them upon their words for want of authentic memorials or chronicles in thofe times. Befides,

as these writers do not quote any authority for what they advance, who could contradict them? They blackened whom they pleased, and wantonly diercted the judgment of pofterity. The wife and impartial reader will, however, readily perceive, how far the veracity of historians is to be depended on, and what degree of credit is due to public facts attefted by authors of reputation, born in a learned and enlightened nation, as well as what bounds to fet to our belief of anecdotes, when related by these fame authors, without any authority to fupport them.

CHAP. IX.

Of MARTYRS.

EVERAL Chriftians afterwards suffered martyrdom; it is not eafy to fay on what particular account they were condemned; but I can venture to affert, that none fuffered under the first Cæfars, merely on the account of religion, for they tolerated all beliefs; therefore, why should they seek out and prosecute an obfcure people, who had a worship peculiar to themfelves, at the time they licensed all others?

The emperors Titus, Trajan, Antoninus, and Decius, were not barbarians: how then can we imagine, that they would have deprived the Chriftians alone of that liberty, with which they indulged every other nation; or, that they would even have troubled them for having concealed myfteries, while the worshippers of Ifis, Mithra, and the Goddefs of Affyria, whose rites were all of them equally unknown to the Romans, were fuffered to perform them without hindrance? Certainly, the perfecutions the

Christians

Chriftians fuffered, must have arisen from other caufes, and from fome private pique, enforced by reafons of state.

For inftance, when St. Laurence refufed to deliver to Cornelius Secularius, the Roman prefect, the money belonging to the Christians which he had in his cuftody; was it not very natural for the prefect and the emperor to be incenfed at this refufal? They did not know that St. Laurence had diftributed this money among the poor, in acts of charity and benevolence; therefore they confidered him only as a refractory perfon, and punished him accordingly *.

* We most certainly have a proper deference for whatever the holy church has made the objects of our reverence; accordingly, we invoke the bleffed martyrs but at the fame time that we pay St. Laurence all due refpect, may we not be permitted to doubt that St. Sixtus faid to him, "You will "follow me in three days." That, during this fhort interval, the prefect of Rome made him demand a fum of money of the Chriftians; that Laurence had time to affemble all the poor people in that city; that he walked before the prefect, to

Again, let us confider the martyrdom of St Polyeuctes. Can he be faid to have fuffered on account of religion only? He enters a temple, where the people are employed in offering thanfgivings to their Gods, on account of the victory gained by the emperor Decius; he infults the priests, and overturns and breks in pieces the altar and ftatues: is there a country in the world where so gross an insult would have been paffed over? The Chriftian who publicly tore the edict of the emperor Dioclesian, and by that act brought on the great perfecution against

fhew him the place where they were affembled; that he was afterwards tried and condemned tothe torture; that the prefect ordered the smith to make a grid-iron large enough to broil a man. upon; that the principal magiftrate of Rome affifted in perfon at this ftrange execution; and läftly, that St. Laurence, while upon the grid-iron, called out to him, "I am done enough on this fide, let "them turn me on the other, if you have a mind. "to eat me." This fame grid-iron feems to have. very little of the Roman genius in it; and befides, how happens it that we do not find a word of this. Atory in any of the heathen writers ?.

his

his brethren in the two laft years of this prince's reign, had not, furely, a zeal according to knowIedge, but was the unhappy cause of all the difafters that befel his party. This inconfiderate zeal, which was often breaking forth, and was condemned even by feveral of the fathers of the church, was probably the occafion of all those perfecutions we read of.

Certainly, I would not make a comparison between the first facramentarians and the primitive Chriftians; as error should never be ranked in the fame clafs with truth: but it is well known, that Farrel, the predeceffor of Calvin, › did the very fame thing at Arles, which St. Polyeuctes had done before him in Armenia. The townsmen were carrying the ftatue of St. Anthony the hermit in proceffion through the ftreets,; Farrel and fome of his followers in a fit of zeal fell upon the monks who were carrying the image, beat them, made them take to their heels, and, having feized upon St. Anthony, threw him into the river. Affuredly Farrel deferved death for this flagrant outrage upon the public peace, but he had the good luck to escape by flight. Now, had he only told thofe monks in the open ftreets that he did!