The subject of the nature of the divine Trinity had early given rise to discussion. Of the three main heretical views, that of Arius and his disciples was the most prevalent. He held in effect that the Son, by whom all things were made, though He had been begotten before all worlds, yet had not always existed. He shone only with the reflected light of His Almighty Father, and, like the sons of the Roman emperors, who were invested with the titles of Cæsar or Augustus. He governed the universe.
The Tritheists advocated a system which seemed to establish three independent deities, while the Sabellian theory allowed only to the man Jesus the inspiration of the divine wisdom. The consubstantiality of the Father and of the Son had been established by the Council of Nicæa in 325, but the East ranged itself for the most part under the banner of the Arian heresy. At first indifferent, Constantine at last persecuted the Arians, who later, under Constantius, were received into favour.
Constantinople, which for forty years was the stronghold of Arianism, was converted to the orthodox faith under Theodosius by Gregory Nazianzen.
IV.--The Conversion of the World
The pagan religion was finally destroyed about the year 390, and the faintest vestiges of it were not visible thirty years later. Its influence, however, might be observed in many of the ceremonies which were introduced into the Church, and the worship of martyrs and relics seemed to revive a system of polytheism by the worship of a hierarchy of saints. Among the most famous of the dignitaries of the Church at this period was the Archbishop of Constantinople, who was distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth. He attempted to purify the eastern empire, excited the animosity of the Empress Eudoxia, and died in exile in 407.
The monastic system had been founded by Antony, an illiterate youth, in the year 305, by the establishment on Mount Cobyim, near the Red Sea, of a colony of ascetics, who renounced all the business and pleasures in life as the price of eternal happiness. A long series of hermits, monks, and anachorets propagated the system and, patronised by Athanasius, it spread to all parts of the world.
The monastic profession was an act of voluntary devotion, and the inconstant fanatic was threatened with the eternal vengeance of the God whom he deserted. The monks had to give a blind submission to the commands of their abbot, however absurd, and the freedom of the mind, the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed by the habits of credulity and submission. In their dress and diet they preserved the most rigorous simplicity, and they subsisted entirely by their own manual exertions. But in the course of time this simplicity vanished, and, enriched by the offerings of the faithful, they assumed the pride of wealth, and at last indulged in the luxury of extravagance.
The conversion of the barbarians followed upon their invasion of the Roman world; but they were involved in the Arian heresy, and from their advocacy of that cause they were characterised by the name of heretics, an epithet more odious than that of barbarian. The bitterness engendered by this reproach confirmed them in their faith, and the Vandals in Africa persecuted the orthodox Catholic with all the vigour and cruel arts of religious tyranny.