Oh happy people, oh Ausonia, how glorious hadst thou been, if either he, that weakener of thine empire, had never been born, or if his own pious intention had never deceived him?[275] [Footnote 275: Constantine the Great.--(W.)] BOOK III. I.--"He hath shut the lions' mouths and they have not hurt me, forasmuch as before Him justice was found in me."[276] At the beginning of this work I proposed to examine into three questions, according as the subject-matter would permit me. Concerning the two first questions our inquiry, as I think, has been sufficiently accomplished in the preceding books. It remains to treat of the third question; and, perchance, it may arouse a certain amount of indignation against me, for the truth of it cannot appear without causing shame to certain men. But seeing that truth from its changeless throne appeals to me--that Solomon too, entering on the forest of his proverbs, teaches me in his own person "to meditate on truth, to hate the wicked;"[277] seeing that the Philosopher, my instructor in morals, bids me, for the sake of truth, to put aside what is dearest;[278] I will, therefore, take confidence from the words of Daniel in which the power of God, the shield of the defenders of truth, is set forth, and, according to the exhortation of St. Paul, "putting on the breast-plate of faith," and in the heat of that coal which one of the seraphim had taken from off the altar, and laid on the lips of Isaiah, I will enter on the present contest, and, by the arm of Him who delivered us by His blood from the powers of darkness, drive out from the lists the wicked and the liar, in the sight of all the world. Why should I fear, when the Spirit, which is co-eternal with the Father and the Son, saith by the mouth of David: "The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance, he shall not be afraid of evil tidings"?[279] [Footnote 276: Dan. vi. 22. Vulg.--(W.)] [Footnote 277: Prov. vii. 7. Vulg.--(W.)] [Footnote 278: Arist. _Eth._ i. 4.--(W.)] [Footnote 279: Ps. cxii. 7.--(W.)] The present question, then, concerning which we have to inquire, is between two great luminaries, the Roman Pontiff and the Roman Prince: and the question is, does the authority of the Roman Monarch, who, as we have proved in the second book, is the monarch of the world, depend immediately on God, or on some minister or vicar of God; by whom I understand the successor of Peter, who truly has the keys of the kingdom of heaven? II.--For this, as for the former questions, we must take some principle, on the strength of which we may fashion the arguments of the truth which is to be expounded. For what does it profit to labour, even in speaking truth, unless we start from a principle? For the principle alone is the root of all the propositions which are the means of proof.