asm of Christian Rome. The descendant of the Decii, however his obscure Pannonian birth might cast a doubt on his hereditary dignity, was called upon to restore the religion as well as the manners of Rome to their ancient austere purity; to vindicate its insulted supremacy from the rivalship of an Asiatic and modern superstition. The persecution of Decius endeavoured to purify Rome itself from the presence of these degenerate enemies to her prosperity. The bishop Fabianus was one of the first victims of his resentment; and Fabianus, Bishop of the Christians did not venture to raise a successor to the obnoxious Rome. office during the brief reign of Decius. The example of the capital was followed in many of the great cities of the empire. In the turbulent and sanguinary Alexandria, the zeal of the populace outran that of the Emperor, and had already commenced a violent local persecution (1). Antioch lamented the loss of her bish o, Babylas, whose relics were afterwards worshipped in what was still the voluptuous grove of Daphne. Origen was exposed to cruel torments, but escaped with his life. But Christían enthusiasm, by Enthusi being disseminated over a wider sphere, had naturally lost some of its first vigour. With many, it was now an hereditary faith, not it less embraced by the ardent conviction of the individual, but instilled into the mind, with more or less depth, by Christian education. The Christian writers now begin to deplore the failure of genuine Christian principles, and to trace the divine wrath in the affliction of the churches. Instead of presenting, as it were, a narrow, but firm and unbroken, front to the enemy, a much more numerous, but less united and less uniformly resolute, force now marched under the banner of Christianity. Instead of the serene fortitude with which they formerly appeared before the tribunal of the magistrate, many now stood pale, trembling, and reluctant, neither ready to submit to the idolatrous ceremony of sacrifice, nor prepared to resist even unto death. The fiery zeal of the African churches appears to have been most subject to these paroxyms of weakness (2); it was there that the fallen, the Lapsi, formed a distinct and too nu¬ merous class, whose readmission into the privileges of the faithful became a subject of fierce controversy (3); and the Libellatici, who had purchased a billet of immunity from the rapacious government, formed another party, and were held in no less disrepute by those who, in the older spirit of the faith, had been ready or eager to obtain the crown of martyrdom. Carthage was disgraced by the criminal weakness even of some among her clergy. A council was held to decide this difficult point; and the decisions of the council were tempered by moderation and (1) Euseb. vi. 40, 41. (2) Dionysius apud Eusebium, vi. 41. (3) The severer opinion was called the heresy of Novatian; charity and orthodoxy, on this oc casion, concurred. Euseb. vi. sub fiu., vii. 4. 5. strong. Valerian. A. D. 254. humanity. None were perpetually and for ever excluded from the pale of salvation; but they were absolved, according to the degree of criminality which might attach to their apostacy. Those who sa crificed, the most awful and scarcely expiable offence, required long years of penitence and humility; those who had only weakly compromised their faith, by obtaining or purchasing billets of exemption from persecution, were admitted to shorter and easier terms of reconciliation (1). Valerian, who ascended the throne three years after the death of Decius, had been chosen by Decius to revive, in his person, the ancient and honourable office of censor; and the general admiration of his virtues had ratified the appointment of the Emperor. It was no discredit to Christianity that the commencement of the censor's reign, 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 change which took place in the sentiments and conduct of Valerian is attributed to the influence of a man 'deeply versed in magical arts (2). The censor was enslaved by a superstition which the older Romans would have beheld with little Jess 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. Macrianus is reported to have obtained such complete mastery over the mind of Valerian, as to induce him to engage in the most guilty mysteries of magic, to trace the fate of the empire in the enA. D. 257. trails of human victims. The edict against the Christians, sugges (1) The horror with which those who had sa crificed were beheld by the more rigorous of their brethren may be conceived from the energetic language of Cyprian:-Nonne quando ad Capitolium sponte ventum est, quando ultro ad obsequium diri facinoris accessum est, labavit gressus, caligavit aspectus, tremuerunt viscera, brachia conciderunt? Nonne sensus obstupuit, lingua hæsit, sermo defecit?... Nonne ara illa, quo moriturus accessit, rogus illi fuit? Nonne diaboli altare quod fetore tætro fumare et redolere conspexerat, velut funus et bustum vitæ suæ horrere, ac fugere debebat... Ipse ad aram hostia, victima ipse venisti. Immolâsti illic salutem tuam, spem tuam, fidem tuam, funestis illis ignibus concremâsti. Cyprian, de Lapsis. Some died of remorse; with some the guilty food acted as poison. But the following was the most extra ordinary occurrence of which Cyprian declares himself to have been an eyewitness. An infant had been abandoned by its parents in their flight. The nurse carried it to the magistrate. Being too young to eat meat, bread, steeped in wine offered in sacrifice, was forced into its mouth. Imme diately that it returned to the Christians, the child, which could not speak, communicated the sense of its guilt by cries and convulsive agitations. It refused the sacrament (then administered to infants), closed its lips, and averted its face. The deacon forced it into its mouth. The conse crated wine would not remain in the contaminated body, but was cast up again.-In what a high-wrought state of enthusiasm must men have been who would relate and believe such statements as miraculous? (2) Euseb. vii. 10. ted by the animosity of Macrianus, allowed the community to remain in undisturbed impunity; but subjected all the bishops who refused to conform, to the penalty of death; and seized all the endowments of their churches into the public treasury. The dignity of one of its victims conferred a melancholy cele- Cyprian, brity on the persecution of Valerian. The most distinguished pre-Carthage. Bishop of late at this time in Western Christendom was Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage. If not of honourable birth or descent, for this appears doubtful, his talents had raised him to eminence and wealth. He taught rhetoric at Carthage, and, either by this honourable occupation, or by some other means, had acquired an ample fortune. Cyprian was advanced in life when he embraced the doctrines of Christianity; but he entered on his new career, if with the mature reason of age, with the ardour and freshness of youth. His wealth, was devoted to pious and charitable uses; his rhetorical studies, if they gave clearness and order to his language, by no means chilled its fervour or constrained its vehemence. He had the African temperament of character, and, if it may be so said, of style; the warmth, the power of communicating its empassioned sentiments to the reader; perhaps not all the pregnant conciseness, nor all the energy, of Tertullian, but, at the same time, little of his rudeness and obscurity. Cyprian passed rapidly through the steps of Christian initiation, almost as rapidly through the first gradations of the clerical order. On the vacancy of the bishopric of Carthage, his reluctant diffidence was overpowered by the acclamations of the whole city, who environed his house, and compelled him by their friendly violence to assume the distinguished and, it might be, dangerous office. He yielded, to preserve the peace of the city (1). Cyprian entertained 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 was the ark, and all without it were left to perish in the unsparing deluge (2). The growth of heretical discord or disobedience was inexpiable, even by the blood of the transgressor. He inight 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 (3). (1) Epist. xiv. (2) Si potuit evadere quisquam, qui extra ar cam Noe fuit, et qui extra ecclesiam foris fuerit, evadit. Cyprian, de Unitate Ecclesiæ. (3) Esse martyr non potest, qui in ecclesià non est. Ardeant licet flammis et ignibus traditi, vel objecti bestiis animas suas ponant, non erit illa fidei corona, sed pœna perfidiæ, nec religiosa virtutis exitus gloriosus, sed desperationis interitus. De Unit, Eccles. Et tamen neque hoc baptisma (sanguinis) here The fearful times which arose during his episcopate tried these stern and lofty principles, as the questions which arose out of the Decian persecutions did his judgment and moderation. Cyprian, who embraced without hesitation the severer opinion with regard to the rebaptizing 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 concerning those whose weakness had betrayed them either into the public denial, or a timid dissimulation, of the faith. The first rumour of persecution designated the Bishop of Carthage for its victim. "Cyprian to the lions!" was the loud and unanimous outcry of infuriated Paganism. Cyprian withdrew from the storm, not, as his subsequent courageous behaviour showed, from timidity; but neither approving that useless and sometimes ostentatious prodigality of life, which betrayed more pride than humble acquiescence in the divine will; possibly from the truly charitable reluctance to tempt his enemies to an irretrievable crime. He withdrew to some quiet and secure retreat, from which he wrote animating and consolatory letters to those who had not been so prudent or so fortunate as to escape the persecution. His letters describe the relentless barbarity with which the Christians were treated; they are an authentic and cotemporary statement of the sufferings which the Christians endured in defence of their faith. If highly coloured by the generous and tender sympathies, or by the ardent eloquence of Cyprian, they have nothing of legendary extravagance. The utmost art was exercised to render bodily suffering more acule and more intense; it was a continued strife between the obstinacy and inventive cruelty of the tormentor, and the patience of the victim (1). During the reign of Decius, which appears to have been one continued persecution, Cyprian stood aloof in his undisturbed retreat. He returned to Carthage probably on the commencement of Valerian's reign, and had a splendid opportunity of Christian Plague in revenge upon the city which had thirsted for his blood. A plague Carthage. ravaged the whole Roman world, and its most destructive violence thinned the streets of Carthage. It went spreading on from house to house, especially those of the lower orders, with awful regularity. The streets were strewn with the bodies of the dead and the dying, who vainly appealed to the laws of nature and humanity for that assistance of which those who passed them by, might soon stand in need. General distrust spread through society. Men avoided or tico prodest, quamvis Christum confessus, et "Though I give my body to be burned, and (1) Tolerâstis usque ad consummationem gloria durissimam questionem, nec cessistis suppli. ciis, sed vobis potius supplicia cesserunt. Steterunt tuti torquentibus fortiores, et pulsantes et laniantes ungulas pulsata ac laniata membra vicerunt. Inexpugnabilem fidem superare non potuit sæviens diu plaga repetita quamvis ruptâ compage viscerum; torquerentur in servis Dei jam non membra, sed vulnera. Cyprian, Epist. viii. ad Martyres. Compare Epist, xii. exposed their nearest relatives; as if, by excluding the dying, they could exclude death (1). No one, says the deacon Pontius, writing of the population of Carthage in general, did as he would be done by. Cyprian addressed the Christians in the most earnest and effective language. He exhorted them to show the sincerity of their belief in the doctrines of their master, not by confining their acts or kindliness to their own brotherhood, but by extending them indiscriminately to their enemies. The city was divided into districts; offices were assigned to all the Christians; the rich lavished their wealth, the poor their personal exertions; and men, perhaps just emerged from the mine or the prison, with the scars or the mutilations of their recent tortures upon their bodies, were seen exposing their lives, if possible, to a more honourable martyrdom; as before the voluntary victims of Christian faith, so now of Christian charity. Yet the Heathen party, instead of being subdued, persisted in altributing this terrible scourge to the impiety of the Christians, which provoked the angry gods; nor can we wonder if the zeal of Cyprian retorted the argument, and traced rather the retributive justice of the Almighty for the wanton persecutions inflicted on the unoffending Christians. retreat. Cyprian did not again withdraw on the commencement of the Cyprian's Valerian persecution. He was summoned before the proconsul, who communicated his instructions from the Emperor, to compel all those who professed foreign religions to offer sacrifice. Cyprian refused, with tranquil determination. He was banished from Carthage. He remained in his pleasant retreat, rather than place of exile, in the small town of Ceribis, near the sea-shore, in a spół shaded with verdant groves, and with a clear and healthful stream of water. It was provided with every comfort and even luxury, in which the austere nature of Cyprian would permit itself to indulge (2). But when his hour came, the tranquil and collected dignity of Cyprian in no respect fell below his lofty principles. On the accession of a new proconsul, Galerius Maximus, Cyprian Return to Carthage. was either recalled or permitted to return from his exile. He resided in his own gardens, from whence he received a summons to appear before the proconsul. He would not listen to the earnest solicitations of his friends, who entreated him again to consult his safety by withdrawing to some place of concealment. His trial was postponed for a day; he was treated, while in custody, with respect and even delicacy. But the intelligence of the apprehension of Cyprian drew together the whole city; the Heathen, eager to behold the spectacle of his martyrdom; the Christians, to watch in their affec (1) Pontius, in Vitâ Cypriani. Horrere omnes, fugere, vitare contagium; exponere suos impie; quasi cum illo peste morituro, etiam mortem ipSam aliquis posset excludere. (2) "If," says Pontius, who visited his naster in his retirement, "instead of this sunny and |