as to pronounce them novel.  “In his time,” says he indignantly, “bishops, presbyters, and deacons, though they had been twice or three times married, began to be recognised as God’s ministers; and if any one of the clergy married, it was determined that such a person should remain among the clergy, as not having sinned.” [353:1] We cannot tell how many of the ancient bishops of the great city were husbands; [353:2] we have certainly no distinct evidence that even Callistus took to himself a wife; but we have the clearest proof that the primitive Church of Rome did not impose celibacy on her ministers; and, in support of this fact, we can produce the unimpeachable testimony of her own catacombs.  There is, for instance, a monument “To Basilus the Presbyter, and Felicitas his wife;” and, on another tombstone, erected about A.D. 472, or only four years before the fall of the Western Empire, there is the following singular record—­“Petronia, a deacon’s wife, the type of modesty.  In this place I lay my bones:  spare your tears, dear husband and daughters, and believe that it is forbidden to weep for one who lives in God.” [353:3] “Here,” says another epitaph, “Susanna, the happy daughter of the late Presbyter Gabinus, lies in peace along with her father.” [353:4] In the Lapidarian Gallery of the papal palace, the curious visitor may still read other epitaphs of the married ministers of Rome.

Though the gospel continued to make great progress in the metropolis, there was perhaps no city of the Empire in which it encountered, from the very first, such steady and powerful opposition.  The Sovereign, being himself the Supreme Pontiff of Paganism, might be expected to resent, as a personal indignity, any attempt to weaken its influence; and the other great functionaries of idolatry, who all resided in the capital, were of course bound by the ties of office to resist the advancement of Christianity.  The old aristocracy disliked everything in the shape of religious innovation, for they believed that the glory of their country was inseparably connected with an adherence to the worship of the gods of their ancestors.  Thus it was that the intolerance of the state was always felt with peculiar severity at the seat of government.  Exactly in the middle of the third century a persecution of unusual violence burst upon the Roman Church.  Fabian, whose appointment to the bishopric took place, as already related, under such extraordinary circumstances, soon fell a victim to the storm.  After his martyrdom, the whole community over which he presided seems to have been paralysed with terror; and sixteen months passed away before any successor was elected; for Decius, the tyrant who now ruled the Roman world, had proclaimed, his determination rather to suffer a competitor for his throne than a bishop for his chief city. [354:1] A veritable rival was quickly forthcoming to prove the falsehood of his gasconade; for when Julius Valens appeared to dispute his title to the Empire, Decius