r of a disputant, he is easily provoked to
supply the defect of argument by the plenitude of power, and to chastise
without mercy the perverse blindness of those who wilfully shut their
eyes against the light of demonstration. The reign of Justinian was
a uniform yet various scene of persecution; and he appears to have
surpassed his indolent predecessors, both in the contrivance of his laws
and the rigor of their execution. The insufficient term of three months
was assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics; [84] and if he
still connived at their precarious stay, they were deprived, under
his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of society, but of the common
birth-right of men and Christians. At the end of four hundred years,
the Montanists of Phrygia [85] still breathed the wild enthusiasm of
perfection and prophecy which they had imbibed from their male and
female apostles, the special organs of the Paraclete. On the approach of
the Catholic priests and soldiers, they grasped with alacrity the
crown of martyrdom the conventicle and the congregation perished in the
flames, but these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three hundred
years after the death of their tyrant. Under the protection of their
Gothic confederates, the church of the Arians at Constantinople had
braved the severity of the laws: their clergy equalled the wealth and
magnificence of the senate; and the gold and silver which were seized by
the rapacious hand of Justinian might perhaps be claimed as the spoils
of the provinces, and the trophies of the Barbarians. A secret remnant
of Pagans, who still lurked in the most refined and most rustic
conditions of mankind, excited the indignation of the Christians, who
were perhaps unwilling that any strangers should be the witnesses of
their intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of the
faith, and his diligence soon discovered, in the court and city, the
magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and sophists, who still cherished the
superstition of the Greeks. They were sternly informed that they must
choose without delay between the displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian,
and that their aversion to the gospel could no longer be distinguished
under the scandalous mask of indifference or impiety. The patrician
Photius, perhaps, alone was resolved to live and to die like his
ancestors: he enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left
his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing wit