venerable
bishop. The experience of Ammianus had convinced him, that the enmity of
the Christians towards each other, surpassed the fury of savage beasts
against man; [161] and Gregory Nazianzen most pathetically laments,
that the kingdom of heaven was converted, by discord, into the image of
chaos, of a nocturnal tempest, and of hell itself. [162] The fierce and
partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and
imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the
angels and daemons. Our calmer reason will reject such pure and perfect
monsters of vice or sanctity, and will impute an equal, or at least an
indiscriminate, measure of good and evil to the hostile sectaries, who
assumed and bestowed the appellations of orthodox and heretics. They
had been educated in the same religion and the same civil society. Their
hopes and fears in the present, or in a future life, were balanced in
the same proportion. On either side, the error might be innocent, the
faith sincere, the practice meritorious or corrupt. Their passions were
excited by similar objects; and they might alternately abuse the
favor of the court, or of the people. The metaphysical opinions of the
Athanasians and the Arians could not influence their moral character;
and they were alike actuated by the intolerant spirit which has been
extracted from the pure and simple maxims of the gospel.

[Footnote 161: Nullus infestas hominibus bestias, ut sunt sibi ferales
plerique Christianorum, expertus. Ammian. xxii. 5.]

[Footnote 162: Gregor, Nazianzen, Orav. i. p. 33. See Tillemont, tom vi.
p. 501, qua to edit.]

A modern writer, who, with a just confidence, has prefixed to his own
history the honorable epithets of political and philosophical, [163]
accuses the timid prudence of Montesquieu, for neglecting to enumerate,
among the causes of the decline of the empire, a law of Constantine, by
which the exercise of the Pagan worship was absolutely suppressed, and
a considerable part of his subjects was left destitute of priests,
of temples, and of any public religion. The zeal of the philosophic
historian for the rights of mankind, has induced him to acquiesce in
the ambiguous testimony of those ecclesiastics, who have too lightly
ascribed to their favorite hero the merit of a general persecution.
[164] Instead of alleging this imaginary law, which would have blazed
in the front of the Imperial codes, we may safely appeal to the ori