secution was very violent and bloody, appears from the several apologies presented to him by St. Justin, Melito, Athenagoras, and Apollinaris, entreating him to put a stop to it. The same is also evident from the number of those that were crowned with martyrdom. In Asia, St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was put to death, and many others about the same time. At Rome was beheaded St. Justin, who wrote two apologies for the Christians. Several others shared with him the same crown. At Lyons, St. Pothinus, the bishop, and many of all ages and conditions were, through the most acute and cruel torments conveyed to heaven. At length the emperor put an end to the persecution about the year 174, prevailed upon, as it is supposed, by the signal favour he and his army, in the German war, received from heaven by the prayers of the Christian legion. He was shut up in narrow defiles, and surrounded by the Quadi and Marcomanni, and his soldiers were ready to perish with excessive heat and thirst.

Under

these calamities, the Christian soldiers humbly addressed themselves to God, who immediately sent a plentiful shower of rain, which relieved Aurelius's army, and at the same time a violent storm of hail, with dreadful flashes of lightning, upon the enemies; which gave a complete victory to the emperor.

The fifth Persecution under Severus.

After the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, the Christians enjoyed a respite of tolerable peace till the reign of Severus, a crafty, treacherous, and bloody prince, and by his nature truly answering his name. He at first treated the Christians with humanity, but was afterwards prevailed upon by their enemies to commence a furious persecution. He not only suffered the governors of the provinces to persecute the Christians by the laws already standing, but he gave out in the year 202 fresh edicts, which were executed with such rigour and barbarity, that the faithful imagined the time of Antichrist was come. About the beginning of this persecution, Tertullian wrote his apology for the Christians, a masterly work, in which he refutes all the calumnies published against them, shows the divine morality of their doctrine, and exposes the absurdity of the Pagan religion. But it does not appear so pathetic an address had any effect. The fire of this persecution raged through all the provinces of the Roman empire, but far from consuming the Church of Christ, it only served to purify it, and to make it shine with greater lustre. The most illus

trious victims immolated on this occasion were St. Victor, bishop of Rome: Leonidas, Origen's father, beheaded at Alexandria; and several of Origen's scholars. St. Potamiæna, an illustrious virgin, and her mother Marcella, after various torments, were burned alive. SS. Felicitas and Perpetua, the one a noble lady in Mauritania, and brought to bed but the day before; the other at that time a nurse; St. Speratus and his companions beheaded at Carthage; St. Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, and many thousands of his people martyred with him.

The sixth Persecution under Maximinus.

During the space of twenty-four years, times were peaceable for the Christians, till Maximinus stept into the imperial throne in 235, a man of base origin and barbarous nature. He raised the sixth persecution, chiefly against the bishops and ministers, and the teachers and principal promoters of Christianity. The historian Capitolinus says of him, that, "never did a more cruel beast tread on the earth." St. Pontian, pope, suffered in this persecution, and several others. Happily it did not last above two years, Maximinus being cut off after a short reign.

The seventh Persecution under Decius.

For ten years from the death of Maximinus till the reign of Decius, the Church enjoyed a tolerable tranquillity; and as Maximinus's persecution was chiefly levelled against the pastors, the bulk of Christians had tasted the sweets of peace for thirty-eight years. This period of tranquillity occasioned, conformably to the bent of human nature, a remissness in the Christians, and a relaxation in their morals: of which St. Cyprian, who lived at that time, grievously complained. Almighty God, therefore, to punish their neglect, to revive their fervour, and to try them in a fiery crucible, permitted a most severe general persecution under Decius, in the year 249. This savage emperor, seeing that Christianity had gained prodigious growth over the whole Roman empire, and that paganism on that account visibly declined, was resolved to support the latter by effectually ruining the former. He therefore issued out a cruel edict against the Christians, and sent it to all the governors of provinces. The Christians were immediately driven from their houses, and stript of their estates; whips and prisons, fires and wild beasts, scalded pitch and melted wax, sharp stakes and burning pincers, were the ordinary

instruments used for their torments. Slow tortures were particularly employed in order to tire out the patience of the sufferers. This persecution crowned at Rome Fabian, pope, Abdon and Sennen, and many others. A great harvest of martyrs was made at Carthage: Appollonia, with many others, suffered at Alexandria, as related by St. Dionysius, bishop of that see. In the east it swept away Babylas, bishop of Antioch; Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, with thousands more. Such was the rage of the pagan magistrates, that the historian Nicephorus declares, it would be easier to count the sands of the sea, than to reckon up all the martyrs of the persecution. Many Christians fled from the scene of slaughter into the deserts. One of this number was St. Paul of the province of Thebais in Egypt, who became an eminent anchoret, and is styled the first hermit.

The eighth Persecution under Valerian.

Valerian being invested with the imperial purple, was at first very favourable to the Christians; but he suffered his mind to be poisoned by the suggestions of magicians, who persuaded him, that to procure success in his wars, and prosperity to the empire, he must render the gods propitious by suppressing Christianity. In this view he issued out edicts, and commenced a bloody persecution in the year 257, which lasted three years and a half. Some of the chief martyrs were at Rome, St. Stephen, pope, his successor St. Xystus, with St. Lawrence his deacon; St. Fructuosus, bishop of Tarragon in Spain; St. Saturninus, bishop of Toulouse, and St. Felix of Nola. Many were the holy victims in Egypt, as St. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, relates. Violent also was the persecution in other parts of Africa, where many suffered death, and many others were condemned to work in the mines but the most eminent of the martyrs in that part of the world was St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, who had so strenuously supported the Christian religion by his writings and example, and had encouraged others to martyrdom both by his words and letters. He had escaped the persecution of Decius; but now he was first banished, then beheaded for the faith, in the neighbourhood of Carthage.

The ninth Persecution under Aurelian.

The Emperor Aurelian, in the beginning of his reign, behaved with humanity towards the Christians; but being strongly attached to idolatrous worship, he at last sent out, in

the year 274, violent edicts to exterminate the Christian religion: but as he died soon after, this persecution was short. The principal victims it sent to heaven were: St. Felix, pope; St. Mamas, at Caesarea in Cappadocia; St. Agabitus in Italy; St. Savinianus, bishop of Troyes; St. Reverianus, bishop of Autun; St. Columba, virgin, and many others in France.

The tenth Persecution under Dioclesian.

The tenth and last general persecution, the most severe and most bloody of all, was set on foot by the Emperor Dioclesian. The Christian religion had by this time gained so much ground, that in every province of the Roman empire, and even almost in every town, multitudes professed it, and public churches had been built, where they assembled for prayer, and other holy exercises. Satan now raging with envy, and seeing his empire near expiring, seemed to summon up his whole strength, in order to make a last effort for the support of idolatry, and the destruction of Christianity. He inspired Dioclesian, and his colleague Maximian, with the most rancorous hatred against the Christians. Dioclesian published an edict at Nicomedia, in the year 303, ordering the churches: be pulled down, and the Holy Scriptures to be burnt. But this was only a prelude to his subsequent inhuman edicts, which presently deluged the Roman empire with Christian blood. Cruelties hitherto unheard of, and all kinds of tortures, were employed upon the Christians. Some were hung with their heads downwards and suffocated by slow fires, as in Mesopotamia; others were broiled upon gridirons, as in Syria. Some were slain by breaking their legs, as in Cappadocia; others had sharp reeds thrust under their nails, and others melted lead poured upon them, as in Pontus. Some were beheaded in Arabia; others devoured by wild beasts in Phoenicia. In Egypt infinite numbers suffered; some of whom, after being cruelly scourged, racked, and having their flesh torn off with pincers, or racked off with pieces of broken pots, were committed to the fire, or thrown into the sea. Phrygia, a populous city, consisting all of Christians, was surrounded by a body of soldiers, who set fire to it, and men, women, and children, were all consumed in the flames. fine, Eusebius the historian, who was eye-witness of some of these barbarous scenes, says, that the cruelties exercised against the Christians were innumerable, and exceeded all relation. He also adds, that the people were not suffered to buy or sell any thing, or to draw water from the public foun

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tains, without first offering incense to idols, placed there for that purpose. It would be endless to reckon up the number of martyrs of these times.

Thus was the persecution carried on by Dioclesian in the East and Maximian in the West, and afterwards by their successors, for the space of ten years, with some interruptions; till Constantine, the first Christian emperor, put a stop to it in the year 313, and gave peace to the Church.

Whoever desires a fuller account of all these persecutions, may have recourse to the writers of Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius, Lactantius le mortibus Persecutorum, Tillemont, Cave, &c. What has been here said, explains sufficiently the meaning of the shower of hail and fire mixed with blood, which fell upon the Christian Church, according to the text of Apocalypse here considered.

The

And now may we not, for a moment, take a quiet view of the triumph of the Church over all her enemies? Devil, like a fierce lion had closely watched her: and made repeated furious attempts to devour her: but the Lion of the tribe of Juda stood for her protection, and defeated all his assaults. Those haughty princes, the Roman emperors, by Satan's instigation, bore down against her with all the weight of their power, to which the faithful opposed no other arms but patience. Nevertheless, the edifice of the Church could not be thrown down, because he that built it was himself the corner stone, and had declared, it should stand for ever. The Pagans persuaded themselves, that by dint of tortures, and severities, they could totally crush the Christians, and extinguish their very name; but their expectations were frustrated, and they saw them daily increase under those very oppressions. The more Christians they tortured, or put to death, the more converts were made from the view of such amazing examples of fortitude; and the Christian blood they spilt, as Tertullian told them, was the seed of new Christians. The heavy pressures the Church laboured under, served to purify her members, like gold in the furnace, and from the fire of persecution she rose up, like the Phoenix, more bright and more vigorous. The idolatrous emperors of Rome looked upon the Christian religion as a mere human invention, and in this lay their mistake: they were ignorant that the work was of divine construction, that it was the new kingdom of the God of Heaven which had just been founded, and to which, by the eternal decrees, all other kingdoms were to give place, Dan. ii. 44. It was the stone, foretold by the prophet Daniel,