First, it became an intellectual fashion. Heathenism was a failure as an answer to the questions of the soul. Men felt it to be a failure, and even while they vowed that all religion was but guess-work, the agnostic world resolved that it was more respectable to wear the label of the Christian scheme.

This condition seems to have been especially marked in the East. In the West this great process by which heathenism broke up and melted into a freshet, threatening to overwhelm the Church in the very moment of yielding to its warmth, went on more slowly and so more safely. In the East, the popular movement toward the Church, not toward a Catholic Christianity be it observed, but toward the Church, as half-converted heathen observers lazily misunderstood and thought they liked it,—that dangerous movement was held in check for ten years by the Diocletian persecution, from 303 to 313, and then the flood came. Edicts of toleration made Christianity a permitted religion for the first time in men's memory. Nay, it became known that it was to be a favored religion. The new emperor, victorious Constantine, was a Christian himself or very nearly so. To be a Christian was a way to the imperial favor. What then? With one convulsive leap Christianity sprang forward to be a social fashion of the East.

Do not lay it all to hypocrisy. There had been, as I have suggested, an intellectual preparation of thorough dissatisfaction with old systems. There only had not been a true understanding of the new one. Doubtless, a crowd of people had poured into the Church who were practically heathen still. No otherwise can I account for some of the horrors of fourth century Church history. These were people converted to the Church, as I have said, rather than to Christianity, and converted through their enjoyment of the Church's accidents —its stately worship, its poetic symbolism, its cultivated leadership, its growing success-but having no love for the Church's essentials of mysterious revelation and severe morality. Mostly, such men would come to the Church's doors with no thought of pretending to be other than they were. Only gradually would they discover fully that the Church's mind and theirs could not consist together. When they did discover that fact, only one conclusion would be natural to them. Not receiving the Church as a supernatural institution, they would think it a real improvement to strike out some of her traditional essentials, in order that the greatest number might with the greatest ease enjoy the Church's pleasant non-essentials.

Such men would see in the Arian movement a golden opportunity to make the Church what they

thought the Church would better be-either a boneless body, not insisting on any clear-cut dogma about the mysteries of the faith, or (as some would even prefer) a body fiercely intolerant of any mystery in theology at all. A Church not essentially Christian, or else a Church positively anti-Christian-one or the other they wanted and meant to have. No doubt, also, they regarded themselves as laborers for the true welfare of humanity. Yet, as always happens when the world undertakes to reform the Church, they grew to be thoroughly unscrupulous in their methods of gaining their desire. Their morality no more than their theology was that of Jesus Christ. Determining to make the Church a new and different institution, easier to live in than the old Church had ever been, they also(most naturally) made the bishop's throne in every see their chief point of attack. The bishop was the guardian and trustee of the faith. It was he who decided for his diocese what were the limits of toleration in religious thought, and generally, what persons could, and who could not, be admitted to communion. If there was to be a radical change in the Church's comprehension, there must be a radical change in the bishops who settled the terms of that comprehension. The innovating, Arianizing party, therefore, used every means to get bishops of their mind into the Church's sees. They also used

every means, honest or dishonest, to get catholicminded bishops out.

Take the case of Athanasius himself. He was accused of murder, of the use of magic arts, nay, of killing a bishop, and cutting off his right hand for use in magic. He was charged with treason against the emperor, and with injury to the general interests of the empire. By a council held in another country, even in Palestinian Tyre,* and having no possible jurisdiction over persons or affairs in Egypt, he was pronounced to be deposed from his see. Within ten years he had twice been banished from Alexandria by imperial order. (Alas! if he could have foreseen it, he was to suffer such exile three times more.) This is the most conspicuous example that could be given, but it is only an example, of a kind of procedure that was going on actively throughout the East.

One touch in this dark picture is of peculiar importance for our present study. Athanasius was banished by the emperor as well as deposed by a Church council. In other words, the state had adopted the policy of pseudo-liberalism and meant to make the Church over in its own interest. Constantine, with a statesman's instinct, had seen in the Church the one great social power that could help him hold his own unwieldy empire

* A.D. 335.

together, teaching loyalty as a part of religion. Therefore it was that he had appeared as a defender of the faith at Nicæa. Some pestilent persons were disturbing the unity of the Church, and the Church and her unity were precious to him and must not be disturbed. Later, he learned

to take another view of things. The Church's peace was disturbed in any case, and its value as the cement of the empire was impaired. But which party was he to favor? To which should he award the final triumph? Surely, to those who would make the Church the most widely inclusive.* The more men the Church could hold within her borders, the better the Church would support his throne.

That was a false reasoning. A Church which was unfaithful to the faith would not for any long time attract more souls, and would always have less power in forming consciences, than a Church which continued steadfastly to be of God. Yet bad as the argument was, it was the natural argument of a worldly soul. It is the kind of mistake that worldly souls always have made, and always will. Constantine made it, at any rate,

*So Constantine wrote to Athanasius before his first exile: "Now that you know my will, admit into the Church all who wish to enter: if you disobey, I will send some one to expel you." S. Ath. Apol. v. 59, quoted by Canon Bright, History of the Church, A.D. 313-451, p. 36.