hich
Lucianus names seventeen of his brethren dead, some in the quarries,
some in the midst of tortures some of starvation in prison. Jussi sumus
(he proceeds) secundum prae ceptum imperatoris, fame et siti necari, et
reclusi sumus in duabus cellis, ta ut nos afficerent fame et siti et
ignis vapore.--G.]

[Footnote 183: When Palestine was divided into three, the praefecture of
the East contained forty-eight provinces. As the ancient distinctions of
nations were long since abolished, the Romans distributed the provinces
according to a general proportion of their extent and opulence.]

[Footnote 184: Ut gloriari possint nullam se innocentium poremisse, nam
et ipse audivi aloquos gloriantes, quia administratio sua, in hac paris
merit incruenta. Lactant. Institur. Divin v. 11.]

We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth, which obtrudes
itself on the reluctant mind; that even admitting, without hesitation or
inquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on
the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknowledged, that the
Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted
far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from
the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the
subversion of the Roman empire in the West, the bishops of the Imperial
city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the
Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and
which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length
assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who from the twelfth to the
sixteenth century assumed the popular character of reformers. The church
of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud;
a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by proscriptions,
war, massacres, and the institution of the holy office. And as the
reformers were animated by the love of civil as well as of religious
freedom, the Catholic princes connected their own interest with that of
the clergy, and enforced by fire and the sword the terrors of spiritual
censures. In the Netherlands alone, more than one hundred thousand of
the subjects of Charles V. are said to have suffered by the hand of the
executioner; and this extraordinary number is attested by Grotius, [185]
a man of genius and learning, who preserved his moderation amidst the
fury of contending sects, and who composed the annal