led him to it. It was to be feared lest the heretics, who in those days were vile persons, should seduce the unwary; and mutual quarrels might have proved fatal to the common cause. A house ill cemented,

and beaten with the storms of persecution, could not have stood.

In his Epistle to the Romans he desires them not to interpose, and by any ways endeavour to preserve him from martyrdom, and he says that the wild beasts had feared and refused to touch some who had been thrown to them, which he hoped would not happen to him. @ [θηρία] και κολακεύσω συντόμως με καταφαγῶν, ἐχ ὥσπερ τινῶν derasrópera &x farlo †. Quas et blanditiis demulcebo, vt citius me devorent; non ut quosdam veritæ non attigerunt, v. So afterwards, when Blandina was exposed, none of the beasts would kill her, says Eusebius, who took it from an authentic history of the martyrs of Lions in Gaul, v. 1. In Diocletian's persecution, Eusebius was eye-witness to such a thing; and somewhat of this kind is related in the Acts of Perpetua. This forbearance of the beasts, though it did not save the lives of the martyrs, yet it animated and comforted the distressed Christians; it reproved the pagans for their worse than brutish cruelty ‡, and it might possibly be the happy

P 3

* I know not whether Ignatius had in view any Christian martyrs, or Daniel, who was cast into the den of lions.

alo,

† In Ignatius and Eusebius it is al. Stephanus reads which probably is right, because-μù 9ing follows. But as to the rule in our grammars, Neutra pluralia gaudent verbo singulari, there are abundance of exceptions to it, particularly in the Scriptures. See in the LXX, Gen. xlviii. 6. Isa. Ixiv. 3. Zach. xiii. 7. and Matt. vi. 26. x. 21. Marc. v. 13. ziii. 12. Luke xxiv. 11. John x. 8. Rev. xxi, 4. Homer. Il. T. 29.

—ευή τοι ταῦτα μετὰ φρεσὶ σῇσε μελένων.

↑ Mitius inveni, quam te, genus omne ferarum.

happy occasion of converting some, who might be inclined to say at such a sight,

-non hæc sine numine Divúm

Eveniunt.

If the lions had been let loose upon Ignatius in the amphitheatre, and had retired and left him unhurt, or fawned upon him, the spectators might possibly have been moved of themselves, or incited by his friends, who were present, to beg the life, or at least the reprieve, of a venerable old man, whom the very brutes had spared, and who seemed protected by hea ven; and such kind of favours were seldom refused to those assemblies. Thus Androcles was saved by the good offices of his old and grateful friend, the lion, and had his life, and liberty, and the lion, given to him, at the request of the people. A. Gellius v. 14. Populi in arená præcipuum jus, says Lipsius, et ad ejus voluntatem domini plerumque se conformabant. Saturn. ii. 22. The emperor, it will be said, had condemned him to the lions. But what then? if the lions would not kill him, the magistrate might, without offence, if he had been so disposed, have respited the martyr's death, till the emperor's farther pleasure should be known.

It must be confessed after all, that such wonders are somewhat ambiguous, because wild beasts are not always in a fighting humour, and might be terrified by the strangeness of the place and noise of the populace, and therefore we find that they sometimes used fire, and whips, and other methods to irritate them; but even these methods were tried in vain, says Eusebius, speaking of what happened to his own knowledge.

Josephus

Josephus relates that one of the Ptolemy's exposed the Jews of Egypt (in the Hippodrome) to be killed by his elephants, whom he had intoxicated with wine; to make them more furious; but the beasts, instead of assaulting the poor Jews, turned upon the spectators and destroyed many of them. This, and some terrible appearance, so frightened the king, that he acknowledged the divine interposition, and set them free, and conferred many favours on them. Josephus adds, that the Jews of Alexandria kept a day in commemoration of this deliverance. Contr. Apion. ii. 5. See also Maccab. iii. 3, 4, 5. and Prideaux, Connect. ii. p. 86. Fol. ed. *

It was not necessary that the Christians should be miraculously saved; the favours promised to them. by their Master were of another kind: Jesus Christ would not save himself from crucifixion, but he struck those to the ground who came to seize him, and the troubled elements bare witness to his dignity and to his innocence. St Stephen's martyrdom was also attended with miraculous circumstances. It is therefore no insuperable objection to any wonders which are related to have accompanied the death of the martyrs, that they did not preserve the sufferers. If indeed they are not well attested, or if they appear to have been of the trifling useless kind, and void of all moral import; if milk instead of blood flowed from their wounds, and sweet odours issued from the faggots, and pigeons flew out of their mouths, the case is altered, and there is some reason to doubt of such miracles. So again; if a monk smelt like a civet-cat when

P 4

*To this it will perhaps be said, that it is no marvel if a drunken beast turned upon his driver.

when he was dead, who smelt like a pole-cat when he was alive, this can hardly pass for a proper and sufficient proof of his sanctity.

The repeated wish of Ignatius was, that he might be torn to pieces and eaten up, that, as he says, he might give no one the trouble of paying him funeral rites.

Vota suos habuere deos

His wish was accomplished, and of his body very little was left undevoured.

The account of his martyrdom, in the Patres Apostolici, vol. ii. p. 157. has the appearance of being genuine, except the last section, which contains the dreams of his friends, and which might possibly be added by another hand. See Le Clerc.

They who reject all the epistles of Ignatius as spurious, reject also the account of his martyrdom. It is inconceivable, say they, that Trajan should have sent an old man, by land, at a great expence, attended with soldiers, from Syria to Rome, instead of casting him to the lions at Antioch: it is also improbable that when he was thus guarded and conducted, he should have been permitted to converse with the Christians, and to give them instructions, and to write epistles, in the several cities through which he passed. The answer is obvious:

Trajan sent him by land, on purpose, to shew him about, and to make an example of him as of a ringleader of the sect, wapaderyμaliser, and to deter the Christians from preaching and spreading their religion; and for the same reason he sent him to be executed at Rome, where there were many Christians, and which, as it was the capital of the world, so was it the head quarters of all sorts of religions. Repressa

in

præsens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat, non modo per Judæam, originem ejus mali, sed per Urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt, celebranturque. Tacitus Ann. xv. 44. Tacitus Ann. xv. 44. Dionysius

Halicarnassensis observes that though there were six hundred nations, which, in a manner, had taken up their abode at Rome, each of which had its own sacred rites, yet no foreign religion had been publicly received by the Romans, or at least not till they had purged and corrected it, and rendered it conformable to their own.

In the time of Trajan, Christianity had made such a progress, that the Romans were jealous, and uneasy at it.

The soldiers who had the custody of Ignatius, made a considerable advantage of him, and, as we observed before, took money of the Christians for the small indulgence which they shewed to their prisoner, and would have been glad that he had written a hundred epistles, if they could have obtained a present

for each.

Trajan had many excellent qualities, and Pope Gregory is said to have prayed his soul out of hell*, though Tillemont seems to give no credit to the story, since he passes it by in silence, and pronounces a sentence of reprobation upon the emperor. † mongst other commendable things which Trajan did,

A

he

• Bayle's Dict. TRAJAN.

+ Ses cendres furent receus à Rome en triomphe, dans un char sur lequel on avoit mis son image: et l'on a encore des marques de ce triomphe, si lugubre pour tout le monde, et surtout pour celui qu'on vouloit relever par ces honneurs imaginaires, et que le vray Dien punissoit dans les enfers-&c. Hist. des Emp. tom. ii. p. 205.