Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/111

98 in the Revenue Cutter, and is borne seaward or shoreward. Conquer your prejudices! No higher law! On the brass cannon you could read,.

Mr. Burns was seized on that day which the Christian church has consecrated to two of the martyrs. Saints Donatian and Bogatian. They seem to have been put to death by Rictius Varus, the Commissioner of Belgic and Celtic Gaul. They suffered death at Nantes. They were impeached for professing themselves Christians. Simple death was not torment enough for being a Christian in the year 287. They were put to the rack first. Their bodies, still held in great veneration, now sleep their dusty slumber in the great cathedral of the town. The antiquarian traveller wonders at the statues of those two martyrs still standing at the comer of the Money-Changers' Street, and telling the tale of times when the Christians only suffered persecution. St. Rogatian's day was not an unfitting time not Puritanic Boston to steal a man!

The day on which Mr. Burns was sent from Boston into Alexandrian bondage is still more marked in the Christian church. It is consecrated to a noble army of martyrs who tasted death at Vienna, in Gaul,—now Vienne, in the south of France—in the year 178 after Christ. I shall never forget the little town, once famous and eminent, where the dreadful event took place. A letter written, it is said, by St. Irenaeus himself details the saddening history. It begins, "We the Servants of Christ [Mr. Everett might translate it ' Slaves ', dwelling at Vienna and Lyons in Gaul to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia who have the same faith and hope with us. Peace, and Grace, and Glory from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ." The whole letter is a most touching memorial of the faithful piety of the Christians in days when it cost life to be religious. Anybody may read what remains of it in Eusebius. Here is the story in short:—

A law was passed forbidding Christians to be put of their own houses "in any place whatsoever."' The most cruel punishments were denounced against all persons who professed the Christian religion.

The Governor, who was also a commissioner appointed for persecuting and murdering the Christians, had the most prominent members of the Church arrested and