the brethren had assembled in the church for the purpose of choosing their future bishop, and when the names of many worthy and distinguished men had suggested themselves to the consideration of the multitude, no one so much as thought of Fabian who was then present.  They relate, however, that a dove gliding down from the roof, straightway settled on his head, as when the Holy Spirit, like a dove, rested upon the head of our Saviour.  On this, the whole people, as if animated by one divine impulse, with great eagerness, and with the utmost unanimity, exclaimed that he was worthy; and, taking hold of him, placed him forthwith on the bishop’s chair.” [349:2]

Some time after the resurrection of the statue of Hippolytus, another revelation was made in the neighbourhood of Rome which has thrown much light upon its early ecclesiastical history.  In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the unusual appearance of some apertures in the ground, not far from the Papal capital, awakened curiosity, and led to the discovery of dark subterranean passages of immense extent filled with monuments and inscriptions.  These dismal regions, after having been shut up for about eight hundred years, were then again re-opened and re-explored.

The soil for miles around Rome is undermined, and the long labyrinths thus created are called catacombs. [350:1] The galleries are often found in stories two or three deep, communicating with each other by stairs; and it has been thought that formerly some of them were partially lighted from above.  They were originally gravel-pits or stone-quarries, and were commenced long before the reign of Augustus. [350:2] The enlargement of the city, and the growing demand for building materials, led then to new and most extensive excavations.  In the preparation of these vast caverns, we may trace the presiding care of Providence.  As America, discovered a few years before the Reformation, furnished a place of refuge to the Protestants who fled from ecclesiastical intolerance, so the catacombs, re-opened shortly before the birth of our Lord, supplied shelter to the Christians in Rome during the frequent proscriptions of the second and third centuries.  When the gospel was first propagated in the imperial city, its adherents belonged chiefly to the lower classes; and, for reasons of which it is now impossible to speak with certainty, [350:3] it seems to have been soon very generally embraced by the quarrymen and sand-diggers. [350:4] Thus it was that when persecution raged in the capital, the Christian felt himself comparatively safe in the catacombs.  The parties in charge of them were his friends; they could give him seasonable intimation of the approach of danger; and among these “dens and caves of the earth,” with countless places of ingress and egress, the officers of government must have attempted in vain to overtake a fugitive.