Whatever his thoughts, he ordered the martyrs different tortures under various officials in different parts of the city. The first child died under the lash shod with lead, the second and third under the bludgeon; the fourth was hurled from a precipice, while the remaining three and Felicitas herself were mercifully beheaded. The reason for the severity and variety of the sentences may have been, as Allard suggests, the Emperor’s desire to strike the imagination of the people and cause them to believe that the gods had had enough of victims. He must have abhorred such cruelty, but he was too weak to resist the clamour of the priests and mob of Rome as Pilate had been in presence of other priests and another mob. Interpret his conduct as we will, mere natural virtue and the maxims of the philosophers show ill beside the folly of the Cross. Children and a weak woman put to shame this paragon of virtues; but, if they did so, the glory was not theirs but Christ’s; it was His love that nerved them to brave the lash, the bludgeon and the axe; He Who bade them be His witnesses to the ends of the earth, was in them, and suffered for them, because they suffered for Him. It is mockery and sophistry to think that such strength could come from frail humanity. * * * * * St. Felicitas and her sons fell victims to the prejudices of the priests and the mob. The martyrdom of St. Justin and his companions was due to another force that was strongly to resist the advance of Christianity--namely, the opposition of the philosophers. The priests and the mob hated the Christians for the contempt with which they treated the State religion. The philosophers had an additional motive for hatred in their jealousy of the influence of the new teachers. “You see we profit nothing: the whole world is gone after Him.”