signing rank or home (which indeed no existing organization enabled them to do), sought in their resolution protection against social corruption with independence and respect among the Christians. To them no occasion presented itself obviously requiring a change in their dress or ornaments. In fashions half Roman, half Tyrian they still 'buried the neck'' in masses of gold chain and pearl, still piled the hair in grape-like clusters, loaded arms and feet with bracelets, outlined the almond-like eye with antimony, dyed the cheeks 'with crimson falsehood,' tipped toes and fingers with henna. A strange sketch of a sister! Modes against which Cyprian alleges Scripture, sense and feeling. Yet this can have been but a small portion of the picture. was much to reverence and much to love in that which excited in the great organizer, in the world-worn lawyer, such intense enthusiasm.

We may be sure there

Grave matter for reflection in this essay are the ‘reverence and fear' with which he scarce reproves, the self-abasement with which he asks their prayers. The motives are at once too low and too lofty upon which he lauds their choice of a virgin-life, the escapes namely from marriage-trouble, their union with Christ, their anticipated superiority in the resurrection-life. There is latent in these motives a subtle selfishness and pride, such as it seems true foresight might have shunned without waiting for experience. But woman's unapproached power in alleviating human wretchedness, and in the revival of aspirations after purity; the influence of great examples of self-sacrifice upon a sordid and luxurious age; the effective operation of frequent intercession, are more substantial and less obtruded motives. They were real then, and they are real for ever; still destined to be at last as effective as they are sound in shaping the nobler monasticisms of the future3.

1 De Hab. Virg. 14, 15, 21. 2 De Hab. Virg. 3, cf. 24.

3 The two Epistles to Virgins, extant in Syriac, ascribed to Clement of Rome,

XIII.

Literary character of the Book Of the Dress of Virgins.'

This book is less analogous to Tertullian's very Montanistic tract 'Of the Veiling of the Virgins' than to that author's two books on the Apparelling of Women.' Those obligations to eschew frivolity and purify their own society, which Tertullian had drawn out for the sex, are here specialised for a single class.

We have found already that the amplest plagiarism was permissible; and, this assumed, there is much literary interest in observing how a master of style like Cyprian deals with the rocky genius of his own 'Master.'

A more delicate taste abjures the coarser appeals and modifies, though unable to abandon, the materialism. Thus still, equality with angels is literally begun for those who 'are not given in marriage"; wool-dyeing is unnatural because there are no purple or scarlet sheep; hair-dye unlawful because 'we cannot make one hair white or black.' His own sufficiently bold phrase that cosmetic arts are 'the siege and storming of the Truth of the face' is worked up with Tertullian's passionate 'they lay hands upon God.' Like his

were first printed in J. J. Wetstein's N.T. vol. II. The first is both from its readings of Scripture (Bp. Westcott, Canon of Scripture, p. 186 n. (ed. 1881)), and also from its topics and omissions (see Wetst. Proleg. pp. iv-vii), a work of the second century, and probably of the first half of it. The pretences to purity under similar though less outrageous conditions (Ep. i. 10) are not accepted, and are so coupled with warnings against idleness, roaming, pretexts of visiting, Scripture reading and exorcizing

as to shew what the dangers of the profession of Virginity unprotected were before the time of Cyprian. The second epistle is not to Virgins, but prescribing caution and decorum to travelling clerics (somewhat too minutely) exhibits the same dangers from another point of view. Freppel (Pères Apostol., pp. 214 sqq.) holds these to be genuine, as do other Roman divines. See Bp. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, I., Clement, vol. I. pp. 407 sqq. (1890).

1 De Hab. Virg. 22.

Cf. 14, 15, 17.

predecessor he ascribes the invention of the toilet, 'woman's world,' to apostate angels who lived before the flood; but he spares us Tertullian's Byronic picture of spirits sighing for a lost heaven yet scheming an eternal hell for their beloved. He cannot part with 'the evil presage' of the then fashionable 'flame-colour' of hair, but avoids suggesting the horror of wearing the despoilment of the strange woman, of the head devoted to gehenna.'

The warning to the innocent though over-drest girl 'thy 'beholder hath in heart gratified his lust; thou art become a 'sword to him" is softened into 'though thou fall not thyself 'thou destroyest others, and makest thyself as it were a 'sword and a poison draught to the beholders'.' 'Modesty is sacristan and priestess of the shrine' becomes in those shrines the worshippers and priests are we3.'

So he preserves the fine turn 'Plainly the Christian will 'glory even in the flesh, but only when it has endured,―torn 'for Christ's sake; that the spirit may be crowned in it, not 'that it may draw the eyes and sighs of youth after it,'-but preserves it more gracefully, 'If we are to glory in the flesh it 'must plainly be then, when it is tormented in the confession. 'of the Name, when woman proves stronger than torturing 'man, when she suffers fires or crosses or sword or wild beasts 'that she may be crowned.'

The gain and loss of the Master in the disciple's hand are evident; the chief gain was that he became more readable: but Cyprian's merit was not limited to the turn of a phrase or the smoothing of a 'Postremissimus' into an 'Extremi et minimi",' or the inweaving of expressions as beautiful as his 'Law of Innocence".' To Augustine, who in him and Ambrose finds the leaders of Christian eloquence, though he criticizes severely the richness of his earlier writing, this

treatise must have appeared very perfect in style. It furnishes him with illustrations both of the 'grand' or 'moving" style, and of the 'temperate?.'

CHAPTER II.

THE DECIAN PERSECUTION.

I.

The Roman Theory of Persecution.

THE disorder and worldliness which have been described were such as in Cyprian's convictions were past correction from within. Possessed with this idea he was visited by intimations of coming trial which wore a supernatural character1. And it came. The Decian persecution was coextensive with the Empire, and aimed at the suppression of Christianity by the removal of its leaders. It was not perceived that it had passed the stage in which it depended on individuals.

But before we enter on this scene of our history, it may be well to lay down the principles upon which harmless people were so cruelly handled on account of their opinions by the law-loving and tolerant state of Rome. The question admits of a less simple answer from the fact that the Christian legists of the Theodosian and Justinian codes have expunged the obsolete statutes. If the chapter of Ulpian 'Of the proconsul's office,' which recited the provisions applicable to Christians in the middle of the 3rd century, were extant we should have the answer to our hand. We can however frame one correctly though circuitously.

2

(1). In the first place the Julian Law of Treason included among state offences and in very general terms the holding

1 On the visions of Cyprian and others see infra.

2 Lactant. Div. Instit. v. II.