ss activity of the clergy,
who wandered round the empire in search of the true faith, would excite
the contempt and laughter of the unbelieving world. [92] As soon as the
emperor was relieved from the terrors of the civil war, he devoted
the leisure of his winter quarters at Arles, Milan, Sirmium, and
Constantinople, to the amusement or toils of controversy: the sword of
the magistrate, and even of the tyrant, was unsheathed, to enforce the
reasons of the theologian; and as he opposed the orthodox faith of Nice,
it is readily confessed that his incapacity and ignorance were equal
to his presumption. [93] The eunuchs, the women, and the bishops, who
governed the vain and feeble mind of the emperor, had inspired him with
an insuperable dislike to the Homoousion; but his timid conscience
was alarmed by the impiety of Aetius. The guilt of that atheist was
aggravated by the suspicious favor of the unfortunate Gallus; and even
the death of the Imperial ministers, who had been massacred at Antioch,
were imputed to the suggestions of that dangerous sophist. The mind of
Constantius, which could neither be moderated by reason, nor fixed by
faith, was blindly impelled to either side of the dark and empty abyss,
by his horror of the opposite extreme; he alternately embraced and
condemned the sentiments, he successively banished and recalled the
leaders, of the Arian and Semi-Arian factions. [94] During the season of
public business or festivity, he employed whole days, and even nights,
in selecting the words, and weighing the syllables, which composed his
fluctuating creeds. The subject of his meditations still pursued
and occupied his slumbers: the incoherent dreams of the emperor were
received as celestial visions, and he accepted with complacency the
lofty title of bishop of bishops, from those ecclesiastics who forgot
the interest of their order for the gratification of their passions. The
design of establishing a uniformity of doctrine, which had engaged
him to convene so many synods in Gaul, Italy, Illyricum, and Asia, was
repeatedly baffled by his own levity, by the divisions of the Arians,
and by the resistance of the Catholics; and he resolved, as the last
and decisive effort, imperiously to dictate the decrees of a general
council. The destructive earthquake of Nicomedia, the difficulty of
finding a convenient place, and perhaps some secret motives of policy,
produced an alteration in the summons. The bishops of the East we