ising within their camp and palaces a secret persecution, [144] for
which the imprudent zeal of the Christians sometimes offered the most
specious pretences. A sentence of death was executed upon Maximilianus,
an African youth, who had been produced by his own father [144a] before
the magistrate as a sufficient and legal recruit, but who obstinately
persisted in declaring, that his conscience would not permit him to
embrace the profession of a soldier. [145] It could scarcely be expected
that any government should suffer the action of Marcellus the Centurion
to pass with impunity. On the day of a public festival, that officer
threw away his belt, his arms, and the ensigns of his office, and
exclaimed with a loud voice, that he would obey none but Jesus Christ
the eternal King, and that he renounced forever the use of carnal
weapons, and the service of an idolatrous master. The soldiers, as
soon as they recovered from their astonishment, secured the person of
Marcellus. He was examined in the city of Tingi by the president of that
part of Mauritania; and as he was convicted by his own confession, he
was condemned and beheaded for the crime of desertion. [146] Examples of
such a nature savor much less of religious persecution than of martial
or even civil law; but they served to alienate the mind of the emperors,
to justify the severity of Galerius, who dismissed a great number of
Christian officers from their employments; and to authorize the opinion,
that a sect of enthusiastics, which avowed principles so repugnant to
the public safety, must either remain useless, or would soon become
dangerous, subjects of the empire.

[Footnote 144: Eusebius, l. viii. c. 4, c. 17. He limits the number of
military martyrs, by a remarkable expression, of which neither his Latin
nor French translator have rendered the energy. Notwithstanding the
authority of Eusebius, and the silence of Lactantius, Ambrose,
Sulpicius, Orosius, &c., it has been long believed, that the Thebaean
legion, consisting of 6000 Christians, suffered martyrdom by the order
of Maximian, in the valley of the Pennine Alps. The story was first
published about the middle of the 5th century, by Eucherius, bishop of
Lyons, who received it from certain persons, who received it from Isaac,
bishop of Geneva, who is said to have received it from Theodore, bishop
of Octodurum. The abbey of St. Maurice still subsists, a rich monument
of the credulity of Sigismund, king of Burgu