Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
pe
JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF Gop &c. - 125
the Son of God, who took flesh for our salvation... and His nati-
vity of the virgin, His resurrection from the dead, His corporal
Ascension into heaven; and in His coming again from Heaven in the |
elory of the Father in order to unite all under Himself, their Head.
St. Irenaeus died as martyr in the year 202.
Victor (290), a man of a noble mind and well instructed in the
christian religion, was conducted before the tribunal of the cruel em-
peror Maximian; and when he firmly refused to sacrifice to the idols and
fearlessly acknowledged, Jesus as true God; he was by the emperor’s
command dragged through the city and treated shamefully by the
infuriated people. Lacerated and his whole body covered with wounds, |
he was led before the prefect, who tried both by threats and flatteries :
to make him deny Christ and adore idols. But Victor, imbued with
the holy Ghost, addressed the prefect and the assembled people, after
having shown the emptiness of idolatry in these words: “With what
love and respect ought we not to love Him, who, when we were His
enemies, loved us before, who unveiled to us the falschoods of the |
gods, and who has, in order to save us, assumed our humanity, who |
being the richest became the poorest, and by whose undeserved |
death our eternal merited doom was averted: — O what wealth
comprises that poverty, so much reviled by the pagans, which
by a simple hint filled whole ships with fishes and satiated 5000
men with five loaves of bread! How vigorous is that weakness, which
healed. the infirmities of his own! What life is contained in ‘that
death, by which so many dead have been resuscitated! .-. . Oh that
you could comprehend, how great He is, whom the whole world
obeys, how beautiful He is, who deserves our entire love, in whom
all is amiable, whose love receives all and from whose judgment none
escapes? — What is holier than His life; more true than His doctrine?
more consoling than His promises, more terrible than His threats?
What is surer than His protection, more lovely than His friendship?
What greater than His glory?” — Scarcely the saint had uttered
these words, when he was ordered to be placed under a mill-stone to
be crushed. But the mill fell to pieces and when St. Victor still
showed signs of life: then he was beheaded.*)
At the time of the ninth consulate of Diocletian on the 12th day
of August (301) it happened that the deacon Euplus exclaimed in a
*) Ruinart: Acts of the martyrs.