ement of cruelty, Simeon placed the unfortunate Sylvanus before a
line of his disciples, who were commanded, as the price of their pardon
and the proof of their repentance, to massacre their spiritual father.
They turned aside from the impious office; the stones dropped from their
filial hands, and of the whole number, only one executioner could
be found, a new David, as he is styled by the Catholics, who boldly
overthrew the giant 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,
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. 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