Section 312
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. and Chaeremon, being arraigned, ^Emilianus, the prefect, said : I have even personally reasoned with you on the clemency of our sovereigns, which you have also experienced. For they have given you the chance of saving yourselves, if you are dis posed to turn to the course of nature, and worship the gods that have preserved them in their government, and to forget those practices which are so unnatural (ruv Ttaga tyvGw). What, then, say ye to these things 1 For neither do I expect that you will be ungrateful for their kindness, since they would dispose you to a better cause.' Dionysius answered, ' All the gods are not worshipped by all, but each party worships those whom they think to be gods. We, therefore, worship the one God and Cre ator of all things, and the very same that has committed the government to their most excellent and sacred majesties, Vale rian and Gallienus. Him we worship and adore, and to him we incessantly pray that their reign may continue firm and un shaken.' Jimilianus, the prefect, again replied : ' But who prevents you from worshipping this one God, if he is a god, to gether with those that are the natural gods ? For you are com manded to worship the gods, and those gods which all know to be such.' Dionysius answered : We worship no other one/ ^Emilianus, the prefect, said, ' I perceive that you are at the same time ungrateful, and insensible to the clemency of our Cesars. Therefore you shall not remain in this city, but you shall be sent to the parts of Lybia, to a place called Cephro. For this place I have selected according to the orders of our Cesars. But neither you, nor any others, shall in any wise be permitted, either to hold conventions, or to enter what you call your ceme teries.* But if any one appear not to have gone to the place The Christians called their burial places cemeteries, xo.^Tvjp,, dormitories, be cause death, in the light of the gospel, is a sleep. These dormitories, as we here see, were frequented by the Christians, as peculiarly calculated to cherish religious sentiments, particularly if these places had been the depositories of martyred con fessors. It was here, too, where, in the firm faith that death is but a sleep, they could hold a kind of communion with departed virtue, and find their own strength ened by it. Well may Christianity be pronounced the only true philosophy, when she arrays our greatest terrors in such a light, 2N