I.

(Persecutions threaten, p. 116.)

We have reserved this heroic tract to close our series of the ascetic essays of our author because it places even his sophistical enthusiasm in a light which shows much to admire. Strange that this defiant hero should have died (as we may infer) in his bed, and in extreme old age. Great man, how much, alike for weal and woe, the ages have been taught by thee!

This is the place for a tabular view of the ten persecutions of the Ante-Nicene Church. They are commonly enumerated as follows: ¹ --

1. Under Nero----a.d. 64.

2. Under Trajan----a.d. 95.

3. Under Trajan----a.d. 107.

4. Under Hadrian (a.d. 118 and)----a.d. 134.

5. Under Aurelius (a.d. 177) and Severus----a.d. 202.

6. Under Maximin----a.d. 235.

7. Under Decius----a.d. 250.

8. Under Valerian----a.d. 254.

9. Under Aurelian----a.d. 270.

10. Under Diocletian (a.d. 284 and)----a.d. 303.

Periods of Comparative Rest.

1. Under Antoninus Pius----a.d. 151.

2. Under Commodus----a.d. 185.

3. Under Alexander Severus----a.d. 223.

4. Under Philip----a.d. 248.

5. Under Diocletian----a.d. 284 till a.d. 303.

In thus chastising and sifting his Church in the years of her gradual growth "from the smallest of all seeds," we see illustrations of the Lord's Epistles to the seven churches of the Apocalypse. Who can doubt that Tertullian's writings prepared the North-African Church for the Decian furnace, and all believers for the "seven times hotter" fires of Diocletian?