Constantine professed to believe that this last creed was delivered by an inspiration of the bishops directly given from heaven; and he at once issued a decree of banishment against all who might refuse to subscribe to it. "He denounced Arius and his disciples as impious, and ordered that he and his books should follow the fate of the pagan Porphyry; and that he and his school should be called Porphyrians, and his books burned under penalty of death to any one who perused them." But he gave them time to reflect upon the matter; and on the next day many stood resolved not to sign, notwithstanding the terrible threats of the emperor. In this state of fear and perplexity, when no man knew to what extremities his brutal threats to extort their compliance might be carried, and when a moody silence, born of their terror and distress, had settled upon the council, to the surprise of all, Arius the Libyan arose and addressed them as follows: "Brethren, I am well persuaded that no other opportunity will ever be given unto me to address any assembly of Christians; being persuaded that the condemnation denounced against me ariseth not from any mistaken zeal on the part of the unbaptized emperor concerning religion, but only from a political necessity that springeth from his godless and insatiable thirst for universal and unhindered power; for verily I think he knoweth little, and careth less, for any confession of faith, except as it affecteth his imperial ambition. As a man, therefore, already doomed, and soon, perhaps, to die, I desire to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance concerning the primitive Church, which now fadeth out of the world, as it hath already faded out of the Western Empire. Brethren, centuries ago, the great Greek philosopher, Plato, in his ’Republic,’ did declare that ’any ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the rich, the other that of the poor, at war with one another’; and this statement is verily true everywhere on earth. For the religion of mankind hath been, in some shape, the worship of mammon, and the warfare, of which Plato speaketh, a warfare for property--for property in offices, prerogatives, lands, houses, wealth, slaves, and every shape that property can take. Ye know that the law was a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ; and that, to prevent the universal and hopeless oppression of the poor, God by Moses did ordain the statute of the year of jubilee, and the statute of the seventh year; and ye know that the prophet Isaiah did make these statutes, which secured a certain blessing for the poor every ’seventh year’ and every ’fiftieth year,’ typical of the continuous state of believers, in the kingdom of heaven, declaring it to be the gospel preached to the poor; and ye know that our Lord did solemnly declare that this prophecy was fulfilled in him, wherefore the wealthy and aristocratic Scribes and Pharisees, who were ’covetous,’