Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

250 THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.at this very moment encouraged the martyrs to beconstant, with the reflection that there was no onewho might not, for the cause of man,suffer whatever nature would most shrink fromsuffering in the cause of God. " The times welive in are proofs," he cried, " of this. How manyand how great are the instances we have seen, inwhich no height of birth, no degree of rank, nopersonal dignity, no time of life, have saved menfrom coming to the most unexpected end, for someman's cause, either at his own hands, if they stoodagainst him, or if for him, by the hands of hisadversaries."12It was a time at which the extremes of recklesscruelty, of profuse luxury, of shameless dissoluteness,met together ; in which women wereforbidden by an express law to expose themselveson the arena as gladiators; in which, when theemperor Severus would legislate against adultery,a memorial was handed to him with the names"of three thousand persons whom his law wouldtouch.13 Such was the character of the time which"followed at once on the empire's golden age; thetime in which the Church of God was lengtheningher cords and strengthening her stakes, and buildingup her divine polity amid the worthlessness ofthe world's greatest empire, and the instability ofall earthly things.12 Tertullian, ad Marty res, 4 : about A,D, 196.13 Dio, quoted by Dollinger, ut supra,