y
were endowed for the education of orphans and foundlings; the law
of celibacy, so forcibly recommended to the Greeks and Latins, was
disregarded by the Persian clergy; and the number of the elect was
multiplied by the public and reiterated nuptials of the priests, the
bishops, and even the patriarch himself. To this standard of natural and
religious freedom, myriads of fugitives resorted from all the provinces
of the Eastern empire; the narrow bigotry of Justinian was punished by
the emigration of his most industrious subjects; they transported into
Persia the arts both of peace and war: and those who deserved the favor,
were promoted in the service, of a discerning monarch. The arms of
Nushirvan, and his fiercer grandson, were assisted with advice, and
money, and troops, by the desperate sectaries who still lurked in their
native cities of the East: their zeal was rewarded with the gift of the
Catholic churches; but when those cities and churches were recovered by
Heraclius, their open profession of treason and heresy compelled them
to seek a refuge in the realm of their foreign ally. But the seeming
tranquillity of the Nestorians was often endangered, and sometimes
overthrown. They were involved in the common evils of Oriental
despotism: their enmity to Rome could not always atone for their
attachment to the gospel: and a colony of three hundred thousand
Jacobites, the captives of Apamea and Antioch, was permitted to erect a
hostile altar in the face of the _catholic_, and in the sunshine of the
court. In his last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which
tended to enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia.
The emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of pity
or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the holy synods:
but he flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the temporal
benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome; and if
he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might hope to provoke the
jealousy of their sovereign. In a later age the Lutherans have been
burnt at Paris, and protected in Germany, by the superstition and policy
of the most Christian king.

The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the church, has
excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests. From the
conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to the north, the
east, and the south; and the simplicity of the gospel was fashion