22.) 
 " These ten times have ye reproached me." (Job xix. 3.) "He found them ten times 
 better than all the magicians." (Dan. i. 20.) 
 
 t Biography of the early Church. By the Rev. R. \V. Evans, M.A. 12mo., pp. 
 7375. London, 1837.
 
 THE BANDIT CAPTAIN. 389 
 
 devout, admitted him to the sacrament of baptism. After this, on 
 the ground that the supposed neophyte was sufficiently defended by 
 the baptismal seal of the Lord, the episcopal superintendence was 
 slackened. But the judgment proved erroneous. The youth, left to 
 the devices of his own evil heart, followed the natural, though 
 hitherto unsuspected, bent of his inclination ; and thence speedily 
 joined himself to a troop of idle and dissolute and thoroughly pro- 
 fligate individuals, his equals in point of age. For a season they 
 indulged only in expensive and riotous living; but at length they 
 organized themselves into a regular gang of marauding banditti. The 
 charitably-supposed real convert, on which presumption he had been 
 admitted to the holy sacrament of baptism, exceeded them all in vio- 
 lence, bloodshed, and ferocity ; whence, by acclamation, he was 
 chosen to be their Captain. Thus, from bad to worse, affairs went 
 on for a season. In the course of time, business brought the Apos- 
 tle John to the same city ; and, on his arrival, one of his first 
 inquiries respected the promising youth, in whom he had felt so deep 
 an interest. " Bishop," said he, " pay me back the loan, which, 
 with the church for our witness, Christ and I intrusted to you." 
 The Bishop, not understanding his cheerful raillery, thought that, 
 through calumny, he was thus called upon to refund a sum of money 
 which he had never borrowed ; but the Apostle soon undeceived him. 
 " I re-demand at your hand," said he, " the soul of the youth whom 
 I intrusted to your pastoral care." On this, groaning and weeping, 
 " Alas ! " replied the Bishop, " he is dead ! " John promptly 
 inquired, how and when and by what death. " To God he is dead," 
 rejoined the Bishop ; " for he is fallen away to all evil courses ; until 
 at length, becoming a robber, he has, instead of taking Christ's 
 church for his portion, occupied, with his abandoned associates, a 
 mountainous wild, fit for their lawless purposes." Forthwith, at 
 these lamentable tidings, after rebuking the Bishop for his negligence, 
 the holy and aged Apostle rent his garments, and beat his head : 
 then, having demanded and procured a horse and a guide, he took, 
 without hesitation, the direct road to the formidable haunt of the 
 robbers. Reaching their outposts, " Lead me," he cried, " to your 
 Captain ; for I am come specially to see him." The Commander of 
 the banditti, little, at first, suspecting the character of his visiter, 
 received him armed as he was ; but, as soon as he perceived the well- 
 remembered countenance of the venerable man, he precipitately 
 betook himself to flight. " My son," cried his eager pursuer, regard- 
 less of his own age and infirmities, " why fleest thou from thy old 
 and unarmed father ? Fear not : there is still, in Christ, a hope 
 of thy salvation." At these oft-repeated exclamations, the robber- 
 chief first stopped, with his eyes fixed to the ground ; then, throwing 
 down his arms, he burst into a flood of tears, wherewithal he was 
 baptized as with a second baptism. Upon this, the Apostle led him 
 back to the church ; and, offering up abundance of prayers, and 
 wrestling with him in prolonged fastings, and soothing him with 
 words of hope and consolation, he desisted not until he had restored 
 him to the church ; thus exhibiting a mighty example of true change
 
 390 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 of mind, (jaeravo/aj,) and a signal indication of regeneration, 
 (BjaAjyysvecnaj,) even to a trophy of such a resurrection from the 
 spiritually dead, as all men might openly behold.* 
 
 In the year 115, Ignatius arrived at Smyrna on his journey to Rome, 
 where he was shortly called by martyrdom to enter the rest that 
 remaineth to the people of God. His heart was overflowing with 
 gratitude and joy at its approach. "We must not indulge in conjec- 
 ture, how seriously and with what cheerfulness they would, during 
 the Bishop of Antioch's temporary residence at Smyrna, converse on 
 the all-engrossing subject. They each regarded themselves as sheep 
 for the slaughter. The different tempers of these men add consider- 
 able interest to our conceptions. " Ignatius was full of Peter's fire ; 
 but Polycarp had all the dove-like gentleness of John. Ignatius was 
 impatient to obtain the crown : Polycarp was content to wait the 
 time of enjoyment. Both were humble. But Ignatius exults in the 
 prospect of dying the death of a malefactor : Polycarp calmly 
 resigned himself to it. It is this resemblance of character to his 
 master that keeps his privilege of having been his disciple much 
 more continually and distinctly in our minds, than we do that of 
 Ignatius." f Ecclesiastical history has not furnished a more interest- 
 ing and affecting narrative than that of the journey of Ignatius from 
 Antioch to Rome. In tracing the procession of the martyr to his 
 final triumph, we forget that we are reading of a prisoner who was 
 dragged to his death in chains. He was committed to a guard of 
 ten soldiers, who at first appear to have treated him with severity ; and 
 having taken a ship at Seleucia, they landed for a time at Smyrna. 
 Here, it is intimated in one of his letters, that the soldiers who 
 attended him were bribed, and were thus induced to allow the bre- 
 thren access to him, though with much insolence and rudeness. Dur- 
 ing the stay of Ignatius at Smyrna a convocation of the Bishops 
 and Deacons of the neighbouring Christian communities was con- 
 vened, whom he exhorted, with the believers generally, to watchful- 
 ness and fidelity, warned them of the heresies that were beginning to 
 spring up, and directed them to hold fast the tradition of the Apos- 
 tles. When he departed, Polycarp sent one of his Deacons, Burrhus, 
 with him as far as Troas, by whose hands he sent letters in return to 
 the Bishop and his flock, in which he entreated Polycarp to take care 
 of the Church of Antioch ; but whether he personally interfered in 
 providing a successor to his martyred friend, we know not. 
 
 The persecution which raged during the days of Trajan well-nigh 
 exhausted its virulence in the immediate neighbourhood of the impe- 
 rial city ; in Smyrna it had scarcely been perceived. A long and 
 happy rest visited the church. In the mean while, Polycarp laboured 
 to strengthen her stakes, by administering to her purity and useful- 
 ness. It was about this time, A.D. 158, that his presence was 
 required in the capital. The leaders of the Gnostic party had with 
 
 Stories of the Primitive and Early Church. By Sophia Woodrooffe. Edited, with 
 an Introduction to the Subject, by G. S. Faber, B. D. 16mo. pp. 126129. London, 
 1845. 
 
 t Evans's Biography of the Early Church, p. 76.
 
 POLYCARP. 391 
 
 considerable success been propagating their opinions in the city 
 of Rome ; and, as the scriptural canon could not have obtained 
 among the generality of the people, in order to be read and under- 
 stood, the pernicious doctrines of that heresy greatly prevailed. The 
 influence of Marcion* was extensive ; and as the Clergy were unaccus- 
 tomed to his subtleties, and knew not how to refute them, the 
 testimony of one so venerable and experienced as the Smyrnsean 
 Bishop was judged expedient. He accordingly, when about his hun- 
 dredth year, undertook this perilous journey. The joy and satisfaction 
 which his arrival in the metropolis of the Roman empire excited, 
 must have been great, especially as the effect of his presence had 
 by no means been miscalculated. Many were led to renounce their 
 heretical errors, when Polycarp testified the truth which he had 
 received at the lips of the Apostles.f There is some evidence that 
 Marcion was rebuked by Polycarp, either before he visited Rome, or 
 during his temporary residence in that city. An anecdote is pre- 
 served which is perhaps more suited to biography than history, but 
 which is valuable as being reported by Irenaeus, who had himself 
 conversed with Polycarp. He tells us that the Bishop was on one 
 occasion met by Marcion, who asked him for some sign of recogni- 
 tion ; but the only reply which he received was, " I recognise the 
 first-born of Satan." The record shows that these two persons were 
 once in contact ; and that a heresy so soul-degrading as that which 
 Marcion propagated, could change the lamb-like spirit of the aged 
 Prelate into the asperity of the lion. 
 
 But Polycarp had another object in view in his visit to Rome. 
 The churches of Asia differed from the western churches with regard 
 to the day of termination of the fast which introduced the festival 
 of Easter. The former ended it on the fourteenth day, which was 
 that of the Jewish passover ; whereas the latter continued it until 
 the day of the resurrection, which day they always fixed on a Sun- 
 day, while the former observed it on whatever day of the week it 
 might fall according to the lunar course. J Each claimed apostolical 
 authority for their practice, the former that of St. John, the latter 
 
 Marcion was a follower of Cerdon ; and though he is said to hare come to Rome 
 about this period, and to have attained the zenith of his fame some years later, when 
 Anicetus was Bishop, there is positive evidence that he was known as a Gnostic teacher 
 at an earlier period. He was a native of Sinope, in Pontus ; and Tertullian applies to 
 him a term which might signify that he was a sailor. (De Prsescript. 30.) His father 
 was Bishop of Pontus. The sequel of Marcion' s history is disgraceful. Having 
 seduced a young woman, he was expelled from the church by his own father, whose 
 principles are represented as particularly strict, having in vain tried to soften him into 
 forgiveness. Being taunted in his own country for the disgrace he had incurred, he 
 thought fit to withdraw, and, according to Epiphanius, he went immediately to Rome. 
 It seems, however, almost certain, that his lapse into heresy took place before his 
 journey to that capital. It is stated that he was known as an heretic in the reign of 
 Hadrian ; and one writer says expressly, that he began to propagate his heresies in 
 Asia, and was there reproved by persons who had been disciples of St. John. (Burton's 
 Lectures on Eccles. Hist., vol. ii., pp. 105, 106; Elliott's Delineation of Romanism, 
 London edit., pp. 677, 691.) For a description of the tenets of Marcion, see Mo- 
 sheim's Institutes of Eccles. Hist, translated by Murdock, edit. Soames, vol. i., pp. 
 193, 194; Bishop Kaye's Tertnllian, pp. 474,476; Tillemont, Memoires pour servir 
 a 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique, torn, ii., pp. 291, et seq. 
 
 t Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 14. 
 
 t Ibid., lib. v., cap. 24.
 
 392 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 the usage of their predecessors. Poly carp appeared as the advocate 
 of the Asiatics, and Anicetus took the lead of the opposite side ; the 
 peace of the church was threatened, and the union of the members 
 in danger of being destroyed. Warm disputes followed, which were not 
 composed until the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, which ordained that 
 the feast should always be observed on the Sabbath ; only, as it was a 
 moveable festival, no small difficulty long continued to be felt as to its 
 adjustment. The interview between the two Prelates was friendly ; 
 no bonds of love were broken ; the venerable Asiatic obtained the 
 esteem and confidence of the Roman Bishop ; they partook together 
 of the body and blood of the Lord : thus testifying, in the most solemn 
 and distinct manner, by deeds, and not merely by words, their essen- 
 tial unity, and unfeigned love.* In this ordinance Anicetus still 
 further evinced his sincere regard for his illustrious and venerable 
 guest, by conceding to him, in his own church, the post of conse- 
 crating the elements of the eucharist. Having accomplished the 
 objects of his journey, Polycarp returned to Smyrna. 
 
 For a long period after the return of Polycarp to his charge, he 
 continued to watch over the flock, and to promote by his advice and 
 influence the welfare of the neighbouring churches. For upwards 
 of seventy years he had been teaching, admonishing, and confuting ; 
 he had fought the good fight, and had finished his course ; and the 
 great Head of the church had determined that he should receive his 
 crown in a way which should most edify and encourage the faithful 
 from whom he was taken. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had not long 
 assumed the purple when the sanguinary persecution, before alluded 
 to, commenced against the Christians. New edicts and decrees 
 which the Emperor had sanctioned, were scattered throughout Asia, 
 by means of which numerous impudent and greedy informers " vexed 
 the church." But the storm increased to a tempest about the 
 seventh year of his reign, A.D. 167, when the Emperor contemplated 
 an expedition against the Marcomanni,f a race of people who had 
 already struck terror into Rome. The heathen Priests were sum- 
 moned, and religious rites celebrated, while Marcus Antoninus would 
 be given distinctly to understand, that the most efficacious way to 
 
 * " When the blessed Polycarp went to Rome, in the time of Anicetus, and they 
 had a little difference among themselves, likewise, respecting other matters, they imme- 
 diately were reconciled, not disputing much with one another on this head. For nei- 
 ther could Anicetus persuade Polycarp not to observe it, because he had always 
 observed it with John the disciple of our Lord, and the rest of the Apostles, with whom 
 he associated ; and neither did Polycarp persuade Anicetua to observe it, who said that 
 he was bound to maintain the practice of the Presbyters before him. Which things 
 being so, they communed with each other ; and in the clmrch Anicetns yielded to Poly- 
 carp, out of respect, no doubt, the office of consecrating ; and they separated from each 
 other in peace, all the church being at peace ; both those that observed, and those that 
 did not observe, maintaining peace." (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. v., cap. 24.) 
 
 t " The Marcomanni, a colony, who, from the banks of the Rhine, occupied Bohe- 
 mia and Moravia, and joined a general conspiracy which terrified the Romans under 
 the reign of Marcus Antoninus ; it comprehended almost all the nations of Germany, 
 from the mouth of the Rhine, to that of the Danube. This dangerous invasion required 
 all the firmness and vigilance of Marcus. He fixed Generals of ability in the several 
 stations of attack, and assumed in person the conduct of the most important province on 
 the upper Danube. After a long and doubtful conflict, the spirit of the barbarians was 
 subdued." (Gibbon.)
 
 PERSECUTION IN SMYRNA. 393 
 
 propitiate the gods, and secure success to his arms, was to discoun- 
 tenance and root up the sect which was established to destroy their 
 worship. If new enactments against the Christians did not proceed 
 immediately from himself, he permitted them to emanate from his 
 provincial Governors ; and the rein was thrown over the shoulders of 
 shameless sycophants who were thirsting for their blood in order that 
 they might obtain the scanty property which some might possess. 
 Night and day the Christians were the victims of a heartless plunder. 
 The Proconsul of Asia Minor, Statius Quadratus, does not at this 
 period appear to have been personally hostile to the Christians ; but 
 the heathen people, with whom the Jewish rabble joined themselves, 
 were enraged against them, and the Proconsul yielded compliance to 
 the fury of the people and the demands of the law. He endeavoured 
 to move the Christians to recantation by threats, by the sight of the 
 torture, and of wild beasts, to whom they were to be thrown ; and 
 if they remained steadfast in their faith, he condemned them to 
 die. In one respect, certainly, he yielded too far to the savage 
 cruelty of the people ; and that was in choosing painful and ignomi- 
 nious kinds of death, such as throwing them to wild beasts, or mak- 
 ing them perish on the funeral pile ; for the law did not require this 
 from him. But, on the other hand, as the law denounced, in gene- 
 ral terms, sentence of death against obstinate adherence to Chris- 
 tianity, people chose to suppose that persons who were not Roman 
 citizens must perish ignominiously. Under the severest tortures, 
 even such as raised the pity of the Heathen themselves, the Chris- 
 tians manifested great tranquillity and fortitude. " They showed us 
 all," says the church of Smyrna, " that they were absent from their 
 bodies during these torments ; or rather that the Lord stood by 
 them, and conversed with them ; and, relying on the grace of Christ, 
 they despised the torments of the world." But the difference was 
 here exhibited between the passing intoxication of enthusiasm, which, 
 though it sought danger with rash self-confidence, turned to coward- 
 ice at the presence of death, and that resolute devotedness to God 
 which waited for his call, and then sought strength from him. One 
 Quintus of Phrygia, a nation peculiarly liable to fantastic and exag- 
 gerated feelings, with many others who had been seized with this 
 enthusiastic fire from his persuasion, appeared before the tribunal 
 of the Proconsul of his own accord, and declared himself a believer ; 
 a conduct which, although always blamed by the church, gave 
 an opportunity to the Heathen to represent the Christians as a set 
 of restless enthusiasts, who ran into danger and death, in the blind- 
 ness of a deluded imagination. Now, when the Proconsul pressed 
 this Phrygian hard, and had affrighted him by the sight of the wild 
 beasts, to which he was to be thrown, he gave in, swore by the 
 genius of the Emperor, and offered sacrifices. The church, after the 
 narration of these circumstances, add this remark : " Therefore we 
 do not approve of those who give themselves up ; for the Gospel does 
 not instruct us to do this." * 
 
 Neandcr, " History of the Christian Religion and Church during the first three 
 Centuries," vol. i.. pp. 106, 107- 8vo. London, 1831. 
 VOL. I. 3 E
 
 394 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 There were yet other circumstances which tended to expedite and 
 render more severe the sufferings of the Christians : a dreadful pesti- 
 lence was ravaging the whole empire, and a dangerous and protracted 
 war with the northern barbarians harassed and grieved the minds 
 of the people ; so that, no longer content with depriving their inno- 
 cent victims of their property, their lives now fell a sacrifice to the 
 popular tumult. This fearful atrocity commenced at Smyrna ; and 
 amidst the games of the amphitheatre, where the most brutalizing pas- 
 sions were fostered by cruelty and sensuality, and roused by the detest- 
 able and heart-sickening spectacles which were exhibited, one single 
 word uttered against the Christian name reminded every bosom that 
 there existed a body of men whose fondest enjoyments were con- 
 demned, and whose claim to the sympathy and regard of humanity 
 was repudiated and spurned. This was now the state of affairs with 
 regard to the Christian church in the far-famed city of Asia. In a 
 crowd pervaded by one common feeling, a single voice touching the 
 chord will raise an unanimous and deafening shout to answer it. 
 The lives of a whole community were often suspended in jeopardy 
 upon the breath of the most worthless poltroon, who, revelling on 
 the miseries of others, obtained a wretched existence amid the pur- 
 lieus and filth of a half-civilized city. Smyrna now realized the 
 extreme horror of this perilous situation. The people proceeded to 
 the most dreadful excesses. Some were flayed alive with scourges, 
 some were roasted with fire, some given to be devoured by beasts, 
 and others subjected to the most ingenious tortures which human 
 malice and frenzy could suggest. The firmness with which the mar- 
 tyrs who suffered previous to Polycarp endured the torture is recorded 
 in the account circulated by the Smyrnsean church : " Those stand- 
 ing round were struck with amazement at seeing them lacerated with 
 scourges, to their very blood and arteries ; so that now the flesh con- 
 cealed in the very inmost parts of the body, and the bowels them- 
 selves, were exposed to view. Then they were laid upon conch-shells 
 from the sea, and on sharp heads and points of spears on the ground ; 
 and, after passing through every kind of punishment and torments, 
 were at last thrown as food to wild beasts." The account records 
 also that Germanicus, a most noble youth, was particularly eminent 
 as a martyr ; who, strengthened by divine grace, overcame the natu- 
 ral dread of death implanted in us ; although the Proconsul was 
 desirous of persuading him, and urged him from considerations of his 
 youth, and entreated him, that, as he was so very young and bloom- 
 ing, he should take compassion on himself. He, however, hesitated 
 not, but eagerly irritated the wild beast against him, all but forcing 
 and stimulating him, that he might the sooner be freed from this 
 unjust and lawless generation. When, therefore, the patience of the 
 martyrs was crowned by the bold daring of Germanicus, the multi- 
 tude rent the air with cries of " Away with the atheists ! * 
 
 * " Away with the atheists ! " From the notorious circumstance of the Christians 
 despising the false gods of the Pagans, and denying their existence as deities, they 
 were charged with atheism ; a plausible and popular accusation, easily admitted by per- 
 sons whose insane prejudices allowed them not the common honesty of fair and rational
 
 APPREHENSION OF POLYCARP. 395 
 
 Let search be made for Polycarp!" and search was forthwith 
 made.* 
 
 When Polycarp heard of the clamour of the people, he resolved to 
 stand at his post unmoved ; but, being persuaded by the entreaties 
 of his friends, he retired to a farm contiguous to the city, where he 
 remained a day and a night, in constant prayer for the peace of the 
 churches throughout the world. During the night, while engaged 
 in supplication, he had a trance, and beheld his pillow suddenly 
 taking fire.f and thus consumed. On waking, he immediately began 
 to interpret the vision to those who were present, foretelling the 
 event that was about to take place, and that it would be necessary 
 for him to give up his life in flames for Christ's sake. Search for 
 him was now vigorously made ; and he was constrained, through the 
 attachment of his brethren, to flee to another part of the country ; 
 and here the confession of a slave, who was submitted to the torture, 
 disclosed his hiding-place. Entering the house late on a Friday 
 evening, the police discovered him reclining in an upper chamber, 
 from whence he might have escaped to an adjoining house ; but he 
 refused, saying, " The will of the Lord be done." He then calmly 
 gave himself up. He addressed the messengers with a mild and 
 cheerful countenance, who were struck with his placid and venerable 
 
 inquiry into facts. Accordingly, Athenagoras mentions that atheism was one of the 
 three stock charges against the primitive believers. (Athen. Legat., sect iv., pp. 15, 16. 
 G. S. Faber.) 
 
 * A relation of the sufferings of Polycarp and his companions was drawn up by their 
 surviving brethren, and sent from Smyrna to the various communities throughout the 
 Christian world. This is one of the most important documents of the early church ; it 
 \va.s so valued in ancient times, that Gregory of Tours tells us, that up to his day it waa 
 publicly read in the Gallican churches ; and Scaliger observes, that he " knew nothing 
 in all ecclesiastical antiquity that was more wont to affect his mind, insomuch that he 
 seemed to be no longer himself when he read it." The substance of the narrative has 
 been preserved by Eusebius in his History ; and what he has not given us has been 
 restored by the industry of Archbishop Ussher. (Milner's Seven Churches of Asia, 
 p. 212.) See also the Acta Martyrii of Polycarp, published by Ruinart iu his Acta 
 I'rimonim Martyrum Slue-era et Selecta; also in the Patres Apostolici. A translation 
 of " The Circular Epistle of the Church of Smyrna concerning the Martyrdom of S. 
 Polycarp" will be found in Wake's Translation of the Apostolical Epistles, p. 138, 
 et seq., 8vo. edit., 1737. It is abridged in Wesley's Christian Library, 8vo. edit., voL 
 i., p. 63, et seq. The substance of the Epistle may also be seen in the Life and Mar- 
 tyrdom of 1'olycarp, in Milner's History of the Church, cent, ii., chap. 5, 8vo. edit., 
 London, 1/1)4. Christian Antiquities, by Sir David Dalrymple. 
 
 t " His pillow suddenly taking fire." There is no reasou to doubt the truth of this 
 account, or to think it impossible that this apostolical Father and martyr should have 
 been forewarned of his sufferings, prepared to expect them, and enabled to give his 
 friends this proof that God was with him and assisted him. He himself interpreted the 
 vi.-ion, signifying by what death he should glorify God. Without this intimation, he 
 could not have known that he should be condemned to the flames, because there were 
 many other ways of destroying criminals ; and of several martyrs who at that time had 
 been executed, not one had been burnt. When Polycarp was condemned, the popu- 
 lace requested that he might be exposed to the lions ; and because it could not be 
 done, they then chose to have him burnt. (Jortin's Remarks on Keel. Hist.) That the 
 martyr should foretell his death by violence, at a period when persecution was fiercely 
 raging, and his person particularly in danger, was only the result of a common fore- 
 sight ; but that he should distinctly foretell his perishing in the flames, when most of the 
 other martyrs of that time were thrown to the beasts, was evidently miraculous ; and 
 the reception of the intimation by a vision was an ordinary mode of divine communica- 
 tion probably not then extinct in the church, and an honour, iu such circumstances, not 
 unlikely to be bestowed upon so faithful and aged a servant. (Hut. of the Seven 
 Churches.) 
 
 3 E 2
 
 396 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 appearance and his composed demeanour, and involuntarily exclaimed, 
 " What advantage is there in apprehending so old a man?" Dis- 
 playing the fruits of that religion which " is first pure, then peace- 
 able, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, 
 without partiality and without hypocrisy," Polycarp won the appro- 
 bation and softened the hearts even of his persecutors. Without 
 hesitation, he directed a table to be prepared for the officers, of which 
 he invited them to partake freely, and begged of them an hour, that 
 he might pray undisturbed. They allowed him two ; and, Heathens 
 as they were, they heard him with admiration and awe, deeply regret- 
 ting that so excellent a man should be put to death. After he had 
 remembered in his intercessions all that had ever been connected with 
 him, small and great, noble and obscure, and the universal church, 
 he was mounted upon an ass, and conducted to the city. 
 
 On his way he was met by Herod, the chief officer of police, the 
 Irenarch,* with his father Nicetes, going out of town ; who, taking 
 him into his chariot, spoke to him in a kind and friendly manner : 
 " What harm can it be for you to say, ' Our Lord, the Emperor,' f 
 and to offer sacrifice, and thus to save your life ?" Polycarp at first 
 was silent ; but when they continued to press him, he calmly said, 
 " I will not do as you advise me." Failing to persuade him, they 
 grew angry, and with bitter and contumelious expressions they threw 
 him out of the carriage, and so violently as to injure one of the bones 
 of his leg. He nevertheless walked on cheerfully, as if nothing had 
 happened, to the Stadium, when the deafening shouts of the spectators 
 met his ear. 
 
 As he entered the Stadium, a voice was heard, sufficiently distinct 
 to be recognised by many of the friends of Polycarp, although the 
 speaker was unobserved : "Be strong, and have courage, Polycarp." J 
 
 " Irenarch." It was the business of the Irenarchae, in other places called Praepo- 
 siti Pacis, to search for and apprehend seditious persons, and those who disturbed the 
 public tranquillity. Archbishop Wake has on the margin of his translation of the 
 Smyrnaean Epistle the words, " Justice of the Peace," which does by no means give a 
 proper notion of the office. Archbishop Parker mistakes the nature of the office and 
 the character of Herod the Irenarch ; for he says, that " Polycarp was apprehended by 
 a fanatic and hot-headed Justice of the Peace." (See Demonstration of the Divine 
 Authority of the Christian Religion, p. 383.) We have no officer of the law with us 
 whose duty is precisely the same with that of the Irenarch ; although we have different 
 officers who may occasionally discharge the same sort of duty. The office is better 
 known on the Continent. (Sir David Dalrymple.) 
 
 t " Our Lord, the Emperor." We learn, from the words of Tertullian, what the 
 sentiments of the Christians about such a demand were : " The name Lord is also one 
 of the names of God. I am willing to call the Emperor lord, but in the common 
 acceptation of language ; and then I must not be compelled to call him lord in the same 
 sense that I call God by this name. But I am free from him. I have one Lord, the 
 Almighty and Eternal God, who is the Lord also of the Emperor." (Tertull., 
 Apolog. 34.) 
 
 1 Iffxvf KO.I avSpifav, Ho\vKapire. Various sentiments have been entertained with 
 regard to this part of the narrative. Some have hinted that the story of the voice ia 
 altogether fictitious ; some have imagined that one of the Christians, a spectator, 
 uttered the words ; and others have believed the voice to have been miraculous. We 
 conceive that the flippant remarks of Dr. Conyers Middleton on this circumstance can- 
 not reasonably be entertained. The brethren heard the voice as Polycarp was entering 
 the Stadium ; but the uproar of the enthusiastic and unfeeling multitude arose when 
 Polycarp had entered ; consequently, the objection which he takes to the narrative on 
 the ground of a tumult, in which no one could be heard, is without foundation. Le
 
 POLYCARP IN THE STADIUM AT SMYRNA. 397 
 
 As he advanced, the Proconsul asked him, "Art thou Polycarp?" 
 which being acknowledged, Quadratus immediately began to persuade 
 him to recant. " Regard," said he, " thy great age ; swear by the 
 genius of Caesar ; repent, and say with us, ' Take away the atheists ! ' ' 
 The holy martyr, looking about the Stadium, and with a severe and 
 determined countenance beholding the crowd, beckoned to them with 
 his hand, sighed, looked up to heaven, and said, (though quite in 
 another sense than they intended,) " Take away the atheists !" On 
 the Proconsul still insisting, and saying, " Swear, and I will release 
 you : revile Christ ; " Polycarp answered, " These fourscore and six 
 years serve I him, and he has never wronged me : how, then, can I 
 blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" But when the Proconsul 
 persisted in requiring him to swear by the fortune of Caesar, Polycarp 
 said, " Since thou ostentatiously requirest me to swear by what thou 
 stylest ' the fortune of Caesar,' as if thou wert ignorant of what T am, 
 hear me boldly speak : I am a Christian ; and if thou wouldest learn 
 what is the doctrine of Christianity, appoint a day, and hear." 
 
 Up to this stage of the proceedings, the Proconsul showed that he 
 did not act from any obstinate religious bigotry, and would gladly 
 have saved the old man if he could silence the people ; but now all 
 his feelings of commiseration fled, and he said to the Bishop, " Per- 
 suade the people." He replied, " I hold it fit to answer for myself 
 before thee ; for we are taught to render unto magistracy, and unto 
 the powers which are ordained of God, all due reverence, so far as we 
 may without wounding our conscience ; but as for that multitude, I 
 hold them unworthy that I should pronounce the apology of my faith 
 unto them." The Proconsul said, " I have wild beasts : to them will 
 I deliver thee, unless thou changest." Polycarp replied, " Call them 
 
 Clerc is among many who suppose that some of the bystanders uttered the words ; and 
 there is an appearance of truth in this conjecture, as the Stadium at Smyrna was situ- 
 ated on the side of an eminence, and words spoken from thence may have seemed to 
 have issued from ahove, in the opinion of those who stood at the entrance of the Stadium ; 
 especially when we consider the agitated state in which the disciplea of Polycarp would 
 be, when they witnessed the entrance of their Bishop. It is a miracle which certainly 
 might be counterfeited. One single Christian might have made the speech from a 
 house-top near the Stadium ; and if he kept his counsel, all his brethren might have 
 been deceived by him. The human voice, when strong and clear, may be heard at a 
 great distance. The heralds in Homer had this accomplishment, and were /3oij/ aya8of 
 and Darius Hystaspis had an Egyptian in the army who was as good as a speaking- 
 trumpet, (Herod., iv., 141,) aud who saved Darius and his army, when they were in 
 great danger, by the force of his lungs. For ourselves, we discover nothing frivolous in 
 this interposition, inasmuch as it was intended to encourage the sufferer ; although we 
 are inclined to imagine, that if the voice had really been supernatural, the more consist- 
 ent phraseology of the Gospel, like that employed by St. Paul, would, we may fairly 
 presume, have been used : Srrj/ce tv ry vtffrft, noAwfopire, ai>Rpiov KOI Kparaiov. 
 i I Cor. xvi. 13.) It is difficult, or rather impossible, to determine the precise time 
 when miracles ceased. The probability is, that, after the last Apostle was removed, 
 they gradually became more rare, until at length they ceased altogether. We may be 
 morally sure, that a violation of the laws of nature would not be continued beyond the 
 time when, as a tangible attestation to the truth of Christianity under the aspect of a 
 really divine revelation, it was absolutely necessary. Miracles, when once the Gospel 
 has been sufficiently ratified by them, are not granted, either to convince the unreason- 
 able sceptic, or to set idle people wondering and talking. (See Jortin'i Remarks on 
 Eccles. Hint. ; Faber's Notes appended to Stories of the Primitive and Early Church ; 
 and my Sermon on " The Signs of an Apostle, and the Evidence for the Cessation 
 of Miraculous Powers in the Church, considered," Oxford, 1832.)
 
 398 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 forth ; for that I should change from the better to what is worse, is 
 impossible ; but to change from evil to good, that is excellent." 
 Then said the Proconsul, " Since thou despisest the wild beasts, I 
 will cause thee to be subdued by fire, unless thou change." Polycarp 
 answered, " Thou threatenest me with a fire which burneth for a sea- 
 son, and will be speedily extinguished ; but thou art ignorant of that 
 fire of a future judgment and everlasting pains, reserved for the 
 wicked. But why lingerest thou ? Bring forth whatever to thee 
 seemeth good." Making these and many similar declarations, he 
 was filled with confidence and joy, and grace seemed to overspread 
 his countenance ; so that he shrank not, neither was he dismayed, at 
 the things that were uttered against him. Finding his firmness 
 invincible, the Proconsul commanded the crier to proclaim, " Polycarp 
 has confessed himself to be a Christian." 
 
 On this, the populace, composed of Heathens and Jews, furiously 
 cried out, " This is the teacher of impiety, the father of the Chris- 
 tians ; the man who is for putting down our gods, and who teacheth 
 the people to abstain from sacrificing, and from religious worship." 
 The Asiarch * Philip was urged by them to set a lion on Polycarp, 
 which he refused, alleging that he had finished the games, so far as 
 exposing to beasts was concerned ; and that, therefore, it was not in 
 his power. Then they all with one voice cried out, " Let Polycarp 
 be burnt alive." As soon as the Proconsul had complied with the 
 demand of the populace, that Polycarp should perish on the funeral 
 pile, Jew and Gentile hastened with the utmost eagerness to collect 
 wood, fagots, and straw from the market-places, workshops, and 
 baths. Polycarp then laid aside his garments ; and having unloosed 
 his girdle, he sought to untie his sandals. This he had not usually 
 done aforetime ; for all the believers were wont to strive who should 
 be the first to do these offices for him, so much was he honoured 
 by reason of his virtuous demeanour, even before he had attained to 
 old age. The instruments belonging to the execution were soon 
 placed around him ; but when they prepared to fasten him with 
 nails, he said, " Suffer me to remain as I am ; for He who enableth 
 me to endure the fire, will also strengthen me to abide unmoved, 
 
 " Asiarch." Affiapxcu were, in the Roman provinces of Western Asia, the chief 
 presidents of the religious rites, whose office it was to exhibit games and theatrical 
 amusements every year, in honour of the gods and Roman Emperors, at their own 
 expense, like the Roman jEdiles. As the exhibition of these games was attended with 
 great cost, wealthy persons were always chosen to fill this office ; fo.r which reason 
 Strabo says, that some of the inhabitants of Tralles, which was one of the most wealthy 
 cities in Asia Minor, were always chosen Asiarchs. They were ten in number, selected 
 by the different towns of Asia Minor, and approved of by the Roman Proconsul: 
 of these, one was the chief Asiarch, and frequently, but not always, resided at Kphesus. 
 Their office only lasted for a year ; but they appear to have enjoyed the title, as a mark 
 of courtesy, for the rest of their lives. (Strabo, xiv., p. 649 ; Acts six. 31 ; with the 
 Notes of Kuinoel and Barnes.) This title also occurs in a Greek inscription at Assar, 
 in Mysia, copied by Mr. Fellows. (Excursion in Asia Minor, p. 49.) In the letter 
 written by the church of Smyrna respecting the martyrdom of Polycarp, (c. 12,) we 
 read that Philip the Asiarch was requested by the infuriated people to let loose a lion 
 against Polycarp, which he said it was not lawful for him to do, as the exhibition 
 of wild beasts (/cwrj-yecrta) had been finished. In another part of this Epistle, (c. 21,) 
 Philip is called High- Priest, (Apx'fptvs,) which appears to show that he must have 
 been chief Asiarch of the province.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP. 399 
 
 although you do not fix me with spikes." They therefore did not 
 nail him ; they only bound him. Before the fire was lighted, he 
 offered the following prayer : 
 
 "0 Lord God Almighty, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son 
 Jesus Christ, through whom we receive the knowledge which telleth 
 of thee, God of angels and of powers, and of all the creation, and 
 of all the family of the just who live in thy presence, I bless thee 
 that thou hast thought me worthy of this day and hour, so that I 
 should be a partaker in the number of thy witnesses, in the cup 
 of thy Christ, unto the resurrection of everlasting life, both of soul 
 and body, in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit. Amongst whom 
 may I be accepted before thee this day, through a fat and acceptable 
 sacrifice, according as thou hast beforehand prepared, and manifested, 
 and hast fulfilled, even thou, the unfailing and true God. On this 
 account, and for all things also, I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify 
 thee, together with thy everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, thy 
 beloved Son ; to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be glory now 
 and for ever. Amen !" 
 
 The fire was then lighted around him ; and when it had ascended 
 in one vast flame, it presented the appearance of an oven, as when 
 the sail of a vessel is filled with the wind, and encircled the martyr 
 as it were in a chamber of fire, where his body remained unconsumed, 
 like gold in the furnace.* At the same time an exquisite fragrance 
 was emitted,f as of frankincense and other spices, to the great com- 
 
 " Tbe sail of a vessel filled with the wind." This account must be received with 
 caution ; for how useless was it to suspend the action of the fire, and then permit the 
 sword of the executioner to perform its office ! If Polycarp had predicted that his ene- 
 mies could not, and should not, burn him, the circumstance would have appeared 
 remarkable ; but here is a martyr who could not be burned, but who was perforated 
 with a dagger without difficulty ! besides the seeming disagreement of the prediction 
 and the event ; so that we naturally ask for the use of the miracle. We regret the 
 record of such a story, being convinced that in its tendency it would rather turn to the 
 discredit than to the advantage of the hallowed cause. The Pagans had many exam- 
 ples, in their fabulous and poetic history, of men who had been unhurt in the flames, 
 of Priests and Priestesses who walked barefoot over the fire without harm : by many 
 this was considered the result of magical incantations ; and probably, by the vulgar 
 Pagan and the malignant Jew, Polycarp was viewed as an old magician, who had 
 recourse, though in vain, to enchantments ; and that although his demon had for a 
 time secured him from the flames, he could not protect from the sword. It is not im- 
 probable that the Jews and Pagans, in their zeal and fury, had collected wood sufficient 
 to consume ten persona, which they placed around the martyr, and ignited in several 
 placea, which blazed up as at the pile of Croesus, urtpi ec^aTo, at the extremities on 
 all sides, and arched over Polycarp. Something like this was seen at the martyrdom 
 of Porphyrius. (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. viii., cap. 11 ; see Jortin's Remarks on 
 Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 212, edit. 1846.) 
 
 t "An exquisite fragrance was emitted." This is confessedly a very suspicious 
 miraclo. The fact, in all probability, was true : scented wood is common in Kastern 
 countries, and the odour might proceed from the fuel ; for the people ran about to the 
 baths and other places to obtain wood, some of which might probably be of that descrip- 
 tion ; or, which perhaps is less likely, the Christians, to honour the martyrdom of their 
 Bishop, might adopt a pagan practice, and cast aromatics and spices over the funeral 
 pyre ; it being an ancient custom, in various places, when burning dead persons of rank 
 and quality, to cast into the flames an abundance of fragrant drugs and perfumes in 
 honour of the deceased. The Christians, however frugal in other respects, in these 
 expenses were profuse at the interment of their brethren. Hence the language of Ter- 
 tnllian : " Thura plane non emimus. Si Arabia; queruntur, sciant Sabiei pluris et cnri- 
 oria suas merces Christianis sepeliendiu profligari, quam diis fumigandis." (Tertul., 
 Apol., cap. xliv.) " We buy, certainly, no frankincense. If the Arabians complain
 
 400 BOOK IV, CHAPTER IV. 
 
 fort and delight of the flock. At length, witnessing the resistance 
 which his body offered to the flames, the impatient and exasperated 
 multitude commanded an attendant, one of those who were wont to 
 despatch wild beasts when they became outrageous, to draw near 
 and plunge his sword into him ; which he had no sooner done, than 
 the quantity of blood issuing from the wound was so great as to 
 quench the fire.* Thus the body was preserved ; but the faithful 
 were not allowed the satisfaction of paying to it the last honours. 
 The malignant Jews prompted Nicetes to persuade the Proconsul not 
 to give the body to the Christians, lest, leaving their crucified Master, 
 they should henceforth worship Poly carp. The Centurion therefore 
 placed his remains in the midst of the fire, where they were speedily 
 consumed. The pitiful slander which the enemies of the church cast 
 upon the believers, was indignantly refuted in the Epistle of the 
 Smyrnaeans : " Little do they consider how impossible it is that 
 either we should forsake Christ, who died for the salvation of the 
 whole world, or that we should worship any other. Him we adore 
 as the Son of God ; but martyrs, as the disciples and followers of our 
 
 of this, let the Sabseaus know that more and more costly merchandise of theirs is 
 lavished in the burials of Christians, than in burning incense to the gods." The Papists 
 have ever been fond of this wonder, probably on account of the ease with which it may 
 be performed. But the relics of the canonized have smelt (so we have been told) of the 
 odoriferous perfume ages after the carcass of the saint has rotted. And the Mussul- 
 man, little behind the Romanist in credulity, piously believes the body of his Prophet to 
 send forth a divine fragrance. Tillemont is excessively elated with this prodigy, and 
 never fails to record it with great seriousness ; and, indeed, there is no reason to ques- 
 tion the fact ; for of all miracles it is the easiest to be performed, and therefore the least 
 satisfactory. 
 
 * In the Epistle which was circulated by the church of Smyrna, it is stated, that 
 when the weapon was plunged into the body of the martyr, fr]\0e TsrfpiffTepa, " egressa 
 est celumba," a dove went forth. This statement is not given by Eusebius, nor 
 Rufinus, nor Nicephorus, nor in two MSS. of the Latin translation of the Epistle. It was 
 certainly in the MS. which Archbishop Ussher employed ; but is not supposed to have 
 been in the original Epistle of the church ; and Dr. Brooke asserts, that " there is not 
 a syllable of the dove to be found in the Greek Menseology." Le Clerc, in his Eccle- 
 siastical History, passes the dove over sub silentio, as not worthy to be mentioned ; (p. 
 729 ;) and in his Bibl. Chois. (xxvi., p. 218) he absolutely rejects it as an interpola- 
 tion : " II n'y a rien de cette colombe dans un MS. que le P. Ruinart cite, non plus que 
 dans Eusebe, etc., ce qui fait croire que c'est une addition de quelqu'un, qui vouloit 
 rendre, par une fraude pieuse, le martyre de S. Polycarpe plus merveilleux." Neither 
 Archbishop Wake nor Sir David Dalrymple alludes to it. That it should find a place in 
 the history of martyrdom during the period when spurious miracles were rife, we are 
 not surprised. When the virgin Eulalia was put to death, we are told by Prudentius, a 
 dove, spotless and white as snow, flew out of her mouth. This has made many suspect 
 that the story of Polycarp's dove might be somewhat more ancient than the time 
 of Prndentius, and give occasion to the fiction about Eulalia's dove. In the third cen- 
 tury, when the Roman Christians were assembled to choose a Bishop, a dove came and 
 sat upon Fabian's head, to point him out for that office. This rumour Eusebius asserts 
 in his History, lib. vi., cap. xxix. In the fourth century, Ephraim Syrus went to 
 Caesarea, to visit Basil, and to hear him preach ; and saw a dove, white as snow, and 
 bright as the sun, sitting upon Basil's shoulder, and whispering to him what he should 
 say. (Tillemont, Hist. Eccles., torn, ix., p. 209, ed. Paris, 1703.) The probability is 
 that the writer of the celebrated Epistle makes no mention whatever of the dove. A 
 blundering transcriber wrote, E|?jA.0e -arfpiffTepa /cot vr\r)6os eu/uaros, " A dove came 
 out, and abundance of blood ;" instead of, E|rjA6e r' apiffrepq wXijflos o/juaros, " A 
 great quantity issued out on, or to, the left side," &c. (Jortin's Remarks on Eccles. 
 Hist.) The Rev. William Trollope, the Editor of the new Edition of Jortin's Remarks, 
 suggests the true emendation to be iffepi ffrepva, which is effected by the insertion of a 
 single letter.
 
 THRASEAS AND OTHER MARTYRS. 401 
 
 Lord, we deservedly love for their eminent kindness towards their 
 own Prince and Master, whose companions and fellow-disciples we 
 also by all means desire to be." So far were those primitive and 
 better ages from that undue and superstitious veneration of the relics 
 of martyrs and departed saints, which after-ages introduced into the 
 church.* 
 
 When the great leader of the Christians was no more, and the 
 exhibition of games ceased, the rage of the multitude was appeased, 
 and they did not call for any more victims : but the thirst for Chris- 
 tian blood was not allayed in other cities of Asia ; and there is reason 
 to think, that it shortly after revived in Smyrna itself, though the 
 earthquake, which nearly destroyed the city, (a dreadful retributive 
 providence,) may have checked for a while the rage of persecution. 
 Thraseas,f Bishop of Eumenia, suffered martyrdom there in this or 
 the following reign ; and if we may believe a later writer, that Papi- 
 rius succeeded Polycarp in the bishopric, we may, perhaps, add, on 
 contemporary authority, that he died by martyrdom. A similar fate 
 befell Sagaris of Laodicea, of which place he was Bishop, while Sar- 
 vilius Paulus was Proconsul of Asia. Apollinarius, Bishop of Hiera- 
 polis, presented a defence of Christianity to Marcus Aurelius about 
 this period, which seems to indicate that his church was suffering 
 persecution. But if any evidence was wanting of the sufferings 
 which the Christians underwent in Asia Minor during this reign, we 
 may refer to another Apology presented to the same Emperor by 
 Melito, Bishop of Sardis. Eusebius gives the title of many works 
 which he composed, and he seems to have left a considerable name as 
 a man of learning ; but we have to regret that his " Defence of 
 Christianity" has shared the fate of all his other compositions. We 
 learn from a small fragment of it, that the work of persecution was 
 then at its height, and that the Magistrates were acting under the 
 authority of some new decree which the Emperor had been persuaded 
 to enact, and the execution of which he left to the provincial Magis- 
 trates. 
 
 In the year 169, the two Emperors left Rome to make war 
 against the Marcomanni, and several German tribes, which were 
 becoming formidable by their inroads upon the Roman provinces. 
 Julius Capitolinus represents the alarm which these barbarians excited 
 as extremely great ; and that the religious as well as military prepa- 
 rations were pursued with very great activity. Unusual measures 
 were taken to secure the smile of heaven ; and since the Priests were 
 specially consulted, and the city of Rome was purified by every means 
 which religion presented, there is reason to fear that the season was 
 one of severe trial to the Christians. It is impossible for us to 
 determine whether this hasty confederation was formed by necessity, 
 
 Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the Church, that flourished in the first four 
 Centuries ; with an historical Account of the State of Paganism under the firat (.'1m-- 
 tian Emperors. By William Cave, D.D. Vol. i., p. 192, et seq. 8vo. Oxford, 
 1840. 
 
 t Euseb., Ecclesi. Hist., lib. v., cap. 18. 
 
 j Ibid., lib. iv., cap. 27. 
 
 Ibid., lib. iv., cap. 26. 
 \OL. I. 3 F
 
 402 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 by reason, or by passion ; but we may rest assured, that the bar- 
 barians were neither allured by the indolence, nor provoked by the 
 ambition, of the Roman Monarchs. This dangerous invasion required 
 all the firmness and vigilance of Marcus Aurelius. The Quadi and 
 the Marcomanni, who had taken the lead in the war, were the most 
 severely punished in its catastrophe. They were commanded to retire 
 five miles from their own banks of the Danube, and to deliver up the 
 flower of their youth, who were immediately sent into Britain, a 
 remote island, where they might be secure as hostages, and useful as 
 soldiers.* 
 
 A report has been current among Christians since the commence- 
 ment of the third century, that the Emperor was disposed to deal 
 more favourably towards them, on account of a circumstance which 
 transpired, of a somewhat miraculous character. During the war 
 against the Marcomanni and the Quadi, the army of Marcus was 
 reduced to great distress, a burning sun lay upon it in front, and it 
 was then suffering the extremities of thirst from a drought, and 
 expecting every instant an attack of the enemy ; but upon the soldiers 
 of the Miletenian or twelfth Legion, which consisted chiefly, if not 
 entirely, of Christians, falling down upon their knees, and praying to 
 God, a thunder-storm followed, the lightnings of which dispersed the 
 Germans, while a copious shower refreshed the soldiers of the 
 Emperor. The Roman army consequently gained the victory ; and in 
 commemoration of this event, Marcus gave the legion the name of 
 " Legio Fulminea." It is also stated, that the Emperor ceased to 
 persecute the Christians ; and although he did not go so far as to 
 receive their religion into the class of " religiones licitse," he pub- 
 lished an edict, inflicting heavy penalties on those who accused the 
 Christians merely on the score of their religion. f That, during the 
 German war, the Roman army suffered severely from the want of 
 water, and was relieved from a situation of great peril by a seasonable 
 shower of rain, is a fact which does not rest on the single authority 
 of Tertullian. It is recorded by several profane writers, and con- 
 firmed by the indisputable testimony of the Antonine column. Nor 
 was Tertullian singular in regarding the event as preternatural ; the 
 heathen historians did the same. But while Tertullian ascribes the 
 deliverance of the Emperor to the prayers of his Christian soldiers, 
 Dion Cassius gives the credit of it to certain magical rites performed 
 by an Egyptian, named Arnuphis ; and on the Antonine column it is 
 attributed to the immediate interposition of Jupiter Pluvius.J This 
 
 * Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i., p. 400. 8vo. Milman's Edit. 
 
 t At nos e contrario edimns protectorem, si literae M. Aurelii gravissimi Imperatoris 
 requirantur, quibus illam Germanicam sitim Christianorum forte militum precatiouibus 
 impetrato imbri discussam contestatur. (Tertul., Apologet., cap. 5.) Marcus quo- 
 que Auvelius in Germanica. expeditione Christianorum militum orationibus ad Deum 
 factia imbris in siti ilia impetravit. (Tertul. ad Scapulam, cap. 4.) 
 
 t It is said that the Prince prayed to Jupiter, stretching out his hands towards 
 heaven ; and saying, " This hand, which never shed human blood, (for I reckon not the 
 blood of the enemies of the gods,) I stretch forth to thee ! " There were pictures where 
 he was represented prayiug, and the soldiers catching the rain in their helmets. The 
 Emperor himself expresses his notions on this matter on a coin, where Jupiter is repre- 
 sented as hurling down his lightning on the barbarians stretched upon the ground ; and
 
 THE THUNDERING LEGION. 403 
 
 latter circumstance completely disproves the statement of this writer, 
 respecting the existence of a letter, in which the Emperor ascribed 
 his deliverance to the prayers of his Christian soldiers ; a statement, 
 indeed, neither reconcileable with his general character, nor with the 
 harsh treatment experienced by the Christians during his reign.* 
 Much truth and falsehood are, therefore, blended together in this nar- 
 ration. There might have been many Christians in the army of 
 Marcus Aurelius ; but that they formed a whole separate legion, is 
 manifestly the fiction of a later age. The thing is, however, very 
 easily explained. The Christian soldiers, under the pressure of this 
 distress, took refuge, as they were accustomed to do, in prayer ; they 
 looked upon their deliverance as the answering of their prayers ; and, 
 on their return home, told their story to their fellow-believers, who 
 would not fail to remind the Heathen of what they owed to the Chris- 
 tians whom they so persecuted. It has also been shown, that one of 
 the Roman legions was called the " Thundering legion," long before 
 the time of the present Emperor, ever since the days of Augustus 
 Coesar;t and that Marcus Aurelius could not have been induced to 
 suspend his persecution of the Christians by any event of this date, 
 for the persecution at Lyons took place only three years later. The 
 letter, which is said to have been written by the Emperor in favour 
 of the Christians, is now acknowledged on all hands to hare been a 
 forgery. Historians generally admit the fact to be indisputable ; but 
 the greater part of them deny that any miraculous interposition is 
 due to the prayers of the faithful. Why, however, the account of 
 the Christians is not at least as credible as that of the Heathen, who 
 attribute a miracle to Jupiter, Mr. Gibbon gives us leave to con- 
 jecture. 
 
 The close of the reign of Marcus Aurelius was signalized by 
 another scene of martyrdom, distant from that where persecution had 
 before raged with the greatest violence, though not altogether discon- 
 nected from it, by the original descent of the sufferers. The Chris- 
 tians of Lyons and Vienne appear to have been a religious colony 
 from Asia Minor, or Phrygia, and to have maintained a close corre- 
 spondence with those distant communities. To this district the 
 two Herods, Archelaus and Antipas, were successively banished; 
 and it is singular enough, that Pontius Pilate, after his recall from 
 Syria, was exiled to the same neighbourhood. Here, however, was a 
 
 perhaps, also, in his Meditations, at the end of the first book, where, among the things 
 for which he has to thank, not himself, bnt the gods, he names, in the last place, the 
 occurrences among the Quadi. It id also quite certain, that this remarkable event can 
 have had no influence on the Emperor's sentiments towards the Christians. (Neander's 
 History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. i., p. 116.) 
 
 The Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, illustrated from the 
 Writings of Tertullian. By John Kaye, D.D., Bishop of Lincoln. 8vo., p. 107. 
 Second Edition. Cambridge, 1826. 
 
 t See Witsius, De Legione Fulminatrice, annexed to his JSgyptiaca ; Laroqne, 
 De Legione Fulminatrice, subjoined to the Adversaria Sacra of M. Laroqne. Those 
 who are desirous of further information on the subject of the Legio Fnlminea, will do 
 well to consult the remarks made on the early miracles by Bishop Blomfield, in the 
 notes to the volume of Sermons preached at St. Botolph. (See also Mosheim, Cent, ii., 
 Pan I., sect. 10.) Jortin is flippant; and Gibbon sneers at the Christians as usual. 
 (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. v., cap. 5 ; Lardner's Works, vol. vii., p. 177, ft teg.) 
 
 3 F 2
 
 404 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Christian community, corresponding in Greek with the mother 
 church. It is by no means improbable that a kind of Jewish settle- 
 ment of the attendants on the banished Sovereigns of Judea might 
 have been formed in the neighbourhood of Vienna and Lyons, and 
 maintained a friendly, no doubt a mercantile, connexion with their opu- 
 lent brethren of Asia Minor, perhaps through the port of Marseilles.* 
 Though Christianity does not appear to have penetrated into Gaul till 
 rather a late period, it may have travelled by the same course, and 
 have been propagated in the Jewish settlement by converts from Phrygia 
 or Asia Minor. Its Jewish origin is, perhaps, confirmed by its adher- 
 ence to the Judaeo-Christian tenet of abstinence from blood. 
 
 The origin of the intercourse between the churches of Vienne 
 and Lyons with the Christians in Asia Minor, is not satisfactorily 
 stated. The names of some persons have been preserved, who 
 are said to have been sent into Gaul by Polycarp, and to have 
 suffered martyrdom there. Irenseus was also commissioned thi- 
 ther by the same individual ; and we know, says Dr. Burton, 
 from his own words, that in his younger days he had seen that vene- 
 rable and apostolical Bishop in Asia. It is not improbable, that,-)- 
 when Polycarp came to Rome, about the year 158, some of his com- 
 panions may have continued their journey westward, and visited 
 Gaul ; or, if we were seeking a reason for Christians leaving their 
 homes in Asia Minor, and settling in such a distant country, we 
 might find it in the continued persecutions, which, perhaps, drove 
 many persons to seek an asylum in safer quarters. We have positive 
 evidence that some of the most distinguished Christians in Vienna 
 and Lyons were Asiatic Greeks : Pothinus, the Bishop of Lyons at the 
 time of this persecution, was undoubtedly a Greek ; and some tradi- 
 tions have represented him as sent into Gaul by Polycarp, or even by 
 the Apostle John. His successor Irenseus wrote his works in the 
 Greek language ; and he speaks of not understanding the Celtic, 
 which was still spoken by some persons in his diocess. The names 
 of several of the martyrs are Greek : Attalus of Pergamos is expressly 
 mentioned ; and Alexander, a Phrygian, is not only said to have 
 been many years in Gaul, but the remarkable circumstance is added, 
 that he possessed a portion of the apostolical spiritual gifts. This 
 would, perhaps, confirm the notion of his having seen Polycarp, or 
 some such person, who had conversed with the Apostles. The 
 Liturgies which were used by the Gallic churches before the time of 
 Charlemagne, did not resemble the Roman Liturgy, but were much 
 more like to that which was used in the churches of Asia Minor, 
 which is another proof of religious intercourse having taken place 
 between the two countries. 
 
 In the cities of Lyons and Vienne, there appears to have been a 
 church ; and we may infer, from the rage and violence of the persecu- 
 tors, that the persons interested in the preservation of Heathenism, 
 
 * Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 193. 
 t Burton's Lectures on Eccles. Hist., lect. xx., p. 172. 
 
 t Palmer, Origines Liturgicae ; Dissertation on Primitive Liturgies, sect. ix. ; Liturgy 
 of Gaul, vol. i., p. 143 ct seq., 8vo., third Edit., Oxford, 1839.
 
 PERSECUTION AT LYONS. 405 
 
 were aware of the steady, but certain, progress which Christianity was 
 making. The storm appears to have been gathering for some time. 
 The feelings of the people rose to a state of ungovernable ferocity, 
 and exceeded, if possible, the fury of the inhabitants of Smyrna. The 
 commencement of this dreadful, though local, persecution, was an 
 ebullition of popular fury. It was about the period when the 
 German war, which had slumbered during some years of precarious 
 peace, again threatened to disturb the repose of the empire. Southern 
 Gaul, though secure beyond the Rhine, was yet at no great distance 
 from the incursions of the German tribes ; and it is possible, that 
 personal apprehensions might mingle with the general fanatic terror, 
 which exasperated the Heathens against their Christian fellow-citizens. 
 The Christian community were on a sudden exposed to a general 
 attack of the populace. The churches in Lyons and Vienne trans- 
 mitted in writing to the Christian communities in Asia and Phrygia 
 an account of their martyrs ; from this document, we give the 
 following : 
 
 " The servants of Christ inhabiting Vienne and Lyons of Gaul, to 
 the brethren throughout Asia and Phrygia, of one common faith and 
 hope of redemption with ourselves, peace, grace, and glory from God 
 the Father, and from Jesus Christ our Lord. The greatness of the 
 tribulation in these parts, the exceeding rage of the Heathen against 
 the saints, and the sufferings of the blessed martyrs, are what we are 
 not able fully to relate unto you, neither indeed can they be contained 
 in writing ; for the enemy at the very first invaded us with the great- 
 est violence, showing from the beginning what sore evils we were to 
 expect. He went about everywhere, exercising his servants to 
 skirmish before the combat with the servants of the Lord, insomuch 
 that we were not only excluded from houses,* public baths, markets, 
 and courts of justice, but we were even prohibited from appearing in 
 any place ; nevertheless, the grace of God was unto us as a commander 
 against the adversary ; it rescued those who were weak, and it 
 ordained chosen persons, as firm pillars, able, through patience, to 
 support the whole force of the assaults of the wicked one. Engaging 
 with him in close combat, they endured reproach, and evil treatment 
 of every kind ; and making small account of what others held to be 
 grievous, they hastened unto Christ ; and thus they manifested, that 
 of a truth the ' sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be 
 compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.' 
 
 " First of all, they courageously endured whatever contumelies the 
 multitude heaped on them ; for they were insulted, beaten, and 
 dragged about, spoiled, stoned, and held in durance, f and they suffered 
 
 * " From houses." The sense of the passage ia, that the Christiana were prevented 
 from having any intercourse with their neighbours ; not that they were not permitted to 
 remain in their own habitations. " Markets and courts of justice." The word in the 
 original is ayopa, which may comprehend both markets and courts of justice. The 
 meaning is, places of public and necessary resort. 
 
 t " Held in durance." Valesius remarks, that hitherto the epistle only speaks of the 
 contumelies of the multitude ; and, therefore, that this does not mean, that the Chris- 
 tians were imprisoned, but that, having met with insults when they appeared in public, 
 they confined themselves at home. Nevertheless, <nry/cA.eicrfs is a strong word to be 
 used, were nothing more understood than what Valesius supposes. The enthusiaatic
 
 406 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 whatever else the brutal multitude delights to inflict on enemies in a 
 state of warfare. Having been brought before the Tribune of the 
 soldiers, and the Magistrates of the city, they were examined in pre- 
 sence of the whole people ; and having given their testimony to the 
 faith, they were shut up in prison until the arrival of the Governor.* 
 When they were brought before him, his demeanour to our people 
 was exceedingly savage. Then did Vettius Epagathus, f one of the 
 brethren, fulfil the measure of love towards God, and towards his 
 neighbour. The manners of this person were so strict, that, young 
 as he was, men held him to be altogether a partaker in the tes- 
 timony given to the ancient Zacharias ; for ' he had walked in the 
 commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.' Moreover, he 
 was nothing slothful in ministering unto his neighbour, very zealous 
 for the Lord, and fervent in spirit. This excellent person could not 
 brook the injustice done unto us ; and being moved with indignation, 
 he requested permission to plead the cause of the Christians ; for 
 that among us there was nothing ungodly or impious. But those 
 who stood around the judgment-seat exclaimed against him ; for he 
 was noted among them all. The Governor, instead of granting his 
 just request, demanded of him, * Whether he also was a Christian ?' 
 Epagathus, with an audible voice, declared, that he was a Christian ; 
 and was forthwith numbered among the martyrs, and obtained the 
 appellation of the Advocate of the Christian s.J But he had an 
 
 fdry of the Heathen might, possibly, have incited them to imprison the Christians, with- 
 out any interposition of civil authority. " Magistrates of the city," or the decemvirs ; 
 c|ov<ricu properly means the superior Judges, who had the jus gladii, or the power of 
 inflicting capital punishments ; but it is also used, in a less accurate sense, for inferior 
 Magistrates. (Vide Epistolam Eccles. Viennen. et Lugdun. de Martyr. S. Pothini 
 Episcopi et aliorum plurimorum; Ruinart, Acta Martyr, sincera.) 
 
 * Governor, fiyepiav, or "praeses." Valesius understands this person to have been the 
 " Legatus Caesaris ; " and he quotes an inscription in Gruter, where mention is made of 
 " Legatna Imp. Nervse Trajani Caesaris Aug. Provinciae Lugdunensis." He adds a 
 remarkable passage from Spartian in Severe, " Deinde Lugdunensem provinciam legatus 
 accepit." And he conjectures, that as Severus, afterwards Emperor, was Legatus Pro- 
 vinciae Lngdunensis in the reign of Marcus Aurelins, he was the Governor of whom the 
 epistle speaks. The conjecture is ingenious, and the behaviour of this Governor 
 accords well with the harsh and unfeeling temper of Severus ; concerning whom it was 
 vulgarly said, " Vere Severus, vere Pertinax." But there is too much reason to believe, 
 that the same character would have been equally applicable to many Governors of 
 provinces of that age. Dion Cassius mentions his government at Lyons ; Fr. Balduinus 
 was of the same opinion : " Interea, dum haec Romae exercerentur, Lugdunensem pro- 
 vinciam legatus regebat Septimius Severns. Non dnbium est, qnae tune illic de Chris- 
 tianis sumpta supplicia esse dicuntur, hujus Seven imperio irrogata fuisse." (Edict. 
 Princ. Rom. de Christianis, p. 97.) 
 
 t All that we know with certainty of this good man is from the Epistle of the Chris- 
 tians of Gaul. Gregory of Tours (Hist., lib. i., cap. 29) mentions a " Leucadius, 
 primus Galliarum Senator, qui de stirpe Vettii Epagathi fuit," in the reign of the Empe- 
 ror Decius. This passage in Gregory of Tours, says Valesius, plainly indicates, that 
 Vettius Epagathus was a person of the first nobility in Lyons ; and, indeed, adds he, 
 the same thing is evident from the epistle itself, where it is said, KCU yap TJV tiriffimos. 
 Bat eirt<nifj.os may imply, " distinguished for his virtues and usefulness," as well as 
 " celebrated on account of his noble birth." 
 
 J " Obtained the appellation of the Advocate of the Christians." In the original it is 
 arapa-KKriros Xpur-rtavuv XF'7/ xaT ' (raJ< There are various opinions as to the interpretation 
 of this passage. Rufinus understands it to signify, that the Governor gave that title to 
 Vettius Epagathus ; (Advocatus qnidem Christianorum, Judicis elogio, appellatus ;) and 
 Valerius is of the same opinion. Others understand it to imply, that this title was generally 
 bestowed on him by the Christiana. It is not improbable, that the Governor, in a taunt-
 
 THK MARTYRS AT LYONS. 407 
 
 Advocate within, even the Holy Spirit, in more ample measure than 
 Zacharias, which he manifested in the abundance of his brotherly 
 kindness, choosing to lay down his life for the vindication of the 
 brethren ; he was a true disciple of Christ, ' following the Lamb 
 whithersoever he goeth.' 
 
 " Others, very soon, began to be separately questioned. The fore- 
 most martyrs were bright and ready prepared,* and with all alacrity 
 they filled up the just measure of their confession. Now, also, there 
 appeared those who were unprepared and unexercised, feeble as yet, 
 and incapable of supporting the great contest ; and of such there fell 
 off to the number of about ten ; and these wrought much vexation 
 of spirit unto us, and sorrow not to be measured ; and they lessened 
 the courage of the rest, who, not having yet been apprehended, 
 though suffering much, had continued to be present with the martyrs, 
 and had never forsaken them. Indeed, we were all greatly dismayed, 
 by reason of the uncertainty of the event in the day of trial : we did 
 not fear the tortures inflicted ; but looking forward unto the end, we 
 dreaded lest any one should fall. And there were apprehended, 
 from day to day, such as were worthy to supply the place of those 
 who had fallen off; so that at length the most excellent persons of 
 both churches, f and they by whose means especially our affairs in 
 these parts had been established, were detained in custody together. 
 Certain Heathens, also, slaves of our people, were apprehended ; for 
 the Governor had published a general order, that we should all be 
 sought after ; and these slaves, through the instigation of Satan, 
 and dreading what they saw the saints endure, gave testimony against 
 us, as guilty of the murder of young children,^ and of incest, and 
 
 ing style, might have called him the Advocate of the Christians, and that the Christiana 
 themselves might have perpetuated the appellation, with the view of doing honour to the 
 brave zeal of Vettius pagathus. There is reason to believe, that the very name of 
 Christian was at first imposed, and not assumed. (See Acts xi. 26.) The name occurs 
 but once in the writings of the Apostles ; (1 Peter iv. 16 ;) and even there it may be 
 justly understood of a name which the followers of Jesus received from the Heathens, 
 or the Jews, and not of a name which they arrogated to themselves. 
 
 * " Ready prepared," SitKpivoiTo. They who entered the lists at the Gymnastic 
 shows of the ancients were examined before they obtained permission to contend. 
 Inquiry in a special manner was made, whether they were free born, and whether they 
 were of the age required in combatants. The persons admitted were said, (tffKpiveffOat ; 
 and the persons rejected, fKKptvfffOcu. In this epistle there are many allusions to the 
 Gymnastic exercises ; but it is difficult to render them into English with precision and 
 dignity ; for the words " racers, boxers, and prize-fighters," convey to a modern ear the 
 notion of something mean and venal. 
 
 t From the whole strain of this epistle, it is evident, that the Christians in Lyons 
 and Vienne were indiscriminately persecuted ; and that no distinction was made by their 
 enemies between bond or free, Ecclesiastics or laymen. Eusebius says, (Eccles. Hist., 
 lib. vi., cap. 28,) that Maximin the Thracian " ordained, that only the Presidents of 
 the churches should be put to death." It is remarkable that Sulpitius Severus does not 
 take this persecution of the Clergy into his account of the general persecutions. 
 
 t In the original, "banquets of Thyestes," alluding to a well-known incident in the 
 ancient history of Greece. That the primitive Christians were charged as guilty of the 
 murder of young children in their religious rites, is certain ; but it is difficult to discover 
 the origin of that charge. There was published in London, in 1T27, a treatise, entitled, 
 " The Calumnies upon the Primitive Christians, accounted for. By Robert Turner, 
 M.A., Vicar of St. Peter's in Colchester." The industrious author observes, that the 
 primitive Christians were popularly accused of atheism, of eating young children, and 
 of incest. These, says Mr. Turner, are " the three original calumnies," almost coeval 
 with Christianity itself. With regard to the second accusation, of eating young chil-
 
 408 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 of other crimes, which it is not lawful for us to think of, much less 
 to perpetrate, and which, indeed, we cannot suppose to have been 
 ever perpetrated by man. But when the rumour of these things was 
 spread abroad, all men became as wild beasts towards us, insomuch 
 that some who hitherto had shown themselves moderate, either from 
 relation or from neighbourhood, now became exasperated against us. 
 Then was fulfilled that which our Lord spake, ' The time cometh, 
 when whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.' 
 (John xvi. 2.) 
 
 " The holy martyrs endured torments which are beyond all descrip- 
 tion ; Satan, meanwhile, eagerly striving, that by them also some- 
 thing flagitious might be acknowledged : but, above all, the whole 
 fury of the multitude, of the Governor, and of the soldiers, was 
 aimed at Sanctus,* a Deacon of the church at Vienne ; Maturus, one 
 newly enlightened, yet a steady combatant ; and Attalus, a native of 
 Pergamus, who had ever been as a foundation-stone, and as a pillar unto 
 the church in these parts; also against Blandina, in whom Christ showed, 
 that the things which appear unto men base, and without comeliness, and 
 altogether contemptible, are highly honoured in the sight of the Lord, 
 whenever there is in them that love which displays itself, not in osten- 
 
 dren, the particulars of it are to be found in Minucius Felix : " Concerning the initi- 
 ation of novices, an abominable fable is universally reported. An infant covered over 
 with paste is served up to the novice, who, ignorant of the disguise, and suspecting 
 nothing, is excited to prick holes in the paste ; and thus, by imperceptible wounds, is the 
 infant slain. Then the persons present eagerly lap his blood, and tear his limbs to 
 pieces. By this sacrifice they are covenanted together, and by such conscious wicked- 
 ness do they pledge themselves to mutual secrecy. These holy rites are more flagitious 
 than aught that bears the appellation of sacrilege." " I will not stay to prove," 
 says Sir David Dalrymple, " that such abominable rites could never have been celebrated 
 by the true disciples of Jesus. The report of their having been performed, is supposed 
 to have arisen from one or other of the following causes : (1.) The general enmity of 
 the Heathens against the professors of Christianity; (2.) The flagitious practices of 
 which certain fanatics, in the early times of the Christian church, are said to have been 
 guilty ; and, (3.) A mistaken apprehension of some tenets and practices peculiar to the 
 religion of Christ." In respect of the charge of incest, Mr. Turner supposes, that it 
 was owing to the name of sisters, which the primitive Christians gave to young women, 
 and of mothers, which they gave to women advanced in years. But this is hardly 
 satisfactory. Had the Christians been accused of incest in general, the accusation 
 might have been supposed to have arisen from the name of sister, which was given to a 
 believing wife. (1 Cor. ix. 5.) But it was a peculiar sort of incest, the unlawful union 
 of parents and children, of which the primitive Christians were accused. Dr. Whitby 
 imagines, that the calumny may have been derived from a passage in St. Paul. (1 Cor. 
 v. 1.) Some of the Heathen might have met with this passage ; and as they were 
 exceedingly inaccurate in their inquiries concerning the Christian system, they might, 
 perhaps, have inferred from it, that such incest was generally practised among 
 the Christians, notwithstanding the admonitions of their teachers. (See An Account of 
 the Martyrs at Smyrna and Lyons in the Second Century, with explanatory Notes. By 
 Sir David Dalrymple. ]2mo. Edinburgh, 1776.) 
 
 * " Sanctns, a Deacon of the church at Vienne." Valesius understands the words 
 to imply, " Sanctus of Vienne, a Deacon." And he seems to wonder, that they should 
 have been understood in any other sense. And yet, if Sanctus were not a Deacon of the 
 church of Vienne, it would appear that the Clergy of the church escaped the fury of 
 the persecution altogether. This is improbable, especially as a late writer, of eminent 
 reputation, has observed, that the religious resentment of the Heathens was chiefly 
 directed against Christian slaves and Ecclesiastics. The office of Sanctus was a cir- 
 cumstance of more moment, and more connected with the rest of the narrative, than 
 the place of his birth ; and as the words are ambiguous, it would appear, for the reasons 
 here given, that " Sanctns, a Deacon of the church of Vienne," is the preferable 
 interpretation. (Sir D. Dalrymple.)
 
 THE MARTYRS OF LYONS. 409 
 
 tatious profession, but in power and in deed. Now all of us feared, 
 that when Blandina was brought unto the combat, she would have been 
 unable, through infirmity of body, to make a resolute confession of 
 the faith ; the like fear had her mistress according to the flesh, herself 
 a combatant, together with the martyrs. Blandina, nevertheless, was 
 filled with such mighty power, that the tormentors, who, from the 
 dawn of day until evening, alternately relieving one another, had em- 
 ployed every manner of torture against her, now became exhausted 
 and feeble, through much toil ; and they themselves confessed, that 
 she had overcome ; for, that there remained no further tortures which 
 they could apply ; and they were astonished, that her breath con- 
 tinued in her, after her body had been so torn and laid open ; and 
 declared also, that any one of the various kinds of torture employed 
 against her, was sufficient to have bereaved her of life. This blessed 
 woman, as a hardy combatant, seemed to have her youth and vigour 
 renewed, while she bare testimony to the faith ; and she was restored 
 to ease, and became insensible of her sufferings, when she pronounced 
 these words : ' I am a Christian, and there is no evil done among 
 us.' 
 
 *' Sanctus also courageously endured the most excessive tortures 
 that could be devised by man. The unrighteous hoped, through the 
 continuance and magnitude of the tortures, to hear from him some 
 confession of things unseemly ; * but he resisted them with so great 
 constancy, that he would not so much as disclose unto them either 
 his name or his nation ; nor would he say of what city he was, nor 
 whether he was a freeman, or a slave ; but to every question that was 
 asked of him, he made answer, in the Roman language, ' I am a 
 Christian.' That he repeatedly avowed to be to him instead of 
 name, and city, and family, and all things. Other language than this 
 the Heathens heard not from him. Wherefore, in torturing him, a 
 mighty emulation arose between the Governors and the tormentors, 
 insomuch that when they had nothing more which they could do 
 against him, they at length fixed heated plates of brass to the most 
 sensible parts of his body, and these indeed were burnt ; but he him- 
 self inflexibly persevered, firm in his confession, being bedewed and 
 comforted by that heavenly fountain of the water of life which flow- 
 eth from Christ. His body gave testimony of what had befallen ; 
 for it was wholly wounds and weals, distorted, and having put off the 
 appearance of human shape. Christ, also, suffering in him, wrought 
 great marvels, destroyed the adversary, and manifested, for an example 
 to others, that nothing can be formidable where the love of the 
 Father is, and nothing painful where the glory of Christ is concerned. 
 The ungodly, after certain days had passed, again began to torment 
 
 " Confession of things unseemly ; " that is, a confession, that things indecent and 
 flagitious were practised among Christians. A learned frieud, says Sir David Dalrymple, 
 understands the expression thus : " To hear something improper fall from him, such as 
 blasphemy against Christ." But the interpretation which is given in the text, appears 
 to be justified by a fragment of Irenanis, where the author, after having mentioned that 
 the slaves accused their Christian masters of drinking human blood, adits, that the 
 Heathen strove, " by tortures, to compel Sttnctus and Blaudiua to make confession, or 
 acknowledge the charge." 
 
 VOL. I. 3 G
 
 410 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 the martyr ; they imagined, that, while his wounds were swollen and 
 inflamed, and incapable of enduring the slightest touch, he would 
 either be overcome through the repetition of tortures, or, expiring 
 amidst them, would cause fear to fall on the rest of the brethren. 
 Nevertheless, nothing of this kind ensued ; but, on the contrary, 
 beyond all expectation and belief of man, his body unbent itself* 
 while the tortures were repeated, and it became erect, and resumed 
 its form, and the exercise of its members ; so that, through the 
 grace of Christ, this last torture, instead of afflicting, healed. 
 
 " There was a certain woman named Biblias, of the number of 
 those who had denied Christ. Satan, confident that she was already 
 devoured of him, sought to increase her condemnation by causing 
 her to blaspheme ; f and he brought her forth to punishment, and 
 hoped to constrain her, already feeble and dispirited, to make report 
 that things ungodly were perpetrated among us. But she, in the 
 midst of torments, awaking as out of a profound sleep, recalled 
 to her remembrance the everlasting punishments in hell, gainsayed 
 the blasphemers, and thus spake : ' How can they devour children, to 
 whom it is not lawful even to taste the blood of brute animals ? ' 
 She thenceforward professed that she was a Christian, and had her 
 portion among the martyrs. When Christ, through the patience of 
 the blessed martyrs, had made those tyrannical chastisements to wax 
 feeble, Satan bethought of other devices ; confinement in darkness, 
 and a most noisome prison ; the grievous straining of their legs in 
 the stocks ; and whatever else the tormentors, when wroth, and filled 
 with the evil spirit, are wont to inflict on their prisoners. Many 
 were hereby suffocated in prison, whom the Lord, to be glorified in all 
 things, willed to depart in that sort ; while others, although they had 
 tasted the bitterness of torment, and were past human cure, remained 
 alive, destitute of assistance from man, but comforted by the Lord, 
 they were strengthened in body and in spirit, and administered 
 encouragement and consolation to their brethren. Others, again, 
 
 " Unbent itself." " The writers of this epistle consider the circumstance here 
 mentioned as something extraordinary ; and I admit," says Sir David Dalrymple, "that 
 it was ; nevertheless, since it is not said that any of the bones of Sanctus were broken, 
 or that his limbs were disjointed, we ought not to be rash in pronouncing the appearance 
 miraculous. The narrative of this epistle is sober and accurate, and little exposed to 
 the cavils of infidelity. We ought not, without necessity, to adopt en interpretation of 
 the passage concerning Sanctus which might be attended with difficulties." 
 
 t Biblias was one of the slaves who, through the force of torture, had borne witness 
 against the Christians, and had accused them of flagitious practices. She was now 
 brought forth that she might in public renew her testimony, or that she might be made 
 to blaspheme. This appears to be the sense of the expression ; and accordingly it is 
 observed that Biblias, instead of persevering in her charge against the Christiana, com- 
 pletely exonerated them. 
 
 t " The grievous straining of their legs in the stocks ; " the original adds, " of their 
 feet, stretched out unto the fifth hole." This is omitted in the translation, because it 
 is unintelligible without a commentary, and consequently would have led to embarrass- 
 ment. It appears that there were five holes for each foot in those stocks. When the 
 feet were placed in the fifth hole on each side, they were extended to the greatest pos- 
 sible distance from each other. This Sir David Dalrymple renders by " grievous strain- 
 ing." It is well expressed by Prudentius : 
 
 " Lignoque plantas inserit, 
 Divarieatis cruribus."
 
 THE MARTYRS OF LYONS. 411 
 
 who were newly confined, not being inured to sufferings, and unable 
 to support the load, expired in prison. 
 
 " Pothinus, to whom the charge of the bishopric of Lyons had 
 been committed, was more than ninety years old, exceedingly 
 infirm, and, by reason of bodily weakness, could hardly be said to 
 breathe. Nevertheless he became animated and strengthened in 
 spirit, through his earnest desire of that martyrdom which now 
 approached ; he also was dragged into judgment, having his body 
 dissolved, as it were, through age and maladies ; yet still retaining 
 life for the exaltation and triumph of Christ. He was carried before 
 the judgment-seat by the soldiers, the Magistrates of the city follow- 
 ing him, and the whole multitude of the people making all manner 
 of exclamations against him, as if he had been Christ himself; and 
 there did he utter a good confession : for when the Governor 
 demanded of him, who was the God of the Christians; he 
 answered, ' If thou art worthy, thou shalt know.' After this he 
 was unmercifully dragged about, and he endured many blows ; for 
 they who were near did evil entreat him with their hands and their 
 feet, not reverencing his grey hairs, while they who were at a dis- 
 tance threw at him whatever they could first lay hold of ; imagining, 
 all of them, that had they omitted aught of their contumelious 
 usage, they would have incurred the guilt of impiety ; and thus they 
 esteemed themselves to be the avengers of their gods. Pothinus, 
 almost expiring, was again thrown into prison, and after two days 
 he gave up the ghost. And now there ensued a mighty dispensation 
 of God, and an example of the boundless mercy of Christ was exhi- 
 bited, not such as had often occurred to the brethren,* yet one that 
 was not unsuitable to the method and art, as it were, of his govern- 
 ment. When the brethren were first apprehended, they who had 
 become apostates endured imprisonment with the rest, and partook 
 of their sufferings ; neither, in that season, did their denial of Christ 
 avail them aught. They who confessed themselves Christians were 
 shut up for that cause alone, and no other charge was brought against 
 them ; but the others were held in durance as murderers and defiled, *f 
 and received twofold chastisement. The confessors had their sorrows 
 lightened through the consolation of martyrdom, and the hope of 
 the promises, and the love of Christ, and the influence of the Spirit 
 of the Father ; but the apostates were grievously tormented by 
 the sentence of their own consciences, insomuch that when they 
 were all brought to judgment, the difference was to be discerned 
 
 * Sir David Dalrymple says, " It would seem that Valesius has altogether misunder- 
 stood the sense of the passage. He says, ' Notandum est quod aiunt Lugdunenses, 
 raruin adhnc in ecclesia ejusmodi indulgentioe usum fuisse erga lapsos, neuipe, quia ad 
 hoc usque tempns pauci admodum lapsi fnerant : itaque, cessante movbo, niliil opus 
 erat hujusmodi medicina. Subsecutia autem persecutionibns hoc remedium crebriua 
 nsitatuni est.' The Christiana of Gaul speak not of receiving again into the church 
 those who had fallen away. They mean, that on this occasion there was an example 
 of apostates again acknowledging that faith which they had abjured ; of this, they say, 
 there were few examples, and they mention it as a peculiar mercy vouchsafed by Christ." 
 
 t Of such offences they had confessed the Christians in general to he guilty ; and, 
 consequently, they acknowledged themselves to be implicated in them. 
 
 3 G 2
 
 412 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 in their countenances ; for the Christians went on rejoicing, with 
 looks intermingled of glory and abundant grace, and their bonds 
 seemed to be as costly ornaments bestowed on them, as ' on a bride 
 adorned with tresses of gold, wrought with divers colours ; ' and they 
 had the sweet perfume which is of Christ, insomuch that some 
 imagined them to have been indeed anointed with ointment. But 
 the apostates were dispirited and abject, woful in their appearance, 
 and altogether uncomely ; they were reviled as base and unmanly 
 by the Gentiles themselves ; and they bare the accusation of 
 murderers, having lost that name which is glorious and of great price, 
 and which maketh alive. 
 
 " The modes of their departure through martyrdom were various. 
 Having plaited one garland of every sort of flowers, and of different 
 colours, they brought it before the Father ; and now it was fitting 
 that those resolute combatants, who had endured the contest in every 
 form, and had mightily overcome, should receive the great and incor- 
 ruptible crown. Maturus, therefore, and Sanctus, and Blandina, and 
 Attains, were publicly exposed to wild beasts, that common spectacle 
 of Gentile inhumanity ; and, to that end, a day for exhibiting the 
 combats with wild beasts was especially appointed. In the amphi- 
 theatre, Maturus and Sanctus again underwent every manner of tor- 
 ture, as if hitherto they had not suffered aught ; or, rather, having 
 repeatedly overthrown their antagonist, and being now to contend 
 among themselves for the crown, they again passed through their 
 wonted course of tribulation ; they were exposed to be torn of wild 
 beasts, and to undergo whatever else the frantic multitude, clamor- 
 ously, and after divers manners, ordained ; and these things having 
 been finished, they were placed in the iron chair, and their bodies 
 were so scorched, that the noisome smell of the burning spread itself 
 around. Neither even here did the multitude cease ; but, waxing 
 more and more outrageous, they strove to overcome the perseverance 
 of the martyrs. Nevertheless, from Sanctus they heard nothing 
 beside that confession, which aforetime he had been wont to utter ; 
 namely, that he was a Christian. These two men, Maturus and 
 Sanctus, having continued alive throughout this long and mighty 
 contest, were in the end slain with the sword. Instead of the variety 
 exhibited in the combats of gladiators, they themselves, during the 
 course of that day, were made a spectacle unto the world. 
 
 " Blandina was fastened to a stake,* and hung from it, exposed 
 as a prey to the wild beasts let loose against her ; and when she 
 appeared in the fashion of one upon a cross, earnestly praying unto 
 God, she greatly encouraged the other combatants ; for, in their 
 sister, thus combating before their eyes, they beheld Him who was 
 crucified for their sake, that he might assure all believers in him, 
 that whosoever suffereth for the glory of Christ hath perpetual com- 
 munion with the living God. And none of the wild beasts having 
 
 Blandina was a slave, and was on that account subjected to this mode of punish- 
 ment. There may be seen in Lipsius (De Cruce, lib. iii., cap. 11) a delineation of this 
 method of exposing the sufferer to be torn in pieces by wild beasts.
 
 THE MARTYRS OF LYONS. 413 
 
 offended her,* she was taken down from the stake, and again impri- 
 soned, and reserved for another combat, that she might increase 
 the condemnation of the crooked serpent, f and by her example ani- 
 mate the brethren. This person, in herself mean and infirm, and 
 wholly despised, was clothed with the strength of Christ, the mighty 
 and unconquerable champion ; and she at different times overcame 
 the adversary, and was crowned with an incorruptible garland. Atta- 
 lus, also, was eagerly sought for by the multitude : he was an emi- 
 nent' person, and entered the lists as a combatant well prepared, 
 through the testimony of a good conscience ; for he had been com- 
 pletely exercised in the Christian discipline, and had ever borne wit- 
 ness to the truth among us. He was led round the amphitheatre 
 with a tablet carried before him, on which was written, in the Roman 
 language, ' This is Attalus the Christian.' The multitude swelled 
 with indignation against him. The Governor, when he learnt that he 
 was a Roman, commanded him, together with the others, to be 
 re-conducted to prison. He inquired of the Emperor what should 
 be done unto them, and awaited his determination. This interval 
 was neither unprofitable nor useless to the Christians ; but, through 
 the patience of those who had endured, the immeasurable compas- 
 sion of Christ became manifest ; for, by the living were the dead 
 raised to life, and the martyrs obtained favour for those who were 
 not martyrs. By their means many of the apostates returned 
 to the church, and were taught to confess the truth in Christ ; 
 and being restored to life, and their spirits braced, they repaired 
 to the judgment-seat to be once more questioned by the Governor. 
 That God, who willeth not the death of a sinner, and who is mer- 
 ciful in calling men to repentance, took away the root of bitterness 
 which was in them. 
 
 " A command came from the Emperor to the effect, ' That they 
 who confessed Christ should be put to death ; J but that they who 
 denied him should be set at liberty.' It was now the season of the 
 general convention at Lyons, whither men of different nations are 
 
 They had probably been already satiated ; or, perhaps, they were disturbed by the 
 shouts and uproar of the multitude. There is no necessity for supposing that anything 
 preternatural happened on this occasion. (Sir David Dalrymple.) 
 
 t This expression, in the account of the Christiana at Lyons, evidently ulludes to 
 Isai. xxvii. 1, " The Lord shall punish the serpent, that crooked serpent." 
 
 t In the original it is, a.irorvij.ircu>ur(h)vcu. This word occurs, Heb. xi. 36, AA\o 
 5e ervfj.irai'iffOrjffaa'. Our translators render it, " tormented," which shows that they 
 were not certain of its meaning ; and, indeed, the opinions of the learned are divided 
 concerning it. " Distended like the skin of a drum," " racked on a cross," 
 ' beaten to death with cudgels," and " beheaded," are some of the meanings ascribed 
 to it. 
 
 This was an occasion of great solemnity, when the sixty nations of Ganl met at 
 the altar sacred to Rome and Augustus, on the Kalends, or first day, of August. 
 The figure of this celebrated altar may be seen on medals ; and it is particularly deli- 
 neated in Menestrier, Histoire de hi Ville de Lyons, p. 68. The sixty nations of Gaul 
 erected an altar to Rome and Augustus. We need not inquire why divine honours 
 were bestowed on the living Augustus : a court-poet says, with more truth than proba- 
 bly he intended, 
 
 " Pr&senti tibi matures largimur honorea, 
 Jurundasque tuurn per nomen ponimus aras."
 
 414 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 wont, from all quarters, to repair. On that occasion the Governor 
 directed the blessed martyrs to be brought before the judgment-seat, 
 where they were exhibited as a theatrical show to the assembled 
 multitudes. He questioned them anew, and caused all those to be 
 beheaded who were found to have the right of Roman citizens ; but 
 with regard to the rest, he exposed them to wild beasts ; when Christ 
 was mightily glorified in those who had formerly denied, but now, 
 contrary to the expectation of the Gentiles, acknowledged, HIM ; for 
 when these men, about to be dismissed, had the question separately 
 put to them, some confessed their faith in Christ, and were num- 
 bered with the martyrs. But they who had no traces of the Chris- 
 tian faith in them, nor knowledge of the wedding-garment, nor 
 understanding of the fear of the Lord, remained without. These 
 were sons of perdition, who, by their conversation, brought an evil 
 report of our way. But the rest were added unto the church. 
 There was a certain man, named Alexander, a native of Phrygia, and 
 by profession a Physician, who had sojourned in Gaul for many years : 
 he was universally known for his love towards God, and his boldness 
 in proclaiming the word ; and he was not without a portion of apos- 
 tolical grace. When they who had formerly apostatized were inter- 
 rogated by the Governor, Alexander stood near the judgment-seat, 
 and, by signs, encouraged them to make confession of the faith, 
 appearing unto the bystanders like one in travail. But the multi- 
 tude, grievously offended that they who had formerly denied should 
 now confess the truth, exclaimed against Alexander as the author of 
 this change. The Governor forthwith ordered him into judgment, 
 and demanded who he was. When he said, 'A Christian,' he was 
 wroth, and decreed him to be exposed to the wild beasts. On the 
 day following, Alexander entered the amphitheatre, together with 
 Attalus ; for the Governor, willing to give pleasure to the people, had 
 again condemned the latter to be exposed.* In this place of public 
 amusement both underwent whatever torture could be devised ; and, 
 having endured this exceeding contest, both were slain with the 
 sword. Alexander all the while uttered not a groan, neither spake 
 he aught ; but in his heart he held converse with God. But Attalus, 
 when he was placed in the iron chair, and the smell of his scorched 
 body was spread around, spake to the multitude in the Roman lan- 
 guage : ' This which you do is indeed to devour men ; but, as for us, 
 we devour not men ; neither commit we any other manner of wicked- 
 ness.' And having been asked, what was the name of (his) God ; 
 he made answer, * God hath not a name, as men have.' 
 
 "After all these, on the last day of the public shows, Blandina 
 was again brought in, together with Ponticus, a youth about fifteen 
 years old. Day after day they had been conducted into the amphi- 
 
 * This was doubtless done to gratify the spectators, who esteemed the devouring of 
 men by wild beasts to be a far more noble show than simple beheading. The Governor, 
 nevertheless, acted in manifest contempt of the laws. It is strange that Attalus, who 
 was neither a slave nor a Bishop, should have been exposed to such tortures under the 
 mild and envied administration of the Antonines !
 
 THE MARTYRS OF LYONS. 4 1 i, 
 
 theatre, that they might be spectators of the tortures inflicted on the 
 brethren ; and now they were peremptorily required to swear by the 
 Gentile idols ; and because they steadfastly persevered, and set the idola 
 at' 1 nought, the multitude became as wild beasts towards them, so as 
 neither to pity the tender years of Ponticus, nor to reverence the 
 sex of Blandina ; they exposed them to whatever was horrible in 
 punishment, and led them round the whole circle of tortures, striving 
 from time to time to make them swear. Nevertheless they strove in 
 vain ; for Ponticus, as the Heathens themselves saw, was animated by 
 the exhortation of his sister, and, having courageously endured every 
 torture, gave up the ghost. The blessed Blandina, the last of the 
 whole, was a noble-spirited matron,* who had encouraged her chil- 
 dren to the combat, and had sent them before her victorious unto the 
 throne of the King. Having again measured that course which her 
 children had trod, and having combated as they had combated, she 
 hastened unto them with joy and exultation in her departure, as if 
 she had been bidden to a marriage banquet, and not exposed a prey 
 to wild beasts. After she had endured scourging, and had been 
 exposed to wild beasts, and scorched in the iron chair, she was at 
 length enclosed in a net, thrown before a bull ; the furious animal 
 oft-times tossed her aloft ; but she felt none of these things, for she 
 was full of hope, and by faith laid hold on the promises, and held 
 converse with Christ. In the end she was slaughtered as a victim, 
 and expired. The Heathens themselves acknowledged, that never 
 did woman among them endure so much as Blandina : yet still their 
 madness and cruelty towards the saints were not satiated ; for a 
 savage and brutalized people, once excited by the devouring beast, can 
 hardly be appeased. They accordingly sought a new occasion of 
 insulting the bodies of the martyrs ; for they felt no shame in being 
 overcome by them, inasmuch as they were devoid of human sense. 
 On the contrary, this inflamed their rage, as if it had been that of a 
 wild beast, both Governor and people equally manifesting their unjust 
 enmity against us, that the scripture might be fulfilled, * He that is 
 unjust, let him be unjust still ; and he that is righteous, let him be 
 righteous still.' They threw to the dogs the bodies of those whom 
 they suffocated in prison ; and they kept diligent watch, day and night, 
 lest any of us should bestow sepulture on them. They then laid out 
 the mangled and burnt remains of the martyrs, and whatever the 
 wild beasts had not devoured, or the fire had not consumed, together 
 with the heads of those who had been beheaded, f and the trunks 
 
 * There appears to be an allusion in this passage to the story of the Jewish mother 
 and her seven sons, who suffered a cruel martyrdom in the days of Antiochua 
 Epiphanea. (See tupra, p. 99, et seq.) 
 
 f This relates to such of the martyrs as were Roman citizens, and in consequence 
 of that quality had been beheaded. In the extract of this epixtle which Ensebins has 
 given, he does not specify the number of the martyrs. He himself says, (lib. v., cap. 
 4,) that it is unnecessary to transcribe the catalogue of them, as contained in the epistle 
 from the Christians of Gaul, because he had inserted the epistle at full length in another 
 work, called, " The Collection of Martyrs;" bnt, unhappily, that work is lost. Gre- 
 gory of Tours (Hist. Francor., lib. i., cap. 27) seems to say, that the martyrs of Lyona 
 were forty-eiyht in number. In lib. i., cap. 49, De Gloria Martyrum, he mentions the
 
 416 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 of their bodies ; and they kept them unburied for sundry days, under 
 the charge of a military guard. Some were filled with indignation,* 
 and gnashed their teeth against the remains of the martyrs, as if they 
 had still sought for more abundant revenge. Others derided and 
 insulted them, magnifying their idols, and ascribing the punishment 
 inflicted on the Christians to their power. There were persons of a 
 milder disposition, who seemed in some sort to sympathize with us ; 
 yet they also grievously upbraided us, saying, ' Where now is their 
 God ? and what hath that religion profited them which they preferred 
 above life itself ? ' Such was the diversity of the behaviour of the 
 Gentiles towards us. But we were mightily grieved that we could 
 not bury the remains ; for neither did the darkness of night afford any 
 aid unto us, nor could money or entreaty persuade. The Gentiles 
 watched the bodies with all diligence, as if to deprive them of sepul- 
 ture had been a matter of great gain. After the bodies of the mar- 
 tyrs had been exposed during six days, the ungodly burnt them, and 
 scattered the ashes in the river Rhone, f which floweth by the city, 
 
 same number of forty '-eight ; but in recounting their names he only specifies forty-Jive. 
 Oat of this list, Attains, one of the most eminent sufferers, is omitted altogether. This 
 must be imputed to the carelessness of transcribers. 
 
 " In this memorable passage," says Sir David Dalryinple, " the behaviour of three 
 different sorts of Heathens is described ; and it may be matter of curious, and not unuse- 
 ful, inquiry, to trace the principles of each sort. They who were filled with indignation, 
 &c., were probably the Heathens who discovered that the Christian system was incom- 
 patible with the Pagan. We know that a rabble of Egyptian, Syrian, Etruscan, and 
 Grecian deities, obtained the privileges of citizenship at Rome, and that the sixty 
 nations of Gaul concurred in erecting an altar to a city and a living man. The politi- 
 cians who devised, or who established, so strange a community of gods, would not have 
 excluded Christ from their pantheon ; but it is probable that they soon discerned the unso- 
 ciable nature of the Christian religion ; because a reb'gion founded on the iinity of the 
 Supreme Being is necessarily unsociable, and can never be incorporated with any species of 
 polytheism. They who understand the genius of Christianity, will not suppose unsociable 
 and intolerant to be synonymous. The next class of Heathens mentioned in the epistle, 
 appears to have been composed of superstitious idolaters, intoxicated with the dregs of 
 Paganism. As their own religion consisted altogether of pageants and ceremonies, the 
 difference between it and the Christian religion must have been discernible even to their 
 rude understandings. By men of such dispositions, ignorant and filled with prejudices, 
 the punishment of the Christians would be considered as the triumph of polytheism. 
 The men of the third sort were those who neither believed in polytheism, nor were active 
 in inculcating the belief of it ; hut who, having no relish for dangerous inquiries, adored 
 the gods of the state, and sincerely pitied the Christians, who, by avowing unlawful 
 opinions, exposed themselves to capital punishment." 
 
 t If in any case the spirit of discovering the relics of holy men could have been 
 restrained, it was in this, where the church itself, without ambiguity of expression, 
 declared, that the bodies and bones of the martyrs, having been collected, were con- 
 sumed to ashes, and scattered in a wide and rapid river. Nevertheless, towards the end 
 of the sixth century, Gregory of Tours says, (De Gloria Martyrum, lib. i., cap. 49,) 
 "Quorum sancta corpora judex iniquus igni tradi precepit, exustisque in Rhodanum 
 pulveres jussit spargi. Sed postquam haec gesta Bunt, cum Christian! mserorem maxi- 
 mum haberent, quasi deperissent beatae reliquiae, nocte apparuerunt viris fidelibus in 
 eo loco quo igni traditi sunt stantes integri et illaesi, et, conversi ad viros, dixerunt eis, 
 Reliquiae nostrte ab hoc colligantur loco, quia nullus periit a nobis j ex hoc enim translall 
 sumus ad requiem, quam nobis promisit Rex ccelorum Christus, pro cujus nomine pasai 
 sumus. Haec renunciantes viri illi religiosi Christianis, gratias egerunt Deo, et con- 
 fortati sunt hi fide ; colligentesque sacros cineres, aedificaverunt basilicam mirae magni- 
 tudinis m eorum honorem, et sepelierunt beata pignora sub sancto altari, ubi se semper 
 virtutibus manifestis cum Deo habitare declaraverunt." It would appear that to the bre- 
 thren, of whom Gregory speaks, intelligence was miraculously communicated, that the 
 ashes of the martyrs, instead of being thrown into the river, had remained on the spot
 
 THE MARTYRS OF LYONS. 417 
 
 that no remains of them might be visible upon earth. These things 
 they did as if they had been able to vanquish. God, and prevent the 
 martyrs from rising again : ' That,' as certain among the Gentiles 
 spake, ' they might be deprived of the hope of that resurrection, in 
 confidence of which they have introduced among us a foreign and a 
 new religion, have contemned whatever is terrible in torture, and 
 with readiness and joy have encountered death. Now let us see 
 whether they will rise again, and whether their God is able to help 
 them, and to rescue them out of our hands.' " 
 
 In those places where only a few Christians resided, their existence 
 was more easily concealed, and the jealousy of the people was not so 
 easily excited. The Governors did not think it necessary to establish 
 a search for them, except where individuals, from peculiar circum- 
 stances, made themselves notorious as enemies of the state religion, 
 which happened about this time in a town not very far from Lyons, 
 called Autun. There was no intention of persecuting the Christians 
 there, as they were in small numbers, and but little known, when a 
 Christian first attracted public notice to himself. The noisy multi- 
 tude, with great solemnities, were celebrating a festival in honour of 
 Cybele, whose worship appears to have come hither from Asia Minor, 
 by the same route which Christianity afterwards followed, and she 
 appears also to have been held in great respect at that time. An image 
 of Cybele was carried round in one of her usual cars, and accompa- 
 nied by a great multitude of people. All fell on their knees ; but 
 Symphorianus, a young man of high family, conceived that his con- 
 science would not allow him to participate in this rite, and most 
 probably, on being taken to task for it, took occasion to speak of the 
 vanity of idolatry. He was instantly seized, and conducted before 
 the Governor Heraclius, a man of consular dignity, as a disturber 
 of the public worship, and a seditious citizen. The Governor said to 
 him, " You are a Christian, I suppose. As far as 1 can judge, you 
 must have escaped our notice ; for there are but a few followers of this 
 sect here." He answered, " I am a Christian : I pray to the true 
 God who rules in heaven, but I cannot pray to idols ; nay, if I were 
 permitted, I would dash them to atoms on my own responsibility." 
 The Governor, on this avowal, declared him guilty of a double crime, 
 one crime against the religion, and another against the laws, of the 
 state ; and, as neither threats nor promises could induce Symphoria- 
 nus to abjure his faith, he was sentenced to be beheaded. As they 
 led him to execution, his mother cried out to him, " My son, my 
 son, keep the living God in thy heart : we cannot fear death, which 
 leads so certainly to life. Up, my son ! let thy heart be up, and look 
 
 where the bodies were burnt. The expression, " Postquam hoec gesta aunt," might 
 be understood to imply something which happened immediately after the death of th 
 martyrs. The mention, however, of a " church of wonderful magnitude," and of the 
 depositing the ashes at " the great altar," authorize us to placo the era of this tale at 
 the distance of two hundred years from the persecution in Onnl. And, indeed, while 
 the memory of the circumstances of the persecution was recent, this fictitious revelation, 
 contradicting the evidence of the senses of all the surviving Christians at Lynn- , could 
 not have obtained credit. (Sir David Dalrymple.) 
 
 VOL. i. 3 H
 
 418 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 to Him that rules on high ! Thy life is not taken from thee to-day, 
 but thou art conducted to a better. By a blessed exchange, my son, 
 thou wilt pass this day to a life of heaven." * 
 
 The testimony of the above-named martyrs is valuable ; and 
 although they do not rank among such as the Apostles, who were 
 eye-witnesses of Christ and his miracles, they lived at a time when 
 the evidences of the truth of the Christian religion might be easily 
 traced to the first original. Irenseus, at this time a Presbyter in the 
 church of Lyons, and afterwards Bishop, in his younger days was 
 well acquainted with Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John ; and 
 Pothinus, who had recently suffered martyrdom when ninety years 
 of age, had doubtless been acquainted with some of the first Chris- 
 tians who flourished immediately after the death of some of those 
 who, " from the beginning, were eye-witnesses and Ministers of the 
 word." All were firmly persuaded of the truth and divine origin 
 of the faith ; they embraced it on the ground of such evidence as 
 appeared to themselves as sufficient and satisfactory, and preferred it 
 to their lives. " They believed, as they supposed, upon good ground, 
 that Jesus Christ was a divine Teacher sent from God. They were, 
 in particular, firmly persuaded of his doctrine concerning future 
 rewards for the good, and punishments for the wicked ; and were 
 thereby engaged to the sincere profession of the truth, and the 
 abhorrence of falsehood. Their knowledge of the Scriptures of the 
 Old and New Testaments, and their respect for them, are manifest 
 from their frequent allusions to them, or quotations from them. 
 They seem to have had among them gifts of the Spirit. Eusebius 
 says, ' They were not destitute of the grace of God, and the Holy 
 Ghost was their Director.' Of Alexander the writers of the Lugdu- 
 nensian Epistle say, ' He was known to almost all men for his bold- 
 ness in preaching the word ; for he was not destitute of apostolic 
 grace.' They likewise say of Attalus, ' that after his first combat 
 it was revealed to him that Alcibiades did not do well in not using 
 the creatures of God ; and Alcibiades acquiesced, and thenceforward 
 partook of all sorts of food promiscuously.' And it may deserve to 
 be considered that Attalus was a Roman citizen, and not a mean per- 
 son. To me those expressions likewise appear remarkable, where 
 they say of these confessors, ' They demonstrated, in fact, the power 
 of martyrdom, using great freedom of speech in all their answers to 
 the Gentiles, and manifesting a greatness of mind in their patience, 
 fearlessness, and undaunted courage under all their sufferings.' Cer- 
 tainly the Christian sufferers had the presence of God with them. 
 All men around them were adversaries ; but God did not forsake 
 
 * The relation of the martyrdom of Symphoriantis, says Neander, from whom the 
 account is taken, is so simple in essentials, so little deformed by the customary exag- 
 gerations of later days, and so suitable to the circumstances of the times, that -we can- 
 not doubt that it is entirely founded on facts, although perhaps in some passages it may 
 be laboured and rhetorical. Everything, however, conspires to prove that the event 
 itself took place at a time not far distant from that of the persecution at Lyons and 
 Vienne.
 
 REMARKS ON THE PERSECUTION AT LYONS. 419 
 
 them ; he strengthened and supported them." * Hence the senti- 
 ments of that fine writer, and excellent man, Joseph Addison : " I 
 cannot omit what appears to me a standing miracle in the first three 
 centuries ; I mean, that amazing and supernatural courage and 
 patience which were shown by innumerable multitudes of martyrs, in 
 those slow and painful torments that were inflicted upon them. I 
 cannot conceive a man placed in the burning iron chair of Lyons, 
 amidst the insults and mockery of a crowded amphitheatre, and still 
 keeping his seat ; or, stretched upon a grate of iron over coals of 
 fire, and breathing out his soul among the exquisite sufferings of such 
 a tedious execution, rather than renounce his religion, and blaspheme 
 his Saviour. Such trials seem to me above the strength of human 
 nature, and able to overbear duty, reason, faith, conviction ; nay, and 
 the most absolute certainty of a future state. Humanity, unassisted 
 in an extraordinary manner, must have shaken off the present pressure 
 and delivered itself out of such a dreadful distress by any means 
 that could have been suggested to it. We can easily imagine that 
 many persons, in so good a cause, might have laid down their lives 
 at the gibbet, the stake, or the block ; but to expire leisurely amidst 
 the most exquisite torments, when they might come out of them, 
 even by a mental reservation, or a hypocrisy which is not without the 
 possibility of being followed by repentance and forgiveness, has some- 
 thing in it so far beyond the force and natural strength of mortals, 
 that one cannot but think there was some miraculous power to 
 support the sufferer." f 
 
 " The superstitions," Milner observes, " which afterwards broke 
 out with so much strength, and, like a dense fog, so long obscured 
 the light of the church, appear not to have tarnished the glory of 
 the Gallic martyrs. The case of Alcibiades, and the wholesome check 
 which the providence of God put to his well-meant endeavours and 
 austerities, demonstrate that excesses of this nature had not as yet 
 gained any remarkable ascendancy in the church. And the descrip- 
 tion of the humility and charity of the martyrs shows a spirit much 
 superior to that which we shall have occasion, with regret, to notice 
 in some succeeding annals of martyrdom. In a word, the power 
 of divine grace was little less than apostolical in the church at Lyons. 
 The only disagreeable circumstance in the whole narrative is the too 
 florid and tumid style peculiar to the Asiatic Greeks, and which 
 Cicero, in his rhetorical works, so finely contrasts with the Attic 
 neatness and purity. In a translation it seems scarce possible to do 
 justice ^to thoughts extremely evangelical and spiritual, clothed ori- 
 ginally in so tawdry a garb. Yet under this great disadvantage a 
 discerning eye will see much of the unction of real godliness. At 
 first sight we are struck with the difference between primitive scrip- 
 tural Christianity, and that affectation of rational divinity which 
 has so remarkably gained the ascendant in Christendom in our times. 
 
 Lardner'u Works, vol. vii., p. 174. 8vo. edit. London, 1831. 
 t Addison's Kvidences of the Christian Religion, sect. vii. 
 
 3 H 2
 
 420 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 In the account we have read, the good influence of the Holy Spirit on 
 the one hand, and the evil influence of Satan on the other, are 
 brought forward everywhere to our view. In our times both are con- 
 cealed, or almost annihilated, and nothing appears but what is merely 
 human. Which of the two methods is most agreeable to the Scrip- 
 ture- must be obvious to every serious and honest inquirer. Christ's 
 kingdom, in the narrative before us, appears, indeed, spiritual and 
 divine ; Christian faith, hope, and charity, do their work under the 
 direction of his Spirit ; Christians are humble, meek, heavenly- 
 minded, patient, sustained continually with aid invisible, and you see 
 Satan actively, but unsuccessfully, engaged against them. In modern 
 Christian religion what a different taste and spirit ! everything is of 
 this world ! Policy, ambition, the display and parade of learning and 
 argument, the belief of Satanic influence ridiculed as weak super- 
 stition, and natural reason and self-sufficiency triumphing without 
 measure, leave no room for the exhibition of the work of God, and 
 the power of the Holy Ghost." * 
 
 It was during the period of the persecution in Lyons that Irenseus, 
 a Presbyter of the church in that city, is first introduced to our 
 notice. He had weathered the storm. He visited Rome, and found 
 the Christian community in a state of suffering little inferior to that 
 which he had recently witnessed at Gaul ; and, indeed, if the Empe- 
 ror acted upon the orders which he sent to his representative in 
 France, there must have been several martyrdoms at Rome in the 
 course of the same year. When Irenseus returned to Lyons, he 
 would find the church without its spiritual head. Pothinus had been 
 martyred ; and the work of destruction had been so extensive, that 
 some time would be required before the church could be restored to 
 a state of tranquillity. Ireneeus was appointed to succeed Pothinus ; 
 and if his other qualifications were equal to his learning, there could 
 not have been a fitter person to preside over the church. But 
 he was not destitute of trial. Persecution still lingered in the 
 precincts of this hallowed spot. Among other martyrs who suf- 
 fered, were Epipodius, a native of Lyons, and Alexander, who 
 was either born in Greece, or descended from Grecian parents. 
 They were brought up together, and had contracted a friend- 
 ship for each other in their infancy, which increased with their 
 years, and was cemented and improved by their union in the 
 faith of Christ. They were in the flower of youth when the 
 persecution began to rage at Lyons ; and having witnessed the 
 fury of the Heathens discharging itself on Pothinus, and his 
 flock, they left the town privately, and retired to a neighbouring 
 village, where they were concealed by a Christian widow, whose 
 fidelity, and the comparative obscurity of the place, protected 
 them for some time from harm. The malice of the persecutors was, 
 however, indefatigable. They were discovered, and without any 
 
 * Milner's Hist, of the Church of Christ, vol. i., cent, ii., chap, vi., p. 262, 8vo. 
 edit. York, 1794.
 
 ALEXANDER AND EPIPODIUS. 421 
 
 charge or examination were committed to prison, in order to await 
 the doom which was preparing for them. 
 
 After three days had elapsed, they were brought bound before the 
 Governor, and examined in the presence of a " great cloud " of 
 idolaters, who, hearing them confess Christ, expressed their indigna- 
 tion in a loud and tumultuous manner. The Judge, who could not 
 restrain his wrath, asked, what signified all the former executions, 
 if there were allowed to remain those who still dared to confess 
 Christ. Being resolved to exert all his ingenuity, in order to corrupt 
 their integrity, he forbade them having any intercourse with each 
 other, sent Alexander back to prison, and retained Epipodius, who 
 was the youngest, in his own mansion, thinking that with him he 
 might easily prevail. He manifested great kindness and concern at 
 his condition. " Why," said he, " should you ruin yourself by your 
 obstinacy ? " and, as if to anticipate the answer of the youthful con- 
 fessor, without waiting for a reply, proceeded to observe, that the 
 Heathen deities were worshipped by the whole world, and also by the 
 Princes who were the governors of it. " We," said he, " honour 
 our gods with feasting and mirth, while you adore a man who was 
 crucified, whose services are opposed to such engaging entertain- 
 ments ; who will not even allow his votaries the enjoyments and plea- 
 sures of life ; and has declared against mirth, and all the pleasures of 
 our senses, enjoins fasting, and recommends the barren virtue 
 of chastity. What can you hope or expect from him, who could not 
 secure himself from the insults and persecutions of the most con- 
 temptible of people ? Consider this seriously, and leave this useless 
 austerity, and enjoy the satisfaction of this world in a manner suitable 
 to your age." 
 
 This deceptive reasoning was lost upon Epipodius, who replied, 
 " The pretended compassion which you manifest does not affect me. 
 A heart full of faith, and love to Christ, can never be moved by such 
 discourse ; what you esteem a tenderness to me, I deem cruelty, and 
 what you recommend as an agreeable life, to me appears the way to 
 certain and eternal death. You know not that Jesus Christ, after 
 he had suffered, as you observe, arose from the dead, and prepared 
 a life of immortality for all such as serve him truly. Man is most 
 certainly composed of two substances, soul and body : our religion 
 directs us to reduce the body under subjection, and to maintain the 
 superiority of the soul : the feasts with which you honour your gods, 
 may indeed afford some sensual gratification, some small satisfaction 
 to the body ; but destroy and murder the soul. How, then, can 
 you call that life, which totally destroys the best part of a man, of 
 which we take the greatest care ? And when you have had your fill 
 of pleasures, as you call them, and indulged your appetites with the 
 most licentious freedom, the delightful scene ends in a miserable and 
 comfortless death ; whereas, though we suffer by your hands, our 
 pains are succeeded by substantial and eternal happiness." This 
 address of the youth being so full of reason and piety, and at the 
 same time displaying so much courage and resolution, the angry Judge
 
 422 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 ordered his mouth to be stopped with blows. This was speedily 
 effected. Nevertheless, he shortly observed, " It is but reasonable 
 that I should resign my soul to Him who created and redeemed me. 
 This will not be dying, but passing to a better life." Here he was 
 again interrupted, and stretched upon the rack, and two executioners 
 were ordered to tear his flesh with iron hooks. The courage and 
 tranquillity with which the holy martyr suffered these torments so 
 enraged the people, that, with loud clamour, they demanded he might 
 be given them to be stoned, or torn to pieces, as their fury should 
 direct : upon which the Governor, fearing an insurrection, ordered 
 him to be removed from the rack, and beheaded ; which was imme- 
 diately done. 
 
 Two days after this execution, Alexander was brought before the 
 same Magistrate, who endeavoured to intimidate him also, by 
 informing him of the number of martyrs he had made from among 
 the Christians, and that he was almost the last of those who bore 
 the hated name. But this, instead of intimidating, strengthened 
 and encouraged Alexander to follow those who had gone before with 
 greater alacrity and vigour. " You are mistaken," said he, " if you 
 think it possible to extinguish the Christian name : our religion 
 is built upon so solid a foundation, that the life of its votaries pre- 
 serves it, and their death propagates it with great success. I own 
 I am a Christian ; and so will I continue to my last moment." The 
 Governor, raging with fury at this undaunted resolution, ordered 
 him to be stretched on the rack, and to be beaten by three execu- 
 tioners. Under this infliction he displayed neither impatience nor 
 pain. Finding the holy youth invincible, the Magistrate commanded 
 him to be crucified ; and on account of the severity and number of 
 the tortures to which he had already been exposed, Alexander soon 
 expired. The bodies of these two youths were forbidden interment ; 
 but, not having been so strictly watched as in former cases, the 
 believers found means to convey them away privily, and to give them 
 decent sepulture. Among those also who sought safety in flight 
 from the massacre at Lyons, Gregory of Tours * mentions Marcel- 
 lus and Valerian, who travelled in different countries to provide 
 for their own safety, and to preach the Gospel. Marcellus went 
 into Basancon, where he was instrumental in bringing many to the 
 obedience of the faith. The persecution following in his wake, he 
 fled to Chalons ; but, being personally known to many of the inhabit- 
 ants, he avoided entering the city. All these precautions were 
 unavailing ; and he fell into the hands of Priscus, the Governor of the 
 province, who was not ignorant of the character or profession of 
 Marcellus, and, having him in his power, he gave directions that he 
 should be tied to some branches of trees, bent for that purpose, and 
 then they should be suddenly loosed, and in their endeavour to 
 recover their natural position his body might be torn asunder. This 
 sanguinary scheme proved abortive. He was afterwards conducted to 
 
 * Greg. Turensis. De Glor. Mart, cap., 54.
 
 MARCELLUS AND VALERIAN. 423 
 
 Chalons, where he was earnestly besought to assist at an idolatrous fes- 
 tival, or, perhaps, to partake of some food which had been offered to 
 an idol ; all which he resolutely refused to do. At length, finding 
 him invincible, he was firmly fixed in the ground up to the middle, 
 aud in this manner he was buried alive. On the third day he 
 expired.* Valerian did not remain long at large. Priscus, being 
 informed that the companion of Marcellus was very indefatigable in 
 his efforts to extend the truth, despatched a messenger to apprehend 
 him. He was immediately subjected to the rack, and torn by iron 
 hooks, accompanied with other unheard-of cruelties ; none of which 
 being able to induce him to alter his adherence to the Saviour, he was 
 beheaded. f 
 
 The Emperor was now declining in years, and in hope of resting 
 from his toils and labours, when news arrived of the Scythians 
 and northern nations taking up arms again, and invading the 
 empire with great appearance of success. This compelled Marcus 
 Aurelius to make speedy preparations to oppose the enemy in person. 
 Before he entered upon this campaign, he married his son Commodus 
 to Crispina, the daughter of Beatius Valens, a man of consular dig- 
 nity : he afterwards went to the temple of Bellona, and performed the 
 ancient ceremony of the javelin. J The Romans, whose attachment to 
 the Emperor daily increased, finding that he was ready to expose him- 
 self in a dangerous war, assembled before his palace, and besought 
 him not to depart till he had given them some precepts for their con- 
 duct, so that, if the gods should take him to themselves, they might, 
 by this assistance, continue in the paths of virtue into which he had 
 
 The Papists are anxious to make it known, that the relics of Marcellns are honoura- 
 bly kept in the great church which bears his name at Chalons, and belongs to a royal 
 monastery which King Gontran founded to his honour. A church was built at Tonrnns, 
 over the tomb of Valerian, before the time of Gregory of Tonrs. Marcellus and Vale- 
 rian are honoured as the Apostles of that country. The great Abbey of Valerian at 
 Tournus is the head of a monastic congregation to which it gives its name. It was a 
 mall monastery when, in 875, Charles the Bald gave it to the Monka of the isle of Nermon- 
 tier, or Ner, or Hero, on the coast of Poiton, who had been expelled by the Normans. 
 They carried with them the relics of Filibert, or Filbert, their founder. This abbey was 
 rebuilt in 1018, from which it took the name of Filbert. In the sixteenth age, the 
 Huguenots plundered this church, and burnt part of the relics of Valerian ; (!) but the 
 principal portion escaped their sacrilegious search. The Abbey of Tournus was con- 
 verted into a college of secular Canons in 1627, only the dignity of Abbot was retained 
 with an extensive jurisdiction, and large revenue. It was enjoyed, in commendam, by 
 Cardinal Fleury. (Alban Butler.) 
 
 t Others are mentioned as having suffered at the close of this reign : Benignns, at 
 Dijon ; Speusippus and many others at Langres ; Androches, Thyrseua, and Felix, at 
 Salieu, near Autuu ; Sympovian and Florella, at Autun ; Severinus, Felician, and 
 Exuperus, at Vienna ; Cecilia, at Sicily ; Thraseas, a Bishop of Phrygia, at Smyrna. 
 Accounts of some of the above are extant, all of which are much corrupted, and merit 
 but little of the confidence of the reader. 
 
 t The Romans were accustomed to pay great respect to Bellona, the goddess of war. 
 She is represented as preparing the chariot of Mars ; and as appearing in battles, armed 
 with a whip to animate the combatants, with dishevelled hair, and a torch in her 
 hand. She was held in the greatest veneration by the Cappadocians, and chiefly at 
 Comana, where she had above three thousand Priests. Her temple at Rome was near the 
 Porta Carmentalis. In it the Senators gave audience to foreign Ambassadors, and to 
 Generals returned from war. At the gate was a small column, called the " Column of 
 war," against which they threw a spear whenever war was declared against an enemy.
 
 424 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 led them by his example. In accordance with the wishes of the peo- 
 ple, it is stated, that he spent three whole days in explaining to them 
 some of the difficulties in morality, and in giving them brief maxims 
 by which they might regulate their actions. Shortly after he marched 
 at the head of his army, with his hopeful son, and gained considerable 
 advantages over the enemy. Few particulars of this last expedition 
 are extant : we learn that he fought many sanguinary battles, where 
 his victories were invariably attributed to his prudence and bravery ; 
 that he was always at the head of his men, and in positions most 
 exposed to danger ; that he erected several strong holds, and thus 
 kept the country in a state of awe ; and was even meditating a third 
 campaign, in which he hoped to complete the \var, when a hand, 
 more powerful than his own, arrested his proceedings : he was seized 
 with a malignant fever at Vienna, which put a period to all his 
 schemes and pursuits. " His purposes were broken off, even the 
 thoughts of his heart." 
 
 Although Marcus Aurelius passed into eternity in the profession of 
 those truths which had long been deeply engraven on his heart, his 
 death was far from being tranquil and easy. The deluge of innocent 
 Christian blood which had been shed with his sanction, and under his 
 auspices, doubtless, added severity to the pangs which embittered his 
 latter moments. His stoical submission to the stern decrees of Pro- 
 vidence made him ready and willing to meet death ; yet the love and 
 care which he ever manifested toward the people, filled his mind with 
 anxiety and fear. He beheld his northern conquests unsettled, his 
 enemies still grasped the sword, and the people were inclined to revolt. 
 The sharpest thorn which rendered uncomfortable his pillow, was the 
 youth and unsteadiness of his son, who was open to temptation of the 
 most licentious and boundless character, with the charm of unrestricted 
 authority within his reach. This was the Emperor's most serious and 
 distressing thought, and led him to say to his friends around him, 
 that he feared the Roman empire would not be large enough to 
 contain the vices of his son. Struggling with these difficulties, and 
 fluctuating between hope and fear as his final hour approached, he 
 requested his principal friends and officers to be gathered around his 
 bed, and taking Commodus by the hand, he thus addressed the com- 
 pany : " You see before your eyes my son and successor, who, having 
 scarcely entered the world, as in a tempestuous ocean, stands in need 
 of the counsel of wise governors to secure him from the violence of 
 youthful passions, which, like furious storms, may drive him into fatal 
 calamities. Therefore, instead of one father, whom he must shortly 
 lose, let him find many in you, to support his youth, and to impart 
 such instructions as wUl be beneficial to him, and the public good. 
 But more particularly make him sensible, that not all the riches and 
 honours of the universe are sufficient to satisfy the luxury and ambi- 
 tion of tyrants ; nor are the strongest guards and armies able to 
 defend them from the hatred and insults of their subjects. Let him 
 be assured, that no cruel and tyrannical Princes ever enjoy long and 
 peaceable reigns, but only those who, by their mildness and clemency,
 
 DEATH OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 425 
 
 gain the hearts of their people. Tell him continually, that it is not 
 they who serve out of constraint, but such as obey voluntarily, who 
 continue faithful in all trials, and are free from either flattery or 
 treachery ; and let him know, that these are the only persons who 
 never fall into disobedience, at least, until they are forced thereto by 
 severe usage. At the same time do not fail to set before him, how 
 exceedingly difficult, and yet how highly necessary, it is for those 
 Princes to set bounds to their passions, that have none to their 
 powers. If you instruct him in these truths, and incessantly cause 
 him to recollect what he has heard, besides the satisfaction of forming 
 a good Prince for yourselves and the whole empire, you will have the 
 comfort of paying to my memory the noblest of all your service, since 
 by that means you will render it immortal." As he was uttering 
 these words, he was seized with faintness, which deprived him of the 
 use of his voice, and on the following day of his life. Happy would 
 it have been for himself, for the Christian community, and for the 
 empire, if such sentiments had formed the rule of his conduct during 
 his eventful reign. But alas ! they did not ! 
 
 During the second campaign of Marcus Aurelius with the Marco- 
 manni we have no reason to believe that the persecution of the Chris- 
 tians entirely ceased in any part of that period. We find also 
 from Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, who wrote his work to Autoly- 
 cus soon after the death of Marcus, that the sufferings of the Chris- 
 tians were not over. In our subsequent chapter we shall also discover 
 that they existed at the commencement of the following reign : every 
 circumstance, therefore, in the history of the deceased Emperor justi- 
 fies the conclusion, that Marcus Aurelius was determinately hostile 
 to the spread of the religion of Christ, and left untried no measures 
 by which he could achieve its complete destruction. Dr. Burton 
 gives reasons why he hesitates to class Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoni- 
 nus Pius among the systematic and resolute persecutors of the 
 church. " The Christians," says he, " suffered in different parts of 
 the empire during all these reigns ; but there were no definite perse- 
 cutions which could be traced to the edicts of the Emperors. Nero 
 and Domitian are always considered to have obtained this disgraceful 
 distinction. Trajan has also been said to have instituted the third 
 persecution, and the fourth has sometimes been ascribed to Hadrian ; 
 but other writers have made Marcus Aurelius the fourth persecutor, 
 so that Antoninus Pius escapes without this obloquy being attached 
 to his name. I have perhaps said enough to show, that we cannot 
 speak of ten persecutions, according to the common notion, nor of 
 any definite number ; but the three Emperors mentioned above were 
 rather favourable to the Christians by their edicts than otherwise. 
 We can hardly say the same of Marcus Aurelius, who called himself 
 a philosophical Emperor, and who was not without amiable qualities, 
 according to the notions of that day. The mention made by him- 
 self, of his having received religious impressions very early from his 
 mother, might give us a favourable idea of both of them. His phi- 
 losophy, which was of the Stoical school, was perhaps one cause of 
 
 VOL. I. 3 I
 
 426 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 his despising the Christians. Apollonius,* whose lectures were 
 attended by the Emperor before and after his accession, was strongly 
 opposed to the new religion. The Emperor mentions another person, 
 named Diognetus, who had taught him to have no faith in incanta- 
 tions, the exorcising of evil spirits, or any pretended wonders of that 
 kind ; and he most probably included the Christians among the 
 numerous impostors of the day. There is reason to believe that the 
 celebrated orator, Fronto, from whom the Emperor had taken lessons 
 in eloquence, published a work which contained calumnies against 
 the Christians ; and we may say, generally, that it was not till the 
 present reign that the philosophers began to attend with any serious- 
 ness to the doctrines of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius was himself 
 a philosopher ; and we may say in his defence, that the increasing 
 demoralization of the people made them more impatient of any restraint 
 in their thirst for Christian blood. The Emperor ought to have 
 restrained them ; but his edicts rather followed, than led, the wishes 
 of his subjects. We have seen that nearly the whole of his reign 
 was a continued series of persecutions ; and he cannot be acquitted 
 of making it more easy for the enemies of the Christians to gratify 
 their malice. He must in many ways have become acquainted with 
 the new doctrines ; but, like his master Apollonius, he was 
 determined not to listen to them ; and his own writings furnish a 
 proof of the prejudice with which he viewed the holy martyrs. 
 Speaking of the soul being ready to quit the body at any time, if 
 required, he says that it ought to be an act of specific deliberation, 
 and not the result of mere obstinacy, as is the case with the Chris- 
 tians. On the whole, we must say, that the condition of the church 
 was much worse at the end of his reign than at the beginning ; 
 and the name of Marcus Aurelius, though conspicuous among phi- 
 losophers, has also an eminent place among the opponents of the 
 Gospel."f 
 
 The brutal Commodus succeeded to the empire when only nineteen 
 years of age, and immediately made a treaty with the different Ger- 
 man nations with whom he had been at war ; and, having accom- 
 plished this in a manner which was far from being satisfactory to the 
 army, he hurried to Rome. The persecution which was raging in 
 several of the provinces when the late Emperor died, continued for 
 Bome time to exist ; and from time to time was revived on account 
 of the personal hostility of the Emperors, not the mature and delibe- 
 
 He lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, who invited him to come from Chalcis to 
 Rome for the purpose of instructing his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius, in philosophy. 
 On his arrival at Rome the Emperor summoned him to the palace, that he might intro- 
 duce his son to him ; but Apollonius answered, that a pupil ought to come to his master, 
 and not the master to his pupil. He is censured for his avarice. From a passage in 
 Lucian we must infer that he came to Rome with a crowd of pupils; and Uemonax, 
 who was then with tlie Emperor, wittily said, " Lo, lo, there comes Apollonius with his 
 Argonauts," alluding to Apollonius, the author of Argonautica. (See Dion Cassius, 
 lib. Ixxi., cap. 35 ; Mar. Antoninus, De Rebus Suis, lib. i., cap. 8 ; Julius Capitolinus ; 
 Antoninus Pius, 10 ; and Lnciani Demonax, 31.) 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., leet. xx.
 
 COMMODUS. 427 
 
 rate policy of a regular and permanent government. The notorious 
 vices and detestable characters of the persecutors tended to vindicate 
 the innocence of Christianity, and enlisted the sympathies of man- 
 kind in its favour, rather than strengthened the general animosity. 
 Some of the rulers were almost as much strangers to the gods, as to 
 the people and Senate of Rome. Many seemed to take a reckless 
 delight in violating the ancient majesty of the Roman religion. 
 Foreign superstitions, almost equally new, and scarcely less offensive 
 to the general sentiment, received the public, the pre-eminent, 
 homage of the Emperor. Commodus, though the Grecian Hercules 
 was at once his model, his type, and his deity, was an ardent votary 
 of the Isiac mysteries ; and while Marcus Aurelius endeavoured to 
 form the beau ideal of a perfect man, in the highest possible personi- 
 fication of human reason, the licentious Commodus trampled upon 
 his precepts, and mocked his efforts, by rushing headlong into the 
 wild barbarities and filthy excesses of savage life. Nevertheless, it ia 
 generally acknowledged that the reign of Commodus was less inju- 
 rious to the interests of the church, than those of his immediate 
 successors. This may appear paradoxical ; but the stubborn fact 
 exists. The Christians suffered more when enlightened and philoso- 
 phical Princes swayed the sceptre, than from an individual whose 
 character and career were a perpetual exhibition of sensuality and 
 cruelty. The government of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius was com- 
 paratively mild ; and so long as their subjects interfered not with 
 the affairs of the state, they did what appeared to be right in their 
 own eyes, and derived amusement and satisfaction from persecuting the 
 church of God. Commodus treated his subjects as they had treated 
 the Christians, and put them to death with as great indifference as 
 others would destroy vermin ; so that while the Romans were daily 
 and hourly expecting the blow to fall upon themselves, they had little 
 leisure, and less inclination, to molest the church. The Emperor, 
 also, was no idolatrous devotee : the four preceding Emperors had 
 professed great attachment to the national faith ; but Commodus did 
 not even keep up the semblance of outward respect to the gods of 
 his country ; the temples were converted by him into scenes of 
 debauchery and bloodshed ; and we may judge of the disgust which 
 was raised by such profanations, when we find the Senate insulting 
 him, after his death, as the enemy of the gods, and the violator of 
 the temples. It was not likely, therefore, that he would regard any 
 representations which might be made to him concerning the alarming 
 increase of Christianity ; and when he proceeded to personate Her- 
 cules, and to exact divine honours, he strengthened the argu- 
 ments of the Christians, who had been long exposing the impieties 
 and absurdities of Heathenism. The state of the church gradually 
 became ameliorated ; and Eusebius confidently speaks of increasing 
 peace * throughout the world, and of many persons of rank embrac- 
 ing Christianity in the city of Rome. 
 
 Euseb.. Ecclei. Hiit., lib. v., cap. 21. 
 3 i 2
 
 428 BOOK IV. CHAP. IV. 
 
 After all, we do not learn that Commodus introduced any relaxa- 
 tion in the laws respecting Christianity, which were frequently 
 employed hy interested or superstitious Magistrates for the oppres- 
 sion of the Christians. The insignificance of the abandoned Empe- 
 ror, little as he can have cared for Christianity, must have been of 
 advantage to the faithful in procuring for them a time of refreshment 
 and repose after their sufferings under Marcus Aurelius. Everything 
 which had a tendency to desecrate, and to bring into contempt, the 
 popular religion before the more intellectual and enlightened part 
 of the community, strengthened the cause of Christianity ; and the 
 more the weaker parts of Paganism, and those most alien to the pre- 
 vailing spirit of the times, were obtruded upon the public view, the 
 more they must have contributed to the advancement of that faith 
 which was rapidly attaining to the full growth of a rival to the estab- 
 lished religion.* An event occurred in the year 183, which operated 
 favourably in reference to the Christian church, though the circum- 
 stances connected therewith were highly disgraceful and wicked. 
 Commodus had been married to Crispina in the year before he set 
 out with his father for the German war ; and this woman, after she 
 became Empress, was convicted of adultery. She was banished to 
 the island of Capreae, and her place was supplied by more than one 
 mistress in the Emperor's court. One of them was Marcia, who had 
 lived before with Quadratus, but not as his wife ; and when Quadra- 
 tus was put to death by Commodus, she married Eclectus, who had 
 been his Chamberlain ; but this did not hinder her from forming the 
 same illicit connexion with the Emperor, which she had before car- 
 ried on with her husband's master. Such a complication of depra- 
 vity becomes still more extraordinary, when we are told that Marcia 
 was a Christian. The evidence seems unquestionable that she had 
 been converted to the Gospel ; but, as too often happens, she allowed 
 her passions to get the better of her principles. The case would be 
 perplexing, if we did not see similar instances, where all the parties 
 profess to be believers ; and if any persons object to the Gospel, 
 that it did not restrain this woman from her licentious conduct, we 
 can only complain of the unfairness which looks for different results 
 in the second century from those which are produced in the nine- 
 teenth. Marcia appears to have so far retained her belief in Christi- 
 anity, that she extended her influence to all the professors of it. She 
 was the favourite mistress of Commodus, and received from him 
 almost all the marks of respect which were given to a wife. This 
 enabled her to show many acts of kindness to the Christians ; and, it 
 is a singular feature in the history of the church, that it was indebted 
 for this first instance of royal favour to the adulterous paramour of 
 an unfeeling and bloodthirsty tyrant.f Thus did "the earth help 
 the woman." 
 
 Accusations against the Christians were not received as before : they 
 
 Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 204. 
 t Burton's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, lect. xx.
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER COMMODU8. 429 
 
 were, notwithstanding, exposed to persecution from any Governor who 
 might individually be hostile to Christianity. Hence Apollonius was 
 martyred. The Proconsul of Asia Minor, Arrius Antoninus, also, 
 commenced a persecution ; but a great multitude of Christians from 
 the town in which the persecution began, flocked to the tribunal in 
 order to deter the officer from this measure by their numbers ; a con- 
 summation they might fairly hope for under a government, where the 
 persecution proceeded from individuals and not from the imperial 
 throne. Irenseus, who wrote during this reign, says, that the Chris- 
 tians frequented the imperial court, and that they were partakers in 
 all the usual advantages of the Roman empire ; that they might go by 
 land or by sea wherever they were inclined;* and yet, this same Ire- 
 nseus also affirms, that the church at all times, from which he does 
 not except those in which he wrote, was constantly sending many 
 martyrs to heaven. f This apparent contradiction is easily solved. 
 " There were about this time at Rome," says John Foxe, " Vincen- 
 tius, Eusebius, Peregrinus, and Potentianus, learned men and instruc- 
 tors of the people, who, following the steps of the Apostles, went 
 about from place to place, where the Gospel was not yet preached, 
 converting the Gentiles to the faith of Christ. These, hearing of the 
 madness of the Emperor and of the people, began to reprove their 
 idolatrous blindness, teaching in villages and towns all that heard 
 them to believe upon the one triune God, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost ; and to come away from such worshipping of devils ; and to 
 give m houour to God alone, who only is to be worshipped ; willing them 
 to repent, and to be baptized, lest they perish with Commodus. With 
 this their preaching, they converted one Julius, a Senator, and others, 
 to the religion of Christ. The Emperor, hearing thereof, caused them 
 to be apprehended by Vitellius, his Captain, and to be required to 
 sacrifice unto Hercules and Jupiter ; which when they stoutly refused, 
 after divers grievous torments and great miracles by them done, at 
 last they were pressed with leaden weights to death. This Peregri- 
 nus had been sent before by Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, into the parts 
 of France, to supply there the room of a Bishop and teacher ; for by 
 reason of the continual and horrible persecutions thereabout touched, 
 those places were left desolate and destitute of Ministers and instruc- 
 tors ; where after he had occupied himself with much fruit among the 
 flock of Christ, and had established the church there, returning home 
 again to Rome, there he finished at last his martyrdom. Now 
 remaineth, likewise, to speak of Julius, who, being a Senator of Rome, 
 and now won by the preaching of these blessed men to the faith of 
 Christ, did often invite them and bring them home to his house ; and 
 being by them more fully instructed in the Christian religion, he 
 believed the Gospel ; and, sending for one Ruffinus, a Priest, was with 
 all his family baptized : he did not (as the common sort was wont to 
 do) keep close and secret his faith, but, incensed with a marvellous 
 and sincere zeal, openly professed the same ; altogether wishing and 
 
 Irenaei Opera, Adv. H acres., lib. iy., cap. 30. f Ibid., lib. Iv., cap. 33.
 
 430 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 praying it to be given to him by God, not only to believe in Christ, 
 but also to hazard his life for him. Which thing the Emperor hear- 
 ing, how that Julius had forsaken his old religion and become a 
 Christian, forthwith sent for him, to come before him ; unto whom he 
 spake on this wise : ' Julius, what madness hath possessed thee, 
 that thus thou dost fall from the old and common religion of thy 
 forefathers, who acknowledged and worshipped Jupiter and Hercules 
 as their gods, and now dost embrace this new and fond religion of the 
 Christians?' At which time Julius, having good occasion to show and 
 open his faith, gave straightway account thereof to him, and affirmed 
 that Hercules and Jupiter were false gods ; and how the worshippers 
 of them would perish with eternal damnation and punishments. The 
 Emperor, hearing how that he condemned and despised his gods, being 
 then inflamed with a great wrath, (as he was by nature very choleric,) 
 committed him forthwith to Vitellius, the Captain of the guard, 
 a very cruel and fierce man, either to see Julius sacrifice to mighty 
 Hercules, or, refusing the same, to slay him. Vitellius exhorted 
 Julius to obey the Emperor's commandment, and to worship his 
 gods, alleging how that the whole empire of Rome was not only 
 constituted, but also preserved and maintained, by them. This 
 Julius utterly refused to do, at the same time sharply admonish- 
 ing Vitellius to acknowledge the true God, and to obey his command- 
 ments, lest he, with his master, should die some grievous death ; 
 whereat Vitellius being moved, caused Julius with cudgels to be 
 beaten to death."* 
 
 The days of Commodus were numbered. He was destitute of every 
 good quality which could secure for him the esteem and respect of his 
 subjects. His degraded tastes, fostered as they had been by the 
 example and indulgence of his mother, and left unchecked by his 
 father, led him to associate with the lowest of the people. The peo- 
 ple, amidst the sufferings which they endured from his horrible 
 tyranny, instead of being led to impute their disasters to the offended 
 gods, had too obvious a cause in the abuses of government ; and their 
 rage was directed, not against the Christians, but against the tyrant 
 
 ' Foxe'a Actes and Monuments, vol. i., p. 149. 8v. Edit. Seeley. " The Martyr- 
 ologies speak of a Senator named Julius, who was put to death in this reign for refusing 
 to sacrifice ; and Lampridius names Julius Proculus among the many Senators who were 
 murdered by Commodus ; hut whether they were the same person, or whether any 
 Christian of that name was martyred, must remain uncertain. We must say the same 
 of a partial persecution, which Baronius supposes to have taken place in the year 1 90. 
 Commodus is known to have given a splendid exhibition of games in that year, which 
 was the fifteenth anniversary of his assuming the proconsular power ; and he insisted 
 upon divine honours being paid to himself, under the character and in the garb of Her- 
 cules. Many persons were put to death for laughing at this extravagant absurdity, and 
 the Martyrologies apeak of some Christians who shared the same fate. The account 
 is by no means improbable, though it rests on little authority ; and we may add, that 
 the present year was likely to set the populace against the Christians, on account of 
 some severe visitations which befell the city. The whole of Italy was suffering from a 
 pestilence, which, as is often the case, waa followed in Rome by a scarcity of food. 
 Many public buildings were also destroyed by fire ; and if Commodus put the Christiana 
 to death for refusing to worship him aa Hercules, he might easily persuade the people 
 that such victims would avert the anger of the gods." (Dr. E. Burton.)
 
 DEATH OF COMMODUS. 431 
 
 himself and his guilty ministers. Conspiracies and rebellions, also, 
 occupied the general attention during various parts of his reign ; and, 
 from all these circumstances, the Christians were but little molested. 
 He wallowed in all manner of excess and luxury. Instead of being 
 called Commodus, the son of Antoninus, he gave directions that he 
 should be styled Hercules, the son of Jupiter : consequently, he aban- 
 doned the Roman and imperial costume, and clothed himself in a 
 lion's skin, and carried about a large club. In this strange garb he 
 appeared in public, to the derision of many, and indignation of others. 
 It is said, that, in order to imitate Hercules in the destruction of 
 giants and monsters, he collected the sick and maimed of Rome, and 
 directed something similar to the feet of dragons to be affixed to their 
 knees, such as the poets feigned the giants had ; he then armed them 
 with sponges instead of stones to throw at him, and afterwards fell 
 furiously upon them, and slew them with his club.* He commanded 
 many statues of himself to be erected throughout the city, and one 
 in the front of the Senate-house, in the form of an archer with his 
 bow bent, so that his very image might strike terror into the behold- 
 ers. He caused the head of a vast colossus to be taken off, and one 
 to be removed from a statue of himself, which bore no proportion to 
 it in size, to be placed upon it. One day at a public solemnity, sup- 
 posing that he had been derided by the people, he was transported 
 with rage, and gave orders to massacre the multitude who were pre- 
 sent, and to burn the city ; which would have been accomplished, had 
 not the Captain of the guard persuaded him to the contrary. He 
 now became so ungovernable as to forsake his palace, and take up his 
 residence in a fencing-school ; and, becoming weary of the name of 
 Hercules, he assumed that of a celebrated gladiator who was deceased : 
 in a word, his actions had rendered him utterly odious and insupport- 
 able to the state, and contemptible and offensive to the people. At 
 length, on the feast of Janus, he resolved to march out of the fencing- 
 school, habited not as an Emperor, but as a common gladiator, and 
 display his powers before the public. This expedited his end : for, 
 this outrageous determination becoming known to his friends, his 
 paramour Marcia, his General Laetus, and his Chamberlain Eclectus, 
 endeavoured by argument and entreaty to divert him from so mean 
 and dishonourable a purpose. Being exceedingly incensed against 
 them, he commanded them to depart ; and, retiring into his chamber 
 at noon, as was his custom, he wrote the names of the above persons 
 in his tablet, to be put to death that evening. After these followed 
 the names of many of the Senators, whose property was to be confis- 
 cated, and distributed among the gladiators and soldiers, to purchase 
 mirth and licentiousness from the former, defence and security from 
 the latter. Little suspecting that any would have the temerity to 
 enter the apartment, he laid the fated document on the couch, and 
 went into the bath. A little boy whom he passionately loved, inno- 
 cently took up the writing to amuse himself with it, and leaving the 
 
 Dion. Casa. Hist., lib. Ixxii., p. 827.
 
 432 BOOK IV. CHAPTER IV. 
 
 room was met by Marcia, who took it from him, supposing it to be 
 writing of another kind. Becoming, however, acquainted with the 
 deadly contents, she forthwith discovered to Laetus and Eclectus their 
 common danger, who resolved to purchase their own security by the 
 death of the tyrant ; they also concluded upon despatching the mon- 
 ster by poison, which was speedily administered by the hands of 
 Marcia herself. The power of the draught threw Commodus into a 
 heavy slumber ; but awaking soon after, and being seized with a 
 violent vomiting, Marcia and the rest of the conspirators, fearing that 
 the deleterious drug would be rejected, hastily called to their aid 
 Narcissus, a stout young man, to whom they exhibited the writing, 
 pointed to his own name among those who were doomed to die, and 
 promised great rewards if he would immediately despatch the 
 Emperor. Narcissus was by no means loath, and the wretched victim 
 was strangled and slain by his nearest friends. Such was the miser- 
 able end of Commodus, in the thirty-first year of his age, after an 
 impious reign of about thirteen years ; a Prince, as Lampridius says, 
 who lived only for his subjects' mischief, and his own shame ; * and as 
 he most resembled Domitian in his life and conduct, so also in his 
 violent death, which sanguinary tyrants seldom escape. f 
 
 " Commodus," says a contemporary writer, " was the first Emperor that was born 
 in his father's reign, and the second that received the empire as a paternal inheritance. 
 He had been spoiled in his youth by his mother Faustina, a woman of very violent pas- 
 sions and sanguinary temper, who corrupted her son's mind both by precept and 
 example. His debaucheries exceeded those of all his predecessors in extravagance and 
 iniquity : even his own sisters became the victims of his lust ; and one of them, having 
 reproached him, was murdered by his hand. All his sports were cruel : he loved to 
 roam through the streets, wounding and slaying the unsuspicious passengers ; he fre- 
 quently contended with gladiators on the public stage, and delighted to display feats of 
 strength ; for his muscular powers were unrivalled. But he showed no disposition for 
 foreign war ; on the contrary, he concluded a peace with the Quadi and Marcomanni, 
 abandoning the territories that had been conquered by his father. An attempt made to 
 assassinate this monster in the third year of his reign, stimulated his natural cruelty to 
 the most savage excess : his assailant, aiming a blow at him with a dagger, exclaimed, 
 ' The Senate sends thee this ! ' and though the murder was prevented by the prompt 
 interference of the guards, the words sank deep into the Emperor's breast, and thence- 
 forward he showed inveterate suspicion and hatred to the whole body of Senators. 
 Scarcely had he escaped this danger, when he was exposed to one more formidable, 
 arising from the war of the deserters. A common soldier named Materuus, guilty of the 
 unusual crime of abandoning his colours, assembled a band of robbers in Gaul, and, 
 being joined by profligates from every part of the empire, pillaged and laid waste that 
 province. Being reduced to great straits by the exertions of Pescennius Niger, Maternus 
 divided his men into several small bands, and marched privately with them by different 
 ways into Italy, designing to murder Commodus at a public festival, and in the confu- 
 sion seize the empire. The conspirators reached Rome in safety ; but just as the plot 
 was on the point of exploding, they were betrayed by their accomplices, arrested, and 
 put to death. An alarming insurrection of the Roman populace, directed not so much 
 against the Emperor as his Minister Cleander, was produced by the exhortations of an 
 unknown woman. The praetorian horse charged the multitude, but were defeated with 
 loss, as cavalry generally are when acting against a mob in narrow streets. Commo- 
 dus, alarmed by the tumult, sacrificed his Minister, and the fury of the Romans was 
 appeased." (Taylor's Student's Manual.) 
 
 t Echard's Roman History, vol. ii , p. 351. Sixth Edit. 8vo. London, 1719.
 
 433 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Competitors for the Throne Pertinaje Julianus Niger, Albinus, and Severus The 
 Emperor appears favourable to the Christians Who are still persecuted Clement 
 of Alexandria Circumstance calculated to win the Esteem of Severus Pro- 
 culus Evodus Training of young Caraca/la In early Life his Disposition was 
 amiable Christians protected Tcrtuliian Severus angry with the Senate of Rome 
 Discord in the Church Theodotus excommunicated by Victor The Heresy 
 imputed to him Escaped Martyrdom by abjuring the Truth Controversy respect- 
 ing the Paschal Feast Intolerance of Victor Heresies Montanus Praxeas 
 Fidelity of Zephyrinus Evil Tendency of Errors Priscilla- and Maximilla 
 The Wars of Severus Commences a Persecution of the Christians Character of 
 Victor Historical Sketch of the early African Churches Synods of Africa 
 Fierce Nature of an Attack of the Emperor on Christianity Terlullian's spirited 
 Apology for Christianity Sufferers in the Persecution Leonidas Notices of 
 Origen His Character and Predilections Ammonius Saccas His Philosophy 
 Numerous Martyrs, Pupils of Origen Potamitena, Marcella, and Basilides 
 Milner's Remarks upon their History The Corruption and Interpolation of Mur- 
 tyrologies Saturninus Martyrs of Scillita Their Examination and Execution 
 The Carthaginian Martyrs Perpetua, Felicitas, and others Sketch of the History 
 of IrenoEUS His supposed Martyrdom Sufferings of the Lugdunensian Christians 
 Severus more bitterly afflicts the Church Visits Britain, and dies in York 
 State of the Church at the Death of Severus Minutius Felix Tertullian Cor- 
 rupt Practices among the Christians Peter Martyr of Alexandria Means 
 employed to depreciate Christianity Julia Severa Philostralus Apollonius of 
 Tyana His Character Specimen of his Miracles Caracalla and Geta Perse- 
 cution for a Time continued Lenity of the Emperor towards the Church His hor- 
 rid Cruelties, and violent Death Short Reign of Macrinut Heliogabalus succeeds 
 to the Throne His Character Mammaea The Worship of the Sun State of 
 Christianity, and the Paganism of Rome Comparative Tranquillity of the Church 
 The Cause of it Popular Tumults adverse to the Christian Martyrdom of 
 Cecilia, Valerian, and others Ado, the Martyrologist Legendary Tale recorded 
 by Allan Butler Death of Heliogabalus, who is succeeded by Alexander Severus 
 His Character when compared with that of his Predecessor Was kindly affected 
 towards the Christians Mammtea Opinions respecting her Was not a Believer 
 in Christ Eclecticism Alexander's tolerant Disposition Attachment to Gospel 
 Precepts Erection of Buildings for Christian Worship Persecution during the 
 Reign of Alexander, how accounted for Character of Ulpian His Death Con- 
 jectures respecting Callistus Catacombs of Callistus Urban His Martyrdom 
 Agapctus Tragical End of a Persecutor Other Martyrs recorded by Foxe. 
 
 WE need not trace the political storms of the Roman empire which 
 immediately followed the death of Commodus, to ascertain the situa- 
 tion of the church. The year 193 witnessed the accession of three 
 Emperors, besides two pretenders to that dignity. Helvius Pertinax, 
 who had been Prefect of the city of Rome, was killed by the praeto- 
 rian guards before he had held the sceptre three months. Didius 
 Julianas, who purchased the throne by offering to the same soldiers 
 two hundred and fifty pieces of gold each, survived his bargain only 
 two months ; for as soon as his accession was known, three persons 
 declared themselves competitors, Piscennius Niger in Syria, Clodius 
 
 VOL. I. 3 K
 
 434 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 Albinus in Britain, and L. Septimius Sevei'us in Pannonia, which 
 ended in the sovereignty of the last. He was now forty-seven years 
 old, having been born at Leptis in Africa. His education had been 
 literary as well as military ; and, as Dr. Burton observes, " we might 
 view his character with more interest, though with much more abhor- 
 rence, if it could be proved that he was the Governor of the province 
 who tortured the martyrs of Lyons, in the year 177. It is certain 
 that he held that station, but most probably at a later period." * 
 These national convulsions, like all other public calamities, could not 
 be favourable to the Christians. Severus was at one time the pro- 
 tector, and at another, the persecutor, of Christianity ; and the fury 
 of the populace, or the malice of individual Governors, subjected the 
 church to innumerable privations and acts of violence. Clement 
 of Alexandria, who wrote shortly after the death of Commodus, says, 
 " We see daily many martyrs burnt, crucified, and beheaded before 
 our eyes." f Two circumstances appear to have rendered the Empe- 
 ror favourably disposed to the Christians at the commencement of his 
 reign, and of which they did not hesitate to avail themselves. A 
 Christian named Proculus a dependent, probably, upon his favourite 
 freed slave Evodus had been so fortunate as to restore him to health 
 by anointing him with oil, and was received into the imperial family, 
 in which he retained an honourable situation till his death ; J; and it 
 is by no means improbable that, through the same connexion, a 
 Christian nurse and a Christian preceptor formed the disposition 
 of the young Caracalla ; and, till the natural ferocity of his character 
 ripened under the fatal influence of jealous ambition, fraternal hatred, 
 and unbounded power, the gentleness of his manners and the sweet- 
 ness of his temper enchanted and attached his family, his friends, the 
 Senate, and the people of Rome. The populace beheld with satisfac- 
 tion the infant pupil of Christianity turning aside his head, and 
 weeping at the barbarity of the ordinary public spectacles, in which 
 criminals were exposed to wild beasts. The Christian interest at 
 the court repressed the occasional outbreaks of popular animosity ; 
 many individuals of rank had become " obedient to the faith," and 
 enjoyed the favour of the Emperor. Another circumstance which 
 tended, in a considerable degree, to throw a temporary shield of pro- 
 tection around the church, was the fact that the Christians refused, 
 during the conflict of parties, to espouse the cause either of Niger or 
 Albinus, but rendered prompt and cheerful obedience to the ruling 
 Monarch. For this we are indebted to the evidence of Tertullian.j| 
 This, however, does not tell to their credit or discredit ; for when the 
 empire was vacant, the legions in Syria had as good a right to set up 
 an Emperor as those in Pannonia ; but, if Tertullian be correct as to 
 
 Burton's Leot. on Kccles. Hist., lect. xxi., p. 210. 
 
 t Clem. Alex. Opera, torn, i., Stromat., lib. ii., sect, xx., p. 494. Fol. Venet., 
 1757. 
 
 t " Proculum Cbristianum qui Torpacion cognominabatur, Evodea procurator em, qui 
 euin per oleum aliquando curaverat, requisivit, et in palatio suo habuit usque ad mortem 
 ejus." (Tertull. ad Scapulam, sect. 4.) 
 
 .531. Spartian. Antonin. Caracall. 
 
 || Tertulliani Opera, ad Scapulam, sect, ii., Apologet. adv. Gent., sect. xxxv.
 
 HKRESY OF VHEODOTUS. 435 
 
 the circumstance, the Christians were likely to profit by the event, 
 when Severus had killed his rival, and was inquiring into the persona 
 who had supported him. The Jews, indeed, appear to have applied 
 to Niger for a remission of their tribute, which he refused to grant 
 them ; and they could get no better terms from Severus : but there 
 is reason to think that the Heathen had by this time learned to 
 distinguish between the Christians and the Jews ; and if Severus felt 
 any displeasure against the latter, he may for that very reason have 
 favoured the Christians.* The implacable vengeance which the 
 Emperor wreaked on the Senate, for their real or suspected inclina- 
 tion to the party of Albinus, and his remorseless execution of so many 
 of the noblest of the aristocracy, may have placed in a stronger light 
 the happier fortune, and commended the unimpeachable loyalty, 
 of the Christians. 
 
 This patch of sunshine, which occasionally appeared on the surface 
 of the church, was not of long duration : it was soon removed by 
 internal discord. A writer who lived not long after this period men- 
 tions Theodotus as having been excommunicated by Victor, Bishop 
 of Rome, for asserting that Christ was a mere man ; f and Epipha- 
 nius informs us that Theodotus was a native of Byzantium, and that, 
 being brought before the Governor of the city, in the time of some 
 persecution, and examined, together with several others, on the 
 charge of being a Christian, he denied his faith, and so escaped the 
 death which was inflicted upon the rest.J It is probable that this 
 event transpired in his native city, and during some part of the three 
 years' siege which it sustained from the forces of Severus. Tertullian 
 informs us, that when the city was taken, Ceecilius congratulated the 
 Christians ; from which it is inferred, that they had been previously 
 in a state of suffering. It seems most probable that Csecilius had 
 himself been harassing them for not taking arms in favour of Niger. 
 We must suppose, says Dr. Burton, that the inhabitants espoused the 
 same side with the army, or the city would not have held out so 
 long ; and when their cause began to be desperate, it was very likely 
 that they would wreak their vengeance upon the Christians, who 
 refused to take up arms. It was while many of his companions were 
 suffering martyrdom, that Theodotus denied his belief in Christ ; and 
 so far, for a while, he escaped. But when the city was taken, and 
 the Christians were freed from danger by the presence of the victo- 
 rious army, some of them reproached Theodotus for his shameful 
 cowardice. He then went to Rome, and was for some time un- 
 noticed ; but being recognised, and again taunted for his apostacy, he 
 defended himself by saying, that he had not denied God, but man ; 
 evidently meaning to say, that he believed Christ to be a mere man. 
 This impiety was brought to the ears of Victor, who expelled him 
 from the communion of his church. || 
 
 Burton's Led. on Eccles. Hint., lect. xxi. 
 
 t Euseb., Krcles. Hist., lib. v., cap. 28. 
 
 j Epiphan. Hiere.-<., liv. 
 
 TertulUani Opera, ad Scapulam, sect. HI., torn, ii., p. 19. Wirceb., 1781 
 
 || Burton' d Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxi. 
 
 3 K 2
 
 436 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 The defection of Theodotus * was followed by the celebrated con- 
 troversy about the paschal festival, which had continued to divide 
 some part of the Eastern and Western churches ever since the days 
 of Polycarp. The mildness which characterized the proceedings 
 of that Bishop had not been continued, and the dispute was running 
 high at this period. Several meetings of the Clergy had been held, 
 and numerous Councils convened, the result of whose deliberations 
 was, that the churches of Asia Minor adhered to the Jewish method 
 of observing the paschal festival on the fourteenth day of the first 
 month ; whereas all the other churches kept it on the day before the 
 Sunday on which they celebrated our Lord's resurrection. The 
 Asiatic churches defended themselves by the authority of the Apostles 
 John and Philip, and by the more recent examples of Polycarp and 
 other martyrs ; and Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, wrote to Victor 
 and the Roman church in a firm, though charitable, tone, and stated 
 their determination to adhere to the custom of their ancestors. This 
 epistle was received with considerable hauteur by the Bishop of Rome, 
 who immediately endeavoured to induce all the other churches to 
 exclude those of Asia Minor from their communion. In this arbitrary 
 measure he was unsupported. He then, in a manner not to be mis- 
 taken, declared that the church of Rome would not commune with 
 the churches of Asia. In what this communion consisted, we may 
 easily imagine : when a Christian of one city went to another, he 
 would naturally wish to join in the administration of the Lord's sup- 
 per, inasmuch as it was a sign of their holding one common faith ; 
 beside which, they had the custom of sending a portion of the conse- 
 crated elements from one diocess to another, in token of peace ; f 
 and Victor appears to have cut off the Asiatic churches from any 
 communion of this kind. The sequel shows how entirely the church 
 of Rome at this time was destitute of any pre-eminence or authority 
 over other churches ; for they not only refused to follow the example 
 of Rome, but some of them wrote to Victor, impressing upon him the 
 necessity of " unity and godly love," and rebuking him sharply for 
 his manifest want of it . J 
 
 Numerous heresies vexed the church at the close of the second 
 century ; that of Montanus had been gaining ground for several 
 
 " It seems strange to our present notions, that Theodotua was by trade a dresser 
 of leather, and yet a man of considerable learning. Such, however, was the fact. He 
 had studied the Greek philosophy, and was himself an author ; but he and his followers 
 are charged with altering some of the hooks of the Old and New Testament." (Burton.) 
 
 t This custom was suppressed by the Council of Laodicea, A.D. 367, or A.D. 372 
 can. xiv. 
 
 1 Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxi. 
 
 This heresy sprang up about the year 171, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. 
 Montanus was a Phrygian by birth, and is said to have embraced Christianity in the 
 hope of rising to the dignities of the church. He pretended to inspiration, and declared 
 that the Holy Ghost had instructed him in several points which had not been revealed to 
 the Apostles. Priscilla and Maximilla, two enthusiastic women of Phrygia, presently 
 became his disciples, and in a short time he had a great number of followers. The 
 Bishops of Asia, being assembled, condemned his prophecies, and excommunicated 
 those that propagated them. They afterwards wrote an account of these transactions 
 to the Western churches, who likewise condemned the heresy. The Montanists, find- 
 ing themselves exposed to the censure of the whole Christian community, formed a
 
 MONTANUS AND HIS TENETS. 437 
 
 years, and appears to have disturbed the peace of the Christian com- 
 munity, not only in Asia Minor, but in other parts of the world. 
 The heads of the church had been decidedly averse to the vagaries 
 which that enthusiast promulgated ; nevertheless, multitudes of both 
 sexes believed him and his associates to be divinely inspired ; so that 
 while the former were thundering forth anathemas against the heretic, 
 his followers were retorting, by describing their opponents as wholly 
 destitute of the influences of the Holy Spirit. Numerous individuals 
 of distinction engaged in this controversy. Closely allied to this, 
 was the heresy of Praxeas, who is stated to have been first a follower 
 of Montanus, but whom he abjured. He embraced doctrines similar 
 to those of Sabellius on the subject of the Trinity, and denied that 
 the Son and the Holy Ghost were distinct persons, representing 
 them as merely modes or operations of the one Being called God. 
 Praxeas uses the language of a modern Unitarian, and speaks of him- 
 self as the worshipper of one God ; whereas his opponents believed 
 in two or three. Tertullian, with great force, exposed this fallacy ; 
 and probably induced, by his writings, the subsequent Bishop, Zephy- 
 rinus, to condemn his opinions. These various disagreements among 
 the brethren tended greatly to diminish the unity and moral power 
 of the faithful, and to strengthen the hands of their numerous adver- 
 saries, who were eager to embrace every opportunity that offered to 
 weaken, annoy, and persecute the church. 
 
 In the mean while, Severus, who had extricated himself from all 
 danger of a rival to the throne in the East, turned his attention to 
 Gaul, where Albinus, another competitor for the empire, had ensconced 
 himself, and was waiting his arrival. A battle was fought in the 
 neighbourhood of Lyons, about the year 198, and the Emperor was 
 victorious, and his opponent slain. In the congratulations and festi- 
 vities which followed, the Christians doubtless refused to take part, 
 on account of the immoralities and impiety which invariably accom- 
 panied them ; and therefore they were sure to experience the insults 
 and hostility of the Heathen, though we have not much evidence that 
 the Christian church, as a whole, suffered greatly during the first six 
 years of the reign of Severus. In the year 199 the Emperor appears 
 to have set out to make war with the Parthians, and during his 
 absence the Christians are said to have suffered greatly at Rome ; 
 if so, the Emperor must be acquitted from any share therein : but 
 times of trouble were returning. In the ninth year of Severus, Vic-, 
 tor * was succeeded in the bishopric of Rome by Zephyrinus, who 
 
 schism, of which Montanus, in conjunction with Priscilla and Maximilla, was at the 
 head. These sectaries made no alteration in their creed : they only held that the Holy 
 Spirit made Montanus his organ for delivering a more perfect form of discipline than 
 what was delivered by the Apostles. They refused communion to those who had been 
 guilty of notorious crimes, considered it unlawful to fly in times of persecution, and 
 condemned second marriages. 
 
 Victor, Bishop of Rome, is by many said to have suffered martyrdom ; but by what 
 meano, it is not related. That notorious martyr-monger, Alban Butler, hesitates to 
 give this imperious Priest that honour. He says, " Victor died in the year 201, the 
 ninth of Severus, after he had sat ten years. He is styled a martyr by some writers of 
 the fifth age, and in an ancient Pontifical written in 630. Though Severus only pub- 
 lished the edict for his persecution in 202, several Christians had suffered in his reign
 
 438 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 had much less peaceful times to grapple with than his predecessor. 
 Severus returned from his Parthian campaign into Syria in 202, and 
 subsequently to Alexandria ; and, from some cause or other, had 
 been highly offended with the Jews, and threatened to inflict a severe 
 penalty on any person who might embrace their religion ; but what 
 led him to include Christianity in that decree, we know not. We 
 have not heard of any offence which the Christians had committed, 
 and we are aware that the Heathen had been learning gradually to 
 distinguish them from the Jews ; but the persecution seems to have 
 raged so violently when the signal was once given, that, as Dr. 
 Burton suggests, we are to look for no other cause than that the 
 Heathen had become impatient to renew their former attacks, and 
 could no longer bear to see the progress which the Gospel was every 
 where making. 
 
 "The voice of Africa," says a modern historian, "has been for 
 centuries silent amid the Christian communities of the earth ; her 
 candlestick removed, and her light extinguished : but there was a 
 period, and that for centuries, when Northern Africa occupied no 
 subordinate station in ecclesiastical rank ; when from her episcopal 
 thrones and Councils she issued her decrees in all the dignity of con- 
 scious authority, and enforced them with a power which she knew 
 could not be disputed. Twelve centuries of darkness and degradation 
 intervene between that period and the present, and little, save the 
 name of Christian, exists to direct the researches of the historian, or 
 rescue the account which has been transmitted to us of numerous and 
 flourishing churches in that now sterile region from the suspicion 
 of fable or romance. Several parts of Africa, besides Egypt, are 
 referred to in the holy Scriptures. Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, is fre- 
 quently mentioned. Its conversion to God is predicted ; and the 
 prophecy may date its fulfilment from the baptism of the officer 
 under Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, by Philip the Deacon. 
 The Libyans are joined with them in a prophecy of Daniel, and some 
 of the inhabitants of Libya are mentioned as being present at the 
 effusion of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. Here, also, 
 Cyrene is introduced, as neighbouring on Libya. Simon, who was 
 compelled to bear our Lord's cross, was a native of this part of Africa. 
 Natives of Cyrene are also spoken of, Acts xi. 20 ; xiii. 1 . Alexan- 
 dria gave birth to Apollos, 'an eloquent man, and mighty in the 
 Scriptures ;' and in a ship belonging to this renowned city, Paul 
 sailed into Italy. Africa being a province of Rome, it was natural 
 
 before that time, as Tillemont remarks. (Memoires Eccles., torn, iii., p. 112.) Pagi 
 thinks Victor did not die by the sword, because in Martyrologies he is called only a 
 confessor, though his dignity and zeal exposed him to continual persecutions, for which 
 alone he might deserve the title of martyr." (Lives of Saints, July 28th.) " Victor ia 
 named by Jerome the first among ecclesiastical authors who wrote in Latin. He pub- 
 lished on the controversy about the celebration of Easter, and some other books on reli- 
 gious subjects, which were still extant in Jerome's time. As for the two Decretals that 
 are ascribed to him, and the two letters to Desiderins and Paracoda, both Bishops 
 of Vienne, they are generally and with reason rejected. The Church of Rome has 
 placed Victor among her saints ; and truly his attempt, however unsuccessful, to pro- 
 mote the power and extend the jurisdiction of that see, deserved no less a reward." 
 (Bower's History of the Popes, vol. i., p. 39, 4to.)
 
 SUPERSTITION OF SEVERUS. 439 
 
 that the Christian religion should be carried thither ; and accord- 
 ingly we find that it abounded with Christians, though of the 
 manner in which the Gospel was introduced we have no certain 
 account. Eusebius and Jerome allege that Mark the Evangelist was 
 the first founder of a congregation at Alexandria, and he is accord- 
 ingly called the first Bishop * of that see. The Ethiopian eunuch 
 baptized by Philip is said to have preached Christ to his countrymen 
 on his return. The light of the Gospel reached the famous city 
 of Carthage in the latter part of the second century ; and not long 
 after, Numidia embraced the religion of the cross. ") Dupin, the 
 celebrated French historian, after giving an account of the African 
 Councils and their acts, says, The reflections which may be made 
 on the Synods of Africa are these : " First, that there were in Africa 
 a great number of Bishops. Secondly, that the title of Metropolitan, 
 in Africa, was not, as in other places, affixed to the Bishop of the 
 civil metropolis, but to the antiquity of the bishopric. Thirdly, that 
 the Bishop of Carthage had much authority over all in Africa ; that 
 he enjoyed great jurisdictions and prerogatives ; in a word, that he 
 was, as it were, the Exarch or Patriarch of all Africa. Fourthly, 
 that Synods were very often held in Africa ; and they were distin- 
 guished into two sorts, one provincial, the other national or general, 
 which were commonly held at Carthage, where the Bishops deputed 
 from the provinces assembled, under the authority of the Bishop 
 of that city. Fifthly, that they handled matters of discipline, and 
 made such canons as they saw the juncture and state of affairs 
 required. Sixthly, that their discipline, with regard to Clergymen, 
 was very regular and exact. Seventhly, that they endeavoured to 
 maintain the ecclesiastical authority by the assistance of the imperial 
 laws. Lastly, that they made canons very useful to ah 1 Christians." 
 
 Severus, during his campaign in the East, would not fail to see 
 many temples deserted, and to witness a religion different from his 
 own, advancing with rapid strides. Individuals in his train would 
 not hesitate to prejudice his mind upon this point, and represent the 
 rising sect as detrimental to the national peace and welfare. In addi- 
 tion to this, Severus, while in the East, had surveyed with wondering 
 interest, the monuments of Egyptian glory, and also of Egyptian 
 superstition. His dark and relentless mind had been especially 
 impressed with the religion of Serapis. In either character, as the 
 great Pantheistic deity which absorbed the attributes and functions 
 of all the more ancient gods of Egypt ; or, in his more limited cha- 
 racter, as the Pluto of their mythology, the lord of the realm 
 of departed spirits ; Serapis was likely to captivate the imagination 
 of the Emperor, and to suit those gloomier moods in which it 
 delighted, in brooding over the secrets of futurity ; and having real- 
 
 * Eusebins names the Bishops in regular succession from Mark ; as, Annianus, who 
 succeeded the Apostle and Evangelist in the eighth year of the reign of Nero ; Avilius, 
 who succeeded Aunianus in the fourth year of Domitian ; after him Cerdon, in the first 
 year of Trajan ; then Primus, in the twelfth of Trajan ; Marcus, Celadin, Agrippinua, 
 Julian, Clement, &c. 
 
 t Missions in Western Africa, &c. By the Rev. Samuel Abraham Walker, M.A. 
 dvo. pp. 82, et teq. Dublin, 1845.
 
 440 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 ized the proud prognostics of greatness which his youth had watched 
 with hope, now began to dwell on the darker omens of decline and 
 dissolution.* Be that as it may, Severus, although formerly favour- 
 able to the Christians, many of whom he had actually saved from 
 persecution, issued an edict against them, which, in its operation, 
 was more severe than that of any former Emperor : its aim was to 
 destroy Christianity root and branch, and to prevent the seed being 
 sown ; he also sent an order to Rome, by which the persons who 
 attended illegal assemblies in that city were to be brought before the 
 Prefect. The spirit of persecution was now revived in most parts 
 of the world, and in some places it raged fiercely ; so that the 
 controversy with the church was carried on by means of torture and 
 fire. Paganism did really triumph. 
 
 "During this persecution, Tertullian," says the historian Milman, 
 " stood forth as the apologist of Christianity ; and the tone of his 
 Apology is characteristic not only of the individual, but of his native 
 country, while it is no less illustrative of the altered position of Chris- 
 tianity. The address of Tertullian to Scapula, the Prefect of Africa, 
 is no longer in the tone of tranquil expostulation against the bar- 
 barity of persecuting blameless and unoffending men, still less that 
 of humble supplication. Every sentence breathes scorn, defiance, 
 menace. It heaps contempt upon the gods of Paganism, it avows 
 the determination of the Christians to expel the demons from the 
 respect and adoration of mankind. It condescends not to exculpate 
 the Christians from being the cause of the calamities which had 
 recently laid waste the province ; the torrent-rains which had swept 
 away the harvests ; the fires which had heaped with ruin the streets 
 of Carthage ; the sun which had been preternaturally eclipsed, when 
 at its meridian, during an assembly of the province at Utica. All 
 these portentous signs are unequivocally ascribed to the vengeance 
 of the Christians' God visiting the guilt of obstinate idolatry. The 
 persecutors of the Christians are warned by the awful examples of 
 Roman dignitaries who had been stricken blind, and eaten with 
 worms, as the chastisement of Heaven for their injustice and cruelty 
 to the worshippers of Christ. Scapula himself is sternly admonished 
 to take warning by their fate ; while the orator, by no means defi- 
 cient in dexterous address, at the same time reminds him of the 
 humane policy of others : ' Your cruelty will be our glory. Thou- 
 sands of both sexes, and of every rank, will eagerly crowd to martyr- 
 dom, exhaust your fires, and weary your swords. Carthage must be 
 decimated ; the principal persons in the city, even, perhaps, your 
 own most intimate friends and kindred, must be sacrificed. Vainly 
 will you war against God. Magistrates are but men, and will suffer 
 the common lot of mortality ; but Christianity will endure as long as 
 the Roman empire, and the duration of the empire will be coeval with 
 that of the world.' " f 
 
 We must now allude to the sufferers in this persecution, which 
 had begun to rage fiercely. Baronius, the annalist, supposes that 
 
 Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii., 8vo. edit., p. 208. 
 t Idem., p. 215.
 
 PERSECUTION IN THE EAST. 441 
 
 one cause of the Emperor travelling to Egypt was, the protection 
 which Philip, the Governor of that country, had lately afforded the 
 Christians.* There is much that is fabulous in the accounts which 
 are extant of this officer. The authority for his conversion to the 
 Gospel, and his subsequent martyrdom, is open to much suspicion ; 
 and the letter which Severus is said to have written to him, com- 
 manding him either to adhere to the old religion, or give up his 
 situation, can hardly be admitted as an authentic document. If the 
 story be founded upon facts, Philip may have been superseded as 
 Governor of Egypt by Laetus, who was certainly in office when the 
 persecution broke out, and who showed himself very willing to second 
 the cruelty of his master. Demetrius was Bishop of Alexandria, and 
 continued to hold that office for several years more. We are not told 
 that he was a personal sufferer in the present season of trial ; but he 
 had the pain of seeing great numbers of his flock cut off by martyr- 
 dom. f From various parts of Egypt the Christians were brought to 
 Alexandria to suffer ; among whom was Leonidas. 
 
 Leonidas was the father of Origen, a Christian of eminent piety, 
 and sedulously devoted to the religious instruction of his children : 
 he was thrown into prison, and shortly beheaded. As the name 
 of Origen stands so pre-eminent among Christian writers, we may 
 briefly notice his early history. He was seventeen years old when 
 his father received the martyr's crown, having been born in the year 
 184 or 185. The astonishing powers of his mind developed them- 
 selves at a youthful age ; and Leonidas is said to have secretly 
 blessed God for giving him such a child, even while he pretended to 
 chide him for going beyond his years in the study of the Scriptures. 
 Origen was extremely studious, and of a melancholy turn of mind ; 
 so that he prematurely turned his attention to theology, into the depths 
 of which he penetrated with untiring industry. After having been 
 some years a pupil of Clement of Alexandria, he placed himself under 
 Ammonius Saccas,| a Teacher of eminence in the Platonic school, 
 
 " The persons who managed this persecution under the Emperor were chiefly 
 Hilarion, Vigellius, Claudius, Herminian, (Governor of Cappadocia,) Capella, Vespro- 
 nius, also Demetrius mentioned by Cyprian, and Aquila, Judge of Alexandria, of whom 
 Ensebius maketh relation." To this list must also be added Scapula, Proconsul of 
 Africa. " The places where the force of this persecution most raged, were Africa, 
 Alexandria, Cappadocia, and Carthage. The number of them that suffered in this 
 persecution, by the report of ecclesiastical history, was innumerable." (Foxe.) 
 
 t Burtou's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxii. 
 
 J Ammonius was surnamed Saccas from the circumstance of his being obliged, in the 
 early period of his life, to gain his livelihood at Alexandria by carrying sacks, and acting 
 a* a porter in the market. He lived at Alexandria about the commencement of the second, 
 and the beginning of the third, century of our era, and died there, A.D. 421. He was the 
 eon of Christian parents, but afterwards embraced the heathen religion, to which he 
 remained faithful to the end of life. His low occupations, during the early part of his 
 career, did not prevent his aspiring to higher things, and he seems to have studied 
 philosophy with real enthusiasm. The discord, and the sectarian spirit of the philoso- 
 phers of his time, who not only indulged in the most vehement polemics against one 
 another, but also endeavoured to lower in public estimation the great founders of the 
 philosophical schools, to which they were opposed, deterred many from joining their 
 several sects. The new system which he built up, and which was an attempt to unite 
 within itself all the great elements of heathen philosophy, was intended to serve as a 
 bulwark against the growing strength of Christianity ; and this system, which main- 
 tained itself for several centuries, was indeed the last great phenomenon of heathen 
 VOL. I. 3 L
 
 442 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 under whom he became master of the philosophy of the Platonics, 
 Pythagoreans, and Stoics ; and acquired the allegorical and mystical 
 style of interpretation which he afterwards employed in his com- 
 mentaries on the Scriptures. In the attack which was now making 
 upon the peace and prosperity of the church, Severus caused to be 
 brought to Alexandria, from all parts of Egypt, the most celebrated 
 of the Christian Divines, that he might satiate his fiendish hatred 
 of the holy Jesus by feasting his eyes on the dying agonies of his 
 most devoted saints. The perverted zeal of young Origen now dis- 
 played itself in a manner common among Christians in those times. 
 He panted for the honour of martyrdom, purposely exposing himself 
 to danger, and determined to join his father in prison, that he might 
 die with him ; but his mother concealed his clothes, and thus con- 
 fined him to the house. He now wrote a letter to his father, one 
 line of which only has come down to us, "Take heed, father, that 
 your care for us do not make you change your resolution." On 
 the death of the father the paternal property was all confiscated, and 
 the family was reduced to the greatest distress ; but God raised up a 
 friend for Origen in the person of a rich lady, who gave him an 
 asylum in her house, where he with diligence continued to prosecute 
 his studies. He was scarcely eighteen when he opened a school to 
 support himself and his mother ; and his success was most encou- 
 raging. Still the persecution raged, and young Origen was unceas- 
 ing in his attendance on the martyrs in prison, and at the place of 
 execution ; * his own escape was almost miraculous, for he had 
 become a celebrated character, multitudes crowding to hear his 
 expositions of the divine word ; f and as Demetrius, the Bishop, had 
 committed the school of Alexandria to him, he was placed in a 
 position of dangerous pre-eminence. Finding the occupation of a 
 grammarian injurious to his theological studies, he relinquished that 
 employment, and sold his library containing the works of the heathen 
 philosophers, poets, &c., for which the buyer engaged to give him 
 four oboli a day ; and on this he subsisted for several years, sleeping 
 
 intellect and philosophy. Ammonius Saccas did not write anything ; hut as a Teacher 
 he exercised an extraordinary influence, and among numerous disciples who flocked 
 around him, we need only mention such names as Longiiras, Plotinus, Porphyry, 
 Herennius, and Origen. 
 
 * " So zealous was he in the cause of Christ, and of Christ's martyrs, that he, nothing 
 fearing his own peril, would assist and exhort them, going to their death, and kiss 
 them ; insomuch that he was oft in jeopardy to he atoned by the multitude ; and some- 
 times by the provision of Christian men he had his house guarded with soldiers, for 
 the safety of those who daily resorted to hear his readings. And many times he was 
 compelled to shift places and houses, for such as laid wait for him in all places ; hut 
 great was the providence of God to preserve him in the midst of all this tempest of 
 Severus." (Foxe; see also Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. vi. cap. 3.) 
 
 t " With all Origen's piety and zeal, nothing could he worse than his mode of inter- 
 preting Scripture. Forsaking the plain and obvious sense, he discovered a mystic 
 meaning under the most literal statement of facts, and supposed that the sacred history 
 was only a parabolic mode of conveying to the initiated divine truths too deep for com- 
 mon understandings. After this manner the whole word of God was turned into fable, 
 and, as a necessary consequence, rendered perfectly useless as a revelation from above ; 
 speaking, as it was thus made to do, a language foreign to the sense meant to be con- 
 veyed." (Walker's Missions in Western Africa.) For an illustration of Origen's mode 
 of interpretation we refer to the Succession of Sacred Literature, by Dr. Adam Clarke, 
 vol. i., p. 167, ft seq.
 
 EXTRAVAGANCIES OF OR1GEN. 443 
 
 on the floor, walking barefooted, aud going almost naked. Ongeii's 
 inind was a chaos of extravagant notions. His conduct was an 
 equally outrageous comment on the loveliness, peace, and socia- 
 bility of the Gospel scheme. Self-infliction of the severest kind 
 was practised by him, as agreeable to the tenderest of Fathers ; and 
 the fruits of the Spirit, instead of being love, joy, peace, appeared 
 to him to be exhibited in every endeavour to banish them from his 
 own breast, and extirpate each tendril on which they might have 
 groAvn. With such teaching and procedure as this, the repose and 
 even existence of the African church were jeoparded ; heresies multi- 
 plied, appeals to Scripture became every day more uncertain and 
 unsatisfactory ; and, as the professedly Christian work soon ceased to 
 be of God, it quickly came to nothing. " How much better," says 
 the historian Milner, " had it been for him to have continued a scho- 
 lar for some time, before his pride was feasted by being appointed a 
 teacher ! But the lively flow of genius seems to have been mis- 
 taken for great growth in Christian knowledge and piety." That 
 Origen was a very voluminous writer, not only his Hexapla and 
 Tetrapla prove, but also the twenty-five volumes which, Eusebius 
 says,* he wrote upon the Gospel of Matthew. But very small tracts 
 were called volumes formerly. This Christian and scholar, after 
 having suffered much for the testimony of Christ, died a natural 
 death at Tyre, A.D. 254, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.f 
 
 But to return. In the year 203 we find a new Governor of Egypt 
 in the room of Lsetus : his name was Aquila, who continued 
 the persecution as before ; and as Severus was now returned to 
 Rome, the enemies of Christianity, doubtless, pursued their unhal- 
 lowed enterprise, and prosecuted their sanguinary crusade, against the 
 faithful with still greater vigour and zeal. Origen was attracting a 
 numerous audience ; among whom we find the name of Heraclas, 
 who succeeded Demetrius in his see, and whose brother, Plutarchus, 
 suffered martyrdom. Both these eminent men were converted to the 
 faith through the instrumentality of Origen ; the latter of whom pre- 
 pared himself for suffering by a holy and devoted life, and being a per- 
 son of distinction was soon apprehended. He was visited and encou- 
 raged in the prison by his teacher, who also accompanied him to the 
 place of execution, where he himself narrowly escaped death from the 
 resentment of the pagan friends of Plutarch, who charged him with 
 being the cause of his abandonment of Heathenism. Serenus, a bro- 
 ther, was another pupil of Origen, who was also burnt at the stake ; 
 Heraclides, Heron, and another of the name of Serenus, suffered at 
 this period in rapid succession by means of decapitation. Herais, 
 also, a damsel, and a catechumen in the same school, was committed 
 to the flames, and, according to the significant expression of 
 
 Enseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 36. 
 
 t For a more full account of this extraordinary man, tbe reader is referred to Enseb., 
 Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 2, et teg. ; Clarke's Succession of sacred Literature, vol. i., 
 p. 1GO, et seq. ; Burton's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, lect. xxi. ; Milner's His- 
 tory of the Church of Christ, vol. i., p. 321, et seq. 8vo. edit. York, 1794; 
 Walker's Missions in Western Africa, p. 95, et seq. ; Cave's Lives of the Fathers, vol. 
 1., p. 321 361. 8vo. edit. 
 
 3 L 2
 
 444 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 Origen, " was baptized with fire." He had several ladies of distinc- 
 tion among his disciples ; and many " of the learned, and even 
 philosophers of no mean account, were prevailed upon to adopt his 
 doctrine."* 
 
 The martyrdom of Potamisena is probably ranked among the most 
 interesting which occurred during the reign of Severus. She was by 
 condition a slave, but had the privilege to be educated in the faith 
 by a pious mother, whose name was Marcella. Being young, and 
 possessing considerable personal attractions, her heathen master con- 
 templated her dishonour ; but finding her resolution and virtue 
 invincible, and all his artifices, threats, and promises in vain, he deli- 
 vered her to the Prefect Aquila, intreating him not to hurt her, if 
 she could be induced to comply with his desire ; and on that condi- 
 tion, the proprietor of the slave promised the Prefect a considerable 
 sum of money. Many things are related of her fortitude in suffer- 
 ing for the faith of Christ. It is said that Aquila, after having 
 applied the severest tortures to her on every part of her body, and 
 not being able to effect his purpose, at last threatened that he would 
 give her person to be abused by gladiators, and actually caused a 
 caldron of boiling pitch to be prepared, and then said to her, " Obey 
 your master, or in this way you shall suffer." She replied, " I con- 
 jure you by the life of the Emperor, which you profess to respect, 
 that you do not suffer me to be dishonoured : command me, rather, 
 to be let down by degrees into the caldron with my clothes on, that 
 you may see the patience with which Jesus Christ, of whom you are 
 ignorant, endues those who trust in him." The Prefect granted this 
 request, and committed her to Basilides, a Captain of the army, to 
 see the execution done. But when the multitude attempted to 
 assault and insult her with abusive language, he endeavoured to sup- 
 press them, and manifested great compassion and kindness towards 
 her. Potamisena, to requite his favours, encouraged him, saying, 
 " that she would pray the Lord to have mercy upon him." When 
 she had spoken this, she went to her martyrdom, and nobly sus- 
 tained the issue. The executioners placed her feet in the boiling 
 pitch, and then gradually lowered her in it, even to the very top of 
 her head, and thus she expired.f Her mother, Marcella, was burnt 
 at the same time. " Not long after," says Eusebius, " Basilides, 
 being urged to swear on a certain occasion by his fellow-soldiers, 
 declared that it was not lawful for him to swear at all, for he was a 
 Christian, and this he publicly professed. At first, indeed, they 
 thought that he was only jesting ; but as he constantly persevered 
 in the assertion, he was conducted to the Judge ; before whom, con- 
 fessing his determination, he was committed to prison. When some 
 of the brethren came to see him, and inquired the cause of this sud- 
 den and singular resolve, he is said to have declared, that Potamisena, 
 indeed, for the three days after her martyrdom, had appeared to him, 
 placed a crown upon his head, and said she had entreated the Lord 
 for him, and had obtained her request ; adding, moreover, that it 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi. cap. 3. 
 
 t Idem, cap. 5 ; Foxe'a Acts and Monuments, vol. i., p. 156. Seeley'a edit.
 
 MARTYRS OF SCILL1TA. 445 
 
 should not be long before he should be received up. On this the 
 brethren gave him the seal * in the Lord ; and after bearing a dis- 
 tinguished testimony to the truth, he was beheaded, f 
 
 The reader will probably be led to imagine this account not only 
 extraordinary, but also improbable ; " yet," remarks a pious his- 
 torian, " it would be rash to reject it altogether. Eusebius lived not 
 long after the time of Origen ; he had made accurate inquiries after him 
 and his followers in Alexandria, and observes, that the fame of Pota- 
 miaena was in his time very great in that province. Her martyrdom 
 and that of the soldier seem sufficiently authentic. Her promise to 
 pray for him after her departure, only shows the gradual prevalence 
 of fanatical philosophy, will-worship, and the like ; and if the reader 
 be not prepared by an adequate degree of candour to admit the truth 
 of Christian narratives, and the reality of Christian grace, though 
 pitiably stained, in many instances, with such superstition, he will 
 find little satisfaction in the evidences of Christian piety for many 
 ages. But we are slaves to habit : we make in our times great allow- 
 ance for the love of the world in Christians, and are not so easily 
 disposed to make allowances for superstition. Yet many wrong sen- 
 timents and views may be found where the heart is devoted in faith 
 and love to God and his Christ. The only difficulty remaining is, 
 how we can apprehend that God should sanctify superstition by send- 
 ing Potamiaena to appear to Basilides ? I apprehend that God being 
 at work with his soul, the idea of the woman would naturally make 
 a strong impression upon his mind, and he might dream what he 
 mentioned. On the whole, the story seems tinged with the super- 
 stition of the times, and yet it is too remarkable in Christian annals 
 to deserve to be forgotten." J 
 
 In other parts of the Roman empire, the effects of the persecution 
 of Severus were equally disastrous. If the ancient Martyrologies had 
 come down to us uncorrupted, they would have afforded us valuable 
 materials in illustrating the genius of real Christianity, and its influ- 
 ence on its primitive professors ; but we regret that the frauds, inter- 
 polations, and impositions with which they abound, are innumerable ; 
 and the Papal and monastic institutions in after-ages induced many 
 for the sake of filthy lucre, or of deceiving the multitude by exhibit- 
 ing the power of church influence, actually to vitiate the accounts 
 which pious and zealous men had recorded of the sufferings of the 
 witnesses for the truth, and endeavoured even to destroy the integrity 
 of the writings of the Fathers in general. The difficulty of procur- 
 ing materials for a well-connected history of the church is thereby 
 considerably increased : we are led to imagine, that this is not the 
 case in respect of the martyrs of Scyllita, a town in the province 
 of Carthage, under Vigellius Saturninus the Proconsul. Dr. Bur- 
 
 By the term " seal," Eusebius doubtless means baptism, which in the primitive 
 chnrch was thus figuratively spoken of. 
 
 t Euselj., Kcclerf. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 0. 
 
 1 Miluer'a History of the Church of Christ, vol. i., p. 326. 
 
 v SittnrnranB was probably in command at the time that Severus visited Africa in 
 202. ThH Kmperor was himself of African extraction; and we know that, towards the 
 end of his reign, he conferred many favours upon that country. Indulgences shown to
 
 446 HOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 ton says, the narrative " is among the few authentic records which 
 have come down to us ; " and Milner does not scruple to observe, 
 that it is " simple, credible throughout, and worthy of the purest 
 ages of the Gospel." 
 
 Twelve persons were brought before Saturninus, the Proconsul 
 of Carthage, the chief of whom were Speratus, Narzal, and Cittin ; 
 and three women, Donata, Secunda, and Vestina. When they came 
 into the presence of the Judge, he said to them all, "You may 
 expect the Emperor's, our master's, pardon, if you will only return 
 in good earnest to our gods." Speratus answered, " We have done 
 no evil to any man ; we have spoken no evil against any man ; nay, 
 for all the wrongs which you have inflicted on us, we have only 
 thanked you, in which we obey our Emperor, who prescribed this 
 rule of behaviour." Saturninus answered, " We have also a religion 
 that is simple : we swear by the genius of the Emperors, and we offer 
 up vows for their health, which you ought also to do." Speratus 
 said, " If you will hear me peaceably, I will declare unto you the 
 mystery of Christian simplicity." The Proconsul replied, " Shall I 
 hear you speak ill of our ceremonies ? rather swear all of you by the 
 genius of the Emperor our master, that you may enjoy the pleasure 
 of life." Speratus again replied, "I know not the genius of the 
 Emperor. I serve God who is in heaven, whom no man hath seen 
 nor can see. I have never been guilty of any crime punishable by 
 the public laws ; if I buy anything, I pay the duties to the col- 
 lectors ; I acknowledge my God and Saviour to be the Emperor of 
 all nations ; I have made no complaints against any person, and 
 therefore they ought to make none against me." The Proconsul, 
 turning to the rest, said, "Do not you imitate the folly of this 
 wicked wretch ; but rather fear our Prince, and obey his commands." 
 Cittin replied, " We only fear the Lord our God, who is in heaven." 
 The Proconsul, upon this, ordered the Christians to be reconducted 
 to prison till the next day, and placed in fetters. 
 
 On the following day, the Proconsul, being seated on his tribunal, 
 caused the prisoners to be brought before him ; and then said to the 
 women, " Honour our Prince, and do sacrifice to the gods." Donata 
 replied, " We honour Caesar as Csesar ; but to God we offer prayer 
 and worship." Vestina answered, " I also am a Christian." Secunda 
 said, " I also believe in my God, and will continue steadfast to him ; 
 and as for your gods, we will not serve nor adore them." Saturninus 
 then ordered them to be separated ; and, having summoned the rest 
 into his presence, he said to Speratus, " Perseverest thou in being a 
 Christian ? " Speratus replied, " Yes ; I do persevere : let all give 
 ear, I am a Christian ; " which being heard by the rest, they all 
 said, " We also are Christians." The Proconsul then said, " You 
 
 the Heathen were often the cause of increased suffering to the Christians ; and the 
 Governors of the province, at this period, appear to have rivalled each other in continu- 
 ing the persecution. The successor of Saturninus was Minucius Fermianus, who was 
 himself succeeded hy Hilarianus. With regard to Saturninus, it was perhaps not unna- 
 tural that a loss of sight, which came upon him shortly after the martyrs of Scyllita 
 suffered, should be considered as a visitation from Heaven. (Burton ; see al*o Tertul., 
 AdScap., cap. 3.)
 
 PERPETUA, FELICITAS, AND OTHER MARTYRS. 447 
 
 will neither consider nor receive mercy." They answered, " Do what 
 you please, we shall die joyfully for the sake of Jesus Christ." The 
 Judge asked, " What books are those which you read and revere ? " 
 Speratus in answer said, " The four Gospels of our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ, the Epistles of the Apostle St. Paul, and all the Scrip- 
 ture that is inspired of God." Saturninus then said, " I will give 
 you three days to come to yourselves." Upon which Speratus 
 answered, " I am a Christian, and such are all those who are with 
 me ; and we will never quit the faith of our Lord Jesus. Do, there- 
 fore, what you think fit." Seeing their resolution, the Proconsul pro- 
 nounced sentence against them in the following terms : " Speratus, 
 and others, having acknowledged themselves to be Christians, and hav- 
 ing refused to pay due honour to the Emperor, I command their heads 
 to be cut off." This judgment having been publicly read, Speratus 
 and the rest exclaimed, " We give thanks to God, who honoureth us 
 this day with being received as martyrs to heaven, for confessing his 
 name." They were carried to the place of punishment, where they 
 all fell on their knees together, and having again given thanks to 
 Jesus Christ, they were beheaded.* 
 
 About this period, A. D. 204, four young professors were arrested 
 at Carthage, who had recently entered the congregation of the faith- 
 ful as catechumens. Their names were Revocatus and Felicitas, who 
 were slaves belonging to the same master, and Saturninus and Secun- 
 dulus, with a young and noble lady, Vivia Perpetua, whose virtues 
 rendered her an object of the tenderest love to her parents and to her 
 husband. At the time of her apprehension she was twenty-two years 
 of age, and had an infant at the breast, and expected shortly to give 
 birth to another. Therefore beside the common struggles of flesh and 
 blood against the hand of death, she had other feelings with which 
 to contend, even those pure feelings of human nature which Chris- 
 tianity recognises in all their strength, and which genuine piety 
 even heightens, while at the same time it requires the sacrifice 
 of them to the one to whom all must yield. The mother of Per- 
 petua was a Christian, but her aged father was a Heathen. Besides 
 the bitterness of losing a beloved daughter, he feared the ignominy 
 which her execution as a Christian would bring upon him. This 
 extraordinary woman wrote an account of the affliction she expe- 
 rienced between being taken from her own home and the execution ; 
 and there are few ancient documents of a more interesting character 
 than that which purports to be, and there is good reason to believe 
 is, a transcript of her narrative or confession. According to this 
 account we learn that she and her companions were kept under guard 
 some days before they were cast into prison ; and that in this interval 
 she was visited by her father, who, loving her with an affection which 
 knew no bounds, earnestly besought her to recant, and so restore 
 herself to her afflicted family ; but, pointing to a vase which stood on 
 the floor, she said, " Can you give any other name than vase to that 
 vessel?" and on his answering in the negative, " Neither," she con- 
 tinued, " can I call myself by any other name than that of Chris- 
 
 Fleury's Hiatoire Kcclesiastique, torn i., lib. v. sect. 3.
 
 448 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 tian." On this the afflicted parent could no longer repress his pas- 
 sion, but flinging himself upon her, he would, in his frenzy, have 
 done her some serious injury ; but her strength and resolution sup- 
 ported her, and she remained unharmed either in mind or person. 
 
 During the short period that these catechumens were under guard, 
 but not confined to the prison, they found means to be baptized, and 
 the prayers of Perpetua were directed particularly for patience under 
 bodily pains. Many days elapsed before she again saw her father : in 
 the mean time they were all thrown into the dungeon. In recording 
 this event, Perpetua, with the natural timidity of her sex, says, " I 
 was terrified at it ; for I had never been in such darkness. fearful 
 day ! The crowd of prisoners made us suffer the most oppressive 
 heat ; and the rude treatment we endured from the soldiers, with the 
 anxiety I felt about my child, increased my uneasiness." The Deacons 
 who brought the communion * to them in the dungeon, purchased for 
 the Christian prisoners a better residence in the prison, where they were 
 separated from other criminals. " We went forth," says Vivia, " and 
 in doing so, every one thought of his own immediate wants. I gave 
 suck to my babe who was dying with hunger, and recommended him 
 to the care of my mother. I endeavoured to strengthen my brother ; 
 but was penetrated with the deepest sorrow at seeing what they suf- 
 fered on my account. Many days were passed in anxiety and rest- 
 lessness ; but being allowed to keep my babe with me, I found great 
 consolation therefrom, and the prison became a palace to me, so much 
 so, that I preferred it to any other place whatsoever." 
 
 Perpetua proceeds to say, that, while in this frame of mind, her 
 brother desired her to pray to God that he would let her know by 
 some vision, whether the present affliction were to end in martyrdom ; 
 to which she answered, that the next day he should hear something 
 respecting it. In the present age, when the mind is so rarely subject 
 to extraordinary excitements, it is difficult to avoid confounding the 
 belief and sentiments, which, though enthusiastic, passionate, and 
 perhaps highly erroneous, are still natural, and worthy of respect, 
 because attributable to a state of feeling produced by real and suffi- 
 cient causes, with those which have no assignable origin, but the 
 suggestions of a weak intellect, and disordered fancy. A very wide 
 difference, however, exists between the two cases ; and while we sim- 
 ply regard with pity the victims of a wild, exciting error in modern 
 times, the visions and revelations of the early Christian sufferers 
 inspire the reflecting mind with a feeling of solemnity not unmingled 
 with either respect or awe, for they serve to convince us of the vio- 
 
 * " Diacones qui nobis ministrabant." (Acta Martyr. Sincera, p. 4.) Neander 
 imagines that the Deacons brought the consecrated elements to the imprisoned Chris- 
 tians, a practice well-known not to be unfrequent. Hence the testimony of Mosheim : 
 " When the Christians celebrated the Lord's supper, which they were acexistomed to do 
 chiefly on Sundays, they consecrated a part of the bread and wine of the oblations by 
 certain prayers which the Bishop of the congregation uttered. The wine was mixed 
 with water ; the bread was divided into small pieces. Portions of the consecrated 
 bread and wine were commonly sent to the absent, and the sick, in testimony of fra- 
 ternal affection towards them." (Mosheim's Eccles. Hist., vol. i., cent, ii., part ii., 
 chap, iv., sect. 12. 8vo. Soames's edit.)
 
 PERI'ETUA, FELICITAS, AND OTHERS. 449 
 
 lent conflict which took place in their hearts before they could sub- 
 due the backwardness of nature to undergo the trial to which faith 
 had put it, a conflict which it hence seems was in many instances 
 too strong for the mind, though not for the spirits.* 
 
 It is evident, however, that neither credulity nor incredulity had 
 any share in the record which Perpetua has left of the circumstance. 
 They were the dreams of a mind agitated by fears which faith might 
 overcome, but the hideous aspect of which it could not change ; and 
 when she says, in speaking of her brother, " I told him boldly that 
 the next day he should hear news ; and I prayed to God, and 
 behold what was shown me ; " we have no reason to doubt that she 
 spoke from the perfect conviction of her heart. Her dream or vision, 
 as she terms it, is described as consisting of a very lofty ladder of 
 gold, which reached from earth to heaven ; but so narrow that not 
 more than one person could ascend it at the same time. To the two 
 sides of this ladder were attached every species of chains, swords, 
 crosses, and other instruments of torture, and they were placed in 
 such a manner that they could not fail of wounding any one who 
 should mount the ladder carelessly, or without looking up ; and below 
 it appeared a huge dragon, which glared ferociously on all who 
 approached. The first person she saw was Satur, who, moved by the 
 example of the catechumens, had voluntarily given himself up to the 
 Magistrates. When he arrived at the top of the ladder, he turned 
 towards her, and said, " Perpetua ! I await you ; but beware that 
 the dragon do not tear you." To which exhortation she replied, 
 " In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, he shall do me no harm." 
 The dragon, on hearing these words, lifted up his head in a manner 
 so gentle, that he seemed to fear her, and she did not hesitate to 
 step from the first stave of the ladder upon the huge monster. She 
 then ascended, and her eyes were quickly regaled with the sight of a 
 wide extended garden, in the middle of which sat a man of lofty sta- 
 ture, in the garb of a shepherd, and with white locks. He was milk- 
 ing his ewes, and was surrounded by a number of other persons, all 
 of whom were clad in white. As Perpetua approached him, he 
 raised his head, and, observing her, said, " You are welcome, my 
 daughter ;" and then gave her of the milk he had drawn from the 
 flock. She received it with joy, and drank it ; on which all those 
 who surrounded the Pastor exclaimed, " Amen ! " with the sound of 
 which still ringing in her ears, she awoke. No doubt was enter- 
 tained by Perpetua or her brother, after the former had related this 
 dream, that her martyrdom was at hand. 
 
 The report that they were about to be tried having reached the 
 ears of the aged father of Perpetua, he hastened to her, and said, 
 " Have pity, my daughter, on my grey hairs ; have pity on thy 
 father, if I was ever worthy of that name ; if I myself have brought 
 you up to this age, if I have preferred you to all your brethren, 
 make me not a reproach to mankind, respect your father and your 
 aunt," (these were joined in the interests of Paganism, while the 
 mother was a Christian, otherwise his silence concerning her seems 
 
 Stebbing's History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 98. 
 VOL. I. 3 M
 
 450 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 scarce to be accounted for,) "have compassion on your son, who can- 
 not survive you. Lay aside thy haughty spirit, lest thou exterminate 
 our race ! not one of us can again speak with the freedom of a man, 
 if thou come to such an end." The old gentleman, with much tender- 
 ness, kissed her hands, threw himself at her feet, weeping, and call- 
 ing her no longer his daughter, but his mistress. He was the only 
 person of the family who did not rejoice at her martyrdom. "The 
 grey hairs of my father," says Perpetua, " gave me pain. I lamented 
 that he alone, of all my family, would not rejoice in my sufferings." 
 She said to him, " When I stand before the tribunal, God's will must 
 come to pass ! for remember, we stand not in our own power, but in 
 that of God." Perpetua, though inwardly torn with filial affection, 
 could offer her father no other comfort than to desire him to acquiesce 
 in the divine disposal. 
 
 The following day, as was anticipated, the prisoners were conducted 
 into court. There the unhappy father appeared, with his young 
 grandson, to try his last efforts with his daughter. The rest of the 
 company having confessed their faith in Christ, it came to Perpetua' s 
 turn to be examined, when her father suddenly stood before her, and 
 conjured her to have pity upon her child. The Governor then joined 
 in the entreaty ; and, addressing Perpetua, said, " Take pity on thy 
 father's grey hairs ; take pity on thy child. Offer sacrifice for the 
 prosperity of the Emperor." " That," said the martyr, " I cannot 
 do." "Art thou a Christian?" said Hilarianus. "I am," replied 
 the dauntless woman ; but as she uttered the last words, her father 
 endeavoured to pull her by force from the tribunal ; on seeing which, 
 the Judge, whose forbearance was exhausted, ordered him to be driven 
 off, and the agonized old man received a violent blow from the staff 
 of one of the officers. " I felt that blow," said Perpetua, " as if it 
 had fallen on myself, so deeply was I affected at beholding my father 
 so treated in his old age." Her fate, with that of her companions, 
 was now decided. They were all condemned, on the ensuing festival 
 of Geta's accession, to be thrown to the wild beasts, and thus afford 
 a cruel sport to the soldiery and people. They returned to their 
 prison rejoicing : the tenderness of a mother's feeling did not over- 
 whelm Perpetua. She sent to her father for her child, that she 
 might give it suck ; but the father would not part with it : this cir- 
 cumstance she notes in her narrative as a particular mercy of God, 
 that neither she nor the infant suffered from this sudden separation. 
 Her father, however, again visited her, and repeated his former 
 entreaties and arguments, but with as little success j and having given 
 the relation of a third vision, with which she supposed she was 
 divinely favoured, she concludes her narrative, which she continued to 
 the last evening of her life : " This is what I have written to the eve 
 of the spectacle. Some one else will describe, if he think proper, 
 what happened there." 
 
 Secundulus died in prison ; and Perpetua was not the only female 
 who afforded an example of extraordinary firmness in this persecution. 
 One of the other prisoners, the slave Felicitas, was within a few weeks 
 of becoming a mother ; and as her situation would have kept her from
 
 PERPETUA, FELIC1TAS, AND OTHERS. 451 
 
 being put to death so soon as her companions, she was afflicted lest 
 her execution would be deferred, and that she would have to suffer 
 among common criminals. Three days before the spectacles, her com- 
 panions joined in prayer for her, that the Almighty would vouchsafe 
 to her a speedy delivery. Her desire was granted. The pains which 
 she endured were so great, as to induce one of the guards to observe, 
 who probably expected to find in her a stoical insensibility, " You 
 complain now, what will you do when exposed to the wild beasts?" 
 Felicitas answered with a sagacity which was truly Christian, " It is I 
 that suffer now ; but then there will be another with me, that will 
 suffer for me, because I shall suffer for his sake." Her new-born 
 daughter was placed in the hands of a Christian woman, who nursed 
 it as her own. 
 
 On the evening preceding the festival, the prisoners were allowed a 
 kind of feast, as was usual, it seems, on such occasions ; but even this 
 was not granted till Perpetua demanded it, in order that other Chris- 
 tians of the place might have an opportunity of visiting them. The 
 tribune, believing a report of some that the prisoners would feed 
 themselves by magical practices, treated them roughly. " Why don't 
 you," said Perpetua, " give us some relief? Will it not be for your 
 honour that we should appear well fed at your spectacles?" This 
 address of hers had the desired effect, and procured a very agreeable 
 alteration in their treatment.* But at their last meal, the martyrs 
 did their utmost to convert it into an ayainj, or "lovefeast," as the 
 eucharistical banquets of the Christians were sometimes called, which 
 they endeavoured to enjoy with as much tranquillity as the admission 
 of the populace to see them would allow. Their brethren and others 
 were allowed to visit them ; and the keeper of the prison is said, at 
 this time, to have been converted to the faith. Occasionally they 
 addressed the Pagans, warning them "to flee from the wrath to 
 come ; " and Satur, seeing them anxious to view the persons of him- 
 self and his fellow-captives, said, "Observe our countenances well, 
 that you may be able to recognise them at the day of judgment." 
 This holy tranquillity and serenity did not forsake them. 
 
 It was usual in those days, in compliance with some of the customs 
 which had been retained from the times in which human sacrifices 
 were offered to Baal, to clothe those condemned to die by wild beasts 
 in priestly garments : they wished to dress the Christian men as 
 Priests of Saturn, and the women as Priestesses of Ceres. Their free 
 and Christian spirits, however, revolted against this. " We have 
 come here voluntarily," said they, " that our freedom might not be 
 taken away from us. We have given up our lives, that we might not 
 be compelled to these practices." The Heathens themselves recog- 
 nised the justice of their demand, and conceded the point. The 
 Spirit of the Lord did not forsake his servants in the hour of trial. 
 
 From the testimony of Perpetua, we learn that their imprisonment was very severe. 
 Khe speaks of beiug in the stocks. They were called nervus ; this was a wooden 
 machine with many holes in which the prisoner's feet were fastened, and stretched to 
 great distances, as to the fourth or fifth holes, for the increase of torment. Perpetua 
 remarks, they were chained, and also set in the engine during their stay in the camp- 
 [!'.- n, which seems to have been several days, in expectation of the public shows. 
 
 3 M 2
 
 452 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 Joy, rather than fear, was manifested in their countenance.* Perpe- 
 tua, upheld by her Lord and Saviour, left the prison with a composed 
 countenance and an easy pace, holding down her eyes, lest the spec- 
 tators might draw wrong conclusions from their apparent vivacity. 
 Revocatus, Saturninus, and Satur, endeavoured to affect the people 
 with the fear of " the wrath to come." Being brought into the pre- 
 sence of Hilarian, the Proconsul, they said, " Thou judgest us, and 
 God shall judge thee." The mob were enraged, and insisted on their 
 being scourged before they were exposed to the beasts. This was 
 done, and the devoted company rejoiced in being thus far conformed 
 to their Saviour's sufferings. The men were exposed to bears and a 
 leopard. Perpetua and Felicitas, having been enclosed in a net, were 
 thrown to a wild cow. Perpetua was first attacked, and was flung, 
 lacerated, to the ground : she then placed herself in a sitting position, 
 gathered her dishevelled hair in her hands, and put it in order, to 
 prevent even the appearance of being in a state of confusion. On 
 seeing her unfortunate companion struggling, wounded on the earth, 
 she stretched out her hands towards her, lifted her up, and then 
 walked tremblingly to one of the gates, where were assembled several 
 of the Christians. At hearing the voice of her friends, Perpetua, it 
 is said, seemed to wake out of a deep sleep, and observed, " I wonder 
 when they will expose us to the cow !" she had been, apparently, 
 unconscious of what had passed, and it was only by showing her the 
 wounds she had received, that they could persuade her she had been 
 injured. With the exception of Satur, who died by the teeth of the 
 leopard, none of the martyrs expired under the attacks of the wild 
 animals to which they were exposed. It was then that the populace 
 insisted on having the martyrs brought into the midst of the amphi- 
 theatre, that they might not lose the last scene of this awful tragedy. 
 Some of the company rose up, and went forward of their own accord, 
 after having given to each other the kiss of charity ; and others 
 received the last blow from the hands of the gladiators without even 
 stirring, and in silence. Perpetua again distinguished herself by her 
 extraordinary firmness. The man into whose hands she fell, was an 
 unskilful gladiator, who wounded her unnecessarily, by missing his 
 aim ; and finding him too much agitated to perform his office aright, 
 she took his trembling hand, and guiding it to her throat, instantly fell 
 beneath his dagger.f 
 
 " The keeper of the prison, profoundly impressed by their conduct, and beginning 
 to discern ' the power of God within them,' admitted many of the brethren to visit them 
 for mutual consolation. And as the day of the games approached, my father (Perpe- 
 tua records) entered, worn out with affliction, and began to pluck his beard, and to 
 throw himself down with his face upon the ground, and to wish that he could hasten his 
 death ; and to speak words which might have moved any living creature. And I was 
 grieved for the sorrow of his old age." (Ruinart, Acta Martyrum Sincera.) 
 
 t See Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. i., p. 121, ct 
 seq. ; Stebbing's History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 96, et seq. ; Milner's His- 
 tory of the Church of Christ, vol. i., cent, iii., chap. 5, p. 331, ed. 8vo., ork, 1794 ; 
 Ruinart, Acta Martyrum Sincera, 4to., p. 94 ; Milman's History of Christianity, vol. 
 ii., p. 216, et seq. ; Tillemont, Mem. Hist. Ecclesiast., torn, iii., p. 136, et seq. 
 Milner very justly observes, that " Augustine in his exposition of the 47th Psalm, 
 taking notice of the victorious strength of divine love prevailing over all natural affection, 
 instances the case of Perpetua. He mentions the same story also, in three other places
 
 IREN^EUS.
 
 IREN.ST7S. 453 
 
 The remote province of Gaul did not escape the general calamity : 
 it has been said, that Irenaeus, who had held the bishopric of Lyons 
 from about the year 1/8, suffered martyrdom in the reign of Severus. 
 Stories are told of the city of Lyons being surrounded by soldiers, and 
 all the Christians being put to death ; * but it is safer to say that no 
 particulars are known ; and it is plain that great numbers of Chris- 
 tians survived, who continued to propagate the Gospel in that part of 
 Gaul. If the account could be believed, which speaks of the Emperor 
 himself being present when Irenseus was put to death, we might con- 
 clude that it did not happen till the year 208, when Severus set out 
 with his two sons to repress an insurrection in Britain, and it is not 
 improbable that they passed through Lyons, but the fact cannot be 
 stated with certainty ; and the evidence of Irenseus having suffered 
 martyrdom at all, is extremely slight.f It is much to be regretted 
 that our records of the early history of Irenaeus are confessedly so 
 scanty. The place of his birth is uncertain. His instructors in 
 Christianity were Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, and the renowned Poly- 
 carp. The former was a man of real sanctity, but of slender abili- 
 ties. He, as well as Polycarp, had been disciples of the Apostle John ; 
 and, with all the imbecility of judgment which has been ascribed to 
 him, he might, under God, have been of essential service to Irenaeus. 
 For Polycarp he entertained an inviolable attachment : from him he 
 received the seeds of apostolic doctrine, and also took an exact and 
 particular notice of whatever was memorable in him, even to the most 
 minute circumstances of his conversation, the memory of which he 
 preserved to his dying day, By whose hands he was consecrated to 
 the ministry of religion, we know not. It is not improbable that 
 he accompanied Polycarp in his journey to Rome about the paschal 
 controversy, when, by his, and the persuasion of Anicetus, he visited 
 Gaul, which at that time was threatened to be overrun with those 
 pernicious heresies which subsequently, not only harassed, but perilled, 
 the very existence of the church itself ; and he greatly assisted 
 the Bishop Pothinus in the management of these affairs. Irenseus, 
 arriving at Lyons, continued several years in the station of a Presby- 
 ter, till a heavy storm arose upon that Christian community, under 
 
 in his treatise on ' the Soul.' But it is evident that he donbts whether Perpetua her- 
 self wrote what is ascribed to her. If so, we may well doubt the truth of the visions 
 with which this excellent narrative has been intermixed, and with which I have not 
 thought it worth while to trouble the reader. Yet the general history has every mark 
 of authenticity ; and Augustine himself published three sermons on their anniversary. 
 It is much to be regretted that the finest monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity have 
 been thus tarnished by mixtures of fraud or superstition. My business is not to recite 
 these, but that, alone which carries marks of truth ; and Augustine's authority has 
 helped me to distinguish here with some degree of precision." 
 
 See Baronii Anual. Kcclesiast., A.D. 205, sect. 28. Gregory of Tours speaks of 
 many martyrs having suffered with Irenseus. 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxii. Irenaeus is called a martyr by Jerome, 
 in Esai. Ixiv. 4, 5, torn, iii., p. 474, edit. Bened., fol. 1699, but not in any other 
 passage : also in the work called Questioner ad Orthodoxas. Quaest. 115. Gregory of 
 Tours asserts it ; but he seems to place his martyrdom in 177, which is impossible. See 
 Dodweil, Diss. ad Iren. iii. 21, p. 259 ; Raynand Indie. Mart. Lugdun., p. 284 ; 
 Tillemont, Memoirea Eccles. Hist , torn, iii., p. 94. 4to. ed. Paris, 1695 ; Cave's 
 Lives of the Fathers, vol. i., p. 258, et tey., 8vo. edit., Oxford ; Milner's History of 
 the Church of Christ, vol. i., cent, iii., chap. 1, 8vo. edit.
 
 454 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, which descended upon the churches in all places, but 
 especially upon those of Lyons and Vienne, where, we are told, it was 
 utterly impossible to describe the brutish fierceness and cruelty of 
 their enemies, and the severity of those torments which the martyrs 
 suffered, banished from their houses, and forbidden so much as to 
 show their heads ; reproached, beaten, hurried from place to place, 
 plundered, stoned, imprisoned, and there treated with all the expres- 
 sions of an ungovernable rage and fury, as is related by the members 
 of the Lugdunensian church. Vast numbers were transported to 
 heaven through infinite and inexpressible racks and torments, and 
 among the rest Pothinus, the Bishop.* 
 
 The church at Lyons being thus deprived of its venerable leader, 
 none was more qualified to fill the vacant seat than Irenseus, who 
 accordingly succeeded in a troublesome and tempestuous time. But 
 as a pilot he was skilful, courageous, and true. He defended the 
 church against the heresies with which it was assailed with affection 
 and fidelity, and triumphantly unmasked and refuted them. The 
 calm and quiet days which the church had enjoyed, free from open 
 and general persecution, were apparently at an end. The Emperor 
 Sever us commenced a bitter and sanguinary attack upon the 
 church, which he prosecuted with great assiduity in all parts of the 
 empire. Having formerly governed the province of Lyons, and noticed 
 the zeal of Irenaeus, and the flourishing state of the church in that 
 place, he was the more anxious to proceed against them. The per- 
 secution, that in other parts picked out some few to make them exem- 
 plary, here served all alike, and went through with the work. Gre- 
 gory of Tours and the ancient Martyrologies inform us, that Irenseus, 
 having been prepared by previous torments, was at length put to 
 death, and, together with him, almost all the Christians of that popu- 
 lous city, whose numbers could not be reckoned up, and caused the 
 streets of the city to flow with their blood.f We may easily allow 
 that this is a rhetorical exaggeration : at the same time, we have no 
 reason to deny the truth of this second persecution at Lyons, and 
 of Irenseus suffering under it. The historian of Tours may not 
 be the most credible authority : nevertheless, we meet with no circum- 
 stances of improbability ; and the silence of Eusebius by no means 
 affords an argument to the contrary. 
 
 * Much has not been said of the state of the church in Rome, and few, if any, parti- 
 culars are known concerning it, during this eventful period. Sevems returned to Rome, 
 and had a triumph for his victories in the East. At the same time he celebrated the tenth 
 anniversary of his accession to the empire. He also married his eldest son, Caracalla, 
 to the daughter of Plautianus ; and there can be little doubt that these united festivities 
 were the signal for many insults -being offered to the Christians. Baronius supposes, 
 that Plautianus was a prime mover in these scenes of cruelty ; and if so, there was, 
 perhaps, some respite in the following year, when he was put to death for plotting 
 against the Emperor and his son. This, however, was the year in which the Emperor 
 chose to have an exhibition of the secular games, but in which he had no regard to the 
 period of one hundred years which ought to have elapsed since the last celebration. 
 These games were attended with many ceremonies, which must have been painful to a 
 Christian even to witness ; and their refusal to take part in them was likely to expose 
 them to many insults and cruelties. (Burton.) 
 
 t Ado in his chronicle says, that Irenseus sxiffered martyrdom with an exceeding 
 great multitude.
 
 DEATH OF SEVERUS. 45b 
 
 It is generally supposed that Severus was in Lyons during this 
 severe visitation, and on his journey to Britain, at the request of 
 Virius Lupus, one of the Governors of that island, who, being unable to 
 withstand the united power of the North Britons and Caledonians, was 
 compelled to purchase with money a precarious respite from their incur- 
 sions. This expedient, though it procured a temporary forbearance, 
 invited them to a repetition of the attempt ; and Lupus, wearied with 
 continued hostilities, solicited the presence of the Emperor and the 
 aid of a numerous army. Though Severus was advanced in years 
 and declining in health, he cheerfully obeyed the summons. He 
 was accompanied by his two sons, Caracalla and Geta ; and after 
 the subjugation of the insurgents, he returned to York, and devised 
 means for the future security of the provinces. But in the midst of 
 his endeavours he was assailed by an enemy more potent and resist- 
 less than any with whom he had hitherto contended. Severus, return- 
 ing to York, grew infirm, partly with excessive labour and fatigue, 
 and partly with grief for the dissolute conduct of his eldest son. It 
 was here that he heard that the soldiers had declared him Emperor, 
 a circumstance which so aroused him, that he immediately called for 
 his litter, and commanded the new Emperor, with the tribunes and 
 centurions to be brought before him, who were so confounded with 
 the majesty of his appearance, as to crave pardon upon their 
 knees : he then placed his hands on his own head, and said to 
 the assembled company, " Know that it is the head that governs, and 
 not the feet ! " and dismissed them. Finding his affliction increase 
 upon him, and perceiving that his speedy dissolution was inevitable, 
 he exclaimed, " I have been all that a man can be ; but this is of no 
 use or service to me now ; " and then commanding the urn to be 
 brought which was intended to contain his ashes, he said, " This urn 
 will shortly contain what the whole world could not before." To his 
 sons and friends who were gathered around him, he made this 
 remarkable declaration, " When I took the empire upon me, I found 
 it declining and languishing ; and now, being aged and decrepit, I 
 leave it in a state firm and vigorous to my sons, if they prove good ; 
 but, if otherwise, it will become feeble, and fall." His pains became 
 so great, that he called for poison to terminate them, but in vain ; 
 and, failing in this, he glutted himself with gross meats which the 
 energy of his constitution refused to digest, and thus he expired. 
 
 The death of Severus put a stop to the persecution and to the 
 unheard-of barbarities of which we have given a faint description. 
 From the year 202 to the end of the reign of this Emperor, the 
 Christians in every part of the world were exposed to severe trials. 
 A writer who flourished about this period, by name Minutius Felix, 
 has left us a dialogue entitled Octavius, which throws considerable 
 light upon the cruel and wicked treatment which the faithful 
 received from certain idolatrous and bigoted men, proving that the 
 scenes which Tertullian depicted in Africa were also exhibited in 
 Rome. The reign of Severus was highly disastrous to the cause of 
 Christianity. If the gross and flagrant extravagancies of Coramodus 
 had directed the attention of the Heathen to look to the safety of
 
 456 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 themselves, rather than to molesting the church of Christ, this 
 period of repose which they enjoyed ceased when Severus ascended 
 the throne. His military expeditions were generally successful, and the 
 state of the nation was, almost without exception, prosperous ; and 
 on this account the Christians were unfavourably thought of, inas- 
 much as they were considered, if not positively hostile to the national 
 welfare, indifferent thereto, and therefore were beheld with great jea- 
 lousy and alarm at the progress which their doctrine was making upon 
 the public mind. Fuel to the flames of persecution was undoubtedly 
 added by the indiscreet conduct of the Christians themselves, many of 
 whom took measures by which they endeavoured to screen themselves 
 from persecution, and some even thought it lawful to purchase their 
 safety for a sum of money. The fact is, that the Magistrates, instigated 
 by the love of lucre, were accustomed to commence an attack upon the 
 Christians, and adjudge some of the poorer sort to suffer death ; by 
 which means they were always sure to place the property of the 
 richer classes at their command. Tertullian inveighed against these 
 practices in terms of the keenest irony, naturally inferring, " Who can 
 wonder that informers and accusers are on the alert, when Christians 
 are in the habit of procuring the forbearance of these wretches bv 
 money?" But it was not only individual Christians that consulted 
 their safety in this way: whole churches were accustomed to com- 
 pound for their peace with the Presidents, and to pay a sort of 
 annual tribute. Nay, further, it appears from the testimony of Ter- 
 tullian, that some of the faithful, so called, were wont to negotiate 
 for their security with those who had merely threatened to become 
 their accusers, unless paid for their forbearance ; at other times with 
 the Presidents themselves, and in certain instances with the common 
 soldiers ; which last circumstance is deserving of notice, inasmuch 
 as it plainly proves that they were directed by the Magistrates to 
 watch the assemblies of the Christians, and not to suffer them to be 
 held without disturbing them ; and, in consequence of this, many 
 were induced to offer bribes to the Heathen to allow them to worship 
 the Most High in peace. The sentiments of some of the Prelates 
 of the church were in favour of this practice, as is testified by Peter 
 Martyr,* of Alexandria, a writer of that age, who, in the canons 
 extracted from his discourse De Poenitentia, not only lays it down, 
 that those who had purchased their safety with money were not to be 
 censured, but unequivocally commends them, and encounters Tertul- 
 lian in defending them. The persecution, also, would have been less 
 generally felt, if the Montanists had not pushed their extravagant and 
 uncompromising doctrines to so great a length. 
 
 In the Roman Martyrology he is reputed a saint. He was educated at Alexan- 
 dria, under the instruction of Theonas, the Bishop of that see, whom he succeeded in 
 300. Eusebius says, " He was a most excellent teacher of the Christian doctrine, an 
 ornament to the episcopal character, both for the holiness of his life, and his laborious 
 application in studying and explaining the sacred Scriptures. He governed the church 
 three years before the persecution. The rest of his time he passed in a more strict and 
 mortified course of life, but without neglecting the common good of the churches." 
 " Without any crime of any kind laid to his charge, beyond all expectation, on a sud- 
 den, for no other reason but the will of Maximin, he was taken into custody and 
 beheaded." His martyrdom took place in 311.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 457 
 
 It is in no degree improbable, that the means employed by the 
 heathen philosophers to depreciate Christianity were in a considerable 
 measure successful among the higher ranks of society. Hence Julia 
 Severa, the wife of the Emperor, out of regard for the national 
 religion, and an earnest desire to promote its prosperity, requested 
 Philostratus, who was teaching oratory at Rome, to write the Life of 
 the celebrated impostor, Apollonius of Tyana. This would doubtless 
 come under the inspection of Severus, and would not tend to elevate 
 our common Christianity in his estimation. Apollonius was consi- 
 dered as the hero of the old religion, and even among Christian 
 writers there are many who have attached more importance to the 
 life and character of this vain impostor than they deserve. Fleury has 
 introduced a full account of his history, and seems to consider that 
 his wonderful works were performed by the assistance of Satan. 
 Tillemont has treated him with too much honour, when he says, that 
 he was one of the most dangerous enemies that the Christians ever had 
 in the beginning ; and that the devil appeared to have sent him into the 
 world about the same time with Jesus Christ, either to balance his 
 authority in the minds of those who should take his cheats for true mira- 
 cles, or to induce those who looked upon him as a deceiver, to doubt 
 also of the miracles of Christ. Cudworth entertained a similar opi- 
 nion.* In respect of the character and actions of Apollonius, admit- 
 ting them to be in any degree comparable to those of our Saviour, as 
 described in the New Testament, there is to be observed a decided 
 difference in the evidence which we possess of their reality. The 
 books of the sacred canon were written soon after the death of our 
 Lord, by those who had been witnesses of what he had said and done, 
 and when there were thousands alive who might detect any attempt 
 to deceive ; while our chief knowledge of the life of Apollonius is from 
 memoirs written upwards of a hundred years after his death. On the 
 other hand, conceding the history to be true, Apollonius is very far from 
 being a perfect character ; and most of the marvellous things ascribed 
 to him may easily be accounted for, without the intervention either 
 of miraculous or magical agency. He was a native of Tyana, in 
 Cappadocia, of an ancient family, possessed of excellent talents, had 
 an imposing appearance, and was not without some virtues. He 
 attached himself to the sect of Pythagoras, practised great absti- 
 nence, observed the law of silence for five years ; and by some 
 instances of great disinterestedness, by the severe tenor of his life, 
 
 * " It is a thing highly probable, if not unquestionable, that Apollonius Tyanxns, 
 shortly after the publication of the Gospel to the world, was a person made choice of 
 by the policy, and assisted by the powers, of the kingdom of darkness, for the doing 
 of some things extraordinary, merely out of design to derogate from the miracles of 
 our Saviour Christ, and to enable Paganism the better to bear up against the assaults 
 of Christianity. For, amongst the many writers of this philosopher's Life,' some, and 
 particularly Philostratus, seem to have had no other aim in this, their whole undertak- 
 ing, than only to dress up Apollonius in such a garb and manner as might make him 
 best seem to be a fit corrival with our Saviour Christ, both in respect of sanctity and 
 miracles." " The use commonly made by the Pagans of the history of Apollonius 
 was to set him up by way of opposition and rivalry to our Saviour Christ." (Cudworth, 
 the true Intellectual System, vol. i., book i., chap, iv., sect. 10. 8vo. Tegg's edit. 
 1845. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 N
 
 458 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 (though not without the suspicion of concealed vicious indulgences,) 
 and by his pretences to inspiration, and perhaps partly by his sii> 
 gularities of walking barefooted, and dressing himself in flax, he 
 gained much notoriety, and was followed by many admirers. He 
 was a great traveller, like those of his sect ; and wherever he went 
 he recounted the wonders he had witnessed and performed. Many 
 miracles are ascribed to Apollonius ; but they are either obviously 
 fabulous, or they can be explained by natural causes. For example, 
 it is related that he restored a young woman to life ; but, according 
 to the showing of his biographer himself, there were symptoms that 
 life had not left her. The time of his death is not known, but it is 
 supposed to have been about the year 97. Statues were erected to 
 his honour, and divine worship in some places was paid to him.* 
 
 The sons of Severus, Caracalla and Geta, succeeded to the empire ; 
 but their accession did not produce any immediate effect upon the 
 Christians, inasmuch as it appears, from the address of Tertullian to 
 that most bitter enemy of the Christians, Scapula, that the com- 
 mencement of the reign of Caracalla was sullied by the execution of 
 several of the faithful in Africa. Under this Prince, however, the storm, 
 which had been directed by his father against the church, was 
 permitted gradually to disappear ; and we do not learn that at any 
 period, during the six years which he reigned, the Christian com- 
 munity had to complain of any grievous or extensive afflictions. 
 Many causes have been assigned for this lenity. Some have attri- 
 buted it to the fact that he was brought up by a Christian nurse, and 
 that in early life he heard many things which were favourable to the 
 new faith ; and others, that it was a deep feeling of resentment 
 which he encouraged towards certain Pagans, who inflicted summary 
 chastisement on a Christian youth, the companion of his boyhood. 
 The predilection of Caracalla towards the boy did not arise from any 
 attachment to Christianity, but from an overweening fondness 
 for the lad, with whom he was particularly intimate ; neither is 
 it very easy to conceive how an infant at the breast could have 
 imbibed a relish for any particular religion ! We do not find that 
 Caracalla was commemorated by the early Christians as one of their 
 patrons ; and the tranquillity enjoyed by them under his reign, is 
 rather to be attributed to their money, of which, in turbulent times, 
 they were not accustomed to be parsimonious, than to the good-will 
 or friendly disposition of this most inhuman Emperor. In his youth, 
 
 Welsh's Elements of Church History, vol. i., pp. 340, 341. To give some idea of 
 the nature of the miracles of Apollonius, and which were triumphantly by the Heathen 
 placed against the miracles of Christ, we select the following : One of his disciples, 
 Menippus, is on the point of marriage at Corinth with a beautiful and wealthy maiden. 
 Apollonius comes to the marriage-feast, and declares the bride to be an emphusa, "a 
 phantom or breath," the rich furniture and decorations of the house melt away, the 
 attendants vanish beneath the gaze of Apolloniua ; and the weeping bride, before she 
 disappears, confesses that she is a lamia or einphusa, who thirsts after the blood of the 
 young, and that she has enticed Menippus to devour him ! At Rome Apollonius meets 
 the funeral of a young maiden. Her betrothed and her parents follow weeping. Apol- 
 lonius approaches, and speaks some words in the ear of the maiden, who returns to her 
 father's house ! A paltry imitation of the miracle of our Saviour's raising the widow of 
 Nain'a son.
 
 CARACALLA. HEL1OGABAMJ8. 1..!) 
 
 it is stated that he was of such a tender and humane disposition, that 
 when he saw any criminal thrown to the wild beasts, he would turn 
 away his eyes, and weep : this disposition did not, however, last long, 
 and he soon became one of the most cruel monsters in human form, 
 that man ever saw. He murdered his brother, and partner of the 
 throne, Geta, pleading as an excuse for this unnatural act, that his 
 brother intended to slay him ! He then proceeded against indivi- 
 duals of every rank, as though they had been conspiring against his 
 person, and put them to death : he commanded his brother's servants 
 to be slain without mercy, with many of the Senators who were the 
 personal friends of Geta. His cruelty knew no bounds ; and his 
 licentiousness equalled his cruelty. He fell by the hand of an assas- 
 sin, Martialis, whose brother Caracalla had recently put to death on 
 suspicion merely. He died, at the age of twenty-nine, the counter- 
 part of Caligula, after a reign of six years, on April 18th, A. D. 217, 
 and Macrinus, who plotted his death, succeeded to the empire. 
 
 No sooner was Macrinus, with "his son Diadumenus, on the throne, 
 than a conspiracy was formed to dispossess him of his ill-gotten 
 prize, in favour of Heliogabalus, a name which, in the eastern lan- 
 guage, signifies " a Priest of the sun : " his personal attractions were 
 much admired, and he was also a great favourite among the sol- 
 diery. He was proclaimed in the camp, and many rallied around his 
 standard. The news of this revolt was a thunderbolt to Macrinus, 
 who, with his son, was obliged to forsake the revellings in Antioch 
 to march against this new usurper. In the confines of Syria and 
 Phoenicia, the belligerents joined battle, in which fear and despair 
 caused the soldiers of Heliogabalus to contend courageously : on the 
 side of Macrinus the Praetorian soldiers only performed their duty ; 
 others were remiss and negligent ; and many, abandoning him, 
 went over to Heliogabalus, who gained the victory. Immediately he 
 fled with some chosen friends through the provinces of Lesser Asia, 
 and entered Bithynia, intending to proceed as quickly as possible to 
 Rome ; but, falling sick at Chalcedon, he was overtaken by his pur- 
 suers, and, with his son, was promptly put to death. 
 
 Heliogabalus succeeded Macrinus, and speedily displayed a scan- 
 dalous and outrageous behaviour. He was but fourteen years of age 
 when he was elected as Emperor ; and though he was the youngest that 
 mounted the throne, he was the most profligate Emperor that Rome 
 ever saw, and died a miserable death after a reign of little less than 
 four years.* We are told, that while he stopped at Antioch on his 
 
 * Helingabalus is " rather to be called a monster than a man, so prodigious was hid 
 life in all gluttony, filthiness, and ribaldry. Suck was his pomp, that in his lamps he 
 u-i-il balm, and filled his fish-ponds with rose-water. To let pass his sumptuous ves- 
 tures, which he would not wear hut oiily of gold, and most costly silks ; and his shoes 
 glistering with precious ntonee finely engraved , he was never two days served with one 
 kind of meat ; he never wore one garment twice. And likewise for his fleshly wicked- 
 ness ; some days his company was served at meal with the brains of ostriches, and a 
 strange fowl called phumicoptery, another day with the tongues of popinjays, and other 
 vvvi-rt singiug-binls. Being nigh to the sea, he never used fish ; hi places far distait 
 from the sea, all his house was served with the most delicate fishes. At one supper he 
 was served with seven thousand fishes, and five thousand fowls. At Us removing, 
 in his progress often there followed him six hundred chariots laden only with common 
 
 3 N 2
 
 460 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 way to Nicomedia in Bithynia, where he passed his first winter, he 
 had an opportunity of seeing Origen. He travelled in company with 
 his mother and her sister Mammsea ; and the character of the latter 
 forms an agreeable contrast, not only with that of her sister, but 
 of the Emperor, and the persons in his court. Her morals were irre- 
 proachable ; and even Christian writers have described her as 
 extremely religious. It has been asserted, that she herself was a 
 Christian, although we cannot say with any degree of certainty that 
 she was actually converted. It is, however, to be lamented, that the 
 character of the Emperor was so little influenced by that of his aunt. 
 He was a monster of vice and sensuality. Before his accession to the 
 throne, he filled the office of Priest of the sun in a temple at Emesa 
 in Phoenicia, and these practices were not abandoned even when he 
 was raised to imperial honours. When he arrived in Rome, one of 
 his objects was to establish the worship of the solar deity ; and to 
 this end, he built a temple to the sun, and removed into it all the 
 most sacred ensigns of superstition which the city possessed, and 
 required his own Priests to study the ceremonies of every other reli- 
 gion, so that, if they were retained at all, they should in future be 
 adopted in honour of the sun. All persons throughout the empire 
 were to worship this luminary, and every species of adoration was to 
 be merged in this.* Little, if any, molestation was offered to the 
 Christians during this reign. The attack which the Emperor made 
 upon the deities of Paganism, inflicted a blow upon idolatry from 
 which it never recovered : Christianity suffered not from it, inasmuch 
 as they had no temples, nor altars, nor any external emblem of reli- 
 gion ; its professors could perform their devotions in secret, without 
 any violation of the imperial command. The sincere votaries of Hea- 
 thenism were differently situated ; and, strange to say, that, on account 
 
 harlots, &c. He sacrificed young children, and preferred to the beat advancements in 
 the commonwealth most light personages, &c. - ; in a word, he was an enemy to all 
 honesty and good order. And when he was foretold by his sorcerers and astronomers 
 that he should die a violent death, he provided ropes of silk to hang himself, 
 swords of gold to kill himself, and strong poison in boxes of jacinth and emerald 
 to poison himself, if needs he must thereto be forced. Moreover, he made a high 
 tower, having the floor of boards covered with gold-plate, bordered with precious stones, 
 from which tower he would throw himself down, if he should be pursued of his enemies. 
 But notwithstanding all his provision, he was slain of the soldiers, drawn through the 
 city, and cast into the Tiber, after he had reigned two years and eight months, as wit- 
 nesseth Eutropius ; others say four years." (Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. i., pp. 
 163, 164. Seeley's edit. 8vo.) " His wicked mother likewise received her reward 
 from Heaven, being slain by the soldiers at the same time." (Echard's Rom. Hist., vol. 
 ii., p. 422. London, 1719.) 
 
 * Burton's Lectures on Eceles. Hist., lect. xxiii. " Every year of the Emperor's 
 brief reign, the god was conveyed from his Palatine temple to a suburban edifice of 
 still more sumptuous magnificence. The statue passed in a car drawn by six horses. 
 The Emperor of the world, his eyea stained with paint, ran and danced before it with 
 antic gestures of adoration. The earth was strewn with gold-dust, flowers and chapleta 
 were scattered by the people, while the images of all the other gods, the splendid orna- 
 ments and vessels of their temples, were carried, like the spoils of subject nations, in 
 the annual ovation of the Phoenician deity. Even human sacrifices, and, if we may credit 
 the monstrous fact, the most beautiful sons of the most noble families, were offered on 
 the altar of this Moloch of the East." (Milman's History of Christianity, vol. i., p. 
 228.) " Caedit et humanas hostias lectis ad hoc pueris nobilibus et decoris per omnem 
 Italiam patrimis et matrimis, credo ut major esset utrique parenti dolor." (Lamprid. 
 Heliogab.)
 
 MARTYRDOM OF CECILIA. 461 
 
 of the capricious conduct of Heliogabalus, they were at least placed 
 iu the same category with those who believed in the doctrines of Christ 
 and him crucified.* 
 
 The favourable light in which the ruling powers occasionally viewed 
 the church, did not entirely screen the Christians from insult and 
 injury, which popular tumults were in the habit of inflicting : hence 
 we occasionally meet with individuals who suffered martyrdom in the 
 comparatively tranquil period which intervened from the death of 
 Severus to the accession of Maximin. It was towards the conclusion 
 of the reign of Heliogabalus, or at the commencement of that of 
 Alexander Severus, that Cecilia, a young lady of high family in Rome, 
 and educated in the principles of the Christian religion, was directed 
 by her parents, against her own inclinations, to marry Valerian, a 
 young person of birth and fortune equal to her own. So great was 
 the influence which she had over him, that he consented to renounce 
 his idolatry, and embrace Christianity, before the nuptials were cele- 
 brated. The conversion of Valerian was shortly followed by that 
 of his brother Tiburtius, which so exasperated the civil Magistrate, 
 that almost immediately after their baptism they were called to make 
 a public confession of the faith which they had embraced. Both 
 of them were accused of the crime of being Christians, and were 
 forthwith sentenced to be beheaded. Maximus, the officer who led 
 them to execution, was so much affected with their behaviour in their 
 last moments, and the fortitude with which they received the stroke, 
 that he declared himself of the same belief, and was immediately 
 taken before the Magistrate, who allowed him the formality of a trial, 
 and subsequently sentenced him to the same fate. Cecilia encou- 
 raged her husband and brother, exhorting them to continue steadfast 
 in the truth, and to die as became sincere disciples ; and then, after 
 a few days, was herself apprehended ; and, being required to offer 
 sacrifice, which she refused to do, was condemned. When before 
 the Magistrate, the officers and others, beholding her comely counte- 
 nance, and being charmed with her chaste and prudent conversation, 
 
 * Mosheim observes, that, in the Life of Heliogabalus by Lampridins, there is a pas- 
 sage which seems to intimate, in no very obscure terms, that this otherwise most wicked 
 of all Emperors was not ill affected towards the Christians : " Dicebat pneterea, Judae- 
 onim et Samaritanorum religiones, et Christianam devotionem iliac transferendum, ut 
 omnium culturarum secretum Heliogabali sacerdotium teneret." From this, Mosheim 
 draws the following conclusions : 1. That Heliogabalus wished to abolish all the ancient 
 Roman deities, and to substitute in their place the sun alone, to whom he officiated aa 
 High Priest. Nor do I much wonder at this ; for there were not wanting amongst the 
 Greeks aud Romans those who conceive that the worship of all the deities referred to 
 the sun alone. 2. That, in addition to this, he wished to have the Jewish, Christian, 
 and Samaritan religions transferred to Rome. And, 3. That his object in seeking to 
 accomplish this was, that the priesthood that is, the Priests of Heliogabalus, or the 
 gun might get instructed in the secret ceremonies of all religions ; and thence, possi- 
 bly, be able to improve or embellish the sacred worship of the god of day. It was not, 
 therefore, the wish of the Emperor to extirpate or abolish the religion of Christ, but that 
 the persons professing it should experience a free toleration even in the city of Rome 
 itself, and be permitted to worship God after their own manner ; so that the Priests 
 of the sun, by having a constant and unrestricted communication with them, might 
 obtain an acquaintance with their more secret discipline. That the Emperor, thus dis- 
 j-..'Wil towards the Christians, should have entertained the least thought of persecuting 
 tin-in, seems quite beyond the reach of possibility. (Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. ii>
 
 462 BOOK IVo CHAPTER V. 
 
 endeavoured to persuade her to a recantation, and thus save herself 
 from the death which was prepared for her ; but she replied with 
 such strength of reason, and such hallowed and appropriate exhorta- 
 tion, that their hearts became softened, and they yielded to the power 
 of that religion which they heretofore had been led to persecute and 
 destroy. Exulting in the power of the Gospel, she desired for her- 
 self a short respite at the hands of the ruler ; which being conceded, 
 she forthwith sent for the Bishop, to establish and ground them ill 
 the faith, and by him they were ere long baptized.* No sooner 
 was this accomplished, than Cecilia was brought before the Judge, 
 and condemned. She was forthwith placed in a bath of scalding 
 water, where she continued for a considerable time unhurt ; after 
 which she was ordered to lose her head.f 
 
 * Ado, the martyrologist, says, that " they were, with divers others, at the same time 
 baptized, both men and women, to the number (as the story saith) of four hundred 
 persons, among whom was one Gordian, a nobleman." Ado, whose name frequently 
 occurs in this work, was born in 799 or 800, in the north of Gaul. His promising 
 talents having attracted the notice of Sigulfus, Abbot of the monastery of Ferrieres, in 
 his native district, he was taken into the school there when a boy ; and after completing 
 his education for the priesthood, he must have continued at Ferrieres till he was long 
 past middle age, if the received chronology of his life be correct. For we are told that, 
 having removed to the monastery of Trugin, on the invitation of the Abbot, Marewood, 
 he remained there only for a short time, the hostility of some of the Monks, who appear 
 to have been envious of his superior attainments or reputation, having induced him to 
 take his departure to Rome, where he resided for five years, pursuing his studies, and 
 then set out on his return to Gaul, in 867 or 858. On his way home he found at 
 Ravenna an old Martyrology ; (still preserved, and known as the " Parvum Romanum 
 Martyrologium ;") and his own more extended work of the same description, which 
 appears to be founded upon that, is supposed to have been written at Lyons, where he 
 stayed for some time under the protection of the Archbishop, Remi, or Remigius. 
 Remi was Chaplain at the imperial court, and possessed great influence ; and it was 
 probably on his recommendation that Ado was appointed Archbishop of Vienne, in 860. 
 He is the author of several works : one of the principal is his " Martyrologia." It is 
 published in full by Jacobus Mosander, a Carthusian, in Cologne, in a seventh (supple- 
 mentary) volume to the " Vitae Sanctorum " of Surius, folio, Cologne, 1586, to which 
 copy we have referred. 
 
 t Alban Butler gravely informs us, when rebuilding the church of Cecilia in Rome, 
 the Bishop was in some pain how to find the body of the saint ; for it was thought that the 
 Lombards had taken it away, as they had many others, from the cemeteries of Rome, 
 when they besieged that city under Astulphus, in 755. One Sunday, as this Pope was 
 assisting at matins, as he was wont, at St. Peter's, he fell into a slumber, in which he 
 was advertised by Cecilia herself, that the Lombards had in vain sought for her body, 
 and that he should find it ; and he accordingly discovered it in the cemetery called by 
 her name, clothed in a robe of gold tissue, with linen cloths at her feet, dipped in her 
 blood. With her body was found that of Valerian her husband : the Pope caused 
 them to be translated to her church in the city, as also the bodies of Tiburtius and 
 Maximns, and of the Popes Urban and Lucius, which lay in the adjoining cemetery 
 of Praetextatus, on the same Appian Road. (Lives of the Saints, November 22d.) 
 Musical and other historians have not been able to assign any better reason for honour- 
 ing Cecilia as the patroness of music, than what may be found in her Acts, which still 
 exist in Surius, but are now considered as of no authority. Yet as they were credited 
 in more credulous times, painters fixed upon organs as the appropriate emblem of this 
 saint ; musicians chose her for their patroness ; and poets have described her as the 
 inventress of the organ, and represented charming angels as leaving their celestial 
 spheres to listen to her harmony. The earliest notice of her as the tutelar saint of 
 music, seems to have been in the works of the great painters of the Italian school ; 
 some representing her as performing on the harp, and others on the organ. Raphael, 
 jn his celebrated portrait of this saint, has placed in her hands a column of organ-pipes, 
 or rather the front of a portable instrument called tbe " regals," which used to be 
 carried by one person, and played by another, in processions. There is another well- 
 known and admirable painting of Cecilia by Dcmenichino.
 
 ALEXANDER SEVERUS. -463 
 
 Heliogabalus was succeeded in the empire by his cousin, Alexander 
 Severus, when sixteen years of age ; but at that juvenile period he 
 promised to adorn the throne as much as some of his predecessors 
 appeared to endeavour to disgrace it. His mother had been indus- 
 trious in her attempts to form his character, and the tutors who had 
 the care of his education were evidently selected for their principles. 
 If Heliogabalus had lived much longer, he would have rendered all 
 these preparations for empire nugatory and futile ; for in the year 
 previous to his death, when he caused the title of Caesar to be 
 imposed on his cousin Alexander, he removed from his company all 
 those individuals who had been selected by his mother, some of whom 
 he banished, and others he put to death. It is by no means impro- 
 bable that some of the sufferers were Christians, especially as Alex- 
 ander's early impressions concerning Christianity were favourable ; 
 for he was a man of wholly different character from his vicious prede- 
 cessor, and his predilection towards the faith of Christ proceeded from 
 entirely different grounds. The sensibilities of this Prince were alive 
 to all that was good ; and he manifested a reverence for everything 
 connected with religion; but he was certainly not a Christian. 
 Whatever Alexander had heard or read of the Saviour, raised in him 
 feelings of admiration ; but he held precisely the same sentiments 
 with regard to other historical characters, some of whom were suspi- 
 cious, and others were unequivocally bad : thus he professed to 
 worship not only Christ and Abraham, but Orpheus and Apollonius, 
 the latter being, without doubt, the notorious impostor, Apollonius of 
 Tyana. According, however, to Lampridius, he not only showed to 
 the Christians toleration, but went so far as to offer divine honours 
 to Christ, and had thoughts of erecting a temple to him. We must 
 take all these expressions with considerable hesitation, especially 
 when we bear in mind the fact, that he had images of certain per- 
 sons which he placed in his chamber, and prayed to them every 
 morning. If this account be correct, we may acknowledge Alexander 
 to have been superstitious, and prejudiced in favour of idolatry ; but 
 in no degree inclined to the faith of the Gospel, so as to embrace it. 
 
 By the more modern Christian historians, Julia Marnmcea, the 
 mother of Alexander, is supposed to have been a convert to Chris- 
 tianity ; but without sufficient authority. It is true that, under the 
 present reign, a greater measure of prosperity and peace had fallen to 
 the lot of the church than under any preceding Emperors ; for which 
 the church was chiefly indebted to Mammaea, whose influence over 
 her son was almost unlimited, and whose sentiments with regard to 
 the doctrines of Christ were kind and propitious ; and therefore 
 many have thought that we cannot withhold our credit from such 
 accumulated testimony in her favour. Eusebius and Jerome give 
 their opinion with a considerable degree of reserve.* Both these 
 writers advert to the visit of Origen to the court of Alexander, at 
 Antioch, to give Mammaea, for a time, the advantage of conversation 
 and instruction ; but neither of them asserts that she so far yielded to 
 the arguments of Origen, as to abandon the superstitions in which 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 21 ; Hieron., De Viriu Illustribus, cap. 54.
 
 464 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 she had been educated, and to embrace Christianity. Eusebius 
 applies to Mammsea the epithet of Seoo-s^craTrjf, arid Jerome styles 
 her reliffiosa;* but these designations do not possess sufficient 
 weight of themselves to place the fact of her conversion beyond dis- 
 pute, since we find them indiscriminately applied by the early writers 
 to all men, whether Christians or not, who professed a due reverence 
 for the supreme Being, and manifested an anxious wish for eternal 
 life. On the other hand, there are to be perceived in the life of this 
 lady manifest indications of a mind labouring under the influence 
 of superstition, and devoted to the worship of the false gods of the 
 Romans. These, added to other considerations, have led several 
 writers of acknowledged celebrity and merit to maintain that Mam- 
 maea continued unshaken in her attachment to the religion of her 
 ancestors. 
 
 Alexander was addicted to the then-prevailing fashion of eclecticism, 
 and he included Christianity among those religions from whence he 
 drew his stores : he therefore gathered much from the system and 
 precepts of the Gospel. Observing that the Christians never filled up 
 any ecclesiastical appointment without publishing the names of the 
 candidates, and consulting the people as to their fitness, he ordered 
 the same to be done in appointing the Governors of provinces, or any 
 public officer, f The Emperor also quoted the Christians for a saying 
 which he was very fond of, and which he ordered to be inscribed on 
 many public buildings : " Do not to another what you would not 
 have him do to you." J But nothing exhibits more strongly his tole- 
 rant disposition, than the decision which he made when the keepers 
 of a public-house claimed a piece of ground that had been occupied 
 by the Christians : the Emperor adjudged it to the latter ; adding 
 the remark, that it was much more fitting for the Most High to be 
 worshipped there in any manner, than for the ground to be employed 
 as a pot-house. It would appear, from this circumstance, that the 
 Christians had now erected buildings in Rome, unless we suppose 
 that they were accustomed to meet for worship in the open air, which 
 is by no means probable ; and though the early history of the Bishops 
 of Rome is fraught with fabulous and legendary tales, there is some 
 evidence that a church was erected about this period by Callistus. || 
 To the astonishment of the Heathen and the Jew, churches began to 
 
 * Lampridius, in his Life of Severus, Histor. Script. August., terms the Empress- 
 mother, " sancta mulier," which in point of force corresponds precisely with the epithets 
 bestowed on her by Jerome and Eusebius. 
 
 t " Ubi aliquos voluisset vel Rectores provinces dare, vel praepositos facere vel Pro- 
 curatores, nomina eoruin proponebat, dicebatq-.ie grave esse, qaum id Christiani et 
 Judaei facerent in praedicandis Sacerdotibus qui ordinandi sunt, non fieri in provinciarum 
 et Rectoribus, quibua et fortunes hominum committerentur et capita." (Lampridius.) 
 
 t " Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris ; quam sententiam usque adeo dilexit, ut 
 et in palatio et in publicis operibus praescribi juberet." (Ibid.) 
 
 " Cum Christiani quendam locum, qui publicus fuerat occupassent, contra propina- 
 rii dicerent, sibi eum deberi, rescripsit, melius esse ut ouomodocumque illic Deus colatur, 
 quam propinariis dedatur." (Ibid.) 
 
 || The church which now bears the name of S. Maria in Trastavere, and which is 
 undoubtedly an ancient structure, is said to have been built by Callistus ; and it is even 
 conjectured by Baronius, that this was the very building which Alexander allowed the 
 Christians to retain. (Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hiat.)
 
 STATE OF THE CHURCH. 4(> ~> 
 
 rise in different parts of the empire : * Christianity had as yet appeared 
 without temple or altar ; the religious assemblies of the faithful had 
 been held in privacy ; it was yet domestic worship. Even the Jew 
 had his public synagogue, or his more secluded proseucha ; but where 
 the Christian met was indicated by no separate and distinguished 
 dwelling ; the cemetery of their dead, the sequestered grove, the 
 private chamber, contained their peaceful assemblies. Their privacy 
 was at once their security and their danger. On the one hand, there 
 was no well-known edifice in which the furious and excited rabble 
 could surprise the general body of the Christians, and wreak its ven- 
 geance by indiscriminate massacre : on the other, the jealousy of the 
 government against all private associations would be constantly kept 
 on the alert ; and a religion without a temple was so inexplicable a 
 problem to pagan feeling, that it would strengthen and confirm all 
 the vague imputations of atheism, or of criminal licence in these mys- 
 terious meetings, which seemed to shun the light of day. The build- 
 ings which the faithful erected, as yet, were of modest height and 
 unpretending form ; but the religion was thus publicly recog- 
 nised as one of the various forms of worship which the govern- 
 ment did not prohibit from opening the gates of its temples to 
 mankind. 
 
 Notwithstanding this boasted tranquil state of the church, we must 
 not imagine that the day was cloudless, though the prospect were 
 cheering. The spirit of persecution was not allowed to become 
 extinct ; so that its voice was occasionally heard, and its victims were 
 known. It appears to be a more .difficult task to account for the 
 afflictions which the Christians were compelled to undergo during the 
 reign of Alexander, than during the days of Ileliogabalua. What has 
 been said of the latter forbidding every kind of worship except that 
 of the sun, makes it highly probable that the cemeteries were places 
 of great resort during that reign ; and the indiscriminatiug cruelty 
 of the Emperor constituted the catacombs at once the place of assem- 
 bly, of martyrdom, and of burial to thousands. Although Alexander 
 enacted no law by which Christianity was received among the " reli- 
 giones licitse," and we have no proof that he himself ever persecuted 
 the Christians, the Martyrologies mention the names of several per- 
 sons who suffered in the reign of Alexander ; and though these 
 records are at variance with what we have seen of his education and 
 character, we cannot condemn these traditions as being utterly with- 
 out foundation. It is possible, that though the Emperor himself was 
 inclined to toleration, he might have had persons around him who 
 thought it their duty to harass the Christians. We are informed 
 of several learned and distinguished men, principally lawyers, who 
 formed a kind of council ; and, while the Emperor was young, they 
 probably had the direction of many of the affairs of the state, the 
 
 TLlemnnt. as Gibbon observes, assigns the date of the earliest Christian churchea 
 to the rei<?n of Alexander -Severas ; Mr. Moyle, to that of Gallienus. The difference 
 is very Alight ; and, after all, the change from a private building set apart for a particu- 
 lar use, and a public one of no architectural pretensions, may have been almost imper- 
 ceptible. The passage of l.ampridius appears conclusive in favour of Tillemont. 
 VOL. I. 3 O
 
 466 BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. 
 
 chief of whom were Ulpian,* Paul, and Sabinus, whose decisions 
 have been preserved by Justinian. Unless the Martyrologies have 
 entirely spoken falsehood, Ulpian was a prime mover in many acts 
 of persecution. Lactantius says, that the lawyer bore Christianity 
 such implacable hatred, that in a work which he published on the 
 duties of a Proconsul, he made a collection of all the edicts and laws 
 which had been promulgated during the preceding reigns against the 
 Christians, doubtless to incite the Governors to proceed against them 
 in their respective provinces. Dr. Burton says, " It is much to be 
 regretted that such a collection, which, though painful, would be 
 highly interesting, is lost ; but we may learn, from some fragments 
 of the work which remain, that the author would decidedly have 
 encouraged intolerance in a Magistrate ; and since he enjoyed the 
 chief confidence of the Emperor, was his principal Secretary, and 
 Commander of the praetorian guards, it is not improbable that he 
 sometimes persuaded his master that the Christians should be 
 punished ;" f for he would not fail to make use of the power which 
 his office gave him, whenever he possessed an opportunity. 
 
 Considerable difficulties attend the history of Callistus, Bishop 
 of Rome. Baronius, the annalist, supposes him to have been mar- 
 tyred in the third year of Alexander ; and some ancient accounts 
 ascribe his death to the Emperor's own order. Other calculations place 
 his death in the year 222, or even earlier ; and some attribute his 
 martyrdom to the capricious cruelty of Heliogabalus. If we had suffi- 
 cient credulity to believe all that is contained in what are termed his 
 " Acts," he was thrown into a pit, after having been put to death in 
 some popular tumult. His name is particularly connected with one 
 of those cemeteries or excavations in the neighbourhood of Rome, as 
 furnishing places of refuge, meeting, and sepulture to the early 
 church. The number of the catacombs have been made to amount to 
 forty-three ; and one bears the name of Callistus to the present day. 
 Callistus was succeeded in his bishopric by Urban, a native of Rome, 
 and the son of Pontianus : as he came to the episcopate in the com- 
 parative peaceful time of Alexander Severus, he knew how to improve 
 that advantage for the benefit of the church. Popular commotions, 
 and the perverse disposition of some of the provincial Governors, 
 gave to several of the faithful an opportunity of glorifying God " in 
 the fires ; " amongst whom was Urban, who suffered in a brief but 
 sanguinary persecution, raised against the Christians by Turcius 
 Almachius, the Governor of Rome, in the absence, and without the 
 knowledge, of the Emperor. Many suffered with him, whom he 
 
 * Domitios Ulpianus was the tutor, friend, and Minister of Alexander : when tLe latter 
 became Emperor, one of his first acts was to recall Ulpian, who had beeii exiled by 
 Heliogabalus, and to place him at the head of his Council of State. He was also made 
 Secretary of State, and ultimately Praetorian Prefect. He lived in great repute for his 
 wise and virtuous administration, until the Emperor, probably at his suggestion, under- 
 took the dangerous task of reforming the army. The discontent of the soldiery broke 
 out into a mutiny ; and Ulpian, pursued by a body of them, was massacred in the pre- 
 sence of the Emperor and his mother, in tie year 288. Ulpiau has oLta.ned the praise 
 of all the Heathen ; but the Christians accuse him of a determined enmity to their 
 company. 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxiii.
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER ALEXANDER. 467 
 
 greatly encouraged by his example and counsel. The exact year in 
 which he was put to death is unknown. It is also stated, that a 
 youth named Agapetus, of the age of fifteen years, was apprehended 
 and condemned at Preneste in Italy, because he steadily refused to 
 sacrifice to idols : he was first scourged with whips, and then hung up 
 by the feet ; afterwards he had hot water cast upon him, and then was 
 thrown to the wild beasts ; none of which producing any impression, 
 he was beheaded with the sword. The Prefect, who is said to have been 
 an individual of the name of Antiochus, while witnessing the infliction 
 of these tortures, fell from his judicial seat, exclaiming that hia bowels 
 were in flames within him, and expired.* 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Death of Alexander Sevcrus, and his Mother Afamnuea Sanguinary Character of 
 Maximin, the Successor of Alexandei Reasons for hit Conduct Nature of this 
 Persecution Its Extent General Aspect of Christianity Persecution of Origen 
 The Montanists Literary Labours of Origen Martyrdom of Calepoditu 
 Pammachius Simplicius Quirilus Martina Hippolytus, a Christian Bishop 
 Who he was Death of Maximin Gordian the Character of his Reign Philip 
 His Treatment of the Christians Persecution at Alexandria Martyrdom of Metro, 
 Quinta, Apollonia, and Serapion Popular Character of the Persecution 
 Testimony of Origen Cyprian Importance of his Writings Hit Conversion /* 
 elected Bishop of Carthage Dethronement and Death of Philip Election of 
 Decius to the Empire Lamentable State of the Church Persecution morally 
 requisite Supposed Motives instigating the Persecution The Decian Edict It* 
 Operation Eusebius Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria Hit Account of lhi 
 Persecution Gregory of Nyxsa Gregory Thaumaturgus Description of the 
 Imperial Edict Deportment of the Sufferers Alexandrian Christians Pieriu* 
 Sabinus, the Roman Governor Capture of the Bishop of Alexandria Ch&remon 
 Celibacy at this Period unknown The Saracens Julian Hit Martyrdom 
 The Sufferings of Betas, Makar, Epimachus, Alexander, Ammoniarum, Mercu- 
 n'o, Dionysia, Heron, Ater, Is idorus, L ioscorus, and others Nemesion, Ammon, 
 Zeno, Ptolemy, and Ingcncs suffer The iron Scraper The Firet into which the 
 Martyrs were thrown in primitive Persecutions Fear of the Magistrates respecting 
 the Soldiery Martyrdom of Ischurion The Courage and Fortitude of Numidicus 
 Filial Affection of his Daughter Interesting Examples of Suffering Affecting 
 Testimony of Confessors Martyrdom of Fabian, Bishop of Rome Story of his 
 Conversion Cardinal Cusani State of Christianity in Rome Influence of the 
 Bishops //* Effects upon the ruling Powers The Persecution increases in Inten- 
 
 Other martyrs are recorded ; namely, Calepodina, a Minister of Rome, whose hody 
 was lirxt drawn through the city, and afterwards cast into the Tiber. Palmatins, 
 a Senator of Rome, with hi* wife and children, and others, hoth men and women, 
 to the number of forty-two, and also another noble Senator of Rome, named Simplicity, 
 all of whom together, and on the same day, had their heads struck off, which were 
 afterwards exhibited on various gates of the city as a terror to all, that none should pro- 
 fe.ss the name of Christ. Besides these, Quiritius also suffered, a nobleman of Rome, 
 who, with hia mother Julitta, and a great number more, were put to death. Also 
 Tiberius and Valerian, citizens of Rome, and brothers, suffered at the same time : first 
 being bruised and broken with bats, and afterwards beheaded. Vincentios, Bergomensis, 
 and Henry of Herford, mention Martina, a Christian virgin, who, after numerous bitter 
 punishments, beiug constant to the faith, was slain by the sword. Some of the above 
 probubly suffered under Maximin, or Decius. (Foxe't Acts and Monuments.) 
 
 3 o 2
 
 468 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 sill/ Death of Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem Origen is imprisoned Babylat , 
 Bishop of Antioch, incarcerated* and dies Eudanwn Retirement of Cyprian 
 The Cause of his Flight His own Vindication His Exile profitable to the Church 
 Continuance of the Persecution Retreat of Paul Asceticism Distinction 
 between the Monks and Ascetics Monachism, when it appeared Therapeutce 
 Clement Pythagoras Martyrdom of Agatha Brutal Conduct of Quintien 
 Christianity in Carthage The Lapsed Cause of Defection in the Church The 
 ThurificatiThe Sacrificati The LibellaticiWhatl Fearful State of Morality 
 in the Christian Community Leniency of the Confessors and Martyrs Especially 
 of Lucian Letters of Peace Instructions of Cyprian His Solicitude for the 
 ff elf are of the Church Conduct of the Roman Clergy Schism at Carthage 
 Novalus Felicissimus Fortunatus State of the Nation Cyprian returns, and 
 decides respecting the Lapsed Election of Cornelius to the Bishopric of Rome 
 Martyrdom of Moyses Julian Peter, and others Lucian and Marcian Trypho 
 and Respicius Cyril, Bishop of Gortyna Theodotus, and others Theodora 
 Warlike Preparations of Decius, and his subsequent Death. 
 
 ALEXANDER SEVERUS and his parent met with a tragical end. 
 An insurrection of the northern nations called the Emperor from that 
 state of tranquillity and repose into which he had fallen, to meet the 
 foe, who had already crossed the Rhine and Danube, and filled all 
 Italy and Rome with consternation. Notwithstanding the enemy was 
 both powerful and numerous, he arrested their progress, and daily 
 gained important advantages over them. But although Alexander was 
 enabled to vanquish the barbarians abroad, he met with far more 
 treacherous usage from his own countrymen, and in his own camp. 
 The legions who had taken a station at Moguntia, or Mentz, had been 
 fearfully corrupted in the reign of Heliogabalus, and ever since had 
 been accustomed to wallow in rapine and licentiousness. Alexander 
 could not endure their lawlessness, nor they his discipline. The dis- 
 affected part exclaimed loudly against the well-known penuriousness 
 of Mammaea, who was then, as at other times, in the camp with her 
 son. These mutinous feelings were greatly increased by the artifices 
 of Maximin, who, gathering the soldiers together, harangued them in 
 violent and incendiary language, " to abandon a niggardly woman, 
 and a dispirited boy, who could tamely truckle to a mother's tyranny ; 
 and to join themselves to a man of courage, who had long been their 
 companion in arms, and an experienced Captain." Language such 
 as this did not fail to produce a corresponding impression in the 
 minds of those to whom it was addressed ; and the soldiers resolved to 
 put Alexander to death, which they shortly afterwards eifected. 
 
 The peace which Christianity had enjoyed under the well-disposed 
 Alexander, was disturbed by the violent accession of a Thracian 
 savage, who, immediately after the murder of the late Emperor, was 
 declared ruler, and a reign of terror may be then said to have begun. 
 The first care of Maximin was to kill all the persons who had been 
 attached to his predecessor,* and it was calculated that not less than 
 
 It is said by Ensebius, (Hist. Eccles., lib. vi., cap. 28,) "that Maximin, being 
 inflamed with hatred against the family of Alexander, which was filled with Christians, 
 was Induced to commence a persecution of these people ; but he adds, that the Emperor 
 ordered the Bit-hops alone to be put to death, as the authors of evangelic.il preaching. 
 Now, unless 1 am altogether deceived, these accounts are apparently quite repugnau
 
 MAXIMIN, A PERSECUTOR. 469 
 
 four thousand met their death in this \vay : Eusebius also relates 
 the important fact, that there were several Christians in the imperial 
 household who suffered among the rest. Maximin, doubtless, cared 
 little or nothing about religion : it is certain, however, that the 
 beginning of his reign was marked by a special persecution against 
 the Christians. " He is said to have aimed his measures particularly 
 at the head of the church ; and the scheme seems to have been 
 so well imagined, and the execution so immediate, that we must 
 trace it to some persons of more calculation and contrivance than the 
 savage who was now upon the throne. He was, perhaps, pleased to 
 have the number of victims increased, and the more so if he were 
 persuaded that the Christians were attached to his predecessor : but 
 he probably knew little of any difference of creeds ; and the persecu- 
 tion may be ascribed, in the first instance, to other persons rather than 
 to himself. We may be sure, that there were many who had long 
 watched the rising sect with jealousy and hatred. The favours which 
 they had received from Alexander and his mother must have greatly 
 displeased all real supporters of the old religion ; and if we knew 
 more of the plot, which raised Maximin to the throne, we should pro- 
 bably find that a wish to suppress Christianity was one of the causes 
 which led to the death of Alexander. When the deed was perpetrated, 
 it was, perhaps, politic to strike terror into the Christians, who might 
 otherwise have been inclined to avenge the loss of their protector." * 
 
 The persecution appears not to have been universal, and, doubtless, 
 it depended in a considerable degree upon the will or caprice of the 
 Magistrates and Governors. The decree of the tyrant, probably, did 
 not embrace all the Christian Bishops and teachers, f but merely such 
 
 to each other. If his hatred to the family of Alexander gave rise to this fresh persecu- 
 tion of the Christiana, the tyrant's fury onght not to hare been directed against the 
 Bishops, of whom there were none connected with that family, but against the family 
 itself. In doing this he would have taken his revenge ; whereas, by his punishment of 
 the Bishops, no sort of evil or detriment whatever could have been felt by the imme- 
 diate objects of his hatred, the surviving Ministers and servants of his predecessor. 
 The difficulty, however, that here suggests itself, will be overcome, if by KOTOS, the 
 ' anger or hatred,' here spoken of by Eusebius, we understand a fear united with 
 hatred, an interpretation that seems perfectly admissible ; for whom we fear, we natur- 
 ally regard with hatred. The tyrant then feared that the family of the murdered 
 Alexander might conspire against him, and endeavour to avenge the slaughter of their 
 excellent master ; and hence he was led to regard the different members of it with a 
 deep and rancorous hatred. With a view to deliver himself from this state of anxiety, 
 he resolved on putting the Christian Bishops to death, trusting that the Ministers and 
 servants of Alexander, being thus deprived of their advisers and guides, would not have 
 it in their power to concert among themselves anything of which he need be apprehen- 
 sive. Some one, no doubt, who imagined himself well informed on the subject, had sug- 
 gested to the Emperor, that the Christians depended entirely on the guidance and will 
 of the Bishops, and that, consequently, were these to be taken from them, every ground 
 for apprehension would be effectually removed. Unless the matter be explained in this 
 way, I cannot possibly understand how Maximin'a hatred of the family of Alexander 
 should have given occasion for the slaughter of the Christian Bishops." (Mosheim's 
 Commentaries.) 
 
 Burton's I,ect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxiv. 
 
 t " Although it is expressly stated by Eusebins, that Maximin commanded all the 
 Christian Bishops and teachers to be put to death, I yet very much doubt whether the 
 tyrant's injunctions actually reached to such a direful and inhuman extent : I suspect, 
 rather, that the Emperor's enmity was confined merely to those Christian teachers who 
 h;.d lived on terms of intimacy with Alexander and his mother, and, with the con-
 
 470 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 of them as lived on terms of intimacy and friendship with his pre- 
 decessor : few instances of the martyrdom of Christian Prelates are 
 met with during his reign, nor were they in any considerable degree 
 persecuted. It is obvious, that in certain provinces the oppression 
 of the Christians was, under the government of this Emperor, 
 carried on upon a more extensive scale, its fury not being restricted 
 to any class of them in particular, but directing itself indiscriminately 
 against them all ; and, perhaps, may be attributed not so much to 
 the edict of the Emperor, as to the injustice of men in power, or to 
 the vox populi of the community, who were ready to imagine them- 
 selves grieved by the toleration of the Christian religion. We there- 
 fore can discover no difficulty in giving full credence to the state- 
 ments of those who maintain that, for the whole of the three years 
 during which Maximin reigned, the Christians were, in various places, 
 exposed to all the evils of persecution.* 
 
 nivance of the former, bad been the instruments of converting a considerable portion of 
 the imperial family to the Christian faith. The chief of these was Origen, who 
 Maximin knew had not long before been called to court, and, therefore, named him as 
 one of the first who was to be sought after, and put to death. The testimony of Orosius 
 is clear as to this. (Hit., lib. vii., cap. xix.) It is well known, that in order to avoid 
 the Emperor's fury, Origen was obliged to remain for two years in concealment 
 at Csesarea. Being thus disappointed of finding him, Maximin vented his indignation 
 on his two most intimate friends, the one a man of eminence named Ambrosius, the 
 other, the Presbyter Protoctaetus : who, after being loaded with injuries and insult, 
 were, by his command, banished into Germany. (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 
 xxviii.) Besides these, the instances appear to have been very few, merely one here 
 and there, of Christian Priests and Bishops, who were persecuted with any degree of 
 severity under the reign of this Emperor. Maximinus, says Sulpitius Severn?, (Hist. 
 Sacr., lib. ii., cap. 32, > ' nonnullarum ecclesiarum clericos vexavit.' But in what way 
 are we to account for this paucity of martyrs and confessors amougst the Bishops and 
 teachers, if Maximin, by his edict, gave command for their entire extermination ? The 
 page of history would have been crowded with the acts of some hundreds of martyrs of 
 the sacred order, put to death under this most inhuman Emperor, had his denunciation 
 been directed against the Pastors of the church generally, and without discrimination. 
 Every seeming obscurity, with regard to this matter, becomes at once dissipated, if, 
 conformably to what is expressly stated by ancient writers, we conceive a hatred or fear 
 of the family of Alexander to have given rise to this persecution of the Christian teach- 
 ers ; for this one circumstance alone may very justly lead us to conclude, that the 
 Emperor's fury was directed merely against snch of them as had lived on terms 
 of friendship or intimacy with Alexander and his imperial family." (Mosheim's 
 Commentaries.) 
 
 * Mosheim's Commentaries, On the Affairs of the Christians, vol. iii., p. 63. This 
 indefatigable historian further says, that the persecution of the Christians under Maxi- 
 min must be attributed to other causes than to commands which he issued. Origen 
 says, that earthquakes had been felt in divers places, and that the populace, after their 
 accustomed manner, attributing this calamity to their toleration of the Christian religion, 
 commenced a severe persecution against those who professed it. Add to this, what is 
 said by him, to the same effect, in his " Exhortation to the Martyrs," which was written 
 under the reign of Maximin. To the same cause, and not to Maximin's cruelty, is to 
 be ascribed the afflictions experienced in Cappadocia, and the neighbouring regions ; 
 which, however, were, in a certain degree, augmented by the injustice of Serenianus. 
 For this we have the testimony of Firmilian, in his epistle to Cyprian. (Cypriani Opera, 
 Epist. Ixxiv., p. 128. Edit. 8vo. Paris, 1836.) From the same authority we also 
 learn, that it was not in all the provinces that the Christians were persecuted, but merely 
 in those which had more particularly experienced the natural calamities referred to. If 
 this persecution were founded on an imperial edict, it would have taken place in every 
 part of the Roman world. Probably, in the first effervescence of his wrath, he might 
 issue orders for the apprehension of Origen and certain others, whom he knew to have 
 lived on terms of intimacy with the preceding Emperor and hia mother ; but that after a 
 short period, the aspect of affairs being changed, and other things drawing off his atten- 
 tion, this sudden gust of passion was subdued without producing any further effects.
 
 CAUSE OF THE PERSECUTION. 4/1 
 
 Christianity in the imperial city experienced the persecution during 
 the reign of Maximin somewhat severely, although he himself did not 
 visit the capital during any part of the three years that he held the 
 empire : Vitalianus, who commanded the praetorian guards at Rome, 
 was a man of singular cruelty. Poutianus, the Bishop of that see, is 
 supposed by some writers to have been put to death, for his freedom 
 and boldness in reproving the idolatry of the inhabitants of that city, 
 and in the island of Sardinia, whence he was banished.* His successor, 
 Anteros, held the see only one month ; which, perhaps, confirms the 
 statement made by Baronius, that he also suffered martyrdom. There 
 can be no doubt that the eastern churches felt the fury of the perse- 
 cution greatly, and some particulars have been preserved to us relat- 
 ing to Cappadocia and Palestine. One writer asserts, without any 
 hesitation, that Origen was the chief cause of the persecution excited 
 by Maximin ; and though the authority is slight, the remark may be 
 so far true, that the great fame of Origen had contributed to raise iu 
 the Heathen a desire to exterminate the Christians. Origen was him- 
 self a sufferer ; and for a while he was obliged to withdraw from his 
 literary retreat at Caesarea. His two pupils, Atheuodorus and Theo- 
 dorus, left him and went to Alexandria ; from which we may, per- 
 haps, infer, that Egypt was one of those countries which was not 
 visited by persecution ; and in Alexandria the two brothers would 
 have the advantage of hearing lectures from Dionysius. Origen now 
 availed himself of the invitation which Firmilianus had given him to 
 go and see him in his own country. Firmilianus was Bishop 
 of Caesarea in Cappadocia ; and at first it was perhaps safer to reside 
 there than in Palestine. But Origen soon found that the storm fol- 
 lowed him. This part of Asia Minor had lately been visited by tre- 
 mendous earthquakes, which swallowed up whole cities, and the 
 calamity, as usual, was attributed to the Christians. Serenianus was 
 now the Governor of Cappadocia ; and Firmilianus, describing this 
 period after a lapse of twenty years, speaks of him as a persecutor of 
 singular severity. It is remarkable, however, that in the midst of 
 these troubles the heresy of Montanus made some progress in that 
 part of Asia. A female of that persuasion had the good fortune 
 to predict the earthquake ; and the completion of her prophecy 
 confirmed the pretensions to inspiration which were made by the 
 Moutanists. Origen, in the mean time, was enabled to save himself 
 by the kindness of a female named Juliana, who lived at Csesarea.f 
 and who afforded him for two years an asylum in her house. She 
 also supplied him with the use of a library ; and the greatest of all 
 his literary works was, perhaps, carried on with much activity during 
 these two years' imprisonment at Cappadocia. J 
 
 positively declares, that his death occurred at the commencement of the 
 following reign. (Kcclea. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 29.) 
 
 t Palladium, Laimac, cap. li. ; Kusch., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 1". 
 
 t Burton's Lectures on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxiv. Origen'a laborious edition of the 
 St'ptuagiut i alluded to. The Jews were accused of having purposely altered it ; and 
 tlie mere error* of transcribers, during a period of four hundred years, could not fail to 
 have introduced many variations. Origen undertook to publixb a more correct edition 
 ot' it ; or, rather, to bring together all the known trautfLttioub which had been made of 
 the Old Tcstumout into Greek.
 
 472 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Among several, of whom we have some indistinct account, who suf- 
 fered in this outrage upon Christianity, were Calepodius, a Minister 
 of Rome, whom the persecutors first dragged about the streets of 
 that city, and afterwards fastened a millstone about his neck, and 
 threw him into the Tiber ; Pammachius, one of the Senators, who, it 
 is said, with his wife and children, and others to the number of forty- 
 two, together with Simplicius, another Senator, were beheaded, and 
 their heads affixed to the gates of the city to deter others from 
 embracing Christianity ; Quiritus, a nobleman of Rome, with his 
 mother Julia, and others, were put to the torture, and various kinds 
 of death ; among whom also was Martina, a noble maiden, who, 
 when neither persuasions nor torments could prevail upon her to 
 renounce the faith of Christ, perished by the sword. Some would add 
 to this number the name of Hippolytus, a Christian Bishop ; but 
 Jerome does not mention the name of the church over which he pre- 
 sided. Photius says, he was a disciple of Irenseus, and also of Cle- 
 ment of Alexandria, and tutor of Origen. He was a considerable 
 writer ; but few of his works have come down to us. Jerome styles 
 him " a most holy and eloquent man ;" Chrysostom gives to him the 
 honourable epithets of " a source of light, a faithful witness, a most 
 holy Doctor, and a man full of sweetness and charity." Theodoret 
 classes him with Irenseus, and designates both " spiritual fountains in 
 the church." Some of the Eastern calendars say that he was put to 
 death by drowning ; others, that for the profession of his faith in the 
 Redeemer, he was tied to a wild horse, and dragged through fields, 
 bushes, and stony places, until he expired. Prudentius tells us, that 
 during this brief persecution many were slain and buried in heaps ; 
 and, doubtless, many more would have perished, had not the 
 Almighty, in compassion to his people, shortened the days of the per- 
 secutor. The reign of the tyrant lasted only three years, of which 
 period it may be said, that his persecution of the Christians was, to a 
 certain extent, local ; his cruelties to all mankind were insatiable, and 
 not to be tolerated. The Senate and people of Rome stood in fear 
 of him, and prayed that he might never be seen among them.* 
 Most of the provinces groaned under the burdens which Maximin 
 imposed upon them ; and Africa first showed its utter detestation of 
 him, by means of his Procurator, who collected the revenues of the 
 Emperor with insupportable outrage and extortion, pillaging the 
 goods, and taking away the lives, of many excellent men. A con- 
 spiracy was formed, and Maximin was destroyed. 
 
 Maximin was succeeded by Gordian, whose reign was, on the 
 whole, advantageous to the empire, and a period of tranquillity to the 
 Christian church. The " banished ones" were recalled, and general 
 confidence among all classes of society was restored : this may be 
 satisfactorily inferred from the meetings which were held in different 
 parts of the world for the suppression of heresy. Indeed, all the 
 Emperors who were born in the Asiatic provinces, were the least 
 
 * " For they had heard, that in the method of his discipline, he crucified some, stuffed 
 others into the hodies of heasts newly slain, cast some alive to wild heasts, and cud- 
 telled others to death, without distinction of rank or quality." (Echard.)
 
 STATE OF THE CHRISTIANS UNDER GORDIAN AND PHILIP. 4~<l 
 
 unfriendly to Christianity. Their religion, whatever it might be, was 
 less uncongenial to some of the forms of the new faith ; it was a kind 
 of eclecticism of different Eastern religions, which, in general, was 
 least inclined to intolerance ; at any rate, it was uninfluenced by 
 national pride, which was now become the main support of Roman 
 Paganism. Gordian was a mere stripling, who, however, with the 
 assistance of his father-in-law Misitheus, a man of great fortitude and 
 courage, so ordered public affairs, that for the six years during the 
 reign of his son, the Christians enjoyed a season of uninterrupted 
 security and repose. In the year 241, Sapor, the King of Persia, 
 invaded the Eastern frontier of the empire, when Gordian marched 
 against him, and defeated him. He did not, however, return 
 home to enjoy the fruits of his victory ; not having been able to pre- 
 vent an aspiring oriental soldier in his army, of the name of Philip, 
 from murdering Misitheus, and usurping the office of Praetorian Pree- 
 fect ; Gordian himself, within a short time after, fell under the 
 machinations of the perfidious Arab, who immediately laid hold of 
 the imperial sceptre, and, in conjunction with his son, for the space 
 of nearly five years administered the government, during the whole 
 of which period he proved himself a firm friend and protector of 
 Christianity. 
 
 The kindness which Philip manifested towards the Christians, gave 
 rise to a report which obtained very general credit with the writers 
 of after-days ; namely, that both the Emperor and his son, having 
 renounced the superstitious worship of the heathen deities, were pri- 
 vately devoted to the Christian religion ; but whether this report is 
 deserving of credit, or ought rather to be regarded as a vulgar tale 
 that arose out of the Emperor's kindness and good-will towards the 
 Christians, has been made the subject of much disputation among the 
 learned. 
 
 About the year 248, which was the last year but one of the reign 
 of Philip, a persecution of the Christians broke out at Alexandria. 
 The Emperor was, doubtless, altogether unconscious of it, and it 
 appears to have been a mere ebullition of popular feeling. The advo- 
 cates of idolatry were enraged at the progress of the Gospel ; and 
 great cruelties were exercised in urging the Christians to abjure their 
 faith. This continued till the Easter of 249, when the Heathen began 
 to quarrel among themselves from some political differences, and thus 
 a short respite was given to the Christians ; but their sufferings were 
 only a prelude to a much more extensive persecution. The names 
 of those who, at this season, were martyred for the sake of Christ, that 
 have come down to us, are but few. Eusebius, who quotes from the 
 epistle which Dionysius wrote to Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, relates 
 the conflict through which the church had to pass. " The persecu- 
 tion with us did not begin with the imperial edict, but preceded it a 
 whole year. And a certain prophet and poet, inauspicious to the 
 city, whoever he was, excited the mass of the Heathen against us, 
 stirring them up to their native superstition. Stimulated by him, 
 and taking full liberty to exercise any kind of wickedness, they con- 
 sidered this the only piety, and the worship of their demons, to slay 
 
 VOL. i. 3 p
 
 474 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 us. First, then, seizing a certain aged man named Metra, they called 
 upon him to utter impious expressions, and, as he did not obey, they 
 beat his body with clubs, and pricked his face and eyes ; after 
 which they led him away to the suburbs, where they stoned him. 
 Next they led a woman named Quinta, who was a believer, to the 
 temple of an idol, and attempted to force her to worship ; but when 
 she turned away in disgust, they tied her by the feet, and dragged 
 her through the whole city, over the rough stones of the paved streets, 
 dashing her against the millstones, and scourging her at the same 
 time, until they brought her to the same place, where they stoned 
 her. Then, with one accord, all rushed upon the houses of the pious, 
 and whomsoever of their neighbours they knew, they drove thither in 
 all haste, and despoiled and plundered them, setting apart the more 
 valuable of the-articles for themselves ; but the more common and 
 wooden furniture they threw about, and burned in the roads, present- 
 ing a scene like a city taken by the enemy. The brethren retired, 
 and gave way ; and, like those to whom Paul bears witness, they also 
 regarded the plunder of their goods with joy. They also seized that 
 admirable virgin, Apollonia, then in advanced age, and, beating her 
 jaws, they broke out all her teeth ; and, kindling a fire before the 
 city, threatened to burn her alive, unless she would repeat their 
 impious expressions. She appeared at first to shrink a little; but 
 when suffered to go, she suddenly sprang into the fire, and was con- 
 sumed. They also seized a certain Serapion in his house, and after 
 torturing him with the severest cruelties, and breaking ah 1 his limbs, 
 threw him headlong from an upper story. And, further, there was no 
 way, no public road, no lane, where we could walk, whether by day 
 or by night, but they, at all times and places, cried out, that whoever 
 would refuse to repeat those impious expressions, he should be imme- 
 diately dragged forth and burned. These things continued to prevail, 
 for the most part, after this manner. But as the sedition and a civil 
 war overtook these wretches, their cruelty was diverted from us to one 
 another. We then drew a little breath, whilst their rage against us 
 was abated." Thus far Eusebius.* 
 
 We cannot fail, at this place, to revert to the remarkable produc- 
 tions of Origen, who wrote in these days concerning the persecution 
 which the church had hitherto endured, its external condition, and its 
 future prospects. He says, with regard to the earlier persecutions, 
 " Although the Christians, who were commanded not to defend them- 
 selves by violence against their enemies, complied with this tender 
 and humane precept ; yet that which they never could have obtained, 
 however powerful they might have been, had they been permitted to 
 go to war, a few (so few, that they may be easily numbered) have, at 
 times, suffered death for the Christiana religion ; and thus God has 
 prevented a war of extermination agaijist the whole body of Chris- 
 tians ; for he wished their continuance he wished that the whole 
 earth should be filled with their salu^ry and most holy doctrine. 
 And, on the other hand, that the weaker brethren might take breath, 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 41.
 
 Engraved 
 
 >! A
 
 ORIGEN'S OPINION CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 475 
 
 and be relieved from the fear of death, God cared for the believers by 
 so scattering, through his own mere will, all assaults upon them, that 
 neither Emperor nor Governor, nor the multitude, should prevail 
 against them further." He says, in reference to his own times, 
 " God hath constantly caused the number of Christians to increase ; 
 their number is still daily on the increase, and he hath already given 
 to them the free exercise of their religion, although a thousand obsta- 
 cles opposed the propagation of the doctrine of Jesus in the world. 
 But since it was God who willed that the doctrine of Jesus should 
 become a blessing to the Heathen, all the assaults of men against 
 other Christians have been brought to shame. And the more the 
 Emperors, the Governors, and the multitude have sought to oppress 
 the faithful, the more powerful have these latter become." He 
 says, that among the multitude of those who embraced Christianity, 
 were also many rich people, many in high offices, and rich and well- 
 born women ; that now a Christian Pastor might obtain honour and 
 respect ; but, nevertheless, that the contempt with which others 
 treated him was greater than the reverence with which he was 
 regarded by believers. He remarks, that, notwithstanding all this, 
 even yet the horrible accusations against the Christians obtained 
 belief with many who abominated holding the slightest intercourse 
 with them, even speaking to them. He writes, that through 
 God's will the persecutions against the church had now long since 
 ceased ; but, casting a glance into futurity, he adds, that this tran- 
 quillity would readily cease in its turn, whenever the calumniators 
 of Christianity should again have spread abroad their sentiments; 
 that the cause of the numerous seditions (during the later years 
 of this Emperor) was the great number of the Christians, who had 
 increased so much from not being persecuted. He foresaw, also, that 
 the persecutions had not yet reached their limit, and that the opi- 
 nion, " that the downfal of the state religion, and the irresistible 
 propagation of Christianity, were bringing disaster on the Roman 
 empire, would, sooner or later, again revive the flames of persecu- 
 tion ;" but, he adds, " When God wills, we enjoy, in a wonderful 
 manner, peace in a world which hates us, and we confide in Him 
 who says, ' Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' He has 
 indeed fulfilled his word ! Inasmuch, then, as He who has overcome 
 the world wills that we also should overcome, since he has received 
 power from the Father, we confide in his victory. But if he will 
 that we should again contend and battle for the faith, let the adver- 
 saries come, and we will say to them, ' We are able to do all things 
 through Him that makes us strong, Jesus Christ our Lord !"' He 
 was persuaded that hereafter all other religions would fall to the 
 ground, and Christianity alone would prevail.* What Origen pre- 
 dicted, ere long took place. 
 
 It was at this period of the history of the church that Cyprian is 
 first introduced to our notice, who had succeeded Donatus in the 
 bishopric of Carthage. A memoir of his life was written by Pontius, 
 
 Xi'auder'i History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. i., p. 128. 
 3 1> '_>'
 
 4/6 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 his Deacon ; and it is much to be regretted, that one who must have 
 known him so intimately, should have written in so incompetent a 
 manner. The information to be gathered from this quarter is not 
 only limited, but almost useless ; much more that is intrinsically 
 valuable may be collected from his own letters, which are happily 
 extant, and which constitute a valuable treasury of ecclesiastical his- 
 tory, notwithstanding the contumely and contempt with which cer- 
 tain modern writers have spoken of all the works of the Fathers 
 of the church. In the epistles of this early martyr, the spirit, taste, 
 discipline, and habits of the times among Christians are strongly 
 delineated, nor have we in this century any account to be compared 
 with them. He was a professor of oratory in the city of Carthage, 
 and a man of wealth and dignity. Caecilius, a Carthaginian Presby- 
 ter, had the happiness, under God, to conduct him to the knowledge 
 of Christ ; and as a recognition of his debt of gratitude, he 
 subsequently assumed the name of him who had been instrumental 
 in his conversion, which took place about the year 246, two years 
 before he was chosen Bishop of Carthage. Thirteen years completed 
 his Christian career. He did not proceed by slow and painful steps 
 of argument and reason to the elevation which he reached ; but, by 
 the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit, he appears to have escaped 
 those shoals and quicksands of false doctrine and heresy which had 
 sadly tarnished the religious character and Christian profession of his 
 eastern brethren, and rapidly to have arrived at " a perfect man, unto 
 the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." It was no 
 feigned virtue that advanced him in the estimation of the people. 
 The love of Christ preponderated in him above all earthly considera- 
 tions. The widow, the orphan, and the poor found in him a sympa- 
 thizing benefactor. The Presbyter Caecilius beheld with great delight 
 the expanding virtues of his pupil, and at his death recommended to 
 the care of Cyprian his wife and children. It was with reluctance 
 that he observed the designs of the people to choose him the Bishop 
 of that diocess : he retired to avoid their solicitations ; but his house 
 was besieged, and his retreat rendered impossible. Although he was 
 raised to this responsible situation in the church almost by acclama- 
 tion, his election was opposed by five Presbyters, one of whom was 
 Novatus, whose factious disposition was the cause of much subse- 
 quent trouble to Cyprian. The Bishop received his appointment at a 
 very critical period of the history of the church. 
 
 The death of Philip shortly followed. He was enjoying in compa- 
 rative tranquillity possession of the empire, when the Goths, who had 
 been previously repelled by Gordian, again passed through Mysia into 
 the province of Thrace, spreading consternation and ruin in their march. 
 The Emperor forthwith despatched Marinus, a valiant and expert 
 General, to arrest their progress : this he accomplished, and subse- 
 quently, by the assistance of the soldiery, he resolved to assume the 
 post of Emperor, and dethrone Philip ; in great consternation Philip 
 appealed to the Senate of Rome, and Decius was commissioned to 
 lead an army against the Goths, and also to chastise the insolence 
 of Mariuus. In the latter he was forestalled by the soldiers, who
 
 DECIUS, EMPEROR. 477 
 
 were as ready to deprive the usurper of life as they were to invest 
 him with empire : him they slew, and chose Decius in his room. 
 Philip, enraged at this double treachery, resolved to march against 
 Decius in person ; but the army, disgusted with the tyrannical beha- 
 viour of the Emperor, and conceiving that Decius was more worthy 
 of the throne, deprived Philip of life in the city of Verona. This 
 event took place about the month of July, 249. 
 
 The name of Decius stands prominent on the list of persecutors. 
 Preceding Emperors connived at the ill treatment of the Christians, 
 and Severus had issued a special edict against them ; but from the 
 death of that Emperor to the accession of Decius, a period of nearly 
 thirty-eight years, the church had been free from general molestation, 
 with the exception of the sufferings inflicted upon it by the barbarian 
 Maximinus. As it had often happened before, that a persecuting 
 government had followed a favourable one, as Marcus Aurelius had 
 followed Antoninus Pius, and Maximin the Thracian, Alexander Seve- 
 rus, so it happened now, when Decius Trajanus, after conquering 
 Philip the Arabian, had ascended the throne. It is but natural to 
 imagine, that when an Emperor, zealously devoted to Paganism, 
 followed one favourable to the Christians, he should feel himself 
 bound, on that very account, to renew with redoubled strictness and 
 severity, and to execute most thoroughly, the older laws, which had 
 fallen into disuse, against the Christians, who, during his predeces- 
 sor's reign, had increased so widely. The repose of the church, and 
 its exemption from persecution, had exerted a lamentable influence ; 
 many, unmindful of their vocation to " contend earnestly for the 
 faith," had suffered themselves to grow slothful ; many who were 
 destitute of vital Christianity had crept into the church, or remained 
 in it because they were descended from Christian parents ; rash and 
 unwarrantable speculations were beginning to be entertained, and 
 Cyprian informs us, that the manners of the Christians, and even 
 of the Clergy, had been gradually becoming corrupt. He speaks of a 
 secular, ostentatious spirit being very apparent. Marriages were 
 formed with Heathens ; and even Bishops were seen to neglect their 
 flocks, and employ themselves in the most ordinary occupations, with 
 a view to obtain money. It appeared absolutely necessary, that the 
 power and truth of faith should be awakened by some new and terrible 
 struggle, that the church at the same time should be purified, and the 
 real and genuine members of it separated from the pretended. The 
 believer needed again to go through the purifying influence of fire. So 
 Cyprian, says Neander, after the first storm of persecution had subsided, 
 taught the church of Carthage to view the whole. " When the cause 
 of sickness," said he to his flock, " is once known, then the remedy 
 for the wound may be found. The Lord wished to prove his people, 
 because the life which God commands had been forgotten in the long 
 time of our tranquillity. A divine chastisement hath, therefore, 
 roused the church, fast sinking as it then was, into sleep and care- 
 lessness. Although by our sins we deserved more, yet the merciful 
 God has so managed, that all which befell us appeared to be rather a 
 trial than a persecution. While men forgot what the believers did in
 
 4/3 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 the time of the Apostles, and what they ought always to do, they 
 gave their minds, with insatiable desire, to the increase of their 
 temporal power. Many of the Bishops, who ought by example and 
 exhortation to lead the rest, neglected their divine calling, and busied 
 themselves with the administration of worldly affairs." Since such, 
 therefore, was the state of many churches, it is easy to see that a 
 persecution, which in its first course seemed likely to be very severe, 
 must have made a great impression on persons unaccustomed to 
 trial.* 
 
 The motives which induced Decius to " stretch forth his hands to 
 vex certain of the church," do not fully appear. Eusebius says, it 
 was from hatred to Philip, who had systematically favoured the 
 Christians ; -f- and perhaps we might not be far from the truth, were 
 we to conjecture that the reason why Decius persecuted the Chris- 
 tians, was similar to that which actuated Maximin, a fear that they 
 might attempt to revenge the death of his predecessor, who had 
 greatly patronized them, and by their rebellious machinations over- 
 throw the newly-established government. Gregory of Nyssa ascribes 
 it entirely to the Emperor's attachment to the old religion, and his 
 dislike to the progress which the Gospel had been making. Pagan- 
 ism would not fail to discover, in the Christianized state of society, 
 one cause of the decline of the empire ; and the partial protection of 
 a foreign religion by a foreign Emperor now that Christianity had 
 begun to erect temple against temple, altar against altar, and the 
 Christian Bishop met the Pontiff on equal terms around the imperial 
 throne would be considered among the flagrant departures from the 
 sound wisdom of ancient Rome. However, be that as it may, it was 
 certainly the intention of the Emperor completely to crush Chris- 
 tianity. Eusebius says, quoting from Dionysius of Alexandria, that 
 the persecution was " horribly terrific ; " and describes it as having 
 been of such a dreadful nature, that, had it been possible, it would 
 have dismayed even the elect themselves. At the conclusion of the 
 year 249, or at the commencement of 250, an edict was issued by 
 Decius which ordered that the Christians should be compelled to 
 sacrifice to the gods.J This mandate was sent to all the Governors 
 
 * Neander, Hist, of the Christ. Church, vol. L, p. 130. 
 
 t Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 39. 
 
 t Acta Pionii, apud Baron, ad An. 254. The precise nature of the edict is discussed 
 by Mosheim. (De Rebus ante Constant. Saec. III., sect, ii.) The edict itself was 
 printed at Thoulouse in J 664 ; but it bears great marks of being spurious. (See Tille- 
 mont, Memoirs, torn, iii., art. 3, p. 310.) This persecution is reckoned the seventh 
 by Eusebius, Jerome, Augustine, Orosius, and Sulp. Severus : others make it the 
 eighth. The edict of Decius is not extant. It was probably verbose, with a preamble, 
 setting forth, " That the worship of the immortal gods was essential to the preserva- 
 tion of that empire, which, by the patronage of those deities, had been established 
 and hitherto upheld ; that the Emperors, Decius and his son, were Princes most reli- 
 gious and gracious ; that, in prosecution of their general design to restore the purity 
 of Roman manners, they were desirous of delivering the empire from the recent and 
 criminal superstitions of the Christians. But as it was the duty of a humane Judge to 
 endeavour to reclaim, rather than to punish, those deluded enthusiasts, the Emperors 
 commanded, that if the Christians consented to cast a few grains of incense upon the 
 altars of the idols, they should be dismissed from the tribunal in safety, and with 
 applause ; but if they persisted in their criminal obstinacy, they should then be capitally 
 punished."
 
 CHARACTER OF THE DECIAN PERSECUTION. 479 
 
 of provinces, who were threatened with bitter punishments them- 
 selves, if they jproved remiss in applying insults and tortures to the 
 Christians. In order to give full effect to the sanguinary law, Decius 
 caused strict inquiry to he made respecting all persons suspected of non- 
 observance of the state religion, and the faithful were to be required 
 to comply with the ceremonies which were observed by the Paganism 
 of Rome. If they refused, threats, and afterwards tortures, were to 
 be made use of to compel obedience. If they proved faithful and 
 undaunted, then sentence of death was pronounced upon them, and 
 especially upon the Bishops, whom the Emperor detested the most : 
 but the intention was at first to try how far they could succeed with 
 the Christians by commands, by threats, by persuasion, and light 
 punishments ; they proceeded gradually to more severe measures ; and 
 the persecution by degrees extended itself into the provinces from the 
 metropolis, where the presence of the Emperor, a declared enemy 
 of the church, made the persecution at first the most severe. Wher- 
 ever the edict of the Emperor was carried into execution, the first 
 step was publicly to appoint a day on which all the Christians were to 
 appear before the Magistrate, abjure their religion, and offer sacrifice. 
 Those who fled their country before this day, escaped with the confis- 
 cation of their property, and a prohibition of their return, under the 
 penalty of death. But when those who were unwilling to sacrifice at 
 once their earthly possessions for a crown of glory in heaven ; and 
 waited for something that might open a middle path for them, 
 did not appear of their own accord on the appointed day, the 
 court of inquiry,* composed of the Magistrate and five of the prin- 
 cipal citizens, began its operation. After repeated tortures, those 
 who remained steadfast were thrown into prison, where hunger and 
 thirst were employed to weaken their resolution. It does not appear 
 that the punishment of death was very readily resorted to. Many 
 Magistrates, who were more interested in extorting money than in 
 executing the laws, or who wished to spare the Christians, agreed 
 with them, that, although they did not really offer sacrifice, yet they 
 would suffer a certificate (libellum) to be set forth, declaring that 
 they had complied with the regulation of the edict. f Others, while 
 they were anxious to escape the putting forth such a document, yet, 
 without ever even appearing before a Magistrate, obtained the entry 
 of their names in the magisterial protocol, or register, among those 
 who had been obedient to the law. (Acta facientes.)\. Many erred 
 ignorantly; thinking that they remained true to their faith when 
 they did nothing that was contrary to their religion, (neither offered 
 sacrifice, nor burnt incense, &c.,) but only allowed others to say 
 that they had done so. The church, however, always condemned this 
 as a tacit abjuration of their faith. 
 
 Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, gives a very graphic 
 
 " Quiiiqne primores illi, qui edicto nuper magistratibus fucrant copulati, nt fidi'in 
 nost nun subruerent." (Cypriani Kpi.-t. xxxix. Paris, 1836.) 
 
 t Those who received such certificates, were called " Libellatici." 
 
 \ " Qui acta fecisaent, lii-i-t nni-soutes cum fiereut non ad fuisaent nt eio scribe- 
 rentur mandando." (Cyp. Epist., Parin, p. 37.) 
 
 Neander'a History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. i., p. 13.'.
 
 480 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 description of the effects of this edict, as recorded by Eusebius.* 
 " Soon a change in the government towards us was announced, and 
 great danger threatened us. The decree f had arrived, very much 
 like that which was foretold by our Lord, exhibiting the most 
 dreadful aspect ; so that, if it were possible, the very elect would 
 stumble. All, indeed, were greatly alarmed, and many of the 
 more eminent immediately gave way ; others were tempted by 
 the public offices they sustained ; others were brought by their 
 acquaintance, and when called by name approached the impure and 
 unholy altars. Yet, pale and trembling, as if they were not only to 
 sacrifice, but themselves to become the victims, and be offered to the 
 idols, they were jeered by many of the surrounding multitude, and were 
 obviously afraid either to die, or to perform the rites. But some 
 advanced with greater readiness to the altars, affirming boldly that 
 they had never been Christians ; concerning whom the declaration 
 of our Lord is most true, that they will scarcely be saved. Of the 
 rest, some imitated the examples already recorded, others fled, and 
 some were seized. Amongst the last, some either immediately, or 
 after certain days, without having been brought to trial, abjured ; 
 and others, by force of torture, renounced the truth. But the firm 
 and blessed pillars of the temple of our Lord, having been strength- 
 ened by Him, and having received might and fortitude according to 
 the powerful faith that was in them, became noble witnesses of his 
 kingdom." J The sanguinary mandate was obeyed with cruel eager- 
 ness ; and what we know of the sufferings at Rome, Alexandria, Car- 
 thage, and in Palestine, may convince us of the extent and severity 
 of the persecution. 
 
 The Alexandrian Christians had enjoyed but a short respite from 
 recent sufferings when the Decian edict was proclaimed. The names 
 of several martyrs are recorded in the epistle of the Bishop, from 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 39. 
 
 t The fears of all Christians were wonderfully excited on the promulgation of the edict. 
 The conclusion at which they arrived respecting it was, that it threatened the church 
 with unheard-of calamities, and prescribed a new mode of assailing the Christians, more 
 formidable than any that had ever before been resorted to. Gregory of Nyssa, in his life 
 of Gregory Thaumaturgus, states, 1 . That the Emperor, by his edict, commanded the Pre- 
 sidents and Magistrates to make use of every species of severity for bringing back the 
 Christians to the worship of the heathen deities. 2. That he threatened the Presi- 
 dents and Magistrates with severe and excruciating punishment themselves if they should 
 be remiss, or discover any sort of tenderness, in carrying his commands into execution. 
 3. That in obedience to his precepts, the Presidents, laying aside every other concern, 
 began immediately, with one consent, to persecute the Christians, publicly making 
 known their powers, and causing it to be understood, that all who should refuse to 
 abjure Christianity, would be subjected to every possible species of torture, and, if their 
 pertinacity should prove invincible, be made to undergo even death itself. 4. That vari- 
 ous species of torture, which had never before been heard of, were devised for this occa- 
 sion, and frightful instruments that were to be employed in the infliction of these tor- 
 tures exposed to public view. 5. That hence was generated incredible affright, and all 
 things were thrown into the utmost confusion. As to what is to be met with in certain 
 other authors, (we may mention in particular, Origen,) respecting the form and tenor 
 of this terrible edict, it all merely tends to corroborate the above statements, without 
 yielding anything whence further light is to be derived on the subject. Without doubt 
 this edict was directed against Christians of every denomination, order, age, and sex : 
 indeed, that such was the case is manifest even from the examples of those who suffered 
 in the cause of Christ at Alexandria, as recorded by Dionysius. 
 J Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 41.
 
 NUMEROUS MARTYRS. 4SI 
 
 which also we have seen that not a few saved themselves by associ- 
 ating with the heathen sacrifices. Pierius, who was connected with 
 the catechetical school, was among the sufferers ; and his brother, 
 Isidorus, appears also to have met with his death. Dionysius was 
 likewise placed in great peril. After eluding the search of Sabinus, the 
 Roman Governor, for some days, he was at length taken, and carried 
 to Taposiris. He then recovered his liberty, and we know nothing 
 concerning him during the remainder of the reign of Decius ; but it 
 is most probable that he continued in concealment. The nature of 
 the country afforded facilities of this kind. The north eastern 
 boundary of Egypt was mountainous, and large tracts of desert 
 extended to the neighbourhood of Alexandria. Chseremon, Bishop 
 of Nilopolis, fled to one of these mountains ; and from the fact 
 of his being accompanied by his wife, we learn, that at that time 
 there was uo law against Bishops being married.* Several other per- 
 sons sought the same hiding-place, and were carried off by the Sara- 
 cens, who now begin to appear in history, and who were accustomed 
 to set an exorbitant price upon their captives as a ransom.f 
 
 The historian Eusebius, according to the record of the Alexan- 
 drian Bishop, mentions the name of Julian, who, being severely afflicted 
 with the gout, and not able either to walk or to stand, was arraigned 
 at the judgment-seat, with two others, who were compelled to carry 
 him thither. One of the two immediately apostatized ; but the other, 
 named Cronion, surnamed Eunus, and the aged Julian himself, hav- 
 ing confessed the Lord, were carried on camels throughout the whole 
 city, afterwards scourged, and finally consumed in an immense fire, 
 surrounded by a large crowd of spectators. But a soldier, whose 
 name was Besas, standing near them, who had opposed the insolence 
 of the multitude, whilst they were led away to execution, was him- 
 self assailed with their loud vociferations to have him brought before 
 the judgment-seat ; and this courageous champion of the Lord, 
 having quitted himself manfully in the great combat for the cause 
 of piety, was beheaded. Another, also, a Libyan by birth, named 
 Makar, having resisted many and earnest solicitations of the Governor 
 to renounce the faith, and remaining inflexible, was burnt alive. 
 After these, Epimachus and Alexander, who had continued for some 
 time in prison enduring various torments from the scraper, and the 
 scourge, were consumed in a large fire.|| With them, also, four 
 
 The fifth of the apostolical canons recognises the marriage of Bishops, Priests, 
 and Deacons. 
 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxv. 
 
 tit was singularly unfeeling to compel those two men to hear their fellow-prisoner 
 to that tribunal where they themselves- were to be tried together with him. " Rea est 
 s;irru miser," was the generous sentiment of a Christian philosopher; a sentiment of 
 more worth than many entire systems of law and theology. " Grief and misery are 
 ever held sacred." The moat volatile and profligate cannot view intense misery without 
 a feeling of hallowed respect ; nor avoid reflecting with awe, that they may be them- 
 selves overtaken by similar calamities. 
 
 The instrument of torture was an iron scraper, calculated to wound and tear the 
 flesh as it passed over it. Valesins calls them, " ferreos ungues." 
 
 || A similar expression occurs before. It is rendered, as above, by the word " fire." 
 Valerius, who is followed by Shorting, translates " unslaked lime." But why he should 
 understand it differently here from what he does above, we know not. These uiartvra 
 VOL. I. 3d
 
 482 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 women suffered : in the first place, Ammoniarum, who had from the 
 first declared to the Governor, that she would never utter any of the 
 words which he had commanded ; and therefore he purposely strove 
 by long and exquisite tortures to overcome her resolution. She 
 nevertheless made good her promise, and was led to execution. The 
 others were the venerable and aged Mercuria ; Dionysia, who was the 
 mother of many children, yet who loved the Lord more than them : 
 these were slain with the sword, not having undergone the trial of 
 torture, for the Governor was ashamed to inflict it in vain, and 
 to be overcome of women. Another person of the name of Ammo- 
 narium, stood forth in the front of the battle, and underwent suffer- 
 ings greater than they all. Heron, and Ater, and Isidorus, Egyp- 
 tians ; and Dioscorus, a youth of about fourteen years of age ; were 
 delivered unto judgment. At first the Magistrate attempted to deceive 
 the youth with fair words, as if he could be easily brought over, and to 
 force him by torture, if necessary. Dioscorus, however, was neither 
 persuaded by words, nor compelled by violence. After scourging the 
 rest in a brutal manner, and beholding them persevere, they were sur- 
 rendered to the flames. Dioscorus was dismissed by the Judge, who 
 could not fail to admire the wisdom of his responses to the questions 
 which had been proposed, observing, " In respect of thy youth, I 
 will allow thee farther space for amendment." " And now," says the 
 relator, "this Dioscorus is among us, expecting a longer and more 
 severe conflict." There was also another Egyptian, named Neme- 
 sion,* who, having been falsely accused of associating with thieves, had 
 cleared himself of that accusation before the military officer of the dis- 
 trict, and being afterwards informed against as a Christian, was brought 
 in bonds before the Governor. That most unjust Judge, having inflicted 
 upon him redoubled stripes and tortures, sentenced him to be burnt 
 alive between two thieves. Closely connected with him was a party 
 of soldiers, Ammon and Zeno, Ptolemy and Ingenes, with the aged 
 Theophilus, who stood together near the judgment-seat. A certain 
 person was brought to trial, charged with being a Christian, who 
 appeared on the verge of apostatizing ; but those men gnashed with 
 their teeth, signified by their countenance, made motions with their 
 hands, and by united and significant gestures showed the great inter- 
 were destroyed by the same kind of death as the preceding. If the. word -amp did 
 not determine the signification, there might be some reason, perhaps, for this version, 
 the word aerSeoros, having TITOVOS xtnderstood. But it is surely going far out of our 
 way to look for this meaning, when the proper one is so obviously determined by the 
 many circumstances which here combine. It may be remarked, by the way, that the 
 expression is, literally, " inextinguishable fire," a strong hyperbole for immense fire : 
 therefore, the more reasonable supposition is, that an intense fire is here meant, or one 
 constantly supplied with fresh fuel, till the body of the martyr was perfectly consumed. 
 
 * Of Nemesion, unless from this passage, we know nothing. One would have ima- 
 gined that, from this sentence, no doubt could arise, whether Nemesion was accused 
 before the Prefect aa the associate of thieves, or as a Christian ; and yet Dionysius of 
 Alexandria has been quoted, with a view of placing Nemesion in a sort of middle state 
 between thief and Christian ! Dionysius evidently censures the injustice of the Prefect 
 in endeavouring to confound Nemesion among real criminals in the mode of punish- 
 ment, whom he conld not on the trial. This wicked and shallow policy might have 
 served to mislead the rabble of Alexandria ; but it was not calculated to deceive philo- 
 sophic and well-informed historians.
 
 CARTHAGINIAN MARTYRS. 483 
 
 est which they took in the event. When the eyes of all were turned 
 towards them, they, not having been seized by any, ran forward with 
 one accord to the bar, and acknowledged themselves Christians. 
 The Governor and his Counsellors were much afraid ; * inasmuch 
 as they who were about to receive condemnation were dauntless, 
 their judges trembled : they went forthwith from the judgment-hall 
 exulting in their testimony. Others, also, in great numbers,t 
 throughout the towns and villages in Egypt, were torn in pieces by 
 the Gentiles, of whom the Bishop of Alexandria records another 
 instance : Ischurion, in the office of a steward, was the hired servant 
 of a certain Magistrate, by whom he was commanded to burn incense ; 
 and when he refused to comply, and persisted in that determination, 
 his master not only evil intreated him, but put him, with his own 
 hands, to death, by thrusting him through with a stake. But, says 
 Dionysius, " Wherefore should I speak of the multitude who, having 
 wandered in deserts and mountains, were consumed through hunger, 
 and thirst, and cold, and diseases, or by robbers and wild beasts ? The 
 brethren who survived those calamities bear witness that they were 
 chosen ones, and that they overcame." J 
 
 In most of the districts there appeared glorious traits of Christian 
 fidelity and devotion. At Carthage we read of a certain Nuraidicus, 
 whom Cyprian, the Bishop, took into the presbytery, because he had 
 so highly distinguished himself during the persecution. After encou- 
 raging many others to a martyr's death, after seeing his own wife 
 expire on the funeral pile, he was himself half burnt, and, almost 
 crushed with missiles, left for dead. His daughter sought the corpse 
 of her father under the heap of stones, in order to bury him. How 
 raptured must she have been to find some signs of life about him 
 still, and to succeed in her dutiful attempt to revive him ! A woman 
 had been brought to the altar by her husband, and they compelled 
 her to offer sacrifice by holding her hands ; but she cried, " I did it 
 not ; you did it ! " and she was accordingly condemned to banish- 
 ment^ We read of confessors of the faith at Carthage, who were 
 in prison, and whom they had endeavoured, for eight days, to bring to 
 recantation through heat, through hunger and thirst ; but who still 
 
 Observing the behaviour of Ammon and his companions, they dreaded a general 
 insurrection of the legiouary soldiers ; an event most formidable in a province, and 
 capable of shaking, and even of overturning, the empire. Happily for the honour of the 
 Christian faith, there was no ground for such apprehension. 
 
 t Mr. Dodwell, a person of much learning and integrity, was alternately under the 
 dominion of prejudice and of paradox. At one season, when the spirit of paradox had the 
 ascendant, he wrote of the small number of martyrs in the primitive church. There 
 are those who, without his prejudices, have vouchsafed to adopt his paradoxes. I pre- 
 tend not to say, that there were legions of martyrs in the primitive ages of the church ; 
 but to affirm, on the other hand, that, in the Decian persecution, for example, there 
 were very few martyrs, while Dionysius, an eye-witness of great authority, affirms 
 that there were very many, appears capriciously sceptical. Indeed, it would seem, from 
 the narrative of Dionysius, that at that time every faithful Christian, in a greater or in. 
 a least degree, partook of the common calamity. ( Dalrymple, ) 
 
 t Kiweb., Kceles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 41. 
 
 Sed et mulier nomine Bona, quae tracta est a marito ad sacrificandnm, qnw con- 
 scientia uon commixsi, ad quia tenentis mauus ejus ipsi sacrificavernnt, coepit dicere 
 contrj* : ' Non ft-ci ; vos fecistis ; ' sic et ipsa extorris facta eat." (Cypriani Epiatol. 
 xviii- Paris, edit., p. 25.) 
 
 3 Q 2
 
 484 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 looked at death in the face unmoved.* Some confessors from Rome, 
 who had endured a year's confinement, wrote to Cyprian as follows : 
 " What can happen to a man more glorious, and more blessed, than, 
 amidst tortures, and even in the sight of death, to acknowledge God 
 the Lord ; and, with lacerated body, with a departing, but a free 
 spirit, to recognise Christ the Son of God, and to become a 
 fellow-sufferer of Christ in the name of Christ ? We have not yet 
 shed our blood ; but we are ready to shed it ! Pray, also, dearest 
 Cyprian, that the Lord may daily more richly confirm and strengthen 
 every one among us with the powers of his might ; and that He, our 
 great Leader, may at length conduct to the battle-field of the fight 
 that is set before us, his warriors, whom he has hitherto practised 
 and proved in the camp of a prison. May he bestow upon us those 
 divine arms which never can be conquered ! "f 
 
 The Bishops were the special objects of the Emperor's hatred, and 
 it is probable that it was principally against them that the punish- 
 ment of death was expressly directed. At the commencement of the 
 persecution, Fabian, the Bishop of Borne, suffered martyrdom, 
 who appears to have been well worthy of the place to which he 
 was raised : J for Cyprian, in answer to the letter wherein the Clergy 
 of Rome gave to him an account of his death, calls him an excellent 
 man ; and adds, that the glory of his death had answered the purity, 
 holiness, and integrity of his life. For his fidelity and uprightness 
 of conduct, the late Emperor committed to Fabian the custody of his 
 treasure ; and it has been imagined, that when Decius ascended the 
 throne, he found less wealth than he had been led to expect, and 
 consequently the Bishop was called to suffer. Be that as it may, 
 Decius, and other enemies to Christianity, thinking that the Christian 
 flock would be far more easily dispersed, provided the shepherd were 
 removed, caused Fabian to be martyred ; but the example of his for- 
 titude and constancy in suffering had a powerful effect on the minds 
 of the faithful during the whole period of the persecution. He had 
 
 " Qui Deo volente in carcere fame necati sunt ; quorum et nos socios futures 
 
 intra dies audietis. Jam enim ex quo iterate reclusi sumus sunt dies octo in die quo 
 tibi litteras scripsi. Nam et ante dies octo per dies quinque medios modicum panis 
 accepimus et aquam ad mensurarn." (Cypriani, Epist. xxi.) 
 
 t Cypriani Epist. xxv.) 
 
 t Fabian is said to have been miraculously chosen to the episcopate of Rome. It is 
 said, " that the people and Clergy being assembled, in order to proceed to a new elec- 
 tion, a dove, unexpectedly appearing, settled, to the great surprise of all present, on the 
 head of Fabian, having been not so much as thought of, being but a layman, and not an 
 inhabitant of Rome, but just then come out of the country. At this prodigy, the whole 
 assembly cried out with one voice, ' Fabianus is our Bishop ! ' and, crowding around 
 him, placed him, without further delay, on the episcopal throne. Thus Eusebius ; (lib. 
 vi., cap. 29 ;) and to this account is owing the modern notion, that the Pope is always 
 choseu by the Holy Ghost. ' What happened in the election of Fabian,' says Cardinal 
 Cusani, ' happens in the election of every Pope. It is true, we do not see the Holy 
 Ghost with our corporeal eyes ; but we may and must see him, if we are not quite blind, 
 with those of the mind. In vain, therefore, O eminent electors, are all your intrigues : 
 the person on whose head the heavenly dove is pleased to perch, will, in spite of them, be 
 chosen ! ' We shall, however, not fail to see in the history of the Popes such monsters 
 of iniquity elected, and that by means of such scandalous practices, that to imagine the 
 Holy Ghost any ways concerned in the election, would be absolute blasphemy." 
 ( B -v.cr'ri History of the Popes, vol. i., p. 48. 4to., London, 1750.)
 
 HOSTILITY OF DECIUS TO THE BISHOPS. 465 
 
 been chosen to preside over the see of Rome in the year 236 ; Ante- 
 ros, his predecessor, having been martyred under Maximinus. He is 
 supposed to have suffered in 250 ; and, as he was slain in Rome, he 
 was probably beheaded. A Christian Bishop was now a much more 
 conspicuous object of attack than in the earlier persecutions. This 
 was strikingly the case in the two leading churches of Rome and 
 Carthage. Decius had been heard to say, that he would rather 
 endure a competitor in the empire, than a Bishop of Rome ; which 
 feliows his personal hatred to Christianity, and his determination to 
 destroy it. The cause of such vindictive feelings might seem difficult 
 to be ascertained, when we consider the extreme disparity between a 
 Christian Bishop of those days, and the Sovereign of the Roman 
 empire. It might be thought that the Emperor could not possibly 
 have looked upon the Bishop with any feelings of jealousy or fear ; 
 and if he treated him with contempt, it need not have seemed surpris- 
 ing. We must, however, remember that the Christians were at this 
 period very numerous in Rome. They have been estimated to have 
 amounted to fifty thousand ; all of whom were submissively obedient 
 to one head, with a regularly organized system of government, and 
 a large pecuniary fund collected among themselves. Associations 
 of this kind have always been objects of suspicion to Kings and 
 rulers ; and the fact of all these people being bound together by a 
 religion which had repeatedly been pronounced unlawful, was likely 
 to increase the feeling of hostility which had been raised against 
 them. If any member of the Roman church were examined before a 
 Magistrate, he would be found to profess himself subject to the 
 Bishop. The personal influence of this one man was probably much 
 greater than that of the Emperor ; and if the latter were aware that 
 his authority was maintained by fear, he might naturally be jealous 
 of one who was beloved, as well as obeyed. These considerations 
 may furnish some explanation of the saying which is ascribed to 
 Decius, and the history of this persecution shows that his inveterate 
 hatred was not confined to words.* 
 
 Nothing, therefore, was wanting to let loose all the most cruel and 
 malignant passions of the heart against the church of Christ. Every 
 quarter of the empire presents us with its anecdotes of suffering and 
 slaughter, its deeds of atrocity and blood. Alexander, the venera- 
 ble Bishop of Jerusalem, who had held the episcopate nearly forty 
 years, was thrown into prison, where he died.f Origen was impri- 
 soned, which confinement did not terminate during the life-time of 
 the persecutor. Babylas, the Bishop of Antioch, was also incarce- 
 rated ; and, like Alexander of Jerusalem, he died before he was released. 
 The storm raged with great severity in Asia Minor, and one Bishop 
 is mentioned, Eudaemon of Smyrna, who was frightened into a 
 denial of the faith ; but many others courageously received the mar- 
 tyr's crown. Two individuals are represented as having come out 
 of Persia to Rome, towards the middle of the third century, a little 
 
 Burton's History of the Christian Church, p. 328. Sixth edition. 
 \ Kpiphanins and Jerom mention him as a martyr : the Roman Mnrtyrology honours 
 bi. memory on March 18th.
 
 486 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 before Decius began his reign, and when the persecution commenced, 
 they were among the first who were seized ; and, having suffered 
 numerous torments, glorified God by their death. Many also of the 
 Bishops, until the first fury of the persecution subsided, retired from 
 their communities, not from cowardice, but because, as their presence 
 inflamed the fury of the Heathen, they esteemed it their duty to 
 secure the repose of the church by a temporary absence, as well as, by 
 all means not inconsistent with their Christian faith and pastoral duties, 
 to preserve their lives for the future service of their flocks. Among the 
 number of those who retired for a season, was the Bishop Cyprian ; and 
 although he was long reproached as having done this from cowardice, 
 yet his subsequent conduct clears him from this imputation ; and the 
 openness and the tranquillity of conscience with which he speaks of 
 it are credible witnesses in his favour, when he writes thus to the 
 Roman church : " Immediately on the first approach of trouble, when 
 the people with loud outcries constantly demanded my death, I retired 
 for a time, not so much from care for my own life, as for the public 
 tranquillity of the brethren, that the tumult which had begun might 
 not be further excited by my presence, which was offensive to the 
 Heathen." Cyprian acted after the principle which he recommended 
 in regard to all other persons also. " Therefore the Lord commanded 
 us to yield, and fly in case of persecution : he commanded this, and 
 practised it himself. For, as the martyr's crown comes from the 
 grace of God, and can only be received when the proper time is 
 come, so he denies not the faith who, still remaining true to Christ, 
 retires occasionally ; but he waits his time." * There was certainly a 
 difference in the case of ordinary Christians, and of one who had the 
 administration of the pastoral office on his hands, and duties to fulfil 
 towards the souls confided to his , care ; but even this Cyprian 
 neglected not : he might fairly appeal to his church, and say, that, 
 though absent in body, he had been present with them constantly in 
 spirit, and sought to guide them, by counsel and by deed, according 
 to the commandments of the Lord.f The letters which Cyprian 
 wrote from his retreat, through the means of the Clergy who travel- 
 led about, and were connected with his church, show with what 
 right he could say this of himself; and with what anxiety he sought 
 to preserve discipline and order in the church ; and how desirous he 
 was that the necessities of the poor, who were prevented by the per- 
 secution from plying their customary employments, should be 
 attended to, and that the prisoners should be relieved by all possible 
 means. The same principles of Christian resolution which moved 
 him to yield to the momentary danger, were shown in his exhorta- 
 tions to his church, when, exhorting them to Christian steadfastness, 
 he endeavoured to warn them against all enthusiastic and exaggerated 
 feelings. He thus writes to his Clergy : " I pray you not to allow 
 your prudence and care for the maintenance of tranquillity to fail ; 
 for although the brethren, in the spirit of love and charity, are desir- 
 ous to visit those glorious confessors of the faith, whom the grace 
 of God has rendered illustrious by such a glorious beginning, yet this 
 Cypriani Opera, Liber de Lapsis, lib. ii. | Idem, Epist. xiv.
 
 RETIREMENT OF CYPRIAN. 1*7 
 
 must be done with precaution, and not in great numbers at a time, 
 lest we provoke the jealousy of the Heathen, and all access be forbid- 
 den ; and so, while we seek for much, we lose everything. Take 
 care, also, that due moderation be kept here for greater security, so 
 that the individual Priests who go to administer the communion to 
 the confessors, and the Deacons who accompany them, may change, 
 after some regular succession, because a change of persons, and a 
 change in those who visit the confessors, will excite less jealousy ; 
 and in everything we must gently and humbly, as becomes the ser- 
 vants of God, humour the times, and provide for the safety and tran- 
 quillity of the church." Cyprian also desires his flock to consider 
 this persecution as an exhortation to prayer : " Let each of us pray 
 to God, not only for himself, but for all the brethren, as the Lord 
 taught us to pray ; who does not command each individual to pray 
 for himself alone, but all generally for all. When the Lord shah 1 see 
 that we are humble and peaceable, united among ourselves, and ren- 
 dered better by these present afflictions, then will he free us from 
 the sufferings of the enemy." * 
 
 The persecution continued to rage with unremitting violence : in 
 the mean while, Cyprian was never more active than in his retreat. 
 His counsels were of the greatest service both in Italy and in Africa. 
 The Presbyters of Carthage sent Clementius, a Sub-Deacon, to Rome, 
 from whom the Clergy in that city were informed of the retreat of 
 Cyprian. They, in return, express to the Africans their perfect 
 agreement in opinion concerning the fact, because he was an eminent 
 character, and his life extremely valuable to the church. Somewhat 
 of the spirit of a primitive Pastor is exhibited in the following letter 
 of the exile to his Clergy. He says, " Being hitherto preserved by 
 the favour of God, I salute you, dearest brethren, rejoicing to hear 
 of your safety. As present circumstances permit not my residence 
 among you, I beg you, by your faith, and by the ties of religion, to 
 discharge your office, in conjunction with mine also, that nothing be 
 deficient either on the head of discipline or diligence. I beg that 
 nothing may be wanting to supply the necessities of those who are 
 imprisoned because of their glorious confession of God, or who labour 
 under the pressure of indigence and poverty ; since the whole ecclesi- 
 astical fund is in the hands of the Clergy for this very purpose, that 
 a number may have it in their power to relieve the wants of indi- 
 viduals." 
 
 Among those who sought safety by exiling themselves from their 
 country, was a young man of Thebaie, in Egypt. lie was an orphan, 
 but inherited from his parents a very considerable fortune ; and his 
 learning and piety were equal to the advantages he inherited by 
 birth. This extraordinary man has had his Life written by Jerome. 
 Unhappily he was exposed to the envy of his sister's husband, with 
 whom he resided ; and, at the breaking out of the persecution in 
 Egypt, his infamous relative conceived the idea of securing his destruc- 
 tion by informing agninst him as a Christian. But Paul obtained 
 notice of the snare laid for him, and lost no time in making his 
 
 Cypriani Opera, Epiat. vil., ad Clerum.
 
 488 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 escape from the house. Not knowing on whom he could depend for 
 shelter in that " reign of terror," he took up his abode for a short 
 time in a lonely country house, and from thence directed his steps 
 towards the mountains which bordered an the desert. There finding 
 a cave, which promised him both shelter and security from his ene- 
 mies, he took possession of it, with the intention of remaining there 
 until the persecution should cease, when he might return to the enjoy- 
 ment of his fortune with safety. But, being naturally of a tranquil 
 and contemplative disposition, the silence of the desert, the freedom 
 it afforded from care, and uninterrupted opportunities of thought and 
 devotion which might be there enjoyed, made him every day more 
 attached to his cave ; and, by the time the persecution terminated, he 
 had become so enamoured of a solitary life, that he gave up all idea 
 of returning to the world ; and for no less than ninety years con- 
 tinued to inhabit the mountains, forgotten by his race, but enjoying a 
 peace for which he paid a price far below its value, if we simply con- 
 sider the sacrifice of his fortune. This is said to be the first instance 
 of a Christian devoting himself to a life of perfect seclusion from the 
 world ; and Paul may therefore be looked upon as the father of that 
 extraordinary race of men who, in a subsequent age, astonished the 
 world by their solitary and austere lives.* There is every reason to 
 believe that a system of monachism had existed in Egypt from an 
 early period. The Therapeutse, described by Philo, were a species of 
 Monks ; and the persecutions which occurred so frequently in the 
 latter half of the third century, drove great numbers of Christians to 
 embrace a solitary life. Beside which, it must be mentioned, that the 
 writers of the Alexandrian school had for a long time been preparing 
 the way for that ascetic and contemplative mode of life which was 
 now beginning to be so highly prized among Christians. The works 
 of Clement, and still more those of Origen, are filled with passages which 
 countenance such a system ; and the later Platonists, who studied in 
 the same school, not only impressed these principles upon their disci- 
 
 Ascetics were such as inured themselves to greater degrees of abstinence and fast- 
 ing than other men ; as those mentioned by Origen, who abstained from flesh and living 
 creatures, in order to mortify and subdue their passions. Such abstinence the aposto- 
 lical canons call Sfficriffis, the exercise of an ascetic life. So that all who abstained from 
 flesh, on account of mortification, not out of an opinion of its uncleanness, as some 
 heretics did, were called " ascetics." The same appellation was given to those who 
 were more than ordinarily intent on the exercises of prayer and devotion. Accordingly 
 Cyril of Jerusalem calls the Prophetess Anna, who departed not from the temple, but 
 served God night and day, " the most religious ascetic." In short, every kind of 
 uncommon piety and virtue laid claim to the name. Whence it appears, that the ascetics 
 were not originally the same with Monks, as Baronius, and the generality of the Romish 
 writers, pretend they were. Ascetics had been long in the church ; but the monastic 
 life was not known till towards the fourth century. The difference between ascetics and 
 Monks is this : 1 . The Monks were men who retired from the business and conversa- 
 tion of the world to some distant mountain, or desert wilderness ; but the first ascetics 
 were men of an active life, living in cities as other men, and differing from them only in 
 the heights to which they carried their virtue. 2. The Monks were to be only laymen ; 
 but the ascetics were indifferently of any order. 3. The Monks were tied up to certain 
 rules and laws of discipline; but the ancient ascetics were governed by no laws but 
 those of the Gospel. In short, though every Monk is an ascetic, every ascetic is not a 
 Monk ; the former appellation being of a more general import than the latter. (Hen- 
 derson.)
 
 MARTYRDOM OF AGATHA. 48D 
 
 pies, but referred to Pythagoras, and other ancient philosophers, as 
 having led a life of abstinence.* 
 
 A number of individuals continued to attest the verity of the Gospel 
 by the shedding of blood. A great multitude fled from their homes. 
 Many were attacked on the road by robbers, who pillaged and mur- 
 dered them -, and others perished of cold and hunger, as they endea- 
 voured to drag their exhausted frames to some place of shelter. But 
 one of the most extraordinary personages mentioned in the Decian 
 persecution was Agatha, a Sicilian lady, of noble extraction, who was 
 as accomplished in mind and person, as she was eminent for the graces 
 of Christianity. Her beauty attracted the attention of Quintien, the 
 Governor of the province ; and his passion being still more inflamed 
 by the gentleness of her demeanour, he assailed her with all the arts 
 of a seducer. Indignant at his attempts, Agatha fled with precipita- 
 tion to the town of Catana ; but Quintien, not to be thus thwarted in 
 his designs, ordered her to be pursued, and brought back by force. 
 Thus in his power, she was committed to the care of a woman, whom 
 he directed to employ every means for corrupting her mind ; and with 
 this infamous pander to her persecutor's will, was the pure-hearted 
 and noble girl obliged to remain a whole month ; at the end of which 
 time her keeper confessed, that all her efforts to subdue the austerity 
 of her charge had failed. Quiutien, however, possessed a fit character 
 for a persecutor. Notwithstanding his admiration of Agatha's beauty, 
 and the feminine charms of her character and disposition, he gave 
 way to the most violent passion on hearing that she continued firmly 
 opposed both to his addresses and to every proposition, compliance 
 with which might be an offence against her religious profession. 
 Determined on revenge, he summoned her before his tribunal, and 
 demanded a confession of her faith. Her answers were direct and 
 explicit. She declared that she was a Christian, and that she held in 
 abhorrence the deities whom the Pagans worshipped. As he had now 
 an apparently legal motive for punishing the unfortunate girl, he 
 ordered her to be conducted to prison ; and the next day, after repeat- 
 ing the mockery of an examination, committed her to the torture, 
 and endured to see the delicate frame of the woman for whom he had 
 expressed the most unbounded love, torn with the scourge, and 
 scorched with burning irons. At the end he directed the nipples of 
 her breasts to be cut off, and in that condition sent back to prison. 
 Agatha had borne her sufferings with the firmness which she evinced 
 in her former conduct towards the tyrant ; and though he directed 
 that no care should be taken of her wounds, nor any nourishment 
 afforded her, she was in a few days sufficiently recovered to be again 
 dragged before the tribunal, and compelled to answer the interroga- 
 tories of Quintien. But not a single contradiction of the sentiments 
 she had originally uttered could be elicited from her lips ; and, un- 
 inoved either by pity for the sufferings she had undergone with so 
 much magnanimity, or by any admiration of her virtue and resigna- 
 tion, the barbarian directed his attendants to renew her tortures by 
 
 Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 10G ; Burton, Lectures ou 
 Eccles. Hist., Icct. xxv. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 R
 
 490 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 placing her on the sharp points of a machine, exposed to burning 
 charcoal. Even this she endured without flinching ; and, on being 
 replaced in her cell, calmly resigned her spirit unto God.* 
 
 The Decian persecution, though it made many martyrs and con- 
 fessors, had also caused great numbers to comply with the imperial 
 edict by offering sacrifices. These lapsed Christians, as they were 
 called, were very numerous at Carthage ; but many, perhaps most 
 of them, retained their belief in Christ, though their courage had 
 given way when their lives were in danger. There were others who 
 had allowed their names to be added to the list of those who had 
 offered sacrifice, though they had not themselves actually done so. 
 The Magistrates were perhaps satisfied if they could make this list 
 appear large ; the triumph of Heathenism over Christianity was 
 acknowledged ; and they gave to those persons a written document, 
 in which they were named as having offered sacrifice, and which saved 
 them from further molestation.f All the persecutions sustained by 
 the Christians in preceding times, taken together, did not produce so 
 great a number of deserters and apostates from the truth, as this 
 short one under Decius. Persons of all ranks, and, what is particu- 
 larly to be wondered at, even Bishops and Priests, scarcely waited to 
 be informed of the tyrant's threats, before they hastened away to the 
 tribunals of the Presidents and Magistrates, and professed themselves 
 ready to abjure Christianity, and join in the worship of the heathen 
 deities. This fearful evil is probably attributable to the soft, disso- 
 lute, and degenerate course of life into which many called Christians 
 had fallen, in consequence of the long-continued season of tranquillity 
 which they had enjoyed of late years. No longer beset by cares and 
 solicitude, the Christians had relaxed much in their professed con- 
 tempt of life and its concerns, and were generally familiar with vicious 
 habits. Cyprian acknowledges this ; and his testimony is of import- 
 ance. In the estimation of others, another circumstance may be con- 
 sidered as conducive to the effect of this Decian persecution. Trajan, 
 by his rescript, merely punished with death those who refused to 
 abandon the faith of Christ, not a word was uttered respecting tor- 
 ture ; and of the same complexion were all the edicts that had been 
 issued by his successors against the Christian. But the terrors of 
 Decius were not confined to capital punishments. By him the 
 despisers of the pagan deities were threatened with tortures of the 
 most excruciating character, and with all the horrors of a lingering 
 and painful death. In the execution of these threats, the Presidents 
 manifested the most scrupulous zeal ; not commanding any one to be 
 put to death without previously worrying and exhausting him in a 
 thousand horrible ways. To such an extent was this system of tor- 
 ture carried, that many of the victims actually expired under the 
 hands of the tormentors. In order to instil greater terror, some of 
 the Presidents exercised their ingenuity in the invention of new modes 
 of anguish, of which they were accustomed to make a public display. 
 All these circumstances were calculated to produce a far greater degree 
 
 * Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 108. 
 t Burton, Lectures on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxv.
 
 THE CASE OF THE LAPSED. 491 
 
 of dejection and dismay, than the punishments of former times. 
 Those for whom death itself has no terrors, are liable to have their 
 fears excited by the prospect of severe torture and laceration ; increased, 
 as they confessedly were, by the numerous examples of inhumanity 
 and cruelty constantly exhibited. The Lapsed, or those who fell from 
 their steadfastness during this short but terrific persecution, were 
 considered of three classes ; the Thurificati, the Sacrificati, and the 
 Libellatici, including those who presented frankincense before the sta- 
 tues of the heathen deities, or Emperor, or victims and sacrifices, and 
 those who had received documents from the hands of the Magistrate, 
 testifying that the requirements of the Emperor had been met, and 
 that they were secure from all future molestation. Much difference 
 of opinion upon this class of people has been manifested. With 
 regard, however, to the following particulars, the question does not 
 admit of a doubt ; namely, that the title Libellaticus was derived 
 from libellus, the libel, or certificate, which those termed Libellatici 
 either presented to the Judge, or else received from him ; and that 
 these Libellatici had redeemed their lives, and secured themselves 
 against the Emperor's edict, by means of money, which does not appear 
 to have been a new thing, nor accounted as disgraceful or unwarrant- 
 able. By the disciples of Montanus it was considered impious to 
 purchase life and safety with money ; but this opinion was peculiar to 
 the Montanists, and condemned by the Christians generally. It is 
 also certain, that the Libellatici were not chargeable with actual apos- 
 tacy, or defection from Christ, either in word or deed ; that is, they 
 never paid any sort of worship or honour to the heathen deities, nor did 
 they either conceal or dissemble their religion : they were, however, 
 guilty of what had a near affinity to this crime, and might, upon a 
 more diligent examination, admit of being regarded as a tacit proof 
 of their having renounced Christ. It is also certain, that the Libel- 
 latici were considered the least criminal among the defaulters ; and, 
 on that account, were allowed to make their peace with the church 
 on comparatively easy terms. The chief points of controversy are the 
 following, Whether it was from certificates they delivered, or from 
 certificates they received, that the Libellatici received their name ; and 
 what were the contents of those documents? The answer turns 
 wholly on the interpretation of certain passages in the writings of 
 Cyprian, who is the only author who makes mention of this class 
 of individuals. Avarice universally prevailed ; and there is no coun- 
 try where life is not preferred to money. The Christian, therefore, 
 to whom the title of Libellaticus was applied, was one who, upon 
 paying a sum of money to the Magistrate, had obtained from him 
 libellus securitatis, a certificate of security, in which it was stated 
 that such a person had complied with the Emperor's edict, that is, 
 had sacrificed to the gods, although, in point of fact, he had 
 done nothing of the kind, but had, on the contrary, intimated to the 
 Judge, that it was a thing which he could not do. On account 
 of this certificate, which, if necessity required, the person holding; it 
 produced, he was publicly regarded as one who had renounced his 
 religion, although, in reality, his adherence to it remained unshaken. 
 
 3 R 2
 
 492 BOOK IV. CH'APTER VI. 
 
 The Judge practised an imposition in granting this certificate : the 
 Christian was guilty of similar deceit in availing himself of it, and 
 felt no compunction in suffering himself to be viewed by the thought- 
 less world around him, as an apostate and a " cast-away." Herein 
 consisted the true and proper crime of the Libellatici ; for, notwith- 
 standing this tacit acknowledgment of their having repudiated Chris- 
 tianity was altogether an imposition, it seemed to differ but in a 
 very trifling degree from a genuine and undisguised profession 
 of apostacy. 
 
 From the language of Cyprian we do not fail to gather the follow^ 
 ing : That the Libellatici had not paid any sort of worship to the 
 heathen deities ; they had not even in any way participated of the 
 meats offered to gods, and were consequently far more innocent than 
 the Sacrificati. That their motive in procuring for themselves certi- 
 ficates, was an apprehension that, if called before the Magistrates, 
 they might, through fear of torture, be induced to defile themselves 
 by an idolatrous offering. That it was not of their own accord, but 
 at the instigation of others, that they made application to the Magis- 
 trates for certificates ; or, as Cyprian expresses it, an opportunity was 
 freely offered by which they might obtain one with facility, without 
 having so much as employed a thought on the subject. Avaricious 
 Magistrates, for instance, if they were apprized of any one amongst 
 the Christians who was favoured with prosperity and wealth, took 
 care to have it privately intimated, either by confidential messengers, 
 or through the channel of friends, that they were desirous of mani- 
 festing their clemency towards him, and that, by paying down a 
 moderate sum of money, he might redeem himself, and secure his 
 future safety. That they did not present written petitions to the 
 Magistrate, but applied to him either personally or by their friends ; 
 and after acquainting him, by word of mouth, with the nature 
 of their request, made him an offer of reward adequate to the protec- 
 tion solicited. Cyprian mentions the terms in which applications 
 of this kind were couched. It was requisite, also, for the safety 
 of the Presidents, that the affair should be transacted in this way. 
 Had petitions in writing been brought forward and presented by 
 those who sought protection without sacrificing, these very certificates 
 might have led to the easy detection of the fraud. Those who are at 
 all conversant with human affairs know well, that things of this sort, 
 tending to diminish the authority of the laws, and to counteract the 
 will of the ruling powers, are not customarily committed to writing, 
 but carried into execution by word of mouth. " A circumstance that 
 makes me," says Dr. Mosheim, " wonder at those who conceive that 
 the Libellatici took their designation from the libelli, or petitions, 
 presented by them to the Judge, is, that a few of the accused or sus- 
 pected individuals made application to the Judge in person, but that 
 others made known their request through the medium of friends. 
 Some, doubtless, would imagine that their transgression would 
 be less criminal if, instead of endeavouring to corrupt the Magistral c 
 themselves, they made use of the instrumentality of others. Pro- 
 bably a few might not be without apprehension, that if they pci%
 
 THE CASE OF THE LAPSED. 493 
 
 sonally presented themselves before the Judge, he would at once 
 cause them to he seized, and thrown into prison ; they therefore pre- 
 ferred having recourse to a heathen worshipper, for whom no fears 
 need he entertained, and commissioning him to make the necessary 
 application to the Magistrate, and paying down the stipulated price ; 
 and it is also clear, that the Libcllatici received a certificate from the 
 Magistrate whom they bribed, a fact which is expressly adverted to 
 by Cyprian in more instances than one : by the same document, also, 
 they obtained security against any efforts that might be made to 
 impeach them, or to compel them to join in the heathen sacrifices." * 
 
 The morality of the persons who thus truckled to existing circum- 
 stances, and basely denied the faith, cannot be too severely repre- 
 hended. What was recorded in the certificate thus solicited or 
 procured, is sufficiently indicated in the following words : " Cujus 
 consensa, licet non a se admissum crimen, publice legitur." The 
 individual, therefore, who solicited the certificate, consented that a 
 crime which he had never committed should be publicly imputed to 
 him. This crime, beyond all question, was that of sacrifice ; and in 
 these papers it was recorded, that the persons holding them had 
 sacrificed to the heathen deities. The President, therefore, testified 
 in his certificate, that Caius or Seius, as the case might be, had com- 
 plied with, and satisfied, the Emperor's edict ; and he who had 
 solicited and procured such certificate, gave his consent that this 
 should be recorded respecting him, although, in point of fact, it was 
 an absolute falsehood. The words, publice legitur, may perhaps lead 
 to the further conjecture, that the certificates thus granted were 
 publicly exhibited in the prsetorium. 
 
 Great numbers of these defaulters, particularly in Egypt and 
 Africa, with a view to obtain for themselves a more ready reconcilia- 
 tion with their respective Bishops and churches, procured from cer- 
 tain of those who were honoured with the title of martyrs to come 
 forward as intercessors on their behalf. An almost incredible degree 
 of importance and authority was attached by the early Christians to 
 the character both of martyrs and confessors ; so that, whatever they 
 might declare to be their desire was considered almost as the -will 
 of heaven. It had become customary, even in the previous century, 
 to receive again into communion all such of the lapsed as were able 
 to procure a testimonial of fraternal love from a martyr, without 
 exacting from them anything beyond a few ordinary proofs of a 
 repentant and contrite spirit. Testimonials of this description from a 
 martyr, declaring that he had consented to overlook the delinquency 
 of such individuals, were usually denominated libelli pacts, or certifi- 
 cates of pardon and peace. In the persecution of which we are now 
 speaking, certain of the martyrs of Africa appear to have extremely 
 abused the privilege with which they were thus invested ; and either 
 out of veneration for the character of a martyr, or from fear, or from 
 ignorance of the law, some of the Bishops and Presbyters conducted 
 themselves with a greater degree of lenity than was proper towards 
 all such of the lapsed as came to them provided with certificates 
 
 Moclipim's Cotniiipntaricri, vol. iii., p. f.O, ,-pnt. iii.
 
 494 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 of the above description ; the evil of which was faithfully pointed 
 out by Cyprian, who strongly recommended that lenity should be 
 tempered with a just measure of severity, and that the liberty of 
 granting certificates of peace should be confined within proper limits. 
 This custom, however, was liable to much abuse. Under the deno- 
 mination of martyrs were included not only those on whom sentence 
 of death had actually been passed, but also those who, after having 
 bravely encountered the most grievous sufferings in the cause of 
 Christ, were still detained in prison, uncertain of the fate that 
 awaited them. Of the right of these martyrs to grant certificates 
 of pardon and peace to such as might petition for them, not the least 
 question was entertained ; neither did any one ever deny, or pretend 
 to deny, that a penance merely of the shorter or more trivial kind was 
 to be imposed on such as should produce to the Bishop certificates 
 of this description. Had any one committed himself so far as to 
 make a question of either of those points, he would have drawn upon 
 himself the accusation of having violated the sanctity and dignity 
 of the martyrs, and of having committed high treason against the 
 majesty of God, who, it was generally believed, spoke and determined 
 through the mouth of these his faithful adherents. It was, therefore, 
 merely respecting the manner in which this privilege of granting 
 certificates should be exercised, and the degree of influence which 
 such documents should be allowed to possess, that any question was 
 raised. These letters of peace did not owe their origin to any parti- 
 cular law or canon, but to custom : a degree of uncertainty therefore 
 prevailed with regard to the extent to which the right of granting 
 them ought to reach ; and this uncertainty occasioned many things to 
 be done by the martyrs in the course of the persecution under Decius 
 which were highly detrimental to the welfare of the church, and which 
 were made the subject of severe reprehension by Cyprian and other 
 Prelates. In the first place, they disregarded the ancient practice 
 of granting certificates of this description only to a few, and not even 
 to these without a diligent examination of the case of each individual ; 
 the martyrs were accustomed to distribute them, without the least 
 reserve or discrimination, to applicants of every description : hence 
 the Bishops were overwhelmed with a flood of certificates of recon- 
 ciliation, many of which were of a very dubious character. Several 
 passages are to be met with in Cyprian, in which he mentions the 
 incredible number of the certificates of peace that were granted by 
 the martyrs. The fact was, that not doubting but that they should 
 be able to obtain such papers, great multitudes hastened away to the 
 heathen tribunals, and, publicly renouncing Christ, offered sacrifice ; 
 and then, as if they had been guilty of nothing wherewith they might 
 reproach themselves, they impudently and with boldness went to the 
 prisons where the more constant of the Christians were courageously 
 awaiting their final sentence, and solicited their mediation, which 
 being readily obtained, they immediately presented themselves before 
 their respective Bishops, and preferred a claim to reconciliation with the 
 church, inasmuch as they had again been recognised as brethren by the 
 martyrs, whose certificates they produced. In the persecutions of pre-
 
 INDISCRETION OF MARTYRS. 495 
 
 ceding times,, this prejudicial course of conduct, into which inexpe- 
 rienced and illiterate martyrs might easily be betrayed, had, by the 
 prudence of the Bishops, been effectually provided against. Deacons 
 of a provident, circumspect character, and well versed in the prin- 
 ciples of the Christian religion, were sent by them to the different 
 prisons, for the purpose of furnishing the martyrs with proper advice, 
 and taking care that certificates of peace should not be granted indis- 
 criminately, but merely to such as could make it appear that they 
 were not undeserving of the boon. 
 
 Some of the martyrs, previously to their yielding up their lives in 
 the cause of their divine Master, commissioned certain of their friends 
 to grant, in their name, certificates of reconciliation to all without 
 distinction, who, after their departure, should make application for 
 them. An example of this occurs in the epistle of Lucian the Con- 
 fessor to Celerinus.* Cyprian represents Lucian as a pious man, but 
 not deeply versed in matters pertaining to religion. It appears that 
 he had granted many certificates on behalf of another martyr, of the 
 name of Aurelius, who was not able to write. Cyprian with great 
 vigour opposed these corruptions ; and Lucian, who was irritated at 
 the treatment he received, burst through every restraint of modesty, 
 and, causing other confessors to associate with him in a league 
 of contumacious audacity, sent forth, in the name of himself and 
 others, one general certificate of pardon and peace, proclaiming it to 
 be their will, that all the lapsed, without exception, should be 
 received again into the bosom of the church. The improper conduct 
 of these martyrs, who were, for the most part, illiterate men, altoge- 
 ther unacquainted with Christian discipline, might possibly have 
 been counteracted and checked, had the Presbyters and Bishops acted 
 conformably to the duties of their station. But, instead of this, and 
 instigated, as it should seem, by a hatred of Cyprian, and other base 
 motives, they shamefully contributed to the augmentation of the evil, 
 and voluntarily carried their concessions to an extent beyond what 
 even the martyrs had asked. Though much latitudinarianism had 
 been manifested, it does not appear to have been the wish of the 
 martyrs generally to overthrow all order, or to break in upon the 
 authority of the Bishops ; nor was it their object to exempt those they 
 received into their favour from all kinds of punishment and penance. 
 This, for a while, involved Cyprian in a harsh and vexatious contro- 
 versy with the martyrs, the confessors, the Presbyters, the lapsed, and 
 the people : in the end, however, the justness of his principles was fully 
 recognised, and he may be said to have left the field triumphant. f 
 
 The defection of so many deeply wounded the charitable and fer- 
 vent spirit of Cyprian. " I could have wished, dearest brethren," 
 said he, " to have had it in my power to salute your whole body 
 sound and entire ; but, as the melancholy tempest has, in addition 
 to the fall of so many of the people, also affected the Clergy, sad 
 accumulation of our sorrow ! we pray the Lord, that, by divine 
 mercy, we may be enabled to salute you, at least, whom we have 
 
 Cypriani Opera, Epist. xxi. 
 
 t Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. iii., p. 77.
 
 496 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 known to stand firm in faith and virtue, safe for the time to come. 
 And though the cause loudly called on me to hasten my return to 
 you, first, on account of my own desire and regret for the loss of 
 your company, a desire which burns strongly within me ; in the next 
 place, that we might in full council settle the various questions in the 
 church which require attention ; yet, on the whole, to remain still 
 concealed, seemed more advisable on account of other advantages which 
 pertain to the general safety ; an account of which our dear brother 
 Tertullus will give you, who, agreeably to that care which he employs 
 in divine works with so much zeal, was also the adviser of this 
 counsel, that I should act with caution and moderation, and not 
 rashly commit myself to the public view in a place where I had so 
 often been sought and called for." * In another epistle he refers to 
 the practical corruptions of the church which were rife during his 
 retreat : " And what plagues, what stripes, do we not deserve, since 
 even confessors, who ought to be patterns to the rest, are quite dis- 
 orderly ! Hence while the tumid and indecent pride of their confes- 
 sion puffs up some, torments have come, and torments unremitted, 
 tedious, and most distressing, even to death itself." f 
 
 With regard to the libelli pads which the martyrs and confessors 
 had granted, Cyprian, in an epistle to the laity, says, " I know from 
 myself that you groan over, and grieve for, the ruins of our people, 
 dearest brethren, as I groan over and grieve with you for each of 
 them ; and feel what the blessed Apostle said, ' Who is weak, and I 
 am not weak ? Who is offended, and I burn not ? ' and again, ' If 
 one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.' I sympathize 
 and condole with our brethren who, lapsing through the violence 
 of persecution, draw with them part of ourselves, and by their 
 wounds have brought acute pain upon us. Divine grace is indeed 
 able to heal them ; yet, I think, we ought not to be in a hurry, nor 
 do anything incautiously and with precipitation, lest we rashly admit 
 them into communion, and the displeasure of the Most High be more 
 severely incurred. The blessed martyrs have written to us, entreat- 
 ing that their desires may be examined when, the Lord vouchsafing 
 us peace, we return to the church : then everything shall be examined 
 in your presence, with concurrence of your judgments. Yet, I hear 
 that some Presbyters, neither mindful of the Gospel, nor considering 
 what the martyrs have written to us, and in contempt of the episcopal 
 authority, have already begun to communicate with the lapsed, and 
 to administer the Lord's supper to them, in defiance of that legiti- 
 mate order by which alone they should be admitted. For if in lesser 
 faults this be observed, much more in evils like these which radically 
 affect Christian profession itself. Our Presbyters and Deacons ought 
 to admonish them of this, that they may cherish the sheep entrusted 
 to them, and instruct them in the way of salvation by divine rules. 
 I have too good an opinion of the peaceable and humble disposition 
 of our people to believe that they would have ventured to take such 
 a step, had they not been seduced by the adulatory arts of some of 
 the Clergy. Do you, then, take care of each of them, and by your 
 
 Cypriani Opera, Epint. v. t Ibid., Epist. viii.
 
 SCHISM IN ROME. 49? 
 
 judgment and moderation, according to the divine precepts, moderate 
 the spirits of the lapsed : let none pluck off fruit as yet unripe with 
 improvident hastiness ; let none commit a vessel again to the deep 
 shattered already and leaky, till it be carefully refitted ; let none 
 put on his tattered garment, till he see it thoroughly repaired. I 
 beseech them to attend to our counsel, and expect our return ; that 
 when we shall come to you, by the mercy of God, we may examine 
 the letters and the desires of the martyrs in the presence of the con- 
 fessors, according to the will of the Lord, and with the concurrence 
 of other Bishops convened together." * 
 
 The epistles which Cyprian had forwarded to his own Clergy were 
 transmitted to Rome, where a similar difficulty had occurred on 
 account of the vacancy of that see. The Roman Clergy entirely 
 approved of what Cyprian had done ; and, having met together, 
 though they had no spiritual head, they decided that the lapsed, 
 when on the point of death, might be admitted to communion. 
 They communicated their decision to several other churches, as well 
 as to Carthage ; and it is worthy of remark, that the persecution did 
 not hinder the Christians in different countries from keeping up a 
 close correspondence with each other, and that they manifested an 
 earnest desire to act in concert. It is also a singular circumstance, 
 that at the time when an infallible head of the church would have 
 been particularly needed for the settling of a question which was in 
 some measure new, the church of Rome was without a Bishop. The 
 Roman Clergy showed great anxiety upon the subject, and exchanged 
 several letters with the Bishop and Clergy of Carthage ; but they 
 assumed to themselves no kind of superiority ; and though Cyprian 
 was glad to have their concurrence and support, he writes as an 
 equal, and as one who in his own diocese was perfectly independent.f 
 
 The controversy respecting the lapsed was accompanied by another 
 of somewhat less importance, if considered merely in itself; but if 
 we regard its rise and origin, it will be found attended with moment- 
 ous and formidable circumstances, inasmuch as it had its source in 
 hatred, and an unrestrained indulgence of malevolent passions ; it was 
 protracted to a considerable length, and carried on with a degree of 
 warmth and pertinacity, beyond what the nature of the affair might have 
 justified, and it produced in the end a deplorable schism. The leading 
 facts of the case are as follows : Novatus, a Presbyter of the church 
 of Carthage, had, before the breaking out of the Decian persecution, 
 on some account or other, not now to be ascertained, fallen out with 
 his Bishop, Cyprian, and drawn away after him certain of his fellow- 
 Presbyters ; that is, he had prevailed on them to refuse conforming 
 in all things to episcopal authority. Novatus is represented on the 
 page of ecclesiastical history to have been a man not only of an 
 arrogant, factious, rash, and inconstant character, but one who had 
 polluted himself by the commission of numerous crimes. Cyprian 
 had intended to proceed against him before the proper authorities, 
 and to eject him from the communion of the faithful, and a day 
 
 Cyprian! Opera, Epist. xi., ad Plebem. 
 t Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxv. 
 VOL. I. 3S
 
 498 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 had been assigned for this purpose ; but the sudden promulga- 
 tion of the Decian edict compelled Cyprian to fly, consequently 
 Novatus escaped the contemplated punishment. After the departure 
 of Cyprian nothing more was heard of this disturbance so long as 
 the Magistrates of Africa continued to vex the church ; but when the 
 violence of the persecution had subsided, and Cyprian contemplated 
 his return to Carthage, Novatus fomented a faction, which for a sea- 
 son prevented his re-appearance in that city. This happened a short 
 time before Easter, and the authors of the schism were Novatus, and 
 four other Presbyters, who had already opposed his authority, and a 
 layman named Felicissimus, who shortly after received ordination 
 from the former. Another instigator of the schism was Fortunatus ; 
 and these men, though they were at first few in number, laid the 
 foundation of a division which lasted for centuries. Some seceders, 
 who took up their residence in the mountains, were called, from that 
 circumstance, " Montenses ; " and the Donatists, who rose into 
 notice in the following century, may be traced to the same turbulent 
 and discontented source.* Such distractions and turbulent proceed- 
 ings had the effect of prolonging the absence of the Bishop from 
 Carthage, but could not ultimately prevent his return. Novatus, 
 however, apprehensive of the severity of Cyprian, withdrew himself, 
 before the return of the latter, to Rome, in which city there pre- 
 vailed no less strife and division than at Carthage. 
 
 At the termination of the paschal festival, Cyprian returned to 
 Carthage, having been separated from his Clergy about one year and 
 four months. His first step was to convene a council for deciding 
 the case of the lapsed ; and before it was gathered together, he 
 wrote a work upon the subject, entitled De Lapsis, which is still 
 extant. The assembly was composed of several Bishops, Presbyters, 
 and Deacons; and inasmuch as all the lapsed were not equally 
 guilty, a suitable distinction was made in the sentence. Those who 
 had actually offered sacrifice had a penitential course of discipline 
 imposed upon them for a definite time ; but the libellatici, having 
 already repented, were at once restored to communion. Felicissimus 
 and his associates appeared before the council, and were excommuni- 
 cated. In the mean while the see of Rome, which had been vacant 
 above twelve months, was filled up by the election of Cornelius. We 
 learn that sixteen Bishops were present when he was chosen, arid 
 that he had the almost unanimous voice of the Clergy and people. 
 One of his own letters is also extant, which gives an interesting 
 account of the ecclesiastical establishment, as it existed at Rome at 
 this period. There were forty-six Presbyters ; from which it has been 
 inferred, that there were as many churches, and we may at least 
 conclude that there were as many distinct congregations. The Dea- 
 cons were only seven, the number having, perhaps, been continued 
 from the apostolical times ; but there were also seven Sub-Deacons, 
 and forty-two assistants. The exorcists, readers, and door-keepers 
 amounted to fifty-two ; and the number of widows, and other poor 
 persons who were maintained by public charity, was above one hun- 
 
 * Burton's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxv.
 
 COUNELIVS AND NOVATIAN. 499 
 
 dred and fifty. This statement leaves no room to doubt, that the 
 Christians of Rome were very numerous, and that collections were 
 still made for the poorer brethren.* 
 
 Cornelius did not find the see of Rome a luxurious and easy posi- 
 tion. A Presbyter of the church in that city, named Novatian,f 
 was equally factious with Novatus, and was enabled to acquire 
 still greater celebrity. He commenced by opposing the election 
 of Cornelius, and setting himself up as a rival Bishop, having per- 
 suaded three other Prelates, who were simple, uneducated men, to 
 come from a remote part of Italy, and assist in his consecration. 
 That there should at one time be two Bishops of the same see, was a 
 thing perfectly unprecedented ; the only exception having occurred 
 at the beginning of the century, when Alexander was appointed as a 
 coadjutor to Narcissus, in the bishopric of Jerusalem. In this 
 case, however, the great age of Narcissus rendered him incapable of 
 discharging his duties ; and there is every reason to suppose that he 
 perfectly agreed with the other members of his church in wishing 
 to have an assistant appointed. The decision was novel, but it was 
 made unanimously, and to the great benefit of the church : whereas, 
 in the case of Cornelius and Novatian, there was no doubt whatever 
 that the former was properly elected ; and that the latter set himself 
 up as a rival, with the support of a trifling minority. It was, how- 
 ever, very desirable that the schism should not spread ; and Corne- 
 lius, as well as his Clergy, was anxious that his election should be 
 made known at Carthage. Cyprian also took pains to inquire into 
 the case, and soon convinced himself that Cornelius was the lawful 
 Bishop. The next step of the Bishop of Rome was to assemble a 
 council, in which the proceedings of Novatian were condemned, and 
 the decision of the Synod of Carthage concerning the lapsed was 
 adopted, with the additional provision, that Bishops, or Clergymen, 
 if they had lapsed, should only be re-admitted to communion as lay- 
 men, and should no longer exercise their spiritual functions. Copies 
 of this decision were sent to distant churches ; and Cyprian showed 
 the same wish to produce uniformity by announcing the election of 
 Cornelius to all the African churches, and by publishing a treatise 
 on the unity of the church. J 
 
 During the proceedings which are thus briefly adverted to, " the 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hiat., lib. vi., cap. 43 ; Burton, Lect. on Eccles. Hir.t., lect. xxv. 
 Gibbon estimates the number of Christians in Rome at this period at fifty thousand. 
 
 t " Novatian, from similarity of name, as well as from principles, has sometimes 
 been confounded with Novatns. There can, however, be no donbt, that they were two 
 different persons ; one of them a Presbyter of Carthage, and the other of Home. 
 Novatian was a man of learning, and had taken part in the correspondence which 
 passed in the preceding year between the Roman Clergy and Cyprian. He is also sup- 
 posed to have been the author of a treatise on the Trinity, which has come down to us, 
 ;iiid which does not bear the marks of any heretical sentiments. His behaviour, at the 
 end of the Decian persecution, was flagrantly irregular, and led the way to most disas- 
 trous circumstances. Hia conduct had been suspected before the election of Cornelius ; 
 and the Presbyters who had been lying in prison since the death of Fabian, pronounced 
 him excommunicated, as well as five other Presbyters who were attached to him. Mat- 
 tors were in thi^ state, when Novatns came from Carthage to Rome, and he easily per- 
 suaded Novatian to commence a (schism." (Burton.) 
 
 t Burton, Eccles. Hint., p. 336. Sixth edition. 
 
 3 s 2
 
 500 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 noble army of martyrs " was abundantly enlarged. Subsequent to 
 the martyrdom of Fabian, and previous to tlie election of Cornelius 
 to tbe episcopate, Moyses was beheld as the chief ornament of the 
 Roman Clergy, nor were Maximus and others considered inferior to 
 him ; both were Priests, and did honour to that character by the 
 sanctity of their lives, and their zeal for the glory of Christ and the sal- 
 vation of man. The persecution furnished a favourable opportunity for 
 the manifestation of their fidelity ; on account of which, with others, 
 they were seized and imprisoned. With considerable courage they 
 sustained the first assaults of the enemy ; and their behaviour under 
 suffering strengthened the Christians in their faith, and inspired them 
 with hallowed resolutions to suffer for Christ. They were for some 
 time confined without enduring further punishment than the loss 
 of liberty inseparable from a prison. At length they were more 
 hardly used, and exposed to numerous trials, and a variety of tor- 
 ments. Several proposals were then made for their enlargement ; 
 but as a compliance with the pagan worship was always included 
 among them, they refused to purchase their liberty at the expense 
 of their faith. This liberty, however, was at length obtained ; and 
 Maximus, with some others, fell into the snares of Novatus, and were 
 decoyed into schism. Moyses stqod his ground, and was proof against 
 all solicitation, exerting himself for the welfare of the church : he 
 declared that he would not hold communion with the schismatic, or 
 any of his adherents, and was active in discovering and defeating his 
 wiles. It was, however, not long before Moyses was again seized, 
 and, with exemplary courage and fortitude, suffered martyrdom, being 
 beheaded within the walls of Rome. 
 
 All that is known of Julian, who suffered during this persecution, 
 is from Chrysostom, who informs us that he was born in Cilicia. 
 The Decian edict for the persecution of the Christians furnished him 
 with an opportunity of maintaining the faith at the cost of ease, 
 liberty, and life. He fell into the hands of a Magistrate, who abused 
 his commission in the infliction of most inhuman cruelties : his con- 
 stancy was severely tried. The civic officer, finding that violence had 
 not the desired effect, determined to try his patience ; and, there- 
 fore, he was immured for a length of time in prison. From his 
 murky dungeon he was frequently carried before his relentless Judge, 
 by whom he was barbarously used, and remanded to prison : some- 
 times these severities were remitted, and milder measures were adopted. 
 For a whole year Julian was wantonly compelled to travel from town 
 to town, that he might be exposed to the insult and contumely of the 
 Pagan ; but he was invincible ; the malice of his adversaries only 
 rendered him a more conspicuous witness of the truth, inasmuch as 
 nothing could make him ashamed or weary of his profession. 
 Finding that all their efforts were ineffectual, and that what was 
 designed for the confusion of the confessor, terminated in the glory 
 of God and the honour of his servant, he was re-conducted to the 
 Magistrate, who, being exasperated, ordered him to be stripped, and 
 scourged until his bones appeared, employing various tortures that 
 might shake the constancy of any who preferred life and ease to the
 
 PETER, AND OTHER MARTYRS. 501 
 
 serenity of mind which a good conscience only can vouchsafe. Julian 
 overcame. The Judge, still more incensed at finding his attempts 
 abortive, resolved to despatch him, and thus rid himself of further 
 trouble and confusion ; he nevertheless commanded him to be exe- 
 cuted in a manner which gave some hopes that Julian might, after 
 all, lose his confidence and patience, and forfeit the reward of his 
 former sufferings. He was confined in a leathern bag, into which 
 a number of serpents and scorpions were put, and then thrown into 
 the sea. 
 
 Pursuant to the Decian edict, Peter, a young man valuable for the 
 excellencies of his mind, was arrested at Lampsachus, a town on the 
 Hellespont, and carried before Optimus, the Proconsul of Asia. Hav- 
 ing answered the usual interrogatories, and confessed himself a Chris- 
 tian, the Proconsul required him to notice the imperial command, and 
 comply therewith by offering sacrifice to Venus. Peter, with prompti- 
 tude, replied, " I am surprised that you should endeavour to persuade 
 me to sacrifice to an infamous woman, whose licentiousness is 
 recorded by your own historians, and whose life consisted of such 
 actions as the laws would severely punish. No ; I ought much 
 rather to offer to the true God and Jesus Christ the acceptable sacri- 
 fice of prayer and praise." On hearing this, Optimus ordered him to 
 be stretched on a wheel, and bound down to it with chains ; which 
 was done with such violence, that his bones were broken. His tor- 
 ments seemed to inspire him with fresh courage ; and in the midst 
 thereof he smiled on his persecutors, as if he designed to reproach 
 them with the impotency of their malice to separate him from God. 
 Then looking up to heaven, he thanked the Almighty for enabling 
 him hitherto to endure the trial, and earnestly requested a continu- 
 ance of the requisite courage and patience to overcome the tyranny 
 of his enemies. The Proconsul, witnessing such undaunted perse- 
 verance and zeal, ordered him to be beheaded. 
 
 Immediately after this sanguinary scene had transpired, and as the 
 Proconsul was setting out for Troas, a city in Phrygia, three others, 
 namely, Andrew, Paul, and Nicomachus, were brought before him for 
 professing Christianity. He asked whence they came, and what was 
 their religion. Nicomachus, more zealous and impatient than the 
 rest, cried out, that he was a Christian. Andrew and Paul, being 
 required to give an account of themselves, said, they were of the same 
 faith. Optimus then, turning to Nicomachus, commanded him to 
 offer sacrifice to the heathen deities, according to the edict of the 
 Emperor ; to which he readily answered, that a Christian ought not to 
 pay that respect to devils which was due only to God. Upon this decla- 
 ration he was put upon the rack, and tortured ; which he endured 
 with laudable patience and resolution, until he seemed ready to 
 expire, and then forfeited all the advantage of his sufferings by abjur- 
 ing the faith, and offering sacrifice to the gods. The Proconsul 
 ordered him to be immediately set at liberty ; but Nicomachus had 
 scarcely given that public proof of his apostacy, than he fell into the 
 most violent agonies, and died on the spot. A young woman about 
 sixteen years of age, of the name of Denisa, witnessed this terrible
 
 502 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 judgment, and exclaimed, " unhappy wretch ! why would you pur- 
 chase a moment's ease at the expense of a miserable eternity?" 
 Optimus heard her, and calling her to him, he asked if she were a 
 Christian ; to which she replied in the affirmative, saying, " Yes, I 
 am ; and therefore pity the poor man who could not hold out one 
 moment longer, when he knew the reward of his sufferings, and that 
 eternal rest was before him." To which the Proconsul, alluding to the 
 dreadful end of Nicomachus, sarcastically said, " He has truly found 
 rest ! for having discharged his duty to the gods, and to the Empe- 
 ror, the great goddesses Venus and Diana have taken him out of the 
 world, that he should not be exposed to the reproach and insult 
 of the Christians." Having thus spoken, he commanded Denisa to 
 offer sacrifice according to the decree of the Emperor, assuring her 
 that if she were disobedient, she should be punished with the utmost 
 severity. To this she replied, that the God whom she served was 
 more powerful than he, and therefore she feared not his threats, nor 
 would she obey his commands ; upon which he delivered her into the 
 hands of two Libertines,* who were ordered to compel her to submis- 
 sion : she was, however, mercifully preserved from evil. Andrew and 
 Paul were remanded to prison. 
 
 On the following morning the populace in great crowds surrounded 
 the Proconsul's house, demanding that Andrew and Paul should be deli- 
 vered into their hands. They had been instigated to this by certain 
 Priests of Diana. Optimus sent for the two martyrs, and ordered 
 them to sacrifice to the goddess. They informed him, that they 
 knew no such deity, nor had they ever rendered divine honours to any 
 but to God alone. This declaration so enraged the people, that they 
 besought the Proconsul would deliver them up to their discretion, and 
 they would vindicate the honour of their gods ; but the Judge, will- 
 ing to make a further trial of their constancy, endeavoured to per- 
 suade them to idolatry ; but, finding he could produce no impression 
 upon them, he ordered them to be scourged, and then delivered 
 to the mob to be stoned to death, who did not delay in putting the 
 sentence into execution ; they tied their feet together, dragged them 
 out of the town, and put them to death. In the meantime, hearing 
 what was going on, Denisa broke from her keeper, and rushed to the 
 place where the martyrs were suffering, declaring that she would 
 share the glory and reward of their martyrdom. The Proconsul, 
 hearing of her wonderful preservation and late escape, commanded 
 her to be taken away and beheaded. 
 
 Lucian and Marcian were brought up in all the errors of Paganism, 
 and they conformed to the extravagancies of Heathenism with energy 
 and zeal ; they professed and practised magic with the undisguised 
 intention of executing their revenge and malice on those who had 
 given them offence, or for the purpose of engaging the affections 
 of females in order to their seduction. These magicians, so called, 
 
 It is said, that the Libertines were surprised by a vision, which so shocked and 
 amazed thtm with the glory ill which it appeared, that they fell at the feet of Denisa, 
 humbly requesting that she would pray for them, that they might not feel the hand 
 of divine justice for their crime.
 
 LUCIAN AND MARCIAN. 503 
 
 having conceived a criminal and violent passion for a lady of strict 
 morality, they practised every art to corrupt her mind : all attempts 
 proved unsuccessful and abortive. In vain they employed their divi- 
 nations, and in vain did they invoke the infernal deities, who were 
 compelled at last to confess, that they had no power over such 
 as acknowledged the true God, and were under the protection of 
 Jesus Christ. This confession astounded these servants of Satan, 
 who speedily arrived at the conclusion, that Christ must be superior 
 to all other powers ; and, through the assistance of divine grace, they 
 pursued this suggestion until they were convinced of the absurdity 
 of Paganism, and the rationality and importance of the religion of 
 Christ. The sincerity of their conversion was demonstrated by 
 burning their books of "curious arts" in the face of the whole town, 
 generally supposed to have been Nicomedia, in Bithynia ; and in 
 declaring publicly, that for the future they neither knew nor trusted 
 in any being, but that God who had convinced them of their folly and 
 impiety. Having made this declaration, they proceeded to the house 
 of God, where they gave a full account of what had taken place, and 
 received baptism. After this public recognition of Christ as their 
 Saviour and God, they forsook wealth, friends, and all their expecta- 
 tions of worldly aggrandisement, and retired into some private place, 
 where they passed the time in penitential sorrow on account of the 
 sins and transgressions of their previous career. 
 
 In a short time the Holy Spirit, who was the cause of their con- 
 version, inspired them with the hallowed resolution of again appear- 
 ing in the world for the instruction of their former acquaintance in 
 the truths of that holy religion which they had recently embraced ; 
 and their addresses received no small weight from the consideration 
 of their former opposition to the doctrines of the Gospel. Nothing 
 but the persecuting spirit of the times impeded their usefulness. 
 These converts were speedily seized and carried before Sabinus, the 
 Governor of Bithynia, who commenced the examination by demanding 
 of Lucian his name and station in society. Lucian speedily satisfied 
 his inquiries, and asserted that he was now a defender and preacher 
 of " the faith which once he destroyed." On the inquiry of the 
 Judge, by what authority he took upon himself the office of a preacher, 
 he replied, " That the laws of humanity and charity obliged all men 
 to endeavour the conversion of their neighbours, and to do all in their 
 power in order to rescue them from the snares of the devil." Mar- 
 cian's replies to the questions of the Proconsul differed nothing from 
 those of his companion, which caused Sabinus to reproach them both 
 with ingratitude to the gods ; from whom, he said, they had received 
 so many favours. Marcian answered to the following effect : " That 
 their conversion was by the same grace which was given to the Apos- 
 tle Paul ; who, from a zealous persecutor of the church, became a 
 preacher of the Gospel." The Judge then advised them to consult 
 their own security, by returning to what he called their duty ; assur- 
 ing them, that nothing but compliance therewith could procure for 
 them the favour of the gods, or the kindness of their Prince. To 
 this remonstrance Marcian responded, " That he and his companion
 
 504 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 could never be sufficiently thankful to that God who had delivered 
 them from darkness, and favoured them with the glorious light they 
 now enjoyed." 
 
 Sabinus hearing them thus magnify the power of the Redeemer, 
 asked them why he had not preserved them from the hands of the 
 Magistrate ; and why he did not rescue them from the sufferings 
 with which they were threatened. " The true glory of a Christian," 
 replied Marcian, "is to lay down what you call life, that he may 
 obtain eternal life by his constant perseverance in the faith ; and we 
 heartily wish that the Almighty would bestow upon you grace and 
 understanding, that you might know the power of that Being whom 
 we obey, and might see his love to all who truly serve and believe in 
 him." The Proconsul ridiculed their expectations of future happi- 
 ness, and desired them forthwith to obey the imperial order and offer 
 sacrifice, before he proceeded to further extremities. Marcian said, 
 "They were ready to bear the worst he could inflict, and were 
 resolved to suffer any torments rather than undergo the displeasure 
 of the true and living God." The Judge now finding that he could 
 prevail nothing, and lost time and labour in endeavouring to persuade 
 these confessors to abandon the new religion, as it was called, and 
 embrace that which they had discarded, he condemned them to be 
 burnt alive. Upon this they were immediately led to the place of 
 execution ; where, being fastened to the stake, and every preparation 
 made, they addressed themselves to their God and Saviour, in the 
 following language : " Our praises, Lord Jesus, must fall short of 
 what we owe for our deliverance from pagan error, the happiness 
 of suffering for thy name, and the comfortable portion of being 
 joined with the saints for ever. To thee be the praise and glory for 
 ever. Amen. Into thy hands, blessed Jesus, we commend our 
 spirits." Thus they breathed out their souls an offering by fire unto 
 the Lord. 
 
 Trypho and Respicius were countrymen, and probably relatives : 
 they are mentioned as having been natives of the province of Bithy- 
 niaj born at Apamea, where their ancestors had for some time resided. 
 They held considerable influence in the Christian community, so that 
 at the commencement of the Decian persecution they were speedily 
 arrested by the order of Aquilinus, the Governor of that part of the 
 country, laden with fetters, and conducted to Nice, where that Magis- 
 trate had a residence, and then thrown into prison until Aquilinus 
 was at leisure to sit in judgment upon them. After some days' con- 
 finement, they were brought into court, when they appeared so full 
 of faith and of the Holy Ghost as to make them proof against the 
 power of their prosecutors. The first questions which the Governor 
 put to them were of the usual character, relating to their name and 
 Btation in society; to which they answered distinctly, that their 
 names were Trypho and Respicius, and that they were well born, but 
 that the Christian religion was irrespective of birth or fortune, as all 
 things were governed by divine providence. One, who was on the 
 tench, thinking to intimidate the confessors, said, "That the Em- 
 peror had commanded all to be burnt alive who refused to sacrifice to
 
 MARTYRDOM OF RESPICIUS AND TRYPHO. 505 
 
 the gods." To this Respicius replied, " That he and his companion 
 only wished they might be thought worthy to suffer in that cause," 
 and requested the court to show them no favour, but to pro- 
 ceed even to the utmost of their power. Aquilinus endeavoured to 
 persuade them to comply with the imperial command, suggesting 
 they were of mature years, and therefore able to understand the rea- 
 sonableness of what he proposed. " Yes/' said Trypho, " we under- 
 stand what we do perfectly well, and are therefore determined to 
 remain true to Christ, and contend for Him to the last drop of our 
 blood." The Governor again urged them to conform to the religion 
 of the empire ; but finding that their resolution was fixed, he 
 ordered them to be placed upon the rack. 
 
 The sentence was scarcely pronounced, when they expressed their 
 readiness to suffer whatever was imposed, by stripping themselves 
 of their garments ; and, stepping forward with surprising alacrity, 
 they bore the torture for nearly three hours with wonderful patience, 
 proclaiming aloud the power of the Most High, and the punishment 
 which he had denounced against idolatry. The Governor then 
 ordered them to be exposed in a state of nudity in the open air ; and 
 as it was the winter season, the severity of the frost disabled them 
 from walking or even standing without much pain. When they had 
 endured that mortification for some time, they were again taken 
 before the Judge, who asked them whether they were yet inclined to 
 alter their opinions ; and being answered in the negative, he ordered 
 them back to prison, assuring them, that if they did not comply with 
 his proposals, they should be treated with still greater severity. Soon 
 after their commitment, Aquilinus made a tour of other cities under 
 his jurisdiction, and on his return called for the two martyrs, whom 
 he once more endeavoured to gain by fair words, which seemed to 
 express a tenderness for them, desiring them to consult their own 
 interests before it was too late. Trypho answered, " That their own 
 real good was the only object of their thoughts ; and that they could 
 not follow his advice in any better manner, than by remaining firm in 
 the profession of their faith." The Magistrate, discovering that all his 
 endeavours were in vain, commanded their feet to be pierced with 
 nails, in which condition they were dragged through the streets ; but 
 the strength of the holy martyrs supported them under their suffer- 
 ings, and imparted to them a courage which was superior to the 
 utmost malice of their enemies. Their fortitude astonished the 
 Judge, who ordered them next to be scourged, which was done 
 until the fatigued executioners were compelled to desist. This so 
 exasperated the Magistrate, that he directed the officers to tear their 
 flesh with iron hooks, and to apply lighted torches to their sides ; 
 but they remained unmoved in the midst of all these torments. 
 Aquilinus addressed the executioners, commanding them to exert all 
 their power; but the martyrs were superior to them. Again he 
 spoke to them, advising them to consider their own security ; but 
 Respicius assured him, that it was not in the power of words or 
 blows to draw them from their duty to God to worship senseless idols. 
 On the following day they were again examined, and endeavours 
 
 VOL. I. 3 T
 
 506 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 made to draw them from their steadfastness ; but without effect. 
 Trypho once more having assured the court, that they were resolved 
 never to be moved from their resolution of serving God and his Son 
 Jesus Christ, the Governor forthwith passed sentence upon them, 
 and they were beheaded. 
 
 Cyril, Bishop of Gortyna, is recorded in the most ancient Martyr- 
 ologies, as having suffered for the sake of Christ about this period. 
 He was born in the year 166; but it is uncertain whether he was 
 a native of Crete, or of Egypt : his early education in the facts and 
 evidences, doctrines and institutions, of Christianity, proves that he 
 either descended from Christian parents, or was favoured with the 
 good providence of falling into the hands of Christian instructers 
 in early life, inasmuch as he frequently manifested such devoted con- 
 fidence in the promises and grace of the Redeemer, as to leave friends, 
 and all temporal enjoyments, in search of the followers and confessors 
 of Christ : with these he spent considerable time, and from their 
 instruction and example he derived much profit. His improvement 
 in acquaintance with heavenly virtues rendered him so conspicu- 
 ous, that at the age of thirty-four he was raised to the episcopate. 
 The charge of those who were committed to his care was an employ- 
 ment far too confined for the exercise of his pastoral zeal : he there- 
 fore extended his exertions to such a degree, that he had ere long 
 the pleasure of witnessing, as the fruit of his incessant and untiring 
 labours, the conversion of the whole town of Gortyna, with the 
 exception of a very small portion of the inhabitants, who, though 
 they preferred darkness to light because of the evil character of their 
 deeds, were nevertheless ready to acknowledge his merit, and to pay 
 him the respect which was due to a good man. 
 
 The church of Gortyna had enjoyed tranquillity since the death 
 of Severus, until the accession of Decius : this favourable interval 
 of nearly forty years Cyril had improved in the propagation of the 
 Gospel, and in fortifying his flock against the storm which ere long 
 might break in tempest and hail around them. On the publication 
 of the edict of Decius, Lucius, then Governor of Gortyna, ordered 
 the Bishop to be apprehended, and required to offer the accustomed 
 sacrifice to the heathen deities. Cyril was at this period about 
 eighty-four years of age ; but his advanced life had not weakened 
 his courage, nor rendered cold his zeal. The Governor, ascertaining 
 his resolution, informed him of the imperial mandate, which adjudged 
 all to the severest torments and death, who refused compliance 
 thereto ; and advised him to pay some regard to his own grey hairs, 
 and not heedlessly to throw away the short remains of a life he in the 
 course of nature might yet enjoy. " That consideration," replied 
 Cyril, " will be allowed no weight in the present case : I can never 
 comply with your proposal, while I remember the irreparable conse- 
 quences of acknowledging any God but Him who alone has title to 
 the name of Most High." Lucius, who was evidently unwilling to 
 put the venerable Prelate to death, observed, that Cyril had a charac- 
 ter for great wisdom and experience : he desired, therefore, that he 
 would give some proof of this being the case, by a prompt and cor-
 
 MARTYRDOM OF CYRII,. 507 
 
 dial obedience to the will of his Prince, and thus, by his example, 
 lead many to loyalty and life. Cyril replied, that the best proof of 
 wisdom he could give, would be to save his own soul, after he had 
 led so many to salvation and heaven, and to bequeath to his spiritual 
 children a pattern of fortitude and courage, such as his high and 
 holy profession required. Other questions were proposed by Lucius, 
 in the hope of shaking the constancy of Cyril ; but, finding him 
 altogether invincible, and being confounded with the answers of the 
 Prelate, which were usually taken from the word of God, according 
 to the example of our Lord when assailed by the adversary of man- 
 kind, he proceeded to pronounce sentence in the following manner : 
 " I order and appoint that Cyril, who has lost his senses, and is a 
 declared enemy of our gods, shall be burnt alive." The old man 
 heard this sentence without expressing the least concern, and walked 
 to the place of his execution with a cheerfulness that showed how 
 full he was of the blessed hope of gaining eternal happiness, and 
 expired with the praises of God in his mouth.* 
 
 Among the Governors of the Roman provinces none was more 
 active in executing the imperial edict against the Christians than the 
 Governor of Crete, who turned the island into what might properly 
 be termed an Aceldama, or " field of blood." Among many who fell 
 a sacrifice to his endeavours to uproot the Christian faith, none were 
 more conspicuous than Theodulus, Saturnius, Europus, Gelasius, 
 Eunicianus, Zeticus, Cleomenes, Agathopas, Bastides, and Evaristus ; 
 who, being brought before the Governor from various parts of Crete, 
 united against the enemy in a way that has made their memory 
 famous to posterity. The first three were inhabitants of Gortyna, 
 where they had probably been grounded in the faith by Cyril their 
 Bishop : the rest were brought from different towns in the island. 
 On the day appointed for their trial, as soon as they appeared in the 
 court, they were commanded to offer sacrifice to Jupiter, in obedience 
 to the will and express command of the Emperor. Upon their refus- 
 ing to defile their hearts or hands with such an iniquitous act, the 
 Judge assured them they should be put to the severest tortures, 
 while their heathen countrymen surrendered themselves to the plea- 
 sures and diversions of a day dedicated to the honour of that deity 
 whose worship they had declined. The confessors, however, who 
 resolved to let no consideration deter them from their duty to the 
 true God, replied, that they should esteem all they could suffer for 
 the supreme Being, as the most substantial pleasure they could enjoy 
 in this world. The Governor then attempted to secure their venera- 
 tion for Jupiter, Juno, and Rheea, by expatiating in commendation 
 of these fictitious gods ; but as their stories, when told to the best 
 
 * Ancient Martyrologies say that he died in the flame ; but some later writers of the 
 acts of the martyrdom of Cyril inform ua, that he was miraculously delivered, and that 
 the fire burnt out without hurting him : they farther assure us, that the Pagans who 
 saw this prodigy, went immediately and acquainted Lucius therewith ; who, being con- 
 vinced of the truth of this miraculous deliverance, glorified the God of the Christians, 
 and stayed all further proceedings against the reverend Prelate. But on hearing that 
 he continued to employ his life in the conversion of numbers to the troth aa it is iu 
 Jesus, he retracted his former clemency, and ordered him to be beheaded. 
 
 3x2
 
 508 EOOK IV. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 advantage, are both ridiculous and absurd, his recital of them fur- 
 nished Theodulus and the rest an opportunity of making several 
 remarks upon them, which were certainly far from being agreeable to 
 the Governor, who stopped their mouths by commanding them to be 
 laid upon the rack and tortured for their impious contempt of the 
 gods. The martyrs remaining the same unalterable assertors of the 
 vanity of idols, and the greatness of the one true God, though their 
 bodies were torn in the most miserable and barbarous manner, the 
 Governor passed sentence upon them, and they were all beheaded : 
 their latest breath was employed in fervent prayer to the Almighty 
 that he would perpetuate the faith of Christ in that district. Secun- 
 dianus was accused in the presence of a Captain of the army of 
 Decius, of being a Christian : he confessed, without hesitation, that 
 such was the case, and was committed to prison. As the soldiers 
 were conducting him thither, Verianus and Marcellinus, two Chris- 
 tians, asked where they were conducting the innocent. They were 
 immediately arrested, and led to a town called Centumcellse, where 
 they were required to offer sacrifice. This they not only refused to 
 do, but, offering some indignity to the idol, they were all condemned 
 to suffer : at first they were beaten with staves ; then they were 
 exposed on a gibbet, where they were tormented with fire, which was 
 held to their sides ; ultimately they were beheaded. 
 
 The short, but sanguinary, reign of Decius was now soon to close. 
 Owing to the incursions of the Goths and other barbarous nations, 
 Decius resolved to oppose them in person in Thrace and Mresia ; and 
 having made considerable preparations, and leaving the government 
 of the empire in the hands of the Senate, he took his son with him, 
 and marched toward the enemy. His successes over the foe were at 
 first numerous, and promised a speedy and triumphant victory ; 
 which would have been the case, had he not been baffled by the 
 treacherous . conduct of his own Generals. The chief of the Goths 
 gave him to understand, that if Decius would allow him to depart in 
 peace, he would at once abandon the possessions he had acquired, 
 and return to his own country ; but the Emperor, having obtained so 
 many advantages over his enemy, was determined to punish former 
 breaches of contract of which they had been guilty, by taking the 
 whole of the opposing army as prisoners, or consigning them to 
 prompt destruction, and refused to listen to his overtures. He then gave 
 orders to Trebonianus Gallus, the Governor of the frontiers of Mresia, 
 carefully to guard certain passes through which the Goths designed 
 to march ; and, to make assurance doubly sure, that he might effect- 
 ually vanquish and secure them, he placed under his command a 
 powerful party of men. But Gallus, being envious of his master, 
 and thirsting for imperial rule, communicated intelligence of the 
 movements of Decius to the enemy, promising to let him pass 
 quietly, and also advising him to divide his army into two parts, one 
 of which he recommended should lie in ambush, and that the other 
 should attack the camp of the Emperor, who would suspect no such 
 manceuvre ; and then, feigning a retreat, draw Decius into the ambus- 
 cade, when he might with facility be destroyed. Historians differ in
 
 DEATH OF DECrUS. 509 
 
 the account which they give of this treachery ; but the treason of 
 (J alias is confessed, and the Emperor was induced to encounter the 
 Goths under circumstances of great disadvantage. The high-spirited 
 Barbarians preferred death to shivery. An obscure town of Moesia 
 was the scene of the battle. The Gothic army was drawn up in three 
 lines ; and, either from choice or accident, the front of the third line 
 was covered by a morass. In the beginning of the action, the son 
 of Decius, a youth of the fairest hopes, and already associated with 
 the honours of the purple, was slain by an arrow, in the sight of his 
 afflicted father ; who, summoning all his fortitude, admonished the 
 dismayed troops, that the loss of a single soldier was of little import- 
 ance to the republic. The conflict was terrible : it was the combat 
 of despair against grief and rage. The first line of the Goths at 
 length gave way in disorder ; the second, advancing to sustain it, 
 shared its fate ; and the third only remaining entire, prepared to dis- 
 pute the passage of the morass, which was imprudently attempted by 
 the presumption of the enemy. "Here the fortune of the day 
 turned," to adopt the language of Tacitus,* " and all things became 
 adverse to the Romans : the place deep with ooze, sinking under 
 those who stood, slippery to such as advanced ; their armour heavy, 
 the waters deep ; nor could they wield, in that uneasy situation, their 
 weighty javelins. The Barbarians, on the contrary, were inured to 
 encounters in the bogs, their persons tall, their spears long, such as 
 could wound at a distance." In this morass the Roman army, 
 after an ineffectual struggle, was irrecoverably lost. Decius, that he 
 might not fall into the hands of the enemy, put the spurs to his 
 horse, and rode furiously into the morass, where, owing to the weight 
 of his armour, he was soon swallowed up, and his body never could 
 be found. Such was the miserable death of Decius, a Prince not 
 deficient in ability, but distinguished during his reign by the most 
 sanguinary and cruel persecution of the church of God : he was reso- 
 lutely determined to effect its ruin, and perished himself in the 
 attempt. The blood of the Christians which he shed not only fell 
 upon him, his son, and his army, but upon the whole Roman empire, 
 as a blasting, withering curse, by the inroads of the Goths and other 
 barbarous nations. " And thus much," says Foxe, " of the tyranny 
 of this wicked Decius against God's saints. Now to touch also the 
 power of God's vengeance and punishment against him. Like as we 
 see commonly a tempest that is vehement not long to continue, so it 
 happened with this tyrannical tormentor ; who, reigning but two 
 years, according to Eusebius.f or three at the most, as saith Orosius,J 
 among the middle of the Barbarians with whom he did war, was then 
 slain with his son. Like as he had before slain Philip and his son, 
 his predecessors ; so was he, with his son, slain by the righteous 
 judgment of God himself." 
 
 * A representation of a similar engagement which took place between a Roman army 
 and a German tribe. (Taciti Annales, lib. i.. cap. Ixiv.) 
 t Eoseb., Eccles. Hit., lib. vii., cap. 1. 
 I Pauli Orosii Historia, lib. iv., cap. 14. 
 5 Foxe, " AcU and Monuments," vol. i., p. 190, 8vo. Swley's edit.
 
 510 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Character of Gallus Humiliating Condition of the Roman Empire A dreadful 
 Pestilence Testimony of Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria Conduct of the Chris- 
 tians Testimonies of Dr. Burton Dr. Cave Pomponius Lcetus Death of Hos- 
 tilianus The Plague imputed to the Christians Demetrian Cyprian's Treatise 
 "Liber ad Demetrianum" Extracts Approaching Persecution Council at 
 Carthage More moderate Measures taken respecting the Lapsed Reason for this 
 Mitigation Imperial Edict Letter of Cyprian to the Thibaritans Benevolence 
 of Cyprian Severity of the Persecution at Rome Arrest of Cornelius Epistle 
 of Cyprian to him Contradictory Statements respecting the Martyrdom of the 
 Bishop of Rome PlumbattE Lucius His Banishment and Recall Epistle of 
 Cyprian to Lucius Character of Gallus as a Persecutor Testimony of Mosheim 
 Decretal Epistles Gross Forgeries Intended to advance the Claims of Romish 
 Supremacy Animadversions on Mosheim Cruelties of the Gallian Persecution 
 The Emperor destitute of moral Courage The popular Cry constantly respected 
 The People most eager to persecute Persecution instigated by the Populace 
 Numerous Testimonies to the Severity of the Persecution of Gallus Martyrdom 
 of Hippolytus Disastrous State of the Roman Empire Unpopularity of tJte 
 Emperor Rebellion of his General, /Emilian Gallus and his Son are slain 
 The Senate gave a Sanction to the Rights of Conquest Profession of JEmilian, 
 who meets with a Competitor in Valerian, by whom he is slain Valerian ascends 
 the Throne His Character, and that of his Son Gallienus, his Associate in the 
 Empire Brief Period of Tranquillity to the Church Death of Origen- Dispute 
 concerning the Baptism of Heretics State of that Controversy Character of 
 Stephen, Bishop of Rome His intemperate Conduct Cyprian on the Independ- 
 ence of Christian Bishops and Churches The grasping Propensity of the Church at 
 Rome Held no superior Powers or Influence The Attempts of Stephen condemned 
 Cause of the Change which took place in the Conduct of Valerian lotoards the 
 Christian Church Macrianus, his History and Character Commencement of the 
 Persecution under Valerian Nature of the Measures employed to induce A postacy 
 Supposed Martyrdom of Stephen Contradictory Accounts of the Event Cyprian 
 writes to the Churches He is summoned before the Proconsul, Paternus /* interro- 
 gated Banished to Curubis His Sympathy with, and Benevolence to, the Sufferers, 
 whom he encourages by an Epistle Martyrdom of Saturninus, Bishop of Toulouse 
 Of Ruffina and Secunda Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, is brought before the 
 Prefect History of Dionysius State of the Persecution in Egypt Frumentarii 
 Dr. Cave quoted Singular Escape of the Bishop Voluntarily conceals himself 
 Returns to Alexandria Is arrested /* interrogated by j^Emilian, and banished to 
 Cephro Heresies of Sabellius and Paul of Samosata Synods Death of Dionysius 
 Valerian's Persian Expedition Macrianus The Persecution carried on with 
 greater Severity The Imperial Edict Its Character Martyrdom of Xystus And 
 of Laurentius Remarks upon his History Martyrdom of Romanus Cyprian 
 retwns from Banishment Prefers to suffer at Carthage How this Object was 
 attained /* apprehended and brought before Galerius Maximus, the Proconsul 
 The Interrogation Martyrdom of Cyprian His general Character. 
 
 THE reins of empire were held with a feeble grasp by Gallus, the 
 successor of Decius, who was little qualified either to maintain the 
 integrity of the kingdom, or to prosecute the plans of the deceased 
 Emperor for the reformation of manners. The views which he enter-
 
 CHARACTER OF CALLUS. 511 
 
 tained of Christianity did not tend to tranquillize the church ; but 
 his naturally easy temper restrained him from the prosecution of 
 violent measures, though the work of persecution was by no means 
 discontinued during his reign. His conduct as Emperor was charac- 
 terized by great pusillanimity and indiscretion. From respectful 
 remembrance of the late Emperor, the imperial title was conferred 
 on Hostilianus, his only-surviving son ; but equal rank, with more 
 effectual power, was granted to Gallus, whose experience and 
 ability were considered adapted to the guardianship of the Prince, 
 and to the present condition of the empire. His first care was 
 to deliver the Illyrian provinces from the intolerable weight of the 
 victorious Goths. He consented to leave in their hands the rich 
 fruits of their invasion, an immense booty ; and, what was still more 
 disgraceful, a great number of prisoners of the highest merit and 
 quality. He plentifully supplied their camp with every conveniency 
 that could assuage their angry spirits, or facilitate their so-much- 
 wished-for departure ; and he even promised to pay them annually a 
 large sum of gold, on condition they should never afterwards infest 
 the Roman territories by their incursions. To such a state of igno- 
 miny and contempt the Roman empire had not been reduced. Dur- 
 ing the period of the Scipios, the most wealthy Monarchs of the 
 earth, " who courted the protection of the victorious commonwealth, 
 were gratified with such trifling presents as could only derive a value 
 from the hand that bestowed them ; an ivory chain, a coarse garment 
 of purple, an inconsiderable piece of plate, or a quantity of copper 
 coin.* After the wealth of nations had centred in Rome, the Empe- 
 rors displayed their greatness, and even their policy, by the regular 
 exercise of a steady and moderate liberality towards the allies of the 
 state. They relieved the poverty of the Barbarians, honoured their 
 merit, and recompensed their fidelity. These voluntary marks of 
 bounty were understood to flow, not from the fears, but merely from 
 the generosity or the gratitude, of the Romans ; and whilst presents 
 and subsidies were liberally distributed among friends and suppliants, 
 they were sternly refused to such as claimed them as a debt. But 
 this stipulation, of an annual payment to a victorious enemy, 
 appeared, without disguise, in the light of an ignominious tribute ; 
 the minds of the Romans were not yet accustomed to accept such 
 unequal laws from a tribe of barbarians ; and the Prince, who by a 
 necessary concession had probably saved his country, became the 
 object of the general contempt and aversion." f 
 
 The judgments of the Most High were still abroad in the land. A 
 fearful pestilence, which commenced its ravages about the time of the 
 demise of Decius, continued to spread devastation and death for nearly 
 fifteen years. The Martyrologist Foxe gives the following fearful 
 description of this scourge : " Neither did the just hand of God 
 
 A tella, a toya, and a golden patera of five pounds' weight, were accepted with joy 
 and gratitude by the wealthy King of Egypt. (Livy, lib. xxvii., cap. 4.) Quina millia 
 <?r:j, a weight of copper, in value about 18 sterling, was the usual present made to 
 foreign Ambassadors. (Lib. xxi., cap. 9.) 
 
 t Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," &c., vol. i., pp. 427429, 8vo. edit. MUman.
 
 512 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 plague the Emperor only, but also revenged, as well, the heathen 
 Gentiles and persecutors of his word throughout all provinces and 
 dominions of the Roman monarchy. Of this plague or pestilence 
 testifieth Dionysius to Hierax,* a Bishop in Egypt, where he declareth 
 the mortality of this plague to be so great in Alexandria, where he 
 was Bishop, that there was no house in the whole city free. And 
 although the greatness of the pestilence touched also the Christians 
 somewhat, yet it scourged the heathen idolaters much more ; besides 
 that the order of their behaviour in the one and in the other was 
 much diverse. For, as the aforesaid Dionysius doth record, the 
 Christians, through brotherly love and piety, did not refuse to visit 
 and comfort each other, and to minister what need required, notwith- 
 standing it was to them great danger ; for divers there were who, in 
 closing up their eyes, in washing their bodies, and in interring them 
 in the ground, were next themselves who followed in their graves ; 
 yet all this stayed not them from doing their duty, and showing 
 mercy one to another. Whereas the Gentiles, contrarily, being 
 extremely visited by the hand of God, felt the plague, but considered 
 not the Striker, neither yet considered they their neighbour ; but, 
 every man shifting for himself, none cared for the other ; but such as 
 were infected, some they would cast out of doors, half dead, to be 
 devoured of dogs and wild beasts ; some they suffered to die within 
 their houses, without any succour ; some they suffered to lie unburied, 
 so that no man durst come near them.f And yet, notwithstanding 
 all their voiding and shifting, the pestilence followed them whither- 
 soever they went, and miserably consumed them ; insomuch that 
 Dionysius, Bishop at the same time of Alexandria, thus reporteth 
 of his own city, that such a mortality was then among them, that 
 the said city of Alexandria had not in number so many altogether, 
 both old and young, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, as it was 
 wont to contain before of the old men only from the age of forty to 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vii., cap. 21, 22. 
 
 t " Every detailed account which has come down to us of severe epidemics in ancient 
 times, represents a depravation of morals as consequent upon sickness. It was so in 
 the present instance ; and the most painful feature was the unnatural disregard dis- 
 played by the Heathen toward their relations and friends. The Christians, on the other 
 hand, were unremitting in their attentions to the dying and the dead. Cyprian and the 
 other Bishops set a noble example of devotedness to their flocks. The fear of contagion 
 seemed never to be thought of ; and, as far as money or personal attendance could 
 mitigate the severity of such a scourge, the Christians enjoyed an advantage which 
 could not fail to be observed by the Heathen. In Pontus this effect was very remark- 
 able. Gregory was still Bishop of Neocaesarea ; and his conduct during the pestilence 
 was the cause of many persons coming over to believe the Gospel." (Burton.) " About 
 this time happened that miserable plague, that so much afflicted the Roman world, 
 wherein Carthage had a very deep share. Vast multitudes were swept away every day, 
 (Pout. Diac. in Vit. Cypr., p. xxxvi., London, Bowyer, 171 7,) the fatal messenger 
 knocking as he went along at every door. The streets were filled with the carcases 
 of the dead, which seemed to implore the assistance of the living, and to challenge a 
 right by the laws of nature and humanity, as that which shortly themselves might stand 
 in need of. But, alas ! all in vain ; every one trembled, and fled, and shifted for him- 
 self, deserted his dearest friends and nearest relations ; none considered what might be 
 his own case, nor how reasonable it was that he should do for another, what he would 
 another should do for him ; and if any stayed behind, it was only to make a prey." 
 (Cave, " Li^es of the Fathers.")
 
 GENERAL PESTILENCE IN THE EAST. 513 
 
 seventy.* Pompouius Leetus also, and other Latin writers, making 
 mention of the said pestilence, declare how the beginning thereof first 
 came (as they think) out of Ethiopia, and from the hot countries ; 
 and so, invading and wasting first the south parts, from thence spread 
 into the east ; and then proceeding further, and increasing in other 
 parts of the world, especially wherever the edicts of the Emperor went 
 against the Christians, it followed after and consumed the greater part 
 of the population, whereby many places became desolate and destitute 
 of inhabitant." Hostilianus himself fell a victim to it, leaving Gallus 
 in sole possession of the empire. 
 
 We have frequently had occasion to remark, that visitations from 
 heaven, such as pestilence, famine, or earthquake, were generally 
 adduced by the Heathen as a charge against the Christians, as being 
 the cause of the gods being so implacably angry with mankind. It 
 was so in the present instance ; and in order to vindicate the cause 
 of Christ from such imputation, Cyprian manfully addressed a dis- 
 course to Demetrian, who had not been backward in imputing the 
 ravages of the pestilence to the anger of the gods at the spread of 
 Christianity. The person who is addressed in this tractate appears to 
 have had some civil authority, and he had made use of it to perse- 
 cute the church of God. The reason why the Bishop of Carthage 
 employed his pen in reproving this reviler, he states in the following 
 passage : " When you assert that very many persons complain that 
 to us is to be imputed, f that wars arise more frequently, that pest 
 and famine rage, and that long seasons of drought suspend the fall 
 of rain, it becomes no longer a duty to be silent, lest silence should 
 argue, not modest feeling, but sense of weakness ; and our scorn to 
 refute false charges, appear as an acknowledgment that they were 
 just ones."}: He proves that the various evils that had come upon 
 the world could not satisfactorily be attributed to Christianity, and 
 that they were rather to be ascribed to the gross abominations of the 
 people, and to the wild and even brutal rage which had been mani- 
 fested towards the Christian church ; that the latter was sufficient to 
 provoke the Almighty to bring these calamities upon them, as a 
 punishment for their folly and madness in endeavouring to effect the 
 destruction of a religion which was in itself so innocuous, and dear to 
 Heaven. We cannot refrain from adducing two passages : Cyprian 
 says, " That wars are prolonged in greater frequency, that barrenness 
 and famine accumulate distress, health is broken up by raging sick- 
 nesses, and the human race, laid waste by desolating pestilence, know 
 that herein prediction has been given ; that in the last days mischiefs 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hint., lib. vii., cap. 21. The men from forty to seventy years 
 of age were called w/j.oytpovres at Alexandria, and were registered to receive a public 
 di. -it rilr n tii in of corn. 
 
 t This wan a popular notion among the Pagans, and is mentioned by Tertnllian, 
 Apol., cap. 40, ad Nationes, lib. i., cap. 9; in the Edict of Maximin, Euseb., Eccles. 
 Hist., lib. ix., cap. vii. ; by Origen, in Mattb. Comment. Interpret., sect, xxxviii. ; in 
 Origen contra Celsum, lib. iii., cap. 15; by Prudentius, contra Symmach., lib. ii., 
 p. 683. It is replied to, among others, by Arnobius, in his work against die Gentiles j 
 by Austin, in his " City of Qod ; " and by Ambrose, in bis reply to Symmachus. 
 
 I Cypriani Opera, Liber ad Demetrianum, praefatio, p. 193, edit. Paris. 
 VOL. I. 3 U
 
 514 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 were to be multiplied, and changes of adversity to advance ; and that 
 as the day of judgment approached, the censure of an offended God 
 was to be more and more enkindled to the plaguing of the race of 
 man. These things befall us, not, as your false complaint and 
 unskilful ignorance of truth pretends and affirms, because your gods 
 are not worshipped by us, but because God has no worship from you. 
 For seeing he is Lord and Ruler of the world, and all things proceed 
 at his arbitrement and nod, and nothing can happen save what He hath 
 either wrought or permitted to be, surely, when those things happen 
 which manifest the wrath of an offended God, they happen not 
 because of us, by whom God is worshipped, but are called down by 
 your offences and deserts, by whom God is neither sought nor feared, 
 and who have never left your vain superstitions for a knowledge of 
 the true religion, that God, who is the one God of all, may from all 
 receive worship and prayer. Hear him in brief himself speaking ; hear 
 his own divine voice both teaching and warning us. (Deut. vi. 13 ; 
 Exod. xx. 3 ; Jer. xxv. 6 ; Haggai i. 9 ; Amos iv. 7.) Behold, the 
 Lord is wrathful and angered, and threatens, because you turn not 
 unto him ; and you are surprised, or complain, in this obstinacy or 
 contempt of yours, becaxise the rain comes down sparingly, because 
 the earth moulders into unsightly dust, because the sterile glebe 
 hardly yields its jejune and pallid herbage, because the stricken hail 
 subdues the vine, the overwhelming whirlwind prostrates the olive, 
 drought stays the fountain, a breathing pestilence corrupts the air, 
 and morbid diseases consume mankind ; whereas these things all come 
 from the provoking of your sins, and God is the more angered when, 
 such and so great as they are, they avail nothing. That these things 
 are done either for the control of the revolting, or the punishment of 
 those who have done wrong, the same God in holy Scripture thus 
 declares : ' In vain have I smitten your children ; they received no 
 correction/ Herein agree other words of the Prophet, devoted and 
 dedicated to God : ' Thou hast stricken them, but they have not 
 grieved ; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive 
 correction.' (Jer. v. 3.) Lo ! plagues are drawn down from God, and 
 fear of God there is none. Lo ! stripes and blows from heaven fail 
 not ; yet there is no trembling, there is no fear. If no such censure 
 entered among the affairs of men, would not boldness of crime among 
 men become much greater in their security from penalty?"* 
 
 Without any hesitation, Cyprian attributes the awful visitation to 
 the hostility of the people to the Christian character, and the retribu- 
 tive hand of the Most High, of which he did not fail to admonish 
 Demetrian. " Consider now what really is the thing, concerning 
 which I mainly speak with you ; your hostility, namely, to us who 
 are innocent men, which is an insult against God, being a ravaging 
 and an oppressing of his servants. It is a small thing that your 
 lives are defiled by all manner of flagrant vices, by the guilt of dismal 
 crimes, by an assemblage of bloodshed and rapine, that true religion 
 is subverted by false superstitions, and God is never either sought or 
 feared ; besides this, you harass God's servants with unjust persecu- 
 
 ' Cypriani Opera, Liber ad Dcmetrianum, cap. ii.
 
 CYPRIAN, " LIBER AD DEMKTRIANUM." 515 
 
 (ions, men dedicated to his honour and name. It is not enough that 
 you worship not God yourself, but you pursue those who do worship 
 liiin with a sacrilegious hatred. You neither worship God, nor in 
 any wise allow him to be worshipped ; and while others, who venerate 
 not only these useless idols and images wrought by the hand of man, 
 but even portents and monsters, find favour in your sight, it is the 
 worshipper of God that alone displeases you. The funeral relics of 
 victims and of sheep, in all parts, smoke within your temples ; but 
 altars to God are either nowhere, or they are concealed. Crocodiles 
 and baboons, stones and serpents, enjoy your worship : God only in 
 the earth is either left unworshipped, or is worshipped not with 
 impunity. The innocent, the just, the friends of God, you deprive 
 of their home, you despoil of their patrimony, you oppress with 
 chains, you inclose in prison, you perish with sword, with wild beasts, 
 with fire. You are not content to make a short work of our pains, 
 and to use a straight and quick brevity of infliction : you rend our 
 bodies with long-drawn torments ; you lacerate the vitals with mani- 
 fold appliances ; too savage and hard-hearted to be content with 
 common torments, your imaginative cruelty invents new species of 
 suffering." 
 
 " Whence," Cyprian proceeds, " is this insatiable ardour for blood- 
 shed, this endless lust for cruelty ? Take your choice of these two 
 things : to be a Christian either is, or is not, a crime. If a crime, 
 why not put to death every one who says he is a Christian ? If not 
 a crime, why punish the guiltless? In this case I ought rather to be 
 tortured, should I pretend I was not a Christian. If, fearing punish- 
 ment from you, I falsely and dishonestly disavowed my past profession, 
 and my withholding of worship from your gods, I should then deserve 
 to be tortured, and to be reduced to confession of my offence by pain 
 inflicted ; as culprits in other cases, who deny an act they are charged 
 with, are put to torture in order that bodily suffering may extract a 
 truth, which the voice refuses to acknowledge. But now, when I 
 confess of my own accord, when I lift up my voice, and, in words 
 oftentimes and perpetually repeated, give you to know that I am a 
 Christian, why use torment against one who owns it, one who pulls 
 down your gods, not in hidden and obscure places, but openly and 
 publicly, and in the market-place itself, within hearing of your Magis- 
 trates and rulers : so that, little as was the ground of blaming me 
 before, it has increased both your hatred and your punishment of me, 
 that I pronounce myself a Christian in a frequented place, and among 
 the crowd, and put you and your gods to confusion by an expressed 
 and public manifestation. Yet why make this infirm body your object ? 
 why go into contention with the weakness of this earthly flesh ? 
 Wrestle rather against the energies of the soul, assail the mental 
 power, pull down my faith, conquer me, if you can, in controversy, 
 conquer me by reason. Let no one think that this has happened by 
 chance, or is a thing of accident : since long ago holy Scripture set 
 forth, and said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord ;' 
 and again the Holy Spirit admonishes us, and says, ' Say not thou, I 
 will recompense evil ; hut wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee.' 
 
 3 u 2
 
 516 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Hence it is plain and manifest, that not through us, but in behalf of 
 us, fall all those things which God in his wrath sends down." * 
 " Harm the servants of God and of Christ no more with your perse- 
 cutions ; for divine vengeance protects them when they are harmed." 
 
 Cyprian beheld the gathering storm, and prepared to meet it. The 
 long continuance of the plague awoke into new life the popular super- 
 stition. The Bishop convened a Council at Carthage, which was 
 composed of forty-one Bishops, who were governed by more moderate 
 principles than those who swayed the assembly at the previous con- 
 vocation. The Council of the preceding year had only held out to 
 the lapsed the prospect of reconciliation, after a long course of disci- 
 pline ; but now, as a severe trial was approaching, it was thought 
 most prudent to admit them at once as soldiers who were impatient 
 to show their fidelity to their heavenly Master. The individuals compos 
 ing this Council did not judge it fitting or reasonable that men should 
 be left unarmed and exposed in the day of conflict ; but that they 
 should be able, by due preparation, to defend themselves with " the 
 whole armour of God." For how could they hope to persuade indi- 
 viduals to shed their blood in the cause of the Redeemer, if they 
 prohibited them the benefit of Christian communion in the church of 
 Christ on earth ? How could they be expected to drink of the mar- 
 tyr's cup, from whom the church withheld the privilege of drinking 
 the " cup of the Lord?" While tranquillity and rest smiled upon the 
 church, the period allotted to penance was protracted ; and the Sacri- 
 ficati were not allowed re-admittance into the hallowed community 
 of God's people but at the hour of death. The enemy, however, was 
 now at the gate, and the church was to be made ready for the con- 
 flict, prepared for suffering ; and those who by the sincerity of their 
 repentance had shown themselves ready to " resist unto blood," and 
 to " contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered unto the 
 saints," were to be encouraged. We are not surprised to learn that 
 many who had lapsed in the Decian persecution, henceforth redeemed 
 their character by submitting courageously to every torture. 
 
 The repose which the death of Decius and the subsequent accession 
 of Gallus procured for the church was very temporary and short- 
 lived. To appease the fury of the populace which the pestilence had 
 excited, an imperial edict was published, in which all the Romans 
 were commanded to sacrifice to the gods, as a means of averting their 
 wrath ; and the refusal on the part of many led to numerous scenes 
 of cruelty and of blood. The number of the martyrs, however, was 
 by no means so great as in the time of Decius ; for the plague, which 
 continued fiercely to rage, kept the barbarous Heathen otherwise 
 employed. The Bishop of Carthage did not leave his city, as he had 
 been obliged to do two years before : he continued ministering to his 
 important charge, and preserving his life, though every day witnessed 
 the imprisonment or martyrdom of some of his Clergy.f At the 
 
 Cypriani Opera, Liber ad Demetrianum, cap. iii. 
 
 t " His attention to the spiritual and temporal wants of his flock was unceasing. 
 Wherever Christians were suffering, he looked npon them as a brother, or rather as a 
 father ; and while, in the treatise which he addressed to the Heathen Demetrian, lie
 
 PERSECUTION UNDER GALLU8. 517 
 
 approach of this new persecution Cyprian wrote a letter of exhorta- 
 tion to the North-African church of the Thibaritans, in which he thus 
 expresses himself : " Let none of you, my beloved brethren, when 
 he sees how our people are driven away, and scattered from fear 
 of the persecution, disquiet himself because he no longer sees the 
 brethren together, nor hears the Bishops preach. We, who dare not 
 shed blood, but are ready to allow our blood to be shed, cannot, at 
 such a time, be collected together. Wheresoever, in those days, any 
 one of the brethren may be separated for a while by the necessities 
 of the time, and absent in body, not in spirit, let him not be agitated 
 by the dreadfulness of that flight ; and if he be obliged to retire and 
 hide himself, let not the solitude of a desert place terrify him. He, 
 whom Christ accompanies in his flight, is not alone ; he is not alone, 
 who, preserving God's temple constantly, wheresoever he is, is not 
 without God. And if in desert places, and on the mountains, a 
 robber shall assault the fugitive, a wild beast attack him, or hunger, 
 thirst, or cold destroy him ; or if, when he passes over the sea in 
 haste, the fury of the storm shall sink his vessel ; yet Christ in every 
 place beholds his warrior fighting." * 
 
 As might naturally be expected, the Bishops of the metropolis, 
 under the very eyes of the Emperor, were the first objects of the per- 
 secution ; for how could people expect to put down the Christians in 
 the provinces, while they suffered their Prelates to remain in Rome ? 
 Cornelius was one of the earliest victims. His vigilance and zeal 
 appeared at the commencement of the outbreak to great advantage, so 
 long as he was allowed to remain with his flock, whom he animated 
 with frequent and powerful exhortations ; and when he was obliged 
 to leave them, he left a glorious example of fortitude and courage. 
 He was speedily apprehended, and before the Magistrates he made a 
 noble confession of the faith, which caused Cyprian to address to him 
 a letter of congratulation. f What happened to him afterwards is 
 
 exposed the falsehood of ascribing the present pestilence to the Christiana, he excited 
 the Christians at Carthage to make a charitable collection for some sufferers in Nuiui- 
 dia. An incursion of Barbarians had carried off a great number of prisoners of both 
 sexes ; and Cyprian raised a subscription for their ransom, which amounted to 3,000." 
 (Burton.) Gibbon, in his " Decline and Fall," estimates it at 850. The words are, 
 " Sestertia centum millia nnmmorum." 
 
 Cypriani Opera, Epist. ad Thibaritanos, p. 78, edit. Paris. 
 
 t Cypriani Opera, Epist. Ivi., ad Conn-Hum in exilio, de ejus confessione, p. 82, 
 edit. 8vo., Paris. This address is truly characteristic of the piety and zeal of the 
 writer, and reflects immortal honour on the Bishop of Rome. A few sentences of it we 
 must translate : " We have heard the glorious character of your faith and constancy, 
 and received the notice of it with such transports of joy, as if we ourselves were par- 
 takers with you in your deserved applauses. For since we have one church, one mind, 
 one common interest, where is the Bishop who takes not as much pleasure in the 
 honours of a brother Bishop as he would take in his own ? Or where are those bre- 
 thren who do not claim a share in the common joy of their fraternity ? Accordingly I 
 cannot express to you the triumph and satisfaction wherewith we received, in these 
 parts, the notice of your noble conduct, of your setting yourself at the head of the con- 
 fession, and leading on your brethren to the conflict, and of their numbers increasing 
 through the illustrious example set them by such a leader ; so that, whilst yon more on 
 foremost in the path of holy conquest, you invite many to follow you, and encourage 
 your people to be confessors, by becoming one first yourself in the name of them all. 
 Thus we are at a loss which most to commend,^the alacrity and constancy of your 
 faith, or the harmony and unanimity wherewith your brethren follow so good a prece-
 
 518 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 uncertain ; and what are termed " The Acts of Saint Cornelius" are 
 generally recognised as fabulous in a very disgraceful degree, so as to 
 have no claim whatever to any reasonable credit : it is true, indeed, 
 that they have been received by the historians, Bede, Ado, and Anasta- 
 sius, with many others, far more considerable for their number than 
 their authority. It is said that he was banished to Centumcellse, 
 now called Civita Vecchia, where he died a natural death, according 
 to the term employed in the Pontifical of Bucherius, Dormitionem 
 accepit.* With regard to the title given him by Jerome, namely, 
 
 dent. On the one hand, the courage of the Bishop who set the example hath heen 
 approved by a public trial of it ; on the other, the adherence of his people to him in this 
 exigence hath been sufficiently displayed by their keeping him company. Whilst you 
 have but one mind and one tongue among you, the whole church of Rome may well be 
 said to have confessed the name of Christ upon this occasion ; and that faith which the 
 blessed Apostle so extolled, hath been signalized in it. Even then he foresaw, through 
 the Spirit, this your noble bearing and firmness ; and what he commended at that time 
 in your forefathers, is justly applicable to you their children, and was doubtless designed 
 to provoke you to imitation. Your fortitude and unity are great and glorious patterns 
 to the rest of our brethren, whom you have taught thereby to have profound and reveren- 
 tial sentiments concerning the Most High, to abide by Christ firmly, and to persevere in 
 every trial. You have instructed our people to unite themselves closely with their 
 Bishop in all difficulties and dangers, and to stand by each other in the seasons of perse- 
 cution. You have convinced us that our tinion may render us invincible, and that the 
 God of peace will refuse nothing to such as pray to him in concert, with peaceable and 
 agreeing hearts. The adversary began the onset upon Christ's camp with great rage 
 and violence ; but he was repulsed with a courage equal to that which he brought with 
 him, and found his storms and terrors met with a proportionate measure of bravery and 
 spirit. He fancied he had obtained another opportunity of advantage over the servants 
 of God, and that he should find them, like raw undisciplined soldiers, in no state of 
 readiness or preparation to receive him ; and consequently imagined that he should 
 gain his point, as usual, at the very first attack. He began with an attempt to single 
 out, like a wolf, one sheep from the rest of the flock, or, like a hawk, he endeavoured 
 to separate some one bird from his companions : being conscious that he had not 
 strength enough to engage them all together, he attempted them singly, and gathered 
 what stragglers he could. But he shortly found that the host of Christ was on Iheir 
 guard, standing to arms as a united and compact body ; accordingly he was speedily 
 repulsed ; he found that they knew better how to die than to be conquered ; they were 
 therefore invincible, because they were not afraid of dying ; they might not resist 
 aggressors, it being contrary to their innocence and sanctity to kill even a guilty per- 
 son, but they were ready to give up their lives, and to make their retreat, as soon as 
 might be, out of a world so full of wickedness and barbarity. What a glorious spectacle 
 was this, and how worthy to have the Almighty beholding it ! What joy must it be to 
 the church of Christ to have witnessed his soldiers advancing in his presence to the 
 attack which the enemy made upon them, not in separate companies, or in small bodies, 
 but to have seen the whole camp at once moving towards it ? For it is a legitimate 
 construction, that all would have engaged, if all had heard of it, when every one who 
 did hear pressed forward with such alacrity. How many of the lapsed have there 
 recovered from their fall ? They maintained their ground upon this occasion with intre- 
 pidity, deriving additional constancy and courage from their shame and concern for their 
 former miscarriage ; from whence it plainly appears, that they had been surprised and 
 disconcerted before from the novelty and suddenness of their situation and peril ; but 
 they recovered themselves, and the fear of the Lord imparted to them new life, so that 
 they waited henceforth with patience and resolution, not only for the pardon of their sin, 
 but for the honour and crown of martyrdom." 
 
 * We are informed, on the authority of Platina and others, which authority by our 
 best-informed historians has been almost simultaneously rejected, that " Cornelius, 
 before he went into banishment, and at the instance of Lucina, a holy matron, by night 
 removed the bodies of Peter and Paul out of the public burial-places, where they seemed 
 to be less secure ; that of Paul was by Lucina herself deposited in ground of her own, in 
 the Via OxiensU, near the place where he suffered : and that of Peter was by Cornelius 
 laid near the place where he was martyred, not far from the temple of Apollo. But 
 when Decius came to understand that Cornelias had received letters from Cyprian, he
 
 MARTYRDOM OF LUCIUS. 519 
 
 that of martyr,* by which he is distinguished in his catalogue, it was 
 imposed upon nil those who for the confession of the faith died in 
 prison, which is supposed to have been the case with Cornelius. 
 
 Cornelius was succeeded in the bishopric of Rome by Lucius, who 
 was banished from that city almost immediately after his election. 
 He is supposed to have been a Roman by birth, and the son of one 
 Porphyrius ; he was admitted among the Clergy of the imperial city, 
 and during the days of Fabian and Cornelius was of some note. His 
 courage and fidelity in asserting and defending the truths of the 
 Gospel rendered him obnoxious to the enemies of Christianity, and led 
 to his exile, which, however, was of short continuance ; and on his 
 return Cyprian, in the name of the African church, addressed to him 
 a congratulatory epistle. Not long after this, he was again appre- 
 hended ; and, following in the wake of his predecessor, he won the 
 crown of martyrdom, having held the see only a few months. The 
 Bishops of Rome, Cornelius and Lucius, appear to have been the only 
 individuals of influence and rank who suffered during the reign 
 of Gallus ; and, like most of the persecutions under the heathen 
 Emperors, this assault may be attributed chiefly to popular feeling. 
 The pestilence was raging with fierceness and an awful fatality ; the 
 people were discontented, and their murmurs were loud and deep. 
 To appease the multitude, and induce public confidence, an edict was 
 issued, which did not direct an attack to be made upon the Christians, 
 but merely admonished the populace to mitigate the wrath of heaven, 
 and prevail on the gods to avert from them the plague, and other 
 calamities under which they were then suffering. Though Gallus did 
 not run the length of his predecessors in those acts of cruelty and 
 injustice towards the Christians which characterized them, he never- 
 theless pandered to their superstition and bigotry ; and when the 
 clamour was raised, " Let Cyprian be thrown to the lions ! " he sent 
 
 caused him to he brought from Centumcellae to Rome ; and in the temple of Tellus, the 
 C ty Prefect being present, he thus expostulates with him : Are you resolved,' said he, 
 ' to live thus contumaciously, that, neither regarding the gods, nor fearing the com- 
 mands and threatenings of Princes, yon keep a correspondence tending to endanger the 
 public weal ? ' To whom Cornelius replied, ' That the letters which he received and 
 returned were only concerning the praises of Christ, and the design of the redemption 
 of souls ; and contained nothing iu them tending to the diminution of the empire.' At 
 this Decius. being enraged, gave command that Cornelius should first be scourged with 
 a kind of whip, which had small globes of lead fastened to the end ; that afterwards ho 
 should be conveyed to the temple of Mars, and there pay adoration to his image ; and 
 upon his refusal so to do, that he should be put to death. The good man, as they were 
 leading him to punishment, disposed of what he had to Stephen, the Archdeacon, and 
 afterwards he was beheaded." (Lives of the Popes, by Baptista Platina. Translated by 
 Sir Paul Rycaut. Fol., second edition., London, JC88.) We have already alluded to 
 that species of torture which was termed a whip, and was armed with small globes of 
 lead. It was called, " plumbutum." ' Flagellum, cujns lora plumbeis globnli* in 
 extremo instructa erant. Acta S. Castuli, Mart, ii., 4. Jussit deorsom in eculeo 
 suspend!, et atrocissime plmnbatis caedi. Vox freqneus in Vitis S. S. in Cod. Theod. c>t 
 apud Scriptores, quos laudaut Jlrissonins de Verbor. Signific. Meursius in Gloss. V. 
 H\ov/j.6aTov. Jacobus Ootofreilus ad 1. 2, Cod. Theod. de Quest., <fec." (I)n Cange.) 
 
 * Hit-ron. Liber L)e Viri<* lllnstribus, cap. Ixvi. Cornelius is reckoned by Jcromo 
 among the ecclesiastical writer*, on account of the four letters which he wrote to Fabius, 
 Bishop of Antioch, who seemed not to disapprove of the tenets of Novatian. He wrote 
 others, of which two nre still extant among the Epi.-ules of Cyprian ; and some fragments 
 of a fourth letter to Fabius have been transmitted to us by Eusebius.
 
 520 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 into banishment and to martyrdom the Prelates of Rome.* 
 of the most enlightened and liberal of the writers on ecclesiar 
 history, alluding to the apprehension of Cornelius, and his h 
 called upon to defend himself before the Praetor, observes, that ' 
 sooner had intelligence of this reached the people, than the grea 
 part of them at once ran to the Magistrate, and not only intrepi 
 there made an open profession of their faith in Christ, but declar 
 themselves ready to lay down their lives with their Bishop in defen 
 of such faith. Not one of this multitude, however, was either put 
 death or subjected to torture, or even so much as thrown into priso 
 All that was done was to send Cornelius, the Bishop of the flock, in 
 banishment. No greater punishment than this was inflicted on 1 
 
 As it regards the Bishops of Rome in those early days, all have had certain decre 
 Epistles ascribed to them, bearing their names and titles. Lucius has had one of th< 
 impudent forgeries filiated upon him, in which those interested members of the Chui 
 of Rome, the fabricators Qf these documents, have most completely missed their ai 
 He is represented as writing to the church in France and Spain, and appointing such 
 order and form of the church as would be utterly incompatible with the time then pj 
 sent ; for he authoritatively directs in that Epistle, that a Bishop, in all places where' 
 he may go, should have two Priests with three Deacons waiting upon him to be w 
 nesses of all his ways and doings. The letter alluded to is given by Labbe, (Coi 
 Sacros, torn, i., col. 721,) with this title, " Epistola Lucii Papae I. ad Gallise atque H 
 pauiae Episcopos ; " and this remark in the margin, " Suspecta eodem jure cum ai 
 Isidori mercibus." The general heading of the letter begins, " Ut duo Presbyteri 
 tres Diaconi in omni loco Episcopo adhsereant propter testimonium ecclesiasticum," ? 
 " Capitul. 1. Ut Episcopus semper testes secum Presbyteros ac Diaconos habeat." T 
 canon itself runs thus : " Can. 1. Propter tales, fratres hortamur vos, sicut et in L 
 sancta ecclesia constitutum habemus, ut semper testes vobiscum Sacerdotes et Diacor 
 habeatis. Et licet conscientia sufficere possit propria, tamen propter malevolos ju> 
 Apostolum, ' etiam testimonium vos oportet habere bonum ab his qui foris sui 
 Quoniam et in hac sancta sede constitutum habemus, ut duo Presbyteri vel tres Di 
 coni in o nni loco Episcopum non deserant, propter testimonium ecclesiasticum.'" Tl 
 is quoted in Decreti Pars III. De Consecratione, dist. 1 : " Jubemus," only the rea 
 ing is, " duo Presbyteri et tres Diaconi." Binius says, in his note on this letti 
 (Labbe, torn, i., col. 726,) " Decernitur ut ad evitanda detractionis et infamiie perici 
 propter testimonium ecclesiae nusquam eant nisi duorum Presbyterorum et trium Diac 
 norum comitatu stipati. Decreti hujus sanciendi calumniae in Cornelium a Novatia 
 conflctie causam dedisse videntur. Baronius, anno 257, num. 5." Baronius (lo 
 citato) reads " et tres Diaconos," and suggests the origin of the law mentioned 
 Biiiius. Foxe, the Martyrologist, observes, " I do not deny that this ordinance may 
 and is convenient; yet I see not how the time of Lucius, A.D. 252, could serve for 
 Bishop to carry such a pomp of Priests and Deacons about him, or to study for a 
 such matter ; forasmuch as Bishops in those days were seldom free to go abroad, w 
 they never so secret, but either were in house close and secret, or in prison, or else 
 banishment." In the epistle from which we have quoted, we cannot fail to notice w 
 what pride and hauteur Lucius is made to speak of the church of Rome. " This h 
 and apostolical church of Rome," saith he, " the mother of all churches of Chr 
 through the grace of God omnipotent, hath never been proved to swerve out of the p 
 of apostolical tradition, neither hath ever been depraved and degraded with beret 
 innovations ; but even as, in the beginning, she received the rule of the apostolical ft 
 from its first teachers, the Princes of the Apostles, so she continueth ever immacu 
 and undefiled unto the end." Uiito this Lucius also is referred, in the decrees of G 
 tian, this Constitution, that no Minister whatsoever, after his ordination, should at 
 time re-enter the chamber of his own wife, on pain of losing his ministry in the chin 
 " Si vero post ordinationem suam Ministros contigerit propriae uxoris invadere cul 
 sacrarii non intrent limina, neque sacrarii portitores fiant, neque altare conting 
 neque ab offerentibus holocaust! oblationem suscipiant, neque ad Domini corporin 
 tionem accedant, neque propinent, neque sine majoris natu autoritate minora ge 
 officia: nrcenm sane ad altare vel calicem ne suggerant." (Corp. Juris Canon, A. F 
 Pithoeo, et Francisco Pithoeo, Decreti I. pars distinct. Ixxxi., cap. 19. " Mini: 
 Folio, torn, i., p. 100. Colonise, 1779.)
 
 SEVERITY OF THE OALLIAN PERSECUTION EXAMINED. 521 
 
 Accessor, Lucius ; and what displays the clemency of the times in 
 'en a still more striking point of view, is, that he was not long after 
 called." " But supposing it to be granted that respecting the 
 .olent deaths of both Cornelius and Lucius, not the least shadow 
 f a doubt can be entertained, still these two examples of Bishops 
 eing put to death serve rather to prove the moderation than the 
 uelty of Callus ; since it is manifest from the epistles addressed by 
 yprian to each, that no one besides was put to death at Rome, 
 yprian himself continued at Carthage without any apprehension, nor 
 as his continuance there by any means a secret to the Magistrates, 
 either is anything whatever to be found in his epistles, whence 
 
 can be made to appear that any Christian was put to death 
 . Africa under Gallus. This persecution, therefore, should seem to 
 ive amounted merely to the banishment of certain individuals, and 
 ie infliction of minor penalties on others." * Those persons, how- 
 r er, take an unfair and narrow view of the whole business, who 
 ould confine the number of martyrs to those whose names are 
 entioned in public documents, or who merely fell victims to the 
 :cisions of legal tribunals. 
 
 Notwithstanding the contemptuous manner in which Mosheim 
 teaks of the writings of Cyprian, as being a tissue of rhetorical 
 ;ure and truthlessness, the Bishop of Carthage had a character to 
 istain in the presence of most bitter and sanguinary foes ; and his 
 tier to Demetrian was perused by numbers who would rejoice in 
 iving an opportunity of bringing home to Cyprian a charge of chi- 
 nery and falsehood : we therefore feel great hesitation in consider- 
 g the assertion which he makes in his address to be unworthy 
 
 credit, regarding the cruelties of this persecution. Numerous 
 clesiastical historians speak of the atrocities which were perpetrated 
 )on the Christians during this reign, and which terminated not but 
 ith the life of Gallus, f who did not possess moral courage sufficient 
 
 Mosheim, Commentaries, vol. iii., p. 130. 
 
 t " That there might be nothing wanting to complete the miseries of the empire, 
 illus renewed the Decian persecution against the Christians, which had been much 
 ated ; resolving, as it were, to imitate his predecessor in nothing but his crimes." 
 chard, Rom. Hist., vol. ii., p. 473. Sixth edit. London, 1719.) " Gallus hie Im- 
 rator sanctos viros, pro pace et sanctitate ipsins orantes, profligavit : atque ita cum 
 s (quos in exiliuru extrnsit) preces, quse pro ipso fit-bant, projecit. Lucium etiam 
 liscopum Romanum exilio mulctavit. Edicta imperialia contra Christianos promulga- 
 
 : quae quocunque pervenissent, horribilem pestilentiam secns traxerunt : tantaeque 
 vitiae id uialum (etiam per aliquot annos) grassatum est, ut magnam partem incolarum 
 liauriret, et loca mnlta inhabitata relinqueret. Persecntores igitur sincere religiouis 
 blicas calamitates non doctrinae sincerae Evangelii, sed snte malitiae (qua verbum Dei 
 isphemaut, ejusque confessores persequuntur) adscribant." (Osiand. Epit. Hist, 
 cles., cent, iii., lib. iii., cap. 12. 4to. Tubing., 1692.) " La persecution dont les 
 ^quea avoient te avertia du ciel, etoit deji commencee, & 1'occasion d'nne peste vio- 
 ite, qul s'&teudit en plnsieurs parties de 1'empire. L'Empereut Hostilien en 6toit 
 irt : et comme elle angmentoit, Gallus et son fils Volusien eurent recoura a leura 
 iux, et envoye'rent des edits par toutes lea provinces, pour ordonner des sacrifices. S. 
 prien fut demande pour la seconde fois dans le cirque, par les cris dn peuple de Car- 
 ige, pour etre expos*? a un lion : et on croit qne ce fut alors qu'il ecrivit le train'- de 
 nhortation an martyre." (Fleury, Hist. Eccles., liv. 7. Nismes, 1779.) "Gallus, 
 s successor of the inhuman Decius, continued, during his transient reign of not quite 
 3 years, the severities practised by his predecessor." (Gregory, History of the Chris - 
 11 Church, chap, ii., p. 112, vol. i. London, 1795.) '< Gallus followed the example 
 
 VOL. I. 3 X
 
 522 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 to resist the popular cry. The hatred against the original propa- 
 gators of Christianity was almost universal, and the faithful were 
 persecuted, in nearly every instance, either by the masses of the popu- 
 lation, or at their instigation. " We must remember," says a modern 
 writer, "that Christianity began to be preached when the power 
 of the people was at its height ; when no philosopher was tolerated 
 who did not flatter them, and no ruler was regarded who did not 
 please them. The third Caesar only governed the empire. The 
 authority of the Caesars was founded on the ascendancy which that 
 imperious family had acquired, by placing themselves at the head 
 of the popular or plebeian party of Rome ; by depressing and weak- 
 ening the aristocracy ; by complying with all the demands of the 
 masses, providing they were clamorous and persevering ; and by 
 ruling in the despotic and cruel manner which is recorded in history, 
 according to the forms of freedom, and by submission to the will 
 of the populace. Tiberius was the jealous Emperor of the hour ; and 
 the inflexible tyrant would have spared no subordinate ruler who 
 might have been accused by the people as indifferent to the expres- 
 sion of their caprice. Under this influence Christ himself was 
 crucified. The populace of Jerusalem, instigated by their rulers, 
 demanded his death. When Pilate hesitated to condemn our Lord, 
 and repeatedly endeavoured to save him, because 'he found no fault 
 in him at all,' he did not dare to resist the popular clamour, which 
 threatened to accuse him to Tiberius. The first persecution which 
 overwhelmed the infant church after the ascension did not precede, 
 but follow, the violence of the popular tumult in which Stephen was 
 put to death. The second persecution under Herod Agrippa, in 
 which James, the brother of John, was put to death, was increased in 
 
 of Decius in issuing an order for compelling Christians to sacrifice." (Burton, Loot, rm 
 Eccles. Hist., lect. xxvi., vol. ii., p. 342.) " An imperial edict was published, requir- 
 ing all Roman subjects to sacrifice to the gods." (Neander, Hist, of the Christ. Relig. 
 and Church, vol. i., p. 136. London, 1831.) " Gallus soon began to disturb the 
 peace of the church, though not with the incessant fury of his predecessor. One Hip- 
 polytus, a Roman Presbyter, had been seduced into Novatianism ; but his mind had not 
 been perverted from the faith and love of Jesus. He was now called on to suffer mar- 
 tyrdom, which he did with courage and fidelity. Either curiosity or a desire of instruc- 
 tive information induced some to ask him, in the last scene of his suffering, whether he 
 still persisted in the communion of Novatian. He delared, in the most explicit terms, 
 that he now saw the affair in a new light, repented of his having encouraged the schism, 
 and died in the communion of the general church." (Milner, Hist, of the Church 
 of Christ, cent, iii., chap. 12.) " Dionysius, in an epistle to Hermamon, makes the 
 following remarks on Gallus : ' But neither did Gallus understand the wickedness of 
 Decius, nor did he foresee what it was that had destroyed him ; but he stumbled at the 
 same stone lying before his eyes. For when his reign was advancing prosperously, and 
 his affairs succeeding according to his wishes, he persecuted those holy men who inter- 
 ceded with God for his safety and peace. Hence, together with them, he also perse- 
 cuted the very prayers that were offered up in his behalf.' " (Euseb. Eccles. Hist., lib. 
 vii., cap. I.) "The successors of Decius, namely, Gallus and hia son Volusian, 
 renewed the persecution against the Christians, which seemed to be subsiding." (Idem, 
 ibid.) " And as these edicts were accompanied by public calamities, particularly by a 
 pestilential disease, which spread through many provinces, the Christians had again to 
 undergo much suffering in divers countries." (See Cyprian, Liber ad Demetrianum ; 
 Milner, Hist, of the Church, cent, iii., chap. 12.) " For the pagan Priests persuaded the 
 populace that the gods visited the people with so many calamities on account of the 
 Christians." (Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., cent, iii., book i., part i., sect. 6, vol. i., p. 
 219. Soames's edit. London, 1845.)
 
 THE INSTIGATORS OF THE PRIMITIVE PERSECUTIONS. .'_'.'< 
 
 severity because the King saw that his cruelty pleased the Jews. 
 The Gospel now began to be preached out of the precincts of Judea 
 to the Gentiles. At Antioch in Pisidia, in the year 45, the Apostles 
 were compelled to flee from the city, because the people were excited 
 against them. The same proceedings took place at Iconium. The 
 Apostle, in all these instances, was assaulted, threatened with ston- 
 ing in one place, and actually stoned and left for dead in another, 
 solely by the people, without any interference on the part of the 
 Magistrates. At Thyatira, when the multitude rose up against them, 
 in consequence of an act of revenge on the part of certain citizens, 
 the Magistrates beat them, and cast the Apostles, instead of the 
 assailants, into prison. The mere rabble at Thessalonica endangered 
 them, without proof. At Athens, Paul was not persecuted ; he was 
 only mocked and derided. In Corinth, after he had been permitted 
 to remain there undisturbed eighteen months, the Magistrate refused 
 to take any cognizance of the insurrection excited by the Jews ; and 
 deemed it beneath his notice to interfere ia what he considered the 
 squabbles of contending Israelites. His refusal to protect the Apostles 
 encouraged the people to commit some violence, though none of the 
 friends of the Apostle were put to death. At Ephesus a great 
 uproar was made ; but was repressed by the moderation of the 
 Magistrates. At Jerusalem, the life of Paul was saved by the inter- 
 ference only of the soldiers. He was tried at the public tribunal, and 
 acquitted ; but was left in prison by the Magistrate, to please the 
 Jews. In all these instances, we are presented only with a picture 
 of the incessant tumults which must have occurred in the principal 
 cities of the empire, upon the preaching of Christianity at the 
 beginning. There was one continued persecution. The account 
 which Paul gives, appears to describe best the general contempt in 
 which the Christians were held. They were as those reserved to be a 
 spectacle in some great theatre, in which the whole creation, angels 
 and men, are the spectators, to exhibit before them an endless variety 
 of suffering. The description which is given us of scenes similar to 
 these, by the early apologists and authors who have related the his- 
 tory of the primitive church, renders the so-much-agitated questions, 
 both as to the number of persecutions and the amount of victims, a 
 matter of little importance. The argument in favour of the truth of 
 Christianity, derived from the afflictions of the early Christians, is 
 much more powerful when it is taken from their daily exposure to 
 death and suffering from popular indignation and hatred, than from 
 the greater or less number of victims at any given period, or from 
 the precise quantity of edicts which were issued by a weak, a wicked, 
 or a populace-courting Emperor. We shall find that nearly all the 
 heathen persecutions either originated in, or were supported by, the 
 indignation, or hatred, or contempt of the mass of the people." * 
 
 The reign of Gallus was now nearly ended ; and in the brief space 
 of about four years, we have seen two Princes successively and reck- 
 lessly wasting the church of God, and both of them brought to an 
 
 Townsend, Ecclesiastical and Civil History philosophically compared, vol. 1., 
 pp. 125128. London, 1817. 
 
 3x2
 
 524 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 untimely death. With regard to the Roman empire, while subject to 
 the sway of Gallua, it was in a disastrous state, owing to the loss of 
 several provinces which fell into the hands of foreign foes, who were 
 perpetually making inroads on the country. The Emperor could 
 only boast of one extensive victory over the Goths, which was gained 
 by JEmilian, his General ; but so far from being an advantage to 
 Gallus, it ultimately led to his destruction, inasmuch as the former 
 became so popular in the army, and the latter so despicable, that the 
 soldiery, induced by the donatives and promises of JSmilian, pro- 
 claimed him Emperor. The news of this event speedily roused the 
 astonished Monarch from those luxurious pleasures in which he was 
 indulging, and caused him, with all possible expedition, to make pre- 
 parations to oppose this dangerous rival. He left Rome in the com- 
 pany of his son and a powerful army, and marched into Mcesia, 
 where he was promptly met by the usurper, who gave him battle : 
 the victory was on the side of JSmilian, who slew both Gallus and 
 Volusian. The murder of these Princes put an end to the civil war, 
 and the Senate gave a legal sanction to the rights of conquest. The 
 letters of .fflmilian to that assembly displayed a mixture of modera- 
 tion and vanity. With apparent sincerity, he proposed to resign the 
 affairs of the civil administration of the empire to their collective 
 wisdom, and that he would be content with the office of their General, 
 and that the time was not far distant when he should triumphantly 
 assert the glory of Rome, and deliver the country from all those 
 hordes of barbarians which at present infested her borders. Four 
 months witnessed the victory and the fall of ^milian. He van- 
 quished Gallus, and sank under the weight of a competitor more 
 formidable than he. " That unfortunate Prince had sent Valerian, 
 already distinguished by the honourable title of Censor, to bring the 
 legions of Gaul and Germany to his aid. Valerian executed that 
 commission with zeal and fidelity ; and, as he arrived too late to save 
 his Sovereign, he resolved to revenge him. The troops of ^EmUian, 
 who still lay encamped in the plains of Spoleto, were awed by the 
 sanctity of his character, but much more by the superior strength 
 of his army ; and, as they were now become as incapable of personal 
 attachment, as they had always been of constitutional principles, they 
 readily imbrued their hands in the blood of a Prince who so lately 
 had been the object of their partial choice. The guilt was theirs, but 
 the advantage of it was Valerian's, who obtained the possession of the 
 throne by the means indeed of a civil war, but with a degree of inno- 
 fence singular in that age of revolutions, since he owed neither grati- 
 tude nor allegiance to his predecessor, whom he dethroned."* 
 
 Valerian was between sixty and seventy years of age when he 
 ascended the throne, not by any popular caprice, or the clamour of 
 the camp, but by the unanimous voice of the Roman empire. Com- 
 parative old age greatly unfitted him for the activity of a sceptre : he 
 therefore determined to share the throne with a younger and more 
 active associate. The choice which he made was far from being a 
 
 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i., chap, x., p. 431, 8vo- 
 Milman'a Edit., London, 1833.
 
 VALERIAN, EMPEROR. 525 
 
 judicious one. Consulting the dictates of affection, rather than the 
 demands of the public weal, he invested with supreme honours hia 
 son Gallienus, a dissolute youth, whose vices had only been concealed 
 from public gaze and public opprobrium by the privacy of his sta- 
 tion in society. The associated government of Valerian and Gallienua 
 continued about seven years, and the sole administration of the latter, 
 about eight ; but the whole period was an uninterrupted career of 
 confusion and calamity. It was by no means discreditable to Chris- 
 tianity, that the commencement of the reign of Valerian, who may 
 be supposed to have examined, with more than ordinary care, its 
 influence on the public morals, was favourable to their cause. Their 
 security was restored, and, for a short time, persecution ceased. The 
 imperial palace abounded with Christians, and the Emperor con- 
 stantly manifested a strong predilection in their favour. It is also 
 pleasing to find, that this season of tranquillity from persecution was, 
 for a time, a season of unanimity and concord. Dionysius, the 
 Bishop of Alexandria, informs us that all the churches were united 
 upon the question of the lapsed,* and as he mentions only the most 
 distinguished Bishops, we insert their names ; namely, Firmiliauus, 
 of Cresarea in Cappadocia ; Theoctistus, of Ceesarea in Palestine ; 
 Mazabanes, of Jerusalem, or, rather, as it was then called, of JEH& ; 
 and Demetrianus, of Antioch. He names also Marinus, Bishop of 
 Tyre ; Heliodorus, of Laodicea ; and Helenus, of Tarsus : to which 
 he adds, that all the churches in Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Pontus, 
 and Bithynia agreed in the same sentiments. It is generally supposed 
 that the life of Origen was brought to a close at this period. He was 
 in prison at the commencement of the Decian persecution, where he 
 continued until the death of the Emperor in 251. The remaining 
 days of his life appear to have been spent at Tyre. Eusebius speaks 
 of his having written many letters after his release,-)- none of which 
 have come down to us ; and since he is said to have died in the 
 seventieth year of his age, his demise ought to be placed in the year 
 253 or 254. | Dionysius is known to have addressed a letter to him 
 on the subject of martyrdom, and it would be pleasing to think 
 
 " Now I wish yon to understand, my brother, that all the churches throughout the 
 East, and farther, that were formerly divided, have been united again. All the 
 Bishops, also, are everywhere in harmony, rejoicing exceedingly at the peace which 
 has been established beyond all expectation." (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vii., cap. 5.) 
 
 t " But the number and greatness of Origen's sufferings during the persecution, and 
 the nature of his death, when the spirit of darkness drew up his forces, and waged a 
 war with all his arts and power against the man, and assailed particularly beyond all 
 that were assaulted by him ; the nature and number of bonds which he endured oa 
 account of the doctrine of Christ, and all his torments of body, the sufferings also 
 which he endnred under an iron collar, and in the deepest recesses of the prison, when 
 for many days he was extended and stretched to the distance of four holes on the rack, 
 besides the threats of fire, and whatsoever other sufferings inflicted by his enemies he 
 nobly bore ; and finally the issue of these sufferings, when the Judge eagerly strove with 
 all his might to protract his life, in order to prolong his sufferings ; and what expressions 
 after these he left behind, replete with benefit to those needing consolation ; all this hid 
 many epistles detail with no less truth than accuracy." (Idem, ibid., lib. vi. cap. 39.) 
 
 t Photins mentions a tradition of his ha dug suffered martyrdom at Cowarea, in the 
 reign of Decius ; but it seems certainly to be unfounded. (See Routh, Rolig. Sacr., 
 vol. iii., p. 273.) 
 
 t Kuseb., Eccles. Hist, lib. vi., cap. 46.
 
 526 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 that it was sent to him during his sufferings in the Decian persecu- 
 tion.* 
 
 Tn the mean time the Gospel was extending into the regions beyond, 
 especially in Spain and Gaul, and numerous were they who professed 
 to believe with their hearts unto righteousness ; but, in the adminis- 
 tration of discipline among them, they were in danger of departing 
 from the simplicity of the truth. The question which more seri- 
 ously perilled the tranquillity and happiness of the church, was that 
 of the baptism of heretics. Into this subject it is foreign to our 
 purpose to enter. We shall therefore only observe, that by no particular 
 law or regulation of the church at large, had it as yet been ascer- 
 tained after what manner those should be dealt with who might 
 renounce their communion with any of the heretical churches, and 
 come over to those of the catholic faith. A Council was held at Car- 
 thage about the year 21 7, f and another at Iconium in 230, which 
 decided against the validity of all baptism administered by heretics. 
 Dionysius of Alexandria mentions another which was held at Synnas, 
 or Synnada, in Phrygia, on the same subject. It seems, however, 
 to have been a practice in the Eastern churches, and, very probably, 
 in the African, || to re-baptize all persons who had received their bap- 
 tism from the hands of heretics. If they had been baptized in the 
 catholic church, and afterwards fell into heresy, they might be re- 
 admitted into the fellowship of the faithful, by the simple imposition 
 of hands from the Bishop, without being re-baptized. ^j For a time 
 this contrariety of practice did not prevent the churches maintaining 
 with each other the relations of charity and brotherly love, until the 
 Asiatic Christians, in certain Councils, proceeded to give to the first- 
 mentioned custom the force of an established law, and to decree, that 
 henceforth whosoever came over to the true church, from any here- 
 tical congregation, should undergo the ceremony of being baptized 
 anew. As soon as the news of this affair reached Stephen, who had 
 succeeded Lucius in the episcopate of Rome, he was very angry, 
 recognising, as he did, the validity of heretical baptism ; and a warm 
 controversy was commenced between him and some of the Asiatic 
 Bishops upon this question, in which Firmilianus, Bishop of Csesarea 
 in Cappadocia, and Helenus, Bishop of Tarsus, took part.** Other 
 Prelates joined in an embassy which was sent to Rome ; but Stephen 
 would not even admit these Bishops to an interview, nor would he 
 even render to them the common rites of hospitality : he also inter- 
 
 Burton, Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxvi. 
 
 t Labbe, Concilia Sacrosancta, fol., torn, i., col. 607, Paris, 1671. 
 
 t Idem, ibid., fol., torn, i., col. 751. 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vii., cap. 7 : " The Council of Synnada. Held about 
 230, or, according to some, in 256, upon the subject of Cataphrygian baptism. Bap- 
 tism received out of the church was declared to be null and void." (Labbe, Concilia 
 Sacrosanc., torn, i., col. 760. See also Landon, Manual of Councils, p. 576.) 
 
 I! Cyprian speaks of many thousand persons having been baptized iu Africa, who had 
 come over to the church from heresy. (Epist. Ixxiii.) The forty-fifth and forty-sixth of 
 what are called the Apostolical Canons, decidedly enjoin the re-baptizing of heretics ; 
 from which Pearson concludes that these two canons were made anterior to the Council 
 of Iconium. 
 
 H Euseb., Eceles. Hist., lib. vii., cap. 7. 
 
 Idem, ibid., lib. vii., cap. 5.
 
 OF THE BAPTISM OF HERETICS. 527 
 
 dieted these Oriental Christians from all communion with himself and 
 the Roman church, without, however, advancing any claim to the 
 right of excluding them from the general church. The threats and 
 anathemas of Stephen were but little regarded.* Cyprian, after 
 having advised with certain of the African Bishops, convened a Coun- 
 cil at Carthage, and, in conjunction with the members of that assem- 
 bly, adopted, by a public act, the opinion of the Asiatics. And, in a 
 second Council convened in the same city, it was again determined 
 that the baptism of no heretical sect whatever possessed any efficacy. 
 Cyprian wrote to Stephen,-)- and communicated the conclusion at 
 which the Council had arrived. His letter is mild and conciliatory. 
 He does not pretend to be ignorant that the mind of Stephen was 
 made up, and that he would be unwilling to relinquish impressions 
 which he had once imbibed ; but he observes that this needs not cause 
 a dissolution of peace and concord. He disclaims any wish to dictate 
 himself ; but, at the same time, he asserts the right of every Bishop 
 to make rules for his own church, holding himself responsible to God 
 alone. That Cyprian was sincere in these professions of moderation, may 
 be seen by what he says in a letter written shortly after to Jubaianus, J 
 an African Bishop, in which he defends, at some length, his own 
 opinion, but gives to every Prelate the right of acting for himself. 
 It is much to be regretted that Stephen did not meet the conciliatory 
 advances of his opponents in the same spirit of charity and forbear- 
 ance. A letter which he wrote about this period, addressed to the 
 African Bishops, but which has not come down to us, appears to 
 have been very intemperate. He called his opponents perverters 
 of the truth, and traitors to ecclesiastical unity, expressions which 
 were most unwarranted, when we consider that his own church 
 was absolutely alone in this controversy. || Cyprian did not person- 
 ally reply to the Bishop of Rome ; but in somewhat strong terms he 
 alludes to it in his epistles to two of his friends,^ who had consulted 
 him on this exciting question. The threat of excommunication drew 
 from the Bishop of Carthage that severe remark, that the person who 
 could utter such a denunciation was a friend of the heretics, and not 
 the friend of the Christian.** 
 
 In the mean time, Cyprian never lost sight of that which to him 
 
 Opera Cypriani, Finniliani Episcopi Caesareae Cappadociae ad Cyprianum Epistola 
 Ixxiv., p. 125. Kd. Paris, 1836. Firmilianus says plainly that Stephen separated him- 
 self from the other churches, and not these churches from him. He calls him a schis- 
 matic, inasmuch as he had withdrawn from the unity of the church ; and, by allowing 
 the baptisms of heretics, he had shown himself to be worse than all heretics. These are 
 strong expressions to he applied to a Bishop of Rome ; hut Firmilianus evidently saw no 
 distinction of rank between a Bishop of Italy and a Bishop of Cappadocia. He speaks 
 of his just indignation being excited by the plain and palpable folly of Stephen, who 
 boasted of his episcopal superiority, and of Us being the successor of Peter : and, as to 
 the latter pretension, ho openly asserts, that many things were done at Rome which 
 were contrary to apostolical authority. (Burton, Lectures.) 
 
 f Opera Cypriani, ad Stephannm Papam, epistola Ixxi. 
 
 I Ibid., epistola Ixxii., ad Jubaianum, de Hsereticis Baptizandifl. 
 
 4 Burton, Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxvi. 
 
 || Idem, ibid., lect. xxvi. 
 
 ^[ Opera Cypriani, epist. Ixxii., ad Jubaianum, epist. Ixxiii., ad Pompeinm. 
 
 " Dat honorem Deo, qui hueretieorum araicus et inimicua Christianorum Sacerdotes 
 Dei veritatem Christi et Eccleate uuitatem tueiitus abstinendos putat 7" (Kpiat. Ixxiii.)
 
 5?8 BOOK IV. CHAPTER Til. 
 
 was above all price, the unity of the church ; and although two 
 Councils had unanimously decided on the point at issue, he convened 
 another and more influential Synod, which was numerously attended. 
 Cyprian opened the proceedings of the assembly by calling upon each 
 of the Prektes to state his own opinion, while as a body they judged 
 no one who differed from them, nor thought of excluding them from 
 their communion. In the following passage there is evident allusion 
 to Stephen, the Bishop of Rome : " For none of us makes himself 
 to be a Bishop of Bishops, or tries tyrannically to frighten his col- 
 leagues into the necessity of obeying ; since every Bishop, in virtue 
 of his own liberty and power, is master of his own will, and is as 
 incapable of being judged by another, as he is of judging himself : 
 but let us wait for the universal judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 who alone has the power of putting us over the government of his 
 church, and of judging us for our actions." The Council promptly, 
 and with great unanimity, confirmed former decisions. Nevertheless, 
 Stephen, filled with anger, refused to grant an audience to the depu- 
 ties of the Council ; and Cyprian wrote upon the subject to the 
 Bishop of Csesarea, in Cappadocia. The latter, in his answer, declares 
 twice, that, in his opinion, the Bishop of Rome had entirely broken 
 peace with Africa ; and that he did not fear to assert, that Stephen, 
 by the very act of separating all others from his communion, had, in 
 fact, separated himself from all the other faithful, and therefore from 
 the communion of the catholic church ; and, by so doing, had really 
 become himself schismatical.* This contest continued in the church 
 until the episcopate of Xystus, or Sixtus, who succeeded Stephen ; and 
 it seems the Bishops of Africa, little by little, yielded their opinion. 
 
 * By most of the Roman Catholic writers, the history of this controversy between 
 Stephen, Bishop of Rome, and certain Asiatic and African Prelates, respecting the vali- 
 dity or efficacy of baptism administered by heretics, has been stadiously, and to the 
 utmost extent of their ability, corrupted and involved in obscurity. For since we are 
 supplied by this history, in its unadulterated state, with evidence, of the most incontro- 
 vertible nature, that the power of the Bishop of Rome, although he certainly held a dis- 
 tinguished rank among the Christian Prelates, was at this period of very limited extent, 
 and that his decrees were with the utmost freedom spurned at and rejected, the writers 
 above alluded to make it their business, as far as possible, to jumble all things together, 
 and partly by the introduction of silly conjectures, and partly by forced interpretations of 
 passages in ancient authors, involve the whole in indistinctness and confusion, lest, as is 
 abundantly manifest, the truth should happen too clearly to reveal itself, and take pos- 
 session of our minds. One of these writers, indeed, on perceiving that, by arts and 
 tricks like the above, the truth might to a certain extent be disguised, but could not by 
 any means be wholly extinguished or obliterated, appears to have come to the resolution 
 of imitating the example of Alexander, by at once cutting through this Gordian knot, 
 which he found to surpass the skill of himself or any other advocate of the unjust pre- 
 tensions of the Romish see to unravel ; and he accordingly obliterates, as it were with a 
 sponge, all the most valuable and important documents respecting this controversy that 
 have reached our days. The author to whom I allude is Ramond Missorius, a brother 
 of the Franciscan order, who, in a particular tract on the subject, published by him at 
 Venice, 1733, 4to., would fain make it appear that the epistles of Firmilian and 
 Cyprian, in which tie decree of Stephen is so roughly handled, as well as certain other 
 documents relating to this controversy, are nothing better than forgeries trumped up by 
 the Donatists of Africa. This almost incredible act of temerity, however, met with its 
 justly merited exposure and reproof, not only in a dissertation from the pen of the 
 Protestant writer, Jo. Geo. Walch, published at Jena, in 1738, but also in a very learned 
 work by a Roman Catholic author, Jo. Henr. Sbaralea, printed at Bologna, in 1741, 4to. 
 (Modheiru, Commentaries.)
 
 THE PERSECUTION UNDER VALERIAN. 529 
 
 Jerome says, that many of the same Bishops who had declared in 
 Council the invalidity of heretical baptism, afterwards concurred in 
 a contrary decree : an end, in part, however, was put to the dis- 
 pute by the breaking out of the persecution anew under Valerian. 
 
 This event speedily was realized. Valerian had favoured the Chris- 
 tians before his accession to the empire, and continued to do so for 
 the first four years of his reign. He is reported to have been more 
 indulgent to them than any former Emperor. Dionysius, adverting 
 to his character, in a letter to Hermamon, observes, " It was revealed 
 to John : ' And there was a mouth given, speaking great things, and 
 blasphemy ; and power was given to him (to continue) forty-two 
 months.' It is wonderful that both these things were fulfilled in 
 Valerian ; and if we consider the behaviour of the man before this, 
 how kind and friendly he was to the pious. For never had any 
 of the Emperors before him been so favourably and benevolently 
 disposed toward them. All his house was likewise filled with good 
 people, and was indeed a church of the Lord." * The change which 
 took place in the sentiments and conduct of Valerian, is attributed to 
 the influence of a man deeply versed in magical arts. The Emperor 
 was enslaved by a superstition which the older Romans would have 
 beheld with little less abhorrence than Christianity itself. " It must 
 be admitted, that Christian superstition was too much inclined to 
 encroach upon the province of Oriental magic ; and the more the 
 older polytheism decayed, the more closely it allied itself with this 
 powerful agent in commanding the fears of man. The adepts in 
 those dark and forbidden sciences were probably more influential 
 opponents of Christianity with all classes, from the Emperor, who 
 employed their mystic arts to inquire into the secrets of futurity, to 
 the peasant, who shuddered at their power, than the ancient and 
 established priesthood." f 
 
 The author of the change which took place in the conduct of 
 Valerian was one Macrianus,^ one of his most intimate friends ; a 
 person of considerable reputation and dignity, but extremely bigoted 
 and superstitious, and remarkable for paying much attention to magi- 
 cians and astrologers. These men, who came chiefly from Egypt, 
 gained an influence with Macrianus, by promising him the empire ; 
 and it was to please them, in return, that he persuaded the Emperor 
 to persecute the Christians. The latter were incessantly active in 
 attacking and exposing the tricks and abominations which formed 
 part of the science of magic ; and hence they raised against them- 
 selves a numerous body, which was always glad to see the Christians 
 persecuted. The Quinquennalia, or fifth anniversary of the Emperor's 
 
 Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. vii., cap. 10. 
 
 t Milman, History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 246. 
 
 t Macrianus, otherwise called Macrinus, was at once a fanatic, intoxicated with the 
 magical superstitions of Egypt, and a selfish, unprincipled politician. He, who represented 
 the Christians to be enemies of the state, took up arms himself against Gallienus, the 
 son of his benefactor, and sought to invest his own children with the imperial purple. 
 In this attempt they all perished by the hands of other usurpers. (Zonaras, lib. xii., cap. 
 24 ; Kusi-li., Eccles. Hiat., lib. vii., cap. 23, where Dionysius of Alexandria elegantly 
 records the action* and the fate of Mucrianus.) (Dalrymple.) 
 VOL. I. 3 Y
 
 530 BOOK IV. CHAPTER TIT. 
 
 accession, would furnish an opportunity for these cruelties ; and 
 there is reason to think that they began in the capital.* Be that as 
 it may, Macrianus obtained such complete mastery over the mind 
 of Valerian, as to engage in the guilty mysteries of magic, and to 
 trace the fate of the empire in the entrails of human victims.-f There 
 does not appear, at the commencement of the persecution, to have 
 been any positive edict issued by the Emperor. This attack upon 
 the church of Christ was at first by no means a sanguinary one, and 
 only required the removal of teachers and Pastors, and especially 
 Bishops, from their flocks. We have already directed attention to 
 the idea which in the former persecution prevailed among the heathen 
 Governors, that if they could first remove the Prelates out of the way, 
 they should have less difficulty in strangling Christianity ; and so the 
 assembling of the congregations was forbidden, and it was hoped that 
 thus their aim might be attained without blood-shedding. Capital 
 punishment was not awarded at first even to the Bishops and Presby- 
 ters, but merely banishment ; and the full penalty of the law was 
 reserved for those who might persist in holding religious congrega- 
 tions, or in continuing to frequent them. The Emperor was not 
 long in discovering that nothing could be accomplished by these 
 measures. The local and temporary separation of the Bishops could 
 not dissolve their connexion with the churches : by letters, by the 
 Clergy travelling backwards and forwards, they were active among 
 their people, as if they had been in the midst of them ; and their 
 exile only rendered them dearer to their flocks. Wherever they were 
 banished, congregations were collected ; and where no sound of the 
 Gospel had been heard, the " word of this salvation " was pro- 
 claimed. 
 
 Stephen, the Bishop of Rome, is supposed by many to have been 
 one of the earliest victims ; but no authentic record of his martyrdom 
 is extant. : The African Christians had for some time witnessed the 
 
 * Burton, Lect. on Eccles. Hist., lect. xxvi., p. 360. 
 
 t Macrianns, says Dionysius, persuaded Valerian to alter his mode of conduct with 
 regard to the Christians, and " to persecute and slay these pure and holy men, as ene- 
 mies and obstacles to their wicked and detestable incantations ; for there were, and still 
 are, men who, by their very presence, their aspect, their breath, their voice, are able to 
 dissipate the artifices of wicked demons. He suggested to him to study the rites 
 of initiation, and abominable arts of sorcery ; to perform execrable sacrifices, to slay 
 unhappy infants, and to sacrifice the children of wretched fathers, and to search the 
 bowels of new-born babes, and to mutilate and dismember the creatures of God ; as 
 if by doing this they should obtain great felicity." (Euseb.. Eccles. Hist., lib. vii.. 
 cap. 10.) 
 
 t Platina, as translated by Sir Paul Rycaut, says, " Stephen, when he had by his 
 example and persuasion converted a multitude of Gentiles to Christianity, being seized, 
 as some say, by Gallienus, or, according to others, by those who upon the edict of 
 Decius were appointed to persecute the Christians, he, with many others, was hurried 
 away to martyrdom ; and, having suffered, was interred in the cemetery of Callistus, in 
 the Via Appia." (Lives of the Popes, fol., p. 38.) Another writer informs us, that " he 
 died on the 2d of August, 257, according to the most probable opinion. The Church of 
 Rome, upon the authority of his Acts, ranks him among the martyrs ; but that honour 
 is not paid him either by Augustine or by Vincentius Liriuensis, who, naming him toge- 
 ther with Cyprian, as they often do, give constantly the title of martyr to the latter, and 
 never to the former. As for his Acts, they flatly contradict, in several points, the most 
 unexceptionable writers among the ancients, and therefore by no means deserve the cre- 
 dit which Baronius would have us give them. Even Anastasius seems to have made no
 
 BANISHMENT OF CYPRIAN. 531 
 
 gathering storm, and intelligence of what was going forward in the 
 imperial city would quickly be communicated to the provinces. 
 Fortunatus, an African Bishop, besought Cyprian to furnish the 
 churches which were most exposed to the assaults of the powers 
 of darkness, with some exhortations on the subject of martyrdom, 
 which might fortify the mind, and prepare it for the suffering hour. 
 He was the first who was called to put his principles in practice. 
 By the end of August, in the year 257, a message had come from the 
 Emperor to the Proconsul Paternus, in which it was ordered that all 
 persons should adopt the religious ceremonies of Rome. Bishops and 
 Presbyters were specially mentioned, and the punishment of exile was 
 appointed for those who disobeyed. It was also added, that private 
 meetings should not be held, and that no person should enter the 
 catacombs. The directions were evidently given by some person who 
 \vas well acquainted with the manners of the Christians. Paternus 
 summoned Cyprian to his tribunal, to whom he said, " The Emperors 
 Valerian and Gallienus have sent me a rescript, in which they com- 
 mand, that all those who do not observe the Roman religion shall 
 now take upon them the Roman ceremonies. I therefore ask, What 
 are you? What do you answer?" Cyprian replied, "I am a 
 Christian, and a Bishop : I know no God but the one true God, who 
 created the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that is in 
 them. This God we Christians serve; to this God we pray day and 
 night for ourselves, for all mankind, and for the prosperity of the 
 Emperor himself." " Is this, then," the Proconsul said, " your 
 fixed resolution ?" Cyprian replied, " It is : a good resolution, 
 which proceeds from the knowledge of God, can never change." On 
 this, Paternus, in compliance with the imperial, edict, pronounced a 
 sentence of banishment upon him, and added, instantly, "This 
 rescript relates not only to the Bishops, but also to the Priests. I 
 desire, therefore, to know from you, who the Presbyters are who 
 dwell in this city?" Cyprian replied, "Your laws have justly con- 
 demned the laying of informations ; * I cannot, therefore, give them 
 up ; but in the places over which they have authority, you will be 
 able to find them." The Proconsul said, " I am speaking now of 
 this place ; and in this place, this very day, will I begin the search." 
 Cyprian answered, " As our doctrine forbids men to give themselves 
 
 account of them, if in bis time they were yet composed, which may be questioned ; for 
 the account which he gives of Stephen's death differs widely from that which we read in 
 those Acts. But he had made a bold attempt towards extending the power and autho- 
 rity of the see of Rome, and therefore was to be placed among the saints for the encou- 
 ragement of others. To say that he bad merited that honour by his virtues, either aa 
 a Christian or a Bishop, had been carrying the imposture too far : the only means, 
 therefore, left of making him a saint, was to make him a martyr, that by his glorious 
 death he might be thought to have deserved what it was manifest from the records of 
 those times, he had not deserved by his Christian life. Hence Acts were forged, set- 
 ting forth his heroic confession of the faith before the Emperor, his sufferings on that, 
 account, the stupendous miracles he wrought, &c. ; which, however incredible, might, in 
 process of time, by their antiquity alone, gain credit with the greater part of mankind." 
 (Bower, " History of the Popes," vol. i., pp. 71, 72, 4to.) 
 
 See Sneton., Titus, cap. viii. ; Dornitianus, cap. ix. ; Plin., Paneg. ad Trajanum, 
 lib. ii., Dig. de jure Fici. ; Lamprid. Commodus, p. 62, edit. Salmas- 
 
 3 Y 2
 
 532 HOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 up,* and it is also contrary to your orders, therefore they cannot give 
 themselves up ; but if you seek them, you will find them." Paternus 
 released him with a declaration, that the assembling of the Christians, 
 be it where it might, and the visiting Christian places of interment, 
 (which usually inflamed the zeal of Christians,) were forbidden under 
 pain of death. The intention was now wholly to separate the Bishops 
 from their churches ; but the bond of the Spirit would not suffer 
 itself to be broken by earthly power. We very soon after find the 
 Bishops and the Clergy, and not only these, but laymen also, and 
 even women and children, condemned, after being ill-treated and 
 beaten, to imprisonment and labour in the mines. We suppose they 
 had been found at the graves, or in congregations. The Bishop, 
 Cyprian, from Curubis, f the place of his banishment, was most active 
 in providing for their temporal and spiritual wants, and in proving, 
 by words and deeds, his sympathy with them. While he sent large 
 sums from his own revenues, and from the church-chest, for their 
 support, and the relief of their distresses, he wrote as follows to 
 them : J " In the mines the body is not refreshed by bed and 
 couches, but the refreshment and the consolation of Christ. The 
 limbs, weary through labour, lie upon the earth ; but it is no punish- 
 ment to lie there with Christ. Though the outward man be covered 
 with filth, yet the inward man is the more purified by the Spirit 
 of God. There is but little bread ; but ' man lives not by bread 
 alone, but by the word of God.' There is but little clothing for the 
 cold ; but he who has put on Christ hath clothing and ornament 
 enough. Even in this, my dearest brethren, your faith can receive 
 no injury, that you are unable to celebrate the communion. You 
 do celebrate the most glorious communion, you do bring the most 
 costly offering ; for the Scripture says, ' The sacrifices of God are a 
 broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not 
 despise.' You bring yourselves as holy and pure offerings to God. 
 Your example," he writes to the Clergy, " the greater part of the 
 
 Voluntary appearance before the jndgment-seat was repudiated by the early 
 church. (Matt. x. 23.) " That the poor hunted Christians should take to cover," was 
 the precept of their heavenly Master, and it was religiously observed by the sober Chris- 
 tians of the primitive ages. Some, indeed, of warm imaginations, and filled with self- 
 confidence, chose to be more zealous in the service of their Lord than he himself 
 required, and they encountered that persecution which he had counselled them to shun. 
 The consequences early felt in the Christian church, are well described in the epistle from 
 the brethren at Smyrna. Concerning this subject there are some strange and crude observa- 
 tions to be found in the writings of eminent persons of recent date. It was a maxim 
 of Cyprian, " Dominus nos confiteri magis voluit, quam profiteri." (Epist. Ixxxii., ad 
 Clerum.) The progress of Christianity was remarkably rapid, and hence one great 
 argument for the divinity of its origin ; yet probably the progress of Christianity would 
 have been more rapid, and the argument thence arising would have been more illus- 
 trious, had the persecuted Christians always observed the precept which our Lord gave 
 them. (Dalrymple.) 
 
 t Curubis, a city about ten or twelve leagues from Carthage. (Dupin.) " Locus exilio 
 destinatus erat Curubis, ut testantur Pontius, Acta passionis, et Augustinus : erat autem 
 Curubis in Zeugitana provincia sub jurisdictione proconsulis posita." (Pagius in Baron. 
 Annal. Eccles., an. 260, sect, xxxiii. ; also Tillemont, Mem. Eccles., torn, iv., art. liv., 
 p. 168. 4to. Paris, 1696.) 
 
 I Opera Cypriani, Epist. Ixxvi., ad Nemesianum et coeteros martyrae in metallo 
 constitutes, p. 139. 8vo. edit. Paris, 1836.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF SATURNINUS. 533 
 
 church has followed, who have confessed with you, and with you 
 have been crowned, being bound to you by the ties of the strongest 
 love, so that prison and the mines could not separate them from you ; 
 and there are among you girls and boys. How great now among you 
 must be the strength of your victorious conscience ! What a triumph 
 in your hearts, to walk among the mines with imprisoned body, but 
 with a heart conscious of power to know that Christ is among you, 
 and delights himself in the patience of his servants, who tread in his 
 footsteps, and walk in his ways to the kingdom of eternity !" * 
 
 Among those who suffered martyrdom for the sake of the truth, 
 we must not omit Saturninus, Bishop of Toulouse, whom the Gallican 
 church represents as one of the most illustrious sufferers their king- 
 dom can boast of ; and assures us that his history has been composed 
 with great care, and attention to accuracy. It appears that Chris- 
 tianity had made but little progress in Gaul, and had endured much 
 from the persecutions of the times, and also from the great scarcity 
 of the Ministers of the Gospel in that country. On this account, 
 Fabian, Bishop of Rome, set apart Saturninus, and other six indivi- 
 duals, to act as Prelates, and sent them into that country to preach 
 Christ and him crucified. Each of them chose the place of his resi- 
 dence ; and Saturninus fixed upon Toulouse, with the view of attempt- 
 ing the conversion of its inhabitants, and those of the adjacent parts. 
 His success is said to have been great. The congregation assembled 
 in some proseucha within the suburbs of the city, between which and 
 the residence of Saturninus, stood the principal heathen temple in 
 Toulouse, where the Priests pretended to predict future events. The 
 oracle, however, was frequently silent when the Bishop passed by ; 
 so that it shortly became tardy in delivering the anticipated 
 responses, and ultimately mute. It was now that the frauds of the 
 pretended deities were not only detected and defeated, but positively 
 exploded, to the no small chagrin and discomfiture of the chief actors. 
 Surprised and confounded at the disgraceful silence of their deities, 
 the principal persons among the idolaters inquired into the cause ; 
 and were immediately informed, by the enemies of the Gospel, that a 
 new sect had recently arisen among them, whose chief object was the 
 utter extermination of the ancient faith ; and that Saturninus, a 
 Bishop of that impious company, constantly passing their hallowed 
 edifice, had awed the gods to silence. A confession like this, we 
 should have thought, would have produced such a change in the pagan 
 population around, that they would have renounced their idolatry, 
 and have exercised their confidence and faith in a Being who has 
 declared, that " the idols he shall utterly abolish." Instead of which, 
 so great was their infatuation, that they proposed killing the Prelate, 
 as the most certain and expeditious way of unloosing the stammer- 
 ing and silent tongue of the oracle. While the Priests and people 
 were engaged in these consultations, they discerned the Bishop as 
 usual passing the temple, on his way to the Christian place of wor- 
 ship ; when, full of ignorant zeal, and anxious to maintain the 
 
 * Neaader, History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. i., pp. 137139.
 
 534 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 honour of their gods, they immediately resolved not to lose this 
 favourable opportunity of carrying their sanguinary designs into prac- 
 tice. He was forthwith seized, and dragged into the temple ; and was 
 told, that he must either appease the offended deities by offering 
 sacrifice, or expiate the crime with his blood. Saturninus boldly 
 replied, " I adore one only God, and to Him I am ready to offer a sacri- 
 fice of praise. Your gods are devils, and are more delighted with the 
 sacrifice of your souls, than with that of your bullocks. How can 
 I fear them, who, as you acknowledge, tremble in the presence of a 
 Christian ? " Irritated with this answer, the Heathen maltreated the 
 holy man with all the rage and barbarity which the most infuriated 
 zeal in defence of their insulted deities could inspire ; and, after 
 inflicting a variety of indignities upon him, they tied his feet to a 
 wild bull which was brought there to be sacrificed, which, being 
 driven from the temple, ran violently down the steps, and fractured 
 the Bishop's skull, and scattered the brains. The martyr's soul was 
 soon released from " the earthly house of this tabernacle," and fled 
 to the kingdom of everlasting peace and joy. The infuriated animal 
 continued to drag the remains of the martyr, scattering his limbs and 
 blood on every side, until the cord which bound him breaking, the 
 trunk was left in the plain without the gates of the city. The feeble 
 condition of the church at Toulouse prevented the Christians carrying 
 away the dead body of Saturninus, which was, at length, by two 
 women, deposited in a deep ditch to secure it from further insult. 
 This martyrdom took place in 257.* 
 
 Rufina and Secunda were sisters, and the daughters of Asterius, 
 a man of a senatorian family in Rome. Rufina, the elder, was be- 
 trothed to Armentarius, a young man of noble extraction ; and 
 Secunda was also engaged to Verinus, an individual of equal rank 
 and fortune to the former. The two gentlemen were Christians. 
 When the persecution arose, both renounced the faith, and also 
 endeavoured to induce the young women to follow their example ; 
 but being too well grounded in the truth as it is in Jesus, and too 
 well supported by the grace of God, to listen to their advice, and 
 diffident of their own strength, they fled from Rome to avoid farther 
 solicitation. Armentarius and Verinus, finding all their efforts to 
 cause them to apostatize from the truth ineffectual and vain, informed 
 against them as being Christians. This base and cowardly act was 
 hailed by the Pagans with great joy. They were pursued, and 
 brought back to the city ; were brought before Junius Donatus, Pre- 
 fect of Rome, by whom, after having endured numerous torments, 
 they were condemned to be beheaded. They were conducted twelve 
 miles out of Rome, and executed in a forest on the Aurelian Way, 
 where also they were buried.f 
 
 See Surras De Probatis Sanctorum, torn, vi., fol., 1675 ; Tillemont, Mem. Eccle- 
 siast., torn, iii., p. 297, 4to., Paris, 1695 ; Calmet, Hist, de Lorraine, liv. iii., p. ]30 ; 
 Rivet., Hist. Liter, de la France, torn, i., p. 306 ; Moreri, Le Grand Diet., in loco. 
 
 t Alban Butler says, this forest, at the period of the martyrdom of these two girls, 
 was called the " Black Forest," Sylva Nigra ; hut from these martyrs this name was 
 changed into that of Sylva Candida, or the " White Forest."
 
 DIONYSIUS, BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA. 535 
 
 It waa in the spring of 258, and while Valerian was busily 
 engaged in military preparations for the Persian expedition, that 
 Dionysius was brought before the Prefect of Egypt, and ordered 
 to recant for his own good, and for the benefit of others. Diony- 
 sius was a native of Alexandria, where his parents appear to have 
 been persons of considerable note ; his father, and probably his 
 ancestors, filled honourable offices, and possessed considerable influ- 
 ence in the city. He was born and educated a Gentile ; but by what 
 means he was converted to Christianity we know not. Having passed 
 through his juvenile studies, he placed himself under the tutelage 
 of Origen, who was at that time the preceptor of the Alexandrian 
 school, and renowned for his philosophic and Christian lectures. 
 On the decease of Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, Heraclas, a scho- 
 lar of Origen, and his successor in the catechetic school, was elevated 
 to the see, and Dionysius advanced to the place ; and upon the death 
 of Heraclas, who filled the episcopal chair fifteen years, none was 
 considered so qualified to succeed him as Dionysius, who accordingly 
 entered upon the duties and responsibilities of the situation in 246. 
 The first years of his office, as Prelate of Alexandria, were, on the 
 whole, tranquil, until Decius seized the reins of government, and 
 then all was uncertainty and confusion. The Christians were perse- 
 cuted with unceasing severity, of which the church in Alexandria 
 shared deeply. Persons of every age, quality, and profession were 
 accused, summoned, dragged, tortured, and executed with all imagin- 
 able rigour, multitudes of whom Dionysius records, together with 
 the manner of their martyrdom. Vast numbers who fled for shelter 
 to the woods and mountains, met with a worse death tha-n that 
 which they sought to avoid at home, being famished with hunger and 
 thirst, starved with cold, overrun with disease, surprised by thieves, 
 worried by wild beasts ; and many were captured by the Arabs and 
 Saracens, who reduced them to a state of slavery more miserable 
 than death itself. In this time of trouble and rebuke many revolted 
 from the faith ; others, however, maintained their position with 
 unflinching courage ; and several who until that moment had been 
 not only strangers, but enemies, to the Christian religion, came 
 forward and professed themselves Christians, in open defiance of 
 those immediate dangers which inevitably accompanied such a 
 declaration. 
 
 Dionysius bore a part in the common tragedy, although God was 
 pleased to throw around him the shield of divine protection for 
 the future good of the church. The following account is recorded 
 by Eusebius,* from whom Dr. Cave quotes largely. No sooner 
 had the Prefect received the imperial orders, than he immediately 
 despatched a Frumentariits,^ or military officer, whose duty it was 
 
 * Enseb., Ecclea. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 40. 
 
 t Frumentarii were officers under the Roman empire, who acted as spies in tLe 
 provinces, and reported to the Emperors anything which they considered of importance. 
 They appear to have been called Frumentarii, because it waa their duty to collect 
 information in the same way as it was the duty of other officers, called by the same 
 name, to collect corn. They were accustomed to accuse persons falsely ; and their
 
 536 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 to seize delinquents, and inquire into seditious reports and prac- 
 tices against the state, and therefore more especially pertained to 
 Judges and Governors of provinces, to apprehend him. This official 
 went about, and narrowly ransacked every corner, searching every place 
 where he imagined he might hide himself ; but in the meantime he 
 never examined the house of Dionysius, concluding that he would 
 not dare to continue at home : nevertheless he remained there not 
 less than four days, hourly expecting the arrival of the officers. At 
 length he left his habitation, accompanied by some friends, and his 
 servants. Not long after, he fell into the hands of his pursuers, and, 
 having received his sentence, he was conducted by a guard, under 
 the command of a Centurion, to Taposiris, a small town between 
 Alexandria and Canopus, there probably to be put to death in as 
 quiet a way as possible. It happened, however, that Timotheus, one 
 of the friends of the Bishop, ignorant of his apprehension, came to 
 the house where he had resided, and finding it empty, and a military 
 guard at the door, fled after him in great amazement and terror. 
 Meeting a countryman on the road, he was asked why he made such 
 haste : Timotheus, supposing that he was no stranger to the affair, 
 gave him a broken and imperfect relation of the whole. The man 
 was going to some nuptial festival which, according to the custom of 
 the country, was protracted to a very late hour, and, entering the 
 house, informed the company what he had heard. In a state of ine- 
 briation, and elevated with mirth, they rose up, ran out of doors, 
 and, with great clamour, rushed toward the place where Dionysius 
 was confined. The guard, hearing such noise and confusion at that 
 unseemly hour of night, left their prisoner, and ingloriously ran 
 away : the drunken party, on entering, found the Bishop in bed. 
 The good man, supposing his nocturnal visitants to be thieves, was 
 reaching something to give (hem : they, however, commanded him 
 to rise and follow them. At last, discerning the errand upon which 
 they had come, he requested them to dismiss him, and then depart ; 
 or at least to be so kind to him, as to assume the office of the exe- 
 cutioner, and take off his head. While he was passionately entreat- 
 ing them so to do, they compelled him to rise, and, having thrown 
 himself on the ground, they dragged him out of his prison by the 
 hands and feet, and then returned to their midnight revels. This 
 tragi-comic scene being ended, Caius and Faustus, Peter and Paul, 
 Presbyters, and his fellow-prisoners, took him up, placed him upon 
 an ass, and conveyed him away into a desolate part of the wilds of 
 Libya, where he, together with Peter and Caius, lay concealed until 
 the storm was overpast.* 
 
 At the death of Decius, Dionysius returned to Alexandria, where 
 
 office was at length abolished by Diocletian. They were succeeded in later times by 
 the agentes rerum. We frequently find in inscriptions mention made of the Frumen- 
 tarii belonging to particular legions ; from which it has been supposed that the Fru- 
 mentarii, who acted as spies, were soldiers attached to the legions in the provinces : 
 they may, however, have been different officers, whose duty it was to distribute corn to 
 the troops. 
 
 Cave's Lives of the Fathers, vol. i., p. 422. Carey edit., 8vo. Oxford, 1840.
 
 BANISHMENT OF DIONYSIUS. 537 
 
 he was constantly employed in the affairs of his diocess,* until the 
 onslaught on the church under the auspices of Valerian took place. 
 The edict of the Emperor was everywhere read, and the Christians, 
 without any protection, were exposed to the common rage. The 
 Alexandrian Bishop, attended by some of his own Clergy, and by 
 some Christians lately arrived from Rome, was brought before .Kmi- 
 lian, the Prefect of Egypt. The Governor did not at first peremp- 
 torily forbid him to hold their religious assemblies, but endeavoured 
 to persuade him to leave off that mode of worship, presuming that 
 others would speedily follow his example. The answer which the 
 Bishop returned was apostolical and terse, that " we must obey God 
 rather than men ;" boldly assuring him that he would worship the 
 true God, and none but Him ; from this resolution he would not 
 swerve, nor ever cease to be a Christian. The Prefect then told 
 them, that both by word and writing he had already informed them 
 of the great clemency of the Emperor, who permitted them to be 
 safe, if they would adore the gods of the empire that were the pro- 
 tectors of it. The Bishop replied, that every one worshipped those 
 whom they thought to be gods ; that, as for themselves, they adored 
 and served that ONE God, who is the Creator of the world, and who 
 gave government to the Emperor, for whom they offered daily prayer 
 that his dominion might be permanent and prosperous. To this 
 JSmilian rejoined, that if He were a Deity, none prevented them 
 from worshipping Him together with them which in the estimation 
 of the Romans were truly gods, they being enjoined to worship, not 
 merely one object of adoration, but emphatically the gods, and those 
 whom all men acknowledged to be such. Dionysius answered, " We 
 cannot worship any other." " I see," replied the Prefect, " that you 
 are a company of foolish and ungrateful people, and not sensible of 
 the favour of our Lords the Emperors ; wherefore you shall stay no 
 longer in this city, but be sent to Cephro, in the parts of Libya ; for 
 thither, according to the Emperor's command, I resolve to banish 
 you. Nor shall either you, or any of your sect, have leave to keep 
 your meetings, or to frequent your cemeteries ; which if any dare to 
 
 It was about this time that Sabellias flourished, who is said to have been a disciple 
 of Noetus, and to have held the rank either of a Bishop or a Presbyter. It is perhaps 
 needless to mention that these heretics denied the personality of the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost. They believed that God the Father was himself the Redeemer and Sanctifier 
 of mankind ; that the divinity of the Father resided in Jesus Christ, who had no sepa- 
 rate existence before his appearance upon earth ; and that the Son and the Holy Ghost 
 are mere modes, or operations, of the one only God. If we seek for a difference 
 between the theory of Sabellivw, and those of his predecessors, we are perhaps to say, 
 that Noetus supposed the whole divinity of the Father to be inherent in Jesus Christ, 
 whereas Sabellius supposed it to be only a part, which was put forth like an emanation, 
 and was again absorbed in the Deity. Noetus acknowledged only one divine Person : 
 Sabellius divided this one divinity into three ; but he supposed the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost to have no distinct personal existence, except when they were put forth for a 
 time by the Father. (Burton, Bamp. Lect., note 103.) These opinions spread rapidly 
 in that part of the Alexandrian diocess, which is called Pentapolis. (Kuseb., Eccle*. 
 Hist., lib. vii , cap. 6.) Dionysius soon heard of it ; and, after some letters had passed 
 on the subject, he had the question discussed in his presence. (Burton, Lect. on Eccles. 
 Hist.) 
 
 VOL.. I. 3 Z
 
 538 BOOK IV. CHAPTER YTI. 
 
 attempt, it shall be at his peril, and he shall be punished suitably to 
 his crime. Begone, therefore, to the place allotted you." 
 
 This sentence was put into operation with promptitude and 
 despatch : Dionysius, though sick, was not allowed one day's respite, 
 either to recover his health, or prepare for the journey. When he 
 came to know more of the locality of his exile, he was troubled, 
 knowing it to be a place destitute of the society of good men, and 
 constantly exposed to the inroads of the lawless and unreasonable : 
 this uneasiness was in some degree alleviated, when he was informed 
 that it was contiguous to a large and populous city, whose neighbour- 
 hood would furnish him with individuals both for conversation, and 
 opportunity for conversion. Cephro was the most rude and barba- 
 rous tract of the Libyan desert; and Colythius,* that particular part 
 to which Dionysius was afterward sent, was peculiarly so. Thither was 
 the Bishop of Alexandria banished, and was followed by a great num- 
 ber of Christians from the city itself, and from other parts of Egypt. 
 At his first arrival, he was met with brutal rudeness from the natives, 
 and with showers of stones ; but he had not been long there, before 
 a moral reformation was effected ; their barbarous manners were not 
 only civilized, but many were led to renounce idolatry, and to 
 embrace the faith of Christ. Notwithstanding the threats of Mmi- 
 lian, the Christians continued to assemble at Alexandria, though the 
 peril was so great, and the Prefect proceeded with rigour against all 
 who were brought before him : many expired under the most cruel 
 torments ; many were laden with heavy fetters, and thrust into noi- 
 some dungeons ; f but the time was gone by when the meetings of 
 Christians could be hindered by an edict ; they might be banished, 
 and put to death ; but the progress of the Gospel could not be 
 restrained. Before the appearance of Dionysius at Cephro, the truth 
 was unknown ; but heathen malice conveyed it to that unfrequented 
 spot, and a numerous church was formed. On hearing of this fact, 
 u3Emilian was induced to separate his prisoners, and remove them to 
 still more unpleasant quarters. They dispersed through different divi- 
 sions of the Mareotic district, and the place to which our Bishop was 
 ultimately sent was nearer Alexandria than Cephro, and seems to 
 have been chosen that the persons confined there might be more 
 within reach of the Governor. His residence in this place appears 
 to have continued for some time : he probably returned to Alex- 
 andria when Gallienus issued his rescript in favour of the Chris- 
 tians. A little before his death, he defended the divinity of Christ 
 against Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, a man infamous both 
 for his abominable heresies and intolerable haughtiness, his vanity, 
 avarice, extortions, and other crimes ; so that his evil course of life 
 caused him to lose sight of the truth. Dionysius being invited to the 
 Synod that was held at Antioch against this heretic, in 264 ; and, 
 
 * Nicephor., Callist., lib. vi., cap. x., torn. L, folio, p. 402. Paris, 1630. 
 t Cave, Lives of the Fathers, vol. i., p. 428. 8vo. edit. Oxford, 1840. 
 I Paul of Samosata taught, as Sabellius had done in 255, that the Father, and the 
 Son, and the Holy Spirit were but one Person ; that the Word and the Spirit were in
 
 THE PERSECUTION INCREASES IN SEVERITY. 539 
 
 not being able to go thither, by reason of age and infirmity, wrote 
 several letters to the church of Antioch, wherein he refuted the here- 
 siarch's errors, but would not condescend to salute him. Toward the 
 close of the year 265 he died at Alexandria, after he had governed 
 that church with wisdom and sanctity seventeen years. 
 
 Valerian having given the title of Augustus to his son Gallienus 
 soon after his own accession to the empire, the names of both conse- 
 quently appear in public documents, and both of them gave authority 
 for the persecution in 257. He left Rome on his Persian expedition 
 in 258. He appears at Byzantium and at Antioch in that year ; and 
 it is well known that, while he was engaged in this war, the whole 
 management of the empire was committed to Macrianus. It is 
 therefore reasonable to imagine, that the persecution of the church 
 would be conducted with greater zeal and severity, during the absence 
 of the Emperor in the East, than when he was at Rome. Gallienus, 
 also, was at this period combating the barbarians in Scythia ; and, it 
 is probable, knew little or nothing of the edicts to which his name, 
 with that of his father, was affixed. It must also be known that 
 Macrianus accompanied Valerian into Persia, and, being aware of the 
 influence which he had over the Emperor, he was enabled to send home 
 a far more sanguinary order against the Christians than had yet been 
 issued. From what Valerian had already witnessed of the effects of the 
 persecution, he must have seen that, in order to suppress Christianity, 
 he must resort to more decided and severe measures. Accustomed as 
 the Christians had been, under former Emperors, to sufferings of a 
 much more heavy and afflictive nature, this comparatively lenient 
 course, confined, in many instances, to banishment, and forbidding 
 public assemblies and visits to the catacombs,* instead of filling their 
 
 the Father, without a real and personal existence, and merely as reason is in man ; BO 
 that, in fact, there was neither Father, nor Son, nor Holy Spirit, but simply one God. 
 Nevertheless he acknowledged that the Father produced the Word ; but only in order 
 that He might operate out of himself; in which he differed from Sabellius. His error 
 upon the subject of the incarnation was equally fatal : he would not allow that the Son 
 of God came down from heaven ; he maintained that Jesus Christ was of the earth, a 
 mere man, having by nature nothing above other men : he confessed that the word, 
 wisdom, and eternal light were in Him ; but only as dwelling in Him, not by a personal 
 union. Hence he recognised in Jesus Christ two inroffrafft is, two Persons, two Christs, 
 two Sons, one of whom was the Son of God by nature, and co-eternal with the Father, 
 being no other, according to his showing, than the Father himself ; whilst the other, 
 who was the son of David, and the son of the Virgin Mary, was Christ only In an im- 
 proper sense, having had no existence before the birth of the Virgin, and being called 
 the Son of God only because he was the abode of the true Son. So that Jesus Christ 
 was righteous, not because righteousness was an attribute essential to him as God, but 
 merely by the practice of virtue and righteousness ; not by his union, but by his com- 
 munication, with the divine Word. Two Councils were held on the subject, and Paul 
 was, in the end, convicted of all his errors ; and especially of holding that Jesus Christ 
 was merely man : he was unanimously deposed and excommunicated ; which judgment of 
 the Couucil was further received and confirmed by all the Bishops of the whole church, 
 the decree of the Council having been received everywhere. (Euseb., Eccles. Hist., lib. 
 vii., cap. 28 ; Labbe, Concilia Sacrosaneta, torn, i., pp. 843, 893, 901.) 
 
 Instances are not unfrequently adduced by learned men, as proof that the first rescript 
 issued by Valerian and his sou was of a more cruel character than we have repre- 
 sented it to have been ; and that not only Bishops and Presbyters, but Christians of 
 every order and sex, were made by it the objects of severe punishment. But the cruelties 
 
 3 z 2
 
 540 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 minds with dismay, was found to stimulate their zeal, and add fresh 
 vigour to their constancy. Valerian, therefore, from the camp issued 
 the following edict : " The Bishops, Priests, and Deacons shall 
 immediately be put to death by the sword. The Senators and 
 Knights shall lose their dignities and property ; and if, after this, 
 they remain Christians, they shall suffer the same punishment of 
 death. Women of condition, after confiscation of their property, 
 shall be banished. The Christians in the service of the imperial court, 
 especially slaves and freed-men, who have formerly made profession of 
 Christianity, or do so now, shall be considered as the property of the 
 Emperor, and shall be distributed in chains to labour in the various 
 imperial public works." * This rescript appears to have reached 
 Rome in the middle of summer ; and the Magistrates and the people 
 showed no reluctance to carry it into full operation. Confiscations 
 and deaths now became frequent. It is evident, also, that the 
 Emperor's chief object was to deprive the Christians of their Clergy, 
 
 thus exercised may, without attributing to this edict any greater severity than we have 
 assigned to it, be very sufficiently accounted for from the orders given at its conclusion ; 
 for it is there in express terms declared, that capital punishment should thenceforward 
 await all those who should give their attendance at the Christian meetings, or be found 
 in the cemeteries or burial-places. There can be no doubt, therefore, but that all those, 
 as well Bishops as others, who were either put to death, or beaten with clubs, or impri- 
 soned, or subjected to any other kind of punishment of a more afflictive description than 
 that of banishment, drew as it were these severities upon themselves, by persisting 
 in holding meetings, contrary to the expressed will of the Emperor, and their being 
 found in the cemeteries. Such, in fact, was the courage of the Christians of those 
 times, that numbers made no scruple of setting the imperial mandate wholly at defiance. 
 The Proconsul of Africa had, without doubt, apprehended a great nmltitnde of Chris- 
 tians of both sexes and of all descriptions, whom he had met with assembled together 
 for the purpose of divine worship. The very mention of boys and girls being of the 
 number is of itself a sufficient proof of this. To inflict the punishment of death on so 
 many of his fellow-creatures at once, although he might clearly have been warranted in 
 so doing by the words of the imperial edict, in all probability appeared to this Magis- 
 trate a proceeding of too relentless and savage a nature to be had recourse to on this 
 occasion ; and he therefore contented himself with causing merely a few of those taken 
 to undergo capital punishment, by way of example to the rest, whilst the others were 
 only beaten with clubs, or sent in bonds to the mines. (Mosheim, Commentaries.) 
 
 The original rescript of the Emperor to the Senate, is found in Cyprian, Epistola Ixxxi. 
 Ad Successum De Nuntiis Roma reversis persecutionem nuntiantibus. " Rescripsisse 
 Valerianum ad Senatum ut Episcopi et Presbyteri et Diacones in continent! animadver- 
 tantur, senatores vero et egregii viri et equites Romani," (" The second et," says 
 Neander, " is a spurious addition, for the egregii viri are the equites, as the senatores 
 are clarissimi.") " I find this passage," says Mr. Rose, the editor and translator of 
 Neander, " thus printed in both editions of Neander's work. It appears that the printer 
 must have left out the words, equites Romani, which follow the second et in the sen- 
 tence of Cyprian. This will make Neander's remark in this parenthesis above, quite 
 intelligible. But he may perhaps mean to condemn the words equites Romani also. " 
 "Dignitate amissa, etiam bonis spolientur, et si ademptis facultatibus Christian! esse 
 perseveravermt, capite quoque multentur ; matron* vero ademptis bonis in exsilium rele- 
 gentur, Csesariani autem quicunque vel prius confessi fuerant vel nunc confess! fuerint, 
 confiscentur et vincti in Caesarianas possessiones descripti mittantur." Instead of 
 descripti, " allotted or distributed," there is a various reading, scripti, or inscripti, 
 " branded." We see by the following passage in Pontius's Life of Cyprian, that in the 
 persecutions of Decius, Christians had been branded on the forehead : " Tot confessores, 
 frontium notatarum secunda inscriptione signatos, et ad exemplum martyrii superstates 
 reservatos, incentive tubae coelestis animaret." The " prima inscriptio " was the " in- 
 scriptio crucis," -xa.pa.Ki "ftp, ffQpayts TOV ffravpov, received in baptism. In the passage 
 of Cyprian, the collocation of the words rather favours the common reading.
 
 MARTYRDOM OF XY8TUS. 541 
 
 and to arrest the progress of Christianity among the higher orders of 
 society. He does not appear to have wished to adopt unnecessarily 
 cruel measures ; but the people and the Governors did not always 
 abide by the spirit of these instructions, as we learn from some of the 
 martyrdoms of this persecution, against the genuineness of which no 
 cogent arguments can, upon the whole, be produced.* 
 
 Xystus, the Bishop of Rome, or Sixtus, as he is sometimes desig- 
 nated, and four Deacons of his church, were the first who suffered 
 martyrdom under this sanguinary edict. He had been elected as the 
 successor of Stephen about three weeks after his death : he is said to 
 have been of Greek extraction, but served, in the quality of Deacon, 
 in the church at Rome, under that Prelate. Though he did not hold 
 his situation twelve months, yet, if we consider the extent and influ- 
 ence of his labours for the flock of Christ, his fidelity, wisdom, and 
 courage were greatly conspicuous. The imperial edict which Macri- 
 anus exacted from the Emperor for the summary execution of the 
 Christian Clergy at Rome, was directed to the Senate, who imme- 
 diately testified their obedience to their Sovereign, by a zealous 
 compliance with his decree ; and Xystus experienced the full severity of 
 the rescript, the Almighty, doubtless, ordaining that the Pastor might 
 be an unerring guide to the flock, animating them with courage to 
 the combat, by example as well as by precept. Cyprian f certifies 
 this in an epistle to Successus, and desires that the same might be 
 notified to his colleagues, that the people might be reminded of their 
 common danger, and encouraged to meet death as Christians. The 
 terms which the Bishop of Carthage employs to record the mar- 
 tyrdom of Xystus, are generally understood to signify that he was 
 beheaded in the catacombs ; his burial-place being the scene of his 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Intimately connected with the sufferings of Xystus, were those of 
 his Deacon, Laurentius, one who during his lifetime was an ornament 
 to the church at Rome. In early life he was raised to office in the 
 Christian community, his piety strongly recommending him to the 
 consideration of the people. Chrysologus and Augustine speak of him 
 as an Archdeacon, probably because Xystus had placed him at the 
 head of his Deacons, whose number was then limited to seven, and 
 one to whom the care of the church treasure was committed. This 
 was his position, at a time when ecclesiastical situations only rendered 
 the possessors more conspicuous marks against which the shafts of 
 persecution would be hurled. When Xystus was conducted to the 
 place of execution, his faithful Deacon followed, and expressed his 
 
 * Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church. 
 
 t " Xi.stum autem in cimitreo animadversnm sciatis octavo iduun Augustaram die, et 
 cnm eo Diacones quatiior. Sed et huic persecution} quotidie ineisrnnt prefect! in nrbe ; 
 et si qui sibi oblati fnerint animadvertantur ; et bona eornm fisco vindicentur." (Kpist. 
 Ixxxi. Ad Snccessum.) Qnartns, a Deacon, is mentioned by some writers as the only 
 individual who suffered with Xystus. Some imagine the name Quartus was but a laptut 
 pennu- of the copiers, and read this passage as follows, "with four Deacon*;" asserting, 
 that four Deacon* suffered at Rome ; namely, Pretextatus, Feliciaaimus, and Agapittu, 
 with their Bishop, and Lawrence, who was martyred soon after.
 
 542 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 grief by a flood of tears, which proceeded, as Ambrose observes, not 
 from the anticipation of the loss of the Bishop, for he well knew, 
 that his death would conduct him to a happy eternity, but from the 
 certainty of his being deprived of the honour and advantage of dying 
 with him. Laurentius is represented as thus addressing his Bishop : 
 " father ! whither goest thou without the company of thy son ? 
 Whither hastenest thou without thy Deacon ? Why am I now neg- 
 lected ? What have I done to deserve this treatment ? Take me 
 with you, and see whether you have committed the holy eucharist to 
 a person unworthy of the honour : allow me also a share in your 
 death, as you have admitted me to share in the ministry of the 
 Saviour." To whom Xystus replied, " I forsake thee not, my son : I 
 give thee to know that a sharper conflict awaiteth thee. A feeble 
 and weak old man am I, and therefore run the race of a lighter and 
 easier death ; but young and strong art thou, and more gloriously 
 shalt thou triumph over this tyrant. Thy time approacheth ; cease 
 to weep and lament ; three days after thou shalt follow me." This 
 answer Laurentius considered as a certain prediction of his own mar- 
 tyrdom. On his return from witnessing the tragic scene of the death 
 of Xystus, he is said to have assembled the poor of the church, 
 among whom he distributed what of the church's money remained in 
 his hands ; for by this means only could he be secure of that treasure 
 being properly applied, which, after his death, might otherwise fall 
 into the hands of the Pagans, and be perverted to profane and dis- 
 honourable uses. 
 
 The merciless Prefect, to use the graphic language of John Foxe, 
 "understanding Laurentius to be a Minister not only of the sacra- 
 ments, but also a distributor of the wealth of the church, promised 
 to himself a double prey, by the apprehension of one silly soul. 
 First, with the rake of avarice, to scrape to himself the treasure of 
 poor Christians ; then, with the fiery fork of tyranny, so to toss and 
 turmoil them, that they should wax weary of their profession." * The 
 Deacon was speedily brought before the Governor, who demanded of 
 him where these riches were, and commanded him to deliver them 
 up for the Emperor's use. " You Christians," he is reported to have 
 said, " complain that we treat you with cruelty : at present I have no 
 wish to employ torments. I ask of you something which it is in 
 your power to grant. It is reported that, in your ceremonies, the 
 Bishops offer the libations in vessels of gold ; that the blood of the 
 sacrifice is received in silver cups ; and that, to give light to your 
 nocturnal ceremonies, you employ tapers fixed in golden chandeliers. 
 It is also said that, to furnish the offerings, the brethren not unfre- 
 quently seh 1 their possessions. Bring now these hidden treasures 
 forward. Our Sovereign has need of them for the maintenance of his 
 troops." To this address the Deacon replied, without any appearance of 
 surprise or agitation, " I acknowledge that our church is rich,f and that 
 
 * Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vol. i., p. 207. Seeley. Edit. 8vo. 
 t In the early ages of the church, the Bishop had the immediate charge of all the 
 poor, also of the widows, orphans, strangers, &c. When the ehurchjes came to have
 
 MARTYRDOM OF LAURENTIUS. 543 
 
 its treasures exceed those of the Emperor. I will let you see the most 
 precious of them ; but you must give me three days to put them in 
 order." The Prefect expressed himself satisfied, and Laurentius 
 immediately hastened to assemble the numerous objects of distress, 
 the sick, the aged, the lame, and the blind, who were supported by 
 the charity of the Christians. Having, as he expressed himself 
 desirous of doing, put all things in order, he went to the Prefect, 
 and conducted him to the church, telling him that he should see 
 there a great court full of golden vessels, and treasures collected in 
 piles under the galleries. On reaching the place, the Magistrate 
 looked round in vain for any appearance of the extraordinary wealth 
 he had expected to discover ; and, instead of the precious vessels, 
 with the thought of which he had filled his imagination, he beheld 
 only a crowd of miserable mendicants, under whose tattered gar- 
 ments none but a Christian philosopher could discover the glory of 
 humanity. His countenance immediately indicated that he had dis- 
 covered the Deacon's meaning ; and the latter said to him, " Why do 
 you look angry ? The gold which you so anxiously desire is but the 
 produce of the earth, and is the cause of many crimes : the true 
 gold is that divine light of which these poor people are the disciples. 
 These are the treasures I promised you : employ them to the advantage 
 of Rome, of the Emperor, and of yourself." * 
 
 " Doubtless," observes the historian Milner, " had the mind of the 
 Prefect been at all disposed to receive an instructive lesson, he had 
 met with one here. The liberality of Christians in maintaining a 
 great number of objects, and looking for no recompence but that 
 which will take place at the resurrection of the just, while they 
 patiently bore affliction, and humbly rested on an unseen Saviour, 
 was perfectly agreeable to the mind of Him who bids his disciples, in 
 a well-known parable, to relieve those who cannot recompense them. 
 How glorious the scene, at a time that the rest of the world were 
 tearing one another in pieces, and philosophers aided not the miseries 
 of men in the least ! But as the persecutors would not hear the doc- 
 trines explained, so neither would they see the precepts exemplified, 
 with patience. "f "Is it thus that I am to be mocked?" said the 
 Prefect. " I am aware that you make a boast of despising death. I 
 will quickly put you to the proof." The threat with which the 
 Magistrate left the place where the Christians assembled was 
 promptly executed. Laurentius was seized, and cast into a dungeon, 
 
 fixed revenues, it was decreed, that at least one-fourth part thereof should go to tlie 
 relief of the poor ; and, to provide for them the more commodiously, divers houses of 
 charity were built, since denominated hospitals. They were governed wholly by the 
 Priests and Deacons, under the inspection of the Bishops. In course of time separate 
 revenues were assigned for the hospitals ; and many, from motives of piety and charity, 
 gave lands and money towards their erection. When the church discipline began to 
 relax, the Priests, who till then had been the administrators of hospitals, converted them 
 into a sort of benefices, which they held at pleasure, reserving the greatest part of the 
 income to their own use ; so that the intentions of the founders were frustrated. 
 
 Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 117- 
 
 t Milner, History of the Church of Chriat, vol. i., cent, iii., chap, xvi., p. 502. 
 8vo. edit.
 
 544 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 from which he was only taken out to be scourged, and fastened to a 
 gridiron * over a slow fire, a torture which he more than once 
 endured with unshrinking fortitude, daring the executioners to do 
 their worst, by exclaiming, after he had been some time exposed to the 
 flames, " I have been roasted long enough on this side, turn me on 
 the other ! " A little while after he said, in the same manner, " My 
 body is now sufficiently cooked, you may satisfy yourselves with it 
 whenever you please," and then expired. This hardihood was no 
 evidence, perhaps, of any superior degree of Christian faith ; but 
 it is one of the many astonishing proofs which exist, that man is 
 capable of enduring the worst tortures of the body, to support the 
 truth of principles, on the assertion of which he rests the present 
 dignity or the future welfare of his spirit. f We cannot fully close 
 the account of Laurentius, without adverting to the case of Romanus, 
 a soldier, and one of the guards who assisted at his execution. The 
 heroic courage with which the Deacon sustained the most excruciating 
 torments was, in the estimation of the soldier, an irrefragable proof 
 of the truth of that religion for which he so bravely suffered, and 
 filled him with a deep veneration for that God who enabled his saints 
 to " endure, as seeing him who is invisible." When Laurentius was 
 first removed from the torture, and remanded to prison, Romanus, 
 who was stationed at the place of confinement, improved that oppor- 
 tunity, and made diligent inquiry into the faith of Christ, and received 
 Christian baptism at the hands of his illustrious prisoner. Thus 
 strengthened, he was enabled to endure martyrdom even before his 
 tutor ; for, no sooner was he baptized, than he was apprehended, and 
 carried before the Judge, who ordered him to be scourged and beheaded, 
 which was immediately done. 
 
 We left Cyprian at Curubis, at some distance from Carthage, to 
 which place he had been sent in the August of the preceding year. 
 He appears to have continued there a twelvemonth. He now returned 
 from exile by permission, and lived in a garden near Carthage, which, 
 although it was previously his private property, and was sold by him 
 for the benefit of the poor, had been providentially restored to him. 
 Here he regulated the affairs of the church, and distributed to the 
 poor. It was in this place, also, that he was informed that the 
 persecution, after a brief interval, was broken out afresh ; and, hear- 
 ing various reports, he sent messengers to Rome, to obtain informa- 
 
 * The name Laurentius is very celebrated among the saints of the Romish Calendar, 
 and we may perhaps doubt whether he met hia death by being broiled upon a gridiron ; 
 but it cannot be denied, that the testimony to his martyrdom is numerous and respect- 
 able. (See Baronii Annales, Ad an. 261, n. 6 ; Kortholt, De Persecut. Eccles. Pri- 
 maevse, cap. ix., sect, xx., p. 406 ; Ruinart, Acta Sincera, p. 187 ; Tillemont, Memoires, 
 torn, iv., p. 38. 4to. Paris, 1696.) 
 
 t We give this story at some length, because it has sufficient marks of credibility, 
 and is supported by the evidence of Augustine. We cannot go with Fleury in various 
 other stories. He seems ready to believe everything, Gibbon to believe nothing, in sub- 
 jects of martyrology. Whatever judgment they may be possessed of, it remains in both 
 equally unexercised ; indiscriminate credulity being as blind a thing as indiscriminate 
 unbelief. It is the duty of a reasonable creature to discern and to distinguish : this 
 requires labour and judgment. Fleury's method needs only the former, Gibbon's neither 
 the one nor the other. (Milner.)
 
 APPREHENSION OF CYPRIAN. 545 
 
 tion on which he could rely. From these lie learnt what he imme- 
 diately communicated to the brethren. Cyprian was now in daily 
 expectation of his end. Galerius Maximus had succeeded Paternus in 
 the proconsulate, and Cyprian anxiously awaited his summons. At 
 this period a number of Senators and others, influential in the com- 
 monwealth for their opulence and station, visited him. Long-continued 
 friendship led many to sympathize with him, so that they tendered 
 their assistance to effect his concealment : Cyprian, however, declined 
 such services. He already had tasted the bitterness of banishment ; 
 he knew the perils to which his pagan friends would be exposed had 
 he fled at their suggestion ; he decided to remain where he was, and 
 calmly wait the result. The Deacon Pontius, the biographer of 
 Cyprian, informs us, in opposition to the intemperate zeal of those 
 who were for giving themselves up to martyrdom, that he had his 
 fears on this subject ; but that his fears were conscientious, lest he 
 should displease God by throwing away his life. He continued at 
 Carthage, exhorting the faithful, and desiring that when he suffered 
 martyrdom, death might find him employed for God. However, 
 being informed that the Proconsul, then at Utica, had sent some 
 soldiers to bring him thither, he was induced to comply, for a season, 
 with the advice of his friends, to retire to some place of concealment, 
 that he might not suffer at Utica, but, if he were called to martyr- 
 dom, he might finish his life among his own people at Carthage : so 
 he states the matter in the last of his letters to the Clergy and peo- 
 ple.* " Here," says he, " in this concealment, I wait for the return 
 of the Proconsul to Carthage, ready to appear before him, and to say 
 what shall be given me at that hour. Do you, dear brethren, do yon, 
 agreeably to the discipline you have always received, and to the 
 instructions you have learnt from me, continue still and quiet : let 
 none of you excite any tumult on account of the brethren, or offer 
 himself voluntarily to the Gentiles. He who is seized and delivered 
 up ought to speak ; the Lord in us will speak at that hour ; and 
 confession, rather than profession, is our duty." 
 
 At length the day arrived for the apprehension of Cyprian. The 
 Proconsul having returned to Carthage, the Bishop went back to his 
 garden ; and while he was there, two officers, with a party of soldiers, 
 came to arrest him. They conveyed him in a chariot, between them, 
 to a place called Sexti, about six miles from Carthage, by the sea-side, 
 where Galerius Maximus lodged indisposed. That officer, being 
 informed of his arrival, directed the Captain of the guard to take him 
 back to his house, about the distance of a stadium from the Prseto- 
 rium, where he might remain until the following day ; but, by the 
 time he reached his place of destination, the Christians in Carthage 
 had been generally acquainted with liis apprehension, and flocked in 
 great numbers to see him. They were permitted to converse with 
 him for some time ; and so courteous was the Captain of the guard, 
 that his friends partook of food at the same table with him ; and 
 
 * Milner, History of tbc Church of Christ, vol. i., ceat. iii., chap. 1C, p. 483. 
 VOL. I. 4 A
 
 546 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 when the multitude were obliged to retire, they continued to linger 
 about the door of the house, before which they passed the night fast- 
 ing, from a fear lest some injury might be inflicted on their Bishop 
 before his trial.* Cyprian gave particular directions in reference to 
 certain young Christian women f whom he beheld among the crowd. 
 The next day the Proconsul sent for Cyprian, who went to the Prseto- 
 rium, attended by crowds of people. The Proconsul not yet appear- 
 ing, he was ordered to wait for him in a private place, where he sat 
 down. Being in a great perspiration, a soldier, who had formerly 
 been a Christian, offered Cyprian a change of raiment ; to whom the 
 Bishop replied, " Shall we seek a remedy for that which may last no 
 longer than to-day ?" J He was then brought into the judgment-hall, 
 where the Proconsul sat, who, addressing the martyr, said, " Are you 
 Thascius Cyprian?" "I am," was the reply. "The very sacred 
 Emperors command you to sacrifice to the gods," continued Galerius 
 Maximus. " I shall not comply," firmly answered Cyprian. " Think 
 awhile," said the Magistrate. " A matter in which the right course 
 is so manifest," answered the Bishop, "requires no reflection." "I 
 pity your situation," the Proconsul is further reported to have said, 
 " and would consult your safety." To which Cyprian replied, " I 
 have no wish that my situation should be otherwise than that which 
 may enable me to glorify God, and speedily obtain his blessing ; for 
 the afflictions of this present time are not worthy to be compared 
 with the glory which shall be revealed in us ; and, ' this light afflic- 
 tion, which is but for a moment, shall work out for us a far more 
 exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' " 
 
 * " Illnxit denique dies alias, ille signatus, ille promissus, ille divinus, quern si tyran- 
 nus ipse differre voluisset, nunquam prorsus valeret." Such is the glowing language in 
 which the arrival of this day is decribed. (Ruinart, Acta Sincera, p. 214.) 
 
 t Intimating that the young maidens should be kept at home (custodiri). In some 
 copies it is " castigari," which Rigaltius thus explains : " Admonuit ut castissiine sese 
 haberent, castitatis, sanctitatis, et pudicitiae memores." The reading " custodiri " 
 appears more simple ; and it is the ancient reading : " Quid illud, quod cum in alium 
 diem dilatus esset, atque illuc se multitude fratrum ac sororum congregans pro foribns 
 pernoctaret, custodiri puellas prsecepit. (August., Serm. 309, n. 4.) A principe deten- 
 tus, virginum pudicitiam custodivit." (Fulgentius, Serm. 6.) The passage exhibits a 
 lively picture of Cyprian's unceasing attention to decency and good order : to use the 
 words of Mr. Gibbon, (Decline and Fall, vol. i., p. 434, Milman's edit.,) "The Bishop 
 exercised a last, and very proper, act of jurisdiction, by directing that the younger 
 females, who watched in the street, should be removed from the dangers and temptations 
 of a nocturnal crowd." (Dalrymple.) 
 
 t The following remarks are well worthy of attention : " The sixteenth chapter of 
 Gibbon's History I cannot help considering as a very ingenious and specious, but very 
 disgraceful, extenuation of the cruelties perpetrated by the Roman Magistrates against 
 the Christians. It is written in the most contemptibly factious spirit of prejudice 
 against the sufferers ; it is unworthy of a philosopher, and of a man of humanity. Let 
 the narrative of Cyprian's death be examined. He had to relate the murder of an inno- 
 cent man, of advanced age, and in a station deemed venerable by a considerable body 
 of the provincials of Africa, put to death, because he refused to sacrifice to Jupiter. 
 Instead of pointing the indignation of posterity against such an atrocious act of tyranny, 
 he dwells with visible art on all the small circumstances of decorum and politeness 
 which attended this murder, and which he relates with as much parade as if they were 
 the most important particulars of the event." (Memoirs of Sir James Mackintosh, 
 vol. i., p. 245.) 
 
 Cyprian appears to have had an impression that at this time he should suffer, and 
 that the instrument of his martyrdom would be the sword. How this was revealed to
 
 MARTYRDOM OF CYPRIAN. 547 
 
 These words appear to have provoked the indignation of the Pro- 
 consul beyond measure. His countenance is said to have glowed 
 with anger as he heard them ; and immediately after, having con- 
 sulted a short time with the persons forming his Council,* he thus 
 addressed the accused :f "You have, for a considerable period past, 
 made a profession of impiety, resisting every attempt of the Emperors 
 to brink you back to their holy religion. Since, therefore, you are 
 the head of that pernicious sect, you shall suffer as a warning to 
 those whom you have deceived, and the discipline of the laws shall be 
 strengthened by your blood." Having thus spoken, he took a small 
 
 him, we learn from Pontus, to whom the Bishop related the following vision : 
 " I had not composed myself to sleep," said the martyr, " when a young man, of an 
 extraordinary stature, appeared to me, and, as I thought, carried me to the Proconsul's 
 tribunal. As soon as that Magistrate saw me, he wrote down my sentence in a table- 
 book ; but as it was not preceded by the usual interrogatories, I could not guess what 
 it was : I observed, however, that my guide, who had posted himself behind the Judge, 
 perused the writing with no small attention and curiosity. As he could not conveniently tell 
 me the purport of it in words, he endeavoured to make me understand it by signs ; for, 
 stretching out his hand, he made a motion with it like that of a sword when employed 
 in beheading, which I immediately comprehended, and concluded that I was condemned 
 to that death ; upon which I addressed myself to the Proconsul, and begged a day's 
 reprieve, to settle my affairs. After I had urged my petition for some time, with much 
 earnestness, he wrote again ; and though I knew not the words, yet I could understand, 
 by bis looks, that my petition was granted, which was confirmed to me by the young 
 man twisting his fingers together." Which vision, our martyr's historian observes, 
 signified his martyrdom a year after he saw it. 
 
 * " His Council," according to the form observed in provincial judicatories among 
 the Romans. A similar expression occurs Acts xxv. 12. 
 
 t Strictly speaking, Galerius was "hardly able to pronounce the words" (" vix ttgte 
 dixit verbis hujusmodi "). When the Proconsul pronounced sentence, he was greatly 
 indisposed, and he died soon after. It seems that, through indisposition, he was 
 scarcely able to pronounce the words. Dr. Lardner translates the passage, " in angry 
 terms ;" but Mr. Gibbon, " with some reluctance." The learned must determine as to 
 the merits of the various translations. Mr. Gibbon adds, that the sentence was con- 
 ceived in the following terms : " That Thascius Cyprianus should be immediately 
 beheaded, as the enemy of the gods of Rome, and as the chief and ringleader of a cri- 
 minal association, which he had seduced into an impious resistance against the laws 
 of the most holy Emperors, Valerian and Gallienus." The sentence is well turned ; yet 
 it expresses not the full meaning of the Proconsul. The same writer is of opinion, that 
 in the trial of Cyprian everything was conducted with the greatest courtesy by the 
 Magistrate. It was necessary that the imperial mandate should be obeyed ; the trial 
 was short but regular ; and the manner of the execution of Cyprian was the mildest 
 and least painful that could be inflicted on a person convicted of any capital offence. 
 Of this, however, no man living could be a competent judge, unless he had been pre- 
 viously hanged and beheaded. But, after all, what are the expressions of the Proconsul, 
 in which, if translated into familiar language, a plain English reader would discover 
 anything but " hard words and hanging ? " For example, " Are you the ringleader of 
 the profane crew ? You are an old, incorrigible offender, the professed enemy of piety, 
 and the chief of a gang of heinous malefactors ; your blood is required for the estab- 
 lishment of religious order, and you are to be instantly beheaded." This translation is 
 not elegant, but it is just. (Dalrymple.) " There is nothing," says a modern writer, 
 " in the Life of Cyprian, by Pontius, nor in the ancient manuscripts, which can make us 
 suppose that the Presbyters and Deacons, in their clerical character, and known to be 
 such, had the permission to attend their Bishop. Setting aside all religious considera- 
 tion-, it is impossible not to be surprised at the kind of complaisance with which the 
 historian Gibbon here insists, in favour of the persecutors, on some mitigating cir- 
 cumstances allowed at the death of a man whose only crime waa maintaining his own 
 opinion* with frankness and courage." 
 
 J " Sanguine tuo sancietur diseiplina." The apparent " ambiguity " of the original 
 is preserved in the translation, " Religion shall be established by thy blood." Galeriun 
 
 4 A 2
 
 548 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 tablet in his baud, from which he read the sentence, which ran thus : 
 " It is ordained that Thascius Cyprian be put to death by the sword ;" 
 on hearing which, the Bishop devoutly exclaimed, " Praised be God!" 
 The Christians who were present could not restrain their feelings, at 
 finding themselves on the point of losing the man who had for so 
 many years instructed and comforted them. " Execute us with 
 him !" they simultaneously exclaimed, as he was borne away to the 
 scene of his martyrdom, whither they and the Pagans followed in 
 immense crowds. The place chosen by the executioners was a level 
 spot of ground, situated about a league from the city, and bordered 
 with large trees. The most intense anxiety was evinced by the people 
 to witness his last moments ; those who were able, took their position 
 on the lofty branches of the trees ; and the pressure was so great, 
 that Cyprian himself felt some uneasiness at what might probably 
 take place. Soon all was ready for his departure ; and after prostrat- 
 ing himself on the earth, and praying for some minutes, he took off 
 his upper garments,* placed a bandage over his eyes, and, giving the 
 executioner twenty-five golden crowns, f awaited the stroke on his 
 knees, and with his hands crossed upon his breast. His blood was 
 caught by handkerchiefs and napkins, which the Christians, now fast 
 multiplying their superstitious practices, had placed about him on the 
 ground ; and at night they were allowed to take the body, and inter 
 it by torchlight with great solemnity . The circumstances attending 
 
 Maximus intended to speak of polytheism ; and yet his words are applicable, with equal 
 propriety, to the Christian religion. To the men of that age the expression appeared 
 remarkable. Certain it is, that in the event, the religion of the Romans was not estab- 
 lished ; and, if we may credit a hundred testimonies, Christianity was. This is 
 expressed with more energy and elegance by Gibbon: "On these melancholy occa- 
 sions," says he, " there were many among the Gentiles who pitied, who admired, and 
 who were converted ; the generous enthusiasm was communicated from the sufferer to 
 the spectators, and the blood of the martyrs, according to a well-known observation, 
 became the seed of the church." Indeed it must have been an enthusiasm uncommonly 
 generous, which could induce men to forsake the religion of their fathers, at the hazard 
 of suffering death, even death the mildest and least painful, or the milder chastisements 
 of imprisonment, exile, or slavery in the mines !! (Dalrymple.) 
 
 Milner says, "Cyprian took off his mantle." Dr. Cave says, " He put off his dal- 
 matic, or under-coat, which he delivered to the Deacons." There is, in the original account, 
 a minuteness in the description of the different parts of Cyprian's dress, which adds to the 
 credibility of the narrative. Many trifling commentaries have been made on the names 
 given to the garments of Cyprian. The translator, omitting any detail of this nature, 
 has endeavoured to speak in general terms ; and, as much as possible, to avoid every 
 expression that is become mean by general use. (Dalrymple.) 
 
 t There is added in the MSS., " And when the executioner came, Cyprian ordered 
 twenty pieces of gold to be given unto him." Bishop Fell pleasantly remarks, that this 
 donative is to be ascribed to the liberality of the copyists. 
 
 J " By torchlight." Some impertinent transcriber has added, " cum voto et triumpho 
 magno," " with supplications and a mighty triumph." Observing the words, " cum 
 cereis," he concluded that here there was a pompous procession with wax tapers and 
 litanies, according to the usage of later times. The truth is, that the interment of 
 Cyprian was performed in the most private manner possible, " that his body might not 
 be again exposed to the insults of the Gentiles." Gibbon, happening to overlook this, 
 has supposed, " that the body was transported in a triumphal procession, with a splen- 
 did illumination, to the burial-place of the Christians." The commentary of Cardinal 
 Baronius is remarkable. In the original there is, " Cum cereis et scolacibus ; " " that 
 is, with ropes dipped in wax, pitch, or other inflammable matter." Baronius, not 
 understanding the word, appears to have read, " cum scholaribus ; " and hence
 
 THE CHARACTER OF CYPRIAN. 5-19 
 
 the martyrdom of Cyprian, give us reason to believe one of these 
 things ; that is, either that the Emperor had conceived the idea of 
 gradually cutting off the principal members of the Christian com- 
 munity, and so consigning it to probable ruin ; or, that the manner in 
 which those who were condemned suffered, depended on the different 
 provincial Magistrates by whom they were tried. If the former were 
 the case, it may be supposed that the Emperor would be content to 
 execute his design, without having recourse to those tortures that 
 only excite the violent passions which give greater strength, while 
 they last, to sects as well as to individuals. In the latter case, we 
 must believe that the character of the present, as well as of the pre- 
 ceding, Proconsul, was superior to that of most persecutors ; for the 
 one only condemned Cyprian to an easy exile, and the other subjected 
 him to none of those sufferings which, it was so usual for the perse- 
 cutors to inflict on their helpless victims. 
 
 " Thus, after an eventful and instructive period of about twelve 
 years, since his conversion," says Milner, " after a variety of toils and 
 exercises among friends, and open foes, and nominal Christians, by a 
 death more gentle than commonly fell to the lot of martyrs, rested at 
 length in Jesus the magnanimous and charitable spirit of Cyprian of 
 Carthage. An extraordinary personage truly ! Let writers whose 
 views are secular, celebrate their heroes, their statesmen, and their 
 philosophers ; and while a Christian taste is derided, let us at least 
 enjoy the rare felicity of these times of civil liberty, in employing the 
 press to do some justice, however deficient our powers may be, to 
 men whom the modern taste seems willing to consign to contemptu- 
 ous oblivion. And let their memory be blessed for ever." * Without 
 doubt Cyprian had his failings, and these, in some considerable 
 degree, rendered his earthly career rough and thorny. He enter- 
 tained the loftiest notions of the episcopal authority. The severe and 
 inviolable unity of the outward and visible church appeared to him an 
 integral part of Christianity ; and the rigid discipline enforced by the 
 episcopal order, the only means of maintaining that unity. The pale 
 which enclosed the church from the rest of mankind was drawn with 
 the most relentless precision. It waa the ark, and all without it were 
 left to perish in the unsparing deluge.f The growth of heretical 
 discord or disobedience was inexpiable, even by the blood of the 
 transgressor. He might bear the flames with equanimity, he might 
 submit to be torn to pieces by wild beasts : there could be no martyr 
 without the church. Tortures and death bestowed not the crown of 
 immortality: they were but the just retribution of treason to the 
 faith. The fearful times which arose during the episcopate of 
 Cyprian, tried these stern and lofty principles, as the questions which 
 
 Tie says, " Priatinus hie moa Christianoa sepeliendi pracedente Cloro diversarum 
 . las.-ium atquo scfwlarum, accensas faces gestantibua singuli*, magna plane pompi." 
 (Dalrymple.) 
 
 Milner, History of the Church of Christ, vol. i., cent, iii., chap, xiv., p. 486. 
 
 t " Si potuit evadere quioquam, qui extra arcam Noe fait, et qui extra ecclesiam foria 
 fuerit, evadit." (Cyp. de Unitat. Ecclesiae.)
 
 550 BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII. 
 
 arose out of the Decian persecution did his judgment and moderation. 
 The Bishop of Carthage, who embraced without hesitation the severer 
 opinion with regard to the re-baptizing of heretics, notwithstanding 
 his awful horror of the guilt of apostacy, acquiesced in, if he did not 
 dictate, the more temperate decisions of the Carthaginian Synod, con- 
 cerning those whose weakness had betrayed them either into the 
 public denial or a timid dissimulation of the faith.* 
 
 * Milman, History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 248. 
 
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