Origen was writing this at a moment of great interest. It was the last year which preceded those two generations, in the course of which five great persecutions should be directed by the emperors against the Church. He was then a man of sixty-four. The son of a martyr, he had when a youth of eighteen beheld his father imprisoned for the faith, and had encouraged him to suffer the loss of all his goods, and death itself, without regarding that large family which must be left in penury, of whom Origen was the eldest. He was burning himself to share his father’s sufferings. In the persecution of which this was the opening Eusebius tells us that seven of his disciples were martyrs: and, lastly, he was to undergo such cruelties himself in the persecution of Decius, then on the eve of breaking out, that he is believed to have died of their results. Now it is in this work that he speaks of the remarkable providence of God in preserving Christians, who by their religion were bound not to defend themselves, against the attacks of their enemies, for God, he says, had fought for them, and from time to time had stopped those who had risen up with the purpose of destroying them. Few and easily numbered were those who hitherto had suffered death for the Christian Faith, samples chosen by God as champions to encourage the rest, while He prevented their whole nation from being rooted out: for it was His purpose that this nation should be firmly rooted and consolidated, and the whole world be filled with its saving doctrine and discipline.(280) Thus it was by His will alone that He scattered every plot directed against them, so that neither emperors, nor local governors, nor the people should be able to indulge their wrath beyond a certain point. Origen, when he thus wrote, could look back on a period of thirty-eight years, during which, with the exception of the severe but passing storm raised by the Emperor Maximin, peace had reigned: years which he had himself employed in unwearied labours of teaching, writing, and converting; in which he had directed and advised an emperor’s mother, and seen a Christian emperor; in which he had witnessed a wonderful increase of the Christian people, and indeed of this increase his words above cited convey a faithful picture. He knew not the fearful trials which were to be encountered before that triumph of the truth which he already anticipated should be attained: or that God was about to accept from the grayhaired man the sacrifice which the impetuous youth had affronted without success. For scarcely has he written this book when he has to fly for his life before the edict of Decius, who will attempt to destroy the Christian religion, and to whose anger Pope S. Fabian falls a victim. Amid great peril after long delay the next Pope Cornelius is chosen. And now for the first time a new danger from within assaults the Church. Novatian, a Roman presbyter of great repute, attempts after the