Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/468

 450 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, a competent allowance for the expenses of their journey. At an early period, when Constantine was the pro- A.D. 314. tector, rather than the proselyte, of Christianity, he re- ferred the African controversy to the council of Aries ; in which the hishops of York, of Treves, of Milan, and of Carthage, met as friends and brethren, to debate in their native tonoue on the common interest of the Latin A.D. 325. or western church'. Eleven years afterwards, a more numerous and celebrated assembly was convened at Nice in Bitliynia, 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 denomina- tion, have been computed at two thousand and forty- eight persons "" ; the Greeks appeared in person ; and the consent of the Latins was expressed by the legates of the Roman pontifJ'. The session, which lasted about two months, was frequently honoured by the presence of the emperor. Leaving his guards at the door, he seated himself (with the permission of the council) on a low stool in the midst of the hall. Constantine listened with patience, and spoke with modesty : and while he influenced the debates, he humbly professed that he was the minister, not the judge, of the successors of the apostles, who had been established as priests and as gods upon earth ". Such profound reverence of an absolute monarch towards a feeble and unarmed as- sembly of his own subjects, can only be compared to the respect with which the senate had been treated by the Roman princes who adopted the policy of Au- gustus. Within the space of fifty years, a philosophic ' We have only thirty-three or forty-sevea episcopal subscriptions : but Ado, a writer indeed of small account, reckons six hundred bishops in the council of Aries. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. torn. vi. p. 422. " See Tillemont, tom. vi. p. 915, and Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme, torn. i. p. 529. The name of bishop, which is given by Eutychius to the two thousand and forty-eight ecclesiastics, (Annal. tom. i. p. 440. vers. Pocock,) must be extended far beyond the limits of an orthodox or even episcopal ordination. " See Euseb. in Vit. Constantin. 1. iii. c. 6 — 21 ; Tillemont, Mem. Ec- cl6siastiques, tom. vi. p. 069 — 759.