Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/172

 152 THE DECLINE AND FALL or Presbytei-s, were not only excluded from the privileges and emoluments so liberally granted to the orthodox clergy, but they were exposed to the heavy penalties of exile and confiscation, if they presumed to preach the doctrine, or to practise the rites, of their nccursid sects. A fine of ten pounds of gold (above four hundred pounds sterling) was imposed on every person who should dare to confer, or receive, or promote, an heretical ordination : and it was reasonably expected that, if the race of pastors could be extinguished, their helpless flocks would be compelled by ignorance and hunger to return within the pale of the Catholic church. II. The rigorous prohibition of conventicles was carefully extended to every possible circum- stance in which the heretics could assemble with the intention of woi-shipping God and Christ according to the dictates of their conscience. Their religious meetings, whether public or secret, by day or by night, in cities or in the countrj', were equally proscribed by the edicts of Theodosius ; and the building or ground which had been used for that illegal purpose was forfeited to the Imperial domain. III. It was supposed that the error of the heretics could proceed only from the obstinate temper of their minds ; and that such a temper was a fit object of censure and punishment. The anathemas of the church were fortified by a sort of civil excommunication, which separ- ated them from their fellow-citizens by a peculiar brand of infamy ; and this declaration of the supreme magistrate tended to justify, or at least to excuse, the insults of a fanatic populace. The sectaries Avere gradually disqualified for the possession of honourable or lucrative emplo3'ments ; and Theodosius was satisfied with his own justice, when he decreed that, as the Eunomians distinguished the nature of the Son from that of the Father, they should be incapable of making their wills or of receiving any advantage from testamentary donations. The 14^ ^"■^^^ guilt of the Manichaean hei'esy was esteemed of such magnitude and Quarto- that it could be expiatcd only by the death of the offender ; decimans, i-n-i i«i A.D. m, and the same capital punishment was mnicted on the Audians, or Quartodecwinnx,^^ who should dare to perpetrate the atrocious crime of celebrating, on an improper day, the festival of Easter. Every Roman might exercise the right of public accusation ; but the office of Inquisitors of the Faith, a name so deservedly ^They always kept their Easter, like the Jewish Passover, on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox; and thus pertinaciously opposed to the Roman church and Nicene synod, which h^d Jixed Easter to a Sunday. Bingham's Antiquities, 1. xx. c. 5, vol. ii. p. 309, fol. edit.