em omni poena et omni
morte reputari, Apol. cap. ult. Eusebius likewise says, "Other virgins,
dragged to brothels, have lost their life rather than defile their
virtue." Euseb. Hist. Ecc. viii. 14.--G. The miraculous interpositions
were the offspring of the coarse imaginations of the monks.--M.]

[Footnote 65: See two instances of this kind of torture in the Acta
Sincere Martyrum, published by Ruinart, p. 160, 399. Jerome, in his
Legend of Paul the Hermit, tells a strange story of a young man, who
was chained naked on a bed of flowers, and assaulted by a beautiful and
wanton courtesan. He quelled the rising temptation by biting off his
tongue.]

The total disregard of truth and probability in the representation of
these primitive martyrdoms was occasioned by a very natural mistake. The
ecclesiastical writers of the fourth or fifth centuries ascribed to the
magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal
which filled their own breasts against the heretics or the idolaters of
their own times.

It is not improbable that some of those persons who were raised to
the dignities of the empire, might have imbibed the prejudices of the
populace, and that the cruel disposition of others might occasionally be
stimulated by motives of avarice or of personal resentment. [66] But it
is certain, and we may appeal to the grateful confessions of the first
Christians, that the greatest part of those magistrates who exercised
in the provinces the authority of the emperor, or of the senate, and
to whose hands alone the jurisdiction of life and death was intrusted,
behaved like men of polished manners and liberal education, who
respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant with the
precepts of philosophy. They frequently declined the odious task of
persecution, dismissed the charge with contempt, or suggested to the
accused Christian some legal evasion, by which he might elude
the severity of the laws. [67] Whenever they were invested with a
discretionary power, [68] they used it much less for the oppression,
than for the relief and benefit of the afflicted church. They were
far from condemning all the Christians who were accused before their
tribunal, and very far from punishing with death all those who were
convicted of an obstinate adherence to the new superstition. Contenting
themselves, for the most part, with the milder chastisements of
imprisonment, exile, or slavery in the mines, [69] they left the