voip action download

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.--Part V. The Catholics, oppressed by royal and military force, were far superior to their adversaries in numbers and learning. With the same weapons which the Greek [112] and Latin fathers had already provided for the Arian controversy, they repeatedly silenced, or vanquished, the fierce and illiterate successors of Ulphilas. The consciousness of their own superiority might have raised them above the arts and passions of religious warfare. Yet, instead of assuming such honorable pride, the orthodox theologians were tempted, by the assurance of impunity, to compose fictions, which must be stigmatized with the epithets of fraud and forgery. They ascribed their own polemical works to the most venerable names of Christian antiquity; the characters of Athanasius and Augustin were awkwardly personated by Vigilius and his disciples; [113] and the famous creed, which so clearly expounds the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, is deduced, with strong probability, from this African school. [114] Even the Scriptures themselves were profaned by their rash and sacrilegious hands. The memorable text, which asserts the unity of the three who bear witness in heaven, [115] is condemned by the universal silence of the orthodox fathers, ancient versions, and authentic manuscripts. [116] It was first alleged by the Catholic bishops whom Hunneric summoned to the conference of Carthage. [117] An allegorical interpretation, in the form, perhaps, of a marginal note, invaded the text of the Latin Bibles, which were renewed and corrected in a dark period of ten centuries. [118] After the invention of printing, [119] the editors of the Greek Testament yielded to their own prejudices, or those of the times; [120] and the pious fraud, which was embraced with equal zeal at Rome and at Geneva, has been infinitely