me principle? Suppose
the case that your supreme god--"Jupiter greatest and best"--or the god
beyond and above him, in whom your philosophers have faith--revealed a
law, requiring what the law of the empire forbids, must you not, would
you not, if your religion were anything more than a mere pretence, obey
the god rather than the man? Although therefore, great Emperor, we blame
the honest Macer for his precipitancy, yet it ought to be, and is, the
determination of us all to yield obedience to no law which violates the
law of Heaven. We having received the faith of Christ in trust, to be by
us dispensed to mankind, and believing the welfare of mankind to depend
upon the wide extension of it, we will rather die than shut it up in our
own bosoms--we will rather die, than live with our tongues tied and
silent--our limbs fettered and bound! We must speak, or we will die--'

Porphyrius again sprang from his seat with intent to speak, but the
Emperor restrained him.

'Contend not now, Porphyrius; let us hear the Christian. I have given
him his freedom. Infringe it not.'

'I will willingly, noble Emperor,' said Probus, 'respond to whatsoever
the learned Tyrian may propose. All I can desire is this only, that the
religion of Christ may be seen, by those who are here, to be what it
truly is; and it may be, that the questions or the objections of the
philosopher shall show this more perfectly than a continued discourse.'

The Emperor, however, making a sign, he went on.

'We have also been charged, O Emperor, with vices and crimes, committed
at both our social and our religious meetings, at which nature revolts,
which are even beyond in grossness what have been ever ascribed to the
most flagitious of mankind.'--Probus here enumerated the many rumors
which had long been and still were current in Rome, and, especially by
the lower orders, believed; and drew then such a picture of the
character, lives, manners, and morals of the Christians, for the truth
of which he appealed openly to noble and distinguished persons among the
Romans then present,--not of the Christian faith, but who were yet well
acquainted with their character and condition, and who would not refuse
to testify to what he had said--that there could none have been present
in that vast assembly but who, if there were any sense of justice within
them, must have dismissed forever from their minds, if they had ever
entertained them, the slanderous fictions that had fi