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government, unity of worship should correspond to the ideal unity of the empire, and that the sovereign had a right to impose his religion upon his subjects, was deeply rooted in the minds of rulers. And the church had but recently emerged from a tempest of savage persecution that taught her a lesson of intolerance. Most of all we should remember that the age was one of INTENSE The ardent feelings RELIGIOUS PASSION.

that under a representative government would find an outlet in political discussion and action, denied these, were directed with redoubled energy along the channels of ecclesiastical politics and The intellectual acu. theological controversy. men that in an age of authorship would have been exercised in literary criticism was directed to the analysis of a copious Christian literature. The church was democratic, and opened an avenue for the exercise of native talent. But beneath these and any other secondary causes that might be alleged we must recognize the rise of a springtide of religious emotion the very excesses of which are at least in refreshing contrast to the senility of pagan culture. And such characters as those of the Christian heroes Athanasius and Ambrose would reflect imperishable lustre upon any age.

In the year 340 Athanasius visited Rome, having been driven from his see by an Arian reaction,

and was cordially received by the bishop, Julius. At the same time Paulus, orthodox bishop of Constantinople, also arrived there, seeking counsel and support. It is pleasant to dwell upon the sympathetic intercourse these three defenders of the faith then enjoyed-the bishops of both Romes and the pope of Alexandria-in view of the long and fierce feuds that raged between their successors in after times. Julius sent Paulus back to the capital with letters demanding his restitution, but he was unable to maintain himself in opposition to an Arian court, was again expelled, and died in exile. Then for a full generation the see of Constantinople was occupied by a succession of Arian prelates whose heterodoxy was of an extreme type. The great sees of Alexandria and Antioch suffered similar but even more violent disorders: the heretical bishops who intruded into the former during the lifetime of Athanasius cruelly persecuted his adherents; while in the latter an Arian synod occasioned a schism that lasted more than fifty years. Even the indefectible faith of the Roman bishops suffered a temporary lapse in the person of Julius' successor, Liberius. He was strictly orthodox by conviction, but experienced the malign influence of the civil power. Banished by order of the Emperor Constantius to the inhospitable region of the river Save, he was badgered at last into subscribing an

Arian symbol and communicating with those who had devised it. Then he was allowed to return to Rome, where he was received with popular rejoicing. It is a notable fact that in all these cases the people were enthusiastically on the side of the persecuted orthodox prelates, recognizing them as leaders of the only effective opposition to imperial despotism. Upon the election of a successor to Liberius-who died in the catholic faith in the year 366—the whole city was convulsed: a war of factions broke out, many lives were lost,— the pavement of a church was defiled with blood. The party of the Spaniard Damasus was victorious in the strife, and he was installed as rightful bishop; his rival was banished by the Emperor Valentinian, and Damasus succeeded in stamping out the last embers of the conflagration with the aid of the civil authority.

From the recent partition of the empire and from the Arian troubles Damasus derived the claim which he put forth to jurisdiction over the churches of Illyria and Macedonia. Those provinces had been assigned to the western half of the empire, and the claim based on the political boundary was strengthened by the fact that the eastern emperor Valens and his bishops were vehement Arians. Damasus is said to have appointed the bishop of Thessalonica as his vicar in those regions

In writings of the time we discover clear indications of the increasing wealth and importance of the Roman see. Enriched by the munificence of pious women, the bishop was enabled already to assume the state of a temporal lord. In Jerome's letters there are palpable hits at the clerical dandies of the day.

After a youth of unrestrained self-indulgence, in which he became perfectly acquainted with all the vices of that corrupt society-he had sinned in every sense, as he himself confesses,-Jerome swung as vehemently to the opposite extreme, and became an apostle of the ascetic life, the “angelic philosophy," as it was fondly called. Invited to Rome, Damasus made him his secretary; at the bishop's request he began his great translation of the Scriptures into Latin, and finished while there his version of the four Gospels. It is easy to understand how, after a period of subjection to sensual pleasures such as both Jerome and Augustine experienced, there should come about a strenuous recoil toward a life of self-mortification: it is not so easy to account for the fascination that the monastic ideal exerted over the imaginations of men like Athanasius, Ambrose, Basil and Chrysostom,-men whose youth had been pure, their home life sweet and ennobling. But the pleasures of the senses had become the be-all and the end-all, the guide of life, of decaying heathenism,

and so it is little wonder that to the sensitive Christian conscience, revolting from the widespread pollution, any indulgence appeared like abuse, and total disuse seemed the only alternative. Again, the conception of a right use of property had not dawned upon the world: wealth was profaned to selfish and sinful ends: complete surrender of it, therefore, seemed the only course to the enthusiastic piety of the time. Certain it is that the choicer spirits were captivated by the thought of an austere life of celibacy, poverty, and retirement from the world. To them the church itself seemed secularized by its alliance with the civil power. These ideas were yet novel and unwelcome to the Romans when Jerome began his ardent propaganda, and in spite of ridicule and obloquy made himself heard. His patron Damasus sympathized with him, and indeed himself burst into verse "in praise of virginity."

In the year 381 a council of only a hundred and fifty bishops met at Constantinople, at the bidding of the orthodox emperor Theodosius, to draw up a definitive condemnation of Arian heresy. Although Damasus was not invited to attend, and the western church was not represented at the council, it yet came in time to be recognized as the second ecumenical assembly of Christendom. The third canon passed by it has an especial bearing upon our subject: it ordained that thenceforth

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