CHAPTER XXVII

HOW THE PERSECUTION BECAME THE OCCASION OF CALAMITY TO THE AGGRESSORS

“FROM the causes I have described, grievous wars arose, and destructive devastations. Hence followed a scarcity of the common necessaries of life, and a crowd of consequent miseries: hence, too, the authors of these impieties have either terminated the extremity of suffering by a disastrous death, or have dragged out an ignominious existence, and confessed it to be worse than death itself, thus receiving as it were a measure of punishment proportioned to the heinousness of their crimes. For each experienced a degree of calamity according to the blind fury with which he had been led to combat, and (as he thought) defeat the Divine will: so that they not only felt the pressure of the ills which could reach them in this present life, but were tormented also by a most lively apprehension of punishment in a future world.