Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

24-1 THE SECOXD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.passing cruelty, but the fixed spirit of his reign.The sway of the sword is openly proclaimed. That' is everything is not only acted on, butlaid down as a guiding "princii)le of state tchildren. The unbroken discipline of her legionarieshad hitherto indeed proved the salvation ofthe state ; but this Septimius fatally tampers with,and in so doing sows the seeds of future anarchyand dissolution. *His death in 211 places the empire in thehands of a youth of twenty-three, all but bornin the purple, like Commodus, and his rival intyranny and dissoluteness of every kind. Cara-calla is endured for six years, and being killed bya plot in the camp, is succeeded by his murdererMacrinus. He again, after a year, gives place toa Syrian boy of fourteen, who took at his acces--sion the honoured name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,but is known to posterity as Heliogabalus.Once more during a space of four years the crimesof Commodus and Caracalla are repeated, or evenexceeded. Indeed ' in these years from 218 to222 the story of shame and degradation reachesits lowest point. But the soldiers of the praetoriancamp themselves rise against Heliogabalus, massacrehim with his mother, and place on the thronehis cousin Alexander Severus, at the age of four-teen. Now Alexander has for his mother Mam-if not a Christianat least a hearer of Drienwho gives her son from his earliest youth a virtu-