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in the evening he had a disorder in his bowels which gave him violent pain. He fell into a grievous and unknown disease, and his inward parts being corrupted, he cast out his liver and his excrements, not from the ordinary passages, but from his miserable mouth, which had uttered so many blasphemies. His secret parts, and all the flesh round about them corrupted also, and bred worms; and to show that it was a divine punishment, all the art of the physicians could give him no relief, though on account of his high rank, and his near relation to the emperor, they employed all kind of remedies. They killed a great number of the choicest and fattest birds, and applied them to the rotten places, to draw out the worms; but the worms, instead of coming forth, entered deeper into his flesh, devouring all that was corrupted, and penetrating to the quick. They got into his stomach, and from time to time came out of his mouth, whilst, to increase his affliction, the very Pagans made a jest of it. Philostorgius says that he remained forty days without speech or sense. He then came to himself a little, and his wife, who, as it is reported, was illustrious for her faith, and who had warned him to spare at least the lives of the Christians, represented to him that he ought to acknowledge and bless the mercy of Jesus Christ, who in chastizing him showed him his power; whereas if he had left him unpunished, and used his ordinary forbearance, he would never have known whom he had set at defiance. This miserable man, pressed by these remonstrances of his wife, and by the sense of his pain, acknowledged that this was the true cause of his sufferings; he detested the crime which was thus severely punished, and bare testimony of his own impiety. He called upon the God of the Christians, and entreated him to have pity on him, or at least to take him soon out of the world; and he pressed his wife to go and pray for him at church, and to desire the prayers of the Christians. But for all this, he appeared to have been no more converted than Antiochus: and he is said to have put to death several Christians only three days before he ended his life. His wife also declared to him that she dared not pray for his recovery, lest she should draw down divine wrath *pon herself.

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'Yet he entreated the emperor to restore to the Christians the churches which he had taken from them, and to cause them to be opened; but he could not obtain from him even that favour, and received only this answer: "It was not I who shut them up, (except the principal church) but I will give no orders to have them set open. At another time the count sent him word that it was because of him, and of having quitted Christianity for his sake, that he suffered such grievous pain, and perished miserably; to which Julian, without fearing the hand of God, or showing at least some compassion for a person so nearly related, sent him this reply: "You have not been faithful to the Gods, and it is for that is for that you suffer such torments.'

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At length the imposthumes all over his body, and the worms which gnawed him continually, reduced him to the utmost extremity. He threw them up, without ceasing, the last three days of his life, with a stench which he himself could not bear. Thus he ended his life by a shameful and miserable death, passing from a punishment of many days to a punishment of eternal duration. He died, if we may believe Philostorgius, whilst they were reading to him divers responses lately made by oracles, all of them promising that he should not die of any distemper. His nephew Julian lamented him as little dead, as living; and resolving not to give glory to Christ, he continued to declare that his calamity befel him for not having been faithful to the Gods. In one of his writings he says of him, that he had governed the city of Antioch with much justice, but he immediately adds, not with sufficient prudence. He there speaks of his death without adventuring to touch upon any of its circumstances.

The disease with which God visited Felix the superin. tendant, was not not so long; for it carried him off in the space of a day, if not more speedily. St. Chrysostom says that he burst suddenly in the middle of his body, by which perhaps he meant what Philostorgius relates, that one of his larger veins bursting, without any straining, the blood flowed from his mouth all the night, or all the day, according to Theodoret : so that in the evening, his blood being all gone, he lost his life, as well as count Julian, and fell into everlasting death. Ammianus entirely agrees

with this, saying that he died suddenly, of a loss of blood.

'There was, it seems, a public place, where were written the names of those who died, and the people reading there the names of Felix, (a title usually given to emperors,) and of Julian, added that of Augustus, as if it had been the emperor himself who was deceased; and this was looked upon as a presage that he would soon be amongst the dead.

'Elpidius the treasurer, who with Julian and Felix went. to pillage the church, was also punished as well as they, though a little later: for, being convicted of having favoured the revolt of Procopius against Valens, A. D. 366, he was stripped of his effects, and shut up in prison, where after having continued for some time, he died without reputation and honour, cursed of all the world, and surnamed Elpidius the sacrificer, or the apostate.

A fourth, who according to Philostorgius had a share in the same sacrilege, and had shamefully profaned the holy altar, was instantly punished like count Julian; for those parts of his body which he had abused in committing his crime were ulcerated, and the worms which bred in them destroyed him miserably.

The justice of God was also made manifest by many punishments of the same kind inflicted on other apostates; and it may not be amiss to collect what history hath preserved concerning it.

'One who was called Hero, a native of Thebes in Ægypt, and bishop of that place, as the Alexandrian Chronicle seems to say, having voluntarily renounced the faith at Antioch, was instantly seized with a disease which corrupted all his body, and made him a hideous spectacle, and a dreadful example of divine justice. He was seen lying in the streets and public places, deprived of all assistance, and even of the pity and compassion of the beholders. The Christians abhorred his perfidy, and the Pagans, after they had seduced him, showed him no regard. Thus he expired miserably in the sight of all the world.

"Theotecnus, a presbyter of Antioch, fell voluntarily into the same crime, deluded by fair promises, and was punished

as instantly and as severely as Hero. His flesh in a short time was corrupted and overrun with worms, and he lost his sight. At last he went mad, and bit and devoured his own tongue, and from these torments passed to others far more terrible.

'We must not omit the punishment which befell one Thalassius, a man famous for his impurities and debauchery, who is said even to have prostituted his own daughter. He died buried under the ruins of his house which fell upon him. Theophanes assures us that his wife, and all his household who professed Christianity, were preserved from this disaster; and a child of seven years old, being asked how he had escaped, answered that he was carried out by an angel. The Alexandrian Chronicle places the death of Theotecnus, Hero, and Thalassius, in the year 363.

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St. Gregory Nazianzen marks out in general the stories which we have related, and adds divers particularities, but without naming the persons. Who, says he, could describe the tragical accidents, the diseases, the different plagues and punishments with which divine justice visited the impious, each of them in a manner suitable to his crime? Some burst asunder in the sight of all men, others were taken off by extraordinary deaths. In the midst of their torments they confessed their crimes with a fruitless and unavailing grief. Some by dreams of the night, others by visions of the day, had their impiety set before them. Who, I say, could enumerate all the calamities by which God in a visible manner avenged the demolition of the churches, the injuries done to the holy table, the profanation of the sacred vessels, and the cruel usage of the servants of Jesus Christ?' H. E. vii. 395.

A deacon, called Cyril, in the time of Constantius, had signalized himself by destroying several images of the gods at Heliopolis. The Pagans were so enraged at this, that when Julian reigned, they seized and slew Cyril, and ripped open his belly, and ate his liver. The divine vengeance pursued all those who had been guilty of this crime; their teeth came out, their tongues rotted, and they lost their sight. So says Theodoret, iii. 7.

Valens, who was made emperor A. D. 364, was a Christian; but being of the Arian party, and of a cruel temper, he became a persecutor of the Consubstantialists. Fourscore presbyters came to him to complain of the ill usage which they had received from the Arians, whereupon it is reported that he caused them to be put to sea, and burnt alive in the ship. Afterwards, in a battle with the Goths, he was defeated and wounded, and fled to a cottage, where he was burnt alive, as most historians relate. All agree that he perished. See Socrates iv. 16. 38. and the notes.

The Consubstantialists called his death a judgment: but if so, it was rather a punishment of his cruelty, than of his heresy; of his cruelty, which was exercised not only on the party which he disliked, but on all his subjects.

A. D. 394. Theodosius, after having been almost de feated, and reduced to great distress, obtained a signal victory over Eugenius, which was generally thought to have been by a particular providence, commanding the storms to fight for him. So say Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Rufinus, Ambrose, Augustin, Orosius, &c. and it is thus elegantly represented by Claudian, though a Pagan:

Te propter gelidis Aquilo de monte procellis
Obruit adversas acies, revolutaque tela
Vertit in auctores, et turbine repulit hastas.
O nimium dilecte Deo, cui fundit ab antris
Eolus armatas hiemes, cui militat æther,
Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti !'

The Christians to this added other embellishments suit able to the taste of those times, as that the victory was foretold by cœlestial visions, dreams, and dæmoniacs, and obtained by the aid of John the Baptist, the tutelar saint of Theodosius.

Supposing it to have been the effect of a particular providence, which might be the case, good reasons may be assigned for it:

Arbogastes, a general, and a man of great authority, basely murdered his young emperor Valentinian II. and set up Eugenius in his place. Arbogastes was a Pagan and an enemy to Christianity, and Eugenius the usurper was a

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