popular ideas
were permitted and even encouraged, the dominant religious party never
for a moment hesitated to enforce its decisions by the aid of the civil
power--an aid which was freely given. Constantine thus carried into
effect the acts of the Council of Nicea. In the affair of Arius, he even
ordered that whoever should find a book of that heretic, and not burn
it, should be put to death. In like manner Nestor was by Theodosius the
Younger banished to an Egyptian oasis.

The pagan party included many of the old aristocratic families of the
empire; it counted among its adherents all the disciples of the old
philosophical schools. It looked down on its antagonist with contempt.
It asserted that knowledge is to be obtained only by the laborious
exercise of human observation and human reason.

The Christian party asserted that all knowledge is to be found in the
Scriptures and in the traditions of the Church; that, in the written
revelation, God had not only given a criterion of truth, but had
furnished us all that he intended us to know. The Scriptures, therefore,
contain the sum, the end of all knowledge. The clergy, with the emperor
at their back, would endure no intellectual competition.

Thus came into prominence what were termed sacred and profane knowledge;
thus came into presence of each other two opposing parties, one relying
on human reason as its guide, the other on revelation. Paganism leaned
for support on the learning of its philosophers, Christianity on the
inspiration of its Fathers.

The Church thus set herself forth as the depository and arbiter of
knowledge; she was ever ready to resort to the civil power to compel
obedience to her decisions. She thus took a course which determined her
whole future career: she became a stumbling-block in the intellectual
advancement of Europe for more than a thousand years.

The reign of Constantine marks the epoch of the transformation of
Christianity from a religion into a political system; and though, in
one sense, that system was degraded into an idolatry, in another it had
risen into a development of the old Greek mythology. The maxim holds
good in the social as well as in the mechanical world, that, when two
bodies strike, the form of both is changed. Paganism was modified by
Christianity; Christianity by Paganism.

THE TRINITARIAN DISPUTE. In the Trinitarian controversy, which first
broke out in Egypt--Egypt, the land of Trinities--the chief point in
dis