e episcopal college. The primates of Rome, Alexandria,
Antioch, Carthage, and afterwards Constantinople, who exercised a more
ample jurisdiction, convened the numerous assembly of their dependent
bishops. But the convocation of great and extraordinary synods was the
prerogative of the emperor alone. Whenever the emergencies of the church
required this decisive measure, he despatched a peremptory summons to
the bishops, or the deputies of each province, with an order for the
use of post-horses, and a competent allowance for the expenses of their
journey. At an early period, when Constantine was the protector, rather
than the proselyte, of Christianity, he referred the African controversy
to the council of Arles; in which the bishops of York of Treves, of
Milan, and of Carthage, met as friends and brethren, to debate in their
native tongue on the common interest of the Latin or Western church.
[126] Eleven years afterwards, a more numerous and celebrated assembly
was convened at Nice in Bithynia, to extinguish, by their final
sentence, the subtle disputes which had arisen in Egypt on the subject
of the Trinity. Three hundred and eighteen bishops obeyed the summons of
their indulgent master; the ecclesiastics of every rank, and sect,
and denomination, have been computed at two thousand and forty-eight
persons; [127] the Greeks appeared in person; and the consent of the
Latins was expressed by the legates of the Roman pontiff. The session,
which lasted about two months, was frequently honored by the presence of
the emperor. Leaving his guards at the door, he seated himself (with
the permission of the council) on a low stool in the midst of the hall.
Constantine listened with patience, and spoke with modesty: and while
he influenced the debates, he humbly professed that he was the
minister, not the judge, of the successors of the apostles, who had
been established as priests and as gods upon earth. [128] Such profound
reverence of an absolute monarch towards a feeble and unarmed assembly
of his own subjects, can only be compared to the respect with which the
senate had been treated by the Roman princes who adopted the policy of
Augustus. Within the space of fifty years, a philosophic spectator of
the vicissitudes of human affairs might have contemplated Tacitus in the
senate of Rome, and Constantine in the council of Nice. The fathers
of the Capitol and those of the church had alike degenerated from the
virtues of their founde