ic and reiterated nuptials of the
priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself. To this standard
of natural and religious freedom, myriads of fugitives resorted from all
the provinces of the Eastern empire; the narrow bigotry of Justinian
was punished by the emigration of his most industrious subjects; they
transported into Persia the arts both of peace and war: and those
who deserved the favor, were promoted in the service, of a discerning
monarch. The arms of Nushirvan, and his fiercer grandson, were assisted
with advice, and money, and troops, by the desperate sectaries who still
lurked in their native cities of the East: their zeal was rewarded with
the gift of the Catholic churches; but when those cities and churches
were recovered by Heraclius, their open profession of treason and heresy
compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm of their foreign ally. But
the seeming tranquillity of the Nestorians was often endangered, and
sometimes overthrown. They were involved in the common evils of Oriental
despotism: their enmity to Rome could not always atone for their
attachment to the gospel: and a colony of three hundred thousand
Jacobites, the captives of Apamea and Antioch, was permitted to erect
a hostile altar in the face of the catholic, and in the sunshine of the
court. In his last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which
tended to enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia.
The emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of pity
or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the holy synods:
but he flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the temporal
benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome; and if
he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might hope to provoke the
jealousy of their sovereign. In a later age the Lutherans have been
burnt at Paris, and protected in Germany, by the superstition and policy
of the most Christian king.

[Footnote 113: See the Arabic canons of Nice in the translation of
Abraham Ecchelensis, No. 37, 38, 39, 40. Concil. tom. ii. p. 335,
336, edit. Venet. These vulgar titles, Nicene and Arabic, are both
apocryphal. The council of Nice enacted no more than twenty canons,
(Theodoret. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 8;) and the remainder, seventy or
eighty, were collected from the synods of the Greek church. The Syriac
edition of Maruthas is no longer extant, (Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental.
tom. i. p. 195, tom. ii