The period from the accession of Decius, in A.D. 249, to the accession of Gallienus, in A.D. 260, which I have now very briefly noticed, was by far the most disastrous the Church had yet endured. With the exception of about five years in the reigns of Gallus and Valerian, the persecution was continuous, though it varied much in its intensity and its range. During the first portion, if measured, not by the number of deaths, but by the atrocity of the tortures inflicted, it was probably as severe as any upon record. It was subsequently directed chiefly against the leading clergy, and, as we have seen, four Roman bishops perished. In addition to the political reasons that inspired it, the popular fanaticism caused by great calamities, which were ascribed to anger of the gods at the neglect of their worship, had in this as in former periods a great influence. Political disasters, which foreshadowed clearly the approaching downfall of the Empire, were followed by fearful and general famines and plagues. St. Cyprian, in a treatise addressed to one of the persecutors who was most confident in ascribing these things to the Christians, presents us with an extremely curious picture both of the general despondency that had fallen upon the Empire, and of the manner in which these calamities were regarded by the Christians. Like most of his co-religionists, the saint was convinced that the closing scene of the earth was at hand. The decrepitude of the world, he said, had arrived, the forces of nature were almost exhausted, the sun had no longer its old lustre, or the soil its old fertility, the spring time had grown less lovely, and the autumn less bounteous, the energy of man had decayed, and all things were moving rapidly to the end. Famines and plagues were the precursors of the day of judgment. They were sent to warn and punish a rebellious world, which, still bowing down before idols, persecuted the believers in the truth. “So true is this, that the Christians are never persecuted without the sky manifesting at once the Divine displeasure.” The conception of a converted Empire never appears to have flashed across the mind of the saint;(894) the only triumph he predicted for the Church was that of another world; and to the threats of the persecutors he rejoined by fearful menaces. “A burning, scorching fire will for ever torment those who are condemned; there will be no respite or end to their torments. We shall through eternity contemplate in their agonies those who for a short time contemplated us in tortures, and for the brief pleasure which the barbarity of our persecutors took in feasting their eyes upon an inhuman spectacle, they will be themselves exposed as an eternal spectacle of agony.” As a last warning, calamity after calamity broke upon the world, and, with the solemnity of one on whom the shadow of death had already fallen, St. Cyprian adjured the persecutors to repent and to be saved.(895)