ll
perishable goods, dwelt always in heaven, and sighed after that happy
moment which was to break the bonds of her slavery, and unite her to God
in eternal bliss and perfect love. Is it possible that so many
Christians, capable of finding in God their sovereign felicity, should
amuse themselves with pleasures which flatter the senses, with reading
profane books, and seeking an empty satisfaction in idle visits, vain
conversation, news, and sloth, in which they pass those precious hours
which they might employ in exercises of devotion, and in the duties and
serious employments of their station! What trifles do they suffer to
fill their minds and hearts, and to rob them of the greatest of all
treasures! Conversation and visits in the world must only be allowed as
far as they are social duties, must be regulated by charity and
necessity, sanctified by simplicity, prudence, and every virtue,
animated by the spirit of God, and seasoned with a holy unction which
divine grace gives to those whom it perfectly replenishes and possesses.

Footnotes:
1. The abbess of this latter is the first princess of the empire.
2. Sap. vii. 6.

{591}

SS. ACEPSIMAS, BISHOP, JOSEPH, PRIEST; AND AITHILAHAS, DEACON, MM.

ST. MARUTHAS closes, with the acts of these martyrs, his history of the
persecution of king Sapor, which raged without intermission during forty
years. The venerable author assures us, that, living in the
neighborhood, he had carefully informed himself of the several
circumstances of their combats from those who were eye-witnesses, and
ushers in his account with the following address: "Be propitious to me,
O Lord, through the prayers of these martyrs--Being assisted by the
divine grace, and strengthened by your protection, O ye incomparable
men, I presume to draw the outlines of your heroic virtue and incredible
torments. But the remembrance of your bitter sufferings covers me with
shame, confusion, and tears, for myself and my sins. O! you who hear
this relation, count the days and the hours of three years and a half,
which they spent in prison, and remember they passed no month without
frequent tortures, no day free from pain, no hour without the threat of
immediate death. The festivals and new moons were black to them by fresh
racks, beatings, clubs, chains, hanging by their limbs, dislocations of
their joints, &c." In the thirty-seventh year of this persecution, a
fresh edict was published, commanding the governors an