no less terrible was pronounced. Among
these we may distinguish the inexpiable guilt of calumniating a bishop,
a presbyter, or even a deacon. [148]

[Footnote 145: The Montanists and the Novatians, who adhered to this
opinion with the greatest rigor and obstinacy, found themselves at last
in the number of excommunicated heretics. See the learned and copious
Mosheim, Secul. ii. and iii.]

[Footnote 146: Dionysius ap. Euseb. iv. 23. Cyprian, de Lapsis.]

[Footnote 147: Cave's Primitive Christianity, part iii. c. 5. The
admirers of antiquity regret the loss of this public penance.]

[Footnote 148: See in Dupin, Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. ii.
p. 304--313, a short but rational exposition of the canons of those
councils, which were assembled in the first moments of tranquillity,
after the persecution of Diocletian. This persecution had been much less
severely felt in Spain than in Galatia; a difference which may, in some
measure account for the contrast of their regulations.]

The well-tempered mixture of liberality and rigor, the judicious
dispensation of rewards and punishments, according to the maxims of
policy as well as justice, constituted the human strength of the church.
The Bishops, whose paternal care extended itself to the government of
both worlds, were sensible of the importance of these prerogatives; and
covering their ambition with the fair pretence of the love of order,
they were jealous of any rival in the exercise of a discipline so
necessary to prevent the desertion of those troops which had enlisted
themselves under the banner of the cross, and whose numbers every day
became more considerable. From the imperious declamations of Cyprian,
we should naturally conclude that the doctrines of excommunication and
penance formed the most essential part of religion; and that it was much
less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of
the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their
bishops. Sometimes we might imagine that we were listening to the voice
of Moses, when he commanded the earth to open, and to swallow up, in
consuming flames, the rebellious race which refused obedience to the
priesthood of Aaron; and we should sometimes suppose that we hear a
Roman consul asserting the majesty of the republic, and declaring his
inflexible resolution to enforce the rigor of the laws. "If such
irregularities are suffered with impunity," (it is thus that the bishop