disappointed, and the seasonable interposition of some miraculous power preserved the chaste spouses of Christ from the dishonor even of an involuntary defeat. We should not indeed neglect to remark, that the more ancient as well as authentic memorials of the church are seldom polluted with these extravagant and indecent fictions. 65 63 (return) [ See the rescript of Trajan, and the conduct of Pliny. The most authentic acts of the martyrs abound in these exhortations. Note: Pliny’s test was the worship of the gods, offerings to the statue of the emperor, and blaspheming Christ—præterea maledicerent Christo.—M.] 64 (return) [ In particular, see Tertullian, (Apolog. c. 2, 3,) and Lactantius, (Institut. Divin. v. 9.) Their reasonings are almost the same; but we may discover, that one of these apologists had been a lawyer, and the other a rhetorician.] 6411 (return) [ The more ancient as well as authentic memorials of the church, relate many examples of the fact, (of these _severe trials_,) which there is nothing to contradict. Tertullian, among others, says, Nam proxime ad lenonem damnando Christianam, potius quam ad leonem, confessi estis labem pudicitiæ apud nos atrociorem omni pœna et omni morte reputari, Apol. cap. ult. Eusebius likewise says, “Other virgins, dragged to brothels, have lost their life rather than defile their virtue.” Euseb. Hist. Ecc. viii. 14.—G. The miraculous interpositions were the offspring of the coarse imaginations of the monks.—M.] 65 (return) [ See two instances of this kind of torture in the Acta Sincere Martyrum, published by Ruinart, p. 160, 399. Jerome, in his Legend of Paul the Hermit, tells a strange story of a young man, who was chained naked on a bed of flowers, and assaulted by a beautiful and wanton courtesan. He quelled the rising temptation by biting off his tongue.] The total disregard of truth and probability in the representation of these primitive martyrdoms was occasioned by a very natural mistake. The ecclesiastical writers of the fourth or fifth centuries ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against the heretics or the idolaters of their own times.