Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/170

148 THE DECLINE AND FALL Eastern empire ; the narrow bigotry of Justinian was punished by the emigration of his most industrious subjects ; they transported into Persia the arts both of peace and war ; and those who deserved the favour, were promoted in the service, of a discerning monarch. The arms of Nushirvan, and his fiercer grandson, were assisted with advice, and money, and troops, by the desperate sectaries who still lurked in their native cities of the East ; their zeal was rewarded with the gift of the Catholic churches ; but, when those cities and churches were recovered by Heraclius, their open profession of treason and heresy compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm of their foreign ally. But the seeming tranquillity of the Nestorians was often endangered, and sometimes overthrown. They were involved in the common evils of Oriental despot- ism ; their enmity to Rome could not always atone for their attachment to the gospel ; and a colony of three hundred thousand Jacobites, the captives of Apamea and Antioch, was permitted to erect an hostile altar in the face of the catholic and in the sunshine of the court. In his last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which tended to enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia. The emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of pity or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the holy synods; but he flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the tem- poral benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome; and, if he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a latter age, the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris, and protected in Germany, by the superstition and policy of the most Christian king. Their mis- The desirc of gaining souls for God, and subjects for the Tartary, church, lias cxcitcd in every age the diligence of the Chris- Indla, China, . . „ , r-n-i ii- &c. AD. 500-tian priests, rrom the conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to the north, the east, and the south ; and the simplicity of the gospel was fashioned and painted with the colours of the Syriac theology. In the sixth century, according to the report of a Nestorian traveller, i^'-' Christianity was suc- -'^See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, 1. iii. p. 178, 170, 1. xi. p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may be found in Photius (cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10, edit. Hoeschel), Th^venot (in the first Part of his Relation des Voyages, &c. ), and Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. 1. iii. c. 25, tom. ii. p. 603-617), has been published by father Montfaucon at Paris 1707 in the Nova CoHectio Patrum (tom. ii. p. 113-346). It was the design of the author to confute the impious heresy of those who maintain that the earth is a globe, and not a tiat oblong table, as it is represented in the 1200