us dispensed to mankind, and believing the welfare of mankind to depend upon the wide extension of it, we will rather die than shut it up in our own bosoms--we will rather die, than live with our tongues tied and silent--our limbs fettered and bound! We must speak, or we will die--' Porphyrius again sprang from his seat with intent to speak, but the Emperor restrained him. 'Contend not now, Porphyrius; let us hear the Christian. I have given him his freedom. Infringe it not.' 'I will willingly, noble Emperor,' said Probus, 'respond to whatsoever the learned Tyrian may propose. All I can desire is this only, that the religion of Christ may be seen, by those who are here, to be what it truly is; and it may be, that the questions or the objections of the philosopher shall show this more perfectly than a continued discourse.' The Emperor, however, making a sign, he went on. 'We have also been charged, O Emperor, with vices and crimes, committed at both our social and our religious meetings, at which nature revolts, which are even beyond in grossness what have been ever ascribed to the most flagitious of mankind.'--Probus here enumerated the many rumors which had long been and still were current in Rome, and, especially by the lower orders, believed; and drew then such a picture of the character, lives, manners, and morals of the Christians, for the truth of which he appealed openly to noble and distinguished persons among the Romans then present,--not of the Christian faith, but who were yet well acquainted with their character and condition, and who would not refuse to testify to what he had said--that there could none have been present in that vast assembly but who, if there were any sense of justice within them, must have dismissed forever from their minds, if they had ever entertained them, the slanderous fictions that had filled them.