adding
fables and miracles, is entitled to some commendation.]

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part VII.

The cruel and arbitrary disposition of Constantius, which did not always
require the provocations of guilt and resistance, was justly exasperated
by the tumults of his capital, and the criminal behavior of a faction,
which opposed the authority and religion of their sovereign. The
ordinary punishments of death, exile, and confiscation, were inflicted
with partial vigor; and the Greeks still revere the holy memory of two
clerks, a reader, and a sub-deacon, who were accused of the murder of
Hermogenes, and beheaded at the gates of Constantinople. By an edict of
Constantius against the Catholics which has not been judged worthy of a
place in the Theodosian code, those who refused to communicate with the
Arian bishops, and particularly with Macedonius, were deprived of the
immunities of ecclesiastics, and of the rights of Christians; they
were compelled to relinquish the possession of the churches; and were
strictly prohibited from holding their assemblies within the walls of
the city. The execution of this unjust law, in the provinces of Thrace
and Asia Minor, was committed to the zeal of Macedonius; the civil and
military powers were directed to obey his commands; and the cruelties
exercised by this Semi- Arian tyrant in the support of the Homoiousion,
exceeded the commission, and disgraced the reign, of Constantius. The
sacraments of the church were administered to the reluctant victims,
who denied the vocation, and abhorred the principles, of Macedonius.
The rites of baptism were conferred on women and children, who, for that
purpose, had been torn from the arms of their friends and parents; the
mouths of the communicants were held open by a wooden engine, while the
consecrated bread was forced down their throat; the breasts of tender
virgins were either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly
compressed betweens harp and heavy boards. [154] The Novatians of
Constantinople and the adjacent country, by their firm attachment to
the Homoousian standard, deserved to be confounded with the Catholics
themselves. Macedonius was informed, that a large district of
Paphlagonia [155] was almost entirely inhabited by those sectaries. He
resolved either to convert or to extirpate them; and as he distrusted,
on this occasion, the efficacy of an ecclesiastical mission, he
commanded a body of