Hence the epithets of itinerant, mountebank, conjurer, cheat, sophist, and sorcerer, heaped upon the teachers of Christianity; sometimes to account for the report or apparent truth of their miracles, sometimes to explain their success. Our Lord was said to have learned his miraculous power in Egypt; "wizard, mediciner, cheat, rogue, conjurer," were the epithets applied to him by the opponents of Eusebius; they "worship that crucified sophist," says Lucian; "Paul, who surpasses all the conjurers and impostors who ever lived," is Julian's account of the apostle. "You have sent through the whole world," says St. Justin to Trypho, "to preach that a certain atheistic and lawless sect has sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean cheat." "We know," says Lucian, speaking of Chaldæans and magicians, "the Syrian from Palestine, who is the sophist in these matters, how many lunatics, with eyes distorted and mouth in foam, he raises and sends away restored, ridding them from the evil at a great price." "If any conjurer came to them, a man of skill and knowing how to manage matters," says the same writer, "he made money in no time, with a broad grin at the simple fellows." The officer who had custody of St. Perpetua feared her escape from prison "by magical incantations." When St. Tiburtius had walked barefoot on hot coals, his judge cried out that Christ had taught him magic. St. Anastasia was thrown into prison as a mediciner; the populace called out against St. Agnes, "Away with the witch," _Tolle magam, tolle maleficam_. When St. Bonosus and St. Maximilian bore the burning pitch without shrinking, Jews and Gentiles cried out, "_Isti magi et malefici_." "What new delusion," says the heathen magistrate concerning St. Romanus, "has brought in these sophists to deny the worship of the gods? How doth this chief sorcerer mock us, skilled by his Thessalian charm (_carmine_) to laugh at punishment!" It explains the phenomenon, which has created so much surprise to certain moderns--that a grave, well-informed historian like Tacitus should apply to Christians what sounds like abuse. Yet what is the difficulty, supposing that Christians were considered _mathematici_ and _magi_, and these were the secret intriguers against established government, the allies of desperate politicians, the enemies of the established religion, the disseminators of lying rumors, the perpetrators of poisonings and other crimes? "Read this," says Paley, after quoting some of the most beautiful and subduing passages of St. Paul, "read this, and then think of _exitiabilis superstitio_"; and he goes on to express a wish "in contending with heathen authorities, to produce our books against theirs," as if it were a matter of books.