ere penalties were denounced
against the guilt both of the missionary and the proselyte. By these
arts, the faith of the Barbarians was preserved, and their zeal was
inflamed: they discharged, with devout fury, the office of spies,
informers, or executioners; and whenever their cavalry took the field,
it was the favorite amusement of the march to defile the churches, and
to insult the clergy of the adverse faction. [100] IV. The citizens who
had been educated in the luxury of the Roman province, were delivered,
with exquisite cruelty, to the Moors of the desert. A venerable train of
bishops, presbyters, and deacons, with a faithful crowd of four thousand
and ninety-six persons, whose guilt is not precisely ascertained, were
torn from their native homes, by the command of Hunneric. During the
night they were confined, like a herd of cattle, amidst their own
ordure: during the day they pursued their march over the burning sands;
and if they fainted under the heat and fatigue, they were goaded, or
dragged along, till they expired in the hands of their tormentors. [101]
These unhappy exiles, when they reached the Moorish huts, might excite
the compassion of a people, whose native humanity was neither improved
by reason, nor corrupted by fanaticism: but if they escaped the dangers,
they were condemned to share the distress of a savage life. V. It is
incumbent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect, whether
they are determined to support it in the last extreme. They excite the
flame which they strive to extinguish; and it soon becomes necessary to
chastise the contumacy, as well as the crime, of the offender. The fine,
which he is unable or unwilling to discharge, exposes his person to the
severity of the law; and his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the
use and propriety of capital punishment. Through the veil of fiction and
declamation we may clearly perceive, that the Catholics more especially
under the reign of Hunneric, endured the most cruel and ignominious
treatment. [102] Respectable citizens, noble matrons, and consecrated
virgins, were stripped naked, and raised in the air by pulleys, with
a weight suspended at their feet. In this painful attitude their naked
bodies were torn with scourges, or burnt in the most tender parts with
red-hot plates of iron. The amputation of the ears the nose, the tongue,
and the right hand, was inflicted by the Arians; and although the
precise number cannot be defined,