travelled through the different provinces; and not only sold, with most frontless impudence, their fictitious relics, but also deceived the eyes of the multitude with ludicrous combats with evil spirits or genii.  A whole volume would be requisite to contain an enumeration of the various frauds which artful knaves practised, with success, to delude the ignorant, when true religion was almost entirely superseded by horrid superstition” (p. 98).  When to all these weapons we add the forgeries everywhere circulated (see ante, pp. 240-243), we can understand how rapidly Christianity spread, and how “the faithful” were rendered pliable to those whose interests lay in deceiving them.  During this century flourished some of the greatest fathers of the Church, pre-eminent among whom we note Ambrose, of Milan, Augustine, of Hippo, and the great ecclesiastical doctor, Jerome.  Already, in this century, we find clear traces of the supremacy of the bishop of Rome, and “when a new pontiff was to be elected by the suffrages of the presbyters and the people, the city of Rome was generally agitated with dissensions, tumults, and cabals, whose consequences were often deplorable and fatal” (p. 94).  By a decree of the Council of Constantinople, the bishop of that city was given precedence next after the Roman prelate, and the jealousy which arose between the bishops of the two imperial cities fomented the disputes which ended, finally, in the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches.  Of the officers of the Church in this century we read that:  “The bishops, on the one hand, contended with each other, in the most scandalous manner, concerning the extent of their respective jurisdictions, while, on the other, they trampled upon the rights of the people, violated the privileges of the inferior ministers, and imitated, in their conduct, and in their manner of living, the arrogance, voluptuousness, and luxury of magistrates and princes” (pp. 95, 96).

In this century is the first instance of the burning alive of a heretic, and it was Spain who lighted that first pile.  Theodosius, of all the emperors of this age, was the bitterest persecutor of the heretic sects.  “The orthodox emperor considered every heretic as a rebel against the supreme powers of heaven and of earth; and each of those powers might exercise their peculiar jurisdiction over the soul and body of the guilty....  In the space of fifteen years [A.D. 380-394], he promulgated at least fifteen severe edicts against the heretics; more especially against those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity; and to deprive them of every hope of escape, he sternly enacted, that if any laws or rescripts should be alleged in their favour, the judges should consider them as the illegal productions either of fraud or forgery....  The heretical teachers ... were exposed to the heavy penalties of exile and confiscation, if they presumed to preach the doctrine, or to practise the rites of their accursed sects....  Their religious