of heresy.
This apostate (Justin was his name) again deceived and betrayed his
unsuspecting brethren, and a new conformity to the acts of St. Paul may
be found in the conversion of Simeon: like the apostle, he embraced the
doctrine which he had been sent to persecute, renounced his honors and
fortunes, and required among the Paulicians the fame of a missionary and
a martyr. They were not ambitious of martyrdom, [15] but in a calamitous
period of one hundred and fifty years, their patience sustained
whatever zeal could inflict; and power was insufficient to eradicate the
obstinate vegetation of fanaticism and reason. From the blood and
ashes of the first victims, a succession of teachers and congregations
repeatedly arose: amidst their foreign hostilities, they found leisure
for domestic quarrels: they preached, they disputed, they suffered;
and the virtues, the apparent virtues, of Sergius, in a pilgrimage
of thirty-three years, are reluctantly confessed by the orthodox
historians. [16] The native cruelty of Justinian the Second was
stimulated by a pious cause; and he vainly hoped to extinguish, in a
single conflagration, the name and memory of the Paulicians. By their
primitive simplicity, their abhorrence of popular superstition,
the Iconoclast princes might have been reconciled to some erroneous
doctrines; but they themselves were exposed to the calumnies of the
monks, and they chose to be the tyrants, lest they should be accused
as the accomplices, of the Manichaeans. Such a reproach has sullied the
clemency of Nicephorus, who relaxed in their favor the severity of
the penal statutes, nor will his character sustain the honor of a
more liberal motive. The feeble Michael the First, the rigid Leo the
Armenian, were foremost in the race of persecution; but the prize
must doubtless be adjudged to the sanguinary devotion of Theodora, who
restored the images to the Oriental church. Her inquisitors explored
the cities and mountains of the Lesser Asia, and the flatterers of
the empress have affirmed that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand
Paulicians were extirpated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames. Her
guilt or merit has perhaps been stretched beyond the measure of truth:
but if the account be allowed, it must be presumed that many simple
Iconoclasts were punished under a more odious name; and that some who
were driven from the church, unwillingly took refuge in the bosom of
heresy.

[Footnote 10: The countries