the clashing
of interests between them more frequent, their rivalry more bitter. The
control of ecclesiastical power was hence perpetually in Rome, though
she was, both politically and intellectually, inferior to her
competitors. As of old, there was a triumvirate in the world destined to
concentrate into a despotism. And, as if to remind men that the
principles involved in the movements of the Church are of the same
nature as those involved in the movements of the state, the resemblances
here pointed out are sometimes singularly illustrated in trifling
details. The Bishop of Alexandria was not the first triumvir who came to
an untimely end on the banks of the Nile; the Roman pontiff was not the
first who consolidated his power by the aid of Gallic legions.

CHAPTER X.

THE EUROPEAN AGE OF FAITH.

AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.

_Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church
and State.--The consequent Paganization of Religion and
Persecution of Philosophy._

_Political Necessity for the enforcement of Patristicism, or
Science of the Fathers.--Its peculiar Doctrines._

_Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge by
Patristicism.--The Libraries and Serapion of
Alexandria.--Destruction of the latter by Theodosius.--Death
of Hypatia.--Extinction of Learning in the East by Cyril, his
Associates and Successors._

[Sidenote: The age of Faith.]

The policy of Constantine the Great inevitably tended to the
paganization of Christianity. An incorporation of its pure doctrines
with decaying pagan ideas was the necessary consequence of the control
that had been attained by unscrupulous politicians and placemen. The
faith, thus contaminated, gained a more general and ready popular
acceptance, but at the cost of a new lease of life to those ideas. So
thorough was the adulteration, that it was not until the Reformation, a
period of more than a thousand years, that a separation of the true from
the false could be accomplished.

[Sidenote: Subdivision of the subject.]

Considering how many nations were involved in these events, and the
length of time over which they extend, a clear treatment of the subject
requires its subdivision. I shall therefore speak, 1st, of the Age of
Faith in the East; 2nd, of the Age of Faith in the West. The former was
closed prematurely by the Mohammedan conquest; the latter, after
undergoing slow metamorphosis, passed into