Come back to life for a little while, Firmianus Lactantius, stop this ass who brays so loudly and outrageously. So delighted is he with the sound of swelling words, that he repeats the same terms and reiterates what he has just said. Is it thus that in your age the secretaries of the Caesars spoke, or even their grooms? Constantine chose them not “as his intercessors” but “to be his intercessors.” The fellow inserted that “to be” [esse] so as to get a more elegant rhythm. A fine reason! To speak barbarously so that your speech may run along more gracefully, as if indeed, anything can be graceful in such filthiness. “Choosing the prince of the apostles, or his vicars”: you do not choose Peter, and then his vicars, but either him, excluding them, or them, excluding him.[465] And he calls the Roman pontiffs “vicars” of Peter, either as though Peter were living, or as though they were of lower rank than was Peter. And is not this barbarous; “from us and our empire”?[466] As if the empire had a mind to give grants, and power! Nor was he content to say “should obtain,” without also saying “conceded,” though either one would have sufficed. And that “constant intercessors,”[466] is very elegant indeed! Doubtless he wants them “constant” so that they may not be corrupted by money nor moved by fear. And “earthly imperial power”; two adjectives without a conjunction. And “be honored with veneration”: and “clemency of our imperial serenity”;[467] it smacks of Lactantian eloquence to speak of “serenity” and “clemency,” instead of grandeur and majesty, when the power of the Empire is concerned! And how inflated he is with puffed-up pride; as in that phrase “gloriously exalted” by “glory, and power, and dignity, and vigor, and imperial honor”! This seems to be taken from the Apocalypse, where it says, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and divinity and wisdom, and strength, and honor and blessing.”[468] Frequently, as will be shown later, Constantine is made to arrogate to himself the titles of God, and to try to imitate the language of the sacred scriptures, which he had never read. “And we ordain and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well over the four seats, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, as also over all the churches of God in the whole earth. And the pontiff also, who at the time shall be at the head of the holy Roman church itself, shall be more exalted than, and chief over, all the priests of the whole world; and, according to his judgment everything which is to be provided for the service of God, and for the faith or the stability of the Christians is to be administered.”