suffering, for the name of Christ, he deserved to be held
in great honour, and his wishes were to be attended to by other
Christians, whatever his character and motives might have been.[32] The
same spirit which led to this mistake continued in Africa after St.
Cyprian's time; and thus, when the persecution began there under
Diocletian and Maximian[33] (A.D. 303), great numbers rushed into
danger, in the hope of being put to death, and of so obtaining at once
the blessedness and the glory of martyrdom. Many of these people were
weary of their lives, or in some other respect were not of such
characters that they could be reckoned as true Christian martyrs. The
wise fathers of the Church always disapproved of such foolhardy doings,
and would not allow people, who acted in a way so unlike our Lord and
His apostle St. Paul, to be considered as martyrs; and Mensurius, who
was the bishop of Carthage, stedfastly set his face against all such
things.

[32] See page 27.

[33] See Chapter IX.

One of the ways by which the persecutors hoped to put down the Gospel,
was to get hold of all the copies of the Scriptures, and to burn them;
and they required the clergy to deliver them up. But most of the
officers who had to execute the orders of the emperors did not know a
Bible from any other book; and it is said that, when some of them came
to Mensurius, and asked him to deliver up his books, he gave them a
quantity of books written by heretics, which he had collected (perhaps
with the intention of burning them himself), and that all the while he
had put the Scriptures safely out of the way, until the tyranny of the
heathens should be overpast. When the persecution was at an end, some of
the party whom he had offended by setting himself against their wrong
notions as to martyrdom, brought up this matter against the bishop. They
said that his account of it was false; that the books which he had
given up were not what he said, but that he had really given up the
Scriptures; and that, even if his story were true, he had done wrong in
using such deceit. They gave the name of _traditors_,[34] (or, as we
should say, _traitors_,) to those who confessed that they had been
frightened into giving up the Scriptures; and they were for showing no
mercy to any traditor, however much he might repent of his weakness.

[34] This means persons who _give up_ or _betray_.

This severe party, then, tried to get up an opposition to Mensurius.
They fo