it is evident that many persons, among
whom a bishop [103] and a proconsul [104] may be named, were entitled to
the crown of martyrdom. The same honor has been ascribed to the memory
of Count Sebastian, who professed the Nicene creed with unshaken
constancy; and Genseric might detest, as a heretic, the brave and
ambitious fugitive whom he dreaded as a rival. [105] VI. A new mode of
conversion, which might subdue the feeble, and alarm the timorous, was
employed by the Arian ministers. They imposed, by fraud or violence, the
rites of baptism; and punished the apostasy of the Catholics, if they
disclaimed this odious and profane ceremony, which scandalously violated
the freedom of the will, and the unity of the sacrament. [106] The
hostile sects had formerly allowed the validity of each other's baptism;
and the innovation, so fiercely maintained by the Vandals, can be
imputed only to the example and advice of the Donatists. VII. The Arian
clergy surpassed in religious cruelty the king and his Vandals; but they
were incapable of cultivating the spiritual vineyard, which they were so
desirous to possess. A patriarch [107] might seat himself on the throne
of Carthage; some bishops, in the principal cities, might usurp the
place of their rivals; but the smallness of their numbers, and their
ignorance of the Latin language, [108] disqualified the Barbarians for
the ecclesiastical ministry of a great church; and the Africans, after
the loss of their orthodox pastors, were deprived of the public exercise
of Christianity. VIII. The emperors were the natural protectors of the
Homoousian doctrine; and the faithful people of Africa, both as Romans
and as Catholics, preferred their lawful sovereignty to the usurpation
of the Barbarous heretics. During an interval of peace and friendship,
Hunneric restored the cathedral of Carthage; at the intercession of
Zeno, who reigned in the East, and of Placidia, the daughter and relict
of emperors, and the sister of the queen of the Vandals. [109] But this
decent regard was of short duration; and the haughty tyrant displayed
his contempt for the religion of the empire, by studiously arranging the
bloody images of persecution, in all the principal streets through which
the Roman ambassador must pass in his way to the palace. [110] An oath
was required from the bishops, who were assembled at Carthage, that they
would support the succession of his son Hilderic, and that they would
renounce all foreig