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by Henry Melvill Gwatkin (Author)
From the preface: "THE present work is not so much a formal history of Arianism as a review of the forces at work in the different stages of the controversy, traced out with special regard to the sequence of events and to their connexion with the social characteristics and political history of the Empire. Thus I have felt at liberty in most cases to omit detailed accounts of well-known scenes, and sometimes to leave out subjects of great importance. Anything indeed pretending to the character of a monograph would have been quite beyond my power in the fragments of time which have been at my disposal. No student is likely to doubt that there is ample room for such a review. Too many of the current church histories pay more attention to the lives of individuals than to the deeper movements of the time, and not unfrequently miss the significance even of these by limiting themselves too strictly to ecclesiastical affairs. Not a few of them also systematically ignore the discoveries of the last forty years. For example, the old date for the council of Sardica is still allowed to stultify history, though it has been untenable since the discovery of the Festal Letters. The lives of Antony and Hilarion are not yet recognised to be mere romances and we are still gravely told that the Nicene creed was formally revised at Constantinople. Some are not ashamed even to revive the Athanasian author ship of the Quicunque. The Benedictines did a noble work in their generation, but even their oversights are only too faith fully copied. Far be it from us to undervalue the gigantic labour of Godefroy or Montfaugon, Valesius or Tillemont; but we do them no honour by slavish copying. What we need is a closer analysis of our original authorities. What is the exact value for example of those parts of Socrates or Sozomen which cannot be traced to Rufinus or Athanasius? What is the relation of the two historians to each other, and of Theodoret to both, and what fragments of original matter can be gleaned from the late Byzantines? It is a mere question of labour to settle these questions, and it has not been done yet. The little of it which has fallen to my share mostly concerns Rufinus and the Chronicon Paschale. When once it is completely done, we may hope to be spared the frequent scandal of seeing the consensus ecclesioe resolve itself into some mendacious novel-writer and his tail of copyists."
