It is true, in the three first centuries ma^iy fond, foolish, corrupt opinions were broached by sundry brainsick men ; but they laid little hold of the church<2S, kept themselves in the breasts of some few disorderly wanderers, and did very little promote the mystery of iniquity : but afterward, when the Roman emperors, and the great men of the earth, under and with them, began to interpose in the things of religion, and were mutually wooed, instigated, and provoked by the parties at variance (as indeed it is a shame to consider upon
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ail meetings, assemblies, disputes, councils, what running, what flattering, what insinuation at court were used on all hands), what root did divers heresies take, how far were they propagated? Witness Arianism which had almost invaded the whole world.
Furthermore, by the ways which were invented oft from the rule, for the extirpation of errors, when by the instiga- tion of prelates, the emperors were (to their own ruin) per- suaded to them, the man of sin walked to his throne. Those very laws, edicts, and declarations, which were obtained against erring persons, did the bishops of Rome invert and use against all the witnesses of Jesus. The devil durst not be so bold as to employ that his grand agent in his appren- ticeship against the saints ; but he first suffers him to ex- ercise his hand aoainst heretics, intendino- to make use of him afterward to another purpose. In most of those con- tests, which the Roman pontiffs had with their fellow-bishops, by which they insensibly advanced their own supremacy, it was the defence of Catholics they undertook, as in the case of Athanasius and others.
Neither did the Christians of old at once step into the persuasion of punishing corporally in case of religion. Con- stantine makes a decree at first, Tjjv kXev^ipiav 3pJ7(ric£tac ovK apvviTsov Hvai, 'that liberty of worship is not to be denied, and therefore the Christians, as others, should have liberty to keep the faith of their religion and heresy.' Euseb. Eccles. Hist. lib. 10. cap. 5. And in the same edict he saith (how truly I know not, but yet great Constantine said it), 'That it is most certain, that this is conducing to the peace of the empire, that free option and choice of religion be left to all.' Afterward, when he began a little farther to engage himself in the business of religion, being indeed wearied with the petitions of bishops and their associates, for the persecution of one another, what trouble^ in a few years did he intricate himself withal? Perplexed he was in his spirit to see the untoward revengefulness jf that sort of people; insomuch that he writes express^; to them, being assembled in council at Tyre, ' That they had neither care of the truth, nor love to peace, nor cr^iscience of scandal, nor would by any means be prevailed on to lay down their malice and animosities.' Socrat. Hist. lib. 1. cap. 22. At
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length an Arian priest curries favour with his sister Con- stantia: she gets him into the esteem of her brother: after some insinuations of his, new edicts, new synods, new re- callings, new banishments of other persons, follow one upon the neck of another. Ruffin. Eccles. Hist. lib. 1. cap. 11. And when this knack was once found out of promoting a sect by imperial favour, it is admirable to consider, how those good princes, Constantine and his sons, were abused, misled, enraged, engaged into mutual dissentions, by the lies, flatteries, equivocations of such as called themselves bishops. Ruffin. lib. 1. cap. 15, 16, &,c. As also how soon with the many the whole busiiSess of religion was hereupon turned into a matter of external pomp and dominion. But it is besides my purpose to rake into that hell of confusion, which by this means brake in upon the churches in suc- ceeding ages. Only for the following imperial edicts and constitutions in the behalf of the faith catholic, and for the punishing of erring persons, I desire to observe,
(1.) That the emperors were stirred up to them by turbu- lent priests, and aspiring prelates. Let the pope's letters to them witness this. Leo E|)ist. 75. &c.
(2.) That they were still bottomed upon such and such councils, that were not to be opposed or spoken against, when all of them were spent for the most part about things quite besides and beyond the Scripture (as feastings, and fastings, and bishops' jurisdictions) ; and some of them were the very ulcers, and impostumations of Christian religion, as those of Nice and Ephesus, both the second; and in general all of them the sea, upon which the whore exalted her seat and throne. And these things did those good men, either deceived by the craft of heretics, or wearied by the impor- tunity of the orthodox.
And yet notwithstanding all this (as I shall afterward declare), I cannot close with that counsel which Themistius a philosophtr gave to Valens the emperor, and am most ab- horrent from t'rie reason of his counsel, viz. 'That he should let all sects aloir^, because it was for the glory of God to be honoured with diversities of opinions and ways of worship.' Yet though this reason be false and impious, yet the advice itself was well conducing at that time to the peace of the churches, something qualifying the spirit of that heretical