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337-361.] LIBERIUS RECANTS HIS RECANTATION.

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be excluded, could alone reverse the decree. Eusebius threatened, but in vain; he laid down the Emperor's gifts in the Church of St. Peter, but Liberius ordered them to be cast forth, and uttered a solemn curse against all Arian heretics. Constantine in his wrath ordered the seizure of his rebellious subject, but a strong party in Rome rose in his defence. The city was surrounded by troops, the bishop was secretly apprehended and carried away by night to the Emperor at Milan. The bishop confronted Constantius, and to the taunt that he was in correspondence with the excommunicated traitor Athanasius, undauntedly replied, "If I were the only friend of Athanasius, I would adhere to the righteous cause.' Liberius was banished to desolate Thrace; and scornfully rejected the money offered to him by the Emperor for his expenses on the way. 'Let him keep it to pay his soldiers.' To the officer who repeated the offer, he sternly replied, 'Do you, who have wasted all the Churches of the world, presume to offer me alms as if to a criminal? Away, first become a Christian.' But two years' exile in that barbarous region, and the disastrous news that the Emperor had established in his vacant see the semi-Arian bishop Felix, broke the proud spirit of Liberius; he consented to sign the semiArian creed of Sirmium, and to renounce Athanasius.

Constantius just then indulged his pride and curiosity in a visit to the ancient capital. He proceeded from Milan to Rome along the Æmilian and Flaminian Ways; and as soon as he approached within forty miles of the city, the march of a prince who had never vanquished a foreign enemy assumed all the appearance of a triumphal procession. His splendid train was quite Oriental, composed of all the ministers of luxury; but in a time of profound peace, it was strange to see him encompassed by the glittering arms of the numerous squadrons of his guards and cuirassiers, whose

streaming banners of silk, embossed with gold, and shaped in the form of dragons, waved round the person of the Emperor. Constantius sat alone in a lofty car, resplendent with gold and precious gems; and except when he bowed his head to pass under the gates of the cities, he affected a stately demeanour of inflexible, or insensible gravity. So thoroughly Persian had the discipline of the Imperial court become, and such were the habits of diplomatic dissimulation which it inculcated, that during the slow and sultry march, he was never seen to disturb his gravity by even moving his hand towards his face, or by turning his eyes either to the right or the left. When he was received by the Senate and magistrates, he surveyed with attention, but without giving expression to a word, the shadows of the civil honours of the republic, and the consular images of the noble families. The streets were lined with an innumerable multitude, and whilst their repeated acclamations expressed their joy at beholding, after an absence of thirty-two years, the sacred person of their Sovereign, Constantius merely expressed his affected surprise that the human race should thus suddenly be collected on the same spot. He was lodged in the ancient palace of Augustus; presided in the Senate; harangued the people in a few set phrases, from the tribunal which Cicero had so often rendered vocal with his eloquence; assisted with freezing ceremony at the games of the Circus; and haughtily, as if his right, accepted the crowns of gold, as well as the fulsome panegyrics, presented by the deputies of the different cities. His short visit of thirty days was employed in viewing the monuments of art and power which were scattered over the seven hills and the interjacent valleys. He admired, in his languid fashion, the awful majesty of the Capitol, the vast extent of the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian, the severe simplicity of the Pantheon, the massy

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CONSTANTIUS VISITS ROME.

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greatness of the Coliseum, the elegant architecture of the Theatre of Pompey and the Temple of Peace, and the stately structure of the Forum and Column of Trajan. He even deigned to say, that the voice of Fame, so prone to invent and to magnify, had made an inadequate report of the majesty of Rome; promised to add to its wonders by the gift of an Egyptian obelisk, in addition to those with which Augustus and his successors had already embellished the metropolis of the world, as the most durable monuments of their power and victory. A vessel of uncommon strength and capacity was accordingly provided to convey one of those obelisks, of an enormous weight of granite-for it was at least one hundred and fifteen feet in length-from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tiber, and it was elevated, by the efforts of art and labour, in the great Circus of Rome.

Just before the Emperor's departure, a procession of Roman ladies, in their richest attire, marched along the admiring streets; stood before the Imperial presence, and by their fearless pertinacity obtained an edict for the release of Liberius; but it decreed that he and Felix should rule with conjoint authority each over his respective followers. Athanasius calls this first of all the long line of Anti-popes,' a monster, raised by the malice of Anti-Christ, worthy of his partisans, and fit to execute their worst designs.' But Dean Milman points out that this very Felix has somehow stolen into the Roman Calendar, and figures there as saint, and pope, and martyr ; and stranger still that the Creed of Athanasius has ever since been resolutely maintained by the Roman pontiffs, and proudly set forth as their own inalienable spiritual heir-loom, and the foundation of their claim to infallibility, although both the pope and the Anti-pope had alike signed the semi-Arian creed and rejected that of Athanasius! When the Emperor's edict was read in the Circus-uncongenial as the place and

its associations were some exclaimed, 'What! because we have two factions here, distinguished by their colours, are we to have two factions in the Church? The whole audience then broke forth in an overwhelming shout, 'One God! one Christ! one Bishop!' Liberius returned to Rome; and the people thronged forth, as of old, to meet some triumphal consul on his return from exile.

Felix fled before his face; but on his return at the head of his armed followers, a murderous conflict ensued-the streets, the baths, the very churches, ran blood. Felix was expelled, and Liberius sank back into such obscurity, that during the short reign of Julian the Apostate both Rome and its bishop seem to have been utterly forgotten.

JULIAN has, perhaps, been somewhat unfairly branded with the ill-sounding name of Apostate, for his early education had been, it might almost appear, studiously and skilfully conducted, so as to show the brighter side of paganism, the darker of Christianity. His infant years had been clouded by the murder of his father;-from childhood to the age of fifteen his existence seemed forgotten, but he was learning valuable lessons in the school of adversity, and from his tutor Mardonius,-who, born a Scythian, and educated in Greece, united the manly spirit of his ruder ancestors with the elegance of Grecian accomplishments,-he imbibed a passion for the poetry of Homer and the philosophy of Plato, with a sovereign contempt for the licentious or frivolous pleasures of Oriental life, especially those of the theatre and the bath. At fifteen his existence was remembered by the Emperor, so he was shut up, with his brother Gallus, in Macellæ, a fortress of Asia Minor, to be subjected to the austerities of ascetic ecclesiastics-such as the midnight vigil, the fast, the long and weary visits to the tombs of martyrs, which, especially with Arians, had now superseded

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a wise and rational instruction in the Holy Scriptures, and a judicious familiarity with the originality, the beauty, and the depth of the Christian faith and morals. For six years he and his brother were detained in this prison, reduced to the debasing society of slaves, and deprived of every sort of instruction. At the age of twenty he was summoned to Constantinople, where his popular demeanour, sober manners and reputation for high talents excited the jealousy of the weak and worthless Constantius, who despatched him to Nicomedia, where the pagan philosopher Libanius was delivering lectures, equally celebrated for their eloquence and their subtle advocacy of Modern Platonism. Julian obtained his writings, which he devoured with all the delight of a stolen enjoyment; secretly formed an intimate acquaintance with Libanius and his partisans; was privately initiated into the pagan ceremonies; and easily evaded the efforts of the Arian bishop Aetius to keep him in the unchristian Christianity of his cruel uncle. He was next removed to Athens, where he was highly distinguished by his talents; and when his brother Gallus fell a victim to the jealousy of Constantius, Julian's life was spared and he was even elevated to the rank of Cæsar by the interference of the humane Empress, who represented him as that harmless unambitious being 'a mere scholar,' whose allegiance and gratitude might be secured by the gift of the purple, and who was qualified to fill a subordinate station, without disputing the commands or shading the glories of his benefactor and sovereign. So he was summoned to the Imperial palace at Milan; and the ceremony of shaving his beard, with his awkward demeanour, when he exchanged his philosopher's cloak for the military habit of a Roman prince, amused for a few days Constantius and his courtiers.

The Emperors no longer deigned to consult with the Senate

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