se of their adversaries. In every election, the claims of the Arian
candidate obtained the preference; and if they were opposed by the
majority of the people, he was usually supported by the authority of
the civil magistrate, or even by the terrors of a military force.
The enemies of Athanasius attempted to disturb the last years of his
venerable age; and his temporary retreat to his father's sepulchre has
been celebrated as a fifth exile. But the zeal of a great people, who
instantly flew to arms, intimidated the praefect: and the archbishop
was permitted to end his life in peace and in glory, after a reign
of forty-seven years. The death of Athanasius was the signal of the
persecution of Egypt; and the Pagan minister of Valens, who forcibly
seated the worthless Lucius on the archiepiscopal throne, purchased
the favor of the reigning party, by the blood and sufferings of their
Christian brethren. The free toleration of the heathen and Jewish
worship was bitterly lamented, as a circumstance which aggravated the
misery of the Catholics, and the guilt of the impious tyrant of the
East. [68]

[Footnote 66: Eudoxus was of a mild and timid disposition. When he
baptized Valens, (A. D. 367,) he must have been extremely old; since he
had studied theology fifty-five years before, under Lucian, a learned
and pious martyr. Philostorg. l. ii. c. 14-16, l. iv. c. 4, with
Godefroy, p 82, 206, and Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. v. p. 471-480,
&c.]

[Footnote 66a: Through the influence of his wife say the ecclesiastical
writers.--M.]

[Footnote 67: Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. xxv. p. 432) insults the
persecuting spirit of the Arians, as an infallible symptom of error and
heresy.]

[Footnote 68: This sketch of the ecclesiastical government of Valens is
drawn from Socrates, (l. iv.,) Sozomen, (l. vi.,) Theodoret, (l. iv.,)
and the immense compilations of Tillemont, (particularly tom. vi. viii.
and ix.)]

The triumph of the orthodox party has left a deep stain of persecution
on the memory of Valens; and the character of a prince who derived
his virtues, as well as his vices, from a feeble understanding and a
pusillanimous temper, scarcely deserves the labor of an apology. Yet
candor may discover some reasons to suspect that the ecclesiastical
ministers of Valens often exceeded the orders, or even the intentions,
of their master; and that the real measure of facts has been very
liberally magnified by the vehement declamation and easy cre