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252 THE DECLINE AND FALL in their lofty position, the sacred images still edified their votaries and reproached the tyrant. i*^ He was himself provoked by resistance and invective ; and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imita- tion the example of the Jewish king, who had broken, without scruple, the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as well as the use of religious [A.D. 729] pictures ; the churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry ; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East and West were involved in a noisy con- flict of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images, as an article of faith, and by the authority of a general council ; but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine ; ^^ and, though it is stigmatized by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. Their synod The dcbatcs and decrees of many provincial synods introduced nopie. AD. the summons of the general council, which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia ; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general council ; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding assemblies which had labori- ously built the structure of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed an unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical ; that image-worship was a corruption of Christianity, and a renewal of Paganism ; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased ; w>'[This is probably incorrect. See Appendix 15 on Leo's edicts.] !*• Some flowers of rhetoric are :ivro5o>' TTapavoiJ.ov kul aOeoi-, and the bishops tois fj.aTaid<|)pocr(.v. By [Pseudo-JDamascenus it is styled aKupos xa'i dSexTo^ (Opera, torn. i. p. 623). Spanheim's Apology for the Synod of Constantinople (p. 171, ice. ) is worked up with truth and ingenuity, fronm such materials as he could find in the Nicene Acts (p. 1046, &c. ). The witty John of Damascus converts ewio-Koirovs into eTrior/coTous, makes them koiAioSouAous, slaves of their belly, &c. (Opera, torn. i. p. 306). 754 [753]