The fiftieth year from the great council came and went, and brought no relief to the calamities of the churches. Meletius and Cyril were still in exile, East and West were still divided over the consecration of Paulinus, and now even Alexandria had become the prey of Lucius. The leaden rule of Valens still weighed down the East, and Valens was scarcely yet past middle life, and might reign for many years longer. The deliverance came suddenly, and the Nicene faith won its victory in the confusion of the greatest disaster which had ever yet befallen Rome.

In the year 376 the Empire still seemed to stand unshaken within the limits of Augustus. If the legions had retired from the outlying provinces of Dacia and Carduene, they more than held their ground on the great river frontiers of the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Rhine. If Julian's death had seemed to let loose all the enemies of Rome at once, they had all been repulsed. While the Persian advance was checked by the obstinate patriotism of Armenia, Valens reduced the Goths to submission, and his Western colleague drove the Germans out of Gaul and recovered Britain from the Picts. The Empire had fully held its own through twelve years of incessant warfare; and if there were serious indications of exhaustion in the dwindling of the legions and the increase of the barbarian auxiliaries, in the troops of brigands who infested every mountain district, in the alarming decrease of population, and above all in the ruin of the provinces by excessive taxation, it still seemed inconceivable that real danger could ever menace Rome's eternal throne.

But while the imperial statesmen were watching the Euphrates, the storm was gathering on the Danube. The Goths in Dacia had been learning husbandry and Christianity since Aurelian's time, and bade fair soon to become a civilized people. Heathenism was already half abandoned, and their nomad habits half laid aside. But when the Huns came up suddenly from the steppes of Asia, the stately Gothic warriors fled almost without a blow from the hordes of wild dwarfish horsemen. The Ostrogoths became the servants of their conquerors, and the heathens of Athanaric found a refuge in the recesses of the Transylvanian forests. But Fritigern was a Christian. Rome had helped him once before, and Rome might help him now. A whole nation of panic-stricken warriors crowded to the banks of the Danube. There was but one inviolable refuge in the world, and that was beneath the shelter of the Roman eagles. Only let them have some of the waste lands in Thrace, and they would be glad to do the Empire faithful service. When conditions had been settled, the Goths were brought across the river. Once on Roman ground, they were left to the mercy of officials whose only thought was to make the famished barbarians a prey to their own rapacity and lust. Before long the Goths broke loose and spread over the country, destroying whatever cultivation had survived the desolating misgovernment of the Empire. Outlaws and deserters were willing guides, and crowds of fresh barbarians came in to share the spoil. The Roman generals found it no easy task to keep the field.

First the victories of Claudius and Aurelian, and then the statesmanship of Constantine, had stayed for a century the tide of Northern war, but now the Empire was again reduced to fight for its existence. Its rulers seemed to understand the crisis. The East was drained of all available troops, and Sebastian the Manichee, the old enemy of Athanasius, was placed in command. Gratian hurried Thraceward with the Gaulish legions, and at last Valens thought it time to leave his pleasant home at Antioch for the field of war. Evil omens beset his march, but no omen could be worse than his own impulsive rashness. With a little prudence, such a force as he had gathered round the walls of Hadrianople was an overmatch for any hordes of barbarians. But Valens determined to storm the Gothic camp without waiting for his Western colleague. Rugged ground and tracts of burning grass delayed his march, so that it was long past noon before he neared the line of waggons, later still before the Gothic trumpet sounded. But the Roman army was in hopeless rout at sundown. The Goths came down 'like a thunderbolt on the mountain tops,' and all was lost. Far into the night the slaughtering went on. Sebastian fell, the Emperor was never heard of more, and full two-thirds of the Roman army perished in a scene of unequalled horror since the butchery of CannÆ.

Beneath that crushing blow the everlasting Empire shook from end to end. The whole power of the East had been mustered with a painful effort to the struggle, and the whole power of the East had been shattered in a summer's day. For the first time since the days of Gallienus, the Empire could place no army in the field. But Claudius and Aurelian had not fought in vain, nor were the hundred years of respite lost. If the dominion of Western Europe was transferred for ever to the Northern nations, the walls of Constantinople had risen to bar their eastward march, and Christianity had shown its power to awe their boldest spirits. The Empire of the Christian East withstood the shock of Hadrianople—only the heathen West sank under it. When once the old barriers of civilization on the Danube and the Rhine were broken through, the barbarians poured in for centuries like a flood of mighty waters overflowing. Not till the Northman and the Magyar had found their limit at the siege of Paris (888) and the battle of the Lechfeld (955) could Europe feel secure. The Roman Empire and the Christian Church alone rode out the storm which overthrew the ancient world. But the Christian Church was founded on the ever-living Rock, the Roman Empire rooted deep in history. Arianism was a thing of yesterday and had no principle of life, and therefore it vanished in the crash of Hadrianople. The Homoean supremacy had come to rest almost wholly on imperial misbelief. The mob of the capital might be in its favour, and the virtues of isolated bishops might secure it some support elsewhere; but serious men were mostly Nicenes or Anomoeans. Demophilus of Constantinople headed the party, and his blunders did it almost as much harm as the profane jests of Eudoxius. At Antioch Euzoius, the last of the early Arians, was replaced by Dorotheus. Milan under Ambrose was aggressively Nicene, and the Arian tyrants were very weak at Alexandria. On the other hand, the greatest of the Nicenes had passed away, and few were left who could remember the great council's meeting. Athanasius and Hilary were dead, and even Basil did not live to greet an orthodox Emperor. Meletius of Antioch was in exile, and Cyril of Jerusalem and the venerated Eusebius of Samosata, while Gregory of Nazianzus had found in the Isaurian mountains a welcome refuge from his hated diocese of Sasima. If none of the living Nicenes could pretend to rival Athanasius, they at least outmatched the Arians.

As Valens left no children, the Empire rested for the moment in the hands of his nephew, Gratian, a youth of not yet twenty. Gratian, however, was wise enough to see that it was no time to cultivate religious quarrels. He, therefore, began by proclaiming toleration to all but Anomoeans and Photinians. As toleration was still the theory of the Empire, and none but the Nicenes were practically molested, none but the Nicenes gained anything by the edict. But mere toleration was all they needed. The exiled bishops found little difficulty in resuming the government of their flocks, and even in sending missions to Arian strongholds. The Semiarians were divided. Numbers went over to the Nicenes, while others took up an independent or Macedonian position. The Homoean power in the provinces fell of itself before it was touched by persecution. It scarcely even struggled against its fate. At Jerusalem indeed party spirit ran as high as ever, but Alexandria was given up to Peter almost without resistance. We find one or two outrages like the murder of Eusebius of Samosata by an Arian woman in a country town, who threw down a tile on his head, but we hardly ever find a Homoean bishop heartily supported by his flock.

Constantinople itself was now the chief stronghold of the Arians. They had held the churches since 340, and were steadily supported by the court. Thus the city populace was devoted to Arianism, and the Nicenes were a mere remnant, without either church or teacher. The time, however, was now come for a mission to the capital. Gregory of Nazianzus was the son of Bishop Gregory, born about the time of the Nicene council. His father was already presbyter of Nazianzus, and held the bishopric for nearly half a century. (329-374.) Young Gregory was a student of many schools. From the Cappadocian CÆsarea he went on to the Palestinian, and thence to Alexandria; but Athens was the goal of his student-life. Gregory and Basil and Prince Julian met at the feet of ProÆresius. They all did credit to his eloquence, but there the likeness ends. Gregory disliked Julian's strange, excited manner, and persuaded himself in later years that he had even then foreseen the evil of the apostate's reign. With Basil, on the other hand his friendship was for life. They were well-matched in eloquence, in ascetic zeal, and in opposition to Arianism, though Basil's imperious ways were a trial to Gregory's gentler and less active spirit. During the quarrel with Anthimus of Tyana, Basil thought fit to secure the disputed possession of Sasima by making it a bishopric. (372.) It was a miserable post-station—'No water, no grass, nothing but dust and carts, and groans and howls, and small officials with their usual instruments of torture.' Gregory was made bishop of Sasima against his will, and never fairly entered on his repulsive duties. After a few years' retirement, he came forward to undertake the mission to Constantinople. (379.) The great city was a city of triflers. They jested at the actors and the preachers without respect of persons, and followed with equal eagerness the races and the theological disputes. Anomoeans abounded in their noisy streets, and the graver Novatians and Macedonians were infected with the spirit of wrangling. Gregory's austere character and simple life were in themselves a severe rebuke to the lovers of pleasure round him. He began his work in a private house, and only built a church when the numbers of his flock increased. He called it his Anastasia,—the church of the resurrection of the faith. The mob was hostile—one night they broke into his church—but the fruit of his labours was a growing congregation of Nicenes in the capital.

Gratian's next step was to share his burden with a colleague. If the care of the whole Empire had been too much for Diocletian or Valentinian, Gratian's were not the Atlantean shoulders which could bear its undivided weight. In the far West, at Cauca near Segovia, there lived a son of Theodosius, the recoverer of Britain and Africa, whose execution had so foully stained the opening of Gratian's reign. That memory of blood was still fresh, yet in that hour of overwhelming danger Gratian called young Theodosius to be his honoured colleague and deliverer. Early in 379 he gave him the conduct of the Gothic war. With it went the Empire of the East.

Theodosius was neither Greek nor Asiatic, but a stranger from the Spanish West, endued with a full measure of Spanish courage and intolerance. As a general he was the most brilliant Rome had seen since Julian's death. Men compared him to Trajan, and in a happier age he might have rivalled Trajan's fame. But now the Empire was ready to perish. The beaten army was hopelessly demoralized, and Theodosius had to form a new army of barbarian legionaries before the old tradition of Roman superiority could resume its wonted sway. It soon appeared that the Goths could do nothing with their victory, and sooner or later would have to make their peace with Rome. Theodosius drove them inland in the first campaign; and while he lay sick at Thessalonica in the second, Gratian or his generals received the submission of the Ostrogoths. Fritigern died the same year, and his old rival Athanaric was a fugitive before it ended. When the returning Ostrogoths dislodged him from his Transylvanian forest, he was welcomed with honourable courtesy by Theodosius in person at Constantinople. But the old enemy of Rome and Christianity had only come to lay his bones on Roman soil. In another fortnight the barbarian chief was carried out with kingly splendour to his Roman funeral. Theodosius had nobly won Athanaric's inheritance. His wondering Goths at once took service with their conqueror: chief after chief submitted, and the work of peace was completed on the Danube in the autumn of 382.

We can now return to ecclesiastical affairs. The dangerous illness of Theodosius in 380 had important consequences, for his baptism by Ascholius of Thessalonica was the natural signal for a more decided policy. Ascholius was a zealous Nicene, so that Theodosius was committed to the Nicene side as effectually as Valens had been to the Homoean; and Theodosius was less afraid of strong measures than Valens. His first rescript (Feb. 27, 380) commands all men to follow the Nicene doctrine 'committed by the apostle Peter to the Romans, and now professed by Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria,' and plainly threatens to impose temporal punishments on the heretics. Here it will be seen that Theodosius abandons Constantine's test of orthodoxy by subscription to a creed. It seemed easier now, and more in the spirit of Latin Christianity, to require communion with certain churches. The choice of Rome is natural, the addition of Alexandria shows that the Emperor was still a stranger to the mysteries of Eastern partizanship.

There was no reason for delay when the worst dangers of the Gothic war were over. Theodosius made his formal entry into Constantinople, November 24, 380, and at once required the bishop either to accept the Nicene faith or to leave the city. Demophilus honourably refused to give up his heresy, and adjourned his services to the suburbs. So ended the forty years of Arian domination in Constantinople. But the mob was still Arian, and their stormy demonstrations when the cathedral of the Twelve Apostles was given up to Gregory of Nazianzus were enough to make Theodosius waver. Arian influence was still strong at court, and Arian bishops came flocking to Constantinople. Low as they had fallen, they could still count among them the great name of Ulfilas. But he could give them little help, for though the Goths of Moesia were faithful to the Empire, Theodosius preferred the stalwart heathens of Athanaric to their Arian countrymen. Ulfilas died at Constantinople like Athanaric, but there was no royal funeral for the first apostle of the Northern nations. Theodosius hesitated, and even consented to see the heresiarch Eunomius, who was then living near Constantinople. The Nicenes took alarm, and the Empress Flaccilla urged her husband on the path of persecution. The next edict (Jan. 381) forbade heretical discussions and assemblies inside cities, and ordered the churches everywhere to be given up to the Nicenes.

Thus was Arianism put down, as it had been set up, by the civil power. Nothing now remained but to clear away the disorders which the strife had left behind. Once more an imperial summons went forth for a council to meet at Constantinople in May 381. It was a sombre gathering. The bright hope which lighted the Empire at NicÆa had long ago died out, and even the conquerors now had no more joyous feeling than that of thankfulness that the weary strife was coming to an end. Only a hundred and fifty bishops were present, all of them Easterns. The West was not represented even by a Roman legate. Amongst them were Meletius of Antioch, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus as elect of Constantinople, and Basil's unworthy successor, Helladius of CÆsarea. Timothy of Alexandria came later. The Semiarians mustered thirty-six under Eleusius of Cyzicus.

The bishops were greeted with much splendour, and received a truly imperial welcome in the form of a new edict of persecution against the Manichees. Meletius of Antioch presided in the council, and Paulinus was ignored. Theodosius was no longer neutral between Constantinople and Alexandria. The Egyptians were not invited to the earlier sittings, or at least were not present. The first act of the assembly was to ratify the choice of Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop of Constantinople. Meletius died as they were coming to discuss the affairs of Antioch, and Gregory took his place as president. Here was an excellent chance of putting an end to the schism, for Paulinus and Meletius had agreed that on the death of either of them, the survivor should be recognised by both parties as bishop of Antioch. But the council was jealous of Paulinus and his Western friends, and broke the agreement by appointing Flavian, one of the presbyters who had sworn to refuse the office. Gregory's remonstrance against this breach of faith only drew upon him the hatred of the Eastern bishops. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were glad to join any attack on a nominee of Meletius, and found an obsolete Nicene canon to invalidate his translation from Sasima to Constantinople. Both parties were thus agreed for evil. Gregory cared not to dispute with them, but gave up his beloved Anastasia, and retired to end his days at Nazianzus. The council was not worthy of him. His successor was another sort of man. Nectarius, the prÆtor of Constantinople, was a man of the world of dignified presence, but neither saint nor student. Him, however, Theodosius chose to fill the vacant see, and under his guidance the council finished its sessions.

The next move was to find out whether the Semiarians were willing to share the victory of the Nicenes. As they were still a strong party round the Hellespont, their friendship was important. Theodosius also was less of a zealot than some of his admirers imagine. The sincerity of his desire to conciliate Eleusius is fairly guaranteed by his effort two years later to find a scheme of comprehension even for the Anomoeans. But the old soldier was not to be tempted by hopes of imperial favour. However he might oppose the Anomoeans, he could not forgive the Nicenes their inclusion of the Holy Spirit in the sphere of co-essential deity. Those of the Semiarians who were willing to join the Nicenes had already done so, and the rest were obstinate. They withdrew from the council and gave up their churches like the Arians. They comforted themselves with those words of Scripture, 'The churchmen are many, but the elect are few.'[1]

Whatever jealousies might divide the conquerors, the Arian contest was now at an end. Pontus and Syria were still divided from Rome and Egypt on the question of Flavian's appointment, and there were the germs of many future troubles in the disposition of Alexandria to look for help to Rome against the upstart see of Constantinople; but against Arianism the council was united. Its first canon is a solemn ratification of the Nicene creed in its original shape, with a formal condemnation of all the heresies, 'and specially those of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, of the Arians or Eudoxians (Homoeans), of the Semiarians or Pneumatomachi; of the Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians, and Apollinarians.'

The bishops issued no new creed. Tradition indeed ascribes to them the spurious Nicene creed of our Communion Service, with the exception of two later insertions—the clause 'God of God,' and the procession of the Holy Spirit 'from the Son' as well as 'from the Father.' The story is an old one, for it can be traced back to one of the speakers at the council of Chalcedon in 451. It caused some surprise at the time, but was afterwards accepted. Yet it is beyond all question false. This is shown by four convergent lines of argument. In the first place, (1.) it is a priori unlikely. The Athanasian party had been contending all along, not vaguely for the Nicene doctrine, but for the Nicene creed, the whole Nicene creed, and nothing but the Nicene creed. Athanasius refused to touch it at Sardica in 343, refused again at Alexandria in 362, and to the end of his life refused to admit that it was in any way defective. Basil himself as late as 377 declined even to consider some additions to the incarnation proposed to him by Epiphanius of Salamis. Is it likely that their followers would straightway revise the creed the instant they got the upper hand in 381? And such a revision! The elaborate framework of NicÆa is completely shattered, and even the keystone clause 'of the essence of the Father' is left out. Moreover, (2.) there is no contemporary evidence that they did revise it. No historian mentions anything of the sort, and no single document connected with the council gives the slightest colour to the story. There is neither trace nor sign of it for nearly seventy years. The internal evidence (3.) points the same way. Deliberate revision implies a deliberate purpose to the alterations made. Now in this case, though we have serious variations enough, there is another class of differences so meaningless that they cannot even be represented in an English translation. There remains (4.) one more argument. The spurious Nicene creed cannot be the work of the fathers of Constantinople in 381, because it is given in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, which was certainly written in 374. But if the council did not draw up the creed, it is time to ask who did. Everything seems to show that it is not a revision of the Nicene creed at all, but of the local creed of Jerusalem, executed by Bishop Cyril on his return from exile in 362. This is only a theory, but it has all the evidence which a theory can have—it explains the whole matter. In the first place, the meaningless changes disappear if we compare the spurious Nicene creed with that of Jerusalem instead of the genuine Nicene. Every difference can be accounted for by reference to the known position and opinions of Cyril. Thus the old Jerusalem creed says that the Lord 'sat down at the right hand of the Father;' our 'Nicene,' that he 'sitteth.' Now this is a favourite point of Cyril in his Catecheses—that the Lord did not sit down once for all, but that he sitteth so for ever. Similarly other points. We also know that other local creeds were revised about the same time and in the same way. In the next place, the occurrence of a revised Jerusalem creed in the Ancoratus is natural. Epiphanius was past middle life when he left Palestine for Cyprus in 368, and never forgot the friends he left behind at Lydda. We are also in a position to account for its ascription to the council of Constantinople. Cyril's was a troubled life, and there are many indications that he was accused of heresy in 381, and triumphantly acquitted by the council. In such a case his creed would naturally be examined and approved. It was a sound confession, and in no way heretical. From this point its history is clearer. The authority of Jerusalem combined with its own intrinsic merits to recommend it, and the incidental approval of the bishops at Constantinople was gradually developed into the legend of their authorship.

The remaining canons are mostly aimed at the disorders which had grown up during the reign of Valens. One of them checks the reckless accusations which were brought against the bishops by ordering that no charge of heresy should be received from heretics and such like. Such a disqualification of accusers was not unreasonable, as it did not apply to charges of private wrong; yet this clerical privilege grew into one of the worst scandals of the Middle Ages. The forged decretals of the ninth century not only order the strictest scrutiny of witnesses against a bishop, but require seventy-two of them to convict him of any crime except heresy. Another canon forbids the intrusion of bishops into other dioceses. 'Nevertheless, the bishop of Constantinople shall hold the first rank after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome.' This is the famous third canon, which laid a foundation for the ecclesiastical authority of Constantinople. It was extended at Chalcedon (451) into a jurisdiction over the whole country from Mount Taurus to the Danube, and by Justinian into the supremacy of the East. The canon, therefore, marks a clear step in the concentration of the Eastern Church and Empire round Constantinople. The blow struck Rome on one side, Alexandria on the other. It was the reason why Rome withheld for centuries her full approval from the council of Constantinople. (1215.) She could not safely give it till her Eastern rival was humiliated; and this was not till the time of the Latin Emperors in the thirteenth century.

The council having ratified the Emperor's work, it only remained for the Emperor to complete that of the council. A new edict in July forbade Arians of every sort to build churches. Even their old liberty to build outside the walls of cities was now taken from them. At the end of the month Theodosius issued an amended definition of orthodoxy. Henceforth sound belief was to be guaranteed by communion, no longer with Rome and Alexandria, but with Constantinople, Alexandria, and the chief bishoprics of the East. The choice of bishops was decided partly by their own importance, partly by that of their sees. Gregory of Nyssa may represent one class, Helladius of CÆsarea the other. The omissions, however, are significant. We miss not only Antioch and Jerusalem, but Ephesus and Hadrianople, and even Nicomedia. There is a broad space left clear around the Bosphorus. If we now take into account the third canon, we cannot mistake the Asiatic policy of endeavouring to replace the primacy of Rome or Alexandria by that of Constantinople.

The tolerance of Theodosius was a little, though only a little, wider than it seems. Though the Novatians were not in communion with Nectarius, they were during the next half century a recognised exception to the persecuting laws. They had always been sound as against Arianism, and their bishop Agelius had suffered exile under Valens. His confession was approved by Theodosius, and several of his successors lived on friendly terms with liberal or worldly patriarchs like Nectarius and Atticus. They suffered something from the bigotry of Chrysostom, something also from the greed of Cyril, but for them the age of persecution only began with Nestorius in 428.

So far as numbers went, the cause of Arianism was not even yet hopeless. It was still fairly strong in Syria and Asia, and counted adherents as far west as the banks of the Danube. At Constantinople it could raise dangerous riots (in one of them Nectarius had his house burnt), and even at the court of Milan it had a powerful supporter in Valentinian's widow, the Empress Justina. Yet its fate was none the less a mere question of time. Its cold logic generated no such fiery enthusiasm as sustained the African Donatists; the newness of its origin allowed no venerable traditions to grow up round it like those of heathenism, while its imperial claims and past successes cut it off from the appeal of later heresies to provincial separatism. When, therefore, the last overtures of Theodosius fell through in 383, the heresy was quite unable to bear the strain of steady persecution.

But if Arianism soon ceased to be a power inside the Empire, it remained the faith of the barbarian invaders. The work of Ulfilas was not in vain. Not the Goths only, but all the earlier Teutonic converts were Arians. And the Goths had a narrow miss of empire. The victories of Theodosius were won by Gothic strength. It was the Goths who scattered the mutineers of Britain, and triumphantly scaled the impregnable walls of Aquileia; (388) the Goths who won the hardest battle of the century, and saw the Franks themselves go down before them on the Frigidus. (394) The Goths of Alaric plundered Rome itself; the Goths of GaÏnas entered Constantinople, though only to be overwhelmed and slaughtered round the vain asylum of their burning church.

In the next century the Teutonic conquest of the West gave Arianism another lease of power. Once more the heresy was supreme in Italy, and Spain, and Africa. Once more it held and lost the future of the world. To the barbarian as well as to the heathen it was a half-way halt upon the road to Christianity; and to the barbarian also it was nothing but a source of weakness. It lived on and in its turn perpetuated the feud between the Roman and the Teuton which caused the destruction of the earlier Teutonic kingdoms in Western Europe. The provincials or their children might forget the wrongs of conquest, but heresy was a standing insult to the Roman world. Theodoric the Ostrogoth may rank with the greatest statesmen of the Empire, yet even Theodoric found his Arianism a fatal disadvantage. And if the isolation of heresy fostered the beginnings of a native literature, it also blighted every hope of future growth. The Goths were not inferior to the English, but there is nothing in Gothic history like the wonderful burst of power which followed the conversion of the English. There is no Gothic writer to compare with Bede or CÆdmon. Jordanis is not much to set against them, and even Jordanis was not an Arian.

The sword of Belisarius did but lay open the internal disunion of Italy and Africa. A single blow destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals, and all the valour of the Ostrogoths could only win for theirs a downfall of heroic grandeur. Sooner or later every Arian nation had to purge itself of heresy or vanish from the earth. Even the distant Visigoths (589) were forced to see that Arians could not hold Spain. The Lombards in Italy were the last defenders of the hopeless cause, and they too yielded a few years later to the efforts of Pope Gregory and Queen Theudelinda. (599) Of Continental Teutons, the Franks alone escaped the divisions of Arianism. In the strength of orthodoxy they drove the Goths before them on the field of VouglÉ (507), and brought the green standard of the Prophet to a halt upon the Loire (732). The Franks were no better than their neighbours—rather worse—so that it was nothing but their orthodoxy which won for them the prize which the Lombard and the Goth had missed, and brought them through a long career of victory to that proud day of universal reconciliation (800) when the strife of ages was forgotten, and Arianism with it—when, after more than three hundred years of desolating anarchy, the Latin and the Teuton joined to vindicate for Old Rome her just inheritance of empire, and to set its holy diadem upon the head of Karl the Frank.

Now that we have traced the history of Arianism to its final overthrow, let us once more glance at the causes of its failure. Arianism, then, was an illogical compromise. It went too far for heathenism, not far enough for Christianity. It conceded Christian worship to the Lord, yet made him no better than a heathen demigod. It confessed a Heavenly Father, as in Christian duty bound, yet identified Him with the mysterious and inaccessible Supreme of the philosophers. As a scheme of Christianity, it was overmatched at every point by the Nicene doctrine; as a concession to heathenism, it was outbid by the growing worship of saints and relics. Debasing as was the error of turning saints into demigods, it seems to have shocked Christian feeling less than the Arian audacity which degraded the Lord of saints to the level of his creatures. But the crowning weakness of Arianism was the incurable badness of its method. Whatever were the errors of Athanasius—and in details they were not a few—his work was without doubt a faithful search for truth by every means attainable to him. He may be misled by his ignorance of Hebrew or by the defective exegesis of his time; but his eyes are always open to the truth, from whatever quarter it may come to him. In breadth of view as well as grasp of doctrine, he is beyond comparison with the rabble of controversialists who cursed or still invoke his name. The gospel was truth and life to him, not a mere subject for strife and debate. It was far otherwise with the Arians. On one side their doctrine was a mass of presumptuous theorizing, supported by alternate scraps of obsolete traditionalism and uncritical text-mongering; on the other it was a lifeless system of spiritual pride and hard unlovingness. Therefore Arianism perished. So too every system, whether of science or theology, must likewise perish which presumes like Arianism to discover in the feeble brain of man a law to circumscribe the revelation of our Father's love in Christ.