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are we reduced to risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to your depredation but we can remove to the distance of four-and-twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and then - you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East and West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. ^35 The remote and interior kingdoms of the West present their homage to Christ and his vicegerent; and we now prepare to visit one of their most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from our hands the sacrament of baptism. ^36 The Barbarians have submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the shepherd. These pious Barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst to avenge the persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head!"

[Footnote 33: The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved in the Acta of the Nicene Council, (tom. viii. p. 651 - 674.) They are without a date, which is variously fixed, by Baronius in the year 726, by Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 120) in 729, and by Pagi in 730. Such is the force of prejudice, that some papists have praised the good sense and moderation of these letters.]

[Footnote 34: (Epist. i. p. 664.) This proximity of the Lombards is hard of digestion. Camillo Pellegrini (Dissert. iv. de Ducatu Beneventi, in the Script. Ital. tom. v. p. 172, 173) forcibly reckons the xxivth stadia, not from Rome, but from the limits of the Roman duchy, to the first fortress, perhaps Sora, of the Lombards. I rather believe that Gregory, with the pedantry of the age, employs stadia for miles, without much inquiry into the genuine measure.]

[Footnote 35: {Greek}]

[Footnote 36: (p. 665.) The pope appears to have imposed on the ignorance of the Greeks: he lived and died in the Lateran; and in his time all the kingdoms of the West had embraced Christianity. May not this unknown Septetus have some reference to the chief of the Saxon Heptarchy, to Ina king of Wessex, who, in the pontificate of Gregory the Second, visited Rome for the purpose, not of baptism, but of pilgrimage! Pagi. A., 89, No. 2. A.D. 726, No. 15.)]

The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the emperor. But on the reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic deities: the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate; and the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor displays his confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the powers of resistance. Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the public enemy, and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and their duty. ^37 At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religion; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people was devoted to their father, and even the Lombards were ambitious to share the merit and advantage of this holy war. The most treasonable act, but the most obvious revenge, was the destruction of the statues of