ciples were branded by
law with the odious name of Porphyrians; his writings were condemned
to the flames, and a capital punishment was denounced against those in
whose possession they should be found. The emperor had now imbibed the
spirit of controversy, and the angry, sarcastic style of his edicts was
designed to inspire his subjects with the hatred which he had conceived
against the enemies of Christ.

But, as if the conduct of the emperor had been guided by passion instead
of principle, three years from the council of Nice were scarcely elapsed
before he discovered some symptoms of mercy, and even of indulgence,
towards the proscribed sect, which was secretly protected by his
favorite sister. The exiles were recalled, and Eusebius, who gradually
resumed his influence over the mind of Constantine, was restored to the
episcopal throne, from which he had been ignominiously degraded. Arius
himself was treated by the whole court with the respect which would have
been due to an innocent and oppressed man. His faith was approved by
the synod of Jerusalem; and the emperor seemed impatient to repair his
injustice, by issuing an absolute command, that he should be solemnly
admitted to the communion in the cathedral of Constantinople. On the
same day, which had been fixed for the triumph of Arius, he expired;
and the strange and horrid circumstances of his death might excite a
suspicion, that the orthodox saints had contributed more efficaciously
than by their prayers, to deliver the church from the most formidable of
her enemies. The three principal leaders of the Catholics, Athanasius
of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, and Paul of Constantinople were
deposed on various f accusations, by the sentence of numerous councils;
and were afterwards banished into distant provinces by the first of the
Christian emperors, who, in the last moments of his life, received the
rites of baptism from the Arian bishop of Nicomedia. The ecclesiastical
government of Constantine cannot be justified from the reproach of
levity and weakness. But the credulous monarch, unskilled in the
stratagems of theological warfare, might be deceived by the modest
and specious professions of the heretics, whose sentiments he never
perfectly understood; and while he protected Arius, and persecuted
Athanasius, he still considered the council of Nice as the bulwark of
the Christian faith, and the peculiar glory of his own reign.

The sons of Constantine must h