nts of his death. Some stories are related
of the courage of martyrs, who actually performed what Ignatius had
intended; who exasperated the fury of the lions, pressed the executioner
to hasten his office, cheerfully leaped into the fires which were
kindled to consume them, and discovered a sensation of joy and pleasure
in the midst of the most exquisite tortures. Several examples have been
preserved of a zeal impatient of those restraints which the emperors
had provided for the security of the church. The Christians sometimes
supplied by their voluntary declaration the want of an accuser, rudely
disturbed the public service of paganism, and rushing in crowds round
the tribunal of the magistrates, called upon them to pronounce and to
inflict the sentence of the law. The behavior of the Christians was too
remarkable to escape the notice of the ancient philosophers; but they
seem to have considered it with much less admiration than astonishment.
Incapable of conceiving the motives which sometimes transported the
fortitude of believers beyond the bounds of prudence or reason, they
treated such an eagerness to die as the strange result of obstinate
despair, of stupid insensibility, or of superstitious frenzy. "Unhappy
men!" exclaimed the proconsul Antoninus to the Christians of Asia;
"unhappy men! if you are thus weary of your lives, is it so difficult
for you to find ropes and precipices?" He was extremely cautious (as it
is observed by a learned and pious historian) of punishing men who had
found no accusers but themselves, the Imperial laws not having made
any provision for so unexpected a case: condemning therefore a few as a
warning to their brethren, he dismissed the multitude with indignation
and contempt. Notwithstanding this real or affected disdain, the
intrepid constancy of the faithful was productive of more salutary
effects on those minds which nature or grace had disposed for the easy
reception of religious truth. On these melancholy occasions, there were
many among the Gentiles who pitied, who admired, and who were converted.
The generous enthusiasm was communicated from the sufferer to the
spectators; and the blood of martyrs, according to a well-known
observation, became the seed of the church.

But although devotion had raised, and eloquence continued to inflame,
this fever of the mind, it insensibly gave way to the more natural hopes
and fears of the human heart, to the love of life, the apprehension
of p