was hung up upon a cross, and placed to be devoured by the beasts that were turned in.” Afterwards she was scourged; at last placed in a basket and thrown to a bull, and died under the tossings of the furious animal. But the account is far too long and minute, and too dreadful, to allow of my going through it. I give this merely as a specimen of the sufferings of the early Christians, from the malice of the devil.
Take again the sufferings which the Arian Vandals inflicted at a later time. Out of four hundred and sixty Bishops in Africa, they sent forty-six out of the country to an unhealthy place, and confined them to hard labour, and three hundred and two to different parts of Africa. After an interval of ten years, they banished two hundred and twenty more. At another time they tore above four thousand Christians, clergy and laity, from their homes, and marched them across the sands, till they died either of fatigue or ill usage. They lacerated others with scourges, burned them with hot iron, and cut off their limbs.
Hear how one of the early Fathers, just when the first persecution was ceasing, meditates on the prospect lying before the Church, looking earnestly at the events of his own day, in order to discover from them, if he could, whether the predicted evil was coming.
“There will be a time of affliction, such as never happened since there was a nation upon the earth till that time. The fearful monster, the great serpent, the unconquerable enemy of mankind, ready to devour......The LORD knowing the greatness of the enemy, in mercy to the religious, says, Let those that are in Judaea flee to the mountains.’ However, if any feel within him a strong heart to wrestle with Satan, let him remain (for I do not despair of the Church’s strength of nerve), let him remain, and let him say, Who shall separate us from the love of CHRIST?’......Thanks to GOD, who limits the greatness of the affliction to a few days, for the elect’s sake those days shall be cut short. Antichrist shall reign only three years and a half,” a time, times, and the dividing of time......"Blessed surely he who then shall be a
