e defeat
of the civil power; he was five times banished, but five times he
returned in triumph. The temporal power of the Church was in its
infancy; it only rose upon the conversion of Constantine, and it was
weak compared to what it became in after ages; but, when the Emperor
of Germany did penance barefoot before Pope Hildebrand, and a king of
England was whipped at Becket's tomb, we only witness the full-grown
strength of the infant power that was being reared by the Bishop of
Alexandria. His writings are numerous and wholly controversial, chiefly
against the Arians. The Athanasian creed seems to have been so named
only because it was thought to contain his opinions, as it is known to
be by a later author.

On the death of Athanasius, the Homoousian party chose Peter as his
successor in the bishopric, overlooking Lucius, the Arian bishop, whose
election had been approved by the emperors Julian, Jovian, and Valens.
But as the Egyptian church had lost its great champion, the emperor
ventured to re-assert his authority. He sent Peter to prison, and
ordered all the churches to be given up to the Arians, threatening with
banishment from Egypt whoever disobeyed his edict. The persecution
which the Homoousian party throughout Upper Egypt then suffered from the
Arians equalled, says the ecclesiastical historian, anything that they
had before suffered from the pagans. Every monastery in Egypt was broken
open by Lucius at the head of an armed force, and the cruelty of
the bishop surpassed that of the soldiers. The breaking open of the
monasteries seems to have been for the purpose of making the inmates
bear their share in the military service of the state, rather than
for any religious reasons. When Constantine embraced Christianity, he
immediately recognised all the religious scruples of its professors;
and not only bishops and presbyters but all laymen who had entered the
monastic orders were freed from the duty of serving in the army. But
under the growing dislike of military service, and the difficulty of
finding soldiers, when to escape from the army many called themselves
Christian monks, this excuse could no longer be listened to, and Valens
made a law that monastic vows should not save a man from enlistment.
But this law was not easily carried into force in the monasteries on
the borders of the desert, which were often well-built and well-guarded
fortresses; and on Mount Nitria, in particular, many monks lost
their li