insinuation and terror, but in vain; for the martyr was immovable, and resolutely despised his threatenings. This so enraged the governor that he commanded him to be put to the acutest tortures: and when they had more than once raked his sides, and torn off his flesh with iron pincers, he was sent to keep company with the other confessors in prison, the governor himself being immediately after disgracefully displaced, and condemned to death by the emperor." During an imprisonment of two years, he was constantly visited by his friend Eusebius, and they employed their time to the most useful purposes. They had before published the Greek translation of the Septuagint, from Origen's Hexapias, for the use of the Palestine churches; and they now composed an elaborate apology, to vindicate Origen from those rude censures and reflections, which the indiscreet zeal of some had cast upon his memory.

The persecution still continued in the East, where Maximin issued new edicts in every province, ordering the idol temples to be repaired, compelling all persons to do sacrifice, and forcing them to eat part of the flesh which was offered. It was likewise directed, that all provisions exposed for sale in the markets should be defiled with things which had been sacrificed: and by these means the miseries of the Christians became so prodigious, that many of the Pagans, themselves condemned the emperor's barbarities, and the cruelties of his officers. Eusebius has given a particular account of the intolerable cruelties practiced in Palestine by Firlnilian, the successor of Urbanus, and of the martyrdom of two virgins and many others; for which the stones and senseless matter miraculously wept, to reprove the barbarous disposition of men. In the following year Pamphilius, over two years' imprisonment, was brought forward, and, still persevering, was condemned, together with his companions. His servant Porphyrius requested that the bodies might be decently buried; but the tormentors were directed to torture him by every device.-They raked off his flesh, until they had laid open the inward recesses of his body, which he bore with invincible patience, though no more than eighteen years of age, being a youth of good parts and learning. He was afterwards "ordered to be burnt in a slow fire, and sucked in the flames at a distance, entertaining his friends in the midst of his torments with a most serene undisturbed mind," till his soul departed from his body: and such was the rage and malice of their persecutors, that their dead bodies were exposed as a prey to wild beasts, under a military guard. Yet neither birds nor beasts would come near them; and their friends were at length permitted decently to inter them.

It was no longer advisable for Eusebius to remain, and therefore he prudently retired from Cæsarea into Egypt. Yet the persecution there, especially about Thebais, raged with increased violence. The most deplorable spectacles were there daily exhibited: the numbers executed blunted the very edges of the Pagan swords. The tormentors were tired out, though they relived one another. The constancy of the martyrs, however, was unshaken; and the sentence of one only had the effect of the advance of others to confess themselves Christians at the tribunal. He was at length cast into prison; but how long he remained there, or by what means he was delivered is no where related. Even Rome was not exempt from persecution, though the western parts were generally peaceable. The tyrant Maxentius not only oppressed the Christians, but condemned Marcellus, bishop of that city, to keep beasts in a stable, and then banished him. Eusebius, son of a Grecian physician, was appointed about seven months after, and in about four or five months also suffered under this tyrant. Soon after this the persecution abated in the middle parts of the empire, as well as in the west: and Providence at length began to manifest vengeance on the persecutor. Maximian endeavored to corrupt his daughter Fausta to murder Constantine her husband: which she discovered, and Constantine forced him to choose his own death, when he preferred the ignominious death of hanging, after being an emperor near twenty years.

Galerius was visited by an incurable and intolerable disease, which began with an ulcer in his secret parts and a fistula in ano, that spread progressively to his inmost bowels, and baffled all the skill of physicians and surgeons. Untried medicines of some daring professors drove the evil through his bones to the very marrow, and worms began to breed in his entrails; and the stench was so preponderant as to be perceived in the city, all the passages separating the passages of the urine and excrements being corroded and destroyed. The whole mass of his body was turned into universal rottenness; and, though living creatures, and boiled animals, were applied with the design of drawing out the vermin by the heat, by which a vast hive was opened, a second imposthum discovered a most prodigious swarm, as if his whole body was resolved into worms. By a dropsy also his body was grossly disfigured: for although his upper parts were exhausted, and dried to a skeleton, covered only with dead skin, the lower parts were swelled up like bladders, and the shape of his feet could scarcely be perceived. Torments and pains insupportable, greater than those he had inflicted upon the Christians, accompanied these visitations, and he bellowed out like a wounded bull, often endeavoring to kill himself, and destroying several physicians for the inefficiency of their medicines. These torments kept him in a languishing state a full year; and his conscience was awakened, at length, so that he was compelled to acknowledge the God of the Christians, and to promise, in the intervals of his paroxysms, that he would rebuild the churches, and repair the mischiefs done to them. An edict, in his last agonies, was published in his name, and the joint names of Constantine and Licinius, to permit the Christians to have the free use of their religion, and to supplicate their God for his health and the good of the empire on which many prisoners in Nicomedia were liberated, and amongst others Donatus. He soon after committed his wife and son to the care of Licinius; and at his death appointed Constantine emperor of Gaul, Spain, Britain, and Germany; Licinius his successor in Illyricum, Greece, and Asia Minor; Maximin had been named Cæsar, and since that emperor of Egypt and the East: and Maxentius, though an usurper, but since called emperor of Italy and Africa, notwithstanding the possession

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