Chapter III.

However, as we have already remarked, it cannot but distress us that no state shall bear unpunished the guilt of shedding Christian blood; as you see, indeed, in what took place during the presidency of Hilarian, for when there had been some agitation about places of sepulture for our dead, and the cry arose, “No areæ—no burial-grounds for the Christians,” it came that their own areæ,3    [An obvious play on the ambiguity of this word.] their threshing-floors, were a-wanting, for they gathered in no harvests. As to the rains of the bygone year, it is abundantly plain of what they were intended to remind men—of the deluge, no doubt, which in ancient times overtook human unbelief and wickedness; and as to the fires which lately hung all night over the walls of Carthage, they who saw them know what they threatened; and what the preceding thunders pealed, they who were hardened by them can tell. All these things are signs of God’s impending wrath, which we must needs publish and proclaim in every possible way; and in the meanwhile we must pray it may be only local. Sure are they to experience it one day in its universal and final form, who interpret otherwise these samples of it. That sun, too, in the metropolis of Utica,4    [Notes of the time when this was written. See Kaye, p. 57.] with light all but extinguished, was a portent which could not have occurred from an ordinary eclipse, situated as the lord of day was in his height and house. You have the astrologers, consult them about it. We can point you also to the deaths of some provincial rulers, who in their last hours had painful memories of their sin in persecuting the followers of Christ.5    [Christians remembered Herod (Acts xii. 23) very naturally; but we may reserve remarks on such instances till we come to Lactantius. But see Kaye (p. 102) who speaks unfavourably of them.] Vigellius Saturninus, who first here used the sword against us, lost his eyesight.  Claudius Lucius Herminianus in Cappadocia, enraged that his wife had become a Christian, had treated the Christians with great cruelty: well, left alone in his palace, suffering under a contagious malady, he boiled out in living worms, and was heard exclaiming, “Let nobody know of it, lest the Christians rejoice, and Christian wives take encouragement.” Afterwards he came to see his error in having tempted so many from their stedfastness by the tortures he inflicted, and died almost a Christian himself. In that doom which overtook Byzantium,6    [Notes of the time when this was written. See Kaye, p. 57.] Cæcilius Capella could not help crying out, “Christians, rejoice!” Yes, and the persecutors who seem to themselves to have acted with impunity shall not escape the day of judgment. For you we sincerely wish it may prove to have been a warning only, that, immediately after you had condemned Mavilus of Adrumetum to the wild beasts, you were overtaken by those troubles, and that even now for the same reason you are called to a blood-reckoning. But do not forget the future.

CAPUT III.

Tamen (sicut supra diximus) doleamus necesse est, quod nulla civitas impune latura sit sanguinis nostri effusionem , sicut et sub Hilariano praeside , cum de areis sepulturarum nostrarum acclamassent: Areae non sint ; areae ipsorum non fuerunt. Messes enim suas non egerunt. Caeterum et imbre anni praeteriti quid commeruerit genus humanum apparuit, cataclysmum scilicet et retro fuisse propter incredulitates et iniquitates hominum; et ignes qui super moenia Carthaginis 0701B proxime pependerunt per noctem, quid minati sint, sciunt qui viderunt; et pristina tonitrua quid sonaverunt, sciunt qui obduruerunt. Omnia haec signa sunt imminentis irae Dei, quam necesse est, quoquo modo possumus, ut et annuntiemus, et praedicemus, et deprecemur interim localem esse : universalem enim et supremam suo tempore sentient, qui exempla ejus aliter interpretantur. Nam et sol ille in conventu Uticensi , extincto pene lumine, adeo portentum fuit, ut non potuerit ex ordinario deliquio hoc pati, positus in suo hypsomate et domicilio . Habetis astrologos. Possumus aeque et exitus 0702A quorumdam praesidum tibi proponere, qui in fine vitae suae recordati sunt deliquisse, quod vexassent chritianos. Vigellius Saturninus qui primus hic gladiumin nos egit, lumina amisit. Claudius Lucius Herminianus in Cappadocia, cum indigne ferens uxorem suam ad hanc sectam transisse, christianos crudeliter tractasset, solusque in praetorio suo vastatus peste , cum vivus vermibus ebullisset : Nemo sciat, aiebat, ne gaudeant christiani . Postea cognito errore suo, quod tormentis quosdam a proposito suo excidere fecisset, pene christianus decessit. Caecilius Capella in illo exitu bysantino : Christiani gaudete , exclamavit. Sed et qui videntur sibi impune tulisse, venient in diem divini judicii. Tibi quoque optamus admonitionem solam 0702B fuisse, quod cum Adrimeticum Mavilum ad bestias damnasses, et statim haec vexatio subsecuta est, et nunc ex eadem caussa interpellatio sanguinis . Sed memento de caetero .