The splendid canopy and hangings of the royal seat were arranged in the customary manner; but it was found necessary to defend them.

by a strong guard, from the insults of the populace.
The Arian ecclesiastics, who ventured to show themselves in the streets, were exposed to the most imminent danger of their lives; and Ambrose enjoyed the merit and reputation of rescuing his personal enemies from the hands of the enraged multitude.
[Footnote 63: His own representation of his principles and conduct (tom.
ii.Epist.xx xxi.xxii.p.

852-880) is one of the curious monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity.

It contains two letters to his sister Marcellina, with a petition to Valentinian and the sermon de Basilicis non madendis.] But while he labored to restrain the effects of their zeal, the pathetic vehemence of his sermons continually inflamed the angry and seditious temper of the people of Milan.

The characters of Eve, of the wife of Job, of Jezebel, of Herodias, were indecently applied to the mother of the emperor; and her desire to obtain a church for the Arians was compared to the most cruel persecutions which Christianity had endured under the reign of Paganism.