destruction of the Church of God the arms of physical violence, but to these he now added others of a different nature. Like a skilful tactician, he essayed at this juncture a two-fold assault upon religion. From without, he would attack the Church of God by physical violence, and from within, by the arms of perverted reason. The latter were adroitly employed and with much damaging effect by the heretical sectaries and especially by the Arian heretics who then disturbed the peace of the world. Aided by the secular power these infatuated innovators dealt such a blow to the Church of the Redeeer that for the moment, in the opinion of many, she seemed to be in danger of perishing. Never before did she pass through so terrible an ordeal, nor has she since. The whole world then seemed to be under the dominion of error. Every-where violence and heresy walked hand in hand through the empire. Gregory of Cappadocia, unlawfully taking possession of the See of Alexandria, at the head of an insolent rabble armed with all manner of weapons, is an instance of this. The same unhappy prelate scouring the provinces at the head of his armed supporters, perpetrating wherever he went the most shameful excesses, banishing, torturing and slaying, as his passions suggested, is a further evidence of the two-fold violence employed by the enemy of mankind at this juncture against the Kingdom of God.

Nor were these the only enemies that religion had to contend with at that period. Another now appeared on the scene, and in some sense a more dangerous and powerful one than any that had been encountered in the past. That was the apostate emperor Julian. The failure of physical violence as a means of destroying the Church of God, and the equally abortive efforts of so many heretical sectaries who till then had attempted, but in vain, to compass the same, taught Julian that if religion were to be overthrown it

should be by more powerful arms than those of violence and heresy. Hence the means he employed. Ignorance and degradation, he was of opinion, would do what violence and heresy had been unable to accomplish. Accordingly, he closed all the educational establishments of the empire. against the Christian youth, debarring them at the same time from all posts of honor and emolument in the empire. A part of the project consisted in the intention to throw open the schools and academies at a subsequent date to the ignorant youth, when it was thought that the acknowledg-" ed prestige and preeminence of the pagan professors would be more than sufficient to cause their doctrinal systems to be accepted. This was a deep, diabolical scheme, and the quarter whence it emanated could not for a moment be doubted. It was the same as depriving one's adversary of his arms and then trying to slay him. But did Julian succeed? Far from it. Like so many others who had attempted the impossible he too found that he had essayed what was entirely beyond his strength. With his dying lips, on the battle-field of Persia, he acknowledged this, and regrettingly declared that Christianity had conquered. It was now closing the end of the fourth century and already the Church had triumphed over a dozen powerful rulers and a far greater number of heretical assailants. By the blood and endurance of her faithful children she conquered the former, and by the ability, learning and wisdom of her doctors she overcame the latter. Her career in subsequent ages has been of a no less troubled and triumphant character. It could not be other, for her destiny has been to suffer, to be contradicted and to triumph.

From the death of Julian, A. D. 364,till the fall of Arianism in the middle of the seventh century, upon the conversion of the Goths to the Catholic faith, the Church of God was sorely afflicted in divers ways. Upon the break up of the

Roman Empire during the reigns of the Arian Emperor Valens, vast Scythian hordes under the distinctive appellations of Huns, Goths and Vandals poured down from their northern homes upon the fairest provinces of the nation, carrying fire and sword wherever they went. The firstnamed under Attila surnamed the Scourge of God, after successively overrunning the principal countries of Europe, laying in ruins the most flourishing cities of the empire, appeared in fine before the walls of Rome and were dissuaded from their purpose of destroying the proud capital of the empire only by the special interposition of Heaven. How many Christian churches were given to the flames and how many of the faithful died by the sword during the progress of this conquering barbarian, it would be impossible to say.

To the Huns succeeded the Goths, the Visigoths, the Lombards and the Vandals. As barbarians and heretics, these rude, untutored, savage invaders proved themselves the deadliest enemies both of the empire and religion. Under the last named, during the reign of Genseric and Huneric, the Church suffered the direst afflictions in Africa. The worst days of the Roman pagan persecutors were again revived. Catholicism was proscribed; the Churches were closed; the clergy banished and the people tortured and slain.

At the same time in the ancient kingdom of Armenia the Church was in like manner called upon to give evidence to her faith. Under the Persian monarch Hazuguerd every effort was made to destroy the faith in that land and when open violence was found insufficient to make the Catholics renounce their faith and to worship the sun, recourse was had to the tactics of Julian, and the weapons of heresy, in the shape of Nestorianism, were artfully employed against them. From another quarter too,

holy Church was called upon at that epoch to do battle against error and in defence of divine truth. A succession of tyrannical, heretical emperors on the throne of Constantinople added not a little to her troubles for centuries. Amongst these the names of the Isaurian and Copronimus will ever occupy dishonored places. Thus for fifteen centuries the Church was constantly in conflict with the world and the powers of darkness. To save the faith and discharge her obligations she had to make the most heroic efforts and the noblest sacrifices. Millions of the lives of her children as we shall see later on, was the price she had to pay for preserving to posterity the rich inheritance of the faith of Christ, and we, the children of the same mother, looking back upon the past and remembering all that our holy Church has thus done and suffered for the maintenance of divine truth and the preservation of virtue, cannot but feel profoundly moved and correspondingly rejoiced at her labors and her triumphs.

The Church's career from the beginning of the sixteenth century down to the present has been no less marked by opposition and contradiction. Enlightenment and civilization, as might be expected, have not lessened, but if possible increased the number and variety of her enemies. Still the power of Cæsar, still the weapons of perverted reason are employed against her. In vain she appeals to the past, in vain she points to the history of eighteen hundred years to show the inutility of seeking to effect her destruction. The enemies of religion blinded by passion and urged on by their own evil desires refuse to listen to reason. Thus persecution has continued and thus it shall

continue till the end.

The great defection from the faith under the leadership of the apostate Augustinian was the keynote to a series of intolerant persecutions which have lasted even unto our

own days, and which in many particulars, the circumstances of the age and of the people being duly taken into account, have exceeded by far every thing that preceded them whether under the Goths, the Vandals or pagan Roman emperors. The chief theatre of the Church's conflict with the powers of darkness in this modern warfare has been Great Britain and Ireland, but especially Ireland. In the latter were perpetrated excesses and enacted coldblooded scenes of atrocity which had better been blotted entirely from the pages of history, but which as a faithful expositor of the Church's afflictions it will be our duty to record in the body of this work. Nothing in the history of the past, except perhaps the sufferings of the Japanese Christians, can at all equal the sufferings of the Irish. In no other country, save the one indicated, has the number of the confessors and martyrs reached comparatively so considerable a figure, or where the sufferings of the people have been protracted through so lengthened a period. In other nations indeed the victims of persecution have been counted by millions, and their sufferings have been alarmingly great; but in Ireland and Ireland alone the contest has been unremittingly continued through centuries, and every conceivable agency brought into use for the destruction of religion. The endurance and sufferings of that race accordingly entitle the Irish to a prominent place in the grand army of martyrs that in every clime and from every people and in every age have testified at the cost of their lives to the faith of Christ.

A combination of circumstances served to make the persecution of the Irish one of unparalleled magnitude. These were difference of race, conquest and heresy. Alien in blood, sentiment and religion, every element that could add bitterness and ferocity to the contest was found combined in the minds of the persecutors. Even after the