From the foregoing summary it will be seen that in the first years of the fourth century polytheism, as resuscitated by Neoplatonism, held the field against its rivals with the support and approval of the government. We cannot attempt here to fathom the motives, so prolific as a literary theme, which induced Constantine first to favour Christianity, then to embrace it for himself and his family, and finally to raise it into the safe position of being the only religion recognized by the state. In the blank outlook of the times some definite belief was a necessity, and, whether from policy or conviction, he steered his course in the direction where the tide seemed to set most strongly. Pure Neoplatonism was congenial only to persons of a meditative temperament; to the sober-minded it was artificial and unconvincing. Its loftier heights were inaccessible to the masses, and in its later development it threatened to make common cause with the jugglers and charlatans who risked a conflict with the law.[1] Manichaeism had only begun to rear its head, and at the best contained much that was fantastic and incomprehensible to a non-Semitic people.[2] Christianity was simple, positive,
- ↑ See the laws against mathematicians, etc., for so were sorcerers and witches designated at the time, from the Antonines onwards; Cod. Theod., IX, xvi; Cod., IX, xviii.
- ↑ As Harnack remarks (loc. cit.), it commended itself successfully to the partly Semitic inhabitants of North Africa, among whom was Augustine. But it permeated Europe as well, and in a more Christianized form flourished among such comparatively modern sects as the Cathari, Albigenses, Bogomils, etc. Its fate in these quarters is traced out by Gieseler and other church historians. But the Manichaean pedigree of these sects is not now accepted so freely as formerly; see Bury's Gibbon, vi, p. 543. At one time all heretics were stigmatized as Manichaeans in the vituperation of the orthodox, especially when their views approached the docetism held by all Gnostics, as in the case of the Monophysites; Labbe, Concil., v, 147, etc.
