Churches; and thus it was that the rising spirit of asceticism naturally
attached itself to the Nicene faith as the strongest moral power in
Christendom. It was a protest against the whole framework of society in
that age, and therefore the alliance was cemented by a common enmity to
the Arian Empire. It helped much to conquer Arianism, but it left a
lasting evil in the lowering of the Christian standard. Henceforth the
victory of faith was not to overcome the world, but to flee from it.
Even heathen immorality was hardly more ruinous than the unclean ascetic
spirit which defames God's holy ordinance as a form of sin which a too
indulgent Lord will overlook.

[Sidenote: New questions in controversy.]

Valens was only a catechumen, and had no policy to declare for the
present. Events therefore continued to develop naturally. The Homoean
bishops retained their sees, but their influence was fast declining. The
Anomoeans were forming a schism on one side, the Nicenes recovering
power on the other. Unwilling signatures to the Homoean creed were
revoked in all directions. Some even of its authors declared for
Arianism with Euzoius, while others drew nearer to the Nicene faith like
Acacius. On all sides the simpler doctrines were driving out the
compromises. It was time for the Semiarians to bestir themselves if they
meant to remain a majority in the East. The Nicenes seemed daily to gain
ground. Lucifer had compromised them in one direction, Apollinarius in
another, and even Marcellus had never been frankly disavowed; yet the
Nicene cause advanced. A new question, however, was beginning to come
forward. Hitherto the dispute had been on the person of the Lord, while
that of the Holy Spirit was quite in the background. Significant as is
the tone of Scripture, the proof is not on the surface. The divinity of
the Holy Spirit is shown by many convergent lines of evidence, but it
was still an open question whether that divinity amounts to co-essential
and co-equal deity. Thus Origen leans to some theory of subordination,
while Hilary limits himself with the utmost caution to the words of
Scripture. If neither of them lays down in so many words that the Holy
Spirit is God, much less does either of them class him with the
creatures, like Eunomius. The difficulty was the same as with the person
of the Lord, that while the Scriptural data clearly pointed to his
deity, its admission involved the dilemma of either Sabellian confusion
o