their sufferings and their virtue, who gave an account of them in a long
letter addressed to their friends in Asia Minor, and written with
passionate sympathy and pious prolixity, but bearing all the
characteristics of truth. It seems desirable to submit for perusal that
document, which has been preserved almost entire in the _Ecclesiastical
History_ of Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in the third century, and which
will exhibit, better than any modern representations, the state of facts
and of souls in the midst of the imperial persecutions, and the mighty
faith, devotion, and courage with which the early Christians faced the
most cruel trials:

"The servants of Christ, dwelling at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to the
brethren settled in Asia and Phrygia, who have the same faith and hope
of redemption that we have, peace, grace, and glory from God the Father
and Jesus Christ our Lord!

"None can tell to you in speech or fully set forth to you in writing the
weight of our misery, the madness and rage of the Gentiles against the
saints, and all that hath been suffered by the blessed martyrs. Our
enemy doth rush upon us with all the fury of his powers, and already
giveth us a foretaste and the first-fruits of all the license with which
he doth intend to set upon us. He hath omitted nothing for the training
of his agents against us, and he doth exercise them in a sort of
preparatory work against the servants of the Lord. Not only are we
driven from the public buildings, from the baths, and from the Forum,
but it is forbidden to all our people to appear publicly in any place
whatsoever.

"The grace of God hath striven for us against the devil: at the same
time that it hath sustained the weak, it hath opposed to the Evil One,
as it were, pillars of strength--men strong and valiant, ready to draw
on themselves all his attacks. They have had to bear all manner of
insult; they have deemed but a small matter that which others find hard
and terrible; and they have thought only of going to Christ, proving by
their example that the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be put
in the balance with the glory which is to be manifested in us. They
have endured, in the first place, all the outrages that could be heaped
upon them by the multitude, outcries, blows, thefts, spoliation,
stoning, imprisonment, all that the fury of the people could devise
against hated enemies. Then, dragged to the Forum by the military
tribune and the magist