ng
Christians. One such instance in the case of a Phrygian, named Quintus,
had caused grave scandal to the Church of Smyrna; for, having gone
before the proconsul and professed himself ready to die for the faith,
when the reality of the death, which he courted, had been brought home
to him by the sight of the wild beasts ready to rend him, the courage of
the Phrygian had failed, and he had offered incense to the gods. Africa
also had had her self-accused martyrs.

But the Spanish confessors have an interest over and above these, both
by reason of their number and the constancy which they displayed in
their self-imposed task. Not a single instance is recorded, though there
may have been some such, where the would-be martyr from fear or any
other cause forwent his crown. Moreover these martyrdoms, by dividing
the Church on the question of their merit, whether, that is, the
victims were to be ranked as true martyrs or not, and, giving rise to a
written controversy on the subject, has supplied us with ample, if
rather one-sided, materials for estimating the provocation given, and
received, on either side.

As time went on, and the Christians and Moslems mingled more closely
together in political and social life, the Church no doubt suffered some
deterioration. Every interested motive was enlisted in favour of
dropping as far as possible out of sight[1] those distinctive features
of Christianity which might be calculated to give offence to the
Moslems; of conforming to all those Mohammedan customs, which are not in
the Bible expressly forbidden to a Christian;[2] and, generally, of
emphasizing the points on which Christianity agrees with Mohammedanism,
and ignoring those (far more important ones) in which they differ. The
Moslems had no such reason for dissembling their convictions, or
modifying their tenets. Consequently a spiritual paralysis was creeping
upon the Church, which threatened in the course of time, if not checked,
to destroy the very life of Christianity throughout the peninsula. The
case of Africa, from which Islam had extirpated Christianity, showed
that this was no imaginary danger. But Spain had this advantage over
Africa: it contained a free Christian community which had never passed
under the Moslem yoke, where the fire of Christianity, in danger of
being swept away by the devouring flames of Mohammedanism, might be
nursed and cherished, till it could again blaze forth with its former
brilliancy.