that he suffereth not the Church of Christ to exist in the world, and hath so founded the Church of Constantine, subverting all of Christianity except its spiritual truth. But ye can plainly see what things shall come to pass. That man whom ye love because it hath suited the purposes of his atheistic ambition to protect the Church against other tyrants, hath established an imperial legal religion for the world, and declares that he will persecute all who conform not thereto. So did the Scribes and Pharisees; so did Tiberius Cæsar, Nero, Diocletian, and the rest of his predecessors; but so Jesus and his apostles never did. I know not whether that man who doeth these things, and hath begun to found his capital, called by his own name of blasphemy, upon seven hills above the sea, be he of whom John in the Apocalypse did speak, but he suiteth well in many respects with what John did prophesy. "Hear me yet a little further. Ye will all, or nearly all, subscribe this creed! Ye will be forced so to do! For the Holy Spirit cometh upon no council of an earthly emperor, but only of Christ’s Church. Henceforth, therefore, thaumaturgy shall be lost unto the Church! Henceforth, therefore, Christianity shall be a human institution! And the faith of Christians will be first one thing, then another, as successive emperors may determine to be best. Those who now are orthodox will be proscribed as heretics, and those who now are heretics will be called orthodox; and Christian emperors will seek to exterminate Christian heretics with fire and sword throughout the world. For the millions of Armenia, and many more throughout Egypt, Syria, and Africa, and the whole nation of the Goths, are as I am--what ye call Arian. So is the brave, the successful, the popular Crispus Cæsar. So is Ulfilas, whom Constantine calleth the Moses of the Goths, whom he now proposes to ordain a bishop over the people whom he converted, and upon whom Constantine made war to force them to accommodate their religion to imperial law. So is Constantia, the sister of the emperor, the widow of Licinius; and so is the young Licinius, her son, and others perhaps of the same imperial family, concerning whom I do not know. See ye not that when Constantine shall die, and his sons shall succeed to empire, the faith of Christ which is now condemned shall be established by the imperial law as true?--And even thou, Athanasius, next Bishop of Alexandria, mayst find thyself a fugitive from thine episcopal palace (which the emperor shall give unto thee), a vagabond upon the friendless earth, a martyr for, or a renegade from, what thou now maintainest to be true!