if he had been a Consubstantialist, and had destroyed the Arians. His sufferings, supposing them to be divine judgments, prove nothing at all as to the controversy but only this, that God hates tyranny and cruelty, the wickedness of which is a clear and uncontested point.

Dum diris cruciatibus Ecclesiam Africanam lacerat Hunnericus, sensit non mortalibus, sed Christo injuriam se fecisse, elementis ipsis primum ad pœnas impio irrogandas festinantibus. Pluvia negatâ, remansit lurida terra facies: nullis arbores frondibus, nullis segetibus tellus cooperiebatur. Lues gravem animalibus et hominibus cladem immittebat. Juvenum, senum, adolescentium, adolescentularum, puerorum agmina simul et funera passim diffundebantur. Catervatim Carthaginem confluebant animata cadavera. Miseros ea urbe pelli Rex e vestigio jubet, ne contagio deficientium commune pararet etiam exercitui ejus sepulchrum. Neque multo post regio corpori horrenda pœna irrogatur, quam Victoris verbis referemus: Tenuit sceleratissimus Hunnericus dominationem regni, annis septem, mensibus decem, meritorum suorum mortem consummans. Nam putrefactum et ebulliens vermibus non corpus, sed partes corporis ejus videntur esse sepulta. Multa de suo, vel ex falso rumore petita, tragica Hunnerici morti addidit Gregorius Turonensis: Hunnericus post tantum facinus arreptus a Dæmone, qui diu de Sanctorum sanguine pastus erat, propriis se morsibus laniabat. In quo etiam cruciatu vitam indignam justa morte finivit.

Dirum magni regis supplicium ubique locorum clamat, Discite justitiam moniti, nec temnite Christum. S. Basnage Ann. iii, p. 570.

There

There is nothing improbable in Victor's account; but yet he is a writer who deals so much in the marvellous, that there is no trusting him. More credit ought to be given to the excellent Thuanus, who thus represents the barbarities and the death of some modern persecutors.

In the reign of Francis the first, the remainders of the Vaudois were massacred by the French Catholics with the utmost brutality. "The baron D'Oppede, "who conducted the affair, was called to account for

it, and was screened and protected by some great men ; "but not long after, this inhuman wretch was seized "with racking pains in his bowels, and died in most mi"serable anguish, and God who suffered him to escape "the punishment which his judges ought to have in*flicted upon him, punished him himself in a severer

A Roman monk, called John, signalized himself at that time in persecuting these poor innocent people. "He invented a new kind of torment; he put their

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legs into boots full of boiling tallow, and then laughing at them, he asked them, if they were not "well equipped for their journey.—Having heard that the parliament of Aix, by orders from the king, had condemned him, he fled to Avignon, where being screened from men, and from human courts "of justice, he could not escape divine vengeance, "He was stripped of all his effects by his domestics, "and reduced to a state of beggary: his body was "covered all over with loathsome ulcers, and he lived long in this horrible condition, often wishing for "death, which came not till he had endured dreadful torments." See Le Clerc, Bibl. Ch. xxvii. 1.

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Philip

Mas

the

Philip de Comines, who wrote the history of Lewis the Eleventh of France, could not avoid observing that the divine vengeance was conspicuous in returning to this most wicked prince the evil which he had inflicted upon others, and in making his punishment suitable to his offences. Many memorable and striking instances of this kind might be produced from modern historians.

In the scriptures there are examples of saints as well as of sinners, who suffered in this life according to the law of retaliation. St Paul was consenting to the stoning of Stephen, and though God forgave him, yet he permitted him to be used by the Jews, as he and the Jews had used Stephen and other Christians, and he was banished, imprisoned, beaten, scourged, and three times stoned.

It is observable that from the beginning of the reign of Tiberius down to Constantine, the Romans, even omitting the colleagues of the emperors, and those usurpers who set themselves up against them, had no less than thirty-seven emperors, whose reigns, one with another, amount only to seven years for each. Take the same space of time in the English History from William the conqueror, and you have no more than eleven kings and their reigns will be of twenty-seven years, one with another.

This very quick succession of the Roman emperors for the first three centuries, the violent and untimely death by which many of them perished, the empire often falling into the hands of persons not related to their predecessors, but their enemies and rivals, and not disposed to adopt their private views and animosities, was of singular advantage to Christianity, and made the persecutions less violent and less lasting than

they

they would else have been, and may very reasonably be looked upon as providential.

Let us now see what the prophets have delivered concerning these events,

The hundred and tenth Psalm is a direct and literal prophecy of Christ :

1. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

2. The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion rule thou in the midst of thine enemies,

3. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

4. The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek. 5. The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.

6. He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies: he shall wound the heads over many countries.

7. He shall drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall he lift up his head.

The second psalm is of the same kind :

1. Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take council together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

3. Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

4. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

5. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and ver then in his sore displeasure.

6. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. 7. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.

8. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

10. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

11. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little: blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

This psalm seems in a lower sense applicable to David; but it suits much better with the Messias, especially when compared with the hundred and tenth, which is a key to it, and the apostles apply it to Christ.

Νο person ever lived before David, and none ever yet arose after him, to whom the cxth Psalm could be applied, besides Jesus Christ.

David was a king, he was a great and victorious king, he was a king by divine election and appointment, he was a prophet, he was called a man after God's own heart, not because he was a better man than many of his subjects, for he was guilty of several faults, but because, as a king, he kept up the true religion, and made the laws of God to be observed in his dominions, and never fell into idolatry; and upon all these accounts he could have no superior upon earth, none who could be his lord. A great king, a promised Messias was to arise; but as he was to be the son of David, he

must