neer in the council by means of the secular power, but they found they were disappointed. They saw that the fathers would have full liberty allowed them to judge, and that themselves would be condemned. . They therefore retired abruptly, and went to Philippopolis, in Thrace. The council nevertheless proceeded to business, and declared their firm adherence to the Nicene faith. They restored St. Athanasius and two other bishops to their sees, from whence they had been expelled, and they pronounced sentence of deposition and excommunication against eleven bishops, who were the chiefs of the Arian faction. Then the fathers dispatched deputies to the emperors, to press the execution of these decrees, and to entreat them to put a stop to Arian persecutions. The oriental heretic bishops, who had retired to Philippopolis, held there a meeting, which they were bold enough to call the council of Sardica, and had the presumption to excommunicate Pope Julius, Osius, of Corduba, and several other Catholic bishops. Moreover, when the Arians heared they had been condemned at the true council of Sardica, they redoubled their violences against the orthodox. They caused several to be put to death; some were exiled, others scourged, and others imprisoned.

Constantius, after the death of his brothers Constanstine and Constans, having suppressed the usurpers Vetraunio and Magnentius, became master of the whole empire, in 353. Two years after, he commenced a general persecution against the Catholics. He sent judges through the different provinces, to compel the bishops to communicate with the Arians, and to subscribe to the sentence against St. Athanasius, whom he had procured to be condemned in a meeting of some Arian bishops, at Milan. The prelates, who refused to comply, were banished, and others of the Arian faction intruded by force of arms. It was upon this occasion that Pope Liberius was exiled to Beræ, in Thrace. The judges were also directed to imprison, punish, and confiscate the goods of the people who should take part with the exiled bishops. Macedonius, the Arian bishop and usurper of the see of Constantinople, made

himself conspicuous in this scene of persecution. He obtained an edict from the emperor, which he published in Constantinople, and in all the neighbouring towns, and had it executed by force of arms, which ordered that all the Catholics should be banished, and their Churches pulled down. But not content with these violences, he procured several persons to be burned in the forehead, others to be exposed to different torments, of which some died.

In 359 was held a council at Ariminum, in Italy, consisting of above four hundred bishops, of whom about fourscore were Arians. They received orders from the emperor Constantius, to attempt nothing against the orientals. The council nevertheless confirmed the Nicene faith, and deposed the heterodox bishops that were present. The Arians here dressed up a fraudulent profession of faith, in appearance Catholic, but containing the Arian poison under artful ambiguous expressions. The Catholics, not aware of the fraud, and supposing the profession to be orthodox, subscribed it. It was in consequence of this subscription, that St. Jerome made the following remark: "The world," said he, "was struck with grief, and wondered to find itself be"come Arian *" But the fathers no sooner perceived the imposition that had been put upon them, than they expressed their detestation of it, retracted their subscription, and professed their adherence to the true faith. The formula subscribed at Ariminum was sent to all the provinces of the empire, with an order from Constantius to all the bishops to sign it, under pain of banishment. This caused great trouble in the Church, and a kind of persecution, and many bishops in the East signed the formula.

About this time great violences were committed at Alexandria by the Arians. Numbers of people were trampled to death in the streets by the soldiers, and others slain by their darts. St. Athanasius was forced to leave the place, and one George, an Arian, a brutish and cruel man, was placed in the patriarchal chair.

Ingemuit totus orbis, et Arianum se esse miratus est.

He renewed the scenes of bloodshed and violence, but two years after, by a just judgment, was massacred by the pagans for his cruelty.

Constantius, the emperor, died in 361, and with his death ceased for a while the Arian persecution. What has been said of this prince sufficiently shows that he was a great sword, according to the expression of the Apocalypse, in the hands of the Arians. In 364, Valens was invested with the empire of the East by his brother Valentinian, who kept to himself the West. This last prince was a true Catholic; but Valens was inclined to Arianism, and openly declared in favour of it in 367, when he was baptized by Eudoxus, the Arian bishop of Constantinople, who made him then swear, that he would always persist in his belief, and persecute those of a contrary persuasion. In conformity to his oath, this emperor became another great sword in defence of the Arians. The devil not being able, as Paulus Orosius observes, lib. vii. c. 29, to persecute the Church any longer by pagan emperors, who no longer existed, found means to do it by the hands of Christian emperors. Valens began his persecution against the orthodox, by ordering the governors of the provinces to banish those bishops who had been deposed by Constantius, and had recovered their sees under Julian. St. Athanasius, among the rest, underwent the penalty, and this was the fourth or fifth time he had been driven from his Church. The Catholics at Constantinople suffered greatly; they were insulted, wounded, and imprisoned, and some of them even put to death. To get a stop put to these violences, they sent a deputation of fourscore ecclesiastics to Valens, at Nicomedia. These, instead of obtaining any redress from the inhuman emperor, were ordered to be put on board a vessel, and the vessel, when out at sea, to be set on fire. The barbarous order was executed, and they all perished. Persecution was openly carried on in different parts of the East. As the monks in the deserts were known to distinguish themselves in supporting the true religion, Valens issued out an order that they should be compelled to bear arms, and the officers who were

sent upon the commission, massacred a great number of them.

The emperor Valens perished miserably in 378, and he being the last of the Roman emperors that favoured Arianism, it lost ground in the eastern provinces, which were chiefly infected. And before the end of this century, that is, before the year 400, the Arians began to differ among themselves about their tenets; they divided into different sects, and these divisions contributed to weaken their strength, and were even the occasion of many of them leaving their party, and embracing the Catholic faith.

On another side, however, one may take notice, that the empress Justina, who favoured the Arians, gave some trouble to the Catholics in the west, particularly to St. Ambrose at Milan; and she prevailed upon her young son Valentinian II. to issue out an edict in support of the Arians, but as she died soon after, it produced but little effect.

The Goths also, who from idolatry had been converted to Christianity, were afterwards brought over to Arianism, about the year 376, by their bishop Ulphilas, who suffered himself to be perverted by Eudoxius, the Arian bishop of Constantinople. These Goths, having overthrown the western empire of Rome, divided themselves into two bodies, one of which settled in Italy, and they were called Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths; the other proceeded into the southern parts of France, and afterwards into Spain, where they fixed, and were named Visigoths, or Western Goths. The Ostrogoths were converted by degrees to the Catholic faith, after their dominion in Italy was extinguished by Narses, the commander of the emperor Justinian's troops, who defeated their army and slew their king Totila in 552. The Visigoths in Spain, under their king Reccared, who had been instructed by St. Hermenegild, were brought over from Arianism to the Orthodox Faith, about the year 587. The Suevi, a German people who settled in Spain, had been also converted a few years before from the Arian heresy: In fine, in this king's reign an end was put to that heresy in Spain, where

it had been imported by the barbarous nations that invaded that country.

The Lombards, originally a German people, who conquered part of Italy, and raised to themselves a kingdom there in 572, were also Arians; but Charlemagne vanquished them in 774, and put an end to their dominion. The remainder of them were in course of time converted.

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The Vandals were not only Arians, but cruel persecutors of the Catholic Church. In a peace they made with the Roman Emperor in 435, was ceded to them large tract of country in Africa, into which a considerable body of them passed from Spain, where they had been settled before. Two years after Genseric their king resolved to establish Arianism in his new African kingdom, and in that view began to persecute the Catholic bishops, and to banish them from their sees. afterwards forbid ordaining any Catholic bishops in his dominions, so that they were reduced in thirty years time to three. In 455 the persecution was so hot, that it crowned many with martyrdom, and their Memorial is celebrated by the Church on the 5th of April. The Arians were actuated with such rage and animosity, that they committed the most outrageous indignities: knowing that the Catholics were assembled at the holy Communion, they broke in upon them, threw down the sacred body and blood of Christ, and trampled it under their feet.

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Huneric, son and successor to Genseric, in 477, was, like his father, an Arian, but surpassed him in his barbarous treatment of the orthodox. He seemed to have more the nature of a Decius or a Dioclesian, than of a Christian prince. We shall only say in general, that he shut up all the Catholic Churches in his dominions, he banished the bishops and clergy to the number of near five thousand, and very numerous were the victims sacrificed to his, cruelty, in this persecution, some of whom lost their limbs, others their lives, for their adherence to the true faith. But the hand of God overtook him in 485, and he died eaten up with worms. Two other persecutions were afterwards raised against the