For what war should we not be ready and well prepared, even though unequal in numbers; we, who die with so much pleasure, were it not that our religion requires us rather to suffer death than to inflict it? If we were to make a general secession from your dominions, you would be astonished at your solitude. We are dead to all ideas of worldly honour and dignity; nothing is more foreign to us than political concerns; the whole world is our republic.

"We are a body united in one bond of religion, discipline, and hope. We meet in our assemblies for prayer. We are compelled to have recourse to the divine oracles for caution and recollection on all occasions. We nourish our faith by the word of God, we erect our hope, we fix our confidence, we strengthen our discipline, by repeatedly inculcating precepts, exhortations, corrections, and by excommunication when it is needful. This last, as being in the sight of God, is of great weight; and is a serious warning of the future judgment, if any one behave in so scandalous a manner as to be debarred from holy communion. Those who preside among us, are elderly persons, not distinguished for opulence, but worthiness of character. Every one pays something into the public chest once a month, or when he pleases, and according to his ability and inclination, for there is no compulsion. These gifts are, as it were, the deposits of piety. Hence we relieve and bury the needy, support orphans and decrepit persons; those who have suffered shipwreck, and those who, for the word of God, are condemned to the mines or imprisonment. This very charity of ours has caused us to be noticed by some: See, say they, how these Christians love one another.”

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ter, not more than a twentieth part of the subjects of the Roman-empire had enlisted themselves under the bauners of the cross before the conversion of Constantine."

"But we Christians look upon ourselves, as one body, informed as it were by one soul; and, being thus incorporated by love, we can never dispute what we are to bestow upon our own members. And is it any great wonder, that such charitable brethren as enjoy all things in common, should have such frequent love-feasts? For this it is you traduce us, and reflect upon our little frugal suppers, not only as infamously wicked, but as scandalously excessive. The nature of this supper you may understand by its name, for it is the Greek word for love. We Christians think we can never be too expensive, because we consider all to be gain that is laid out in doing good. When therefore we are at the charge of an entertainment, it is to refresh the bowels of the needy. We feed the hungry, because we know God takes a peculiar delight in seeing us do it. If therefore we feast only with such brave and excellent designs, I leave you from thence to guess at the rest of our discipline in matters of pure religion. Nothing earthly, nothing unclean, has ever admittance here. Our souls ascend in prayer to God, before we sit down to meat. We eat only what suffices nature, and drink no more than is strictly becoming chaste and regular persons. We sup as servants that know we must wake in the night to the service of our Master, and discourse as those who remember that they are in the hearing of God. When supper is ended, every one is invited forth to sing praises to God; and by this you may judge of the measure of drinking at a Christian feast. As we begin, so we conclude all with prayer, and depart with the same tenor of temperance and modesty we came; as men who have not so properly been drinking, as imbibing religion."*

There is something noble in the following appeal, with which Tertullian closes his apology.

"And now, O worshipful judges, proceed with your shew of justice, and believe me, ye will be still more and more just in the opinion of the people, the oftener you make them a sacrifice of Christians. Crucify, torture, condemn, grind us all to powder if you can; your injustice is an illustrious proof of our innocence, and for the proof of this it is that God permits us to suffer; and by your late condemnation of a Christian woman to the lust of a pander, rather than the rage of a lion, a lion, you notoriously confess that such a pollution is more abhorred by a Christian, than all the torments and deaths you can heap upon her. But do your worst, and rack your inventions for tortures for Christians. "Tis all to no purpose; you do but attract the notice of the world, and make it fall the more in love with our religion. The more you mow us down, the thicker we spring up-the Christian blood you spill, is like the seed you sow; it springs from the earth again and fructifies the more. That which you reproach in us as stubbornness, has been the most instructive mistress in proselyting the world for who has not been struck with the sight of what you call stubbornness, and from thence prompted to look into the reality and grounds of it; and who ever looked well into our religion that did not embrace it? and whoever embraced it [on proper grounds] that was not ready to die for it? For this reason it is that we thank you for condemning us, because there is such a happy variance and disagreement between the divine and human judgment, that when you condemn us upon earth, God absolves us in heaven."

MINUCIUS FELIX was cotemporary with Tertullian, and rather before than after him. He had been a Roman orator, but, being converted to the Christian faith, he wrote an eloquent and learned defence of that religion, which Dr. Lardner thinks was published about the year 210. This work is in the form of a dialogue, between

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Cæcilius, a heathen, and Oetavius, a Christian-Minucius sitting as umpire between them. The style of Minucius possesses all the charms of Ciceronian eloquence; nor would it be an easy task for any translator of him to do justice to his original. Cæcilius, the heathen, in a long and declamatory harangue, brings forward all the common-place calumnies of his predecessors, and accuses the Christians as a desperate and unlawful faction, who poured contempt upon their deities, derided their worship, scoffed at their priests, and despised their temples as no better than charnel houses and heaps of dead bones. Octavius, having patiently listened to this severe philippic, addresses himself to Minucius, and tells him, that he shall endeavour to the best of his ability, by stating the truth, to exonerate his religion from the foul aspersions cast upon it by his opponent. He does not deny the fact, that the Christians poured contempt upon the gods of the heathen. On the contrary, he freely admits it, and proceeds to evince the vanity of the worship of their images. "The mice," says he, "the swallows, and the bats, gnaw, insult, and sit upon your gods; and, unless you drive them away, they build their nests in their mouths; the spiders weave their webs over their faces. You first make them, then clean, wipe, and protect them, that you may fear and worship them. Should we view all your rites, there are many things which justly deserve to be laughed atothers that call for pity and compassion."

He then proceeds to discuss the subject with his opponent in regular order. He shews that man differs from the other creatures on this lower world, chiefly in this, that while the beasts of the field are created prone to the earth, bent downward by nature, and formed to look no further than the good of their bellies-man was created erect and upright, formed for the contemplation of the heavens, susceptible of reason and conscience-calculated

to lead him to the knowledge and imitation of God. Hence he infers the absurdity of atheism and the necessity of a great first cause, as one of the clearest dictates of reason and conscience. "When you lift up your eyes to heaven," says he, "and survey the works of creation around you, what is so clear and undeniable, as that there is a God, supremely excellent in understanding, who inspires, moves, supports, and governs all nature. Consider the vast expanse of heaven, and the rapidity of its motion, either when studded with stars by night, or enlightened with the sun by day; contemplate the almighty hand which poises them in their orbs, and balances them in their movement. Behold how the sun regulates the year by its annual circuit, and how the moon measures round a month by its increase, its decay, and its total disappearance. Why need I mention the constant vicissitudes of light and darkness, for the alternate reparation of rest and labour? Does not the standing variety of seasons, proceeding in goodly order, bear witness to its divine author? The spring with her flowers, the summer with her harvests, the ripening autumn with her grateful fruits, and the moist and unctuous winter, are all equally necessary. What an argument for providence is this, which interposes and moderates the extremes of winter and summer with the allays of spring and autumn-thus enabling us to pass the year about with security and comfort, between the extremes of parching heat and of cold? Observe the sea, and you will find it bounded with a shore, a law which it cannot transgress. Look into the vegetable world, and see how all the trees draw their life from the bowels of the earth. View the ocean, in constant ebb and flow; and the fountains, running in full veins; with the rivers, perpetually gliding in their wonted channels. Why should I take time in shewing how providentially this spot of earth is cantoned into hills, and