ing darkness. In the pages of Victor
Vitensis, which tell the sad story of the persecution of the African
Catholics by the Arian Vandals, you will find many a moving tale which
shews that God had his own, even among those degraded Carthaginians.

The causes of the Arian hatred to the Catholics is very obscure. You
will find all that is known in Dean Milman's History of Latin
Christianity. A simple explanation may be found in the fact that the
Catholics considered the Arians, and did not conceal their opinion, as
all literally and actually doomed to the torments of everlasting fire;
and that, as Gibbon puts it, 'The heroes of the north, who had submitted
with some reluctance, to believe that all their ancestors were in hell,
were astonished and exasperated to learn, that they themselves had only
changed the mode of their eternal condemnation.' The Teutons were
(Salvian himself confesses it) trying to serve God devoutly, in chastity,
sobriety, and honesty, according to their light. And they were told by
the profligates of Africa, that this and no less, was their doom. It is
not to be wondered at, again, if they mistook the Catholic creed for the
cause of Catholic immorality. That may account for the Vandal custom of
re-baptizing the Catholics. It certainly accounts for the fact (if after
all it be a fact) which Victor states, that they tortured the nuns to
extort from them shameful confessions against the priests. But the
history of the African persecution is the history of all persecutions, as
confest again and again by the old fathers, as proved by the analogies of
later times. The sins of the Church draw down punishment, by making her
enemies confound her doctrine and her practice. But in return, the
punishment of the Church purifies her, and brings out her nobleness
afresh, as the snake casts his skin in pain, and comes out young and fair
once more; and in every dark hour of the Church, there flashes out some
bright form of human heroism, to be a beacon and a comfort to all future
time. Victor, for instance, tells the story of Dionysia, the beautiful
widow whom the Vandals tried to torture into denying the Divinity of our
Lord.--How when they saw that she was bolder and fairer than all the
other matrons, they seized her, and went to strip her: and she cried to
them, 'Qualiter libet occidite: verecunda tamen membra nolite nudare,'
but in vain. They hung her up by the hands, and scourged her till
streams of