n of the Arian controversy. Their suffrage is claimed,
with equal confidence, by the orthodox and by the heretical parties; and
the most inquisitive critics have fairly allowed, that if they had the
good fortune of possessing the Catholic verity, they have delivered
their conceptions in loose, inaccurate, and sometimes contradictory
language.

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part III.

II. The devotion of individuals was the first circumstance which
distinguished the Christians from the Platonists: the second was the
authority of the church. The disciples of philosophy asserted the rights
of intellectual freedom, and their respect for the sentiments of their
teachers was a liberal and voluntary tribute, which they offered to
superior reason. But the Christians formed a numerous and disciplined
society; and the jurisdiction of their laws and magistrates was strictly
exercised over the minds of the faithful. The loose wanderings of the
imagination were gradually confined by creeds and confessions; the
freedom of private judgment submitted to the public wisdom of synods;
the authority of a theologian was determined by his ecclesiastical rank;
and the episcopal successors of the apostles inflicted the censures of
the church on those who deviated from the orthodox belief. But in an age
of religious controversy, every act of oppression adds new force to
the elastic vigor of the mind; and the zeal or obstinacy of a spiritual
rebel was sometimes stimulated by secret motives of ambition or avarice.
A metaphysical argument became the cause or pretence of political
contests; the subtleties of the Platonic school were used as the badges
of popular factions, and the distance which separated their respective
tenets were enlarged or magnified by the acrimony of dispute. As long
as the dark heresies of Praxeas and Sabellius labored to confound the
Father with the Son, the orthodox party might be excused if they
adhered more strictly and more earnestly to the distinction, than to the
equality, of the divine persons. But as soon as the heat of controversy
had subsided, and the progress of the Sabellians was no longer an object
of terror to the churches of Rome, of Africa, or of Egypt, the tide
of theological opinion began to flow with a gentle but steady motion
towards the contrary extreme; and the most orthodox doctors allowed
themselves the use of the terms and definitions which had been censured
in the m