OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

wards and immunities which the emperor hadso liberally bestowed on the orthodox clergy.But as the sectaries might still exist under thecloud of royal disgrace, the conquest of the Eastwas immediately followed by an edict whichannounced their total destruction . 1 After apreamble, filled with passion and reproach,Constantine absolutely prohibits the assembliesof the heretics, and confiscates their public pro-perty to the use either of the revenue or of thecatholic church. The sects against whom theimperial severity was directed, appear to havebeen the adherents of Paul of Samosata ; themontanists of Phrygia , who maintained an en-thusiastic succession of prophecy, the nova-tians, who sternly rejected the temporal efficacyof repentance; the marcionites and valentinians,under whose leading banners the various gnos-tics of Asia and Egypt had insensibly rallied ;and perhaps the manichaeans, who had recentlyimported from Persia a more artful compositionof oriental and Christian theology . b The designof extirpating the name, or at least of restrain-ing the progress, of these odious heretics, wasprosecuted with vigour and effect. Some ofthe penal regulations were copied from theedicts of Diocletian ; and this method of con-

* Eusebius in Vit. Constantin. 1 . iii, c. G3, G4, 65, 66.

b After some examination of the various opinions of Tiliemont,Beausobre , Lardner, &c. 1 am convinced that Manes did not propa-gate his sect, even in Persia , before the year 270. It is strange, thata philosophic and foreign heresy should have penetrated so rapidly intothe African provinces; yet I cannot easily reject the edict of Diocle-tian against the maniclixans, which may be found in Baronius, Annal.Eccles. A. d. 287.

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