to shut themselves up in their own houses; they were subsequently seized and thrown into prison; and afterwards their slaves were put to the torture, and compelled to accuse them of crimes of which they were innocent.  Pothinus, the pastor of Lyons, now upwards of ninety years of age, was brought before the governor, and so roughly handled by the populace that he died two days after he was thrown into confinement.  The other prisoners were plied with hunger and thirst, and then put to death with wanton and studied cruelty.  Two of the sufferers, Blandina, a female, and Ponticus, a lad of fifteen, displayed singular calmness and intrepidity.  For several days they were obliged to witness the tortures inflicted on their fellow-disciples, that they might, if possible, be intimidated by the appalling spectacle.  After passing through this ordeal, the torture was applied to themselves.  Ponticus soon sunk under his sufferings; but Blandina still survived.  When she had sustained the agony of the heated iron chair, she was put into a net and thrown to a wild bull that she might be trampled and torn by him; and she continued to breathe long after she had been sadly mangled by the infuriated animal.  While subjected to these terrible inflictions, she exhibited the utmost patience; no boasts escaped her lips; no murmurs were uttered by her; and even in the paroxysms of her anguish she was seen to be full of faith and courage.  But such touching exhibitions of the spirit of the gospel failed to repress the fury of the excited populace.  Their hatred of the gospel was so intense that they resolved to deprive the disciples who survived this reign of terror of the melancholy satisfaction of paying the last tribute of respect to the remains of their martyred brethren.  They, accordingly, burned the dead bodies, and then cast the ashes into the Rhone.  “Now,” said they, “we will see whether they will rise again, and whether God can help them, and deliver them out of our hands.” [296:1]

Under the brutal and bloody Commodus, the son and heir of Marcus Aurelius, the Christians had some repose.  Marcia, his favourite concubine, was a member of the Church; [296:2] and her influence was successfully exerted in protecting her co-religionists.  But the penal statutes were still in force, and they were not everywhere permitted to remain a dead letter.  In this reign [296:3] we meet with some of the earliest indications of that zeal for martyrdom which was properly the spawn of the fanaticism of the Montanists.  In a certain district of Asia, a multitude of persons, actuated by this absurd passion, presented themselves in a body before the proconsul Arrius Antoninus; and proclaimed themselves Christians.  The sight of such a crowd of victims appalled the magistrate; and, after passing judgment on a few, he is said to have driven the remainder from his tribunal, exclaiming—­ “Miserable men, if you wish to kill yourselves, you have ropes or precipices.”