THE DECLINE AND FALL

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chap, tiff, who punished the obscure sins of the mul-.J^titude, respected the conspicuous vices and de-structive crimes of fhe magistrate; but it wasimpossible to arraign the conduct of the magi-strate, without controling the administrationof civil government. Some considerations ofreligion, or loyalty, or fear, protected the sa-cred persons of the emperors from the zeal orresentment of the bishops; but they boldly cen-sured and excommunicated the subordinate ty-rants, who were not invested with the majestyof the purple. St. Athanasius excommunicateed one of the ministers of Egypt ; and the in-terdict which he pronounced, of fire and water,was solemnly transmitted to the churches ofCappadocia . 1 Under the reign of the youngerTheodosius , the polite, the eloquent Synesius,one of the descendants of Hercules , 2 filled theepiscopal seat of Ptolemais, near the ruins ofancient Cyrene , b and the philosophic bishop

* Basil Epistol. xlvii, in Baronins(Annal, Eccles. a. d. 370, No.91),who declares that he purposely relates it, to convince governors thatthey were not exempt from a sentence of excommunication. In hisopinion, even a Toyal head is not safe from the thunders of the Vatican ;and the cardinal shews himself much more consistent than the lawyersand theologians of the Gallifan church.

* The long series of his ancestors, as high as Eurysthenes, thefirst Doric king of Sparta , and the fifth in lineal descent from Her-cules, was inscribed in the public registers of Cyrcnne, a Lacedajmo-liian colony. (Synes. Epist. Ivii, p. 107, edit. Pttav). Such a pureand illustrious pedigree of seventeen hundred years, without addingthe royal ancestors of Hercules, cannot be equalled in the history ofmankind.

b Synesius (de Regno, p. 2) pathetically deplores the fallen andruined state of Cyrenc, teovis exx»ivi?, -caXen k&i jy

T«V «a TuXu; <rc<f>*;v vev mmc xai xarnfuc, Kat (Alya spit'smr. Ptolemais,* pew city, 82 miles to the westward of Cyrcne, assumed the metropo-lian