mediate effect upon Claudia, further than exciting her wonder and curiosity; but the subject was as often resumed as the excessive timidity of Pomponia would allow; until at length the lovely Briton became a sincere convert to Christianity.

VOL. III.

D

CHAPTER V.

"Ce n'est pas là, vous le savez, la doctrine de St. Paul ni celle qu'on professe dans notre eglise.

NOUVELLE HELOISE.

CLAUDIA had been so amiable and so beneficent before her conversion, that the change wrought in her heart scarcely produced any visible change in her conduct and outward demeanour; but the same actions were now performed. from a higher motive. The deeds of benevolence, which, before, seemed to emanate from a kind of instinctive impulse, proceeded, now, from principle: and that unfailing stream of kindly affections, which endeared her to all who knew her, and which flowed spontaneously from a happily constituted disposition, flowed on as usual, but derived its source from a higher and purer spring, where it was less liable to be rendered turbid by human frailties, or intermittent by the parching influence of human ingratitude. These kindly affections,

too, displayed themselves in a different, as well as more extensive manner; and her wish to civilize, became the desire to christianize, her beloved country.

In consequence of her having renounced paganism, she was introduced to some of the principal christians at Rome, and among the rest to St. Paul, who was then resident there, and to his influential friend Aristobulus. Before these holy fathers of the church, she pleaded the cause of her countrymen, and pressed the claims of the poor Britons upon their attentive ears with such affectionate zeal, that she induced the apostle of the Gentiles to send out the first Roman convert* as a missionary to our island.

Aristobulus was the more willing to undertake this high commission, from the circumstance of his having had an interest in the welfare of our benighted ancestors increased, if not excited, by the narratives which he had

* Aristobulus, who, our chronicles relate, suffered martyrdom on his landing in Britain, is believed to have been the person whose household was greeted by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, and is supposed to have received his conversion on the day of Pentecost, being, it is imagined, one of the Romans, stated by St. Luke to have been present.

heard of their singular superstitions from Pomponia, with whom he lived in intimacy, and who had imbibed from him her first notions of christianity.

Although, however, Claudia's new religion did not produce any very manifest alteration in her outward conduct, it most sensibly affected her feelings and prospects in life. In the early days of the church, when its existence, according to human calculations, could only be maintained by the most exemplary demeanour of its members, the female converts were particularly admonished not to subject themselves to the temptations which must necessarily be the consequence of intermarriage with idolators. It also too often happened, either that domestic peace was sacrificed, and reproach to the sacred cause incurred on that account; or, on the other hand, that the fortitude of the Christian yielded to the persuasions of love or of fear, and a relapse into idolatry ensued. Claudia, had constantly before her a most affecting illustration of the unhappy consequences of a difference of religion between the husband and wife in the case of Pomponia Græcina, which had transformed the one into a judge, and the other into a culprit.

It was to obviate such estrangements and apostasies, that St. Paul had recently given those strict and explicit injunctions to the infant church at Corinth, which we find in his 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols ?*

This subject was the cause of bitter affliction to Claudia; and her mind was cruelly tortured with the struggle between faith and love—the things of Heaven and those of earth! Nor was she at all assisted or solaced by the timid counsels of Pomponia, to whom she communicated her uneasiness, and who vainly advised her notto rack her bosom with unnecessary scruples. "It might be," she told her, that " Pudens was, or would become, a Christian before marriage—or her influence would undoubtedly make him one afterwards; and there could be no real harm," she assured her, " provided she felt * Chap. 6. v. 14.