fiercer fires than they
ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing
in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets
trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many
tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so
many dancers." * But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw
a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which the zealous
African pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms.

Doubtless there were many among the primitive Christians of a temper
more suitable to the meekness and charity of their profession. There
were many who felt a sincere compassion for the danger of their friends
and countrymen, and who exerted the most benevolent zeal to save them
from the impending destruction. The careless Polytheist, assailed by
new and unexpected terrors, against which neither his priests nor
his philosophers could afford him any certain protection, was very
frequently terrified and subdued by the menace of eternal tortures. His
fears might assist the progress of his faith and reason; and if he
could once persuade himself to suspect that the Christian religion might
possibly be true, it became an easy task to convince him that it was the
safest and most prudent party that he could possibly embrace.

III. The supernatural gifts, which even in this life were ascribed to
the Christians above the rest of mankind, must have conduced to their
own comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. Besides
the occasional prodigies, which might sometimes be effected by the
immediate interposition of the Deity when he suspended the laws of
Nature for the service of religion, the Christian church, from the time
of the apostles and their first disciples, has claimed an uninterrupted
succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision, and
of prophecy, the power of expelling daemons, of healing the sick, and
of raising the dead. The knowledge of foreign languages was frequently
communicated to the contemporaries of Irenaeus, though Irenaeus himself
was left to struggle with the difficulties of a barbarous dialect,
whilst he preached the gospel to the natives of Gaul. The divine
inspiration, whether it was conveyed in the form of a waking or of a
sleeping vision, is described as a favor very liberally bestowed on all
ranks of the faithful, on women as on elders, on boys as well as up