re
recent ideas; but, before he could accomplish this, he was overtaken by
death. So little efficacy was there in the determination of the Council
of Nicea, that for many years afterward creed upon creed appeared. What
Constantine's new creed would have been may be told from the fact that
the Consubstantialists had gone out of power, and from what his son
Constantius soon after did at the Council of Ariminium.

[Sidenote: Spread of theological disputes.]

[Sidenote: Athanasius rebels against the emperor.]

[Sidenote: Steady aggression of the Church and crimes of ecclesiastics.]

So far, therefore, from the Council of Nicea ending the controversies
afflicting religion, they continued with increasing fury. The sons and
successors of Constantine set an example of violence in these disputes;
and, until the barbarians burst in upon the empire, the fourth century
wore away in theological feuds. Even the populace, scarcely emerged from
paganism, set itself up for a judge on questions from their very nature
incapable of being solved; and to this the government gave an impetus by
making the profits of public service the reward of sectarian violence.
The policy of Constantine began to produce its results. Mental activity
and ambition found their true field in ecclesiastical affairs. Orthodoxy
triumphed, because it was more in unison with the present necessity of
the court, while asserting the predominance of Christianity, to offend
as little as might be the pagan party. The heresy of Arius, though it
might suit the monotheistic views of the educated, did not commend
itself to that large mass who had been so recently pagan. Already the
elements of dissension were obvious enough; on one side there was an
illiterate, intolerant, unscrupulous, credulous, numerous body, on the
other a refined, better-informed, yet doubting sect. The Emperor
Constantius, guided by his father's latest principles, having sided with
the Arian party, soon found that under the new system a bishop would,
without hesitation, oppose his sovereign. Athanasius, the Bishop of
Alexandria, as the head of the orthodox party, became the personal
antagonist of the emperor, who attempted, after vainly using physical
compulsion, to resort to the celestial weapons in vogue by laying claim
to Divine inspiration. Like his father, he had a celestial vision; but,
as his views were Arian, the orthodox rejected without scruple his
supernatural authority, and Hilary of Poict