eable
with all the crimes and vices to be found on earth? It is this accursed
idolatry, O Romans, that has sunk you so low in sin! They are your lewd,
and drunken, and savage deities, who have taught you all your refinement
in wickedness; and never, till you renounce them, never till you repent
you of your iniquities--never till you turn and worship the true God
will you rise out of the black Tartarean slough in which you are lying.
These two hundred years and more has God called to you by his Son, and
you have turned away your ears; you have hardened your hearts; the
prophets who have come to you in his name have you slain by the sword or
hung upon the accursed tree. Awake out of your slumbers! These are the
last days. God will not forbear forever. The days of vengeance will
come; they are now at hand: I can hear the rushing of that red right arm
hot with wrath--'

'Away with him! away with him!' broke from an hundred voices!--'Down
with the blasphemer!'--'Who is he to speak thus of the gods of
Rome?'--'Seize the impious Gallilean, and away with him to the
prefect'--These, and a thousand exclamations of the same kind, and more
savage, were heard on every side; and, at the same moment, their denial
and counter-exclamations, from as many more.

'He has spoken the truth!'--'He is a brave fellow!' 'He shall not be
touched except we fall first!'--came from a resolute band who
encompassed the preacher, and seemed resolved to make good their words
by defending him against whatever assault might be made. Macer, himself
a host in such an affray, neither spoke nor moved, standing upright and
still as a statue; but any one might see the soldier in his kindling
eye, and that a slight cause would bring him upon the assailants with a
fury that would deal out wounds and death. He had told them that the old
Legionary was not quite dead within him, and sometimes usurped the place
of the Christian; this they seemed to remember, and after showering
upon him vituperation and abuse in every form, one after another they
withdrew and left him with those who had gathered immediately around
him. These too soon took their leave of him, and Macer, unimpeded and
alone, turned towards his home.

When I related to Probus afterwards what I had heard and witnessed, he
said that I was fortunate in hearing what was so much more sober and
calm than that which usually fell from him; that generally he devoted
himself to an exposition of the absurdities