File:The story of our Christianity; an account of the struggles, persecutions, wars, and victories of Christians of all times (1893) (14597256749).jpg

Identifier: storyofourchrist00bird (find matches)
Title: The story of our Christianity; an account of the struggles, persecutions, wars, and victories of Christians of all times
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Bird, Frederic Mayer, 1838-1908 Harrison, Benjamin, 1833-1901
Subjects: Church history
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa., Peerless Publishing Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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vited Christians ofposition to feasts, and set before them meats that had been offered to idols.Many of humbler station were mutilated : a few, including the bishops of Alex-andria, Antioch, and Emesa, were put to death, or died in prison. Maximins answer to the petition of the people of Tyre is still preserved.He praises their zeal, laments the obstinate impiety of the Christians, cheerfully 184 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. agrees to the banishment of them, and authorizes the priests to inflict any punish-ment short of execution. In particular he points out the benefits received fromthe heathen gods, who have smiled upon the land and kept off plague, drought,earthquake, and tempest. But it would not do. These very calamities were about to fall upon theEast, exhausted by the emperors tyranny, and enraged by his insolent vices.His officers went through the provinces to collect recruits for his harem, usingforce on occasion. The noblest families were not secure; their daughters, where
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COLUMNS OF TEMPLE AT LUXOR. he had had his will, were married to slaves or barbarians. Valeria, the daughterof Diocletian and widow of Galerius, was handsome and wealthy; he wished tomarry her, and she refused. Her estates were confiscated, her servants tortured,her friends put to death, her fair reputation assailed, and she and her motherPrisca banished, and at length, through the strange cruelty of Licinius, beheadedand their bodies thrown into the sea. Diocletian, from his retirement, in vaintried to protect them; and the world beheld with amazement two empresses THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 185 treated like common criminals. Their fate could hardly have been more cruelif they had been really Christians ; and we know nothing of their character tocontradict the rumor that they were so. VICTORY OF THE CHURCHES. Meantime the evils which Maximin praised the gods for averting—drought,famine, pestilence—came heavily upon Asia. The court lived in luxury, and thesoldiers plundered fr

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