to Rome.

THE COMING OF THE HUNS

In the middle of the fourth century the state of the Christian religion
was a scandal and a disgrace. Patient, humble, and long-suffering in
adversity, it had become positive, aggressive, and unreasonable with
success. Paganism was not yet dead, but it was rapidly sinking, finding
its most faithful supporters among the conservative aristocrats of the
best families on the one hand, and among those benighted villagers on
the other who gave their name to the expiring creed. Between these
two extremes the great majority of reasonable men had turned from the
conception of many gods to that of one, and had rejected for ever the
beliefs of their forefathers. But with the vices of polytheism they had
also abandoned its virtues, among which toleration and religious good
humour had been conspicuous. The strenuous earnestness of the Christians
had compelled them to examine and define every point of their own
theology; but as they had no central authority by which such definitions
could be checked, it was not long before a hundred heresies had put
forward their rival views, while the same earnestness of conviction led
the stronger bands of schismatics to endeavour, for conscience sake, to
force their views upon the weaker, and thus to cover the Eastern world
with confusion and strife.

Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople were centres of theological
warfare. The whole north of Africa, too, was rent by the strife of the
Donatists, who upheld their particular schism by iron flails and the
war-cry of "Praise to the Lord!" But minor local controversies sank to
nothing when compared with the huge argument of the Catholic and the
Arian, which rent every village in twain, and divided every household
from the cottage to the palace. The rival doctrines of the Homoousian
and of the Homoiousian, containing metaphysical differences so
attenuated that they could hardly be stated, turned bishop against
bishop and congregation against congregation. The ink of the theologians
and the blood of the fanatics were spilled in floods on either side, and
gentle followers of Christ were horrified to find that their faith was
responsible for such a state of riot and bloodshed as had never yet
disgraced the religious history of the world. Many of the more earnest
among them, shocked and scandalized, slipped away to the Libyan Desert,
or to the solitude of Pontus, there to await in self-denial and prayer
that