Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

362 THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.one of the most merciless acts of tyrannical crueltytook place, which gave an occasion for severalthousand men at once to offer up their lives. Unresistingvictims, yet brave soldiers with arms intheir hands, they endured two decimations, andwhen remonstrance had proved in vain, piled theirarms, and let themselves be massacred to the lastman rather than violate their conscience. The placewhere they suffered took the name of their heroiccaptain, Maurice; the churches of that Alpine valleyto this day bear witness by his figure over theiraltars to that most illustrious act of Christiansacrifice : and beside the place of their reposerises still a monastery which for thirteen hundredand fifty years has guarded the sepulture of alegion of martyrs, and is become one of the mostancient Christian houses of prayer.It cannot be doubted that in the last twenty-five years of the third century the number ofChristians was being largely increased, and moreoverthey were daily gaining the higher ranks ofsociety. Diocletian had reigned for eighteen years,and seemed effectually to have stopped that incessantsuccession of soldiers gaining the throne byassassination and yielding it in turn to their assassins,which for fifty years threatened to destroythe state. At such a moment it was that Diocletian,belying all the past conduct of his life, letloose against the Christian Church the last, thefiercest, and the longest of the heathen persecutions.