n which they disbelieved
and detested. Their frequent relapses provoked one of the successors of
Sisebut to banish the whole nation from his dominions; and a council
of Toledo published a decree, that every Gothic king should swear to
maintain this salutary edict. But the tyrants were unwilling to dismiss
the victims, whom they delighted to torture, or to deprive themselves
of the industrious slaves, over whom they might exercise a lucrative
oppression. The Jews still continued in Spain, under the weight of
the civil and ecclesiastical laws, which in the same country have been
faithfully transcribed in the Code of the Inquisition. The Gothic kings
and bishops at length discovered, that injuries will produce hatred, and
that hatred will find the opportunity of revenge. A nation, the secret
or professed enemies of Christianity, still multiplied in servitude and
distress; and the intrigues of the Jews promoted the rapid success of
the Arabian conquerors.

As soon as the Barbarians withdrew their powerful support, the unpopular
heresy of Arius sunk into contempt and oblivion. But the Greeks still
retained their subtle and loquacious disposition: the establishment of
an obscure doctrine suggested new questions, and new disputes; and it
was always in the power of an ambitious prelate, or a fanatic monk,
to violate the peace of the church, and, perhaps, of the empire. The
historian of the empire may overlook those disputes which were confined
to the obscurity of schools and synods. The Manichaeans, who labored
to reconcile the religions of Christ and of Zoroaster, had secretly
introduced themselves into the provinces: but these foreign sectaries
were involved in the common disgrace of the Gnostics, and the Imperial
laws were executed by the public hatred. The rational opinions of the
Pelagians were propagated from Britain to Rome, Africa, and Palestine,
and silently expired in a superstitious age. But the East was distracted
by the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies; which attempted to explain
the mystery of the incarnation, and hastened the ruin of Christianity in
her native land. These controversies were first agitated under the reign
of the younger Theodosius: but their important consequences extend
far beyond the limits of the present volume. The metaphysical chain of
argument, the contests of ecclesiastical ambition, and their political
influence on the decline of the Byzantine empire, may afford an
interesting and ins