ox of their contemporaries, with
those by party and country most separated from them, we have a proof
that that system, whatever it turns out to be, was received before their
time--_i.e._ before the establishment of Christianity under Constantine;
in other words, that we must look for the gradual corruption of the
Church, if it is to be found, not when wealth pampered it, and power and
peace brought its distant portions together, but while it was yet poor,
humble, and persecuted, in those times which are commonly considered
pure and primitive. Again, the genius of Arianism, as a party and a
doctrine, was to discard antiquity and mystery; that is, to resist and
expose what is commonly called priestcraft. In proportion, then, as
Cyril and Eusebius partook of that spirit, so far would they be in their
own cast of mind indisposed to the Catholic system, both considered in
itself and as being imposed on them.

Now, have the writers in question any leaning or tenderness for the
theology of Luther and Calvin? rather they are as unconscious of its
existence as of modern chemistry or astronomy. That faith is a closing
with divine mercy, not a submission to a divine announcement, that
justification and sanctification are distinct, that good works do not
benefit the Christian, that the Church is not Christ's ordinance and
instrument, and that heresy and dissent are not necessarily and
intrinsically evil: notions such as these they do not oppose, simply
because to all appearance they never heard of them. To take a single
passage, which first occurs, in which Eusebius, one of the theologians
in question, gives us his notion of the Catholic Church:--

"These attempts," he says, speaking of the arts of the enemy, "did
not long avail him, Truth ever consolidating itself, and, as time
went on, shining into broader day. For while the devices of
adversaries were extinguished at once, confuted by their very
activity,--one heresy after another presenting its own novelty, the
former specimens ever dissolving and wasting variously in manifold
and multiform shapes,--the brightness of the Catholic and only true
Church went forward increasing and enlarging, yet ever in the same
things and in the same way, beaming on the whole race of Greeks and
barbarians with the awfulness, and simplicity, and nobleness, and
sobriety, and purity of its divine polity and philosophy. Thus the
calumny ag