THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ST. HILARY OF POITIERS.

He was, therefore, in full sympathy with Athanasius on the main point. His manner of treating the controversy shows that the policy of Athanasius was also, in great measure, his own. Like Athanasius, he spares Marcellus as much as possible. We know that Athanasius refused to condemn him to the end, though one of the most formidable weapons in the arsenal of the Anti-Nicene party was the way they could plausibly pair their two names together as the most strenuous opponents of Arianism. Similarly, Hilary never names Marcellus ² Syn. 91. ³ This sparing of Marcellus, in the case of a Westerner like Hilary, may have been a concession to the inability of the West—e.g., Julius of Rome and the Council of Sardica—to see his error. But it is more likely he was following the general policy of Athanasius, just as he rarely mentioned the homoousion. Hilary was singularly independent of Western opinion, and his whole aim was to win the East., just as he never names Apollinaris, though he had the keenest sense of the danger involved in either heresy and argues forcibly against both. Like Athanasius again, he has no mercy on Photinus the disciple, while he spares Marcellus the master. It is a small but clear sign of dependence that he occasionally applies Athanasius' nickname of Ariomanitæ, or "Arian lunatics," to his opponents. It is certain that Hilary was familiar with the writings of Athanasius and borrowed from them freely. But so little has been done towards ascertaining the progress of Christian thought and the extent of each writer’s contribution to it that it is impossible to say which arguments were already current—and may have been independently adopted by Hilary and Athanasius—and for which the former is indebted to the latter ⁴ No such examination seems to have been made as that to which Reuter in his admirable Augustinische Studien has subjected some of the thoughts of St. Augustine.. Yet it is universally recognized that the debt exists; and Hilary’s greatness as a theologian ⁵ Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, ii. p. 243 n. (ed. 3). Hilary is, "making all allowance for dependence on Athanasius, an independent thinker, who has, indeed, excelled the bishop of Alexandria as a theologian.", his mastery of the subject, would embolden him to borrow and adapt the more freely because he was dealing with an equal and a fellow-combatant in the same cause.

Athanasius and Hilary can never have met face to face. But the eyes and agents of Athanasius were everywhere, and he must have known something of the exile and services of Hilary, who was, of course, well acquainted with the history of Athanasius, though, like the rest of Gaul, he may not have been whole-hearted in his defense. He was now all the more likely to be drawn towards him because this was the time of his approximation to the younger generation of the Conservative School. It is with them that Hilary’s affinities are closest and most obvious. The great Cappadocians were devoted Origenists—we know the service they rendered to their master by the publication of the Philocalia—and there could be no stronger bond of union between Hilary and themselves. They were the outgrowth of that great Asiatic school to which the name of "Semi-Arians" (somewhat unkindly given by Epiphanius) has clung, and which was steadily increasing its influence over the thought of Asia, the dominant province of the whole Empire at this time. Gregory of Nazianzus, the eldest of the three great writers, was probably not more than twenty-five when Hilary was sent into exile, and none of them can have seriously affected even his latest works. But they represented, in a more perfect form, the teaching of the best men of the Conservative School. When we find that Hilary—who was old enough to be the father of Basil and the two Gregories—has thoughts in common with them which are not found in Athanasius, we may safely assign this peculiar teaching to the influence of this school of theology upon Hilary, who was already predisposed by his loyalty to Origen to listen to the representatives of the Origenist tradition. We see one side of this influence in Hilary’s understated doctrine of the Holy Ghost. The Semi-Arians were coming to be of one mind with the Nicenes as to the consubstantial Deity of the Son; none of them, in all probability, would have admitted at this time...