African persecution is the history of all persecutions, as confest
again and again by the old fathers, as proved by the analogies of
later times. The sins of the Church draw down punishment, by making
her enemies confound her doctrine and her practice. But in return,
the punishment of the Church purifies her, and brings out her
nobleness afresh, as the snake casts his skin in pain, and comes out
young and fair once more; and in every dark hour of the Church, there
flashes out some bright form of human heroism, to be a beacon and a
comfort to all future time. Victor, for instance, tells the story of
Dionysia, the beautiful widow whom the Vandals tried to torture into
denying the Divinity of our Lord.--How when they saw that she was
bolder and fairer than all the other matrons, they seized her, and
went to strip her: and she cried to them, 'Qualiter libet occidite:
verecunda tamen membra nolite nudare,' but in vain. They hung her up
by the hands, and scourged her till streams of blood ran down every
limb. Her only son, a delicate boy, stood by trembling, knowing that
his turn would come next; and she saw it, and called to him in the
midst of her shame and agony. 'He had been baptized into the name of
the Blessed Trinity; let him die in that name, and not lose the
wedding-garment. Let him fear the pain that never ends, and cling to
the life that endures for ever.' The boy took heart, and when his
turn came, died under the torture; and Dionysia took up the little
corpse, and buried it in her own house; and worshipped upon her boy's
grave to her dying day.

Yes. God had his own left, even among those fallen Africans of
Carthage.

But neither there, nor in Spain, could the Vandals cure the evil.
'Now-a-days,' says Salvian, 'there are no profligates among the