He was stopped in the porch by the
archbishop; who, in the tone and language of an ambassador of Heaven,
declared to his sovereign, that private contrition was not sufficient
to atone for a public fault, or to appease the justice of the offended
Deity. Theodosius humbly represented, that if he had contracted the
guilt of homicide, David, the man after God's own heart, had been
guilty, not only of murder, but of adultery. "You have imitated David in
his crime, imitate then his repentance," was the reply of the undaunted
Ambrose. The rigorous conditions of peace and pardon were accepted; and
the public penance of the emperor Theodosius has been recorded as one of
the most honorable events in the annals of the church. According to the
mildest rules of ecclesiastical discipline, which were established in
the fourth century, the crime of homicide was expiated by the penitence
of twenty years: and as it was impossible, in the period of human life,
to purge the accumulated guilt of the massacre of Thessalonica, the
murderer should have been excluded from the holy communion till the hour
of his death. But the archbishop, consulting the maxims of religious
policy, granted some indulgence to the rank of his illustrious penitent,
who humbled in the dust the pride of the diadem; and the public
edification might be admitted as a weighty reason to abridge the
duration of his punishment. It was sufficient, that the emperor of the
Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear in a mournful
and suppliant posture; and that, in the midst of the church of Milan, he
should humbly solicit, with sighs and tears, the pardon of his sins. In
this spiritual cure, Ambrose employed the various methods of mildness
and severity. After a delay of about eight months, Theodosius was
restored to the communion of the faithful; and the edict which
interposes a salutary interval of thirty days between the sentence and
the execution, may be accepted as the worthy fruits of his repentance.
Posterity has applauded the virtuous firmness of the archbishop; and
the example of Theodosius may prove the beneficial influence of those
principles, which could force a monarch, exalted above the apprehension
of human punishment, to respect the laws, and ministers, of an invisible
Judge. "The prince," says Montesquieu, "who is actuated by the hopes and
fears of religion, may be compared to a lion, docile only to the voice,
and tractable to the hand, of his keep