racens disputed in arms the
honor of his benediction; the queens of Arabia and Persia gratefully
confessed his supernatural virtue; and the angelic Hermit was consulted
by the younger Theodosius, in the most important concerns of the church
and state. His remains were transported from the mountain of Telenissa,
by a solemn procession of the patriarch, the master-general of the East,
six bishops, twenty-one counts or tribunes, and six thousand soldiers;
and Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament and impregnable
defence. The fame of the apostles and martyrs was gradually eclipsed by
these recent and popular Anachorets; the Christian world fell prostrate
before their shrines; and the miracles ascribed to their relics
exceeded, at least in number and duration, the spiritual exploits of
their lives. But the golden legend of their lives was embellished by the
artful credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age was
easily persuaded, that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a Syrian
monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of the universe.
The favorites of Heaven were accustomed to cure inveterate diseases with
a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate
demons from the souls or bodies which they possessed. They familiarly
accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and serpents of the
desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the
surface of the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and
refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales,
which display the fiction without the genius, of poetry, have seriously
affected the reason, the faith, and the morals, of the Christians. Their
credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted
the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the
hostile light of philosophy and science. Every mode of religious worship
which had been practised by the saints, every mysterious doctrine which
they believed, was fortified by the sanction of divine revelation, and
all the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous
reign of the monks. If it be possible to measure the interval between
the philosophic writings of Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret,
between the character of Cato and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the
memorable revolution which was accomplished in the Roman empire within a
period of five hundred ye