09. BOOK V, CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III.

Accession of Jovian—General Exultation—His Character—Favours the Interests of the Church—Paganism is at a Discount—Proceedings of the Arians, Donatists, and Novatians—General Toleration—The Standard of the Cross is replaced—Intolerant Proceeding of Magnus rebuked and punished—Athanasius re-appears in Alexandria—Is addressed in an Epistle by Jovian—Who invites him to resume the See of Alexandria—Which is offensive to the Arians—A Deputation wait upon Jovian—Who remains firm—Death of Jovian—Is succeeded by Valentinian—Who associates Valens with him in the Empire—Character of both—Valens ranks among the Orthodox—But is led by Eudoxius, Bishop of Constantinople, to the Side of Arianism—Valentinian is tolerant—Ammianus Marcellinus—Paganism is tolerated—Valens is zealous for Arianism—And persecutes the Orthodox—Prelates are exiled—Barbarities at Antioch—Murder of eighty Ministers—Modestus a Tool of Valens—Rev. H. H. Milman—Savage Ferocity of Valentinian—His Death—Valens again expels the orthodox Prelates from the Churches—Athanasius again flees—The See is filled by Lucius, a Usurper—Death of Procopius—Heroism of numerous Martyrs—Death of Athanasius—Nominates his Successor—Prepares the way for further Persecution—Peter, the orthodox Successor of Athanasius, is imprisoned—And exiled—Euxoius—Tunult in Alexandria—Lucius attacks the Monasteries—Pantonius—Heracides—Persecution of the Monks—Macarius—Lucius installed by the Help of the Sword—Cruelty of Magnus—And of Palladius—Numerous Monks sent to the Mines—The Goths—Athanaric—Fritigern—Sufferings of Sabas—His Character—Intolerant Proceedings of Athanaric—Unflinching Integrity of Sabas—Persecution increases—Sansola, a Fellow Sufferer—Atharides—Sabas is tortured—And relieved by a pagan Woman—Martyrdom of Sabas—Idolatry and Superstition of the Goths—Nicetas—Butter Hatred

* Milner, Hist. of the Church, cent. iv., chap. 4, vol. i., p. 595.

CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTER.

of Athanaric—Numerous Attempts to induce Apostacy—A "noble Army of Martyrs" among the Sufferers of this Period—Valens approaching a Crisis in his Career—Influence of Christianity on the Barbarian of the Age—The Gothic Invasion—Salutary Effects of the Christian Clergy—Basil—Interview of Valens—Efforts of Modestus to shake the Fidelity of the Prelate—Valens succumbs to the Bishop, and presents an Oblation to the Poor—Piety of Terentius—Many Christians murdered amongst the Goths—Eusebius of Samosata—A powerful Adversary of Arianism—His Care of the Church—Machinations of the Arians—An Instance of his Firmness—Council at Antioch—In Disguise he makes the Tour of Syria—Continually frustrates the Schemes of the Arians—Eusebius is banished into Thrace—Perilous Situation of the Messenger—Escapes privately into Exile—Uproar in Samosata—Corresponds with Gregory Nazianzen—And with Basil—Character of Eunomius—Gregory Nyssen—Eunomius is superseded by Lucius—His violent Temper—Evolcius and Antiochus are banished—Paulinus—Defence of Eusebius and Meletius—Peter of Alexandria—Warlke Movements in Thrace—Valens marches against the Goths—He restores the exiled Bishops—Death of Eusebius—His Charity—Progress of the Goths—History of their Movements—Theophilus at the Council of Nice—Ulphilas, Character of—The Goths embrace Christianity—And Arianism—Death of Valens—Succeeded by Gratian—Valentinian the Younger—Theodosius—Murder of Gratian—Ambrose—Rebellion of Maximus—Justina—Ambrose commanded to resign the Churches of Milan—Refuses—And is persecuted by Justina—Valentinian II. dies—Critical Period of Church History—Canons of the Church, part of the civil Law—Priscillian—Persecution and Death of Priscillian—The first Martyr to sectarian Opinions—Theodosius—His Baptism—His intolerant Manifesto—Councils and Emperors govern the Church—Ambrose—Sanguinary Conduct of Theodosius—Bold Conduct of Ambrose—Penitence of the Emperor—Successfully pleads for the Pardon of an Offender—Epiphanius—His Character—His supposed Miracles—Exumenical Council of Constantinople—Maximus—Canons of the Council—Heresies—Theodosius makes a determined Attack on Paganism—Desecration and Destruction of pagan Temples—Marcellus, Bishop of Apamea—Temple of Jupiter—Martyrdom of Marcellus—Olympus—Temple of Serapis destroyed—And the colossal Statue of Serapis—Acacius, Bishop of Berea—Numerous Heresies—Martyrdom of Heretics—Donatists—Theodosius—Edicts of—Veneration for Martyrs—Death of Theodosius—Pelagius—Honorius—Semi-Pelagianism—Origin of Nestorianism—Cessation of the Agape—Doctrines of the Nestorians—Repartces of Sisinius—John Chrysostom—Christianity compromised—Corruption of Manners—Troubles of the Empire—State of the Church—Council of Carthage—Persecution in Persia—Several Prelates deposed—Persecution of a Deaconess—Chrysostom condemned—Character of Innocent—Statue of the Empress—Testimony of Prudentius—Tumult in the Church—Gladiatorial Games prohibited—Death of Chrysostom—Worship of Martyrs—Theodosius the Younger—Pulcheria—Relics of Martyrs—Death of Stilicho—Alaric takes Rome—Vigilantius—Donatists at Carthage—Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria—Martin of Tours—Progress of Superstition—Martin in the Army—First Monastery in France—His Fanaticism—And Miracles imputed to him—Sulpitius—Pagan Rites introduced—Doubtful Character of Proselytes—Credibility of Sulpitus—Examples—Saint-Worship of Paulinus—Jerome—Early Career of—Character of—Bethlehem—Monastic Institutions—Birth Place of Vigilantius—Marcellus Tales—His Principles in Danger—Propagation of Falsehoods—Difficulty of studying Scripture—Vigilantius ordained—Abuse of the fourth Century—Apostolical Authority—Vigilantius at Bethlehem—Cradle—Desecration—Extravagant Notions of Celibacy—Vigilantius in the Cottian Alps—Connexion between him and the Waldeness—Gospel professed in the Cottian Alps—Vigilantius condemns numerous Errors—Perished in the Massacre of Barcelona—Dr. Henderson—Jerome—Theodosian Code established—Definition of Heresy—Laws against

—Term "Inquisitor" first used—Final Effort of Paganism—Character of Leo-Aggrandizement of the Roman See—Private Confession—Generic upon Carthage—Heresy of Eutyches—Councils of Constantinople, Chalcedon, and Ephesus—Vandal Persecution—Martyrdom of Armogastus—Death of Valentinian III.—Numerous Sects—Arians strengthen Rome—Power of the Church—Christianity extends—Edicts against Heresy—Code of Theodosius—Code of Justinian.

AFTER the demise of Julian, the providence of God, to the consummate joy of the Christian world, directed the troops to Jovian, a man of inferior rank, but of talent and integrity, who was elected by the unanimous voice of the army to occupy the vacant throne. The situation of the soldiery, when they thus took upon them to name a Sovereign for the vast empire of which they regarded themselves as the bulwark, was hopelessly gloomy; and the new-made Emperor was obliged to accept a peace which his enemies stigmatized as not less disgraceful to himself than it was ruinous to the state. But whatever were the opinions taken of his conduct by the politicians of the age, the Christians were loud in their expressions of joy at the elevation of a man who had refused, it was said, to accept the diadem from the hands of the soldiers till they had professed themselves ready to renounce the pollutions of Paganism. Nor were they deceived in their hopes. Jovian's earliest attention was directed to the state of the church.* The newly-elected Emperor without hesitation informed his constituents that he was a Christian, and could not hope for divine protection, or the success of their arms, were he to take the command of men trained up in the principles of the late Emperor Julian. The soldiers replied, "You shall command Christians. The oldest of us were trained by Constantine, the next by Constantius; and the reign of Julian has been too short to bind any man among us to his persuasion." On assuming the reins of empire, he immediately wrote to the Governors of the provinces, commanding them to open the churches, and diligently to attend divine worship. He ordered the Nicene canons to be observed; he restored to the Clergy and the churches the gifts, revenues, and privileges which his predecessor had confiscated and abolished; and recalled the Bishops and other exiles from banishment.† Though Christianity alone was publicly to be practised, by an edict which he issued, all had liberty to worship God in whatever way they pleased in their private devotions.‡ On the death of Julian, immediately the temples were everywhere closed; the Priests absconded; the philosophers had quitted the cloak, and resumed their common dress; to so great despair were the Pagaus reduced. Within the church, the orthodox and the Arians were everywhere at variance. Antioch was split into three divisions. The Donatists in Africa exercised a turbulence that required the interference of the Magistrate. The Novatians, chiefly faulty in a narrow bigotry and excess of discipline, had kept up some good understanding with the general church, had joined her in the defence of the faith against Arianism, had endured persecution in common with her, while Arianism triumphed; and some of them at

* Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 179.

† Townsend, Civil and Ecclesiastical History, vol. i., p. 351.

‡ Theod., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 4; Socrat., Hist. Eccles., lib. iii., cap. 21.

ATHANASIUS RETURNS TO ALEXANDRIA.

Martinium in Paphlagonia had cut in pieces several companies of soldiers, who under Constantius had been sent to oblige them to embrace the heretical creed.* So persuaded was Jovian of the importance of general toleration, that he actually permitted Themistius, an illustrious pagan Magistrate, to harangue before him on the propriety of religious freedom, and the rights of conscience, and to thank him for the liberty which he gave his subjects. Jovian replaced in the standard the figure of the Cross, which Julian had taken away. One Magnus, an officer of note, had burned, by his private authority, the church of Berytus in Phœnicia: the Emperor was very near beheading him; but contented himself with obliging him to rebuild the church at his own expense.

As soon as Athanasius heard of the demise of Julian, he speedily appeared in Alexandria, to the joy and gladness of his own congregation. An epistle from Jovian confirmed him in his office. A few sentences from this address will at once testify the approbation with which the Emperor viewed the misused and persecuted Prelate. "As we admire beyond expression the sanctity of your life, in which shine forth the marks of resemblance to the God of the universe, and your zeal for Jesus Christ our Saviour, we take you, venerable Bishop, under our protection. You deserve it by the courage which you have shown in the most painful labours, and your contempt of persecutors, and menacing words. Holding in your hands the helm of faith, which is so dear to you, you cease not to combat for the truth, nor to edify the Christian people, who find in you the perfect model of all virtues. For these reasons we recall you immediately. And we order you to return to teach the doctrine of salvation. Return to the holy churches: feed the people of God." This movement on the part of Jovian was truly obnoxious to the Arian portion of the community, who were determined, if possible, to secure the episcopate for an individual of the name of Lucius, a man destitute of even the appearance of piety. Application was made to the Emperor by a deputation of Arians who waited upon him, and Lucius very modestly acted the part of spokesman. The friends of Athanasius sent deputies on their part to oppose them. Already was it proved that the interference of Constantine, and subsequently of Constantius, in the expulsion of Bishops from certain dioceses, had established an untoward precedent which was followed frequently. A short extract of the conferences may throw some light on the character of Jovian, and on the state of religion at that time. "We beg your power, your majesty, your piety," say the Arians, "to give us audience." "Who and whence are you?" "Sir, we are Christians." "Whence, and of what city?" "Of Alexandria." "What do you desire of me?" "To give us a Bishop." "I have ordered Athanasius to return to his see." "Sir, this man has been banished many years, for crimes of which he has not been cleared." A soldier of the Emperor's guard interposed: "Sir, give yourself the trouble to examine who these people are: they are the remains of George, the villain who desolated Alexandria." At these words

* Milner, Hist. of the Church, cent. iv., chap. 10, vol. i., p. 600.

2 x

Jovian, who was on horseback when they met him, spurred his horse and left them. The Arians were not to be so repulsed: they presented themselves to Jovian a second time. "We have several heads of accusation against Athanasius, which we are able to prove. It is thirty years since he was banished by Constantine and Constantius, of immortal memory." (And in the time of Julian he was an exile.) "The accusations of ten, twenty, thirty years," replied Jovian, "are out of date. I know why he was accused, and how he was banished." A third time Jovian being importuned by the same petitioners, and the deputies of the Athanasians speaking at the same time, the Emperor said, "When all speak together, one cannot understand who is in the right. Choose two persons on both sides: I cannot answer both of you." The Arians begged the Emperor to set over them any person except Athanasius. "I have made inquiries," said he: "he teaches sound doctrine." "It is true, he speaks well; but means ill," answered the Arians. The Emperor replied, "I need no other testimony: if he mean ill, he must give account of that to God: we men hear words; God alone knows the heart." "The Treasurer," said a lawyer, a cynic philosopher, "has taken some houses from me on account of Athanasius." "Is Athanasius responsible for the actions of the Treasurer?" "I have a charge against Athanasius," said another lawyer, named Patalas, a Pagan. "What business," asked the Emperor, "has a Pagan like thee to trouble himself about Christians?" Enraged at the attempt of the Arians to corrupt the eunuchs of the court, he made them to undergo the torture, to discover the length and depth of this intrigue; and threatened to treat his first domestics in the same manner, if they followed similar practices. He established Athanasius in his diocese. The reign of Jovian was short. He was suddenly removed; but not without suspicion of poison. The Christians bewailed him; the Pagans in general spoke well of him: the Arians speedily endeavoured to take advantage of his decease, and the church was once more clothed in sackcloth.*

Valentinian was a man of high rank and character, who had exposed himself to trouble in the time of Julian. He had withdrawn from the army rather than offer even questionable adoration to standards decorated with the symbols of idolatry. He was chosen the successor of Jovian, and immediately associated with himself his brother Valens, to whom he committed the eastern provinces; an imprudent exercise of fraternal affection which was productive of evils Christendom had long and deeply to deplore. Valens, whose mind, it appears, was little qualified for the discussion of abstruse opinions, had hitherto adhered closely to the orthodox faith. By the persuasions of his wife, who had been taught the system by Eudoxius, Bishop of Constantinople, he was induced to examine the doctrines of Arius; and, previously to his setting out for the seat of war in Germany, he received baptism from that Prelate. Valentinian, the Emperor of the West, maintained a calm and uninterrupted toleration, which incurred the reproach of indifference from the Christian

* Milner, History of the Church, vol. 1., p. 605.

GENERAL STATE OF THE CHURCH.

party; but has received the respectful homage of the pagan historian, Ammianus. The immunities and the privileges of the heathen priesthood were confirmed; and the rites of divination were permitted, if performed without malicious intent. In Rome the vestal virgins maintained their sanctity; the altar of Victory, restored by Julian, preserved its place; a military guard protected the temples from insult; but a tolerant as well as prudent provision forbade the employment of Christian soldiers on this service. Valens was zealous above measure in the support of his new creed: he commenced a series of acts of persecution by banishing all the members of the orthodox party from Constantinople; sending several of the most eminent Bishops into distant exile. Among these were Eusebius, of Samosata, a man so beloved by his people, that he was obliged to employ stratagem to save the officers who apprehended him from destruction; Pelagius of Laodices, and Meletius of Antioch. Barses, Bishop of Edessa, was the next victim of intolerance; and his banishment was followed by a general attack on the defenceless inhabitants, who, though spared death, were subjected to evils scarcely less to be dreaded. Antioch and other places suffered in a similar manner; and the barbarities of the day are said to have been crowned by the murder of no less than eighty Christian Ministers, by a single contrivance of Arian fury. These victims to the intolerance of the Emperor had ventured to seek him in his palace at Nicomedia, and present a series of written complaints against the agents of his cruelty. Enraged at their temerity, he sent secret orders to Modestus, the Prefect of Edessa, to apprehend and put them to death. The Magistrate, fearing the consequence of an open execution, condemned them to banishment; but the sailors who navigated the vessel in which they were transported, received directions to set fire to the ship when out at sea, and leave them to their fate. The order was punctually executed, and they perished in the flames.*

Both Emperors allowed perfect freedom to the public ritual of Paganism; and both in the East and the West exercised a relentless persecution against magic and unlawful divination. This operated most effectually against the interests of Paganism. "It was the more fatal," says Mr. Milman, "because it was not openly directed against the religion, but against practices denounced as criminal, and believed to be real, by the general sentiment of mankind, and prosecuted by that fierce animosity which is engendered by fear. Some compassion might be felt for innocent victims, supposed to be unjustly implicated in such charges: the practice of extorting evidence or confession by torture might be revolting to those, especially, who looked back with pride and with envy to the boasted immunity of all Roman citizens from such cruelties; but where strong suspicion of guilt prevailed, the public feeling would ratify the stern sentence of the law against such delinquents; the magician or the witch would pass to execution amid the universal abhorrence. The notorious connexion of any particular religious party with such dreaded and

* Stebbing, Hist. of the Christian Church, 12mo., vol. I., p. 182; Milner, Hist. of the Church, vol. I., p. 609; Socrat., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 16.

2 x 2 abominated proceedings, particularly if proved by the conviction of a considerable majority of the condemned from their ranks, would tend to depress the religion itself."* Julian greatly encouraged these dark and forbidden practices, against which the persecution of Valentinian was constantly directed. But with Valentinian justice degenerated into savage tyranny. The Emperor kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to which the miserable criminals were thrown in his presence, while the unrelenting Monarch listened with ferocious delight to their groans.† One of these animals, as a reward of his faithful service to the state, received his freedom, and was let loose into his native forest. Valentinian did not long wield the sceptre, after he had defeated the Germans, and restored tranquillity to the African provinces: he had also been successful in an expedition against the Quadi, whose territories he had laid waste; and afterwards, when giving an audience to their ambassadors, whilst speaking in a very excited manner, he ruptured a blood-vessel, and expired.

Valens, at the solicitation of Eudoxius, ordered the Bishops who had been deposed in the reign of Constantius, and were afterwards restored, to be expelled from the churches. By virtue of this order Tatian, Governor of Alexandria, attempted to drive Athanasius out of that city. The Prelate had the hearts of his people. Long experience of his integrity and virtue, respect for his talents, and compassion for his sufferings, had secured him this the most reasonable and the most glorious of all empires. The Prefect was so sensible of this, that for some time he durst not proceed to execute his orders. At length he broke one night with an armed force into his church, where he generally lodged, and sought for his person in every place, but in vain. Athanasius, probably warned beforehand of the danger, had retired, and remained for four months concealed in his father's sepulchre. This was the fourth time that he had fled from Alexandria. Valens, however, from the dread he seems to have had of the people, ordered him to be recalled; nor could Lucius, the Arian Bishop of that see, prevail upon him to give Athanasius any more trouble.‡ The rebellion of Procopius planted many thorns in the pillow of the Emperor. It was diligently rumoured abroad, that Procopius had been designated as his successor by the expiring Julian, and the astrologers had predicted the elevation of that individual to the greatest height. The magical ceremony of divination, which was denounced before Valens, was Pagan throughout all its dark and mysterious circumstances; and many fell victims to the fears and vengeance of Valens. Procopius met with a cruel end.§ About this

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii., p. 115.

† The Christians did not escape these legal murders, constantly perpetrated by the orders of Valentinian. In Milan, the place where three obscure victims were buried was called Ad Innocentes. When he had condemned the decurions of three towns to be put to death, in a remonstrance against their execution, it was stated, that they would be worshipped as martyrs by the Christians. (Ammian. Marcell., lib. xxvii., cap. 7.)

‡ Milner, Hist. of the Church, vol. I., p. 608.

§ It is probable that a severe persecution might have ensued at this crisis, had not Procopius commenced a civil war. As he possessed the chief authority at Constantinople, he soon collected a large army, and marched against Valens. The latter quitted Syria, and met Procopius near Nacolis, a city of Phrygia, and captured him alive.

PERSECUTIONS IN ANTIOCH.

time Valens went to Antioch. During his absence Eudoxius died, after having governed the church of Constantinople during the space of eleven years. Demophilus was ordained his successor by the Arian Bishops; but those who followed the Nicene doctrines, believing that the course of events was in their power, elected Evagrius as their Bishop. He had been ordained by Eustathius, who had formerly governed the church at Antioch in Syria, and who, having been recalled from banishment by Jovian, lived in a private manner at Constantinople, and devoted himself to the instruction of those who held his sentiments, exhorting them to perseverance. The Arians were deeply incensed at this ordination, and commenced a violent persecution against those by whom it had been effected. During the Emperor's visit to Antioch, he ejected from the churches of that city and of the neighbouring towns all those who adhered to the Nicene faith: he persecuted them with extreme severity, put many of them to death in a variety of ways, and caused others to be drowned in the river Orontes. Having heard that there was a magnificent church at Edessa, named after the Apostle Thomas, he went to see it. On approaching the edifice, he saw the members of the church assembled for worship without the walls of the city; for they had been deprived of their place of assembly. It is said, that the Emperor was so indignant with the Prefect for permitting these assemblies, that he struck him. Modestus, the Prefect, although he was himself a heretic, secretly warned the people of Edessa not to meet for prayer on the same spot the next day, for he had received orders from the Emperor to punish all who resorted thither; but the people, totally disregarding the threat, assembled, with more than their customary zeal, at the usual place of meeting. Modestus, on being apprized of their proceedings, was undecided as to what measures ought to be adopted, and repaired to the place where they had assembled. A woman, leading a child by the hand, forced her way through the ranks of the army, as if bent upon some affair of importance. Modestus remarked her conduct, ordered her to be stopped, and summoned her into his presence, to inquire the cause of her anxiety. She replied, that she was hastening to the spot where the members of the Catholic church were assembled. "Know you not," replied Modestus, "that the Prefect is on his way thither, for the purpose of condemning to death all who are found upon the spot?" "I have heard so," replied she, "and this is the very reason of my haste; for I am fearful of arriving too late, and thus losing the honour of martyrdom." The Governor having asked her why she took her child with her, she replied, "In order that he may share in the sufferings of the others, and participate in the same reward." Modestus, struck with astonishment at the courage of this woman, went to the through the treachery of Aglionius and Gomoarius, two of his Generals. Valens put them all to a cruel death; and although he had sworn to show favour to the two Generals, he caused them to be sawn asunder. He commanded Procopius to be fastened by the legs to two trees, which had been bent together by the application of a great force; so that, on the sudden removal of that force, when the trees were left to resume their natural position, the victim was torn in twain. (Sozomen., Hist. Eccles., lib. vi, cap. 8.)

Emperor, and, acquainting him with what had occurred, persuaded him to renounce a design which was neither beneficial nor creditable.*

Athanasius departed from this troublesome life in 373, after he had been Bishop forty-six years. On being desired to nominate a successor, he mentioned Peter, an aged saint, and the faithful companion of his labours. This last act of the deceased Prelate prepared the way for further persecution. We are informed by Sozomen, that the Arians having received early intelligence of the death of Athanasius, Euzoius, Bishop of the Arians at Antioch, and Magnus, the Chief Treasurer, lost no time in seizing and imprisoning Peter, whom Athanasius had appointed to succeed him, and they forthwith transferred the government of the church to Lucius. Thence followed a cruel persecution of the faithful in Egypt; for no sooner had Lucius presented himself in Alexandria, and attempted to take possession of the churches, than he met with great opposition from the people, and the Clergy and holy virgins were accused as the originators of the sedition. Some made their escape, as if the city had fallen into the hands of an enemy: others were seized and imprisoned. Some of the prisoners were afterwards dragged from the dungeons to be torn with iron nails, while others were burnt by means of flaming torches. It seemed wonderful how they could possibly survive the tortures to which they were subjected. Banishment, or even death itself, would have been preferable to such sufferings. Peter the Bishop made his escape from prison, and, embarking on board a ship, proceeded to Rome, the Bishop of which church held the same sentiments as himself. Thus the Arians, though comparatively few in number, remained in possession of the churches. At the same time an edict was issued by the Emperor, enacting, that as many of the followers of the Nicene doctrines should be ejected from Alexandria, and the rest of Egypt, as might be directed by Lucius. Euzoius, having thus accomplished his designs, triumphantly returned to Antioch. This did not satisfy the Arian party. Lucius, the Arian Prelate of Alexandria, contemplated a crusade against the monasteries of the country, especially as they were governed by individuals of undoubted sanctity, and strongly opposed to the heresy of Arius. The leaders of these Egyptian ascetics appear to have been two men of the name of Macarius,† and Pantonius and Heraclides, with other disciples of Antony.

* Sozomen., Hist. Eccles., lib. vi., cap. 18.

† MACARIUS, the Elder, was a celebrated hermit of the fourth century, said to be a disciple of Antony, born at Alexandria in 301 of poor parents. He was first a baker, which trade he pursued till the age of thirty; then being baptized, he retired, and led a solitary life. He passed sixty years in a monastery in Mount Sceta, dividing his time between prayer and manual labour. He died about 391. Fifty homilies in Greek have been attributed to him, which were printed in Paris in 1526, with Gregory Thaumaturgus, in folio; and in 2 vols. 8vo. at Leipsic in 1698.

MACARIUS, the Younger, was a famous Monk, a friend of the preceding, and a native of Alexandria, and had near five thousand Monks under his direction. He was persecuted by the Arians, and banished into an island, where he converted almost all the inhabitants by his preaching, and, as some say, by his miracles. He died in 394 or 395. The Rules of Monks, in thirty chapters, are attributed to him; and a discourse by him, on the death of the just, was published by Tollius, in his "Insignia Itinerarii Italici." (Rose, Blog, Dict.)

INTOLERANT PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE FAITHFUL.

Reflecting that the Arians could never succeed in establishing an ascendancy over the Catholic church, unless the Monks could be drawn towards that party, Lucius determined to have recourse to force in order to compel the Monks to embrace his opinion, all gentler measures having been attended with signal failure. But here the machinations of the Emperor were frustrated, inasmuch as the Monks were fully prepared to fall by the sword rather than to apostatize from the Nicene faith. Sozomen, who has a strong predilection for the miraculous, relates, that at the very time the soldiers were about to attack them, a man, whose limbs were withered, and who was unable to stand, was carried to them; and that, when they had anointed him with oil, and commanded him, in the name of Christ whom Lucius persecuted, to arise, and go to his house, he was immediately restored to health and strength. This miraculous cure, if so it were, was intended to manifest the necessity of adopting the sentiments of those whose prayers were heard and answered by the Most High, in opposition to the dogmas of Lucius; but the persecutors of the Monks were not led to repentance by this miracle; on the contrary, they arrested these good men, and conveyed them by night to an island of Egypt, lying in the midst of swamps and marshes. The inhabitants of this place had never heard of the Christian faith, and were devoted to the service of demons; and the locality contained many temples of great antiquity, used for idolatrous purposes. It is also related, that when the Monks landed on the island, the daughter of the Priest, who was possessed of a devil, went to meet them. The girl ran screaming towards them; and the people of the island, astonished at her strange conduct, followed in crowds. When she drew near the ship in which these exiled Ministers were, she flung herself upon the ground, and exclaimed in a loud voice, "Wherefore are you come to us, O servants of the great God; for we have long dwelt in this island without giving trouble to any one? Unknown to men, we have concealed ourselves here, and shut up ourselves within these marshes. If, however, it please you, accept our possessions, and fix your abode here: we will quit the island." Macarius and his companions exorcised the demon, and the girl was restored. Her father and all her house, with the inhabitants of the island, immediately embraced Christianity, and demolished their temple for the purpose of erecting a church. On these occurrences being reported at Alexandria, Lucius was overcome by immoderate grief; and fearing lest he should incur the hatred of his own partisans, and be accused of warring against God and not against man, he sent secret orders for Macarius and his companions to be re-conveyed to their own dwellings in the wilderness. About the same period Didymus, the philosopher, and several other illustrious men, acquired great renown. Struck by their virtue, and by that of the Monks, the people followed their doctrines, and opposed those of the partisans of Lucius. The Arians, though not so strong in point of numbers as the other party, grievously persecuted the church in Egypt.*

In these "wars and rumours of wars," with which the tranquillity

* Sozomen., Hist. Eccles., lib. vi., cap. 20.

of the church was so greatly disturbed, imperial violence prevailed. Euzoius induced Valens to oppose Peter, and Lucius was installed by the power of the sword. Then we behold the insolent cruelty of Magnus,* a Pagan, whom the mercy of Jovian had spared. Many Athanasians were murdered, and many treated with great outrage, whilst Arianism, supported by the civil power, triumphed without control. Nineteen Priests and Deacons, some very old, were seized by Magnus. "Agree, wretches," said the Pagan, "to the sentiments of the Arians. If your religion be true, God will forgive you for yielding to necessity." "Forbear to importune us," they replied: "we do not believe that God is sometimes Father and sometimes not. Our fathers at Nice confessed, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father." Whips and tortures, the grief of the godly, and the insults of Jews and apostates, altered not their determination: they were banished to Heliopolis in Phoenicia. Palladius, a Pagan, the Governor of Egypt, sent many to prison, who had presumed to weep; and, after he had scourged them, sent twenty-three of them, chiefly Monks, to work in the mines. Other scenes of savage cruelty are related: it is tedious and unpleasant, says Milner, to enlarge upon them; but it is a pleasure to behold the fruits of the labours of Athanasius, in the faithful sufferings of so many of his followers.† What a Prelate was Euzoius! his conduct at the present juncture required severe animadversion; otherwise his name deserves to descend into the waters of oblivion, anathematized and forgotten! The piety of Terentius, an officer of Valens, deserves to be recorded. The Emperor, pleased with his services, bade him ask a favour. The man begged the liberty of a place of worship for the orthodox. Valens, in a rage, tore his petition. Terentius, gathering the fragments of the petition, said, "I have received the gift, O Emperor: the Judge of all the earth is judge of my intentions."

Among those who suffered for righteousness' sake was one Sabas, together with a considerable number among the Goths, who had embraced the Christian religion some years previous: they were governed by two Kings, who, with much the greater part of their subjects, continued still Pagans. Fritigern, who governed the Western Goths, was an ally to the Romans, and therefore did not persecute the Christians with violence; while Athanaric, King of the Eastern Goths, who was at war with them, and had been defeated by the Roman forces, fell on his Christian subjects, whom he hated, because they were of the same religion with his enemies. Sabas on this occasion was one who felt the weight of his revenge: he was humble, mild, modest, well-grounded in his religion, and a perfect model of those virtues which should distinguish the professors of the true faith from the rest of the world; was constant in his attendance on divine worship; zealous for the honour and advancement of the church; remarkable for his contempt of riches, and the numerous advantages and pleasures of the present world. Thus armed, he convinced and confounded his idolatrous countrymen, and excited the Christians to

* Theodoret., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 22.

† Milner, History of the Church, cent. iv., chap. 11, vol. i., p. 614.

MARTYROOM OF SABAS.

virtue by his discourses and example. All his actions were accompanied by a lively and an ardent charity, which made him surmount all difficulties and human considerations, and to press the word of truth with an undaunted courage, though always with a sweetness that must convince the persons whose instruction and conversion he contemplated. In the year 370, Athanaric* issued orders, that all persons in his dominions should partake of the pagan sacrifices, on which the Christians were required to eat of the meat which had been offered to idols, which would, had they consented, have been deemed an act of apostasy. Those among the Pagans who had relations who were Christians, endeavoured to save them by offering them meat which had not received the idolatrous consecration: the Magistrates were thus imposed upon, and led to believe that all had been accomplished according to their instructions. Sabas, however, was too well acquainted with the principles of the Apostle Paul to imagine that the sin was only to be found in eating: he knew that causing the weak to stumble, and giving the enemies of the faith an advantage over them, also constituted the act criminal and sinful, neither of which consequences could be possibly avoided by any disguise. He not only refused to comply with what was proposed to him, but publicly declared, that those who sheltered themselves under that artifice were not worthy to be called Christians; and thus preserved several from being deceived by this pernicious dissimulation. Those whose good intentions for the service of their friends had projected this scheme in their favour, were so incensed on account of the fidelity of Sabas, that they obliged him to quit the town; but the general esteem in which he was held would not allow the inhabitants of the place to be long without him.

This persecution increased in virulence. Some of the Pagans, desirous of preserving their friends in safety, offered to make a solemn oath, that there was not one Christian in their places of residence. Sabas, who could not endure this officious perjury, went to the place where they were assembled, and boldly cautioned them against such a step, asserting that he was himself an exception. The Heathens persisted, and resolved to screen the remainder from harm, and swore there was but one Christian among them. The Magistrate knew that Sabas was the person: he ordered him before him; and when inquiry was made into his fortune and circumstances, it appeared that the garments in which he was clad constituted nearly the whole of his temporal property, when he was summarily dismissed with great contumely, as an individual altogether unworthy of notice. In 372 the persecution was unabated. Sabas, not willing to expose

* Athanaric, a King of the Visigoths in the fourth century. While this people were located in Thrace, Athanaric was their Judge. He joined in the revolt of Procopius against Valens, and drew upon himself the wrath of the latter, who defeated him in battle in 369. He was afterwards defeated by the Huns; and, losing his ascendancy, he quitted the post he then held of Judge or Governor of his people, and retired into the mountains of Caucasus. On the death of Fritigern, he returned to command the Visigoths, became their King, and entered into hostilities against the Romans; but soon made peace with Theodosius, whom he accompanied to Constantinople in 381. He died in that city the same month, in consequence of his excesses at table. (Biog. Univ.)

2 Y himself to the trial without evident occasion and necessity, left the town of his residence to spend the festival of Easter with Sansala, a Christian Priest of great sanctity of life. They spent the first three days in peace, and employments suited to the occasion; but on the third night they were surprised by the arrival of a party of soldiers, commanded by Atharides, the son of one of the first nobility in the land. He knew the character of Sansala, and entered his house, where they seized both him and Sabas, who were in bed. The Priest had time allowed to dress himself, after which he was hurried off in a carriage; but Sabas was taken away in a state of nudity, dragged through thorns and briers, and violently beaten: but the patience of Sabas was even superior to the cruelty of Atharides, and God was pleased to preserve him amidst all their ill-treatment without any external marks of violence. Afterwards they took two beams, and, extending his limbs, they tied his arms to one and his legs to the other, and in that position they left him on the ground, while they went to repose themselves for the evening. The woman of the house where his tormentors were lodged, becoming acquainted how ill he had been used, went and released him: he then employed his temporary liberty in assisting her to prepare a repast for his persecutors. The following morning Atharides ordered his hands to be tied together, and hung him up on a cross-beam, and, bringing Sansala to the same place, thought that a proper time to practise on the fidelity of these two Christians; upon which they presented them some meats, which had been offered to the heathen deities, and declared that eating them was the only way to preserve their lives. The heathen Priests, however, assured these persecutors, that they only lost time and labour in such an attempt; for they had to deal with persons who were prepared to meet the most cruel death that could be invented, rather than commit so detestable an act. Those who were engaged in the affair urged the compliance of the victims, by informing them, that Lord Atharides had sent them, and that he anticipated they would be obedient. Sabas, with great magnanimity, answered them, that they knew no Lord but the Lord Almighty, and had less reason to fear death from refusing what was offered them than a life which would be as impure and profane as the person by whose authority they were sent. One of the servants of Atharides, who was standing by, heard this severe reflection upon his master, and revenged the affront by striking the confessor upon the breast with such violence, that the whole company concluded he could not survive the blow: he nevertheless received it with great tranquillity. The Priest was then set at liberty, and these myrmidons of oppression directed their rage entirely against Sabas, whom Atharides ordered to be promptly despatched on account of his obstinacy, and the great liberties he had taken with him. He was carried to Mussow, a river in Wallachia, to be drowned. Sabas, missing Sansala, whom he wished to have been a partaker with him in his sufferings, and in the glory that was to attend them, asked those about him what had become of him, and what he had done that he was to be deprived of the crown of martyrdom. They unceremoniously informed him, that that was no busi-

GENERAL PERSECUTION UNDER ATHANARIC.

ness of his; and Sabas then employed the rest of his time in praising God for the favour done to him by the acceptance of his sufferings and life: in fine, his behaviour was such as to reduce his executioners to pity and respect him. They were even convinced of his utter innocency with regard to anything worthy of death. When they were come to the banks of the river, and were on the point of consigning him to the flood, he overheard the discourse among themselves on the subject, and, full of an ardent desire of martyrdom, he pressed them to the punctual execution of their commission. He was then thrown into the river, where he perished, having manifested a remarkable instance of courage and fidelity. His body was afterwards found, which received decent sepulture from the Christians of the place.

About this period the Goths were very powerful in the East; and the greater part being slaves to idolatry and superstition, the Christians often experienced the effects of the aversion which this people showed towards the faith of Christ and its professors. Nicetas was of Gothic race, born near the banks of the Danube, and had been converted to Christianity during the reign of Constantine, by Theophilus, Bishop of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and the Goths; and although the faithful had been frequently called to suffer for the sake of Christ, we do not find that Nicetas met with any trouble on account of his religion until the time of the Emperor Valens; when Athanaric, a potentate remarkable for his savage temper and implacable aversion to the Roman empire, imagining that Christianity was peculiar to that kingdom, viewed the professors of that faith as the indomitable adversaries of his crown. These prejudices were the fruitful source of a severe persecution throughout the length and breadth of his dominions. Wherever any Christians resided, Athanaric ordered an idol to be paraded about in a chariot, and exacted a prompt and servile adoration from all the faithful; who, upon refusing compliance with this outrageous mandate, were doomed to be burnt in their houses. Numbers of every age and of both sexes fled to the places of divine worship, where they anticipated security; but the Pagans had no regard for anything which the Christians might call sacred: they set on fire the buildings, and consumed all that were in them. Although it is probable that a "noble army of martyrs" suffered on this occasion, history has only transmitted to us the names of Sabas and Nicetas; of the latter of whom we have no very particular account, the Greek Martyrologies briefly recording, that he suffered September 15th, A.D. 372, being burnt alive for the faith as it is in Christ Jesus. In the multitude of martyrs who glorified God among the barbarous Goths, Nicetas holds a distinguished rank.*

The career of Valens was advancing to a crisis. It was followed by the first permanent establishment of the barbarians within the frontiers of the Roman empire. Christianity now began to assume a new and important function, promoting that assimilation and union between the conquerors and the conquered, which prevented the total extinction of the Roman civilization, and the oppression of Europe by

* Butler, Lives of the Saints, Sept. 15th, vol. ii., p. 445.

2 v 2 complete and almost hopeless barbarism. However Christianity might have disturbed the peace, and therefore, in some degree, the stability, of the empire by the religious factions which distracted the principal cities;—however that foreign principle of celibacy, which had now become completely identified with it, by withdrawing so many active and powerful minds into the cloister or the hermitage, may have diminished the civil energies, and even have impaired the military forces, of the country;* yet the enterprising and victorious religion amply repaid those injuries by its influence in re-modelling the new state of society. If treacherous to the interests of Rome, it was true to those of mankind. Throughout the whole process of the re-settling of Europe, and the other provinces of the kingdom, by the migratory tribes from the North and East, and the vast system of colonization and conquest which introduced one or more new races into every province, Christianity was the one common bond, the harmonizing principle, which subdued to something like unity the adverse and conflicting elements of society. Christianity, no doubt, while it discharged this lofty mission, could not but undergo a great and desecrating change. It might repress, but could not altogether subdue, the advance of barbarism: it was constrained to accommodate itself to the spirit of the times; while struggling to counteract barbarism, itself became barbarized. It lost at once much of its purity and its gentleness; it became splendid and imaginative, warlike and at length chivalrous. When a country in a comparatively high state of civilization is overrun by a foreign and martial horde, in numbers too great to be absorbed by the local population, the victors usually establish themselves as a kind of armed aristocracy, while the conquered are depressed into a race of slaves. Where there is no connecting, no intermediate, power, the two races co-exist in stern and irreconcilable hostility. The conquerors began to assume the supreme power, and to take possession of the property in the subjugated lands, or at least a considerable share in the landed estates; and laid the ground-work, as it were, for that feudal system which was afterwards developed, with more or less completeness, in different countries of Europe.

One thing alone, in some cases, observes Mr. Milman, tempered, during the process of conquest, the irreclaimable hostility; in all, after the final settlement, moulded up together in some degree the adverse powers. When, as in the Gothic invasion, it had made some previous impression on the invading race, Christianity was constantly present, silently mitigating the horrors of war, and afterwards blending together, at least to a certain extent, the rival races. At all times it became the connecting link, the intermediate power, which gave some community of interests, some similarity of feeling, to the master and the slave. They worshipped at least the same God in the same church; and the care of the same Clergy embraced both with

* Valens, perceiving the actual operation of this unwarlike dedication of so many able-bodied men to useless inactivity, attempted to correct the evil by law, and by the strong interference of the government. He invaded the monasteries and solitary hermitages of Egypt, and swept the Monks by thousands into the ranks of the army. But a reluctant Egyptian Monk would, in general, make but an indifferent soldier. (Milman.)

INTERVIEW OF VALENS WITH BASIL.

something of an harmonizing and equalizing superintendence. The Christian Clergy occupied a singular position in this new state of society. At the earlier period they were, in general, Roman: later, though sometimes barbarian by birth, they were Roman in education. When the prostration of the conquered people was complete, there was still an order of people not strictly belonging to either race, which maintained a commanding attitude, and possessed certain authority. The Christian Bishop confronted the barbarian Sovereign, or took his rank among the leading nobles. During the invasion, the Christian Clergy, though their possessions were ravaged in the indiscriminate warfare, though their persons were not always secure from insult or from slavery, yet, on the whole, retained, or very soon resumed, a certain sanctity, and hastened, before long, to wind their chains around the minds of the conquerors. Before a new invasion, Christianity had, in general, mingled up the invaders with the invaded; till at length Europe, instead of being a number of disconnected kingdoms, hostile in race, in civil polity, in religion, was united in a kind of federal Christian republic, or a principle of unity, acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope.*

The memorable interview of the Emperor with Basil, as it has been related by the orthodox party, displays, if the weakness, certainly the patience and forbearance, of the Sovereign; if the uncompromising firmness of the Prelate, some of that leaven of pride with which he has been taunted by Jerome. During his circuit through the Asiatic provinces, the Emperor approached the city of Cæsarea in Cappadocia. Modestus, the violent and unscrupulous favourite of Valens, was sent before to persuade the Bishop to submit to the religion of the Emperor. Basil was inflexible. "Know you not," said the offended officer, "that I have power to strip you of all your possessions, to banish you, to deprive you of life?" "He," answered Basil, "who possesses nothing, can lose nothing: all that you can take from me are the wretched garments I wear, and the few books which are my only wealth. As to exile, the earth is the Lord's; everywhere it will be my country, or rather my place of pilgrimage. Death will be a mercy, it will but admit me into life: long have I been dead to this world." Modestus expressed his surprise at this unusual tone of intrepid address. "You have never, then," replied the Prelate, "conversed before with a Bishop?" Modestus returned to his master. "Violence will be the only course with this man, who is neither to be appalled by menaces, nor won by blandishments." But the Emperor shrunk from violent measures. His humbler supplication confined itself to the admission of Arians into the communion of Basil; but he implored in vain. The Emperor mingled with the crowd of undistinguished worshippers; but he was so impressed by the solemnity of the service, the deep and full chanting of the Psalms, the silent adoration of the people, the order and the majesty,—by the calm dignity of the Bishop and of his attendant Clergy, which appeared more like the serenity of angels than the busy scene of mortal men,—that, awe-struck and overpowered, he

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii., p. 130.

scarcely ventured to approach to make his offering. The Clergy stood irresolute whether they were to receive it from the infectious hand of an Arian: Basil at length, while the trembling Emperor leaned for support on an attendant Priest, condescended to advance, and accept the oblation. But neither supplications, nor bribes, nor threats, could induce the Bishop to admit the Sovereign to the communion. In a personal interview, instead of convincing the Bishop, Valens was so overpowered by the eloquence of Basil, as to bestow an endowment on the church for the use of the poor. A scene of mingled intrigue and asserted miracle ensued. The exile of Basil was determined; but the mind of Valens was alarmed by the dangerous illness of his son. The prayers of Basil were said to have restored the youth to life; but, a short time after, having been baptized by Arian hands, he relapsed and died. Basil, however, maintained his place and dignity to the end.*

The piety of Terentius, an officer of Valens, deserves to be recorded.† He was eminent for valour, and was able, on his return from Armenia, to erect trophies of victory. The Emperor promised to give him anything that he should desire. But he asked neither for gold nor silver, for lands, houses, nor power; but only that a church might be given to those who preached the apostolical doctrines. When Valens received the petition, and had read the contents, he was exceedingly irritated, and desired Terentius to prefer something else. He gathered up the torn and scattered fragments of the document, and left the presence of the Emperor, rejoicing that he had been thought worthy of suffering reproach and shame for the sake of the Saviour of men.

Numbers of the faithful were murdered among the Goths through the cruelty of their King, Athanaric. Eusebius of Samosata was among the sufferers. He sustains a prominent place on the page of ecclesiastical history, having proved himself to be one of the strongest pillars of the orthodox faith against the Arians. He was a native of Samosata in Syria, on the banks of the Euphrates, of which city he was constituted Bishop during the time of Constantius. The Persian war brought that Emperor to Antioch, where he assembled a Council with the design of condemning the terms "consubstantial," and "different in substance," and thus to preserve some medium between the orthodox and the pure Arians. The Bishops who met on that occasion, among whom was Eusebius, made it their first petition, that that church should be provided with a Pastor, whom they might consult in affairs relating to the points which were now in dispute; for Eustathius had been deposed by the Arian party, and Eudoxius, whom they had placed in his room, was removed to Constantinople, and thus Antioch was entirely destitute of a Prelate. Until now, the choice fell on Meletius by general agreement; and the writing which contained the free consent of both parties for his election, having been

* Greg. Nazian., Orat. xx.; Greg. Nyas., Contra Eunom.; and also the ecclesiastical historians in loco.; Milman, Hist. of Christianity, book iii., chap. 7, vol. iii., p. 127.

† Theodoret., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 32.

EVIL MACHINATIONS OF ARIANISM.

subscribed by all the Bishops, was lodged in the hands of Eusebius. The first discourse the new Prelate delivered, opened the eyes of the Arians to see that they were mistaken in their man; upon which they prevailed with the Emperor to banish him, after he had been about a month in possession of his see. Eusebius, perceiving the violence and irregularity of these proceedings, imagined that he had no further business at Antioch, and made the best of his way home. The Arians, remembering that he was in possession of the acts of the election of Meletius, and not judging their honour safe while it remained in his hands, they persuaded the Emperor to despatch a messenger after Eusebius to wrest this obnoxious document from him. The answer of the Prelate of Samosata was, that he could not give up a trust reposed in him by a large number, without the express consent of all concerned therein. Valens, irritated by this reply, wrote to Eusebius on the subject, and assured him that he had commissioned the bearer of his letter to cut off his right hand, if he refused to surrender the instrument in question; which threat, historians inform us, was only used to compel Eusebius to comply with their request. He was fully aware that the party was capable of any cruelty to advance their cause; but, without the least emotion, he presented both his hands, and declared that he would rather lose them, than part with so flagrant a proof of Arian injustice. The Emperor was surprised at his resolution, and professed highly to esteem him ever after. From this period Eusebius became exceedingly offensive to the Arians, who viewed him as their inveterate foe. When Jovian succeeded Julian, he restored peace to the church, and gave Meletius the liberty of convening a Council at Antioch. Eusebius with twenty-five other Prelates composed that assembly, who were all unanimous in declaring for the doctrine of the church as delivered by the Council of Nice. The church suffered greatly at this time by the Arians, supported as they were by the authority of Valens, who was blindly devoted to that party. Their industry and activity obliged the orthodox Prelates to be upon their guard, none of whom was more vigilant than Eusebius. His zeal, however, was so governed by the rules of prudence, that his attempts seldom failed of success. It was not enough for Eusebius to screen his own flock from the insults of the common enemy, and maintain the faith in its purity against all the stratagems of those who would corrupt the people; but, knowing that churches were by the iniquity of the times deprived of their Pastors, he disguised himself, and made the tour of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine; fortified the orthodox against the solicitations of the heretics, ordained several Priests and inferior Clergy, and when he discovered orthodox Prelates in his travels, he assisted them in consecrating Bishops for the service of the widowed churches. It was impossible to conceal the hand that every day gave some additional blow to the Arian party, and depressed their interests wherever they were employed, until the Emperor, at their instigation, granted an order for Eusebius to be banished into Thrace. He was at Samosata when the messenger arrived with this order: it was late in the evening; and the Bishop, who was well beloved by his people, requested that he would make no noise, but as much as possible conceal his business; "for," said he, "if it become public, the people will fall upon you, throw you into the river, and then I shall be accused of causing your death." Eusebius was sufficiently collected to go through his accustomed devotions; and when the evening was far advanced, he left his house on foot, attended only by one trusty servant, who carried a pillow and a book after him. At break of day the whole town was in an uproar; for the Bishop's servant, who accompanied him in his exile, had left his master's orders for such as were to follow him, and the books which were to be sent after him: but there was no room for consolation while the Bishop was absent, and the river was soon covered with boats, manned with individuals who were in quest of their father and friend. He had not left Zeugma when they reached that town, and they conjured him with tears and sighs not to abandon them, and thus leave the flock exposed to the fury of the wolf. The Prelate could not but be strongly affected with the remonstrances of his people; but urged the authority of the Apostle Paul, for submitting to the commands of the powers in existence. Finding they could not prevail upon him to return to Samosata, they entreated to be allowed to testify their affection for him by furnishing him with all that could make that long and arduous journey as tolerable as possible. They offered him money, clothes, and servants, and every accommodation in their power: he thanked them for these tokens of regard, accepted a few of them, prayed with the company, exhorted them to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the saints," and then pursued his journey into Thrace. Gregory Nazianzen could not enjoy the satisfaction of beholding the exile as he passed through Cappadocia, inasmuch as he was confined to his room on account of indisposition. But as soon as he was able to write, he gave him to know how much he was grieved at being deprived of that pleasure. In this communication he informs him, that, seeing him assert the faith with such undaunted courage, and submit to all the hardships which attended his generous behaviour with so much patience and humility, he viewed him as an illustrious martyr of Jesus Christ, and that he ought to receive the assistance of the prayers of the faithful.

When Eusebius arrived at his journey's end, he wrote to Basil, and sent the letter by a person who was well acquainted with the country, and capable of giving an exact account of his situation in that district. Basil, overjoyed to hear from Eusebius, embraced the opportunity of one of his flock journeying to Thrace, to acquaint him with his sentiments with regard to the courage and fidelity displayed by Eusebius, and the glory that attended his suffering in such a cause. The correspondence was carried on between these Prelates during the exile. In the meantime the see of Samosata was filled by Eunomius: not the individual against whom Basil and Gregory Nyssen wrote; but a man of a sweet and easy temper, and evidently utterly unfit for supporting such a usurpation. The conduct of the people on his accession to the episcopate was an undeniable proof of the uncommon merit of Eusebius, and also of his pastoral qualifications. They

PERSECUTING MOVEMENTS OF LUCIUS, THE ARIAN USURPER. 353 were so unanimous in their affections towards their banished Prelate, that not one of them, no matter of whatever rank, would communicate with the intruder, or even attend at the public services when he undertook to officiate: they carried their resentment at his intrusion so high, that they would not speak to him, nor exchange any of the offices of civil life with him. Eunonius could not but discover how disagreeable he was to the people of Samosata, and therefore thought it advisable to leave them. The Arians were soon convinced of their mistake in placing one of so much moderation at the head of the church in that city, and chose one of a very different character to supersede him. The second usurper was named Lucius, notorious for his roughness, and serving the heretical cause with as much warmth and passion as could be desired by those who promoted him to that office. Lucius soon discovered that he was as odious to the people as the opinions which he held, and was endeavouring to establish among them. Nothing, however, appeared to discourage him. The behaviour of the Clergy and people only provoked him to still more violent measures. In the transports of his rage, he banished several Ecclesiastics: among the rest was Evolcius, a Deacon, and Antiochus, a Priest, nephew to Eusebius, the former of whom was exiled to the desert of Oasis beyond Egypt, and the latter to a remote corner of Armenia. Basil could not endure that his friends Eusebius and Meletius of Antioch should be misrepresented by those who had espoused the interests of Paulinus, and imposed on the Western Bishops as persons who were suspected of Arianism: he wrote a letter in their defence to Peter of Alexandria, then at Rome, urging their sufferings inflicted by that party as a proof of the purity of their faith; and also solemnly assured him, on his own experience, that they were perfectly orthodox in their sentiments and discourses; and, in a letter addressed to Eusebius, he made very strong complaints against the Prelates of the West, who were so easily prejudiced against one for whose faith he could so safely answer. Thrace was now become a scene of war between the Goths and the Emperor's forces, which considerably increased the pain and mortification attendant on the banishment of Eusebius. During these contests his life was frequently in peril; but the divine protection was visibly exercised in his favour, and he was preserved for greater usefulness in the church. In the year 378 Valens left Antioch, and made his head-quarters at Constantinople, and, after some stay there, he resolved to march against the Goths in person; but before he entered upon that expedition, he endeavoured to secure the protection of Heaven by granting peace to the church, and allowing the exiled Bishops to return to their respective sees. Eusebius, thus restored to his post, began to consider the distressed condition of the faithful in Mesopotamia and Syria, who were deprived of their Pastors. Historians inform us, he provided them with Bishops. The last place to which he extended his care in this manner was Dolica, a small town in Syria, overrun with Arianism: his design was to put that diocese in the care of Maris, who was every way qualified for that important post. As he was entering the town with this object, an Arian woman, who was but

2 2 too well acquainted with his design, threw a tile from the top of the house, which broke his head, and of this wound he died in a few days. Eusebius, whose great ambition was to imitate the conduct of his divine Master, foreseeing his death would bring that unfortunate woman into trouble, gave his friends who were with him an oath that they would not prosecute her. He died, A.D. 380.

Christianity had early, as it were, prepared the way for the amalgamation of the Goths with the Roman empire. In their first inroads, during the reign of Gallienus, when they ravaged a large part of the Roman territory, they carried away numbers of slaves, especially from Asia Minor and Cappadocia. Among these were many Christians. The slaves subdued the conquerors: the gentle doctrines of Christianity made their way to the hearts of all the barbarous warriors. A Gothic Bishop,* with a Greek name, Theophilus, attended at the Council of Nice. Ulphilas, at the time of the invasion in the reign of Valens, consecrated Bishop of the Goths during an embassy to Constantinople, was of Cappadocian descent.† Among the Goths, Christianity first assumed its new office, the advancement of general civilization, as well as of purer religion. It is difficult to suppose that the art of writing was altogether unknown to the Goths before the time of Ulphilas. The language seems to have attained a high degree of artificial perfection before it was employed by that Prelate in the translation of the Scriptures.‡ Still, the Mæso-Gothic alphabet, of which the Greek is by far the principal element, was generally adopted by the Goths.§ It was universally disseminated; it was perpetuated, until the extinction or absorption of the Gothic race in other tribes, by the translation of the sacred writings. This was the work of Ulphilas, who, in his version of the Scriptures,|| is reported to have omitted, with a Christian but vain precaution, the Books of Kings, lest, being too congenial to the spirit of his countrymen, they should inflame their warlike enthusiasm. Whether the genuine mildness of Christianity, or some patriotic reverence for the Roman empire, from which he drew his descent, influenced the pious Bishop, the martial ardour of the Goths was not the less fatal to the stability of the Roman empire. Christianity did not

* Philostorg., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 5.

† Socrat., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 41.

‡ The Gothic of Ulphilas is the link between the East and Europe, the transition-state from the Sanscrit to the modern Tentonic languages. It is possible that the Goths, after their migration from the East to the North of Germany, may have lost the art of writing, partly from the want of materials. The German forests would afford no substitute for the palm-leaves of the East; they may have been reduced to the barbarous runes of the other heathen tribes. (Milman.)

§ The Mæso-Gothic alphabet has twenty-five letters, of which fifteen are evidently Greek, eight Latin. The two, th and hie, to which the Greek and Latin have no corresponding sound, are derived from some other quarter. They are most likely ancient characters. The th resembles closely the runic letter which expresses the same sound. (Milman.)

|| The greater part of the fragments of Ulphilas's version of the Scriptures now extant is contained in the celebrated Codex Argentens, now at Upsala. This splendid M.S. written in silver letters, on parchment of a purple ground, contains almost the whole four Gospels. On the Gothic translation of the Scriptures, see Socrat., Eccles. Hist., lib. iv., cap. 33; Sozomen., Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 37; Philost., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 5; Theod., Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 30, 31.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE GOTHIC INVASION. 355 even mitigate the violence of the shock with which, for the first time, a whole host of northern barbarians was thrown upon the empire, never again to be shaken off. This Gothic invasion, which first established a Teutonic nation within the frontier of the empire, was conducted with all the ferocity, provoked, indeed, on the part of the Romans by the basest treachery, of hostile races, with no bond of connexion. Mr. Milman judiciously observes, that the pacificatory effect of the general conversion of the Goths to Christianity, was impeded by the form of faith which they embraced. The Gothic Prelates, Ulphilas * among the rest, who visited the court of Constantinople, found the Arian Bishops in possession of the chief authority: they were the recognised Prelates of the empire. Whether their less cultivated minds were unable to comprehend, or their language to express, the fine and subtle distinctions of the Trinitarian faith, or persuaded, as it was said, by the Arian Bishops, that it was mere verbal dispute, these doctrines were introduced among the Goths before their passage of the Danube, or their settlement within the empire. The whole nation received this form of Christianity: from them it appears to have spread, first embracing the other branch of the nation, the Ostrogoths, among the Gepidæ, the Vandals, and the Burgundians. Among the barbaric conquerors was the stronghold of Arianism: while it was gradually repudiated by the Romans, both in the East and in the West, it raised its head, and obtained a superiority, which it had never before attained, in Italy and Spain. Whether more congenial to the simplicity of the barbaric mind, or in some respects cherished on one side by the conqueror as a proud distinction, more cordially detested by the Roman population, as the creed of their barbarous masters, Arianism appeared almost to make common cause with the Teutonic invaders, and only fell with the Gothic monarchies in Italy and Spain. While Gratian and Valentinian the Second espoused the cause of Trinitarianism in the West, by measures which show that their sacerdotal advisers were men of greater energy and decision than their civil ministers, it subsisted

* Ulphilas, a Gothic Bishop, to whom a Gothic translation of the New Testament has been ascribed, was a Cappadocian; but the period at which he lived is not ascertained. Philostorgius places him in 326, under Constantine the Great. When the Goths were expelled by the Huns, in 375, he was sent to the Emperor Valens, to solicit a place of settlement for them in Thrace; and, in order to obtain it, he is said to have embraced Arianism. It is stated that he invented the Gothic characters, and translated the Bible into that language. The Swedes flatter themselves with the idea, that they possess a part of this ancient monument, containing the greater part of the four Gospels, in the so-called Codex Argenteus. This Codex is mutilated in several places; but what remains entire, is, for the most part, perfectly legible. It was first discovered in 1597, in the library of the Benedictine abbey of Werden, in Westphalia, by Anthony Marillon. Soon after, it was observed in the same library by Arnold Mercator, who transcribed a few verses, which Grüter gave to the public in his "Inscriptiones Antiquæ." From the abbey of Werden it was conveyed to Prague, during the short period in which that town was occupied by Frederick, Elector-Palatine. At the capture of Prague, in 1648, it was found among the literary spoils by Count Königsmark, and sent as a present to Queen Christina, who, it is said, gave it to Isaac Vossius, on whose death it was purchased by Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, and presented to the University of Upsal. Of this Codex there have been three editions, the first printed at Dort, in 1665; the second at Stockholm, in 1672; and the third at Oxford, in 1750. The last contains a Gothic Grammar, by the Editor, Edward Lye.

2 z 2 almost as a foreign and barbarous form of Christianity.* The measures which Valens took for the suppression of the Goths, left him but little leisure to vex the church: he therefore endeavoured to soothe the asperities which he had already created, and obliged the Arian Bishop of Alexandria to vacate his throne for Peter, the nominee of Athanasius. Valentinian died in the year 375, and Valens fell in battle, 378.

The empire was now divided between Gratian, the eldest son of Valentinian, his brother Valentinian, who ruled in the West, and Theodosius, whom he chose as his colleague, in the East.† The first and last of these Princes were devoutly attached to the orthodox tenets; and under their reign the church recovered from the confusion into which it had been thrown by the systematic opposition of Valens. Gratian put himself, with filial reverence, under the instruction of Ambrose, who wrote his treatise on the divinity of the Holy Ghost expressly at his request. But this pious Sovereign was murdered in his attempt to subdue the rebellion of Maximus, in 383; and for some time Justina, the mother of young Valentinian, again wasted the strength of the church by her attempts to restore the Arian ascendancy. In this she was firmly opposed by Ambrose, whom she in vain sought to expel from his bishopric. Fearless of the consequences, he intrepidly declared, when his church was surrounded by imperial troops, that he would never willingly leave the flock of Christ to be devoured by wolves. But Justina was resolved upon executing her purpose; and trusting that, by adding the aid of a keen sophist to the authority of her station, success would be made certain, she invited the Arian Auxentius, a Scythian by birth, to challenge him to dispute before the Emperor on the subject in question. Ambrose replied, with dignity, that the Emperor was not to be constituted a Judge in such matters; and Justina was left to depend solely on the illegal exercise of authority. Again demanding the resignation of the churches in Milan, and again meeting with a refusal, the basilica, or cathedral, in which Ambrose had enclosed himself, was once more surrounded by the military. But he continued firm to his purpose; while the people, devoted to their Prelate, gave daily proofs of their attachment, by exposing themselves to imprisonment, and every other species of oppression, rather than assent to the Arian dogmas. The united popularity and fortitude of the Bishop rendered his forcible deposition too perilous an experiment for even Justina to make; and his influence being required to stop the threatened invasion of Maximus, he was finally left in the peaceable enjoyment of his authority. The youthful Valentinian himself, made acquainted with the true merits of the Prelate by his colleague Theodosius, only lived long enough to win his regards, and obtain, in dying, a valuable testimony of his pious affection.‡

We now arrive at a critical period in the history of the church, with regard to the records of persecution. A period of fifty-six years had

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii., p. 139.

† Theolont., Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 1.

‡ Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 184.

CONDEMNATION OF PRISCILLIAN.

elapsed between the Council of Nice, and the second General Council held at Constantinople, the empire in the mean time having fallen under the dominion of Constantine II., Constantius II., Constans, Julian the Apostate, Jovian, Valentinian, Valens, Gratian, Valentinian II., and Theodosius; all of whom, whether orthodox in their faith or otherwise, may be said to have pursued the policy of Constantine, in enforcing the observance of the canons of the church by the civil law. In the East a new metropolitan city had been built by Constantine, and named after him, Constantinople, which was made the seat of empire. The jurisdiction of the see of Constantinople was rapidly extended in Europe and Asia, and its Bishops were acknowledged second in precedence; the Primate of Rome, from that city having been the ancient imperial residence, being honoured as "head of the church." At this time the incomes of churches were committed to the management of Deacons and Sub-Deacons; but all distributions of these revenues were dispensed at the discretion of each Bishop, for the maintenance of the Clergy of his diocese, and for alms. Many circumstances, also, contributed during this age to the diffusion of the Gospel, which had spread eastward into Persia* and India, and westward into Iberia; also, according to some, it had found its way into Britain and Ireland; and when it is considered that the first Christian Emperor was proclaimed in Britain, it is fair to presume that he would desire to propagate his own religion in this part of the empire.

A sect, whose history belongs rather to this than the ensuing period, originated from the peculiar opinions of Priscillian, a Spanish Bishop, whose character is given by Sulpitius, with his usual spirit and brilliancy of style. He is said to have been a man of great learning and eloquence, endowed with vast powers of body and mind; who, by assumed modesty and gravity, was calculated to gain ascendancy over ordinary capacities. Idacius, an aged Presbyter, in conjunction with Ithacius, Bishop of Sossuba, (a doubtful locality,) accused him, before a Council of Saragossa, in 380, with being a teacher of Manichean doctrines, and obtained his condemnation; but the death of Gratian prevented the rescript for his banishment being put in force, and he was again restored to his see for a short time. His accusers then urged the civil power, that the heresiarch might be expelled

* In the year 343, according to Baronias, but more correctly, 349, Sopor, King of Persia, sent ambassadors to Constantine the Great, to negotiate a treaty of alliance; when Constantine took occasion to write to that King, entreating him to grant protection to the Christians in his dominions. Nevertheless, the Magi raised a persecution against them, by accusing Simeon, Archbishop of Seleucia, with favouring the Romans, who were then at war with Persia; whereupon Sopor burdened them with insupportable taxes, and ordered their Priests and Ministers to be beheaded, their churches to be demolished, and their property confiscated. He ordered Simeon, also, to be taken into custody, as a traitor to the state and the religion of the Persians. These orders were executed, and Simeon was brought before the King in irons. He was commanded to worship the sun, which he refused, and was condemned to death, with many other Christians. An edict was published in the following year, by which all the Christians in Persia were condemned to death; and great numbers perished, together with all the Bishops and heads of churches; and the persecution was continued by his successors, with more or less severity, till the year 399. (Sozomen., Hist. Eccles., lib. ii., cap. 8—15; Socrat., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 8.)

from the cities of Spain, which had generally become infected with his errors; and the Magistrates issued their decrees accordingly. Upon this, the Priscillianists sought protection in Italy, and prayed to be heard in their own defence before Damasus, Bishop of Rome; they appealed, also, to Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, for the same privilege; and in both these cases their suit was rejected. Maximus, the usurper, at the death of Gratian, entered Treves at the head of his forces; and Ithacius immediately sought to obtain his decree against the heretics. Priscillian also appealed to the same authority, and Maximus took upon himself the office of Judge in the case. The heretics were accused of spreading opinions opposed to Christianity; and they were declared guilty, and condemned by the Emperor. Martin, Bishop of Tours, interposed, and implored Maximus to spare the lives of the victims. He reminded Maximus, that since they stood expelled from the churches by the sentence of ecclesiastical Councils, it was a new and unknown evil for a secular Judge to undertake to decide cases purely spiritual. This interference in behalf of the lives of the condemned party was ineffectual, and Priscillian, with several of his deluded adherents, suffered death at Treves, in the year 384. It has not been satisfactorily shown what the precise opinions of this sect were; but, not consuming the eucharist, omission of fasts, the enjoining of celibacy, and making perjury, in times of persecution, a pardonable crime, are stated to have been errors of which they were guilty. Whatever may have been his offence, Priscillian is deemed the first martyr to sectarian opinions, under the operation of the system which resulted from the measures of Constantine.* When Valens died, Gratian appointed an experienced and judicious person to take part with himself in the government of the Eastern world. Theodosius, a Spaniard, who had given abundant proof of valour and prudence, was fixed upon, and the choice was generally approved. He was forty-three years of age when he was called to Sirmium, and invested with the purple in the year 379. The first two years of his reign having been chiefly occupied in clearing Thrace, and other parts of the realm, from the Gothic invaders, by whom they were overrun, the first great act in which he made himself conspicuous in the cause of the church was, the calling of the Council of Constantinople in 381. There is, however, one incident which, as it occurred about this period, served to unfold the character of the emperor, and to presage the glory of his reign. Towards the end of the first year 380, Theodosius received the sacrament of baptism from Ascolus, the orthodox Bishop of Thessalonica; and as he ascended from the font, he dictated a solemn edict, which proclaimed his own faith, and prescribed the religion of his subjects. "It is our pleasure," such is the imperial style, "that all the nations which are governed by our clemency and moderation, should steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by the Apostle Peter to the Romans; and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the discipline of the Apostles, and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe the sole

* Townsend, Eccles. and Civil Hist., vol. i., p. 350.

SECULAR POWER EMPLOYED TO EXECUTE THE CANON LAW. 359

Deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, under an equal majesty and sacred Trinity. We authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians; and as we judge that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the infamous name of heretics, and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable appellation of churches. Besides the condemnation of divine justice, they must expect to suffer the severe penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict upon them." * The power over the church, above that of Bishops and Metropolitans, was vested in Councils, and in the Emperors. The latter, as heads of the state, were acknowledged as heads of the church also; and as such, they convoked Synods at their pleasure, and confirmed their laws; they, moreover, ordered punishments, and appointed to dignities. Influenced, as it might happen, by secular or religious motives, they sometimes took upon themselves to decide controversies, and even to rescind decisions of Synods, by declaring in favour of those who had been condemned. The party favoured by such interference was not likely to complain: those only who suffered maintained the authority of the Bishops over the church, and denied that of the Emperors. Though dependence of this kind on the civil authority was generally objected to by the Clergy, they still acknowledged the decision of the Emperor to be the final appeal; and it was a boast of the Bishop of Rome, that he could be judged by none other than the Emperor himself. The Bishops were submissive to the imperial authority, when exercised in the affairs of the church, so long as the rights of conscience and the doctrines of Christianity were not infringed. Indeed, the historian Socrates, in the preface to his fifth book, says, "That from the time Emperors embraced the Christian religion, the administration of the church devolved upon them." Still, on the other hand, it is necessary to be borne in mind, that the care of public morals had always been confided exclusively to the Clergy, which gave them power over the Emperors themselves. A remarkable instance, which occurred near the time now under review, may be mentioned in proof of this authority of the spiritual over the temporal power. Soon after the advancement of Theodosius the Great to the imperial throne, he was called to account by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, for having caused many inhabitants of Thessalonica to be massacred, in revenge for the murder of some imperial officers which had been committed in that place; and was compelled to reconcile himself with the church by the humiliation of public penance.† The account is very graphically given by Theodoret:—

After the death of Eugenius, the Emperor went to Milan, and repaired towards the church, to pray within its walls. When he drew near the gates of the edifice, he was met by Ambrose, the Bishop of the city, who took hold of him by his purple robe, and said to him, in the presence of the multitude, "Stand back! a man defiled by sin, and with hands imbrued in blood unjustly shed, is not worthy, with-

* Townsend, Eccles. and Civil Hist., vol. 1., p. 354.

† Tillemont, Hist. des Emp., tom. v., p. 336.

out repentance, to enter within these sacred precincts, or partake of the holy mysteries." The Emperor, struck with admiration at the boldness of the Bishop, began to reflect on his own conduct, and, with much contrition, retraced his steps. The crime alluded to had been committed under the following circumstances:—A charioteer had made a declaration of obscene passion to Buthericus, a military chief of Illyria, and had, in consequence, been committed to prison. Some time after, some magnificent races were to be held at the hippodrome, and the populace of Thessalonica demanded the release of the prisoner, considering him necessary to the celebration of the games. As their request was not attended to, they rose up in sedition, and slew Buthericus. On hearing of this deed, the wrath of the Emperor was excited to a fearful height, and he commanded that a certain number of the citizens should be put to death. The whole city was deluged with blood unrighteously spilled; for strangers, who had but just arrived there on their journey to other lands, were sacrificed with others. There were many cases of suffering well worthy of commiseration, of which the following is an instance:—A merchant offered himself to be slain as a substitute for his two sons, who had both been selected as victims, and promised the soldiers to give them all the gold he possessed, on condition of their effecting the exchange. They could not but compassionate his misfortune, and consented to take him as a substitute for one of his sons, but declared that they did not dare to let off both the young men, as that would render the appointed number of the slain incomplete. The father gazed on his sons, and wept bitterly; and, loving them both equally, he could not make choice between them: he was still standing irresolute, and utterly unable to decide, when they were both slain before his eyes. I have also been informed, said the historian Sozomen, that a faithful slave voluntarily offered to die instead of his master, who was being led to the place of execution. It appears that it was for these, and other acts of cruelty, that Ambrose rebuked the Emperor, forbade him to enter the church, and excommunicated him. Theodosius publicly confessed his sin in the sanctuary, and, during the time set apart for penance, refrained from wearing his imperial ornaments, as being inconsistent with a season of mourning. He also enacted a law, prohibiting the officers intrusted with the execution of the imperial mandates, from inflicting the punishment of death till thirty days after the mandate had been issued, in order that the wrath of the Emperor might have time to be appeased, and that room might be made for the exercise of mercy and repentance. Ambrose, no doubt, performed many other actions worthy of his priestly office, which are known only to the inhabitants of the country. Among the illustrious deeds that are attributed to him, we are made acquainted with the following:—It was the custom for the Emperor to take a seat in assemblies of the church within the palisades of the altar, so that he sat apart from the rest of the people. Ambrose, considering that this custom had originated either from subserviency, or from want of discipline, caused the Emperor to be seated without the trellis-work of the altar, so that he sat in front of the people, and behind the Priests. The Emperor Theodosius approved

AMBROSE, ARCHBISHOP OF MILAN.

of this wise alteration, as did likewise his successors; and we are told that it has been ever since scrupulously observed. Another magnanimous action was performed by this Prelate of Milan. A Pagan of distinction insulted Gratian, affirming that he was unworthy of his father; and he was, in consequence, condemned to death. As he was being led out to execution, Ambrose went to the palace to implore a pardon. Gratian was then engaged in witnessing a private exhibition of horse-racing; for it was frequently the practice of the Emperors to engage in these diversions at times that the public were excluded: the officers at the gates of the palace would not therefore interrupt him by informing him that Ambrose solicited an interview. On finding this to be the case, the Bishop went to the circus, and, entering with the persons who took charge of the animals, he made his way up to the Emperor, and would not leave him till he obtained a pardon for the man who had been condemned to death. Ambrose was very diligent in the observance of the canons of the church, and in maintaining discipline among his Clergy. I have selected the above two incidents from among the record of his numerous magnanimous deeds, in order to show with what intrepidity he addressed those in power, when the service of God was in question.*

The disputes of the belligerent parties on questions of a spiritual character, were generally embarrassed with perplexing and complicated theories; and the Emperors were in difficulty to know which opinions were orthodox, and which were heretical. Appeals to minor Synods became indispensable, in order to preserve entire the apostolical constitution of the church. These provincial assemblies were often held until the first Council of Constantinople was convened.

Epiphanius,† a popular writer of this period, and Bishop of

* Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 25.

† Sozomen, who had a strong tendency to superstitious extravagance, and was very credulous, gives the following account of Epiphanius, and of a miracle which he performed:—Peter the Apostle was not, it appears, the only man who raised another from the dead: John the Evangelist wrought a similar miracle, it is said, at Ephesus, as did likewise the daughters of Philip at Hierapolis. The miracle of Epiphanius is said to be as follows:—Two beggars, having ascertained when Epiphanius would pass that way, agreed to exact a larger donation than usual from him, by having recourse to stratagem. As soon as the Bishop was seen approaching, one of the beggars flung himself on the ground, and simulated death; the other uttered loud lamentations, deploring the loss of his companion, and his own inability to procure him the rite of sepulture. Epiphanius prayed to God that the deceased might rest in peace: he gave the survivor sufficient money for the luterment, and said to him, "Take measures, my son, for the burial of your companion, and weep no more; he cannot now arise from the dead; the calamity was inevitable; therefore you ought to bear it with resignation." Saying these words, the Bishop departed from the spot. As soon as there was no one in sight, the beggar who had addressed Epiphanius touched the other with his foot, as he lay extended on the ground, and said to him, "You have well performed your part: arise now, for through your labour we have a good provision for to-day." He, however, returned no answer to this address, and, as he appeared incapable of speech or motion, the other beggar ran after Epiphanius, wept, and tore his hair, confessed the deception that had been practised, and besought him to restore the dead man to life. Epiphanius merely exhorted him to submit with patience to the catastrophe, and sent him away. God did not raise the dead beggar to life; but (as Sozomen says) I feel persuaded it was His design to show that those who practise deception on his servants, are accounted as guilty of the fraud, as if it had been perpetrated against Him who sees all, and who hears all. (Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 27.)

3 A

Salamis, in the Isle of Cyprus, was much inferior in ability to his numerous contemporaries. But his works, though deficient in just argument, and containing statements on which not much dependence should be placed, are nevertheless valuable, as exhibiting the general state of opinions and parties at the time when he wrote. The treatise on heresies is his principal production, and is divided into three parts. In the first he gives an account of the heresies which existed before Christ, amounting, according to his statement, to forty-six; in the next he describes twenty-three of a later date; and in the third book, eleven.* He was bred a Monk, and the work just mentioned is disfigured by so many marks of levity and ignorance, that no one can follow him with confidence.† Intimately connected with our history of the records of persecution, stands the first œcumenical Council of Constantinople. By the canons of Nice, and the apostolical code intimately associated therewith, we are in possession of the fundamental laws and regulations by which the universal church preserved its principles and rites free from corruption; and the enactments of the Constantinopolitan Synod complete the system of episcopal legislature unanimously ratified and acted upon by the fathers of the first four centuries. The former Synod, held in this city, took place in 360, or 362, in which sixty-two Bishops excommunicated and deposed Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, for his errors in faith concerning the Holy Spirit. The first question considered ‡ was that relating to the church of Constantinople; and it was declared, that Maximus, called the Cynic, had not been lawfully constituted a Prelate; that his ordination, and all that he had since done in his pretended character of Bishop, was null and void, and that he was a usurper of the see of Constantinople. Then they proceeded to elect to the see Gregory of Nazianzum, and eventually, notwithstanding his entreaties and tears, obliged him to accept the office. During these proceedings it pleased God to take away Meletius; and Gregory succeeded him as President of the Council. He endeavoured, with all his power, to induce them to leave Paulinus in the see of Antioch, with a view of appeasing the divisions of that church; but his efforts were ineffectual. The Bishops of Macedonia and of Egypt vehemently opposed his designs, objecting also to his election, upon the ground, that, being already Bishop of another see, he ought not to have been translated to that of Constantinople. In consequence of this, Gregory formed the resolution to entreat the Fathers to permit him to resign the see of Constantinople; which he in the end did, and Nectarius was elected in his room. During this interval Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria, presided over the Council; but Nectarius, immediately after his election, took that office upon himself. Now, Nectarius had been a Priest in the latter city;

* Stebbing, Hist. of the Christ. Church, vol. I., p. 217.

† Waddington, A History of the Church, vol. I., chap. vii., p. 217.

‡ Platina dates this Council 370. The proper date is from 381 to 383, it having been prorogued through that period. Dupus makes three assemblies of Bishops; one in 381, another in 382, and the last in 383. It began in May, 381, and sat till August. Cave and Newman think there were only two sittings. (Hey, Lect., vol. iv., p. 96; Newman, Arians, p. 398; Mosheim, vol. i., p. 355.)

ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

but, so far from having passed through the inferior degrees, as the canons direct, he had not been even baptized.* The Council then proceeded to publish seven canons. 1. Confirms the Council of Nice, and anathematizes, "extremâ execratione ac detestatione," all who deny it. 2. Forbids Bishops to go beyond their borders, and to trouble other dioceses; directs that the Bishop of Alexandria shall have the sole administration of Egypt; that the affairs of the Asian, Pontic, and Thracian dioceses shall be administered by their respective Bishops, and that the Synod of each province shall administer the affairs pertaining thereto. 3. Gives the Bishops of Constantinople the post of honour next to the Bishops of Rome. 4. Declares the nullity of the consecration and of the episcopal acts of Maximus. 5. Approves the tome of the Western Bishops, and of Antioch; which is thought to be the synodical letter of Damasus, Bishop of Rome, to the Council of Antioch, A.D. 378, and the letter of the Fathers in answer. These acknowledge one and the same Divinity, in the three persons of the Trinity.† 6. Lays down a rule for ecclesiastical judgments, and permits all persons whatever to bring an accusation against a Bishop, or any other Ecclesiastic, on account of any private injury or wrong said to have been received; but in church matters it directs, that no accusation shall be received coming from heretics or schismatics, or from persons excommunicated or deposed, or accused of any crime, before they shall have justified themselves. And, 7. States the conditions upon which heretics may be received into the church, with the ceremony to be observed on the occasion. It ordains, that Arians, Macedonians, Sabbatians, (Novatians,) Quartodecimans, and Apollinarians, shall be received after they have made profession of faith, and anathematized their errors, by the unction of the Holy Spirit; and the chrism, wherewith they shall be anointed on the forehead, the eyes, the mouth, the hands, the ears, at the pronouncing of these words, "This is the seal of the Holy Spirit." As to the Eunomians, the Montanists, the Sabellians, and all other heretics, they were to be received like Pagans; that is, at first they shall receive the imposition of hands, to give them the name of Christians; afterwards they shall be placed in the rank of catechumens; that they shall be exorcised by blowing three times into their faces, and into their ears; (exufflation;) that they shall be catechised; and that for a long time they shall be permitted to hear only the holy Scripture in the church; and at last they shall be baptized.

Notwithstanding many pacific appearances studded the hemisphere of the church, there was, nevertheless, an under current of deep malignant feeling secretly spreading the waters of strife, among the various communities of the faithful. Several of the Emperors, when they embraced the faith of Christ, took the most effectual and seasonable

* Landon, Manual of Councils, p. 163.

† The tome of the Western Bishops was the confirmation of the Nicene Creed, and anathematization of those who dissented from it, agreed upon at the Council of Sardica, where were met three hundred and forty-one Bishops, being all of the Western Church. (Howel, Synopsis Canonum, p. 23, folio, London, 1710; Dupin, vol. i., p. 273; Cave, vol. i., p. 366, and Beveridge; Cod. Canon, in loc.)

3 A 2 measures to discountenance the practice of idolatry, and to introduce the worship of the true God. Constantine the Great, and his son Constantine, who succeeded him in the East, forbade offering sacrifice to the deities of Paganism, but gave no directions for the destruction of the temples. Julian the Apostate, it will be remembered, reversed the decrees of his predecessors, and employed the weight of his authority in the re-establishment of idolatry and superstition. Jovian, his immediate successor, prohibited pagan worship, but did not survive to see the fruit of his exertions. Valens, to whose share the Eastern empire descended, was so wholly intent on the promotion of Arianism, that he only disturbed the faithful, and allowed the Heathens the unlimited exercise of their unhallowed faith. This was the melancholy posture of affairs in the East, when Theodosius the Great was associated in the empire with Gratian, A.D. 379. The new Emperor, full of zeal for the Christian name, was resolved to complete the good work, which had suffered so much interruption since the days of Constantine. As Egypt had always been considered the hot-bed of superstition, and the chief seat of idolatry, he commenced his reform with that country, and proceeded to Phoenicia and Syria. Theodosius sent an order to Cynegius, Prefect of the East, for shutting up all the temples, and prohibiting pagan superstition, under very severe penalties. The Prelates were also required to forward the execution of that order. Marcellus, the Bishop of Apamea in Syria, was the first who attempted to demolish the temples of the idols. This ecclesiastical dignitary was a man of great merit, and universally respected for many excellent qualities. He had laboured hard for the extirpation of idolatry in Apamea; but his success was not proportioned to his zeal, until Cynegius came, attended with an armed force, which kept the Heathens in awe, and deterred them from a revolt before his arrival, for which they were ripe. The design of the Prefect was to undermine the very foundations of idolatry in that city, by the destruction of the temple of Jupiter; a very magnificent and extended structure. He was, however, unequal to the task. The stones were of a stupendous size, very durable, and well cemented and bound together by cramps * of iron and lead. The Bishop perceiving the Prefect at a stand, advised him to direct his course to some other place; and then besought the Almighty to direct him in the way of razing that monument of idolatry. His prayer was heard. On the following morning, a labouring man, who obtained his living by carrying burdens, and was utterly unacquainted with even the first rudiments of architecture, waited upon the Bishop, and engaged, on very easy terms, to level this temple of Jupiter with the ground. Marcellus accepted the proposal, and the affair was executed in the following manner. This somewhat novel engineer, having examined the situation of the edifice, and finding it surrounded by a gallery, supported by stately pillars ten yards in circumference, judged that it would be more to his help to weaken the foundation of the structure, than to attack the

* "Cramps."—In architecture, a cramp is a piece of metal, bent, or dovetailed, at each end, for the purpose of holding two blocks, of any material, firmly together.

DESECRATION AND DESTRUCTION OF PAGAN TEMPLES.

body of the edifice immediately: he undermined the pillars themselves, which he supported with beams of timber. When he had thus rendered insecure three of the most considerable of these pillars, he put fire to the timber, and the pillars fell, and drew twelve more with them, and thus brought down one side of the edifice. The people flocked together from all parts of the town, praising the Most High, who had triumphed over his enemies. The zealous Prelate made the same havoc wherever he found temples erected in honour of the false gods, as the most expeditious and efficacious means for gaining the deluded people to the worship of the one true God. Supported by what forces he had in the country, the Prefect prosecuted the same work with all imaginable success. There was at that time a spacious temple at Aulo, in the territory of Apamea, which the Pagans defended with their might. Marcellus, although out of order, through bodily indisposition, endeavoured to accompany the soldiers to that fortress of idolatry. He was so lame, that he could neither pursue the enemy, nor provide for his own safety by flight; and therefore thought fit to keep at a proper distance, and give the necessary orders for attack. While the Emperor's forces were employed in their work, a body of the Pagans sallied forth, seized the Bishop, and burnt him alive. As he was alone when this happened, it was some time before it was generally known. When it was disclosed, and the authors of that barbarous action were discovered, the sons of Marcellus were for inflicting summary justice on the murderers; but this motion was opposed and overruled by the most judicious and pious persons of the province, who were of opinion, that the young men ought rather to thank God for the favour their father had received at his hands, and the glory of martyrdom, which he had thus obtained. The Synod of the province also refused to revenge on his barbarous enemies a death so happy for Marcellus, and so glorious for his family.*

Although the career of Marcellus terminated so fatally, the work of demolition was not long content with less famous edifices, these outworks of Paganism; it aspired to attack again one of its strongest citadels, and, by the public destruction of one of the most celebrated temples in the world, to announce that polytheism had for ever lost its hold upon the minds of men. It was considered the highest praise of the magnificent temple in Edessa, of which the roof was of remarkable construction, and which contained in its secret sanctuary certain very celebrated statues of wrought iron, and whose fall had excited the indignant eloquence of Libanius, to compare it to the Serapion in Alexandria. The Serapion at that time appeared secure in the superstition which connected its inviolable sanctity and the honour of its god with the rise and fall of the Nile, with the fertility and existence of Egypt, and, as Egypt was the granary of the East, of Constantinople. The Pagans had little apprehension that the Serapion itself, before many years, would be levelled with the ground. The temple of Serapis, next to that of Jupiter in the capitol, was

* Soxom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 15; Theodoret., Hist. Eccles., lib. v. cap. 21.

the proudest monument of pagan religious architecture. Like the more celebrated structures of the East, and that of Jerusalem in its glory, it comprehended within its precincts a vast mass of buildings, of which the temple itself formed the centre. It was built on an artificial hill, in the old quarter of the city called Rhacotis, to which the ascent was by a hundred steps. All the substructure was vaulted over; and in these dark chambers, which communicated with each other, were supposed to be carried on the most fearful and, to the Christian, abominable mysteries. All around the spacious level platform were the habitations of the Priests and the ascetics dedicated to the worship of the god. Within these outworks of the city rather than temple was a square, surrounded on all sides with a magnificent portico. In the centre arose the temple, on pillars of enormous magnitude and beautiful proportion. The work, either of Alexander himself or of the first Ptolemy, aspired to unite the colossal grandeur of Egyptian with the fine harmony of Grecian art. The god himself was the especial object of adoration throughout the whole country, and every part of the empire into which the Egyptian worship had penetrated, but more particularly in Alexandria; and the wise policy of the Ptolemies had blended together, under this pliant and all-embracing religion, the different races of their subjects. Egyptian and Greek met as worshippers of Serapis. The Serapis of Egypt was said to have been adored for ages at Sinope: he was transported from that city with great pomp and splendour, to be re-incorporated, as it were, and re-identified with his ancient prototype. While the Egyptians placed in Serapis the great vivific principle of the universe, the fecundating Nile, holding the Nilometer for his sceptre, the Lord of Amen-ti, the President of the regions beyond the grave; the Greeks at the same time recognised the blended attributes of their Dionysius, Helios, Æsculapius, and Hades. The colossal statue of Serapis embodied these various attributes.* It filled the sanctuary; its outstretched and all-embracing arms touched the walls; the right the one, the left the other. It was said to have been the work of Sesostris: it was made of all the metals fused together, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin: it was inlaid with all kinds of precious stones: the whole was polished, and appeared of an azure colour. The measure, or bushel, the emblem of productiveness, or plenty, crowned its head. By its side stood the symbolic three-headed animal, one the fore-part of a lion, one of a dog, one of a wolf. In this the Greeks saw the type of their poetic Cerberus.† The serpent, the symbol of eternity, wound round the whole, and returned, resting its head on the hand of the god. The more completely, observes Mr. Milman, (from whom on this subject we have quoted largely,) the adoration of Serapis had absorbed the worship of the whole Egyptian pantheon, the more eagerly Christianity

* The statue is described by Macrobius, Saturn. i., 20; Clemens Alexandrin., Exhortat. ad Gent., i., p. 42; Ruffin., Hist. Eccles., lib. xli., cap. 23.

† According to the interpretation of Macrobius, the three heads represented the past, the present, and the future: the rapacious wolf, the past; the central lion, the intermediate present; the fawning dog, the hopeful future. (Milman.)

DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS.

desired to triumph over the representative of polytheism. However, in the time of Hadrian, the philosophic* party may have endeavoured to blend and harmonize the two faiths, they stood now in their old direct and irreconcilable opposition. The suppression of the internal feuds between the opposite parties in Alexandria, enabled Christianity to direct all its concentrated force against Paganism. Theophilus was a man of boldness and activity, eager to seize, and skilful to avail himself of, every opportunity to inflame the popular mind against the Heathens. A Priest of Serapis was accused and convicted of practising those licentious designs against the virtue of the female worshippers, so frequently attributed to the priesthood of the Eastern religions. The noblest and most beautiful women were persuaded to submit to the embraces of the god, whose place, under the favourable darkness caused by the sudden extinction of the lamps in the temple, was filled by the Priest. These inauspicious rumours prepared the inevitable collision. A neglected temple of Osiris, or Dionysius, had been granted by Constantius to the Arians of Alexandria. Theophilus obtained from the Emperor a grant of the vacant site for a new church, to accommodate the increasing numbers of the orthodox Christians. On digging the foundation, there were discovered many of the obscene symbols used in the Bacchic and Osirian mysteries. Theophilus, with more regard to the success of his cause than to decency, exposed these ludicrous or disgusting objects in the public market-place, to the contempt and abhorrence of the people. The Pagans, indignant at this treatment of their sacred symbols, and maddened by the scorn and ridicule of the Christians, took up arms, and demanded severe reprisals. The streets ran with blood, and many Christians who fell in this tumultuous fray received the honours of martyrdom. A philosopher named Olympus placed himself at the head of the pagan party. Olympus had foreseen and predicted the ruin of the external worship of polytheism. He had endeavoured to implant a profound feeling in the hearts of the Pagans, which might survive the destruction of their ordinary objects of worship. "The statues of the gods are but perishable and material images: the eternal intelligences which dwelt within them have withdrawn to the heavens."† Yet Olympus hoped, and at first with his impassioned eloquence succeeded in rousing his pagan compatriots to a bold defiance of the public authorities in support of their religion; faction and rivalry supplied what was wanting to faith; and it appeared that Paganism would likewise boast its army of martyrs,—martyrs, not indeed through patient submission to the persecutor, but in heroic despair perishing with their gods.

The Pagans at first were the aggressors: they sallied from their fortress, the Serapion, seized the unhappy Christians whom they met, forced them to sacrifice on their altar, or slew them upon it, or threw them into the deep trench defiled with the blood and offal of sacrifice. In vain Evagrius, the Prefect of Egypt, and Romanus, the Commander of the troops, appeared before the gates of the tem-

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. ii., p. 155.

† Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 15.

ple, remonstrated with the garrison, who appeared at the windows, against their barbarities, and menaced them with the just vengeance of the law. They were obliged to withdraw, baffled and disregarded, and to await the orders of the Emperor. Olympus exhorted his followers to the height of religious heroism. "Having made a glorious sacrifice of our enemies, let us immolate ourselves, and perish with our gods." This was more easily said than done. Before the edict of Theodosius arrived, Olympus had disappeared: he had stolen out of the temple, and had embarked for Italy. The Christian writers do honour to his sagacity, or to his prophetic powers, at the expense of his courage and fidelity to his party. In the dead of night, when all was slumbering around, and all the gates closed, he heard the Christian Alleluia pealing from a single voice through the silent temple. He acknowledged the sign, or the omen, and anticipated the unfavourable sentence of the Emperor, the fate of his faction, and of his gods. This temporary triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness was not achieved without a struggle. The Bishop of Alexandria, to whom the temple of Bacchus had, at his own request, been granted by the Emperor, converted the edifice into a Christian church. The statues were removed, the most secret recesses of the temple explored. The Pagans, amazed at so unexpected an exhibition, would not suffer it in silence, but conspired against the Christians, took possession of the temple of Serapis, which large and beautiful structure was placed on an eminence. Here they conveyed their Christian prisoners, put them to the torture, and otherwise maltreated them. The efforts of Romanus to reduce the citadel to submission were utterly in vain. The Heathen, who had shut themselves up in the temple of Serapis, were averse to yield from fear of the punishment that they knew would await their outrageous proceedings, instigated as they were by that craven miscreant, Olympus. When the Emperor was informed of all these occurrences, he declared that the Christians who had been slain were blessed, inasmuch as they had been admitted to the honours of martyrdom, and had suffered in defence of the faith. He offered a free pardon to those by whom they had suffered death, hoping that by this act of clemency they would be the more readily induced to embrace Christianity; and he commanded the demolition of the temples which had been the cause of the sedition. It is said, that when this edict was read in public, the Christians uttered loud shouts of joy, because the Emperor laid the odium of what had occurred upon the Pagans. The people who were guarding the temple of Serapis were so terrified at hearing these shouts, that they took to flight; and the Christians immediately obtained possession of the spot, which they have retained ever since. It is said, that when the temple was being demolished, some stones were found on which were hieroglyphic characters in the form of a cross, which, on being submitted to the inspection of the learned, were interpreted as signifying "the life to come." These characters, Sozomen informs us, led to the conversion of several of the Pagans, as did likewise other inscriptions found in the same place, and which contained predictions of the

DESTRUCTION OF THE IDOL SERAPIS.

destruction of the temple. It was thus that the temple of Serapis was converted into a church: it received the name of the Emperor Arcadius.*

The Eastern Pagans appear to have been but little acquainted with the real character of Theodosius. When the rescript arrived, they laid down their arms, and assembled in peaceful array before the temple, as if they expected the sentence of the Emperor in their own favour.† The officer began: the first words of the rescript plainly intimated the Emperor's abhorrence of idolatry. Cries of triumph from the Christians interrupted the proceedings; the panic-stricken Pagans abandoning the temple and the god. Two of the celebrated Pontiffs, one of Amoun, one of "the Ape," retired to Constantinople, where the first, Ammonius, taught in a school, and continued to deplore the fall of Paganism; Helladius, the other, was known to boast of the part he had taken in the sedition of Alexandria, in which, with his own hands, he had slain nine Christians.‡ The imperial rescript at once went beyond and fell short of the fears of the Pagans. It disdained to exact vengeance for the blood of the Christian martyrs, who had been so happy as to lay down their lives for their Redeemer; but it commanded the destruction of the idolatrous temples; it confiscated all the ornaments, and ordered the statues to be melted or broken up for the benefit of the poor. Theophilus hastened in his triumphant zeal to execute the ordinance of the Emperor. Marching with the Prefect at the head of the military, they ascended the steps to the temple of Serapis. They surveyed the vacant chambers of the Priests and the ascetics; they paused to pillage the library;§ they entered the deserted sanctuary; they stood in the presence of the god. The sight of this colossal image, for centuries an object of worship, struck awe to the hearts of the Christians themselves. They stood silent, inactive, trembling. The Archbishop alone maintained his courage: he commanded a soldier to proceed to the assault. The soldier struck the statue with his hatchet on the knee. The blow echoed through the breathless hall; but no sound or sign of divine vengeance ensued; the roof of the temple fell not to crush the sacrilegious assailant, nor did the pavement heave and quake beneath his feet. The emboldened soldier climbed up to the head, and struck it off: it rolled upon the ground. Serapis gave no sign of life; but a large colony of rats, disturbed in their peaceful abode, ran about on all sides. The passions of the multitude are always in extremes. From breathless awe they passed at once to ungovernable mirth. The work of destruction went on

* Soxom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 15.

† If the oration of Lilianus, exhorting the Emperor to revenge the death of Julian, was really presented to Theodosius, it betrays something of the same ignorance. He seems to think his arguments not unlikely to meet with success; at all events, he appears not to have the least notion that Theodosius would not respect the memory of the apostats. (Milman.)

‡ Soerat., Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 16. Helladius is mentioned in a law of Theodosius the Younger, as a celebrated grammarian, elevated to certain honours. This law is, however, dated 425, at least five-and-thirty years after this transaction.

§ "Nos vidimus armaris librorum; quibus direptis, eximatus ea a nostris homialibus, nostris temporibus memorant." (Oros., lib. vi., cap. 15.)

3 B amid peals of laughter, coarse jests, and shouts of acclamation; and as the fragments of the huge body of Serapis were dragged through the streets, the Pagans, with that revulsion of feeling common to the superstitious populace, joined in the insult and mockery against their unresisting and self-abandoned god.* The solid walls and deep foundations of the temple offered more insurmountable resistance to the baffled zeal of the Christians; the work of demolition proceeded but slowly with the massive architecture; and some time after, a church was erected in the precincts to look down upon the ruins of idolatry, which still frowned in desolate grandeur upon their conquerors.† Yet the Christians, even after their complete triumph, were not without some lingering terrors; the Pagans, not without hopes that a fearful vengeance would be exacted from the land for this sacrilegious extirpation of their ancient deities. Serapis was either the Nile, or the deity who presided over the periodical inundations of the river. The Nilometer, which measured the rise of the waters, was kept in the temple. Would the indignant river refuse its fertilizing moisture, keep sullenly within its banks, and leave the ungrateful land blasted with perpetual drought and barrenness? As the time of the inundation approached, all Egypt was in a state of trembling suspense. Long beyond the accustomed day, the waters remained at their usual level: there was no sign of overflowing. The people began to murmur; the murmurs swelled into indignant remonstrances; the usual rites and sacrifices were demanded from the reluctant Prefect, who despatched a hasty messenger to the Emperor for instructions. There was every appearance of a general insurrection; the Pagans triumphed in their turn; but before the answer of the Emperor arrived,—which replied in uncompromising faith, “that if the inundation of the river could only be obtained by magic, and impious rites, let it remain dry; the fertility of Egypt must not be purchased by an act of infidelity to God,” ‡—suddenly, the waters began to swell, an inundation more full and extensive than usual spread over the land; and the versatile Pagans had now no course, but to join again with the Christians in mockeries against the impotence of their gods.

But the next hostile measure was still more unexpected. Notwithstanding the manifest authority assumed by Christianity, and by one

* They were said to have discovered several of the tricks by which the Priests of Serapis imposed on the credulity of their worshippers. An aperture of the wall was so contrived, that the light of the sun, at a particular time, fell on the face of Serapis. The sun was then thought to visit Serapis; and at the moment of their meeting, the flashing light threw a smile on the lips of the deity. There is another story of a magnet on the roof, which, as in the fable about Mahomet's coffin, raised either a small statue of the idol, or the sun in a car with four horses, to the roof, and there held it suspended. A Christian withdrew the magnet, and the car fell, and was dashed to pieces on the pavement. (Milman.)

† The Christians rejoiced in discovering the cross in various parts of the building: they were inclined to suppose it miraculous, or prophetic of their triumph. But, in fact, the crux anænia is a common hieroglyphic, a symbol of life. (Milman.)

‡ Improbable as it may seem, that such an answer should be given by a statesman like Theodosius, yet it is strongly characteristic of the times. The Emperor neither denies the power of the malignant demons worshipped by the idolaters, nor the efficacy of enchantments, to obtain their favour, and to force from them the retarded overflow of the river. (Milman.)

THE GODDESS OF VICTORY DESTROYED.

of the Christian Prelates, best qualified by his own determined character to wield at his will the weak and irresolute Gratian; notwithstanding the long ill-suppressed murmurs, and now bold and authoritative remonstrances, against all toleration, all connivance at Heathen idolatry; it might have been thought that any other victim would have been chosen from the synod of gods; that all other statues would have been thrown prostrate, all other worship proscribed, before that of Victory. The service of the altar was not considered incompatible with the command of armies; the Romans, after their consulships and triumphs, aspired to the place of Pontiff, or of Augur; the seats of Cicero and Pompey were filled, in the fourth century, by the most illustrious members of the senate; and the dignity of their birth reflected additional splendour on their sacerdotal character. The fifteen Priests who composed the College of Pontiffs enjoyed a more distinguished rank as the companions of their Sovereign; and the Christian Emperors condescended to accept the robe and ensigns which were appropriated to the office of Supreme Pontiff. But when Gratian ascended the throne, more scrupulous, or more enlightened, he sternly rejected those profane symbols; applied to the service of the state, or of the church, the revenues of the Priests and vestals; abolished their honours and immunities; and dissolved the ancient fabric of Roman superstition, which was supported by the opinions and habits of eleven hundred years. Paganism was still the constitutional religion of the senate. The hall, or temple, in which they assembled, was adorned by the statue and altar of Victory; a majestic female standing on a globe, with flowing garments, expanded wings, and a crown of laurel in her out-stretched hand. The Senators were sworn on the altar of the goddess, to observe the laws of the Emperor and of the empire; and a solemn offering of wine and of incense was the ordinary prelude of their public deliberations. The removal of this ancient monument was the only injury which Constantius had offered to the superstition of the Romans. The altar of Victory was again restored by Julian, tolerated by Valentinian, and once more banished from the senate by the zeal of Gratian. But the Emperor yet spared the statues of the gods, which were exposed to the public veneration; four hundred and twenty-four temples, or chapels, still remained to satisfy the devotion of the people; and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of the Christians was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice. But the faithful formed the least numerous party in the senate of Rome, and it was only by their absence that they could express their dissent from the legal, though profane, acts of a pagan majority. Incessantly, the dying embers of freedom were, for a moment, revived and inflamed by the breath of fanaticism. Four respectable deputations were successively voted to the imperial court, to represent the grievances of the priesthood and the senate, and to solicit the restoration of the altar of Victory. The conduct of this important business was intrusted to the eloquent Symmachus, a wealthy and noble Senator, who united the sacred characters of Pontiff and Augur with the civil dignities of Proconsul of Africa, and Prefect of the city. This nobleman is said to have

3 B 2 commanded the respect, and even deserved the common attachment, of all his countrymen: he ventured, a rare example in those days, to interfere between the tyranny of the Sovereign, and the menaced welfare of the people.* An uncorrupt Magistrate, he deprecated the increasing burdens of unnecessary taxes, which weighed down the people; he dared to suggest, that the eager petitions for office should be at once rejected, and the worthiest chosen out of the unpretending multitude. The breast of Symmachus was animated by the warmest zeal for the cause of expiring Paganism, and his religious antagonists lamented the abuse of his genius, and the inefficacy of his moral virtues. He mourned in bitter humiliation over the acts of Gratian; the removal of the statue of Victory; the abrogation of the immunities of the pagan priesthood: he hoped to obtain from the justice, or perhaps the fears, of the young Valentinian, that which had been refused by Gratian. The senate met under his authority: a petition was drawn up, and presented in the name of that venerable body to the Emperor. In this composition Symmachus lavished all his eloquence. His oration is written with vigour, with dignity, with elegance.† But in the feeble and apologetic tone, we perceive at once, that it is the artful defence of an almost hopeless cause; it is cautious to timidity; dexterous; elaborately conciliatory; moderate from fear of offending, rather than from tranquil dignity. Ambrose, on the other hand, writes with all the fervid and careless energy of one confident in his cause, and who knows that he is appealing to an audience already pledged by their own passions to his side; he has not to obviate objections, to reconcile difficulties, to sue or to propitiate; his contemptuous and criminating language has only to inflame zeal, to quicken resentment and scorn. He is flowing down on the full tide of human passion, and his impulse but accelerates and strengthens the rapid current. The orator whose petition is extant to the Emperor Valentinian, was evidently conscious of the difficulty and danger of the office which he had assumed. He cautiously avoids every topic which might appear to reflect on the religion of his Sovereign; humbly declares, that prayers and entreaties are his only arms; and artfully draws his arguments from the schools of rhetoric, rather than from those of philosophy. Symmachus endeavours to seduce the imagination of a young Prince, by displaying the attributes of the goddess of Victory; he insinuates that the confiscation of the revenues which were consecrated to the service of the gods, was a measure unworthy of his liberal and disinterested character; and he maintains, that the Roman sacrifices would be deprived of their force and energy, if they were no longer celebrated at the expense as well as in the name of the republic. Even scepticism is

* Symmachus, who was invested with all the civil and sacerdotal honours, represented the Emperor under the two characters of Pontifex Maximus and Princeps Senatis. See the proud inscription at the head of his works.

† Heyne has expressed himself strongly on the superiority of Symmachus to Ambrose. "Argumentorum delectu, vi, pondere, aculeis, non minus admirabilis illa est quam prudentia, cautione, ac verecundia: quam tanto magis sentias si verbosam et inanem, interdum calumulosam et veteratoriam declamationem Ambrosii compares." (Censur. Ingen. et Mor. Q. A. Symmach. in Heyne Opuscul.)

APPEAL OF SYMMACHUS TO THEODORIUS.

made to supply an apology for superstition. The great and incomprehensible secret of the universe eludes the inquiry of man. Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be permitted to guide; and every nation seems to consult the dictates of prudence by a faithful attachment to those rites and opinions which have received the sanction of ages. If those ages have been crowned with glory and prosperity, if the devout people have frequently obtained the blessings which they have solicited at the altars of the gods, it must appear still more advisable to persist in the same salutary practice, and not to risk the unknown perils that may attend any rash innovations. The test of antiquity and success was applied with singular advantage to the religion of Numa; and Rome herself, the celestial genius that presided over the fates of the city, is introduced by the orator to plead her own cause before the tribunal of the Emperors. "Most excellent Princes," says the venerable matron, "fathers of your country, pity and respect my age, which has hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety. Since I do not repent, permit me to continue in the practice of my ancient rites. Since I am born free, allow me to enjoy my domestic institutions. This religion has reduced the world under my laws. These rites have repelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the capitol. Were my grey hairs reserved for such intolerable disgrace? I am ignorant of the new system that I am required to adopt; but I am well assured that the correction of old age is always an ungrateful and ignominious office."* The fears of the people supplied what the discretion of the orator had suppressed; and the calamities which afflicted or threatened the declining empire were unanimously imputed by the Pagans to the new religion of Christ and of Constantine.†

Ambrose was at hand to confront the eloquent Pagan, and to prohibit any fatal concession. Far different is the tone and manner of the Archbishop of Milan. He asserts in plain terms, says Mr. Milman, the unquestionable obligation of a Christian Sovereign to permit no part of the public revenue to be devoted to the maintenance of idolatry. Their Roman ancestors were to be treated with reverence; but in a question of religion they were to consider God alone. He who advises such grants as those demanded by the suppliants is guilty of sacrifice. Gradually he rises to still more imperious language, and unveils all the terrors of the sacerdotal authority. "The Emperor who shall be guilty of such concessions will find that the Bishops will neither endure nor connive at his sin. If he enter a church, he will find no Priest, or one who will defy his authority. The church will indignantly reject the gifts of him who has shared them with Gentile temples. The altar disdains the offerings of him who has made offerings to images. It is written, 'Man cannot serve two masters.'" Ambrose, emboldened, as it were, by his success,

* See the fifty-fourth epistle of the tenth book of Symmachus. In the form and disposition of his ten books of Epistles, he imitated the younger Pliny; whose rich and florid style he was supposed by his friends to equal or excel. But the luxuriancy of Symmachus consists of barren leaves, without fruits, and even without flowers. Few facts, and few sentiments, can be extracted from his verbose correspondence. (Gibbon.)

† Gibbon, Decline and Fall; Milman's Notes, second edit., vol. iii., p. 6.

ventures, in his second letter, to treat the venerable and hallowed traditions of Roman glory with contempt. "How long did Hannibal insult the gods of Rome! It was the goose and not the deity that saved the capitol. Did Jupiter speak in the goose? Where were the gods in all the defeats, some of them but recent, of the pagan Emperors? Was not the altar of Victory then standing?" He insults the number, the weaknesses, the marriages, of the vestal virgins. "If the same munificence were shown to Christian virgins, the beggared treasury would be exhausted by the claims. Are not the baths, the porticoes, the streets, still crowded with images? Must they still keep their place in the great council of the empire? You compel to worship if you restore the altar. And who is this deity? Victory is a gift, and not a power; she depends on the courage of the legions, not on the influence of the religion; a mighty deity, who is bestowed by the numbers of an army, or the doubtful issue of a battle!"* Such, however, proved to be the death-struggle of Paganism under the auspices of Theodosius: nevertheless, a re-action took place in the West, which for a period threatened much commotion. The pernicious attachment to the Arian sect which Valentinian had imbibed from the example and instructions of the Empress Justina, was soon erased by the lessons of a more orthodox education. His growing zeal for the faith of Nice, and his filial reverence for the character and authority of Ambrose, disposed the faithful to entertain the most favourable opinion of the virtues of the young Emperor of the West.† They applauded his chastity and temperance, his contempt of pleasure, his application to business, and his tender affection for his two sisters; which could not, however, seduce his impartial equity to pronounce an unjust sentence against the meanest of his subjects. But this amiable youth, before he had accomplished the twentieth year of his age, was oppressed by domestic treason; and the empire was again involved in the horrors of a civil war. Arbogastes,‡ a gallant soldier of the nation of the Franks, held the second rank in the service of Gratian. On the death of his master he joined the standard of Theodosius; contributed, by his valour and military conduct, to the destruction of Maximus; and was appointed, after the victory, Master-General of the armies of Gaul. His real merit, and apparent fidelity, had gained the confidence both of the Prince and people; his boundless liberality corrupted the allegiance of the troops; and whilst he was universally esteemed as the pillar of the state, the bold and crafty barbarian was secretly determined either to rule or to ruin the empire of the West. The important commands of the army were distributed among the Franks; the creatures of Arbogastes were promoted to all the honours and offices of the civil

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii., p. 172.

† See Ambrose, tom. ii., de Obit. Valentin., cap. 15, &c., p. 1178, cap. 36, &c., p. 1184. When the young Emperor gave an entertainment, he fasted himself; he refused to see a handsome actress, &c. Since he ordered his wild beasts to be killed, it is ungenerous in Philostorgius (lib. xi., cap. 1) to reproach him with the love of that amusement.

‡ Zosimus (lib. iv., p. 275) praises the enemy of Theodosius. But he is detested by Socrates, lib. v., cap. 25; and Orosius, lib. vii., cap. 35.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE MURDER OF VALENTINIAN.

government, the progress of the conspiracy removed every faithful servant from the presence of Valentinian; and the Emperor, without power, and without intelligence, insensibly sunk into the precarious and dependent condition of a captive.* The indignation which he expressed, though it might arise only from the rash and impatient temper of youth, may be candidly ascribed to the generous spirit of a Prince, who felt that he was not unworthy to reign. He secretly invited the Archbishop of Milan to undertake the office of a mediator, as the pledge of his sincerity, and the guardian of his safety. He contrived to apprize the Emperor of the East of his helpless situation; and he declared, that unless Theodosius could speedily march to his assistance, he must attempt to escape from the palace, or rather prison, of Vienna in Gaul, where he had imprudently fixed his residence in the midst of the hostile faction. But the hopes of relief were distant and doubtful; and as every day furnished some new provocation, the Emperor, without strength or counsel, too hastily resolved to risk an immediate contest with his powerful General. He received Arbogastes on the throne; and, as the Count approached with some appearance of respect, delivered to him a paper which dismissed him from all his employments. "My authority," replied Arbogastes, with insulting coolness, "does not depend on the smile or the frown of a Monarch;" and he contemptuously threw the paper on the ground. The indignant Sovereign snatched at the sword of one of the guards, which he struggled to draw from its scabbard; and it was not without some degree of violence that he was prevented from using the deadly weapon against his enemy, or against himself. A few days after this extraordinary quarrel, in which he had exposed his resentment and his weakness, the unfortunate Valentinian was found strangled in his apartment; and some pains were employed to disguise the manifest guilt of Arbogastes, and to persuade the world that the death of the young Emperor had been the voluntary effect of his own despair.

The political hemisphere was again hung with blackness, and "the dogs" of civil war were again let loose. The prudence of Arbogastes had prepared for the success of his sanguinary but ambitious designs; and the provincials, in whose breasts every sentiment of patriotism or loyalty was extinguished, expected, with tame resignation, the unknown master whom the choice of a Frank might place on the imperial throne. But some remains of pride and prejudice still opposed the elevation of Arbogastes himself, and the judicious barbarian thought it more advisable to reign under the name of some dependent Roman. He bestowed the purple on the rhetorician Eugenius, whom he had already raised from the place of his domestic Secretary to the rank of the Master of the Offices. In the course both of his private and public service, the Count had always approved the attachment and abilities of Eugenius; his learning and eloquence, supported by the gravity of his manners, recommended him to the

* Gregory of Tours, (lib. ii., cap. 9, p. 165,) in the second volume of the historians of France, has preserved a curious fragment of Sulpitius Alexander, an historian far more valuable than himself.

esteem of the people; and the reluctance with which he seemed to ascend the throne, may inspire a favourable prejudice of his virtue and moderation. The Ambassadors of the new Emperor were immediately despatched to the court of Theodosius to communicate, with affected grief, the unfortunate accident of the death of Valentinian; and, without mentioning the name of Arbogastes, to request that the Monarch of the East would embrace as his lawful colleague the respectable citizen who had obtained the unanimous suffrage of the armies and provinces of the West. Theodosius was justly provoked that the perfidy of a barbarian should have destroyed, in a moment, the labours and the fruit of his former victory; and he was excited by the tears of his beloved wife, to revenge the fate of her unhappy brother, and once more to assert by arms the violated majesty of the throne. But as the second conquest of the West was a task of difficulty and danger, he dismissed, with splendid presents, and an ambiguous answer, the Ambassadors of Eugenius; and almost two years were consumed in the preparations for the civil war. Before he formed any decisive resolution, the Emperor was anxious to discover the will of Heaven; and as the progress of Christianity had silenced the oracles of Delphi and Dodona, he consulted an Egyptian Monk, who possessed, in the opinion of the age, the gift of miracles, and the knowledge of futurity. Eutropius, one of the favourite eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, embarked for Alexandria, from whence he sailed up the Nile, as far as the city of Lycopolis, or of Wolves, in the remote province of Thebais. In the neighbourhood of that city, and on the summit of a lofty mountain, the holy John had constructed, with his own hands, a humble cell, in which he had dwelt above fifty years without opening his door, without seeing the face of a woman, and without tasting any food that had been prepared by fire, or any human art. Five days of the week he spent in prayer and meditation; but on Saturdays and Sundays he regularly opened a small window, and gave audience to the crowd of suppliants who successively flowed from every part of the Christian world. The eunuch of Theodosius approached the window with respectful steps, proposed his questions concerning the event of a civil war, and soon returned with a favourable oracle, which animated the courage of the Emperor by the assurance of a bloody but infallible victory.* The accomplishment of the prediction was forwarded by all the means which human prudence could supply. The industry of the two Master-Generals, Stilicho and Timasius, was directed to recruit the numbers, and to revive the discipline, of the Roman legions. The formidable troops of barbarians marched under the ensigns of their national chieftains. The Iberian, the Arab, and the Goth, who gazed on each other with mutual astonishment, were enlisted in the service of the same Prince; and the renowned Alaric acquired, in the school of Theodosius, the knowledge of the art of war, which he afterwards fatally exerted for the destruction of Rome.†

* Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 22. Claudian mentions the journey of the eunuch; but he most contemptuously derides the Egyptian dreams, and the oracles of the Nile.

† Gibbon, Decline and Fall, second edit., vol. ii., p. 553, notes by Milman.

THEODOSIUS ENGAGES ARBOGASTES IN BATTLE.

The Roman historian represents the Emperor of the West, or, to speak more properly, his General, Arbogastes, as instructed by the misconduct and misfortune of Maximus, how dangerous it might prove to extend the line of defence against a skilful antagonist who was free to press or to suspend, to contract or to multiply, his various methods of attack. Arbogastes fixed his station on the confines of Italy: the troops of Theodosius were permitted to occupy, without resistance, the provinces of Pannonia, as far as the foot of the Julian Alps; and even the passes of the mountains were negligently, or perhaps artfully, abandoned to the bold invader. He descended from the hills, and beheld, with some astonishment, the formidable camp of the Gauls and the Germans, that covered with arms and tents the open country which extends to the walls of Aquileia, and the banks of the Frigidus, or cold-river.* This narrow theatre of the war, circumscribed by the Alps and the Adriatic, did not allow much room for the operations of military skill; the spirit of Arbogastes would have disdained a pardon; his guilt extinguished the hope of a negotiation, and Theodosius was impatient to satisfy his glory and revenge by the chastisement of the assassins of Valentinian. Without weighing the natural and artificial obstacles that opposed his efforts, the Emperor of the East immediately attacked the fortifications of his rivals, assigned the post of honourable danger to the Goths, and cherished a secret wish, that the bloody conflict might diminish the pride and numbers of the conquerors. Ten thousand of those auxiliaries, and Bacurius, General of the Iberians, died bravely on the field of battle. But the victory was not purchased by their blood: the Gauls maintained their advantage, and the approach of night protected the disorderly flight, or retreat, of the troops of Theodosius. The Emperor retired to the adjacent hills, where he passed a disconsolate night,† without sleep, without provisions, and without hopes; except that strong assurance which, under the most desperate circumstances, the independent mind may derive from the contempt of fortune and of life. The triumph of Eugenius was celebrated by the insolent and dissolute joy of his camp; whilst the active and vigilant Arbogastes secretly detached a considerable body of troops to occupy the passes of the mountains, and to encompass the rear of the Eastern army. The dawn of day discovered to the eyes of Theodosius the extent and the extremity of his danger; but his apprehensions were soon dispelled by a friendly messenger from the leaders of those troops, who expressed their inclination to desert the standard of the tyrant. The honourable and lucrative rewards which they stipulated as the price of their perfidy, were granted without hesitation; and as ink and paper could not easily be procured, the Emperor subscribed

* The Frigidus, a small, though memorable, stream in the country of Goretz, now called the Vipso, falls into the Soutius, or Lisonzo, above Aquileia, some miles from the Adriatic. See D'Anville, Ancient and Modern Maps; and the Italia Antiqua of Cluverina.

† Theodoret affirms, the Apostle John and the Evangelist Philip appeared to the waking or sleeping Emperor on horseback, &c. This is the first instance of apostolic chivalry, which afterwards became so popular in Spain and in the Crusades.

3 C on his own tablets the ratification of the treaty. The spirit of his soldiers was revived by this seasonable re-inforcement; and they again marched, with confidence, to surprise the camp of a tyrant, whose principal officers appeared to distrust either the justice or the success of his arms. In the heat of the battle, a violent tempest, such as is often felt among the Alps, suddenly arose from the East. The army of Theodosius was sheltered by their position from the impetuosity of the wind, which blew a cloud of dust in the faces of the enemy, disordered their ranks, wrested their weapons from their hands, and diverted, or repelled, their ineffectual javelins. This accidental advantage was skilfully improved: the violence of the storm was magnified by the superstition of the Gauls; and they yielded, without shame, to the invisible powers of Heaven, who seemed to militate on the side of the Emperor. His victory was decisive; and the deaths of his two rivals were distinguished only by the difference of their characters. The rhetorician, Eugenius, who had almost acquired the dominion of the world, was reduced to implore the mercy of the conqueror; and the unrelenting soldiers separated his head from his body, as he lay prostrate at the feet of Theodosius. Arbogastes, after the loss of a battle, in which he had discharged the duties of a soldier and a General, wandered several days among the mountains. But when he was convinced that his cause was desperate, and his escape impracticable, the reckless barbarian imitated the example of the ancient Romans, and turned his sword against his own breast. The fate of the empire was determined in a narrow corner of Italy; and the legitimate successor of the house of Valentinian embraced the Archbishop of Milan, and graciously received the submission of the provinces of the West. Those provinces were involved in the guilt of rebellion, while the inflexible courage of Ambrose* alone had resisted the claims of successful usurpation. With a manly freedom, which might have been fatal to any other subject, the Archbishop rejected the gifts of Eugenius,† declined his correspondence, and withdrew himself from Milan, to avoid the odious presence of a tyrant, whose downfall he predicted in

* It is related of Ambrose, that, while sleeping in his cradle, a swarm of bees settled on his lips, and then winged their way towards heaven. From this circumstance his father is said to have predicted his future greatness and ability. His works display neither the power nor the erudition of some of the other Fathers; but they are not deficient in eloquence; and while the historian may gather from parts of them very useful information on the state of manners at the period, the general reader will find, in other portions of them, the most admirable instruction on the great duties of a Christian. His principal productions, under the former head, are his numerous letters, his treatises on Penance and Virginity, and the Book of Mysteries, or Sacraments. Under the latter, his chief work is the Book of Offices, to which may be added numerous expositions of the Psalms, and other portions of Scripture, in the form of homilies or sermons. As a theologian, or a scholar, Ambrose was not much regarded by the great men of his age. Jerome describes his treatise on the Holy Ghost as a production in which there is nothing logical, nothing masculine, nothing moving, nothing convincing; in every respect feeble and languid; but polished, dressed up, and painted with strange colours. (Stebbing.)

† Arbogastes and his Emperor had openly espoused the pagan party, according to Ambrose and Augustine. (See Le Beau, lib. v., cap. 40.) Beugnot (Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme) is more full, and perhaps somewhat fanciful, on this remarkable re-action in favour of Paganism.

SYSTEM OF PAGANISM CONDEMNED.

discreet and ambiguous language. The merit of Ambrose was applauded by the conqueror, who secured the attachment of the people by his alliance with the church; and the clemency of Theodosius is ascribed to the humane intercession of the Archbishop.*

With this victory of Theodosius the vain hopes of Paganism expired. The Emperor had published in the East the last and most peremptory of those edicts which, gradually rising in the sternness of their language, proclaimed the ancient worship a treasonable and capital crime. In its minute and searching phrases it seemed eagerly to pursue Paganism to its most secret and private lurking-places. Thenceforth no man of any station, rank, or dignity, in any place, in any city, was to offer an innocent victim in sacrifice: the more harmless worship of the penates, or household gods, which lingered, probably, more deeply in the hearts of the Pagans, than any other part of their system, not merely by the smoke of victims, but by lamps, incense, and garlands, was equally forbidden. To sacrifice, or to consult the entrails of victims, was constituted high treason, and thereby a capital offence, although with no treasonable intention of calculating the days of the Emperor. It was a crime of sufficient magnitude to infringe the laws of nature, to pry into the secrets of futurity, or to inquire concerning the death of any one. Whoever permitted any heathen rite, hung a tree with chaplets, or raised an altar of turf, forfeited the estate on which the offence was committed. Any house profaned with the smoke of incense, was confiscated to the imperial exchequer. Whoever violated this prohibition, and offered sacrifice either in a public temple, or on the estate of another, was amerced in a fine of twenty-five pounds of gold; (a thousand pounds of our money;) and whoever connived at the offence was liable to the same fine; the Magistrate who neglected to enforce it, to a still heavier penalty. This law, stern and intolerant as it was, spoke, no doubt, the dominant sentiment of the Christian world; † but its repetition by the successors of Theodosius, and the employment of avowed Pagans in many of the high offices of the state and army, may permit us charitably to doubt whether the exchequer was much enriched by the forfeitures, or the sword of the executioner stained with the blood, of conscientious Pagans. Polytheism boasted of no martyrs, and we may still hope, that if called upon to carry its own decrees into effect, its native clemency, though, unhappily, Christian bigotry had already tasted of heretical blood, would have revolted from the sanguinary deed, which it justified in theory, on the authority

* The events of this civil war have been taken from Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. ii., p. 556, second edit., 8vo., Milman's Notes. And he has compiled this part of his history from the following sources, which we have carefully examined. Ambrosii Opera, tom. ii., epist. lxii., p. 1022; Paulinus in Vita Ambros., cap. 26-34; Augustin., De Civitat. Dei, lib. v., cap. 26; Orosius, lib. vii., cap. 35; Sorum., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 24; Theodoret., Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 24; Zosimus, Hist., lib. iv., pp. 281, 282.

† Gibbon has quoted from Le Clerc a fearful sentence of Augustine addressed to the Donatists. "Quis nostrum, quis vestrum non laudat leges ab Imperatoribus datas adversus sacrificia Paganorum? Et certe longe ibi poena severior constituta est; illius quippe impletatis capitale supplicium est." (Epist. xciii.) But passages amiably inconsistent with this fierce tone might be quoted on the other side.

3 c 2 of the Old Testament, with the vital principles of the Gospel.* Rome heard of the triumphs of Theodosius, and perhaps witnessed the presence of the conqueror, who, in the East, had already countenanced the most destructive attacks against the temples of the gods. The Christian poet † describes a solemn debate of the Senate on the claims of Jupiter and of Christ to the adoration of the Roman people. According to his account, Jupiter was out-voted by a large number of suffrages; the decision was followed by a general desertion of their ancestral deities by the obsequious minority; the old hereditary names, the Annii and the Probi, the Anicii and Olybii, the Paulini and Bassi, the popular Gracchi, six hundred families, at once passed over to the Christian cause. The pagan historian, to a certain degree, confirms the fact of the deliberate discussion, but differs as to the result. The Senate, he states, firmly, but respectfully, adhered to their ancient deities.‡ But the last argument of the pagan advocates was fatal to their cause. Theodosius refused any longer to assign funds from the public revenue to maintain the charge of the idolatrous worship. The Senate remonstrated, that if they ceased to be supported at the national cost, they would cease to be national rites. This argument was more likely to confirm than to shake the determination of the Christian Emperor. From this time the temples were deserted; the Priests and Priestesses, deprived of their maintenance, were scattered abroad. The public temples still stood, nor was it forbidden to worship within them without sacrifice; the private, and family, or Gentile deities still preserved their influence. The Paganism of the West was buried in the ruins of the empire. Gratian had dissevered the supremacy of the national religion from the imperial dignity; he had confiscated the property of the temples. Still, however, the outward form of Paganism remained. Some priesthoods were still handed down in regular descent; the rites of various deities, even of Mithra and Cybele, were celebrated without sacrifice, or with sacrifice, furtively performed; the corporation of the aruspices was not abolished. There still likewise remained a special provision for certain festivals and public amusements; § and the expenses of the sacred banquets and of the games were defrayed by the state.

While Paganism, like the pyramid reversed, was nodding to its fall, a few pursued the easy tenor of their way, unruffled by the threat of persecution, or the prospects of worldly emolument and temporal power and grandeur. Among these we must enumerate Acacius, the Prelate of Beræa, in Syria. He was from his youth brought up to the profession of ascetic monasticism, and was rigid in observing all the

* "Quis eorum comprehensus est in sacrificio (cum his legibus ista prohiberentur) et non negavit?" (Augustin., in Psalm. cxx., quoted by Gibbon from Lardner.)

† Sexcentas numerare domos de sanguine prisco

Nobilium licet, ad Christi signacula veritas

Turpis ab idoli vasto emersisse profundo.

(Prudent. ad Symmach.)

Prudentus has probably amplified some considerable desertion of the wavering and dubious believers.

‡ Zosim., Hist., lib. iv., cap. 59.

§ It was called, the vectigal templorum. Vectigalia was the general term for all the regular revenues of the Roman state.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE DONATISTS AND NOVATIANS.

regulations of this mode of life. Zeno and Ajax, two brothers, flourished about the same period. They defended the truth of their religion with invincible intrepidity, and confessed themselves to be Christians so repeatedly in the presence of the Pagans, that they were subjected to the most cruel treatment. Heresies also sprung up like mushrooms in a newly-mown meadow, chiefly through the various ramifications of Arianism. The Donatists retained all their former ferocity. The Novatians found in the candid historian Socrates, one who gave to the world authentic information respecting them, having himself been acquainted with the son of one of their Presbyters. The general church, though surely right in its principle of opposition to the particular point of Novatian inflexibility, yet afterwards abused the license of re-admission into the church granted to offenders; and as discipline relaxed in various places, all kinds of crime abounded. The people of Phrygia and Pamphylia, being habitually an abstemious people, averse to pleasures and to the indulgence of sensuality, were, on that account, the more disposed to admit the severities of Novatianism.* About this time a party of them separated themselves still farther from the general church, by appointing, in a Synod, that Easter should be observed at the same time that the Jews kept the feast of unleavened bread. But as Agelius, the Novatian Bishop of Constantinople, and other more celebrated Prelates of their denomination, were not present, a schism was formed from this circumstance among them. Agelius presided forty years over their church at Constantinople, and died in the sixth year of Theodosius. When he was near his end, he ordained Sisinnius to be his successor, a Presbyter of the church, of great learning, who had been instructed by Maximus, the famous friend of Julian. The flock of Agelius murmured, because he had not ordained Marcian, a man of eminent piety, by whose means they had weathered in safety the persecution of Valens. The aged Bishop, willing to pacify them, ordained Marcian, and directed that he should be his immediate successor, and that Sisinnius should be the next Bishop to Marcian. Thus slender and scanty are the accounts left us, of a Prelate, who for so many years presided over a great flock in turbulent and trying times. On Marcian's succession, one Sabbatius, a Jew, receiving Christianity, was advanced by him to the office of Presbyter, and in his heart panted after a bishopric. This man undertook to defend the innovation concerning Easter, and, under pretence of greater strictness of life, he withdrew himself from the church, declaring that he could not conscientiously communicate with some members of the congregation. In time, however, his views were laid open, as he attempted to hold separate assemblies. Marcian then found his error in ordaining so ambitious a person, and often said, in his grief, that he wished he had laid hands on thorns rather than on Sabbatius. He took measures, however, to disappoint his ambition. Calling a Council, he sent for Sabbatius, and desired him to lay open the reasons of his disgust. The man informed them, that the difference of opinion concerning Easter was his grievance, as he thought that festival ought to be observed according to the rule of

* Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. iv., cap. 28.

the Synod of Pazum. The Bishops, suspecting his designs, obliged him to swear, that he would not attempt to enter their ranks, and then decreed, that the time of observing Easter should be left indifferent, and that no schism should be made in the church on that account. Their design of preserving unity was laudable; but it succeeded not. Sabbatius drew over a number of the simpler sort, and particularly those of Phrygia and Galatia, to his own Jewish mode, and obtained for himself an appointment to the office of Bishop by his followers, in contradiction to his oath. The consequence was, a variety of divisions among the Novatians, concerning the time of Easter, and other frivolous subjects, and the crumbling of this church into contentious parties of different kinds. Little can be said on this subject, but what must occur to the mind of a thinking reader. This most respectable of all the dissenting churches seems to have preserved, for a considerable time, a strictness and purity of discipline and manners; but its essential characteristic of narrow bigotry, in things of no moment, gave occasion to internal divisions among its own members, which, fomented by unprincipled persons, must have perverted them much from the simplicity of the Gospel.*

We have also to take into consideration martyrs of another character, who, from the ranks of the heretics, suffered for the Christian faith as it was held and taught by themselves: there is no reason to doubt but several evinced the same fortitude, the same conscientious devotion to principle, as the martyrs of the orthodox church. Allowing, says Dr. Stebbing, that the maxim of Cyril and Augustine is correct, and that it is not the pain, but the cause, which makes a martyr; yet, we may ask, how can this be applied, to deprive men of the honour of martyrdom who were willing to die rather than change their faith? Or, is it accordant with common justice to deny the praise of devotedness to those who gave as high a proof of their sincerity as can possibly be given by a human being? All that we can rightly say is, that if the principles for which they suffered were not in themselves good, they cannot be viewed with that gratitude and veneration which we must feel for those to whom, under God, we owe the establishment of doctrines essential to our happiness, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; but looking upon them as men suffering for what they believed to be true, they demand our respect; and since they afforded examples of constancy and fortitude, at all times valuable, constituted as we are, they have a powerful claim to our gratitude: so that those who died for the faith to which we ourselves assent, claim in the highest degree our affection and veneration; those who suffered with the same constancy in support of other principles, merit a proportionable share of our admiration and praise; the former standing first in our esteem, because they helped to establish our faith, as well as left us an example of constancy; the latter in an inferior station, inasmuch as it is their example only which claims our regard. But according to the author of the "Apologie pour les Réformateurs," it is impossible that the constancy of a heretic should be anything but madness and folly, or

* Milner, History of the Church, cent. iv., chap. 19, vol. ii., p. 65.

MARTYROOM AMONG THE HERETICS.

that he should be inspired to die for his heresy by the grace of God, or the movements of his grace; and he consequently ascribes all instances of such martyrdoms to the effects of cupidity, a violent desire of vain-glory, or some other passion of the same kind, equally low and terrestrial. In the same manner, after describing the characteristics of a true martyr in the hour of death, he triumphantly demands, "Is it possible, that the spirit of deceit and illusion, of error and obstinacy, should produce the same movements in a heretic? Is it possible, in short, that a heretic should appear before the public full of joy, blessing God, praying for his persecutors, singing sacred hymns, and proceeding to death with more pleasure than others would escape from it?" "This, I sustain, is impossible," observes M. Jurieu; and he concludes, that the ancients did not mean by their celebrated maxim merely to distinguish those who suffered for the truth from those who suffered for error, but to mark the difference between those who died for righteousness' sake, and those who suffered for their crimes. We have already seen, that, as early as the first century of the Christian era, certain disputatious spirits had arisen in the church, whose proceedings materially affected the unity and internal peace of the infant establishment. The Gnostics, the Nicolaitans, the Cerinthians, and the Ebionites followed hard upon the Apostles themselves; and these early preachers of error were succeeded by Basilides, Marcion, Bardesanes, and the far more celebrated Manes, or Manicheaus.* Learning and philosophy have both expended some of their richest stores in the examination of the doctrines which are supposed to have been professed by these various sects; and every intimation we possess of their character leads to the conclusion, that whatever were the intentions or the moral dispositions of their authors, they were essentially opposed to the simple character of the primitive Christian faith. But the church considered the most important part of the religion of the Gospel to consist in the precepts of resignation to the plain, but brief, revelations of the Deity. That it should regard such reasoners, therefore, with suspicion, can admit of no doubt; and it was natural, that when it found them attempting to subvert the faith of humble converts, or leading those to dispute who had scarcely learned the principles of their profession, it should use all lawful expedients to prevent the progress of the schism. Very far, however, were the first directors of the Christian church from being persecutors: their only object was to defend it against the introduction of error; and they employed the means which reason and custom suggest for the maintenance of peace and unity in any society whatever. They had neither the power, nor, as it would seem, the inclination, to use violence against those who dissented from their body; but they were bound not to hold communion with persons as members of the church, who were known to oppose its doctrines; and they therefore signified, by a mode of expression common to their age, and accordant with the customs of other religious societies, that those who thus upheld principles unknown to the fathers were separated from the main body of the faithful. So long as this was done

* Beausobre, Histoire du Manichéisme.

solely from the pure and conscientious motive of preserving the church from the agitations engendered by unquiet spirits, no offence was committed against private liberty. Those who doubted were exposed to no other penalty than that which, if their objections were sincere, could scarcely be felt as a hardship; that is, they were separated from a communion with which they had previously ceased to have any real or proper connexion.

Such, however, observes Dr. Stebbing, is the tendency of human nature to convert necessary precautions into food for unnecessary severity, that there is reason to fear that, as the principles of Christian practice began to lose ground in other respects, it was also corrupted in this, and that orthodoxy was at a very early period made a pretence for measures scarcely conformable with the mild spirit of the Gospel. But, however this may have been, there is not the smallest reason for the conjecture, that the first Christians exercised against each other any personal violence, or that the church viewed its anathemas in any other light, than simple forms of expulsion from its communion. If any of the ancient heretics, therefore, suffered for their religion, it must, doubtless, have been at the hands of the heathen persecutors; and that there is reason to believe that some of them did so suffer, has been already shown.* But the allusion to the martyrdom of the earlier sectarians, by Eusebius, is too brief to make us acquainted with the circumstances under which they fell victims to persecution; and from the manner in which the passage referred to before is worded, it may be questioned whether it ought to be regarded as implying more than that the heretics boasted of having had martyrs amongst them. When, however, we arrive at the period in which the Donatists flourished, all doubt vanishes as to the subject of heretical martyrdoms. This does not affect the argument, that none of the other sectarians willingly suffered death in defence of their opinions; for, as far as we can discover the character of these dissentients, the Gnostics, the Manicheans, and others, were as opposite to the Donatists, as the cool, sceptical Socinian is to the wild Anabaptist of Germany.

The origin of this sect may in some degree account for the zeal, though scarcely for the strange enthusiasm, subsequently exhibited by its members. Donatus, its founder, was one of the Numidian Bishops, who opposed, with just indignation, the advancement of such of the African Clergy as had, in a moment of weakness, delivered up the Scriptures in the Diocletian persecution, and who were then generally stigmatized with the title of traditores. By his influence the opposition excited against the election of one or two obnoxious individuals, was quickly extended into a dangerous schism; and in a few years Africa was overrun by a party whose zeal rapidly degenerated into the worst species of licentiousness. Under the name of Circumcelliones, the most furious of these fanatics commenced a war against those who opposed them in opinion, which was in no respect less disgraceful to human feeling than the most violent of civil strifes. The

* The Novatians, it has before been mentioned, were frequent sharers in the sufferings of the orthodox.

STRUGGLES WITH THE DONATISTS.

laws which the Emperor Constantine had deemed necessary to enact against them, had probably no slight influence in inflaming the sectaries to this degree of violence; and he was induced by the persuasions of some wise and moderate men, to restore to the Donatists the privileges of which he had deprived them. But the flame of discord had been lighted, and it was not now to be easily extinguished. Donatus, surnamed the Great, and the other Bishops who had espoused his opinions, vehemently resisted the proffered terms of reconciliation, and the Circumcelliones pursued the course they had begun, of terror and bloodshed. The attempts made by the successor of Constantine to pacify these malcontents, proved equally abortive with those employed by his father; and an army was at length sent against them under Macarius, who, having defeated them in a general engagement, banished Donatus and the heads of the party, exercising against the rest the most dreadful severities of a military judicature. Some of the most celebrated of the fathers considered that they were performing an act of the highest piety, by writing against this sect; and it would have been well for the credit of the orthodox rulers of those times, had they left the cause to the pious zeal and learning of those excellent men. After all that was done by the victorious officer of Constans, and by the laws which were passed in subsequent years, it was to the powerful eloquence of Optatus * and Augustine that their defeat and suppression were chiefly owing. The former of these distinguished writers was Bishop of Milevum in Africa, and his work on the schism of the Donatists is elegantly and even powerfully written. According to this author, the persons whom they accused of delivering the Scriptures to the persecutors, were altogether innocent of that crime; and he boldly retorts the accusation upon the accusers. In answer to Parmenianus, a Donatist, to whom the work is addressed, and who had strongly reprehended the orthodox for the persecutions of which they had been guilty, observes, that the church had never persecuted them, and that they could name no member of the church that had done so. On the contrary, the Donatists, he says, had committed the most disgraceful excesses against the orthodox; had driven away Bishops from their churches, murdered Deacons while officiating at the altars, exercised cruelties of every kind against women and children, nor had even forborne to treat the most sacred things with despite. "Your Bishops," says he, "caused the eucharist to be thrown to the dogs; and presently the tokens of God's anger were seen; for the enraged animals turned upon their masters, and tore them as if they were thieves whom they knew not; the justice of God thus employing their teeth to revenge the sacrilege." With regard to the persecution commenced by Macarius, he observes, that that officer was obliged

* Optatus is recognised as a saint in the Romish calendar. He was Bishop of Milevum, a town of Numidia, and flourished under Valentinian and Valens. He wrote his very able and judicious treatise on the schism of the Donatists about the year 370, against Parmenian, Bishop of that sect. He is commended by Augustine, Jerome, and Fulgen-tius. There are several editions of his works: the last and best is that of Dupin, (1700,) who has settled the text from four Mss., and has given short notes, with various readings, at the bottom of the page; and at the end he has inserted the notes of Badoubin, Casanbon, Barthius, and others.

3 D to employ rigorous measures to quell the sedition; and again asserts, that the church itself had no share in instigating such proceedings, which she neither desired to have pursued, nor was aware of when commenced. The Bishop, however, notwithstanding these repeated assertions respecting the innocence of the orthodox, renders his own opinions on the subject of persecution somewhat doubtful, by suggesting that the attack on the schismatics was authorized by the example of Moses, who put three thousand men to death for worshipping the golden calf; and, boldly contending that when our Saviour commanded the Apostle Peter to put up his sword, he only intended the command to be understood of that particular time and circumstance! Then, repeating the accusations he had already brought against them, he exclaims, "Ye have redoubled your sacrilege, in breaking the chalices which held the blood of Christ; ye have melted them down to make ingots of gold or silver, which ye have sold in the markets to every one indifferently who would buy them. Sacrilegious as ye are, ye have not even respected the chalices in which you have yourselves offered, and they have been bought, it is probable, by infamous women for their own use. Or the Pagans, perhaps, have taken them for vessels to be employed in the service of idols. O fearful crime! O unheard-of impiety!"*

The origin of the disgraceful excesses to which Optatus thus alludes, was the same as that of the opposition made by the Donatists to the election of the obnoxious Bishop. They argued that, as that individual had disgraced himself by apostacy, the altar would be defiled by his presence; and, when they had driven their opponents from the churches, they pretended, and many of them, deceived by a blind fanaticism, doubtless believed, that the vessels which had been used by these desecrated Priests, had suffered contamination from their touch, and ought no longer to be employed in the service of God. The absurdity of their ideas on these points is, of course, sufficiently evident; but there is every reason to believe that it was thus they justified their conduct, and that we are, therefore, to regard the accusations brought against them, of an unprovoked and flagitious sacrilege, with some degree of modification. But in the year 411, Augustine succeeded in persuading the chiefs of the Donatists to meet the representatives of the church in a conference at Carthage. The eloquence with which he there encountered the most accomplished of the party, and the strong and lucid arguments he opposed to the reasons on which they established their schism, convinced many of the least obstinate of their errors. Others, whom his arguments would not, perhaps, have sufficiently affected, were deeply moved by the mildness and charity with which he propounded his sentiments. He had agreed, at the opening of the debate, and had induced the other Bishops to join with him in the promise, that if they could not convict the Donatists of error, and prove their separation from the church unreasonable, they would resign their bishoprics into their hands, and be content to retire into the situation of private persons. All he said

* Sancti Optati, Milevi. Episc., Opera, fol. Lutet. Parisior., 1676.

EXTRAVAGANCIES OF THE DONATISTS.

was in conformity with this assurance. "If they speak injuriously of you," was his advice to the orthodox, "suffer it to be so, and answer not. Speak not to him who maltreats you, but speak much to God in his favour. Say meekly to him who attacks and injures you, 'Whatever you speak or do against me, I, notwithstanding, love you, because you are my brother.'" But the influence which Augustine exercised over the assembly by these means was not sufficient to prevent the debates from being continued with warmth three days; nor did he succeed in convincing the heads of the party that their schism was unlawful or unreasonable. The conviction, however, which his arguments failed to convey to the minds of the Donatists, rushed with full force upon the understandings of those who agreed with the eloquent orator; and when, at the conclusion of the conference, it was to be decided on which party lay the guilt of the schism, the Tribune Marcellinus, who presided at the meeting, passed a sentence against the Donatists, which doomed them to exile or apostasy. Crowds of them, it is said, purchased their safety by immediately assenting to the decree of the Tribune, or the persuasions of Augustine. Those who persevered in their opposition appealed to the Emperor; but he rejected their application, and not only confirmed the sentence of his Minister, but directed the revival of the laws which had been anciently in force against them. This had no other effect than that of confirming the most dangerous part of the sect in their fanaticism and licentiousness. The Circumcelliones continued their horrible violences with the fury of men inspired by despair, as well as the most deplorable superstition; and the orthodox, while thus exposed to the daggers of these wretched enthusiasts, everywhere rejoiced at the spectacle of hundreds of their less guilty opponents sinking under the infliction of ruinous fines, preparing for banishment, or perishing, as was often the case, by the hand of the public executioner.

It was at this period of the conflict, continues Dr. Stebbing, thus fiercely carried on between the two parties, that the Donatists began to exhibit instances of wilder enthusiasm and contempt of suffering than had as yet been displayed by any of the Christian sectaries. Despising the power which was sufficient to crush them, they resolved upon depriving their enemies of the glory of a triumph, and affected to rejoice that they were deemed worthy of undergoing death in vindication of their faith. To such a height of madness did this idea carry them, that when they might have escaped without difficulty, they voluntarily exposed themselves to their persecutors; and when those whom they thus dared pitied their fanaticism, and refused them the desired martyrdom, they either destroyed themselves, or, which was equivalent, placed their adversaries in a position which rendered forbearance impossible. The following is one of the anecdotes related of their conduct in this respect:—A party of the most impatient of these deluded beings, having sought in vain for some means of terminating their existence with honour, met, in the course of their wanderings, with a young man, a member of the orthodox church, whom they resolved to sacrifice to their hatred of his sect. Some of them, however,

3 D 2 conceived an idea, that this act of barbarity would be less becoming their zeal, than their suffering a similar piece of cruelty to be perpetrated on themselves. This notion was immediately embraced by the whole party, and they signified to the young man, that they would allow him to remain uninjured, if he would agree to put them to death. To this strange proposition the young churchman signified his assent; but he demanded, with great appearance of reason, that they should consent to be bound before he commenced the slaughter; for, unless they put themselves out of the power of injuring him, he argued, they would probably no sooner feel the smart of their wounds, than their agreement would be forgotten, and he made a victim of their still greater cruelty. There was so much fairness and plausibility in this request, that the Donatists readily consented to be bound hand and foot, and in that condition they awaited the stroke which was to place them among the worthiest of the saints. But, instead of affording them the expected gratification, the young man first broke the swords which they had placed in his hands, and then beat them as a punishment for their folly. The firm manner in which he had bound their hands and feet prevented them from resisting his blows; and they were afterwards left rolling in the road, to endure the abuse and mockery of whoever passed by. It was not, however, to such mad and ignorant enthusiasts as these appear to have been, that the custom of self-murder, the most remarkable characteristic, was confined. According to the usual accounts given of this people, those who pretended to offer any apology for their conduct, defended it by asserting, that they preferred dying to running the risk of being obliged to communicate in any manner with their adversaries. Others seem to have considered, that by destroying themselves when the pursuit was hot against them, they should terrify the orthodox from continuing the persecution, and by that means save their brethren and their faith. It was to this notion Augustine appears to have referred, when, in writing to Count Boniface on the subject of the numerous conversions that had occurred, he says, "When you see how many have been saved from perdition, by being delivered from this miserable schism, you will acknowledge that it would have been great cruelty to abandon so many persons to eternal damnation, and to the flames of hell, for fear that a band of desperadoes, so few in number compared with these, should voluntarily commit themselves to the flames which they had prepared for their own destruction." Among the works of this celebrated father, are two books addressed to Gaudentius,* the Donatist Bishop of a city in Numidia, and one of those who had been commissioned by the sect to defend their rights in the conference at Carthage. The history of the fate of the Bishop is very imperfect; but from the incidental notices of it in the epistles addressed to him

* Gaudentius was elected Bishop of Brescia about the end of the fourth century. He was sent in 405 to Constantinople, with the Legates of Pope Innocent, to re-establish Chrysostom in his see, and to hold a General Council. The time of his death is fixed by some at the year 410, and by others at 427. He wrote a life of his predecessor, Philaster, and letters, and other pieces, which are inserted in the fifth volume of the Bibliotheca Patrum; but the most complete edition of his works was published at Brescia, in 1738, by Paul Galeardi.

FANATICISM OF GAUDENTIUS.

on the subject of his heresy, it appears, that having fled from his diocese, in order to avoid the fury of the persecution, he was soon after induced, from some compunctions of conscience, to return. He had no sooner re-established himself in his church than he made it known, that if any attempt were made to compel him to communicate with the orthodox, he would immediately set fire to his cathedral, and perish, with his faithful followers, under its ruins. The officer to whom the execution of the laws against the Donatists was intrusted was Dulcitius, a man whose disposition inclined him to tolerance, and who so far overstepped the usual maxims of his profession, as to write to Gaudentius, and persuade him, with great earnestness, to re-unite himself to the church, or at least not to commit the dreadful crime of destroying himself, and the unfortunate people that were with him. He next asked him how he could find it in his heart to resolve upon burning the beautiful edifice in which he had so often called upon the name of God; or how he could deem it consistent with reason to burn himself, if he believed that he was innocent, instead of seeking his safety in flight, as Jesus Christ had directed his disciples to do of old.

To this epistle Gaudentius instantly replied, that he was resolved, if any violence were employed against him, to finish his days in the camp of the Lord; but that as for those who were with him, he was so far from wishing to constrain them, that he had exhorted all who were under the influence of fear to depart and save themselves. The next day he wrote another letter, in which he defended his conduct more at length, and cited the example of Itaxis, whose death is recorded in the Second Book of Maccabees, in proof of the propriety of his proceedings. Dulcitius, unable to combat these arguments, sent both the epistles to Augustine, with an earnest request that he would answer them, and give him instructions as to the method it would be right to pursue with the heretics. The Prelate replied, that the fear of suffering some few miserable creatures to perish ought not to prevent his employing the most rigorous measures for the salvation of others. He afterwards wrote a formal answer to the arguments of the Donatist, who again defended himself as before; but history has left it doubtful whether he perished by his own hand, as he threatened, or consented to avoid the persecutions of his enemies by a voluntary exile. The former is not at all improbable, considering the disposition to suicide which prevailed so generally among the sect, and that it is known that several Bishops and others of the Clergy put themselves to a violent death. Mention is made by Augustine, in one of his epistles, of a presbyter named Donatus, who, in order to escape from his pursuers, leaped into a well, with the intention of destroying himself; but the persons who were following him coming up soon after, he was dragged out; and the father employs this instance of care and humanity on the part of the orthodox, to prove how sincere they were in their anxiety for the spiritual good of the heretics. Partial, indeed, as are the accounts of this famous controversy, and allowing that many of the assertions respecting the fury of the Donatists are somewhat exaggerated by the historians of the opposite side, there appears to be every reason for believing that considerable forbearance was exercised towards them by the public authorities, and that they were guilty of excesses which could only have proceeded from men under the influence of the worst species of fanaticism. Optatus, whose work, it should be remembered, was addressed to one of the party, accuses it of being chiefly characterized by a spirit of untameable ferocity. "Those," he says, "who are seduced either by faction or subtlety to join the sect, whether they be men or women, are suddenly converted from sheep into wolves, from faithful into perfidious, from patient into mad, from pacific into litigious, from simple into artful, from modest into shameless, from gentle into fierce, from innocent into artificers of evil." The unmerciful means which they everywhere employed to resent the injuries they had suffered from the orthodox, tend greatly to prove the truth of these allegations. Never did the Christian church endure, perhaps, so many evils from the intrusion of a sectarian spirit as during the existence of the Donatist heresy; and, to add to the ignominy with which the memory of that people has been handed down to posterity, they are believed, and with good reason, to have shared in exciting one of the most sanguinary persecutions that was ever experienced by a Christian people, either in former or subsequent days. The province of Africa having fallen into the hands of the Vandals, Genseric their King, and after him Huneric his son, pursued the orthodox with a wanton barbarity which the Arians, Donatists, and other sectarians, appear to have employed every means to influence. One of the earliest laws of Huneric was, that no person should enjoy any public function who did not profess himself an Arian; and crowds were soon after sent into exile, or thrown into unhealthy prisons, in which they died of the fevers generated by the condition of their miserable cells. When a conference was proposed, but broken off by the Arians, the unfortunate Clergymen, who were to have advocated the cause of the orthodox, were severally condemned to receive a certain number of blows with a wand, and then to be sent into exile. Eugenius, the Bishop of Carthage, was one of those who were thus treated; and, in his banishment, he is said to have employed himself continually in writing letters to his flock, or in the performance of the most rigid acts of devotion, to obtain divine pardon for the sins to the commission of which he attributed the present calamity. But, if we may give credit to the earliest accounts of this persecution, exile was the mildest species of punishment employed by the Vandal Monarch and his Arian and Donatist advisers against the orthodox. The catalogue of sufferings recorded by the Bishop of Utica, in his narrative of these events, presents us with the same frightful spectacles as those described in the pagan persecutions, except that we may more than once discover the signs of that bitter hatred which is scarcely to be found but among warring sectarians. To prevent them saving themselves by flight, the persecutors exercised the same vigilance against the faithful as if they had been an invading army: not a fruit-tree, it is said, was allowed to remain where it was thought they might seek refuge; and every monastery and house of prayer which might have

VARIOUS HERESIES IN THE CHURCH.

given them shelter was burnt to the ground. Of those who were seized, the most venerable almost uniformly experienced the worst treatment, the fury of barbarous pursuers appearing to gather fresh nourishment from the dignity of those they tormented. Among the favourite methods of manifesting their rage was that of compelling their victims to drink sea-water, or other nauseous liquids, till they were on the point of suffocation,—a species of torture which, some centuries after, obtained great favour with the venerable Fathers of the Inquisition. At other times, they forced their prisoners to bear burdens which camels or horses would have almost found oppressive; and when these contrivances were deemed insufficient to punish their unfortunate adversaries, they applied sharp instruments to different parts of their bodies, in order to make them move under the load which they were wholly unable to support. These methods were pursued indiscriminately with young and old, and every feeling of nature was outraged and forgotten.* But we must not anticipate.

The unity no less than the external triumph of the church of Christ occupied the mind of Theodosius at this critical period. He had been anticipated in this project in the West by his imbecile predecessors and colleagues, Gratian and Valentinian the Younger. The laws began to speak the language of the exclusive establishment of Christianity, and of Christianity under one rigorous and unaccommodating creed and discipline. Almost the first act of Theodosius was an edict for the universal acceptance of the catholic faith. It appeared under the name, and with the conjoint authority, of the three Emperors, Gratian, Valentinian II., and Theodosius. It was addressed to the inhabitants of Constantinople. "We, the three Emperors, will that all our subjects follow the religion taught by the Apostle Peter to the Romans, professed by those saintly Prelates, Damasus, Pontiff of Rome, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria; that we believe the one divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of majesty co-equal, in the Holy Trinity. We will that those who embrace this creed be called catholic Christians; we brand all the senseless followers of other religions by the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles to assume the name of churches; we reserve their punishment to the vengeance of heaven, and to such measures as divine inspiration shall dictate to us." Thus the religion of the whole Roman world was enacted by two feeble boys, and a rude Spanish soldier.† The next year witnessed the condemnation of all heretics, particularly the Photinians, Arians, and Eunomians, and the expulsion of the Arians from the churches of all the cities in the East, and their surrender to the only lawful form of Christianity.‡ On the assembling of the Council of Chalcedon, two severe

* Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, 12mo., vol. I., p. 212.

† Baronius, and even Godefroy, call this law a golden, pious, and wholesome stature. Happily it was on the right side. (Milman.)

‡ On the accession of Theodosius, according to Sozomen, the Arians possessed all the churches of the East except Jerusalem. (See Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 2.)

laws were issued against apostates and Manichæns, prohibiting them from making wills. During its sitting, the Emperor promulgated an edict, prohibiting the Arians from building churches either in the cities or in the country, under pain of the confiscation of the funds devoted to the purpose.* The circumstances of the times coincided with the design of Theodosius to concentre the whole Christian world into one vigorous and consistent system. The more legitimate influence of argument and intellectual and religious superiority concurred with the stern mandates of the civil power. All the great and commanding minds of the age were on the same side, as to the momentous and strongly-agitated questions of the faith. The productive energies of Arianism seemed as it were exhausted: its great defenders had passed away, and left, apparently, no heirs to their virtues and abilities. It was distracted with schisms, and had to bear the unpopularity of the sects, which seemed to have sprung from it in the natural course, the Eunomians,† Macedonians,‡ and a still multiplying progeny of heresies. Everywhere the Trinitarian Prelates rose to ascendancy, not merely from the support of the government, but from their pre-eminent character or intellectual powers. Each province seemed to have produced some individual adapted to the particular period and circumstances of the time, who devoted himself to the establishment of the Athanasian opinions. They were master-spirits, capable of guiding the vessel in troublous seas. The intractable Egypt, more particularly turbulent Alexandria, was ruled by the strong arm of the bold, but unprincipled, Theophilus. The dreamy mysticism of Syria found a congenial representative in Ephrem. A

* Sozomen adverts to these severe laws, but asserts that they were enacted merely in terrorem, and with no design of carrying them into execution. (Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 12.)

† The Eunomians were a sect of the fourth century, a branch of Arianism, and took their name from Eunomias, Bishop of Cyzicus. Cave, in his Historia Literaria, vol. i., p. 223, gives an account of their faith, which shows how nearly their tenets approached Arianism. "There is one God, uncreated and without beginning, who has nothing existing before him, for nothing can exist before what is uncreated; not with him, for what is uncreated must be one; nor in him, for God is a simple and uncompounded Being. This one simple and eternal Being is God, the Creator and Ordainer of all things; first, indeed, and principally, of his only-begotten Son, and then, through him, of all other things. For God begat, created, and made the Son only by his direct operation and power, before all things and every other creature; not producing, however, any being like himself, or imparting any of his own proper substance to the Son; for God is immortal, uniform, invisible, and therefore cannot communicate any part of his own proper substance to another. He alone is unbegotten, and it is impossible that any other being should be formed of an unbegotten substance. He did not use his own substance in begetting the Son, but his will only; nor did he beget him in the likeness of his substance, but according to his own good pleasure; he then created the Holy Spirit, the first and greatest of all spirits, by his own power, in deed and operation mediately, yet by the immediate power and operation of the Son. After the Holy Spirit, he created all other things, in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, corporeal and incorporeal, mediately by himself, but by the power and operation of the Son," &c.

‡ Macedonians were the followers of Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, who, through the influence of the Eunomians, was deposed by the Council of Constantinople in 360, and sent into exile. He considered the Holy Ghost as a divine energy diffused throughout the universe, and not as a person distinct from the Father and the Son. The sect of the Macedonians was crushed before it had arrived at its full maturity, by the Council assembled by Theodosius in 381, at Constantinople.

VARIOUS ABUSES OF CHRISTIANITY.

more intellectual, yet still somewhat imaginative, Orientalism animates the writings of Basil; in a less degree, those of Gregory of Nazianzum; still less, those of Gregory of Nyssa. The more powerful and Grecian eloquence of Chrysostom swayed the popular mind in Constantinople. Jerome, a link, as it were, between the East and the West, transplanted the monastic spirit and opinions of Syria into Rome; and brought into the East much of the severer thought, and more prosaic reasoning, of the Latin world. But the greatest, the most permanently influential, of all the celebrated men of that day was Augustine, who united the intense passion of the African mind with the most comprehensive and systematic views, and intrepid dogmatism on the darkest subjects. United in one common cause, acting in their several quarters according to their peculiar temperaments and characters, these strong-minded and influential Ecclesiastics almost compelled the world into a temporary peace, until first Pelagianism, and afterwards Nestorianism, again unsettled the restless elements: the controversies, first concerning grace, free-will, and predestination, then on the incarnation and two natures of Christ, succeeded to the silenced and exhausted feud concerning the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead.*

Various abuses had shown themselves in these harsh and rugged days of Christianity, and there are others yet unnoticed, of which the earliest vestiges and indications may probably be discovered in the ante-Nicene church, or in the writings of its Fathers; but among these certainly idolatry is not one. The ancient Christians continued to shun, with a pious horror, which persecution exasperated, and which time, that great Physician, did not mitigate, every approach to that abomination; and while they truly considered it essentially and distinctively Pagan, the reluctance which they felt to bow before any image, was aggravated by the firm belief, that the images of the Pagans represented the implacable adversaries of man and God. So definite and so broad was the space which, in this point at least, separated the two religions, that it seemed impossible that either of them should overstep it, or that any compromise could ever be effected between principles so fundamentally hostile. Yet the contrary result took place; and a reconciliation, which in the commencement of the fourth century could not easily have been imagined, was virtually accomplished before its termination. The progress of this revolution may be easily traced. On the first establishment of their religion, it was natural that Christians should look back from a condition of unexpected security on the sufferings of their immediate predecessors with the most vivid sentiments of sympathy and admiration. They had beheld those sufferings, they had witnessed the constancy with which they were endured: the same terror had been suspended over themselves, and their own preservation they attributed, under the especial protection of divine Providence, to the perseverance of those who had perished. The gratitude and veneration thus fervently excited were loudly and passionately expressed; and the

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. III., p. 188.

honours which were due to the virtues of the departed were profusely bestowed on their names and their memory. Enthusiasm easily passed into superstition, and those who had sealed a Christian's faith by a martyr's death were exalted above the condition of men, and enthroned among superior beings. Superstition gave birth to credulity, and those who sat among the powers of heaven might sustain, by miraculous assistance, their votaries on earth; and credulity increased the food on which it fed, by encouraging the detested practice of forgery and imposture. Under these dangerous circumstances, it became the duty of the Fathers and the leading Ministers of the church to moderate the violence of popular feeling, and to restrain any tendency towards vicious excess. But, unhappily for the integrity of the orthodox faith, the instructors were themselves carried away by the current, or, we should rather say, united their exertions to swell and corrupt it. The people we may excuse and compassionate; but we blush when we discover the most distinguished writers of the fourth century, Athanasius, Eusebius the historian, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine, engaged in a shameful conspiracy against their religion, while they exaggerate the merit of the martyrs, assert or insinuate their immediate sanctification, and claim for them a sort of reverence which could not easily be distinguished from worship. In this age, and from this cause, arose the stupid veneration for bones and relics; it was inculcated and believed, that prayer was never so surely efficacious as when offered at the tomb of some saint or holy person; the number of such tombs was then multiplied; at all of them miracles, and prophecies, and prodigies, and visions were exhibited or recorded; and the spirit of the Gospel was forgotten in the practice of forbidden ceremonies, and the belief of impious fables. Such were the first unworthy advances which were made by Christianity, and encouraged by her leading Ministers, with a view to reconcile at least her external differences with Paganism.*

The death of Theodosius speedily followed his victory over Eugenius; four months only elapsed, and his demise was considered by the people as an unforeseen and a fatal event, that cast a shade over the hopes of a rising generation: the indulgence, however, of ease and luxury had cast, with a liberal hand, the seeds of disease and death. The strength of Theodosius was unable to support the sudden and violent transition from the palace to the camp, and the increasing symptoms of a dropsy announced the speedy dissolution of the Emperor. The opinion, and perhaps the interest, of the public had confirmed the division of the Eastern and Western empires; and the two royal youths, Arcadius and Honorius, who had already obtained, from the tenderness of their father, the title of Augustus, were destined to fill the thrones of Constantinople and of Rome. Those Princes were not permitted to share the danger and glory of the civil war; but as soon as Theodosius had triumphed over his unworthy rivals, he called his younger son, Honorius, to enjoy the fruits of the vic-

* Waddington, History of the Church, vol. I., p. 234.

DEATH OF THEODOSIUS.

tory, and to receive the sceptre of the West from the hands of his dying father. The arrival of Honorius at Milan was welcomed by a splendid exhibition of the games of the Circus, and the Emperor, though he was oppressed by the weight of his disorder, contributed by his presence to the public joy. But the remains of his strength were exhausted by the painful effort which he made to assist at the spectacles of the morning. Honorius supplied, during the rest of the day, the place of his father, and the great Theodosius expired in the ensuing night. Notwithstanding the recent animosities of a civil war, his death was universally lamented. The barbarians whom he had vanquished, and the churchmen by whom he had been subdued, celebrated, with loud and sincere applause, the qualities of the deceased Emperor which appeared the most valuable in their eyes. The Romans were terrified by the impending dangers of a feeble and divided administration; and every disgraceful moment of the unfortunate reigns of Arcadius and Honorius revived the memory of their irreparable loss. To adopt the language of the historian of Rome, we may observe that in the faithful picture of the virtues of Theodosius, his imperfections have not been dissembled; the acts of cruelty, and the habits of indolence, which tarnished the glory of one of the greatest of the Roman Princes. An historian,* perpetually adverse to the fame of Theodosius, has exaggerated his vices, and their pernicious effects: he boldly asserts, that every rank of subjects imitated the effeminate manners of their Sovereign; every species of corruption polluted the course of public and private life; and that the feeble restraints of order and decency were insufficient to resist the progress of that degenerate spirit which sacrifices without a blush the consideration of duty and interest to the base indulgence of sloth and appetite. The contemporary writers who deplore the increase of luxury and depravation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the blind and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals. If it can be affirmed, with any degree of truth, that the luxury of the Romans was more shameless and dissolute in the age of Theodosius than in that of Constantine, perhaps, or of Augustus, the alteration cannot be ascribed to any beneficial improvements which had gradually increased the stock of national riches. A long period of calamity or decay must have checked the industry, and diminished the wealth, of the people; and their profuse luxury must have been the result of that indolent despair which enjoys the present hour, and declines the thoughts of futurity. The uncertain condition of their property discouraged the subjects of Theodosius from engaging in those useful and laborious undertakings which require an immediate expense, and promise a slow and distant advantage. The frequent examples of ruin and desolation tempted them not to spare the remains of a patrimony which might,

* Zoeimi Historia, lib. iv., p. 244.

3 x 2 every hour, become the prey of the rapacious Goth. And the mad prodigality which prevails in the confusion of a shipwreck or a siege may serve to explain the progress of luxury amidst the misfortunes and terrors of a sinking nation. The poison spread, and the camps of the legions were fatally infected. The enervated soldiers abandoned their own and the public defence; and the pusillanimous indolence which generally prevailed may be considered as the immediate cause of the downfal of the empire.*

The resolution to exterminate idolatry was not carried so far by Honorius in the Western empire, as by his brother Arcadius in the East, inasmuch as the former directed that the temples, with their images and sacred utensils, should be protected from injury; yet he prohibited the use of them in oblations, or any other ceremonies. He was not only a steady opponent of certain heresies which had for a long time prevailed, but also of the Pelagian heresy, which in the beginning of the fifth century began to take root. Pelagius and Celestius were the founders of this sect, upon both of whom the credit of unimpeachable sanctity and virtue has been bestowed by Augustine, the most rigid and indomitable adversary of their theological sentiments. Pelagius was a native of Britain; and, according to tradition, he was educated in the monastery of Bangor Iscoed, in the county of Flint, in Wales, of which place he became a Monk, and afterwards an Abbot.† One of the earliest institutions for theological learning in this island was probably that at Llantwit-Major, or Llaniltut, so called from Iltutus, after he was set over it by Garmon. At that place, called Caer Worgan, the Emperor Theodosius is said to have established a seminary of learning in the preceding century, soon after the defeat of Maximus, or about A.D. 388. At such a place Pelagius may have received the rudiments of his education. This person's British name was Morgan, or perhaps Morien, which, as it signifies "maritime," or "bordering on the sea," may have been easily Latinized into Pelagius. The county of Morgannwg, or Glamorgan, was so called on account of its maritime situation; although, according to others, it received its name from one Morgan, a Prince of that country. This celebrated character was in all probability a native of that part of Wales, from whence the name has become very common in all the adjoining counties, but is scarcely known in North Wales. That country has produced some eminent characters of comparatively recent date of similar endowments with Pelagius, who was admired for his learning and unblemished deportment; and noted as being a

* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. ii., p. 559, Milman's notes, second edit., London, 1846.

† It is generally agreed upon by authors of antiquity, that he was a Briton; but as to the affirmation of certain writers of a more modern date, respecting his being one of the Monks of Bangor, (meaning Bangor Iscoed in Maelor,) there is a mistake which is easily detected. The monastic institution being hardly yet introduced into Britain, he could not have been a member of any monastery; although in the progress of this century many of those institutions, known among Britons by the name of "Bangors," were either founded or newly regulated. But Bangor in Maelor, on the river Dee, or, as it was afterward called, "Bangor Dunod," from the Prince who founded it, was not known until the ensuing century. (Hughes, Horn Britannica, vol. i., p. 86.)

PELAGIUS.

man of subtle and metaphysical genius, even while he was condemned on account of error. He, and many besides him, who secluded themselves from the bustle of the world, from a desire to addict themselves to study, were called Monks. Such were Basil and Chrysostom, whom friendship, piety, and learning knit together in the strictest bonds of fraternity. Chrysostom was compelled to quit his solitude to undertake the pastoral charge; the important and arduous duties of which he has so ably depicted in his excellent treatise on the Christian priesthood.*

At what time Pelagius left the land of his nativity, it is not easy to ascertain; but it must have been some time previous to the close of the fourth century. He then resided for some time at Rome, where he was greatly respected, previous to his being charged with maintaining erroneous doctrines; and afterwards, when associated with Celestius,† he privately propagated his obnoxious sentiments. The rise of the Pelagian heresy, according to Bede, was in the year 394; but, according to both Vossius and Ussher, not until 405. The latter date will, perhaps, best apply to the time when Pelagius was generally known to avow the sentiments which he had for some time secretly entertained, and which had been previously propagated by Rufinus. Pelagius was the author of certain works well received even by those persons who afterwards opposed him. He was honoured by the correspondence of Augustine; and when the celebrated John Chrysostom heard of his falling into erroneous tenets, he greatly lamented him. In his letter to Olympias, which was written in his state of exile in Armenia, A.D. 405, he thus expresses himself:—"My grief is great on account of Pelagius the Monk: think, of how many crowns are they worthy who stand undaunted,

* Horm Britannicus; or, Studies in ancient British History, containing various Disquisitions on the National and Religious Antiquities of Great Britain. By John Hughes, in 2 vols., 8vo., London, 1819, vol. 1, p. 88.

† As a proof that education had made considerable progress in Ireland, we are distinctly informed by Jerome and others that the celebrated Celestius, so well known afterwards as the bold follower of Pelagius, the arch-heretic, was by birth an Irishman; and three letters to his parents are still extant which demonstrate that he had received an early Christian education in that country. The epistles not only imply that his parents were Christians, but that there must have existed an extensive community of them in a country where such a writer could have been instructed, and such letters at all understood. They were written, says Moore in his History of Ireland, in the form, as we are told, of little books, and full of such piety as to make them necessary to all who love God. Their date is A.D. 369, and they were written, I need scarcely remark, previously to the falling of Celestius into his grievous errors, and sixty-two years before the arrival of Patrick; but they evidently imply a full reception of Christianity into Ireland at a much earlier period. The ablest opponent, perhaps, to be found to the arrogant and presumptuous heresy of Pelagius, was the countryman and contemporary of Celestius, the celebrated Sedulius. As a Missionary he travelled through France, Italy, Asia, and Arabia. He wrote several works in prose and verse; among the former, a comment on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle, entitled, "Sedulius Scoti Hiberneuis in omnes Epistolas Pauli Collectaneum." How profoundly skilled Sedulius was in the leading doctrines of the Gospel, may be inferred from the clearness, conciseness, and appositeness of his remarks, critically comparing Scripture with itself, according to the analogy of faith. He was indeed an honour to his country, and a bright luminary in the orthodox church of his age. The country that produced such scholars as Celestius and Sedulius, at that early period, must have arrived at a high state of mental civilisation. (Dean Murray, Ireland and her Church, 4to., p. 10, second edit., London, 1846)

when we see men who have lived with so much piety and strictness drawn away." It would therefore appear, that he did not bring his errors with him from Britain, whatever there might have been in his way of thinking, which might dispose him the more readily to imbibe the opinions which he afterwards propagated.

Celestius subsequently became the principal coadjutor of Pelagius, and Jerome unhesitatingly recognised him as the Cerberus of Pelagius. He became acquainted also with one Julian of Campania, who made himself very active in disseminating his heterodox principles. "But it was not into one city," says Jerome, "that he introduced those blasphemous opinions; but to the utmost of his ability he spread them through the world." Celestius was also a man of a more bold and forward turn than Pelagius:* the latter made use of him as his agent and right-hand man. It is said that at first he only proposed his doubts respecting certain points of doctrine generally received, as if he wished to be more fully satisfied respecting original sin, and the necessity of divine grace. But after a while he was no longer able to disguise his sentiments, and then he met with vehement opposition from all quarters. "These persons," says Mosheim, "looked upon the doctrines which were commonly received concerning the corruption of human nature, and the necessity of divine grace to enlighten the understanding and purify the heart, as prejudicial to the progress of holiness, of virtue, and tending to lull mankind in a presumptuous and fatal security. They maintained that these doctrines were false, as they were pernicious; that the sins of our first parents were imputed to them alone, and not to their posterity; that we derive no corruption from their fall, but are born as pure and unspotted as Adam came out of the forming hand of his Creator; that mankind, therefore, are capable of repentance and amendment, and of arriving at the highest degrees of piety and virtue, by the use of their natural faculties and powers; that, indeed, external grace is necessary to excite their endeavours, but that they have no need of the internal succours of the divine Spirit." This controversy was referred by Celestius and Pelagius to the decision of Zosimus, who was raised to the Pontificate, A.D. 417. The new Pontiff, gained over by the ambiguous and seemingly-orthodox confession of faith that Celestius had artfully drawn up, and also by the letters and protestations of Pelagius, pronounced in favour of these Monks, declared them sound in the faith, and unjustly persecuted by their adversaries. The African Bishops, with Augustine at their head, little affected with this declaration, continued obstinately to maintain the judgment they had pronounced, and to strengthen it by their exhort-

* The Pelagians maintained the following doctrines:—1. That Adam was by nature mortal; and, whether he had sinned or not, would certainly have died. 2. That the consequences of Adam's sin were confined to his own person. 3. That new-born infants are in the same situation with Adam before the fall. 4. That the law qualified men for the kingdom of heaven, and was founded upon equal promises with the Gospel. 5. That the general resurrection of the dead does not follow in virtue of our Saviour's resurrection. 6. That the grace of God is given according to our merits. 7. That this grace is not granted for the performance of every moral act; the liberty of the will and information in points of duty being sufficient.

DOCTRINES OF PELAGIANISM.

ations, their letters, and their writings. Zosimus yielded to the perseverance of the Africans, changed his mind, and condemned, with the utmost severity, Pelagius and Celestius, whom he had honoured with his approbation, and covered with his protection. This was followed by a train of evils, which pursued these two Monks without interruption. They were condemned by that Ephesian Council which launched its thunder at the head of Nestorius. In short, the Gauls, Britons, and Africans, by their Councils and Emperors, by their edicts and penal laws, demolished this sect in its infancy, and suppressed it entirely before it had acquired any tolerable degree of vigour or consistence.

The almost-interminable disputes to which the Pelagian controversy gave rise, were instrumental in producing another variety of sectarians; who, from their aim to avoid the extremes of the contending parties of the day, mingled the heresies of the one with the orthodox principles of the other, on which account they were called "Semi-Pelagians."* They maintained the power of free will to produce goodness, faith, and newness of life; but that man could not persevere onwards to the attainment of that degree of holiness which should complete his own salvation without the grace of the Saviour. They denied that there was any peculiar or special dispensation of his grace through predestination; but held that all were capable of receiving its efficacy, or resisting it. It is likewise declared, that they held opinions concerning the predestination of infants, to which strong objections were raised. This sect sprang up in the South of France about the year 428, and was upheld by many persons of learning, the chief of whom was Cassian, a pupil of Chrysostom, and Honoratius, Bishop of Marseilles. On the other hand, it was resisted by Hormisdas and Felix III., Bishops of Rome; by Hilarius of Arles, Prosper of Aquitaine, and others, who faithfully followed the doctrines of Augustine in their endeavours to interrupt its progress, and to neutralize its effects. Another heresy, in this fatally-misguided period, which added to the uneasiness and peril of the church, pertained to the doctrine of the incarnation, and other abstruse points relating to the union of the Word with the human offspring of Mary.† It arose from Nestorius

* "Semi-Pelagians" was a name anciently, and is even at this day, given to such as retain some tincture of Pelagianism. Cassian, who had been a Deacon of Constantinople, and was afterwards a Priest of Marseilles, was the chief of these Semi-Pelagians, whose leading principles were, 1. That God did not dispense his grace to one more than another in consequence of predestination; that is, an eternal and absolute decree; but was willing to save all men, if they complied with the terms of his Gospel. 2. That Christ died for all men. 3. That the grace purchased by Christ, and necessary to salvation, was offered to all men. 4. That man before he received grace was capable of faith and holy desires. 5. That man was born free, and consequently capable of resisting the influences of grace, or of complying with its suggestions. The Semi-Pelagians were very numerous; and the doctrine of Cassian, though variously explained, was received in the greatest part of the monastic schools in Gaul, from whence it spread itself far and wide, through the European provinces. As to the Greeks, and other Eastern Christians, they had embraced the Semi-Pelagian doctrines before Cassian. In the sixth century the controversy between the Semi-Pelagians and the disciples of Augustine prevailed much, and continued to divide the Western churches.

† They believed that in Christ there were not only two natures, but two persons, of which the one was urine, even the eternal Word; and the other, which was human, was the man Jesus; that these two Persons had only one aspect; that the union between the refusing to apply the term Θεοτόκος, "Mother of God," to "Mary, the mother of Christ." Nestorius substituted the word Χριστοτόκος. This led, of course, to a violent controversy; and from the rank and character of the Divines who had embarked in the dispute, it became impossible to bring the dispute to an end without the decision of a Council. As the settlement of this question was therefore the principal reason for calling together a General Council at Ephesus, we shall, in the mean time, advert to a few further particulars, tending to show the circumstances by which this intestine broil was rendered of signal importance. Nestorius was a Syrian, born in Germanicia, a Monk of Euprepias, near Antioch, of the church in which city he had formerly been a Presbyter; was elected to the episcopate of Constantinople upon the death of Sisinius, in 428. He was very violent in his censures against heretics, and immediately after his consecration he addressed the Emperor: "Give me, O Cæsar, give me the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you in exchange the kingdom of heaven! Exterminate with me the heretics, and with you I will exterminate the Persians!" He violently attacked a secret conventicle of Arians, by setting fire to it; and the flames spreading did much damage to the city, on which account he was named the "Incendiary." He also persecuted the Quartodecimans in Lydia, Caria, and in other parts. Soon after his elevation to the high metropolitan dignity, he permitted Anastasius, his Priest, and Dorotheæus, a Bishop, to preach the doctrine above-mentioned, which he himself also maintained. Proclus, Bishop of Cyzicum, opposed it; and at length the Clergy, Monks, and people combined against the new heresy. Cyril of Alexandria also resolutely impugned it; affirming, in opposition, the principles laid down in the Nicene Creed, and adding twelve tremendous anathemas. Against these Nestorius promulgated as many. A long correspondence took place between Cyril, Celestine, Nestorius, and the Eastern and Western Bishops, all without the effect of bringing Nestorius to confess his error.* At last both parties, Nestorius as well as the orthodox, applied to the Emperor to summon a General Council, which he did; and deputed Candidian to watch the proceedings, not for the purpose of interfering with the controversialists, but to prevent disturbance from the

Son of God and the Son of man was formed in the moment of the virgin's conception, and was never to be dissolved; that it was not, however, an union of nature, or of person, but only of will and affection; that Christ was therefore to be carefully distinguished from God, who dwelt in him as in his temple; and that Mary was to be called "the mother of Christ," and not "the mother of God." One of the chief supporters of the Nestorian cause was Barsumas, created Bishop of Nisibis, A.D. 435. Such was his zeal and success, that the Nestorians who still remain in Chaldea, Persia, and Assyria, and the adjacent countries, consider him alone as their parent and founder. By him Phreoxes, the Persian Monarch, was persuaded to expel those Christians who adopted the opinions of the Greeks, and to admit the Nestorians in their place, putting them in possession of the principal seat of ecclesiastical authority in Persia, the see of Seleucia, which the Patriarch of the Nestorians has always filled, even down to our time. Barsumas also erected a school at Nisibis, from which proceeded those Nestorian Doctors who, in the fifth and sixth centuries, spread abroad their tenets through Egypt, Syria, Arabia, India, Tartary, and China. (See Account of the Nestorian Christians, by Asshel Grant.)

* Townsend, Eccles. and Civil Hist. considered, vol. I., p. 369.

THE NESTORIANS.

Monks and others who had assembled in great numbers. In subsequent periods of the history of this sect, we find they were sometimes called Chaldeans, and extended their spiritual conquests beyond Mount Imaus, and introduced the Christian religion into Tartary, properly so called, and especially into that country called Karit, bordering on the northern part of China. The Prince of that region, whom the Nestorians converted to the Christian faith, assumed, according to the vulgar tradition, the name of John after his baptism, to which he added the surname of "Presbyter," from a principle of modesty; whence, it is said, his successors were each of them called "Prester John" until the time of Gingis Khan. But Mosheim observes, that the famous Prester John did not begin to reign in that part of Asia before the conclusion of the eleventh century. The Nestorians formed so considerable a body of Christians, that the Missionaries of Rome were industrious in their endeavours to reduce them under the Papal yoke. Innocent IV. and Nicholas IV. used their utmost efforts for this purpose, but without success. Till the time of Pope Julius III., the Nestorians acknowledged but one Patriarch, who resided first at Bagdad, and afterwards at Mousul; but a division arising among them, in 1551 the patriarchate became divided, at least for a time, and a new Patriarch was consecrated by that Pope, whose successors fixed their residence in the city of Ormus, in the mountainous parts of Persia, where they still continue, distinguished by the name of Simeon; and so far down as the seventeenth century, these Patriarchs persevered in their communion with the Church of Rome, but seem at present to have withdrawn themselves from it. The great Nestorian Pontiffs, who form the opposite party, and look with a hostile eye on this little Patriarch, have, since the year 1559, been distinguished by the general denomination of Elias, and reside constantly in the city of Mousul. Their spiritual dominion is very extensive, takes in a greater part of Asia, and comprehends also within its circuit the Arabian Nestorians, and also the Christians of St. Thomas, who dwell along the coast of Malabar. It is observed, to the lasting honour of the Nestorians, that of all the Christian societies established in the East, they have been the most careful and successful in avoiding a multitude of superstitious opinions and practices that have infested the Greek and Latin churches. About the middle of the seventeenth century, the Romish Missionaries gained over to their communion a small number of Nestorians, whom they formed into a congregation or church; the Patriarchs or Bishops of which reside in the city of Amida, or Diarbekir, and all assume the denomination of Joseph. Nevertheless the Nestorians in general persevere to our own times in their refusal to enter into the communion of the Romish Church, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties and alluring offers that have been made by the Pope's Legate to conquer their inflexible constancy.*

Augustine was confessedly the most celebrated among the ancient Christian Fathers; but the notice of him in this work must necessarily be brief. He was born in Numidia, in the year 354, and his

* Henderson, Theolog. Dict. in loco.

early youth was distinguished by his aversion to all study, and especially that of the Greek language. From profane he directed his attention to religious subjects; and when we recollect that Tertullian, the greatest among his African predecessors, seceded from the church in the maturity of his judgment and learning, in order to embrace the visions of a raving fanatic, we are scarcely astonished to learn that the youthful imagination of Augustine was seduced by the Manichæan opinions. He appears to have retained them for nine or ten years, during which time his rhetorical talents had raised him into notice, and it was not until the year 386 that he was persuaded, as it is said, by the sermons of Ambrose, and the writings of the Apostle Paul, to return to the communion of the church. His baptism speedily followed his conversion; his ordination took place soon afterwards, and the city of Hippo in Africa, which owes most of its celebrity to its association with his name, was that in which he first ministered as a Priest, and afterwards presided as Bishop. He died in 430, in the thirty-fifth year of his episcopate. The first recorded exploit of his ecclesiastical life was the destruction of an inveterate and a consecrated abuse. The origin of the *Agapæ*,\* or “feasts of charity,” and the purposes to which in early times they contributed, were innocent and praiseworthy. But as the influx of the pagan converts grew more rapid, and as these naturally sought in the new religion for any resemblance to the popular ceremonies of the old, the solemnity in question insensibly changed its character under their influence, and degenerated into the licence and debauchery of a heathen festival. Augustine, while yet a Presbyter, undertook the difficult task of persuading the people to abandon a favourite and hereditary practice, and by the simple exertion of his eloquence he succeeded. Services of reading and chanting were substituted in its place; and while the churches of the heretics resounded with the customary revelry,

\* *Agapæ*, or “love-feasts,” “feasts of charity,” among the ancient Christians, when liberal contributions were made by the rich to the poor. It has been supposed by many that the custom is sanctioned by 1 Cor. xi. 20, 21; but the following verse clearly shows that the Apostle reprobates the idea of the Corinthian Christians eating any other social meal in public but that of the Lord’s supper. Chrysostom gives the following account of this feast, which he derives from the apostolic practice. He says, “The first Christians had all things in common, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles; but when that equality of possessions ceased, as it did even in the Apostles’ time, the *Agapæ* or ‘love-feast’ was substituted in the room of it. Upon certain days, after partaking of the Lord’s supper, they met at a common feast, the rich bringing provisions, and the poor, who had nothing, being invited.” It was always attended with receiving the holy sacrament: but there is some difference between the ancient and modern interpreters, as to the circumstance of time; namely, whether this feast was held before or after the communion. Chrysostom is of the latter opinion; the learned Dr. Cave of the former. These love-feasts, during the first three centuries, were held in the church without scandal or offence; but in after-times the Heathens began to tax them with impurity. This gave occasion to a reformation of these *Agapæ*. The kiss of charity with which the ceremony used to end, was no longer given between different sexes; and it was expressly forbidden to have any beds or couches for the conveniency of those who should be disposed to eat more at their ease. Notwithstanding these precautions, the abuses committed in them became so notorious, that the holding them (in churches at least) was solemnly condemned at the Council of Carthage, in the year 397. Attempts have been made, of late years, to revive these feasts. They are, however, not very general, being confined almost entirely to the Sandemanians, and some of the stricter Antipædichaptists. This primitive practice, though under a simpler form, and more expressly religious, is retained in modern times only by the Moravians and by the Wesleyan Methodists.

PERSECUTING CHARACTER OF AUGUSTINE.

the voice of devotion alone proceeded from the assemblies of the orthodox. This change took place in the year 395; and from that moment the reputation of Augustine spread rapidly throughout the African church; and thence, as his labours proceeded, was diffused with no less of splendour to the most distant parts of Christendom. Besides the faithful discharge of his episcopal and his private duties, the Bishop of Hippo engaged deeply in the controversies of the day; and his attacks are chiefly against the Manicheans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians. His familiarity with the errors of the first may have qualified him more effectually to confute them; but it is at the same time curious to observe the motives which he advanced for his own adhesion to the orthodox church. They are the following: The consent of the people; the authority which began in the faith of miracles, which was nourished by hope, augmented by charity, confirmed by antiquity; the succession in the chair of the Apostle Peter; and the name of "Catholic" so established, that if a stranger should ask "Where is the catholic church?" no heretic would certainly dare to claim that title for his own communion.* These arguments, and such as these, have been so commonly reported in later ages, that, without at all entering (for such is not our province) into the question of their real value, we are contented to record their high antiquity, and the sanction which they received from the name of Augustine. His exertions against the Donatists have attached to the character of that Father the stain of persecution. The maxim, says Mosheim,† which justified the chastisement of religious errors by civil penalties, was confirmed and established by the authority of Augustine, and thus transmitted to following ages. He cannot be vindicated from that charge;‡ he unquestionably maintained the general principle, that the unity of the church should be preserved by secular interference, and that its adversaries should be crushed by the material sword. But his natural humanity in some degree counteracted the barbarity of his ecclesiastical principles; and there is still extant an epistle addressed by him to Marcellinus, (in 412,) in which he earnestly entreated that Magistrate to extend mercy to certain Donatists, who had been convicted of some sanguinary excesses against the orthodox. But his misfortune was, that, while his private philanthropy preserved the lives perhaps of a few individuals, the efficacy which he added to the worst maxim of church polity not only sharpened the shafts of injustice in his own time, but tempered them for long and fatal service in after-ages.§

The interests of the Macedonians at Constantinople were materially affected by their possessing no Bishop; for ever since they had been

* No heretic was so likely to have laid that claim as a Donatist; yet even a Donatist, while he maintained that the true catholic spirit and purity was alone perpetuated and inherent in his own communion, would scarcely have affirmed, that was, bond fide, the universal church, which did not extend beyond the shores of Africa, and which had not the majority even there. (Waddington.)

† Mosheim, Institutes of Eccles. History.

‡ Besides the epistle to Dulcitios, see his letter, or rather tract, to Boniface, "De Correctione Donatistarum;" and that to Vincentius. The principle is avowed and defended in both, at least provided the animus be to correct, not to revenge!

§ Waddington, A History of the Church, vol. I., chap. xi., p. 331.

3 v 2 deprived of their churches by Eudoxius, under the reign of Constantius, they had been governed only by Presbyters. The Novatians, on the other hand, although they had been agitated by the controversy concerning the Passover, which had been renewed by Sabbatius, had been allowed to remain in quiet possession of most of their churches, and had not been molested by any of the laws enacted against other heretics, because they maintained that the three Persons of the Trinity are of the same substance. The virtue of their Bishops also tended greatly to the maintenance of union and concord among them. After the death of Agelius, they were governed by Marcion, a Bishop of eminent piety; and on his decease, the bishopric devolved upon Sisinius, a very eloquent man, well versed in the doctrines of philosophy and of Scripture; and so expert in disputation, that even Eunomius, who made a practice of discussing controverted topics, often refused to hold disputes with him. His course of life was exemplary, and above the reach of calumny; yet he indulged in luxury, and even in superfluities; so that those who knew him not were incredulous as to whether he could remain temperate in the midst of so much abundance. He possessed so much kindness of disposition, and suavity of manner, that he was highly esteemed by the Bishops of the orthodox church, by the rulers, and by the learned. His jests were replete with good nature, and he could bear ridicule without manifesting the least resentment: he was very prompt and witty in his rejoinders. Being once asked wherefore, as he was a Bishop, he bathed twice daily; he replied, "Because I do not bathe thrice." On another occasion, being ridiculed by a member of the orthodox church because he dressed in white, he asked where it was commanded that he should dress in black; and as the other hesitated for a reply, he continued, "You can give no argument in support of your position; but I refer you to Solomon, the wisest of men, who says, 'Let your garments be always white;' moreover, Christ is described in the Gospel as having appeared in white; and Moses and Elias manifested themselves to the Apostles in robes of white." It appears to me, says Sozomen, that the following reply was also very ingenious. Leontius, Bishop of Ancyra, in Galatia, repaired to Constantinople, after he had deprived the Novatians in his province of their churches. Sisinius went to him to request that the churches might be restored; but far from yielding compliance, he reviled the Novatians, and said that they were not worthy of holding assemblies, because, by abolishing the observance of penance, they intercepted the mercy of God. To this Sisinius replied, "No one does penance as I do." Leontius asked him in what way he did penance. "In coming to see you," retorted Sisinius. Many other witty speeches are attributed to him, and he is even said to have written several works with some elegance. But his discourses obtained greater applause than his writings; for the intonation of his voice, the expression of his countenance, and all his attitudes produced extraordinary effects upon his audience. This brief description may serve to convey some idea of the disposition and mode of life of Sisinius; * but in this day

* Sozom., Hist. Eccles., lib. viii., cap. 1.

CHRYSOSTOM OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

of rebuke and blasphemy, these puerile jests and miserable attempts at jocosity ill become a Prelate of the early church.

John, surnamed from his eloquence, Chrysostom, that is, "the golden-mouthed," was a native of Antioch, of a noble and opulent family. In the year 374, while he was still young, he had acquired such distinction, that the neighbouring Prelates elected him to a vacant see; but it is generally affirmed, that he refused that dignity, and fled to an adjacent mountain, where he passed four years in the society of an ancient solitary; thence he changed his residence to a frightful cavern, which witnessed, for the two following years, his rigid austerities. Having completed this preparatory discipline, he entered upon the offices of the ministry; and after edifying his native city for eighteen years by the most animating instructions, he was at once exalted, without solicitation, and even against his professed wish, to the see of Constantinople. Chrysostom carried with him to that dangerous eminence, not only the fervour of Christian eloquence, but the severity of monastic virtue; and he thought it little to move the affections and raise the admiration of his audience, unless he could reach their practice, and quell their vices. Had he confined his exhortations to the mass of the people, he would have produced less effect, perhaps, but he would have excited no odium; but the intrepid and earnest orator rose, in his vehement denunciations, from the people to the Clergy, and from the Clergy to the court, without excepting even the Empress herself from his reproaches.* To the keenness of his censures he added the weight of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and both were zealously employed against episcopal licentiousness,† no less than against the vices and scandals imputed to the priesthood, and especially to the monastic orders. According to the most credible accounts, the state of religion in that diocese was far from being such as a man of Chrysostom's piety and severe character would desire. From the commencement of his episcopal labours, therefore, he found himself obliged to oppose many of the most influential of his Clergy, and to set an example of self-denial and austerity of living little agreeable to men who had been accustomed to enjoy, with hardly any restraint, the luxuries of the imperial capital. In the arrangement of his own household, he was so economical, that he was able to found a variety of hospitals, and comfort numerous poor persons, with the sums which he saved out of the usual expenditure of his revenues. This excellent union of economy and charity, together with the most assiduous attention to the duties of prayer and preaching, rendered him an object of warm admiration to the people. But in proportion to the increase of his popularity, those who suffered by the reform he was anxious to introduce, became more and more desirous of effecting his ruin; and on the arrival of Theophilus,

* Endoxia, after falling in her first attempt to displace Chrysostom, renewed her hostilities; and it was then that the Bishop delivered the sermon (if, indeed, he did at all deliver it) beginning with the celebrated words:—"Herodias is again furious; Herodias again dances; she once again requires the head of John." An insolent allusion, says Gibbon, which, as a woman and a Sovereign, it was equally impossible for her to forgive.

† In his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen Bishops of Lydia and Phrygia, and passed a very severe censure upon the whole order.

Bishop of Alexandria, his declared and inveterate enemy, at Constantinople, a strong party was instantly formed, determined to carry their wishes into execution.* In order to accomplish this, Theophilus held a Council in the neighbourhood of Chalcedon, whither he was attended by thirty-six Bishops, and there prepared to decide the fate of Chrysostom by one of the most outrageous violations of the episcopal dignity that was ever committed by one member of that order towards another. The intended victim of these machinations was not ignorant of what was plotting against him; but he was destitute of the means necessary to resist so powerful a party. The Empress Eudoxia also, a woman of violent temper, had been for some time desirous of avenging herself for an affront which she was supposed to have received in one of his sermons; and she consequently forwarded the intentions of his enemies with all the influence she possessed. Thus menaced, Chrysostom had no resource but his piety and fortitude; and on these he depended without shrinking. "A terrible storm," said he, in one of his sermons preached at this time, "is approaching; but we have no fear of sinking, for we are founded on a rock: what, in fact, can I have to dread? Death? Jesus Christ is my life, and death is my gain! Exile? The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof! Confiscation? We brought nothing into the world, and we can carry nothing out!" To the summons which was sent him to appear before the Council, he replied that he would with great willingness attend, provided his known enemies were not allowed to preside as Judges. To Theophilus himself he objected, because he was heard to say, as he came out of Alexandria, "I am going to depose John." He urged the same reason against three other Bishops, and intimated his resolution not to appear before the Synod till these persons were ejected from the tribunal. No attention, however, was paid to his protests; and, after summoning him three times without avail, the assembly proceeded with the measures on which it had previously resolved. Chrysostom was, accordingly, deposed in form; and a letter being sent to the Emperor Arcadius, a weak and ignorant Monarch, containing an account of the trial, the Bishop was forthwith expelled his church. This was not effected without considerable difficulty. For three days the populace surrounded the cathedral into which he was known to have retired, and from which they were resolved no force should drag him. What would have been the result of a conflict between his numerous partisans and the officers of the Emperor, it is not easy to decide; but, to avoid the tumult and bloodshed which must have been the consequence of such a struggle, he resigned himself into the hands of the persons employed to take him, and was carried to a small town in Bithynia.

His departure was no sooner discovered by the multitude, than their previous murmurs rose into loud and wrathful expressions of vengeance against his persecutors. The next day the tumult was still

* Socrates, Hist., lib. vi., cap. 9, where it appears, that one of the earliest causes of the enmity of Theophilus, was the reception which Chrysostom gave to some Ecclesiastics deposed by that Patriarch.

PERSECUTION AND DEATH OF CHRYSOSTOM.

unsubdued: troops of people besieged the Emperor's palace with prayers for the restoration of their beloved Bishop; others poured out execrations on the name of Eudoxia, who, it was believed, had taken the principal part in the obnoxious proceedings. The most lively alarm was thus excited among the courtiers: all apprehended the terrors of a general insurrection; and Constantinople presented, from one end to the other, a scene of mingled fury and dismay. To add to the confusion, at the moment when the rage of the one and the anxiety of the other party were at their height, the motions of an earthquake were felt, and a thousand voices were instantly heard, exclaiming, that it was a token of divine anger at the persecution of the holy Chrysostom. Eudoxia herself, it is said, trembled at the ominous coincidence, and now besought the Emperor to recall the Bishop with as much earnestness as she had before solicited his condemnation. Arcadius was himself too much alarmed to deny her request; and messengers were immediately despatched to bring Chrysostom back to Constantinople.

His return was hailed and commemorated by the people with every demonstration of enthusiasm; but he had not long resumed the exercise of his functions, when the Empress, by desiring her statue to be placed in the neighbourhood of the church, again led him to commit some offence against her pride.* Theophilus lost no time in availing himself of this circumstance: a new cabal was formed, and Chrysostom was again ordered into exile. He was, as before, obliged to employ a stratagem to escape the watchful affection of his people; but his departure was this time attended with more fatal consequences than on the previous occasion. Deprived of their Pastor, the numerous congregations which had assembled in the cathedral to celebrate a festival, left the church, attended by some Priests, and proceeded to the baths of Constantine, where they intended to complete their devotions, and baptize some catechumens who were waiting to receive that sacrament. But scarcely had they reached the baths, when they were assailed by a body of five hundred soldiers, sent to disperse them; violences of every description were committed by their barbarous pursuers; the females were outraged, the Priests severely wounded, and many of the worshippers seized and forced away to prison. Unfortunately, on the very day of Chrysostom's departure, the cathedral took fire; and it being at once suspected that his followers were guilty of planning its destruction, they were pursued and punished with redoubled cruelty. A Priest and a Reader were submitted to the most dreadful tortures to force from them a confession of the crime; but persisting in the assertion of their innocence, the one was kept on the rack till he expired, and the other, having had sufficient strength to endure his agonies, was sent to die in exile.

Chrysostom himself was treated without any regard either to his station, or the infirmities of his constitution. The officer and soldiers to whose custody he had been committed, compelled him to travel day and night without cessation, till they arrived at Cæsarea, in Cap-

* Socrat., Hist. Eccles., lib. vi., cap. 18.

padocia, where he was seized with a severe fever, the necessary consequence of the extreme fatigue to which his exhausted frame had been exposed. He trusted, however, that he should be allowed to repose for a time in quiet, now that he was so far beyond the reach of the affectionate people who had provoked his enemies by rising in his defence. In this he was disappointed: he had hardly prepared himself for rest, when a party of rude and bigoted Monks surrounded the house in which he was lodged, and demanded his instant dismissal. The Governor of the town for some time endeavoured to appease the intolerant rancour of these religionists; but his efforts were repulsed with indignation, and the unfortunate Prelate was obliged to resume his journey, suffering as he was under the violent attacks of an acute fever. For more than a month he was exposed to the united evils of sickness, confinement in the midst of savage, implacable soldiers, and the many other troubles which to a sick and nervous traveller could not be trifling. At length, after a journey occupying about seventy days, he arrived with his guards at the town of Arcasias, among the ridges of Mount Taurus, where he was received by the Bishop of the place in a manner so affectionate, that it almost atoned for the toil to which he had been unjustly subjected in his long and painful travel. The same attention was also shown him by a wealthy layman of the town, who afforded him a comfortable lodging in his house, and sought, by every means in his power, to save him from the injuries of the severe climate to which he was thus suddenly exposed. For three years was the illustrious Prelate confined in this remote region; but his solitude and privations neither diminished the rancour of his enemies, nor injured the activity of his mind. The attempts which were made in his favour by numerous partisans, as well in the West as in the East, stirred up the base and interested faction which had procured his deposition, to employ the vilest arts to prevent his restoration. How little he feared their menaces, or was deterred by them from pursuing the course which his conscience had marked out to him, was made sufficiently evident by the bold and extensive plans he continued to form for the reformation of the church. Comprehending in his paternal affection every district over which he could exercise any influence, he from time to time addressed the people in letters, the eloquence of which lost none of its force from the recollection of his misfortunes; but, by its effect on the popular mind, made both his private enemies, and the enemies of religion itself, tremble for the success of their machinations. It was while filled with apprehensions at these repeated attacks of the exiled Bishop on their authority, that the party of Theophilus at Constantinople renewed their appeals to the wavering Arcadius, and obtained an order for the further removal of Chrysostom to the town of Pytius, a wretched, lonely place at the extremity of the desert of that name, on the eastern shore of the Euxine. The commission was executed in the same ruthless manner as that which had directed his removal from Constantinople. Though suffering under the weight of accumulating infirmities, he was hurried along with all the speed which his robust and merciless guards could use; and he had not yet reached the

PAGAN CORRUPTION.

coast of the Euxine, when the little strength he possessed was exhausted, and he fell a martyr to their barbarity.*

It was truly lamentable to witness the unworthy advances which were made about this time by Christianity, and encouraged by some of her leading Ministers, with a view to reconcile at least her external differences with Paganism.† And, no doubt, they were very effective in alluring those easy polytheists, whose piety was satisfied with numerous festivals in celebration of the exploits of mortals deified; for with them the change was only in the name of the Deity, not in the principles of the religion. At the same time, it must be observed, that the Pagans, on their side, made the concession of sacrifice, or at least of immolation, which was the centre of their whole system. They were indulged with a sort of polytheism of saints and martyrs, and even sensible objects of worship were not withheld from them. But those beings and images were to be approached only with prayer and supplication; and if it was presently found expedient to permit offerings to be made to them, their shrines were never contaminated with the blood of victims. By this degrading compromise the church was filled by numerous converts, who believed, and who were probably taught to believe, that the worship which they had deserted was by no means essentially dissimilar from that which they had embraced; and who continued, after their admission, to perpetuate and exaggerate those corruptions by which alone the resemblance was created. Here, then, we discover the root of several of the abuses of the Papacy: they were concessions made during this critical period to the genius of Paganism, in order to entice its votaries into more speedy conformity, and to accelerate the dissolution of the one religion into the other. The immediate object was accomplished: to diminish the numerical display of polytheism, and prematurely to crowd the churches and processions with nominal Christians. But the lasting result has been to darken and disfigure the features of Christianity, not in one race only, or for one age, but through a period of which fourteen centuries have already been accomplished, and of which we cannot yet foresee the termination.‡ Various circumstances conduced to the approach of Christianity to this polytheistic form, or at least to permit, what it is difficult to call by any other name than "polytheistic" habits and feelings of devotion. It attributed, however vaguely, to subordinate beings some of the inalienable powers and attributes of

* Stebbing, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., p. 251. A heavy charge has been brought against Chrysostom, on account of the efforts he made to enlarge the boundaries and increase the power of his patriarchate. The authority which he exercised led to the idea that he was a sort of Vicar to the Roman Pontiff: a notion which could only have had its rise among the most zealous defenders of the Papal supremacy. (See Baanage, Histoire de l'Eglise, lib. vi., cap. 2.)

† In the year 410, Synesius a Platonic philosopher of Cyrene, was ordained Bishop of Ptolemais, by Theophilus of Alexandria. Synesius remonstrated against this election, declared himself to be a Platonist, and specified several points in which his speculative opinions differed from those of the Christians. But as he was an agreeable orator, and had much influence in the province, his objections were overlooked, and after receiving baptism he entered upon his episcopal functions. This is far from being the only instance of the pliancy of the early church, at a period, too, when it had no excuse from fear or persecution. (Waddington.)

‡ Waddington, History of the Church, vol. i., p. 235.

3 G the Deity. Under the whole of this form lay the sum of Christian doctrine; but that which was constantly presented to the minds of men was the host of subordinate, indeed, but still active and influential, mediators between the Deity and the world of man. Throughout (as has already been, and will presently again be indicated) existed the vital and essential difference between Christianity and Paganism. It is possible that the controversies about the Trinity, and the divine nature of Christ, tended indirectly to the promotion of this worship of the Virgin, of angels, of saints, and martyrs. The great object of the victorious, to a certain extent, of both parties, was the closest approximation—in one sense, the identification—of the Saviour with the unseen and incomprehensible Deity. Though the human nature of Christ was as strenuously asserted in theory, it was not dwelt upon with the same earnestness and constancy as his divine. To magnify, to purify this from all earthly leaven, was the object of all eloquence: theologic disputes on this point withdrew or diverted the attention from the life of Christ as simply related in the Gospels. Christ became the object of a remoter, a more awful, adoration. The mind therefore began to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in closer alliance with human sympathies. The constant propensity of man to humanize his Deity, checked, as it were, by the receding majesty of the Saviour, readily clung with its devotion to humbler objects.* The weak wing of the common and unenlightened mind could not soar to the unapproachable light in which Christ dwelt with the Father: it dropped to the earth, and bowed itself down before some less mysterious object of veneration. In theory it was always a different and inferior kind of worship; but the feelings, especially impassioned devotion, know no logic: they pause not; it would chill them to death if they were to pause for these fine and subtle distinctions. The gentle ascent by which admiration, reverence, gratitude, and love, swelled up to awe, to veneration, to worship, both as regards the feelings of the individual and the general sentiment, was imperceptible. Men passed from rational respect for the remains of the dead,† the communion of holy thought and emotion, which might connect the departed saint with his brethren in the flesh, to the superstitious veneration of relics, and the deification of mortal men, by so easy a transition, that they never

* The progress of the worship of saints and angels has been fairly and impartially traced by Shroeck, and others. In the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, it is said, "We love the martyrs as disciples and followers of the Lord." The Fathers of the next period leave the saints and martyrs in a kind of intermediate state, the bosom of Abraham, or paradise, as explained by Tertullian, contra Marcion, iv. 34; Apologet 47. Compare Iren. adv. Harres. v., cap. 31; Justin. Dialog. cum Tryph.; Orig. Homil. vi., in Levit.

† The growth of the worship of relics is best shown by the prohibitory law of Theodosius, against the removal and sale of saints' bodies. "Nemo martyres distrahat, nemo mercetur." Augustine denies that worship was ever offered to Apostles or saints. "Quis autem audivit aliquando fidelium stantem sacerdotem ad altare etiam super sanctum corpus martyris ad Dei honorem cultumque constructum, dicere in precibus, Offero tibi sacrificium, Petre vel Paule, vel Cypriane, cum apud eorum memorias offeratur Deo qui eos et homines et martyres fecit, et sanctis suis angelis coelesti honore sociavit." De Civit. Dei, viii. 27. Compare xvii. 10, where he asserts miracles to be performed at their tombs. (Milman.)

INTERCESSION OF SAINTS.

discovered the precise point at which they had transgressed the unmarked and unwatched boundary.

This new polytheizing Christianity, therefore, was still subordinate and subsidiary, to adopt the language of Mr. Milman, in the theologic creed to the true Christian worship; but it usurped its place in the heart, and rivalled it in the daily language and practices of devotion. The worshipper felt and acknowledged his dependency, and looked for protection or support to these new intermediate beings, the intercessors with the great Intercessor. They were arrayed by the general belief in some of the attributes of the Deity. According to that belief, they had ubiquity; the perpetual cognizance of the affairs of the earth; they could hear the prayer; they could read the heart; they could control nature; they had power, derivative, indeed, from a higher source, but still exercised according to their volition over all the events of the world. Thus each city, and almost each individual, began to have his tutelar saint; the presence of some beatified being hovered over and hallowed particular spots; and thus the strong influence of local and particular worships combined again with that great universal faith of which the supreme Father was the sole object and the universal temple.* Still, however, this new polytheism differed in its influence, as well as in its nature, from that of Paganism. It bore a constant reference to another state of existence. Though the office of the tutelary being was to avert and mitigate temporal suffering, yet it was still more so to awaken and keep alive the sentiments of the religious being. They were not merely the agents of the divine providential government on earth, but indissolubly connected with the hopes and fears of the future state of existence.†

This mournful state of affairs gives an involuntary interrogative, and suggests a melancholy answer. The influence of the Clergy must evidently have been greatly diminished, or the manners of their respective congregations could never have acquired that strong taint of corruption to which so many allusions are made in the writings of the times. Or, if this were not the case, the Clergy in general must themselves have ceased to lay that stress upon sanctity as an essential in the Christian character which formerly constituted the basis of their addresses. Whichever be true, there can be little

* An illustration of the new form assumed by Christian worship may be collected from the works of Paulinus, who, in eighteen poems, celebrates the nativity of Felix, the tutelary saint of Nola. Felix is at least invested with the powers ascribed to the intermediate deities of antiquity. Pilgrims crowded from the whole of the south of Italy to the festival of Felix. Rome herself, though she possessed the altars of the Apostles Peter and Paul, poured forth her myriads; the Capenian gate was choked, the Appian Way was covered, with the devout worshippers. Multitudes came from beyond the sea. Felix is implored by his servants to remove the impediments to their pilgrimages from the hostility of men, or adverse weather; to smooth the sea, and send propitious winds. There is constant reference indeed to Christ, as the source of this power; yet the power is fully and explicitly assigned to the saint. He is the prevailing intercessor between the worshipper and Christ. But the vital distinction between this paganizing form of Christianity and Paganism itself is no less manifest in these poems. It is not merely as a tutelary deity in this life that the saint is invoked; the future state of existence, and the final judgment, are constantly present to the thoughts of the worshipper. Felix is entreated after death to bear the souls of his worshippers into the bosom of the Redeemer, and to intercede for them at the last day. (Milman.)

† Milman, History of Christianity, vol. III., p. 543.

3 G 2 doubt that the superior orders of the hierarchy, with the exception of some few distinguished men, no longer exhibited those examples of self-denial and meekness, of patient piety and laborious attention to their duties, which had till of late been the sole foundation on which they rested their claims to the respect of the people. There were several causes, perhaps, at work in the production of this change; but the most prominent, and apparently the most active, was the too great familiarity which the heads of churches had contracted with courts and Princes. John the Baptist could occupy only the dungeon of Herod's palace, and sad would it have been for the early community had Paul, won by the praises of Festus or Felix, become their convert, while he endeavoured to make them his. But the wretched condition of the empire contributed in no small degree to disturb the tranquillity and advancement of the church. Christians appeared to have embarked their chief treasure in the same vessel as the rest of mankind; and having been delivered by the mercy of God from the evils of present persecution, they seemed to have returned to the world, that they might suffer in its miseries and toil.

Theodosius had ceased to reign several years before Chrysostom was summoned to the pontifical throne of Constantinople. The East was governed by women and eunuchs. In assuming the episcopal throne of the metropolis, to which he is said to have been transported almost by force, Chrysostom, who could not but be conscious of his power over the minds of men, might entertain visions of the noblest and purest ambition. His views of the dignity of the sacerdotal character were as lofty as those of his contemporaries in the West: while he asserted the authority which set them apart and far above the rest of mankind, he demanded a moral superiority, and entire devotion to their calling, which could not but rivet their authority upon the minds of men. The Clergy, such as his glowing imagination conceived them, would unite the strongest corporate spirit with the highest individual zeal and purity. The influence of the Bishop in Antioch, the deference which Theodosius had shown to the intercession of Flavianus, might encourage Chrysostom in the fallacious hope of restoring peace, virtue, and piety, as well as orthodoxy, in the imperial city. But in the East, more particularly in the metropolis, the sacerdotal character never assumed the unassailable sanctity, the awful inviolability, which it attained in the West. The religion of Constantinople was that of the Emperor. Instead of growing up like the Bishop of Rome, first to independence, afterwards to sovereignty, the presence of the imperial government overawed and obscured the religious supremacy. In Rome, the Bishop was subject at all times to the rebellious control of the aristocracy, or exposed to the irreverent fury of the populace; but he constantly emerged from his transient obscurity, and resumed his power. In Constantinople, a voluptuous court, a savage populace, at this period multitudes of concealed Arians, and heretics of countless shades and hues, at all periods thwarted the plans, debased the dignity, and desecrated the person of the Patriarch of Constantinople.*

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii., p. 218.

DECLINE OF LEARNING.

A canon of the Council of Carthage, which was held a short period previous to this era, forbade the study of secular books by the Bishops; and this event has marked a crisis in the history of Christian literature. A deplorable dearth of learning followed this crisis, and scarcely three names were recognised as celebrated for any talent or acquirement. However, we must not attribute this rapid defection to the injudicious ordinance in question; since its authority was not universal, and since injunctions of that description are seldom obeyed except by such as are previously disposed to receive them. It was an index, rather than a cause, of the altering spirit of the church; and as such we record it. The real reasons of that defection, and of the darkness which followed it, are two: the first of these, which alone perhaps might gradually have completed the extinction of sound learning, was the internal corruption of Christianity, and the spreading influence of Monachism. An age of prodigies and relics and Stylites, was not proper for the growth of genius, or the cultivation of knowledge; and the little of either which survived in the East, may have owed its existence to the dissensions of the Christians, as much as to their virtues. The second reason was the frequent irruption and final settlement of the barbarian conquerors. This cause was, indeed, confined almost entirely to the provinces of the West; but the wounds which it inflicted there were deeper and of more extensive influence than might at first have been apprehended. It afforded a fearful prospect, that those hordes of colonists were wholly uninstructed in literary acquirements, and even generally prejudiced against them. Theodoric himself, the wisest, as well as the best, among their Princes, while he respected the superior civilization of the vanquished, despised and disclaimed that art, which seemed to be employed for no other end than to inflame and perpetuate religious controversy. He could never be prevailed upon to learn to read. But the cause which increased and prolonged that mischief, and created many others, was the superstitious disposition which the invaders brought with them. They had learnt, as a rudiment of their own religion, a subservient reverence for their priesthood, and this principle accompanied them into the Christian church; the priesthood received without reluctance the unbounded homage which was offered to them; their authority grew with that obsequiousness, and their ambition swelled with their authority; and when they found how easily this could be maintained and extended over a credulous people, and how certainly credulity is the offspring of ignorance, they became interested in perpetuating blindness and prejudice.*

Notwithstanding the deterioration of Christianity, it continued to spread into the regions of Paganism. The inhabitants of Libanus and Anti-Libanus accepted baptism from a Syrian Monk, whose name and title are still famous. Simeon Stylites, or Simeon of the Pillar, had for many years sat, knelt, or stood on the top of a lofty pillar within the enclosure of a rude cloister in the desert of Telanessa, receiving the applausees of the whole country, giving audience

* Waddington, History of the Church, vol. i., p. 261.

to applicants of all ranks, who expected him to afford them miraculous assistance, and uttering decisions on theological disputes. The story of the conversion of the Libanites, divested of fabulous ornament, may perhaps be thus related. Those Heathens had fallen under the terror of a superstition still rife in some parts of the East, and believed in the transformation of human beings into beasts of prey.* Cunning impostors kept up the delusion until it became insufferable, and they betook themselves to the saint of the pillar, trusting that his power would prove superior to that of their tormentors. He enjoined on them, first, the solemn erection of crosses in the most troubled parts of their country; secondly, watches to be kept around those crosses for three days together, and as many nights; (a proceeding admirably calculated to overawe the nocturnal ramblers, who imitated the howlings of wild beasts;) and, thirdly, a general baptism. The scheme succeeded so well, that the poor creatures fancied themselves Christians. The influence of the Stylite was also increased beyond measure; his enmity might have been formidable; and we are sorry to learn from Evagrius, that Theodosius, after he had compelled the Christians of Antioch to restore to the Jews of that city the synagogues of which they had taken forcible possession, was induced, by his remonstrances, to rescind his own act, give sanction to the robbery,† displace the Magistrate who had interceded with him on behalf of the persecuted Jews, and ask pardon of the aerial saint, who feared no other Emperor but God.

Many of the barbarian tribes also, in establishing themselves in their newly-acquired conquests, embraced the faith; and even a large body of Jews, inhabitants of Crete, opening their eyes to the true meaning of their prophetic records, acknowledged their fulfilment in the person of Christ. The immediate cause of their conversion deserves to be mentioned, as indicative of the ready attention given in this age to the boldest pretenders to divine authority. One of their own nation, taking advantage of their enthusiasm, declared himself to be Moses, and asserted that he had been sent from heaven to conduct them through the sea to the land of promise, as he had done in ancient times through the Red Sea. Having assured them, moreover, that they had no farther need of money, on the day appointed for their setting forth, he led them to a promontory which overhung the sea, and commanded them to leap with confidence into the deep. The foremost ranks of the deluded multitude instantly obeyed; and while numbers of them sunk to rise no more, others lay mangled on the sharp points of the jutting rocks, or were seen struggling for life amid the waves. Some were saved by the humane exertions of fishermen and Christian merchants; and the rest of the assembly, undeceived by the miserable fate of their companions, gladly returned to their homes, and, having been led to reflection, forthwith embraced Christianity. The impostor himself was never more seen or heard

* See Gobat's Journal of three Years' Residence in Abyssinia, on the Bondas, May 18th, 1830; Life, &c., of Nathanael Pearce, vol. ii., Appendix I., and compare with the account of Simeon given by Assemann, Bibliotheca Orientalis, i., 242, seq.

† Evagrius, Hist. Eccles. i., 13.

PERSECUTION IN PERSIA.

of; and it was the belief of many, that he must have been an evil spirit in a human shape.

In this century Ireland was converted by the preaching of the celebrated Patrick, who, after labouring in that country forty years, at length established a metropolitan church at Armagh. Whatever degree of prosperity, moreover, may seem indicated by this event, it was fearfully counterbalanced by the violence which the yet unconverted barbarians exercised against the vanquished Christians, and by the dissensions which prevailed to so deplorable an extent among the Christians themselves. On looking beyond the immediate confines of Christendom, a still darker scene presents itself.

Persia, about the year 421, was deluged with Christian blood, and tortures were endured by the faithful not inferior to those which had been suffered by their forefathers in the reign of Nero. Even here, however, our sympathy is checked by well-grounded suspicions, that this persecution owed its origin as much to the imprudence of the Christians as to the cruelty or enmity of the Persians. The first occasion of dispute was afforded by Abda, Bishop of Suza, who pulled down one of the temples dedicated to fire; and, on refusing to repair the injury at the command of the King, was put to death. The Persians appear to have satisfied themselves on this occasion with retaliating on the sect in general, by pulling down their churches; and the fiercer spirit of revenge which broke out some time after, is attributable to the belief which prevailed, that the Romans, then at war with Persia, were aided by their secret counsels. On the death of Isdegerdes, the Persian King, the nation, as if by hereditary succession, devolved the war against the church upon his son Gororanes; and it is not easy to describe the various species of punishments which were invented to torture the faithful. Some had their hands flayed, and others their backs. Some had the skin torn off the face, from the forehead to the chin. Others had reeds, which had been split in half, fastened round their bodies, and bound on as tightly as possible, from head to foot, then each of the reeds was dragged off with great force, bearing with it the adjacent skin. This operation occasioned great agony. The persecutors also dug pits, and filled them with mice: they then threw the pious defenders of the faith into these pits, after having first bound their hands and their feet, so that they could not drive off the vermin. The mice, pressed by hunger, devoured their flesh, thus occasioning exquisite torture. Besides these cruelties, the persecutors devised and executed yet more barbarous punishments, which were suggested to them by the enemy of human nature and truth. But nothing could shake the fortitude of these defenders of the faith. Some of them voluntarily surrendered themselves to the persecutors, desiring to receive the death which leads to immortal life. I shall, says Theodoret, relate the sufferings of two or three of these holy men, in order that their fortitude may convey an idea of that of others. Hormisdas was descended from the illustrious race of Aclemenides, and was the son of a Prefect. When the King heard that he was a Christian, he sent for him, and desired him to deny God the Saviour. But he told the King, that this command was neither just nor expedient. "Whoever," said he, "can be easily induced to contemn and deny the God of the universe, would be much more easily persuaded to despise Kings, who are but men, and by nature subject to death. If it be a crime deserving capital punishment, O King," continued he, "to deny your power, how much more deserving of punishment is he who denies the Creator of all things!" The King, instead of admiring the wisdom of this admirable speech, deprived him of his possessions and of his honours, and commanded him to take charge of the camels of the army. After many days had elapsed, the King, as he was looking through a window, caught sight of this great man, and perceived that he had become tanned by the heat of the sun, and that he was covered with dust. Remembering his illustrious parentage, the King sent for him, and ordered him to be attired in a linen tunic. Then, thinking that his mind would be subdued by his former labour, contrasted with the present kind treatment afforded him, he said to him, "Do not now persist in carrying on this contention, but renounce the Son of the carpenter." Hormisdas, full of divine zeal, tore, in the presence of the King, the tunic which he had given him, and said, "If by this present you thought to seduce me from religion, take back your gift." The King, perceiving his fortitude, banished him, naked as he was, out of the kingdom. The King also discovering that Suenas, a wealthy man possessed of a thousand slaves, would not consent to deny his Creator, asked him which of his slaves was the most wicked. To this very slave the King gave authority over the whole family, and desired that he should be waited on by his master. He also gave the wife of Suenas in marriage to this slave; hoping by these means to subdue the faith of this defender of the truth. But this hope was frustrated; for Suenas had built his house upon a rock. A certain Deacon, named Benjamin, was seized, and cast into prison. Two years after, a Roman Ambassador arrived in Persia, who was sent upon some special embassy. He heard of the imprisonment of the Deacon, and entreated the King to release him. The King consented, on condition that Benjamin would promise not to instruct any of the Magi in the Christian doctrines. The Ambassador promised, in his own name, that Benjamin would comply with this condition. But Benjamin, on hearing the declaration of the Ambassador, exclaimed, "I cannot refrain from communicating the light which I have received. The punishment of which those are worthy who hide their talents, is declared in the holy Gospel." The King, not being aware that such a reply had been made by Benjamin, commanded him to be released from captivity. After he had been set at liberty, he continued as usual to seek out those who were in the darkness of ignorance, and to lead them to the light of truth. About a year after, the King was informed of these proceedings: he sent for him, and commanded him to deny the God he worshipped. He asked the King what punishment would be merited by one of his subjects who should leave the kingdom, and prefer to dwell in some other region? The King having answered that he would be worthy of death, and of the greatest vengeance, this wise man said, "Of what

CONSTANTINOPLE.

punishment, then, is not that man worthy, who forsakes his Creator to make a god of one of his fellow-servants, and to render him the worship which he owes to God!" The King was highly provoked at this reply, and commanded twenty reeds to be forced up the nails of his hands and of his feet. But perceiving that he turned this punishment into ridicule, he ordered pointed reeds to be thrust into the most sensitive parts of his person, which produced unspeakable agony. The generous defender of the faith was afterwards impaled, and in this condition he gave up his spirit. Numberless other barbarities were perpetrated by the Persians. It must not, however, be regarded as a matter of surprise, that these acts of cruelty and impiety were permitted by the great Ruler of the universe; for, previous to the reign of the great Emperor Constantine, all the Roman Emperors furiously persecuted the defenders of the truth. Diocletian, also, on the day of the commemoration of our Saviour's sufferings, demolished all the sacred edifices which were in the Roman empire. But nine years afterwards these churches were rebuilt in a far higher style of magnificence and grandeur than before, whereas Diocletian perished in his impiety. The wars in which the church was involved, and her subsequent victory, were predicted by our Lord. It is evident, says Theodoret, that war is more profitable to us than peace; for while the one renders us effeminate, heedless, and timid, the other inspires us with vigilance, and with contempt for the things which are passing away.*

The faithful of both sexes were still subject to heavy and protracted persecution, especially in the East, and from members of the same persuasion, and professing the common faith. The first whom we shall name was Nicarete, a lady of Bithynia, who belonged to a very illustrious family, and well known on account of her virtuous life and actions. She bore with invincible fortitude the calamities which befell her; saw herself unjustly despoiled of the greater part of her ample patrimony without manifesting any indignation, and managed the little that remained to her with so much economy, that, although she was advanced in age, she contrived to supply all the wants of her household, and to contribute largely to the relief of the poor. To great charity she added so much ingenuity, that she was able to compound medicines for those who were suffering from sickness, and she frequently succeeded in curing patients who had derived no benefit from the skill of the Physicians. Olympias, a Deaconess, was dragged before the tribunal, and interrogated by the Prefect, with regard to the charge of having set fire to the church at Constantinople. She replied, "My past life ought to avert all suspicion from me; for I have devoted my large property to the reconstruction and embellishment of the churches of God." The Prefect alleged that he was well acquainted with her past course of life. "Then," continued she, "you ought to appear as our accuser, instead of sitting as our Judge." As the accusation against her was wholly unsubstantiated by proof, and as the Prefect found that he had no reason on which he could justly

* Theodoret Hist. Eccles., lib. v., cap. 39.

3 H blame her, he adopted another tone, and, as if desirous of advising her, represented to her and the other ladies, that it was absurd in them to secede from communion with their Bishop, and thereby entail trouble upon themselves. They all deferred to the advice of the Prefect with the exception of Olympias, who said to him, "It is not just that, after having been publicly calumniated without having had anything proved against me, I should be obliged to clear myself of charges totally unconnected with the accusation in question. Let me rather take counsel concerning the original accusation that has been preferred against me. For even if you resort to unlawful compulsion, I will not hold communion with those from whom I ought to secede, nor consent to anything that is contrary to the principles of piety." The Prefect, finding that he could not prevail upon her to hold communion with Arsacius, dismissed her, that she might consult the Advocates. On another occasion, however, he again sent for her, and condemned her to pay a heavy fine; for he imagined that by this means she would be compelled to change her mind. But she totally disregarded the loss of her property, and quitted Constantinople for Cyzicus. Tigris, a Presbyter, was, about the same period, stripped of his clothes, scourged on the back, bound hand and foot, and stretched on the rack. He was a foreigner, and an eunuch, but not by birth. He was originally a slave in the house of a person of rank, and on account of his faithful services had obtained his freedom. He was afterwards ordained as a Presbyter, and was distinguished by his moderation and meekness of disposition, and by his charity towards strangers and the poor. Eutropius, a Reader, was also required to name the persons who had set fire to the church; but although he was scourged severely, his sides and cheeks torn with iron nails, and lighted torches applied to the most sensitive parts of his body, no confession could be extorted from him, notwithstanding his youth and delicacy of constitution. After having been subjected to these tortures, he was cast into a dungeon, where he soon after expired.*

We have already dwelt on the condemnation of Chrysostom. He seized the first opportunity the absence of his friends afforded him to surrender himself to the imperial officers; but, owing to an earthquake which took place the same night, he was forthwith recalled. It was but at an early period of this century that Innocent, who occupied the episcopal chair at Rome, expired. On account of his general acquaintance with the laws and traditions of the church, he was frequently consulted by the Western and Eastern Prelates on points both of faith and discipline: of this he took advantage to lay down, with an air of authority, many false and dangerous principles, all tending to the diminution of the episcopal power, and the advancement of the Papal. The dignity of the apostolic see was the burden of his epistles, which he improved into a claim of supremacy; and to him the episcopal chair of Rome was more indebted for the grandeur it afterwards attained, than to all his predecessors. He formed the plan of that spiritual monarchy which they, by constant application, established at length, notwithstanding the almost insurmountable

* Soxom., Hist. Eccles., lib. viii., cap. 24.

CHRYSOSTOM.

difficulties with which they had to contend. He was the first who, changing the ancient foundation of the primacy, claimed it as the successor of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and not as the Bishop of the first city, though on that consideration alone it had been granted by the Councils. He claimed by divine right the power of finally deciding all ecclesiastical controversies and disputes, and thus an unlimited jurisdiction; and furnished his successors with a pretence, to plead some antiquity for the opinions and principles which they in a short period eagerly pursued,* and none more than Gregory VII. A statue of the Empress Eudoxia was about to be erected, which gave fresh ground of offence to the faithful, and on these occasions of public festivity the people were wont to be indulged in dances, pantomimes, and every kind of theatrical amusement. The zeal of Chrysostom was always especially directed against these idolatrous amusements, and on this occasion his invective was unsparing. An edict of the Emperor again suspended the Prelate, and fresh tumults arose. In the midst of the solemn celebration of Good-Friday, the military forced their way, not merely into the nave, but up to the altar, on which were placed the consecrated elements. Many were trodden under foot; many wounded by the swords of the soldiers; the Clergy were dragged to prison; some females, who were about to be baptized, were obliged to flee with disordered apparel; the water of the font was stained with blood; the soldiers pressed up to the altar, and seized the sacred vessels as their plunder. Constantinople for several days had the appearance of a city which had been stormed; and wherever the partisans of Chrysostom were assembled, they were assaulted and dispersed by the soldiery. His final banishment to Cucusus in Armenia took place; but in that miserable seclusion he was not allowed peaceably to remain. Sometimes his life was endangered by the invasion of the Isaurian marauders, and he was obliged to take refuge in a neighbouring fortress, named Ardissa, where he even encouraged the hope of restoration; but he did not calculate aright the obstinate and implacable resentment of his persecutors. He was at length ordered to be removed to Pityus, on the Euxine, a still more savage place on the verge of the empire, and died on the journey thither. The most remarkable feature in the persecution of Chrysostom is, that it arose not out of difference of doctrine, or polemic hostility. No charge of heresy darkened the pure fame of the great Christian orator. His persecution had not the dignity of conscientious bigotry, it was a struggle for power between the temporal and ecclesiastical supremacy; but the passions and personal animosities of Ecclesiastics, the ambition, and perhaps the jealousy, of the Alexandrian Patriarch, as to jurisdiction, lent themselves to the degradation of the episcopal authority in Constantinople, from which it never rose. No doubt the choleric temper, the overstrained severity, the monastic habits, the ambition to extend his authority, perhaps beyond its legitimate bounds, and the indiscreet zeal of Chrysostom, laid him open to his adversaries; but in any other station, in the episco-

* Bower's History of the Popes, vol. 1., p. 328.

3 H 2 pate of any other city, these infirmities would have been lost in the splendour of his talents and of his virtues. Though he might not have weaned the general mass of the people from their vices, yet he would have commanded their respect; and nothing less than a schism, arising out of religious difference, would have shaken or impaired his authority. At all events, the fall of Chrysostom was a warning which might repress the energy of future Prelates; and doubtless the issue of this conflict materially tended to degrade the office of the chief Bishop in the Eastern empire. And it may be questioned whether the proximity of the court, and such a court as that of the East, would, in any circumstances, have allowed the episcopate to assume its legitimate power, far less to encroach on the temporal sovereignty. But after this time, the Bishop of Constantinople almost became a mere officer of state: appointed by the influence of, if not directly nominated by, the Emperor, his gratitude was bound to reverence, or his prudence to dread, that arbitrary power which had raised him from nothing, and might dismiss him to his former insignificance. Except on some rare occasions, he bowed with the rest of the empire before the capricious will of the Sovereign, or the ruling favourite; he was content if the Emperor respected the outward ceremonial of the church, and did not openly espouse any heretical doctrine.*

The veneration of the relics of martyrs, which began very early,† now became excessive; being, indeed, but another form of Heathenism.‡ During the perilous and gloomy days of persecution, the reverence for those who endured martyrdom for the religion of Christ had grown up out of the best feelings of man's improved nature. Reverence gradually grew into veneration, worship, adoration. Although the more enlightened maintained a marked distinction between the honour shown to the martyrs, and that addressed to God, the line was too fine not to be transgressed by excited popular feeling. The Heathen writers constantly taunt the Christians with the substituting of the new idolatry for the old. The charge of worshipping dead men's bones, and the remains of malefactors, constantly recurs. A pagan philosopher, in the fourth century, contemptuously selects some barbarous names of African martyrs, and inquires whether they are more worthy objects of worship than Minerva or Jove.§ But the modern sceptic, whose derision falls equally on Christianity and on the practices of those who have corrupted Christianity, while he discerus but little ridiculous in the idolatry which it displaced, must be reminded that Paganism abounded

* Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii., p. 238.

† Mosheim, De Reb. Christ. ante Const., Sec. I., sec. 32.

‡ Rochette, in his essays, has illustrated the extraordinary care with which the Heathen buried along with the remains of the dead every kind of utensil, implements of trade, down to the dolls of children; even food and knives and forks. This appears from all the tombs which are opened, from the most ancient Etruscan, to the most modern Heathen, sopsichres.

§ "Quis enim ferat Jovi fulmina vibranti præferri Mygdonenem; Junoni, Minerva, Veneri, Vestæque Sanaem, et cunctis (prop nefas!) diis immortalibus archimartyrem Nymphanionem, inter quos Lucitas hand minore catu suscipitur, atque alii interminato numero; diisque hominibusque odiosa nomina." (See August. Epistol., xvi.)

PULCHERIA.

in absurdities equally gross, to say the least, and in traditions immeasurably more monstrous.

Theodosius the Younger succeeded his father Arcadius, but the government was in the hands of Anthemius the Prefect for several years, when it was assumed by Pulcheria, the sister of Theodosius, who held it till his death in 450. In 421 he had married Eudocia, the daughter of Leontius, an Athenian sophist. Theodosius was a weak Prince. The whole government was carried on in his name; but he blindly acquiesced in all that his sister did. His long reign was one of almost undisturbed peace, and is memorable for the collection of laws that was made in it, and known by the name of Codex Theodosianus, which was completed and promulgated in the Eastern empire, 438. The comparative imbecility of Theodosius brought forward, in bold relief, Pulcheria, of whom Sozomen relates that, although she was not yet fifteen years of age when Arcadius died, she had received a spirit of piety and wisdom beyond her years, determined to remain unmarried, and persuaded her sisters to do the same, lest any other man should, by means of relationship with them, usurp the empire, to the exclusion of their brother, or be the occasion of envy and intrigues. While she provided the best masters for her brother during his minority, she applied herself assiduously to study, that she might speak and write correctly both Greek and Latin. She built churches, and enriched them with costly gifts; honoured the Ministers of religion and all good men, assisted those who desired to prosecute sacred studies, laboured to prevent the circulation of heretical doctrine, erected buildings for the reception of paupers, and monasteries for those who wished to leave, as they thought, the world. She and her devout sisters were reputed to possess the gift of prophecy: a gift once possessed by some members of the church, but probably withdrawn long before her day. The imperial family, under her direction, was distinguished by simplicity and frugality, and a severe and conventual style of living, utterly unlike the magnificence usually found in palaces.* This same writer adds to his record of easily-attested facts a tale about the apparition of a deceased martyr to Pulcheria, for the sake of directing her to a spot where the bones of forty martyrs lay interred;† but this may safely be rejected as incredible, because contrary to many evidences of holy Scripture, that, far from affording supernatural inducements to the veneration of relics, or of so called holy places, it has always pleased God to obviate or to discourage all such superstitious practices.

Meanwhile, the decline of the Western empire was accelerated by the cowardice of Honorius at its head, the murder of his faithful and often victorious General, Stilicho, and the sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth. The province of Africa was agitated by the Donatist controversy; and multitudes of ultra-Donatists, distinguished as Circumcelliones, committed the most barbarous excesses, roaming over the country, and murdering the members of the original church, whether Clergy or laity, wherever they could do so with impunity. A decree

* Sozomen., Hist. Eccles., lib. ix., cap. 1, 3.

† Ibid., lib. ix., cap. 2.

of Honorius, granting them liberty of conscience, had but emboldened them to greater violence; and, at an assemblage of both the parties at Carthage, in the year 410, where Augustine pleaded powerfully on the side of ecclesiastical order, it was found impossible to effect a reconciliation; and, as all parties were accustomed, in those days, to appeal to the Emperor, Theodosius II., successor of Honorius, confirmed the sentence of his representative, who had presided at the Council, and issued a decree condemnatory of the Donatists altogether, involving alike the peaceable and the turbulent in the penalties of fine, confiscation, or banishment, and even inflicting death on the most obstinate. The penalties were excessive, no doubt, and imperial justice might have been satisfied with suppressing outrages of public peace; but the Donatists cannot be acknowledged worthy of memory among Christian martyrs. They took the sword, and, in turn, perished by the sword. The same weapon was employed, without so fair a pretext, not by an Emperor, but by a Bishop,—by Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, who, under pretence of purifying the monasteries of the desert of Nitria, in Egypt, from the errors of Origenism, employed soldiers to drive out the Monks, and chase them from the country.

The son of a Hungarian soldier, if not born, at least educated, at Ticinum, in Italy, the present Pavia, received the first lessons and hallowing influences of Christianity in early childhood. When only ten years of age, he sought peace to his soul, became a catechumen of the church, and would gladly have incorporated himself at once in a monastic fraternity, to escape the discomfort of a pagan home; but his father, being a military Tribune in the imperial service, and probably full of the martial spirit which still characterizes the people of Hungary, constrained him to enter the army. At eighteen he was baptized, and, at the age of twenty, after having borne arms for two years, put off the material armour, and, in the pursuance of the long-cherished desire, became a Monk. But it was after the Christians in Tours, a city and diocese of Gaul, had unanimously elected him to be their Bishop, that Martin of Tours rose into eminence as an unwearied propagator of external Christianity in that province. Sometimes he dwelt in his monastery, surrounded by about eighty disciples, whose extreme veneration magnified even his ordinary actions into achievements of supernatural power; or, attended by multitudes of willing followers, he travelled from place to place, overturning the altars, and demolishing the temples, of enfeebled Paganism, and rearing Christian churches in their stead. Yet he inflicted no cruelty on the frequenters of those temples; and, although his rude zeal, with the trifling miracles attributed to him by his biographer, Sulpicius Severus, with the credulity then prevalent, might obscure the real excellence of his character, his remonstrances against the conduct of the Bishops who caused the judicial murder of the heretic Priscillian, his diligence, zeal, and habitual self-denial, must claim our respect, regardless of the opposite treatment his memory has received from the Romanists who adore him as canonized, and from the gentle spirits of our day who regard him as a fanatic. We will at least rejoice in those names which

PAULINUS OF NOLA.

figure in the Papal Breviary, of which it cannot be said that the men who bore them ever shed the blood either of heretic or martyr.

The authenticated legends of this devoted man contain no mention of this brightest feature of his character; but his demolition of the half-deserted fanes marked him as the final conqueror of Druidism; and the ancient Christian Gauls believed so devoutly in his valour and sanctity, that they carried his cloak with them to battle to insure victory; and it is remarked that Martin was the first confessor, the first who, without being martyred, received worship in the Latin church. But in the fifth century the Latin church was declining so rapidly, that its most active and eminent Clergy were unable to stem the current. Of this unhappy position Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, is an example. Surrounded by a grossly ignorant and ungodly population, and destitute of the baptism of the Holy One, which would have given him resistless power over the people of his diocese, he endeavoured, by external decorations, to supply the nakedness of the sanctuaries deserted of their glory. The deplorable idleness and dissoluteness of the crowds who came into Nola to celebrate the festivals, and especially the vigils, or nocturnal assemblies, are described and lamented by himself. They were so utterly untaught as not to know the common rules of Christian decency; and in their drunken carousals spilt the too abundant wine on the tombs of the saints;* and therefore, while, in classic and even scriptural style, he adorned both the interior and exterior of his church with inscriptions, which might instruct the few who could read them, he had paintings placed on the walls, that representations of the passage of the Red Sea, Joshua and the ark of God, Job covered with ulcers, Tobit smitten with blindness, and of Esther and Judith, examples of female excellence, might engage the visitors to remain within the building, and hear explanations of the pictures, instead of indulging their appetites in the neighbourhood,† during the intervals of public worship. But the glutton and the drunkard soon saw enough: the sermons of Paulinus, however entertaining, did not reach the heart, and could not subdue the passions; and the failure stands recorded in reproof to those who would foist upon the people the lead of an aesthetic substitute, for the pure gold of Gospel truth. Paulinus meant well, no doubt; and it would be unjust to charge him with idolatry, although he unintentionally encouraged its entrance, and ought to have respected a decision of the Council of Elvira, published a few years before, that paintings were not to be exhibited in churches, lest they should become an occasion of idolatry. One of our most excellent ecclesiastical historians‡ observes, that "the written word was neglected, and these poor substitutes were placed in its room." It was so eventually; but it is due to the name of Paulinus to say, that he made provision of the word of God in that very church, by having copies ready for perusal in a secretarium, or distinct apartment, with this inscription over the door:—

* Paulin, Carm. ad Felicem Martyrem.

† Paulin, Natal. Felicis, lib. ix., x.

‡ Milner, cent. viii., chap. 3.

"Si quem sancta tenet meditandi in lege voluntas,

Hic potarit residens sacris intendere libris."

"If any one feels a holy desire to meditate in the law, he may sit down here and peruse the sacred books." * The fearful sin of hiding the word of God had not yet been committed.

Jerome, a man of the preceding century, enjoyed, during the first twenty years of the fifth, a universal fame. His knowledge of the

Hebrew language and some of its cognate dialects, at that time a rare, and almost singular, attainment, qualified him to translate the Old

Testament into Latin, independently of the Septuagint Greek version;

to comment on the text in a manner far superior to that of his contemporaries, especially Origen; and to leave invaluable literary treasures to the church, in his Version and biblical writings, which have already done much to counteract the force of errors propagated by himself.

The student of sacred literature will always value the works of Jerome;

but, on the other hand, it cannot be concealed that his asceticism was equal to his industry, and his impatience to his learning. It does not fall within the design of this work to portray with minute precision the character of one in whom were united the lore of the

Rabbins, and the erudition of Italy and Greece; who was equally at home and equally influential in the monastic cells of Bethlehem, and in the palaces of Rome; at whose feet noble ladies and sordid Monks alternately poured their confessions, and who comprehended within the circle of amicable correspondence, or theological controversy, the most eminent persons of his day. He appears on this page chiefly as the opponent of Vigilantius.† Vigilantius is said to have been a native of Aquitaine, although he lived in Spain, was a Presbyter at

Barcelona, and would be generally regarded as a Spaniard. Mariana calls him a native of Pamplona; but others have contended that he was not a Spaniard, but a Gaul, and that therefore the virgin soil of

Spain suffers not the pollution of his birth. Be it so. He was a

Gaul, but spent most of his time in Spain, and found many of the best men there to be quite of one mind with him. When a young man, he went to Italy, where he was kindly received by Paulinus,

Bishop of Nola, who probably had known him when at Barcelona, and who entertained a high opinion of his piety. Bearing a letter commentatory from this friend, Vigilantius proceeded to Palestine, and presented himself to Jerome. The learned anchorite gave him a cordial welcome, and, when speaking of him afterwards, scrupled not to call him "the holy Priest Vigilantius;" which he certainly would not have done had there been anything unseemly in his deportment, or if at that time the views of the stranger had been contrary to his own.

But, during a short residence in Palestine, and travels in Egypt and the East, where monachism was far more prevalent and more austere and superstitious than as yet in Europe, Vigilantius perceived its evil tendencies; and, on his return to Barcelona, openly declared against

* Paulin., epist. xii., ad Severum.

† Jorinian is associated with Vigilantius, both in the history of Jerome and in the list of heretics; but so little is known of Jorinian, that he cannot be more than mentioned here.

VIGILANTIUS.

the whole system, and found many, both of the Clergy and the laity, quite willing to receive his doctrine, and second his endeavours to cast off the load of trifles which had recently obscured the purity of both faith and worship. He taught that relics ought not to be carried about, or laid up in the churches, as objects of religious veneration, much less worshipped, according to the practice of some, whom he called contemptuously cinerarii, or ashes-men, because they revered the bones and ashes of the dead. He further insisted that it was sinful to pay the accustomed honours at the tombs of the martyrs; that nocturnal assemblies were occasions of crime, and ought to be suppressed, a fact which the history of that century indubitably attests; that celibacy, which had been lately introduced into the church, was a heresy, and the spurious chastity of ecclesiastics and recluses merely a veil of secret abominations. "What need hast thou," said he, as we find in an extract produced by Jerome, "what need hast thou, not only to honour with so great honour, but also to adore, that—I know not what to call it—which thou keepest with so much care carried about in that little box?" And, again, in the same book: "Why dost thou kiss that dust, wrapped up for worship in a cloth?" And, further: "After the fashion of the Gentiles, we see introduced into churches, under pretext of religion, while yet the sun is shining, heaps of wax tapers lighted, and people kissing a bit of dust, or whatever it is, inclosed in a little box, and wrapped in precious linen. Men of this kind pay great honour to the blessed martyrs, whom they think to render illustrious by such vile ceremonies, but whom the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne enlightens with all the brightness of His majesty." Jerome was indignant. His anger burst all bounds of moderation. No name was too bad to be given to Vigilantius; no comparison too hateful to set forth his impiety. The antagonist of the mild Augustine, of Origen, and, in short, of all who presumed to contradict his oracle, or to speak lightly of his practices, pursued Vigilantius with a luxuriant vituperation, which might be cited as perfect in its kind. But what could be done? There was no Pope as yet, no "holy office," no ecclesiastical police. Spain was independent of Italy, and, as yet, far less corrupt. Even an anathema, could it have been launched from Bethlehem, would have dropped into the waters of the great sea, ere it could reach the shores of Iberia; and the zealous witness against rising idolatry was aided in the work of demolition by those who shared his views; and, if they had laboured as hard to save souls as they did to extinguish tapers, and break up reliquaries, Christendom might even then have been kept from the great apostasy. But they did not so, and the issue of the whole is merely this,—that Protestants claim Vigilantius as a confessor of a portion of the truths they hold; and Romanists, following the example of their master, load his memory with execration, which, in such a case, may almost pass for praise. With respect to Vigilantius it is also to be observed, that, as he did not attack the doctrine, so much as the practice, of the church, in his day, his position was not so perilous as otherwise it might have been. The edicts of Theodosius against the Arian, Manichean, and other heresies, and

3 I the laws embodied in the Theodosian Code, did not touch his case, although he was branded by his opponents as a heretic; that is to say, a dissident, in the worst and most odious acceptation of the word. These laws cannot be better described than in the compendious and exact language of Llorente, the historian of the Spanish Inquisition. "I shall not stay," he says, "to cite the laws which the Emperors of East and West issued against heretics, as any one may read them in the codes of Theodosius and Justinian, with the additions collected by the commentators, Godefroy and others. I will only say that the result of the whole was to impose, among other penalties, the mark of infamy, privation of offices and honours, incapacity of dignities, confiscation of property, prohibition of making a will, or receiving a bequest, banishment from one's place of abode, and sometimes exile from his country; but never the penalty of death, except on the Manichees, and in some particular cases; which particular cases, however, became frequent, as it was pretended that the peace of the empire would be endangered, unless the danger were obviated by making examples of some for warning to the rest. The Emperor Theodosius, in the year 382, first promulgated a law against the Manichees, commanding them to be punished with death, and confiscation of goods, and charging the Praetorian Prefect to create Inquisitors and informers against all such as might be concealed. And here, as Godefroy justly observes, is the first notice of an Inquisition, and of information in matters of heresy; for hitherto it had been only on occasion of the most atrocious crimes that public accusation, which was thought injurious to the empire, was permitted. The successors of Theodosius varied his legal provisions, according to particular circumstances of time and persons. Heretics were chiefly excited to conversion by edicts, being told that if they did not voluntarily abjure their heresy, the imperial Judges would proceed against them. Against those who were known to be heretics, and did not abjure voluntarily, by virtue of the edicts, proceedings were instituted; but they were still informed, that if they would be converted within a time appointed, they should be reconciled to the church, without any other punishment than canonical penance; and if they showed a disposition to yield, conferences were held with them to persuade them to be convinced." * Legal persecution, however, had not attained to this uniformity of practice so early as the time of Jerome and Vigilantius.

As this century advanced, the quarrel between the Bishops of Constantinople and Rome, each striving for the pre-eminence, became hotter; and Leo "the Great," Bishop of Rome, made himself conspicuous in opposition, not only to his competitor, but to his Sovereign, although the Sovereign of the empire was then acknowledged to be the head of the church. But this contest is too secular and too insignificant to command the pen which has to record such a conflict between the kingdoms of light and darkness as was waged on the shores of Africa, under Genseric and Hunneric, the Vandals. Boniface, Prefect of the province of Africa, disappointed of some promotion

* Llorente, Historia Critica de la Inquisicion de España, cap. 1., art. 2.

PERSECUTION BY THE VANDALS.

he had hoped for, invited Genseric, leader of the Vandals, who then occupied the province of Andalusia,* in Spain, to come over to his assistance, for the maintenance of his authority against the natives of the interior, who infested the Roman territory. The barbarian accepted the call; and, in the year 427, crossed the strait of Gibraltar, and landed not fewer than fifty thousand fighting men on the coast of Mauritania, or Morocco. The province being thus occupied, the Vandals—partly heathen and partly Arians, and Genseric himself an Arian, like the Goths, a similar people, converted also in mere appearance, without any influence of the Gospel on their understanding or their heart, and therefore only capable of receiving that humanized form of Christianity which denies the Godhead of the Saviour—sought possession of the churches. Genseric propagated Arianism, too, because it was disapproved at Rome; and he was urged to persecute the orthodox by the Arian Bishops who came over with him, and who desired establishment in the sees. Turning against Boniface, whom he resolved not to succour, but supplant, he laid the country waste, sparing none. Babes were torn from their mothers' bosoms, and either dashed upon the stones, or impaled by the soldiers on their spears, or cleft asunder by their swords. Churches were pillaged and burnt down. The Ministers were put to the torture to discover hidden treasure; and, if any was discovered, tortures were again applied to extort more, or to destroy the victims; or, if nothing was forthcoming, they were aggravated through vexation. Wanton barbarities were perpetrated without any apparent object. They forced open the mouths of some, and choked them with mire. They bound cords on their heads and legs, until the cords rang with extreme tension. Others were forced to swallow salt water, vinegar, and most nauseous liquids, until their state became insufferable, and they were insensible, or died in the hands of their tormentors. Ministers of the church and men of high respectability were made to carry heavy loads, like beasts of burden, and urged on, like them, with goads of iron, until many of them fell, had not strength to rise again, and perished on the roads. Pampinias, Governor of Utica, died, after having had his naked body burnt, from head to foot, with red-hot iron plates; and Mansuetus, a man of rank, was burnt to death in a gate of the city. When they reached Carthage, Genseric commanded that Bishops, and other persons eminent for station and piety, should be stripped, brought out of the churches in a state of nudity, and made slaves. The Bishop of Carthage, Quod-vult-deus, with a large number of Presbyters, was put out to sea in a leaky ship, and they were all drowned, while the Vandals profaned the churches. Edicts were published, that all who had received sacred orders should be put to death, and their bodies buried in silence. While these things were going on at Carthage, some of the most reverend Ministers and Doctors who remained repaired in a body to the King, surrendered themselves to him, leaving all they had, both public and private property, and begged him that he would allow them life only, and that among the

* Mariana (Hist., lib. v., cap. 3) says that Botica, the province they occupied, was called from them "Vandalosis," and thence "Andalusia."

3 1 2

Vandals. "How," said Genseric, "can you dare to ask so much? I have determined not to leave one of you alive." The interview took place on the sea-shore; and he commanded them to be drowned instantly in his presence. Some of his attendants, touched with compassion, begged for them to be spared, and they were dismissed. They went away sorrowful, celebrated divine worship where and as they could, yet always fleeing for life from place to place; and at last, when they thought they had got beyond the scene of slaughter, if any one of them, when preaching, happened to pronounce the name of Pharaoh, Holofernes, Nebuchadnezzar, or any one who is mentioned in Scripture as a persecutor, he was at once banished for an implied slander on the King. When they had been banished, no one was allowed to take their place; so that there arose a famine of the word of God, except where the people, deprived of their Ministers, comforted and instructed one another. Attempts were made to ordain new Bishops, but were effectually frustrated; and Victor, of Utica, to whom we are indebted for this moureful narrative, says, that of one hundred and sixty-four orthodox Bishops, only three were remaining when he wrote, one of whom—Quintianus—was then a refugee at Edessa. After taking breath for a short time from this carnage, the Vandal Chief commanded a general surrender of everything made use of in religious worship, and especially of the sacred books, hoping, it was thought, more easily to overpower the orthodox, if he could deprive them of the word of God. Valerianus, Bishop of the church of Habessina, finding it hopeless to resist any longer, left that city, that he might not witness the desecration, wandered about houseless, and was soon found dead, an old man, more than eighty years of age. In the village of Reia, a small company of Christians ventured to open a church which had been long shut up, that they might there observe the solemnities of Easter; but an Arian Presbyter fell on them with a band of armed men. The reader fell, transfixed by an arrow, part of the congregation soon lay dying in their gore, and those who escaped for the moment were seized, and, by slow tortures, all were put to death. In another place a Vandal mob broke into a church during the time of communion, and trampled the consecrated elements under foot.

To maintain Arianism intact in the official portion of the state, Genseric imposed a test on all candidates for employment in his service; and those who feared sin more than death, proved their faith in the atoning Saviour by undergoing extreme cruelties. Among these confessors was Armogastus. The cords which bound his head and limbs caused unutterable pain; but, as he lifted up his heart in prayer to the divine Redeemer, the cords broke, and he found instantaneous relief. Other and stronger cords, some even made of horse-hair, were again wound round him; but again he cried to God in his necessity, and the power that released Peter from his chains once more set Armogastus free. He was then suspended by one leg, but seemed free from pain, proof against his tormentors. Theodoric, son of the tyrant, being present, would have beheaded him; but an Arian Presbyter, also standing by, suggested that his life should be taken by some slower method, lest he should be accounted a martyr. He was

PERSECUTION BY THE VANDALS.

therefore sent to hard labour in the field; but, after a short time, brought nearer to Carthage to be a cow-herd, where he might be seen by passers-by. But he had a soul too lofty to be cast down thus; and, after suffering shame for Christ's sake, he sweetly fell asleep in the Lord. Genseric tried a gentler method with one Masculon, offering him great things if he would turn Arian. His faith could not be shaken, and the King commanded him to be put to death. But he secretly ordered the executioner to take his head off, if he waited in silence to receive the stroke; but, if he began to speak, not to kill him then, lest he should be regarded as a martyr,—a witness to the divinity of Christ. But Christ gave him strength to make a prompt confession; so that while preparing to lay down his life in martyrdom, he, in fact, saved it. The royal persecutor now found that he had Christians even in his household, which he began to rid of them in like manner; but, weary and sickened of shedding blood, yet not relenting, he was constrained to relax the persecution, although it only ended with his life.

Hunneric, his son and successor, began his reign with an artful appearance of moderation. At first, that he might get credit for piety,—by so erroneous a standard was piety estimated in that age,—he instituted a severe inquisition of heretics, especially of Manichees; and as many as were discovered he commanded either to be burnt or drowned. Yielding to the request of the Emperor Zeno, he consented that the Catholics * of Carthage should have a Bishop of their own, after having been without one for twenty-four years; but he added the condition, that Arians should also be allowed entire liberty in Constantinople, and the other eastern provinces; and that, if any obstruction were offered to them in the exercise of this liberty, the new Bishop, and all the other Clergy throughout the province of Africa, should be forthwith banished, and driven to the Moors or Berbers, in the interior of the continent. When the Carthaginian church heard this, they said that, under such conditions, they would rather not have a Bishop, but continue still under the oversight of Jesus Christ, who had governed them hitherto. However, a Bishop was set over them,—Eugenius, a good man, who soon became obnoxious to the Arian Priests, and was required, by Hunneric, not to allow any person dressed as a Vandal to enter his church. To this he answered, that the house of God was open for all, and he could not forbid entrance to any. Murderous persecution then broke out again. Men were stationed at the doors with sticks armed with jagged iron, (palis dentatis,) to lay hold of the long hair (for such was the Vandal fashion) of those who came to worship. Some had their eyes torn out of the sockets, and women were scalped, and paraded in that condition about the town. All the orthodox who were found in any department of the public service were degraded, and made to work like slaves or convicts. In the seventh year of Hunneric's reign, these atro-

* The word Catholic is here used in its original and proper meaning, to denote universal, as opposed to sectarian; and orthodox in the fundamental truths of Christianity, as distinguished from heretical. It has an implied reference, at this period of ecclesiastical history, to the Arian and Manichean controversies.

cities were again renewed at the instigation of Cyrila, an Arian Bishop, who incessantly had it sounded in his ears that his kingdom was in danger, and that nothing could save it but the extirpation of Dissenters. Many of the Dissenters were accordingly transported to Sardinia and Sicily; and in order to give a judicial colouring to those proceedings, the Christian Ministers were falsely accused of unchastity, and innocent females subjected to extreme indignities and tortures, with the hope of extorting something that might serve to criminate them. Not a word escaped their lips that could be made use of to dishonour their persecuted Pastors; but many died in consequence, and others were deformed through life from the injuries they received. At that time nearly five thousand persons were banished into the desert with circumstances of most revolting barbarians. From all parts of the country they were driven like cattle to one place, that there they might hear proposals to accept Arianism, or submit to the alternative of being abandoned to the savage Moors. Some persons of rank addressed the assemblage in terms of bland entreaty; but soft words were not enough to subdue the faith of men who had already endured such fiery trials, and their answer was worthy of their cause. "With a loud cry, and with one consent, they raised their voices, saying, 'We are Christians! We embrace the confession of the universal church,—God one and three!'" That was enough: they were taken to the desert, a vast human herd, and so crowded at the resting-places that their appearance became loathsome, like that of negro slaves on the middle passage. Even the savage Moors sometimes pitied them. They possessed their souls in patience, and took for their by-word, "This honour have all his saints." The recital of their sufferings during this journey is heart-rending. Many aged and sickly people, and children, perished by the way; but none apostatized. Cyprian, Bishop of Uniziba, came to meet them, and gave them words of consolation, and was afterwards banished in consequence. Shortly after this expulsion of the Catholics, Hunneric convened an assembly of Ecclesiastics to discuss the controversy, rejecting, however, the petition of Eugenius, that the summons might also be sent to the provincial churches, banishing some Ministers whose talent was likely to be troublesome to the Arian Doctors, and having a few others flogged, to keep the rest in awe. On the morning of the first day of the Synod, if so it may be called, he had Laetus, a man eminent for piety, burnt alive. The orthodox who appeared there were made to sit apart from the Arians, covered with contempt, and forced to hear a royal edict read, sanctioned, and proclaimed, which was merely a compendium of the imperial edicts put forth from time to time against the Arians, and now, by change of names, turned against themselves. The execution of the edict was in exact agreement with the character of the Synod, and the record of the continued martyrdoms is not less illustrative of diabolical rage on the one hand, and of Christian constancy on the other, than any that preceded. But one event is related so perfectly miraculous, and yet so well attested, that it must be marked as perhaps the last great authentic instance of the kind in the history of the Christian church.

PERSECUTION BY THE VANDALS.

And Gibbon, whose levity, infidelity, and heartless contempt of all who have ever suffered for the sake of Christ, often deprive even truth, in his hands, of its charm and evidence, shall supply the result of his own research,—a reluctant but sufficient witness.

"Tipasa, a maritime colony of Mauritania, sixteen miles to the east of Cæsarea, had been distinguished, in every age, by the orthodox zeal of its inhabitants. They had braved the fury of the Donatists; they resisted, or eluded,* the tyranny of the Arians. The town was deserted on the approach of an heretical Bishop: most of the inhabitants who could procure ships passed over to the coast of Spain; and the unhappy remnant, refusing all communion with the usurper, still presumed to hold their pious, but illegal, assemblies. Their disobedience exasperated the cruelty of Hunneric. A military Count was despatched from Carthage to Tipasa: he collected the Catholics in the Forum, and, in the presence of the whole province, deprived the guilty of their right hands and their tongues. But the holy confessors continued to speak without tongues; and this miracle is attested by Victor, an African Bishop, who published his history of the persecution within two years after the event. 'If any one,' says Victor, 'should doubt of the truth, let him repair to Constantinople, and listen to the clear and perfect language of Restitutus, the Sub-Deacon, one of these glorious sufferers, who is now lodged in the palace of the Emperor Zeno, and is respected by the devout Empress.' At Constantinople we are astonished to find a cool, a learned, and unexceptionable witness, without interest, and without passion. Æneas of Gaza, a Platonic philosopher, has accurately described his own observations on these African sufferers. 'I saw them myself: I heard them speak: I diligently inquired by what means such an articulate voice could be formed without any organ of speech: I used my eyes to examine the report of my ears: I opened their mouth, and saw that the whole tongue had been completely torn away by the roots; an operation which the Physicians generally suppose to be mortal.' The testimony of Æneas of Gaza might be confirmed by the superfluous evidence of the Emperor Justinian, in a perpetual edict; of Count Marcellinus, in his chronicle of the times; and of Pope Gregory the First, who had resided at Constantinople, as the Minister of the Roman Pontiff."† Procopius, also, who is acknowledged by Gibbon in a note, testifies that he had seen these persons in the streets of Constantinople talking without any inconvenience.‡

Drought and famine succeeded to the horrors of persecution; after famine a great mortality, until the dead were too numerous to be buried by the exhausted survivors; and, lastly, Hunneric himself ended his days in lingering and painful disease, induced, as it would seem, by constitutional decay. The force of true religion which had enabled the African church to resist the protracted persecution

* "Or eluded," is a gratuitous addition, an example of the flippancy with which this writer manages on every page to insinuate what he has not the courage plainly to affirm.

† Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 37.

‡ Procopius De Bell. Vandal., lib. 1., cap. 8.

now compendiously described, might have excited the reasonable hope that Northern Africa would become one of the happiest countries in the world; that the prayers of so many faithful men would have been answered, and their example blessed, to the eventual revival of vital Christianity: but the lamp of doctrine was extinguished; the Ministers of truth were killed or banished; the multitudes were too ignorant, depressed, and scattered, to restore the means of grace among themselves; then also the Vandals rapidly declined, and with them even the name of Christianity passed away from that part of the world. And throughout the Roman empire, orthodoxy, excellent as it is, was substituted for life: right opinions were contended for; but right experience and right practice were forgotten. Councils, as at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, and at Constantinople, were convened to settle the differences of divided Christendom, differences often in reality no greater than varieties of opinion that now arise and pass away in religious society without notice, because they rather relate to words than things. Worldly passions embittered theologic hate, and reasons of party and impulses of ambition corrupted the purity even of men who had some zeal for the maintenance of fundamental truth, but endeavoured to sustain truth and put down error by dint of authority and force, instead of seeking the influences of the Holy Spirit, who alone can effectually teach the disciples of the Saviour.