is to be defended by exhorting,
not by slaying, not by severity, but by patience; not by crime, but by
faith: _... nihil enim est tam voluntarium quam religio_."[308] "Deus,"
says St. Hilary of Poitiers ("ad Constantium," _Opp._ i. p. 1221 C),
"obsequio non eget necessario, non requirit coactam confessionem."[309]
St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom protest in like manner against
the intemperate proselytism of the day.[310] For the result which
followed the general adoption of Christianity threw an unfavourable
light on the motives which had caused it. It became evident that the
heathen world was incapable of being regenerated, that the weeds were
choking the good seed. The corruption increased in the Church to such a
degree that the Christians, unable to divest themselves of the Roman
notion of the _orbis terrarum_, deemed the end of the world at hand. St.
Augustine (_sermo_ cv.) rebukes this superstitious fear: "Si non manet
civitas quae nos carnaliter genuit, manet quae nos spiritualiter genuit.
Numquid (Dominus) dormitando aedificium suum perdidit, aut non
custodiendo hostes admisit?... Quid expavescis quia pereunt regna
terrena? Ideo tibi coeleste promissum est, ne cum terrenis perires....
Transient quae fecit ipse Deus; quanto citius quod condidit Romulus....
Non ergo deficiamus, fratres: finis erit terrenis omnibus regnis."[311]
But even some of the fathers themselves were filled with despair at the
spectacle of the universal demoralisation: "Totius mundi una vox
Christus est ... Horret animus temporum nostrorum ruinas persequi....
Romanus orbis ruit, et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur....
Nostris peccatis barbari fortes sunt. Nostris vitiis Romanus superatur
exercitus.... Nec amputamus causas morbi, ut morbus pariter
auferatur.... Orbis terrarum ruit, in nobis peccata non ruunt."[312] St.
Ambrose announces the end still more confidently: "Verborum coelestium
nulli magis quam nos testes sumus, quos mundi finis invenit.... Quia in
occasu saeculi sumus, praecedunt quaedam aegritudines mundi."[313] Two
generations later Salvianus exclaims: "Quid est aliud paene omnis coetus
Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum?"[314] And St. Leo declares, "Quod
temporibus nostris auctore diabolo sic vitiata sunt omnia, ut paene
nihil sit quod absque idolatria transigatur."[315]

When, early in the fifth century, the dismemberment of the Western
empire commenced, it was clear that Christianity had not succeeded in
reformin