in anxious suspense waiting for his coming, and receiving
him with excess of joy when he came. I say it unwillingly,
but I must say it.
Some resisted him, even that he might
obtain his wish. Whom however, how forbearingly, how
patiently, how kindly he bore with! how indulgently he
forgave, reckoning them afterwards among his most intimate
and familiar friends, to the wonder of many! for who, but
might count it miraculous that so retentive a memory should
become so oblivious?

7. How henceforth he bore himself, who would suffice to
relate how great was his loving-kindness, his strength of
mind! his mercy, his severity! Such sanctity and grace
shone forth from his countenance as to confuse the gazer.
His look was graveand glad; neither a sternness which was
sad, nor overmuch good nature; but a just mixture of both;
so that one might doubt whether he claimed more our rever-
ence or our love, except that he claimed both. Nor did his
dress belie his countenance, subdued, as it was, to the
middle course.
He was not the man to be inflated with the
pride of the world's fashions; yet neither to grovel in a
studious penury; in that the latter style of dress is as boastful,
as that so ambitious frugality is ostentatious. How, when a
Bishop, he acted towards the poor, whom he already loved as a
catechumen, let the priests of mercifulness consider; whether
taught in the office of good works by the discipline of their very
order, or obliged to the duty of love by the general bond of
the Gospel Sacrament. As for Cyprian, what he was, such his
Bishop's seat found him ready made, and did not make him.

250.

8. And so it was that for such merits he forthwith obtained A. D. also the glory of proscription. Nor was it other than fitting that one, who within the retreat of conscience so abounded in the full honours of religion and faith, should also have a public name among the Gentiles. Indeed he might even then, for the rapidity with which he developed into all things, have hastened to the appointed crown of Martyrdom; especially

i Five Priests opposed his consecration, one of them being Novatus; they afterwards fomented the disorders of which the Confessors were made the instrument, (vid. infra Introd. to Trea

tise v.) and joined the party of Felicissimus. This they did when S. Cyprian was in concealment during the persecution. vid. Ep. 43. init. ed. Fell.

since the cries were frequent which called him " to the lion";' had it not been meet that he should pass through all degrees of glory before he came to the highest, and had not the ruin of the Church which then threatened needed the aid of so fertile a mind. For imagine him taken hence at that time by the high reward of Martyrdom; who was there to shew the gains of grace making progress by faith? who to curb the single women as it were with the bridle of the vid. iv. Lord's lessons into a congruous rule of chastity, and a dress vid. vi. becoming their holiness? who to teach penitence to the vid. vii. Lapsed? truth to heretics, unity to schismatics? to the sons

vid.

Treat. i.

of God peace and the law of Gospel prayer? who to be the vid. ii. instrument of overthrowing blaspheming Gentiles, by retorting on them their charges on us? by whom were Christians, grieved vid. xi. at loss of friends with excess of fondness or (what is worse)

and viii.

vid. xiii.

defect of faith, by whom to be comforted with the hope of vid. x. things to come? from whom should we else learn mercy? vid. xi. from whom patience? who was there to repress the evil vid. xii. feeling springing from the malignity of poisonous envy, with the sweetness of a salutary remedy? who to cheer the host of Martyrs with the exhortation of a divine discourse,-who lastly to hasten with a stirring heavenly trumpet those many confessors, signed with a second inscription on their brow, and reserved as living examples of Martyrdom? Well surely it was ordered then, well and indeed divinely, that a man so necessary for so many and so good objects, was retarded from a Martyr's consummation'.

9. You wish to be sure that that retirement of his which now took place, was not from fear"; not to allege other

k"Christianos ad Leonem." Tertullian Apol. 40. de Spect. 26.

m On the subject of flight in persecution, vid. infra note g, on vi. 8. vid. 1 S. Jerome relates, that he had seen also Ep. 34. fin. ed. Fell. Tertullian an old man, who professed to have seen in in his Montanistic Tract De fuga in his youth an amanuensis of S. Cyprian's, Persecutione maintains that flight is who was in the habit of relating that unlawful. The Roman Clergy (Ep. 8.) the latter never passed a day without find fault with S. Cyprian's flight: he reading Tertullian, continually saying to defends himself, (Ep. 20.) saying he him, Da Magistrum; Hand me my withdrew to hinder a riot. His warrant Master. vid. Jerom. de Vir. Illustr. for doing so was a divine direction. 53. also Introd. to Treatise iv. That vid. Ep. 16. "When a persecution S. Cyprian however did not follow impended, the Bishops used to assemble Tertullian implicitly is plain from his the people, and exhort them to conretiring from the persecution, not to stancy. Then they baptized infants and mention other points of difference. catechumens, and divided the Eucha

evidence, he did suffer afterwards; which suffering of course he would have shrunk from according to his wont, had he shrunk from it before. But in truth, fear it was, but right fear; fear of offending the Lord, fear which had rather be dutiful to God's precepts, than be crowned together with the breach of them. A mind surrendered in all things to God, and a faith enslaved to the divine directions, considered that it would be sinning in very suffering, unless it had obeyed the Lord who then ordered that retreat. Something more must here be said on the advantage of the postponement, though already I have touched on the subject. By what seems shortly to have taken place, we may prove, as follows, that that retirement did not issue from human pusillanimity, but, as is the case, was really divine. The people of God had been ravaged with the extraordinary and fierce assaults of a harrassing persecution; and, whereas the crafty enemy could not deceive all by one and the same artifice, therefore raging against them in manifold ways, wherever the incautious soldier exposed his side, there he worsted each by various overthrows. Some one was required who, when wounds had been received, and darts cast by the changeful art of the torturing enemy, had heavenly remedies at hand according to the nature of each, now to pierce and now to sooth; and then was preserved a man of a mind beyond all others divinely tempered, to steer the Church in a steady middle course between the rebounding waves of colliding schisms. Let me ask then, is not such design divine? could it have been without God's governance? Let them look to it who think that such things happen by chance. The Church answers to them with loud voice, declaring that she does not allow, does not believe, that these her necessary champions are reserved without the providence of God.

10. However, let me be allowed to run through the rest. A. D. A dreadful pestilence broke out afterwards", and the extra

rist among the faithful." Vales. in Euseb. Hist. viii. 11. S. Dionysius was accused of having retired without first attending to these necessary duties. ibid.

For a description of the pestilence, vid. infra ix. 9. vid. also the letters of

Dionysius of Alexandria (Euseb. Hist.
vii. 22.) and S. Gregory Nyssen's life
of Gregory of Neo-Cæsarea, in fin. In
the year 262 it was especially destruc-
tive in Rome and in the cities of
Greece, carrying off in Rome as many
as 5000 persons daily. Half the popu-

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It

ordinary ravages of a hateful sickness entered house after house of the trembling populace in succession, carrying off with sudden violence numberless people daily, each from his own home. There was a general panic, flight, shrinking from the infection, unnatural exposure of infected friends; as though to carry the dying out of doors, were to rid one's self of death itself. Meanwhile multitudes lay about the whole city, not bodies, but by this time corpses; and called on the pity of passers-by from the view of a fortune common to both parties. No one looked to aught beyond his cruel gain. No one was alarmed from the recollection of parallel instances. No one did to another what he wished done to himself. were a crime to pass over what in such circumstances was the conduct of this Pontiff of Christ and God, who had surpassed the Pontiffs of this world as much in benevolence as in truth of doctrine. First he assembled the people in one place, urged on them the excellence of mercifulness, taught them by instances from holy Scripture how much the offices of benevolence avail to merit with God. Then he subjoined that there was nothing wonderful in cherishing our own with the fitting dutifulness of charity; that he became the perfect man, who did somewhat more than publican or heathen, who, overcoming evil with good and exercising what resembled a divine clemency, loved even his enemies, who prayed, as the Lord admonishes and exhorts, for the well-being of those who are persecuting him. He then makes His sun rise, and bestows rain from time to time to foster the seed, shewing forth all these benefits not only to His own, but to strangers also; and he, who professes himself even God's son, why follows he not the example of his Father? "We should answer to our birth," he says; "it is not fit that they should be degenerate who are known to have been born again by God; rather the seed of a good Father should be evidenced in the offspring, by our copying of His goodness." I pass over many other things and those important, which my limits will not allow me to detail; about which let it suffice to have noticed thus

lation of Alexandria perished in it, according to Gibbon, who says that it "raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every

family of the Roman empire, from 250 to 265." Hist. x. fin. Its duration is variously estimated.

much. If the very Gentiles, had they heard them in the rostrum, would probably have believed forthwith, what should a Christian people do, whose very name begins in faith? Accordingly ministrations are divided among them at once, according to the ranks and circumstances of such. Many who from stress of poverty were unable to shew forth benefits of cost, shewed forth what was more than costliness; by their personal toil doing other services more precious than all riches. Who indeed under such a teacher but must haste to be occupied in some part of that warfare, by which he would be pleasing God the Father, and Christ the Judge, and so good a Priest besides? Accordingly they did good in the profusion of exuberant works to all, and not only to the household of faith. They did somewhat more than is recorded of the incomparable benevolence of Tobias. He must pardon the word, again pardon it, pardon it often; or, to speak more truly, he must in equity grant, that, although there was room for very much before Christ, yet after Him there has been room for somewhat more, since to Christ's times the fulness is ascribed. The slain of the king and the outcasts, whom Tobias gathered together, were of his own kin only.

257.

11. To these so good and so merciful deeds banishment A.D. succeeded. For unbelief ever makes such return, recompensing the worse for the better. Nor need I mention what God's Priest answered the proconsul who questioned him, for there are Acts which relate it. Any how he is forbidden the city, he who had done some good towards its health; he who had toiled lest the eyes of the living should suffer the horrors of the infernal abode; he, I say, who sleepless in the watchings of benevolence had by a blameless kindness, (O the crime!) secured a deserted state and destitute country from the sight of many exiles, when all were flying from the loathsome look of the city. But this is the world's concern in it, with whom exile is a punishment. To us our country is less dear, who have a name in common, who abhor even our own parents if they would persuade us contrary to the Lord. To them it is a heavy punishment to live away from their city. To the Christian the whole world is our home. Wherefore, though he be sent away into ever so hidden and remote a