CHAPTER LIX

MAXIMIN, BLINDED BY MEANS OF HIS DISEASE, ISSUES AN ORDINANCE IN FAVOUR OF THE CHRISTIANS

AND still the stroke of God continued heavy upon him, so that his eyes protruded and fell from their sockets, leaving him quite blind: and thus he suffered, by a most righteous retribution, the very same punishment which he had been the first to devise for the martyrs of God. At length, however (for he survived even these sufferings), he too implored pardon of the God of the Christians, and confessed his impious opposition of the will of heaven: he too recanted, as the former persecutor had done; and by laws and ordinances explicitly acknowledged his error in worshipping those whom he had accounted gods, declaring that he now knew, by positive experience, that the God of the Christians was the only true God. These were facts which Licinius had not merely received on the testimony of others, but of which he had himself had personal knowledge: and yet, as though his understanding had been obscured by some dark cloud of error, he resolved to persist in the same evil course.