assent to our requests in a case that is so easy, you shall not be allowed to remain in our kingdom." Accordingly Mellitus was expelled, and came into Kent, intending to discuss with Laurence and Justus, his brother bishops, as to what ought to be done. And they determined, by their joint counsel, that it would be better for them all to return to their own country, and serve God with free minds, than to remain among rebels to the faith without doing any good. Accordingly, Mellitus and Justus, in the first place, departed into Gaul, intending there to await the result of the business. But not long afterwards, the king, who had expelled the messengers of truth, went forth to battle against the people of the Gewisei, and were all, in accordance with the divine judgment, slain with their whole armies. But when Laurence, the archbishop, was about to follow Mellitus and Justus, and to abandon Britain, the night before his departure he ordered a bed to be prepared for him in the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. And when, after having poured forth many prayers and tears to God for the condition of the church, he had laid down his limbs to rest there, and had fallen asleep, there appeared to him the most blessed prince of the apostles, and scourged him for a long period in the secret silence of the night with a severe whip, and asked him, with apostolical severity, why he was forsaking the flock which he himself had committed to him, or to what shepherd, now that he himself was fleeing, he was entrusting the sheep of Christ who were placed in the midst of wolves ? " Are you," said the vision, " forgetful of my example, who, for the little ones of Christ whom he recommended to me as a proof of his affection for me, endured chains, and stripes, and imprisonment, and affliction, and at last, even the death of the cross at the hands of infidels, in order to be hereafter crowned with Christ ?" So Laurence, the servant of Christ, being animated by the scourging and simultaneous exhortation of the blessed Apostle, came at early dawn to the king, and lifting up his garments, showed him with what severe stripes he had been scourged. And the king marvelled greatly, and asked who in his kingdom had dared to inflict such blows on so excellent a man. At length, when he heard that it was for the sake of his safety that the bishop had suffered such wounds and torments from the Apostle of Christ, he* feared greatly, and having anathematized all idola