flesh was scraped from the very bone with ragged shells, or lacerated with burning pincers and ungulæ, or horrid claws of iron, specimens of which have been found in the catacombs. Plates of red-hot brass and molten metal were applied to the naked body, till it became one indistinguishable wound. Mingled salt and vinegar or unslaked lime were rubbed upon the quivering muscles, torn and bleeding from the rack and scourge. Men were condemned by the score and hundred to labor in the mines with the sinews of one leg severed, one eye scooped out, and the socket seared with a red-hot iron. Chaste matrons and tender virgins were given over-worse fate a thousand-fold than death!-to dens of shame and the gladiators' lust, and subjected to nameless agonies too horrible for words to utter. And all these untold sufferings were endured, often with joy and exultation, for the love of a Divine Master, when a single word, a grain of incense cast upon the heathen altar, would have released the victims from their agonies. No lapse of time, and no recoil from the idolatrous homage paid in after ages to the martyr's relics, should impair in our hearts the profound and rational reverence with which we bend before his tomb.

One of the most remarkable features of the ages of persecution was the enthusiasm for martyrdom that prevailed, at times almost like an epidemic.* Age after age the soldiers of Christ rallied to the conflict, whose highest reward was the guerdon of death. They bound persecution as a wreath about their brows, and exulted in the "glorious infamy" of suffering for their Lord. The brand of shame became the badge of highest honor. Besides the joys of heaven, they won imperishable fame on earth; and the memory of a humble slave was often haloed with a glory surpassing that of a Curtius or Horatius. The meanest hind was ennobled by the accolade of martyrdom to the loftiest peerage of the skies. Impatient to obtain the prize, these candidates for death often pressed with eager

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*"Are there not ropes and precipices enough?" said a Roman proconsul to a Christian mob that came clamoring for martyrdom. Many of the Fathers protested against this infatuation. "Who calls me a martyr scourges me," said Ignatius on his way to death. "That name belongs to Christ alone," said the martyrs of Vienne. Tertullian fanned this enthusiasm, but Clement sought to repress it. They are not martyrs, but suicides," he wrote, "who light their own funeral pyres." By precept and example Cyprian enforced an opposite course.

haste to seize the palm of victory and the martyr's crown. They went to the stake as joyfully as to a marriage-feast; and "their fetters," says Eusebius, "seemed like the golden ornaments of a bride." Though weak in body, they seemed clothed with vicarious strength, and confident that, though "counted as sheep for the slaughter," naught could separate them from the love of Christ. Wrapped in the fiery vest and shroud of flame, they yet exulted in their glorious victory. While the leaden hail fell on the mangled frame, and the eyes filmed with the shadows of death, the spirit was entranced by the vision of the opening heaven, and above the roar of the ribald mob fell sweetly on the inner ear the assurance of eternal life.

This spirit of martyrdom was a new principle in society. It had no classical counterpart. Socrates and Seneca suffered with fortitude, but not with faith. The loftiest pagan philosophy shrinks abashed before the sublimity of Christian hope. This looks beyond the shadows of time and the cares of earth to the grandeur of the infinite and the eternal. The heroic deaths of the believers exhibited a spiritual power mightier than the primal instincts of nature-the love of wife or child, or even of life itself. Like a solemn voice falling on the dull ear of mankind, these holy examples urged the inquiry, “ What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" And that voice awakened an echo in full many a heart; the martyrs made more converts by their deaths than in their lives. "Who that sees our sufferings," says Tertullian, "is not excited to inquiring? Who that inquires does not embrace our faith?" *

The second section of Pressensé's volume treats of the postapostolic Fathers and Apologists. Comparatively few, even of those who have the ability, have the time or opportunity to read the Fathers in the original. Yet without some acquaintance with their writings it is impossible to understand the spirit of the age in which they lived, the moral atmosphere of the times, and the social environment of that primitive Christianity to which they so largely gave the impress of their own character. There were, indeed, giants in the earth in these days-giants of evil as well as of good-men of renown in wickedness, prodigies of cruelty and vice, and men of *Apol., 50.

colossal Christian character, who performed undying labors for God and man. The battles for and against the truth were wars of the Titans; and in the massy works they left behind we have evidences of the prowess of the Christian champions. Nowhere can he who is unfamiliar with this noble brotherhood better make their acquaintance than in the vivid portraits and characterizations of this book; and he who is already familiar with them will enjoy with still keener zest the discriminative criticism and analysis of their character given by our author. These portraits are clearly limned, and give the individuality of the person in full relief. They are not blurred and faded copies of each other, nor bloodless specters of superhuman virtue like the Romish Saints, but men of like passions with ourselves, often with a touch of human error or infirmity, which makes us feel their kinship to our souls.

We see Justin Martyr, an earnest seeker after God, a type of the nobler thought of the age in which he lived, turning from school to school, from teacher to teacher, till at the feet of Jesus he found that rest unto his soul which neither the stern, cold doctrines of Zeno, nor the sublime musings of Plato, could impart. Like another Paul, he became a faithful confessor of Jesus; and with apostolic zeal he proclaimed the newfound truth of the Gospel, even unto death. It was a fire in his soul that could not be repressed. "Every man who can bear witness to the truth," he exclaims, "and does it not, will be judged of God." When arraigned before the heathen prefect, he was asked if he expected to ascend to heaven when beheaded. "I know it: beyond all power of doubt, I know it," he replied, and went rejoicing to his fate.

The marvelous vari-colored life of Alexandria-a sort of newer Athens or older Paris-a city of blended luxury and learning, folly and philosophy, heathen vice and Christian virtue, is vividly portrayed. We sit at the feet of Clement and Origen, the noble teachers of her Christian schools. With a lofty eclecticism they culled the fairest flowers from the garden of heathen philosophy, and distilled healing simples from its often poisonous fruit. They sifted the golden grains of truth and pearls of thought from the ancient religions of paganism to adorn the brow of Christianity. They recog

nized the grand conception, so nobly expressed by Milton, that as the Egyptian Typhon hewed in pieces the god Osiris, so the virgin form of Truth has been rent and scattered to the four winds of heaven. Hence, as Isis anxiously searched for the mangled body of Osiris, so the eager seekers after Truth must gather mangled limb by limb wherever they can find them.*

With loving minuteness our author lingers over the character of Origen, whom he styles "one of the greatest theologians and greatest saints the Church has ever possessed." He was the noblest of the Christian Fathers and Apologists. The heroic son of a martyred sire, he fought valiantly, by tongue and pen, the battles of the faith, and won at last the martyr's crown. To the zeal of Paul he united the tenderness of John. His whole life was a perfumed altar-fire of love,† never dimmed by obloquy, nor fanned into flames of hate by opposition or persecution, but glowing brighter and brighter till his frail and emaciated body was consumed.

In striking contrast with this noble magnanimity is the fiery and intolerant zeal of Tertullian, the greatest of the Western Fathers. He beams not with the calm mild light of Hesper on the brow of eve like Origen, but burns like a blazing meteor, presaging wrath to man. The fervid heat of his

native African skies seems transfused into his veins. Born in the midst of the corrupt and semi-barbaric civilization of Carthage, and trained in the literary jugglery of the times, he became an adept, at once in Carthagenian vice, and in the florid eloquence of the decaying empire. His energy of character made him as pre-eminent in wicked indulgence as he afterward became in rigorous asceticism. His literary characteristics are thus strikingly described by Pressensé :

His style is, in fact, the exact expression of his soul; it is strong even to hardness; it is strained, incorrect, African, but irresistible. It is poured forth like lava from an inward furnace, kept ever at white heat, and the track of light it leaves is a track of fire too. It abounds in bold and splendid images, but there is nothing gentle or joyous in its brilliancy; it is not the calm brightness of the sun; it is the strange lurid fire which wreathes round the summit of the volcano, and rises in red smoke. The *Plea for Unlicensed Printing."

"Love," he says, over and over, "is an agony, a passion: caritas est passio.”

language of Tertullian is full of sharp and abrupt antitheses, like those which characterize his thoughts. .. In every phrase one might seem to hear the sharp clash of swords that meet and cross, and the spark which dazzles us is struck from the ringing steel. Hence that incomparable eloquence which, in spite of sophisms and exaggerated metaphors, ravishes and rules us still.*

The burning intensity of his convictions often leads Tertullian to excessive vehemence of expression. He does not recognize, like the philosophic Clement or Origen, the germs of goodness in things evil, but overwhelms with vituperation and invective every thing connected with paganism. He exults in the anticipation of the near approach of the day of wrath, which should consume the wicked as stubble; nay, he himself would fain call down fire from heaven to destroy them. This unamiable trait is thus justly characterized by our author:

This joy in the anticipation of the doom of the enemies of Christ is altogether alien to the spirit of the Gospel; that mocking laugh, ringing across the abyss which opens to swallow up the persecutors; this cruel irony over the most fearful woes; all those fiery characters on the page, are evidences of Tertullian's passionate attachment to the cause of Christianity, and also of his intense hatred to every thing opposed to it. Hence the implacable, cutting, sardonic tone of his apologetic writings. He does not, like Justin or Clement of Alexandria, seek to trace in paganism a dim preparation for Christianity. He takes the ax of John the Baptist, and lays it at the root of the tree, with the full intention to cut it down and consume it utterly.†

..

Yet, conscious of his mental infirmity, he exclaims, "Me miserable, ever sick with hot impatience! I am like the sick who laud the blessings of the health they lack." In his tract on Prayer he breathes out the yearnings of his soul for God. "How daring it is," he exclaims, "to pass one day without praying!" He recognizes the providence of God as numbering even the bristles of the swine, as well as the hairs of his children. He beautifully portrays the conjugal felicity, in prayer and praise and loving fellowship, of the Christian husband and wife; yet even this is tinged with stern asceticism. In violation of the parental instinct of the human soul, he deprecates the "bitter, bitter pleasure of children" on account of the troubles that they bring. He inveighs against all fe