Section 386
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 355 he spoke, behold his firmness, and before this, the courage and the energy of this youth, who gave evidence of a zeal for piety and a spirit more than human? For when a second excite ment was raised against us by Maximinus, in the third year of the persecution, and the edicts of the tyrant, to this effect were first issued, that all persons every where should publicly offer sacrifices, and that the rulers of the cities should see to this with all care and diligence, when the heralds also were proclaiming throughout all Cesarea, that men women and children should come to the temples of the idols, at the command of the gover nor ; and moreover, the military tribunes were calling upon each one by name, from a list, and the heathen were rushing in an immense crowd from every quarter, this youth fearlessly and with out imparting his purpose to any, stealing away from us who dwelt in the same house, and unobserved by the military band around the governor, approached Urbanus who happened then to be making libations. Fearlessly seizing his right hand, he sud denly interrupted him in the act of sacrificing. Then he coun selled and exported him in a solemn and serious tone to abandon his error, saying it was not right that we should desert the one only and true God, to sacrifice to idols and demons. This was done by the youth, as is very probable, under the impulse of a divine power, which by this deed gave a kind of audible testi mony, that the Christians, those to wit that were really such, were so far from abandoning the religion which they had once embraced, that they wrere not only superior to all the threatened dangers, and the punishments consequent on these ; but over and above this, acted with still greater freedom, and declared them selves with a noble and fearless utterance, and were it possible that their persecutors could be delivered from their ignorance, even exhorted them to acknowledge the one only and true God. After this, he of whom we are now speaking, as might be ex pected in the case of an act so daring, was immediately seized and torn by the soldiers like ravenous beasts, and after suffering most heroically innumerable stripes on his whole body, was cast into prison until further orders. There, being stretched by the tormentor with both feet a night and day, on the rack, he was