hose fires. Christ, O
Romans, if you will receive him, will save you from them, and from those
raging fires of sorrow and remorse, which here on earth do constitute a
hell hot as any that burns below. It is your sins which kindle those
fires, and with which Christ wages war--not with you. It is your sins
with which I wage war here in the streets of Rome, not with you. Only
repent of your sins, Romans, and believe in Christ the son of God, and O
how glorious and happy were then this great and glorious city. I have
told you before, and I tell you now, your vices are undermining the
foundations of this great empire. There is no power to cure these but
in Jesus Christ. And when I know this, shall I cease to preach Christ to
you because a man, a man like myself, forbids me? Would you not still
prepare for a friend or a child the medicine that would save his life,
though you were charged by another never so imperiously to forbear? The
gospel is the divine medicament that is to heal all your sicknesses,
cure all your diseases, remove all your miseries, cleanse all your
pollutions, correct all your errors, confirm within you all necessary
truth. And when it is this healing draught for which your souls cry
aloud, for which they thirst even unto death, shall I the messenger of
God, sent in the name of his Son to bear to your lips the cup, of which
if you once drink you will live forever, withhold from you that cup, or
dash it to the ground? Shall I, a mediator between God and man, falter
in my speech, and my tongue hang palsied in my mouth, because Aurelian
speaks? What to me, O Romans, is the edict of a Roman Emperor? Down,
down, accursed scrawl! nor insult longer both God and man.'

And saying that, he reached forth his hand, and seizing the parchment
wrenched it from its brazen frame, and rending it to shreds strewed them
abroad upon the air.

It was done in the twinkling of an eye. At first, horror-struck at the
audacity of the deed, and while it was doing, the crowd stood still and
mute, bereft, as it were, of all power to move or speak. But soon as the
fragments of the parchment came floating along upon the air, their
senses returned, and the most violent outcries, curses, and savage yells
rose from the assembled multitude, and at the same moment a movement
was made to rush upon the Christian, with the evident purpose to
sacrifice him on the spot to the offended majesty of the empire. I
supposed that their purpose would be