however accurate and distinct,
could scarcely be followed, even if without risk of error, at least
without misgiving. However, could he master this point before the morning
he was comparatively safe; he then had to strike into the solitary
mountains, and to retrace his steps for a while towards Sicca along the
road, till he came to a place where he knew that Christian scouts or
_videttes_ (as they may be called) were always stationed.

This being his plan, and there being no way of mending it, our confessor
retired into the cottage, and devoted the intervening hours to intercourse
with that world from which his succour must come. He set himself to
intercede for the Holy Catholic Church throughout the world, now for the
most part under persecution, and for the Roman Empire, not yet holy, which
was the instrument of the evil powers against her. He had to pray for the
proconsulate, for Numidia, Mauretania, and the whole of Africa; for the
Christian communities throughout it, for the cessation of the trial then
present, and for the fortitude and perseverance of all who were tried. He
had to pray for his own personal friends, his penitents, converts,
enemies; for children, catechumens, neophytes; for those who were
approaching the Church, for those who had fallen away, or were falling
away from her; for all heretics, for all troublers of unity, that they
might be reclaimed. He had to confess, bewail and deprecate the many sins
and offences which he knew of, foreboded, or saw in prospect as to come.
Scarcely had he entered on his charge at Carthage four years before, when
he had had to denounce one portentous scandal in which a sacred order of
the ministry was implicated. What internal laxity did not that scandal
imply! And then again what a low standard of religion, what niggardly
faith, and what worn-out, used-up sanctity in the community at large, was
revealed in the fact of those frequent apostasies of individuals which
then were occurring! He prayed fervently that both from the bright pattern
of martyrs, and from the warning afforded by the lapsed, the Christian
body might be edified and invigorated. He saw with great anxiety two
schisms in prospect, when the persecution should come to an end, one from
the perverseness of those who were too rigid, the other from those who
were too indulgent towards the fallen; and in proportion to his gift of
prescience was the earnestness of his intercession that the wounds of the
Churc