c peace was
distracted by heresy and schism, the sacred orators sounded the trumpet
of discord, and, perhaps, of sedition. The understandings of their
congregations were perplexed by mystery, their passions were inflamed
by invectives; and they rushed from the Christian temples of Antioch
or Alexandria, prepared either to suffer or to inflict martyrdom. The
corruption of taste and language is strongly marked in the vehement
declamations of the Latin bishops; but the compositions of Gregory and
Chrysostom have been compared with the most splendid models of Attic, or
at least of Asiatic, eloquence.

VII. The representatives of the Christian republic were regularly
assembled in the spring and autumn of each year; and these synods
diffused the spirit of ecclesiastical discipline and legislation through
the hundred and twenty provinces of the Roman world. The archbishop or
metropolitan was empowered, by the laws, to summon the suffragan bishops
of his province; to revise their conduct, to vindicate their rights,
to declare their faith, and to examine the merits of the candidates who
were elected by the clergy and people to supply the vacancies of the
episcopal college. The primates of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage,
and afterwards Constantinople, who exercised a more ample jurisdiction,
convened the numerous assembly of their dependent bishops. But the
convocation of great and extraordinary synods was the prerogative of
the emperor alone. Whenever the emergencies of the church required this
decisive measure, he despatched a peremptory summons to the bishops, or
the deputies of each province, with an order for the use of post-horses,
and a competent allowance for the expenses of their journey. At an early
period, when Constantine was the protector, rather than the proselyte,
of Christianity, he referred the African controversy to the council
of Arles; in which the bishops of York of Treves, of Milan, and of
Carthage, met as friends and brethren, to debate in their native tongue
on the common interest of the Latin or Western church. Eleven years
afterwards, a more numerous and celebrated assembly was convened at Nice
in Bithynia, to extinguish, by their final sentence, the subtle disputes
which had arisen in Egypt on the subject of the Trinity. Three hundred
and eighteen bishops obeyed the summons of their indulgent master;
the ecclesiastics of every rank, and sect, and denomination, have been
computed at two thousand and