ims:--"As if
they could be said to believe in God, who persecute His Church, and deem
it hateful to believe in a Christ who was very God and very man."[2]

Fourthly, the martyrs died a quick and easy death. But, as Eulogius
points out,[3] pain and torture give no additional claim to the martyr's
crown.

Lastly, it was objected that the bodies of these martyrs, as indeed was
to be expected, corrupted, and were even, in some cases, devoured by
dogs. "What matter," says Eulogius,[4] "since their souls are borne away
to celestial mansions."

[1] Eul. "Lib. Apol.," sec. 3.

[2] _Ibid._, sec. 12.

[3] _Ibid._, sec. 5.

[4] "Mem. Sanct.," i. sec. 17.

But it was not objections brought by fellow-Christians only that
Eulogius took upon himself to answer, but also the taunts and scoffs of
the Moslems. "Why," said they, "if your God is the true God, does He not
strike terror into the executioners of his saints by some great
prodigy? and why do not the martyrs themselves flash forth into miracles
while the crowd is round them? You rush upon your own destruction, and
yet you work no wonders that might induce us to change our opinion of
your creed, thereby doing your own side no good, and ours no harm."[1]

Yet the constancy of the martyrs affected the Moslems more than they
cared to confess, as we may infer from the taunts levelled at the
Christians, when, in Mohammed's reign, some Christians, from fear of
death, even apostatized. "Whither," they triumphantly asked,[2] "has
that bravery of your martyrs vanished? What has become of the rash
frenzy with which they courted death?" Yet though they affected to
consider the martyrs as fools or madmen, they could not be blind to the
effect that their constancy was likely to produce on those who beheld
their death, and to the reverence with which their relics were regarded
by the Christians. They therefore expressly forbade the bodies of
martyrs to be preserved[3] and worshipped, and did their best to make
this in certain cases impossible by burning the corpses and scattering
the ashes on the river, though sometimes they contented themselves with
throwing the bodies, unburnt, into the stream.

[1] "Mem. Sanct.," i. sec. 12.

[2] Eulog., "Mem. Sanct.," iii. sec. 6.

[3] See "De Translatione corporum Sanctorum Martyrum," etc.,
sec. 11. "Non enim, quos martyres faciunt, venerari Saraceni
permittunt." See above, p. 38. The bodies of earlier mart