Caius (in l. 2, ad Cornel. de sicar.) states that the cause should be proved in presence of judges before the master could pronounce his sentence. Spartianus, the biographer, informs us that the Emperor Adrian, the immediate predecessor of Antoninus, enacted a law forbidding masters to kill their slaves, unless legally convicted. And Ulpian relates that Adrian placed, during five years, in confinement (relegatio) Umbricia, a lady of noble rank, because, for very slight causes, she treated her female slaves most cruelly. But Constantine the Great, about the year 320, enacted that no master should, under penalty due to homicide, put his slave to death, and gave the jurisdiction to the judges but if the slave died casually, after necessary chastisement, the master was not accountable to any legal tribunal. (Const. in 1. i.; C. Theod. de emendat. servorum.) As Christianity made progress, the unnatural severity with which this class of human beings was treated became relaxed, and as the civil law ameliorated their condition, the canon law, by its spiritual efficacy, came in with the aid of religion, to secure that, the followers of the Saviour should give full force to the merciful provisions that were introduced. The principle which St. Augustine laid down was that observed. The state was to enact the laws regulating this species of property; the church was to plead for morality and to exhort to practise mercy. About the same time, St. Peter, archbishop of Alexandria, drew up a number of penitential canons, pointing out the manner of receiving, treating, and reconciling the “lapsed,” or those who, through fear of persecution, fell from the profession of the faith. Those canons were held in high repute, and were generally adopted by the eastern bishops. The sixth of those canons exhibits to us a device of weak Christians, who desired to escape the trials of martyrdom, without being guilty of actual apostasy. A person of this sort procured that one of his slaves should personate him, and in his name should apostatize. The canon prescribes for such a slave, who necessarily was a Christian and a slave of a Christian, but one-third of the time required of a free person, in a mitigated penance, taking into account the influence of fear of the master, which, though it did not excuse, yet it diminished the guilt of the apostasy. The general council of Nice, in Bythinia, was held in the year 325, when Constantine was emperor. In the first canon of this council, according to the usual Greek and Latin copies, there is a provision for admitting slaves, as well as free persons who have been injured by others, to holy orders. In the Arabic copy, the condition is specially expressed, which is not found in the Greek or Latin, but which had been previously well known and universally established, “_that this should not take place unless the slave had been manumitted by his master_.”