INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I.

as that of the Holy Spirit, he held the conservative Eastern view. Nor were the Latin-speaking churches well equipped with theological literature. The two 6 great theologians who had as yet written in their tongue, Tertullian and Novatian—with the former of whom Hilary was familiar—were discredited by their personal history. St. Cyprian, the one doctor whom the West already boasted, could teach disciplined enthusiasm and Christian morality, but his scattered statements concerning points of doctrine convey nothing more than a general impression of piety and soundness; and even his arrangement, in the Testimonia, of scriptural evidences was a poor weapon against the logical attack of Arianism. But there is little reason to suppose that there was any general sense of the need of a more systematic theology. Africa was paralyzed, and the attention of the Western provinces was probably engrossed by the Donatist strife, into which questions of doctrine did not enter. The adjustment of the relations between Church and State, and the instruction and government of the countless converts who flocked to the Faith while toleration grew into imperial favor, must have needed all the attention that the Church’s rulers could give. And these busy years had followed upon a generation of merciless persecution, during which change of practice or growth of thought had been impossible; and the confessors—naturally a conservative force—were one of the dominant powers in the Church. We cannot be surprised that the scattered notices in Hilary’s writings of points of discipline, and his hortatory teaching, are in no respect different from what we find a century earlier in St. Cyprian. And men who were content to leave the superstructure as they found it were not likely to probe the foundations. Their belief grew in definiteness as the years went on, and faithful lives were rewarded, almost unconsciously, with a deeper insight into truth. But meanwhile, they took the Faith as they had received it; one might say, as a matter of course. There was little heresy within the Western Church. Arianism was never prevalent enough to excite fear, even though repugnance was felt. The churches were satisfied with faith and life as they saw it within and around them. Their religion was traditional, in no degenerate sense.

But such a religion could not satisfy ardent and logical minds like those of St. Hilary and his two great successors, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. To such men, it was a necessity of their faith that they should know—and know in its right proportions—the truth so far as it had been revealed, and trace the appointed limits which human knowledge might not overpass. For their own assurance and for effective warfare against heresy, a reasoned system of theology was necessary. Hilary, the earliest, had the greatest difficulty. To aid him in the interpretation of Scripture, he had only one writer in his own tongue, Tertullian, whose teaching—in the matters which interested Hilary—though orthodox, was behind the times. His strong insistence upon the subordination of the Son to the Father, due to the same danger which still, in the fourth century, seemed in the East the most formidable, was not in harmony with the prevalent thought of the West. Thus Hilary, in his search for reasons for the Faith, was practically isolated; there was little at home which could help him to construct his system. To an intellect so self-reliant as his, this may have been no great trial. Scrupulous though he was in confining his speculations within the bounds of inherited and acknowledged truth, yet in matters still undecided he exercised a singularly free judgment, now advancing beyond, now lingering behind, the usual belief of his contemporaries. In following out his thoughts, loyally yet independently, he was conscious that he was breaking what was new ground to his older fellow-Christians, almost as much as to himself, the convert

6. This is on the assumption, which seems probable, that Irenæus was not yet translated from the Greek. He certainly influenced Tertullian, and through him Hilary; and his doctrine of the "recapitulation" of mankind in Christ, reappearing as it does in Hilary, though not in Tertullian, suggests that our writer had made an independent study of Irenæus. Even if the present wretched translation existed, he would certainly read the Greek.