In Italy, and especially at Rome, the work of destruction was eagerly carried on by Maximian, an implacable enemy of the Christians; and after his death by the abominable voluptuary Maxentius, in whom the twin passions of cruelty and lust struggled for the mastery. These 91 monsters of iniquity revelled in a carnival of blood, and glutted the Catacombs with victims, some of the most illustrious of whom will shortly be mentioned. On the retirement of Diocletian, satiated with slaughter and weary with the cares of state, to his retreat at Salonica, Galerius continued the persecution with increased zeal. It was the expiring effort of paganism, the death throes of its mortal agony. But the Christian religion, like the trodden grass that ranker grows, flourished still in spite of the oppression it endured. Like the rosemary and thyme, which the more they are bruised give out the richer perfume, it breathed forth the odours of sanctity which are fragrant in the world to-day. Though the frail and the fickle fell off in the blast of adversity, the staunch and true remained; and from the martyr’s blood, more prolific than the fabled dragon’s teeth, a new host of Christian heroes rose, contending for the martyr’s starry and unwithering crown. But the period of deliverance was at hand. Smitten by the power of that God whose titles and attributes he had usurped, the wretched Galerius, amid the agonies of a loathsome disease, implored the intercessions of the Christians whom he had so ruthlessly proscribed. With sublimest magnanimity the church exhibited the nobility of a Gospel revenge, and obeyed the injunction of its divine Master to pray for those who persecuted and despitefully used it. From the dying couch of the remorseful monarch came an abject apology for his cruel deeds; and, in late atonement for his crime, a decree of amplest recognition of Christianity, and restoration of the right to worship God. Like the trump of jubilee, the edict of deliverance pealed through the land. It penetrated the gloomy dungeon, the darksome mine, the catacomb’s dim labyrinth; and from their sombre depths vast 92 processions of the “noble wrestlers of religion”[130] thronged to the long forsaken churches with grateful songs of praise to God.