theless, shewed them, in various ways, and on many occasions, unequivocal testimonies of kindness and regard. Some attribute this to the instructions and counsels of his mother Julia Mammæa, for whom he had a high degree of love and veneration; and who was herself favourably disposed towards the Christians. Being at Antioch with her son, A. D. 229, she sent for the renowned Origen, who resided at Alexandria, to come to her, that she might enjoy the pleasure and advantages of his conversation. It does not appear that either the emperor or his mother, so far understood and believed the Christian doctrine as to make an open profession of it, though their favourable sentiments induced them to tolerate the sect, during their lives, which were prolonged to the year 235, when they were both put to death in a conspiracy raised by Maximin, a man who had risen from the humblest ranks of life, to a dignified station in the army, and who now was made emperor. dari

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From the death of Severus, which happened in 211, to the commencement of the reign of Maximin, A. D. 235, a period of about five and twenty years, the condition of the Christians was, in some places prosperous, and in all, tolerable. But with Maximin the aspect of affairs changed. The character of this latter monarch formed a striking contrast to that of his predecessor. The former tyrants, says Gibbon, viz. Caligula and Nero, Commodus and Caracalla, were all dissolute and unexperienced youths, educated in the purple, and corrupted by the pride of empire, the luxury of Rome, and the perfidious voice of flattery. The cruelty of Maximin was derived from a different source the fear of contempt. Though he depended on the attachment of the soldiers, who loved him for virtues like their own, he was conscious that his mean and barbarous origin, his savage appearance, and his total ignorance of the arts and institutions

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of civil life, formed a very unfavourable contrast with the amiable manners of Alexander Severus. He remembered, that, in his humbler fortune, he had often waited before the door of the haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance by the insolence of their slaves. He recollected also, the friendship of a few who had relieved his poverty and assisted his rising hopes. But those who had spurned, and those who had protected him, were guilty of the same crime, the knowledge of his original. obscurity. For this crime many were put to death; and by the execution of several of his benefactors, Maximin published, in characters of blood, the indelible history of his baseness and ingratitude.

The sanguinary soul of the tyrant was open to every suspicion against those among his subjects, who were the most distinguished by their birth or merit. Whenever he was alarmed by the sound of treason, his crueltywas unbounded and unrelenting. A conspiracy against his life was either discovered or imagined, and Magnus, a consular senator, named as the principal author of it. Without a witness, without a trial, and without an opportunity of defence, Magnus, with four thousand of his supposed accomplices, were put to death. Confiscation, exile, or simple death, were, however, esteemed uncommon instances of his lenity. Some of the unfortunate sufferers, he ordered to be sewed up in the hides of slaughtered animals, others to be exposed to wild beasts, others again to be beaten to death with clubs. Throughout the Roman world, a general cry of indignation was heard, imploring vengeance against the common enemy of human kind, and, at length, by an act of private oppression, a peaceful and unarmed province was driven into rebellion against him.*

The malice of Maximin, against the house of the late

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i, ch. 7.

emperor, by whom the Christians had been so peculiarly favoured, stimulated him to persecute them bitterly, and he gave orders to put to death the pastors of the churches, whom he knew Alexander had treated as his intimate friends. The persecution, however, was not confined to them others suffered at the same time; and, a letter from Firmilian to Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, preserved in the works of the latter, informs us that the flame extended to Cappadocia and Pontus.* Ambrose, the friend of Origen, and Protoctetus, pastor of the church in Casarea, suffered much in the course of it, and to them Origen dedicated his Book of Martyrs. He himself was obliged to retire; but the tyrant's reign lasted only three years, in which time it must be confessed that the rest of the world had participated of his cruelties as much as the Christians. But the name of Origen is too important to be passed over in a history of the Christian church, with only a casual or incidental mention. He was a man, says Dr. Priestley, so remarkable for his piety, genius, and application, that he must be considered an honour to Christianity and to human nature. Even Jerome, his great adversary, admits that he was a great man from his infancy. His history is given in considerable detail by Eusebius, who tells us, that this very eminent man was born at Alexandria, in Egypt, A. D. 185. His father Leonides, from whom he received the first rudiments of his education, bestowed uncommon pains upon it; and afterwards had him instructed by the ablest masters of the age, among whom were St. Clement and Ammonius Saccas, an eminent philosopher of Alexandria, the founder of the Eclectic sect. His early improvements were such as gave his worthy parent the greatest satisfaction. He was only seventeen years of age when the persecution

* Cyprian's Works, Letter. 75. p. 256.

+ Eusebius, b. 6. ch. 28. Orosius, b. 7. ch. 19.. Origen, tom. 28. VOL. I.

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under Severus began in Alexandria, and his father was apprehended and confined; yet, he would at that early period of life, have fain thrown himself in the way of the persecutors, if his mother, after her most earnest entreaties had failed, had not hid his clothes in order to prevent him going abroad. He, however, wrote to his father, exhorting him to stedfastness in his profession, and not to be moved by any considerations about his family, though, in the event of his death, there would be a widow and seven children, left in great poverty; and, thus encouraged, his father was beheaded, submitting to his destiny with becoming resolution.

A large family being left in this destitute condition, a rich lady of Alexandria, the friend of genius and virtue, took Origen into her family. She, at the same time, entertained in her house, a person of distinguished abilities, who held the principles of the Gnostics, and her table was the resort of other men of letters. But though Origen could not refrain from associating with this heretic, such was the firmness of his mind and the fixedness of his prin ciples that he would never join with him in prayer. In his eighteenth year he was elected master of the great School of Alexandria, which had been deserted by its late master in the time of persecution; and not chusing to be unnecessarily burthensome to his benefactress, he quitted her mansion, and provided for his own support by giving lessons of instruction in grammar and the principles of religion. So devoted, however, did he become to the study of sacred literature, that he wholly abandoned the teaching of grammar, and sold his library, consisting of the works of the heathen philosophers and poets, for which the purchaser engaged to pay him four oboli a day. While he was thus employed, many of his pupils became martyrs; and, being in so conspicuous a station, it was with great difficulty that he himself es

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caped. Being obliged to instruct women as well as men, and having adopted a plan of great austerity of manners, in a fit of enthusiastic fervor, he made a literal application to himself of Christ's words, Matth. xix. 12, an action for which he greatly condemned himself, in the subsequent period of his life when he had reaped the benefit of experience and reflection.

Applying himself with extraordinary assiduity to the duties of his office as a teacher, his reputation rapidly encreased, and it was still further augmented by an edition of the Old Testament, with all the different Greek versions then extant accompanying it, ranged in separate columns. These were the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, that of Theodotion, and two others, with the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters and the same in Greek letters. This constituted eight columns in the whole, but it was called Hexapla, from having the six Greek versions. Finding this work too expensive and unwieldy for general use, he afterwards reduced it in both respects by composing what is called the Tetrapla, which contained only the first four of the Greek versions already mentioned.

Some time after, Origen quitted his employment and his studies, for the purpose of making a visit to Rome, for what particular object does not appear; but, returning to Alexandria, many persons of learning from distant places resorted to him; and the bishop of Alexandria being applied to by an Arabian prince for a person to instruct him in the Christian faith, he made choice of Origen in preference to any other.

At the time that Alexandria was ravaged by Caracalla, Origen went to Cæsarea in Palestine, and there the bishop engaged him to expound the scriptures publicly in the church, though he had not then been ordained. This gave umbrage to Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria,