evilish cruelties of
persecutors; in spite of the contaminating atmosphere of sin which
surrounded her; in spite of having to form herself, not out of a race
of pure and separate creatures, but by a most literal 'new birth' out
of those very fallen masses who insulted and persecuted her; in spite of
having to endure within herself continual outbursts of the evil passions
in which her members had once indulged without cheek; in spite of
a thousand counterfeits which sprang up around her and within her,
claiming to be parts of her, and alluring men to themselves by that very
exclusiveness and party arrogance which disproved their claim; in spite
of all, she had conquered. The very emperors had arrayed themselves
on her side. Julian's last attempt to restore paganism by imperial
influence had only proved that the old faith had lost all hold upon the
hearts of the masses; at his death the great tide-wave of new opinion
rolled on unchecked, and the rulers of earth were fain to swim with the
stream; to accept, in words at least, the Church's laws as theirs; to
acknowledge a King of kings to whom even they owed homage and obedience;
and to call their own slaves their 'poorer brethren,' and often, too,
their 'spiritual superiors.'

But if the emperors had become Christian, the Empire had not. Here and
there an abuse was lopped off; or an edict was passed for the visitation
of prisons and for the welfare of prisoners; or a Theodosius was
recalled to justice and humanity for a while by the stern rebukes of
an Ambrose. But the Empire was still the same: still a great tyranny,
enslaving the masses, crushing national life, fattening itself and its
officials on a system of world-wide robbery; and while it was paramount,
there could be no hope for the human race. Nay, there were even those
among the Christians who saw, like Dante afterwards, in the 'fatal gift
of Constantine,' and the truce between the Church and the Empire, fresh
and more deadly danger. Was not the Empire trying to extend over the
Church itself that upas shadow with which it had withered up every
other form of human existence; to make her, too, its stipendiary
slave-official, to be pampered when obedient, and scourged whenever she
dare assert a free will of her own, a law beyond that of her tyrants; to
throw on her, by a refined hypocrisy, the care and support of the masses
on whose lifeblood it was feeding? So thought many then, and, as I
believe, not unwisely.

B