st twenty-five years) to the service of the church. I
should recommend this miracle to our divines, if it did not prove the
worship of relics, as well as the Nicene creed.]

[Footnote 70: Paulin, in Tit. St. Ambros. c. 5, in Append. Benedict. p.
5.]

[Footnote 71: Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. x. p. 190, 750. He partially
allow the mediation of Theodosius, and capriciously rejects that of
Maximus, though it is attested by Prosper, Sozomen, and Theodoret.]

The reign of Maximus might have ended in peace and prosperity, could
he have contented himself with the possession of three ample countries,
which now constitute the three most flourishing kingdoms of modern
Europe. But the aspiring usurper, whose sordid ambition was not
dignified by the love of glory and of arms, considered his actual forces
as the instruments only of his future greatness, and his success was the
immediate cause of his destruction. The wealth which he extorted [72]
from the oppressed provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was employed
in levying and maintaining a formidable army of Barbarians, collected,
for the most part, from the fiercest nations of Germany. The conquest
of Italy was the object of his hopes and preparations: and he secretly
meditated the ruin of an innocent youth, whose government was abhorred
and despised by his Catholic subjects. But as Maximus wished to occupy,
without resistance, the passes of the Alps, he received, with perfidious
smiles, Domninus of Syria, the ambassador of Valentinian, and pressed
him to accept the aid of a considerable body of troops, for the service
of a Pannonian war. The penetration of Ambrose had discovered the snares
of an enemy under the professions of friendship; [73] but the Syrian
Domninus was corrupted, or deceived, by the liberal favor of the court
of Treves; and the council of Milan obstinately rejected the suspicion
of danger, with a blind confidence, which was the effect, not of
courage, but of fear. The march of the auxiliaries was guided by
the ambassador; and they were admitted, without distrust, into the
fortresses of the Alps. But the crafty tyrant followed, with hasty and
silent footsteps, in the rear; and, as he diligently intercepted all
intelligence of his motions, the gleam of armor, and the dust excited
by the troops of cavalry, first announced the hostile approach of a
stranger to the gates of Milan. In this extremity, Justina and her son
might accuse their own imprudence, and the