h. Among those prelates who led the
honorable band of confessors and exiles, Liberius of Rome, Osius of
Cordova, Paulinus of Treves, Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercellae,
Lucifer of Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers, may deserve to be
particularly distinguished. The eminent station of Liberius, who
governed the capital of the empire; the personal merit and long
experience of the venerable Osius, who was revered as the favorite of
the great Constantine, and the father of the Nicene faith, placed those
prelates at the head of the Latin church: and their example, either of
submission or resistance, would probable be imitated by the episcopal
crowd. But the repeated attempts of the emperor to seduce or to
intimidate the bishops of Rome and Cordova, were for some time
ineffectual. The Spaniard declared himself ready to suffer under
Constantius, as he had suffered threescore years before under his
grandfather Maximian. The Roman, in the presence of his sovereign,
asserted the innocence of Athanasius and his own freedom. When he was
banished to Beraea in Thrace, he sent back a large sum which had been
offered for the accommodation of his journey; and insulted the court of
Milan by the haughty remark, that the emperor and his eunuchs might want
that gold to pay their soldiers and their bishops. [128] The resolution
of Liberius and Osius was at length subdued by the hardships of exile
and confinement. The Roman pontiff purchased his return by some
criminal compliances; and afterwards expiated his guilt by a seasonable
repentance. Persuasion and violence were employed to extort the
reluctant signature of the decrepit bishop of Cordova, whose strength
was broken, and whose faculties were perhaps impaired by the weight of
a hundred years; and the insolent triumph of the Arians provoked some
of the orthodox party to treat with inhuman severity the character, or
rather the memory, of an unfortunate old man, to whose former services
Christianity itself was so deeply indebted. [129]

[Footnote 128: The exile of Liberius is mentioned by Ammianus, xv.
7. See Theodoret, l. ii. c. 16. Athanas. tom. i. p. 834-837. Hilar.
Fragment l.]

[Footnote 129: The life of Osius is collected by Tillemont, (tom. vii.
p. 524-561,) who in the most extravagant terms first admires, and then
reprobates, the bishop of Cordova. In the midst of their lamentations on
his fall, the prudence of Athanasius may be distinguished from the blind
and intemperate ze