§ 1. We deservedly ought to believe so great an authority, since they had no occasion or cause for deceiving. I omit those kings who are in Scripture, because those who do not acknowledge divine oracles yield more readily to human testimonies. Nevertheless, all prudent princes have considered that decree to have been declared to themselves which the divine oracle announced to David: “If your sons will keep my ways and walk before me in truth, with all their heart and all their soul, a man from the throne of Israel will not be taken away from you.”
Philip the Arab, since he was not ignorant that he had obtained the empire by parricide, having been instructed better concerning religion, stood as a suppliant among the penitents before the Church at the command of Fabian the pontiff. By his deed he showed that no governments acquired by crime are lasting, for he too was soon killed.
Among princes scarcely any obtained greater glory than Constantine, for he both ruled most widely and cultivated religion before the rest: he closed the temples of demons, built temples for the true God, and fostered the commonwealth. Yet he attributed all things received to piety and subjected all matters in the judgment of religion to the Council of Nicaea. Jovian, a man of the greatest spirit and loftier than the august empire itself—first a confessor and afterward the successor of him whom he had endured as a tyrant—denied that, being a Christian, he wished to command an army which worshiped false gods, because he judged that amid such great crimes no happiness of the commonwealth could exist.
Theodosius and Valentinian wrote to the Synod of Ephesus that through those things which pertain to preserving piety and religion they could attain all other things also. Accordingly, Theodosius himself, accustomed to sing Psalms and say prayers with his wife Eudoxia and his sister Pulcheria, held the kingdom for a long time and happily.
The same is the judgment of Justin to Hormisdas, of Honorius to Arcadius, of Justinian II, of Charlemagne to the bishops of Spain, and of the others whose commendation is in history and whose memory is among posterity.
But in this matter no reasoning can be produced more illustrious, more effective, and more approved through many centuries than the law of the Roman Empire—that is, the public law of the world—which has now been accepted by so many nations and confirmed by so many kings that to wish to tear away its primary part is to disturb human affairs and overthrow the commonwealth.