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for betraying the innocent blood of that just and good man, George Eagles, who was here condemned in the time of Queen Mary by my procurement, when I sold his blood for a little money."

Froling, a priest of much celebrity, fell down in the street, and died on the spot.

Dale, an indefatigable informer, was consumed by vermin, and died a miserable spectacle.

Sir Ralph Ellerker was eagerly desirous to see the heart taken out of Adam Damlip, who was wrongfully put to death. Shortly after, Sir Ralph was slain by the French, who mangled him dreadfully, cut off his limbs, and tore his heart out.

Alexander, the severe keeper of Newgate, died miserably, swelling to a prodigious size, and became so inwardly putrid, that none could come near him. This cruel minister of the law would go to Bonner, Story, and others, requesting them to rid his prison, he was so much pestered with neretics! The son of this keeper, in three years after his father's death, dissipated his great property, and died suddenly in Newgate-market. "The sins of the father," says the decalogue, "shall be visited on the children."

John Peter, son-in-law of Alexander, a horrid blasphemer and persecutor, died wretchedly. When he affirmed anything, he would say, "If it be not true, I pray I may rot ere I die." This awful state visited him in all its loathsomeness.

Henry Smith, a student in the law, had a pious Protestant father, of Camden, in Gloucestershire, by whom he was virtuously educated. While studying law in the Middle Temple, he was induced to profess Catholicism. He afterwards became an open reviler and persecutor of the religion in which he had been brought up; but conscience one night reproached him so dreadfully, that in a fit of despair he hung himself in his garters. He

was buried in a lane, without the Christian service being read over him.

Dr. Story was cut off by public execution, a practice in which he had taken great delight when in power. He is supposed to have had a hand in most of the conflagrations in Mary's time, and was even ingenious in his invention of new modes of inflicting torture. When Elizabeth came to the throne, he was committed to prison, but unaccountably effected his escape to the coutinent, to carry fire and sword there among the Protestant brethren. From the duke of Alva, at Antwerp, he received a special commission to search all ships for contraband goods, and particularly for English heretical books. He gloried in a commission that was ordered by Providence to be his ruin, and to preserve the faithful from his sanguinary cruelty. It was contrived that one Parker, a merchant, should sail to Antwerp, and information should be given to Dr. Story that he had a quantity of heretical books on board. The latter no sooner heard this, than he hastened to the vessel, sought everywhere above, and then went under the hatches, which were fastened down upon him. A prosperous gale brought the ship to England. After being condemned he was laid upon a hurdle, and drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, where, after being suspended about half an hour, he was cut down, stripped, and the executioner displayed the heart of a traitor. Thus ended the existence of this Nimrod of England.

3. ΜΑΧΙΜΙΝ.

MAXIMIN, emperor of the east, in the beginning of the fourth century, was one of the most savage and relentless persecutors of the early Christians. He directed what is termed the sixth general persecution, inventing

and executing the most horrid punishments on the followers of Jesus. Engaged in war with Licinius, he vowed to Jupiter, that, if successful, he would annihilate the very name of Christianity. But he was conquered, and was soon after smitten with a dreadful plague, beneath the influence of which his flesh wasted from his bones; he suffered the pangs of hunger in the midst of plenty; his eyes started from their sockets; and according to the account of Eusebius, he believed himself condemned by the righteous judgment of God. In his agonies, he shrieked, "It was not I; it was others who did it!" Writhing under his disease, he made the most abject confessions of his guilt, and besought that Christ whom he had persecuted, to have pity on him, avowing himself conquered by a superior power. Thus miserably died this wretched man.

4. GALERIUS.

GALERIUS was the adopted son of Diocletian, and succeeded to the government of the eastern part of the Roman Empire on the resignation of that monarch. He was naturally of a tyrannical and cruel disposition, and bore an implacable hatred to the Christian religion and all professing it. At his instigation, Diocletian commenced the tenth general persecution in the year of our Lord 303. Fitted by nature and possessing the power, he became one of the most terrible scourges of the Christian Church. He not only condemned Christians to torture, but often burned them to death in slow fires and with the most horrible torments. He would have them chained to a post, then a gentle fire put to the soles of their feet, which contracted the callous till it fell off from the bone; then flambeaux just extinguished were put to all parts of their bodies, so that they might be

tortured all over. At the same time, care was taken to keep them alive by throwing cold water in their faces and giving them some to wash their mouths, lest their throats should be dried up with thirst and choke them. Thus their miseries were lengthened out whole days, till at last, their skins being consumed, they were just ready to expire, when they were thrown into a great fire, and their bodies burned to ashes, which were afterwards carefully scraped up and thrown into the river.

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 imposthume discovered a more 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 endeavouring to kill himself, and destroying several physicians for the inefficacy 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.

5. JULIAN THE APOSTATE.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE sought to destroy the Christian religion, and its ministry, by depriving them of their schools and the means of education. He avowed it as his object to show the falsity of the Scripture predictions respecting the temple; and for this purpose he gave orders that it should be rebuilt, and the Jews' worship set up again. But, as historians relate, he was utterly defeated; balls of fire issuing out of the foundation, scattering the materials and overwhelming the workmen with terror. He fell in battle, fighting against the Persians. Finding himself mortally wounded, he received a handful of his gushing blood, and threw it up towards heaven, "in spite," says one historian, "against the sun, the idol of the Persians, which fought against him;" but more probably, as other respectable historians state, "in malignant hatred against Christ;" who also add, that "as he hurled the blood upward, he cried, Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!"

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