onduct of the Latin bishops, who
were deceived, and who repented.]

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part IV.

Such was the rise and progress, and such were the natural revolutions
of those theological disputes, which disturbed the peace of Christianity
under the reigns of Constantine and of his sons. But as those princes
presumed to extend their despotism over the faith, as well as over the
lives and fortunes, of their subjects, the weight of their suffrage
sometimes inclined the ecclesiastical balance: and the prerogatives of
the King of Heaven were settled, or changed, or modified, in the cabinet
of an earthly monarch. The unhappy spirit of discord which pervaded the
provinces of the East, interrupted the triumph of Constantine; but
the emperor continued for some time to view, with cool and careless
indifference, the object of the dispute. As he was yet ignorant of the
difficulty of appeasing the quarrels of theologians, he addressed to
the contending parties, to Alexander and to Arius, a moderating epistle;
[77] which may be ascribed, with far greater reason, to the untutored
sense of a soldier and statesman, than to the dictates of any of his
episcopal counsellors. He attributes the origin of the whole controversy
to a trifling and subtle question, concerning an incomprehensible
point of law, which was foolishly asked by the bishop, and imprudently
resolved by the presbyter. He laments that the Christian people, who had
the same God, the same religion, and the same worship, should be divided
by such inconsiderable distinctions; and he seriously recommend to the
clergy of Alexandria the example of the Greek philosophers; who could
maintain their arguments without losing their temper, and assert
their freedom without violating their friendship. The indifference and
contempt of the sovereign would have been, perhaps, the most effectual
method of silencing the dispute, if the popular current had been less
rapid and impetuous, and if Constantine himself, in the midst of faction
and fanaticism, could have preserved the calm possession of his own
mind. But his ecclesiastical ministers soon contrived to seduce the
impartiality of the magistrate, and to awaken the zeal of the proselyte.
He was provoked by the insults which had been offered to his statues;
he was alarmed by the real, as well as the imaginary magnitude of
the spreading mischief; and he extinguished the hope of peace and
tolerat