distinguished for an adherence to the strict letter of the sacred text, and for the primitive simplicity of their forms of worship. Their ecclesiastical institutions exhibited the most liberal principle of reason. The austerity of the cloister was relaxed, and gradually forgotten. The standard of piety was changed from absurd penances to purity of life and morals. Houses of charity were endowed for the support and education of orphans and foundlings, and the religious teachers were obliged to depend for temporal support upon the voluntary subscriptions of their brethren and the labour of their own hands. To these churches, famous throughout the East no less for the purity of their worship than their exemption from ecclesiastical tyranny, myriads of fugitives resorted from all the provinces of the Eastern empire, and the narrow bigotry of the emperors was punished by the emigration of their most useful subjects, who transported into a foreign realm the arts of both peace and war. Among the mountains of Armenia, and beyond the precincts of the Roman power, they seemed to have found a new world, where they might breathe the air of religious freedom. The emperors, ignorant of the rights of conscience, and incapable of pity or esteem for the heretics who durst dispute the infallibility of holy councils, and refused to acquiesce in their imperial decisions, vainly sought, by various methods, to excite against them the indignation of their sovereign and the vengeance of persecution. During this time the Paulicians had increased in a wonderful manner. The desire of gaining souls for God, and subjects for the church, has, in all ages, fired the zeal and animated the activity of the Christian priesthood. It must not be supposed that the Paulicians were less arduous in the prosecution of their spiritual enterprises. Assuming the character of travelling merchants, or in the habits of pilgrims, a character to this day sacred throughout the East, they joined the Indian caravans, or pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar. The hordes encamped on the verdant banks of the Selinga, or in the valleys of the Imaus, heard, with feelings of mysterious reverence, the story of the incarnation; and illiterate shepherds and sanguinary warriors forsook their flocks and deserted their camps to listen to the simple eloquence of an Armenian pilgrim. Perhaps the exposition of a metaphysical creed was no more comprehensible to the one than were lessons of humanity and repose to the other; but both were susceptible of the baser passions of hope and fear, and both could understand the effect that their rejection or adoption of the gospel would exercise, according to the popular belief, upon their destiny in a future world. The mysterious rites of Christianity were administered to multitudes, among whom a great Khan and his warriors were said to be included.[1] In other regions the Paulicians were no less successful. Unwonted crowds