Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

178 THE FIRST AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.many a Regulus and Sparta many a Leonidas inthe humblest ranks of their citizens : Gaul hadthousands as noble as Vercingetorex, and Spainnot one but many Numantias. Human naturehad never been wanting in the courage to die forthe visible goods of human life. But to labour,to combat, to endure pain, sorrow, privations, tosuffer in every form for the invisible goods of afuture life, to recognise, that is, an inviolableorder of religion and morality, so far superior tothat a man can grasp and hold in his possession,to wife, children, goods, friends, freedom,and fatherland, and to life adorned and crownedwith these, that any or all of these, and life itself,are to be sacrificed for its preservation ; this maybe said to be a thought of which the wholeheathen world ruled by Augustus and Tiberiuswas unconscious.1 For other reasons also it wasfamiliar enough with the sacrifice of life, since thecontinual practice of war and the permanent institutionof slavery had made human life the cheapestof all things in its eyes. And further, to dierather than to live dishonoured was still the ruleof the nobler among the millions who yielded tothe sway of Augustus, But to die for the main-1 Tertullian, Apol. 50. " O gloriam licitam, quia humanam, cui neeprsesumptio perdita nee persuasio desperata deputatur in contemptumortis et atrocitatis omnimodae, cui tantum pro patria, pro imperio, proamicitia pati permissum est, quantum pro Deo non licet." See again theinstances he collects ad Marty res^ 4; and Eusebius, Hist. 5, prooem.,draws the same contrast.