'These,' replied the first, soon as he could find room for utterance--'these are indeed not of the earliest age, but they from whom they learned their faith are of that age, namely, the apostles and the great master of all.' 'Heresy,' cried out one who had spoken before, 'always dates from the oldest; it never has less age nor authority than that of Christ.' 'Christians! Christians!' Macer's stentorian voice was now heard towering above the tumult, 'what is it ye would have? What are these distinctions about which ye dispute? What have they to do with the matter now in hand? How would one doctrine or the other in such matters weigh with Aurelian more than straws or feathers? But if these are stark naught, and less than naught, there are other questions pertinent to the time, nay, which the time forces upon us, and about which we should be well agreed. A new age of persecution has arisen, and the church is about to be sifted, and the wheat separated from the chaff--the first to be gathered into the garners of God, the last to be burnt up in fire unquenchable. Now is it to be proved who are Christ's, and who are not--who will follow him bearing their cross to some new Calvary, and who, saving their lives, shall yet lose them. Who knows not the evil that, in the time of Decius, yes, and before and since too, fell upon the church from the so easy reception and restoration of those who, in an hour of weakness and fear, denied their master and his faith, and bowed the knee to the gods of Rome? Here is the danger against which we are to guard; from this quarter--not from any other of vain jargon concerning natures, essences, and modes of being--are we to look for those fatal inroads to be made upon the purity of the gospel, that cannot but draw along with them corruption and ruin. Of what stuff will the church then be made, when they who are its ministers, deacons and bishops, shall be such as, when danger showed itself, relapsed into idolatry, and, soon as the clouds had drifted by, and the winds blew soft, came forth again into the calm sunshine, renounced their idolatry, and again professing Christ, were received to the arms of the church, and even to the communion of the body and blood of our Lord? Christians, the great Novatian is he to whom we owe what purity the church yet retains, and it is in allegiance to him--'