ath was open; other objects presented. A successful career in the
Church led to results not unworthy of comparison with those that in
former days had been attained by a successful career in the army.

The ecclesiastical, and indeed, it may be said, much of the political
history of that time, turns on the struggles of the bishops of the
three great metropolitan cities--Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome--for
supremacy: Constantinople based her claims on the fact that she was
the existing imperial city; Alexandria pointed to her commercial
and literary position; Rome, to her souvenirs. But the Patriarch of
Constantinople labored under the disadvantage that he was too closely
under the eye, and, as he found to his cost, too often under the hand,
of the emperor. Distance gave security to the episcopates of Alexandria
and Rome.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. Religious disputations in the East have
generally turned on diversities of opinion respecting the nature and
attributes of God; in the West, on the relations and life of man. This
peculiarity has been strikingly manifested in the transformations that
Christianity has undergone in Asia and Europe respectively. Accordingly,
at the time of which we are speaking, all the Eastern provinces of
the Roman Empire exhibited an intellectual anarchy. There were fierce
quarrels respecting the Trinity, the essence of God, the position of the
Son, the nature of the Holy Spirit, the influences of the Virgin Mary.
The triumphant clamor first of one then of another sect was confirmed,
sometimes by miracle-proof, sometimes by bloodshed. No attempt was ever
made to submit the rival opinions to logical examination. All parties,
however, agreed in this, that the imposture of the old classical pagan
forms of faith was demonstrated by the facility with which they had been
overthrown. The triumphant ecclesiastics proclaimed that the images of
the gods had failed to defend themselves when the time of trial came.

Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the southern
European races, the Semitic have maintained the unity of God. Perhaps
this is due to the fact, as a recent author has suggested, that a
diversified landscape of mountains and valleys, islands, and rivers, and
gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of divinities. A vast
sandy desert, the illimitable ocean, impresses him with an idea of the
oneness of God.

Political reasons had led the emperors to look with favor on