§ 22. EVILS OF THK UNION OF CHIECH AND STATE. 125
the invasions cf the barbarians, as we see by the grievous com plaints of a Chrysostora, an Augustine, and a Salvian, were aa largely and as passionately attended as ever ; and even fightd with wild animals, in which human life was generally more or less sacrificed, continued,' and, to the scandal of the Christian name, are tolerated in Spain and South America to this day.
§ 22. Evils of the Union of Church and State. Seculariza t/ion of the Church.
We turn now to the dark side of the union of the church with the state ; to the consideration of the disadvantages which grew out of their altered relation after the time of Constautine, and which continue to show themselves in the condition of tha church in Europe to our own time.
These evil results may be summed up under the general designation of the secularization of the church. By taking in the whole population of the Roman empire the church became, indeed, a church of the masses, a church of the peojile, but at the same time more or less a church of the wo]"ld. Christianity became a matter of fashion. The number of hypocrites and formal professors rapidly increased;" strict discipline, zeal, self-sacrifice, and brotherly love proportionally ebbed away ; and many heathen customs and usages, under altered names, crept into the worship of God and the life of the Christian people. The Roman state had grown up under the influence of idolatry, and was not to be magically transformed at a
' In a law of Leo, of the year 469 (in the Cod. Justin, iii. tit. 12, 1. 11), besidea the scena theatralis and the circense theatrum, also ferarum lacryniosa spectacula are mentioned as existing. Salvian likewise, in the fifth century (De gubern. DeL, 1. vi. p. 51), censures the delight of his contemporaries in such bloody combats of man with wild beasts. So late as the end of the seventh century a prohibition from the Trullan council was called for in the East. In the West, Theodoric appears to have exchanged the beast fights for military displays, whence proceeded the latei tournaments. Yet these shows have never become entirely extinct, but remain ia the bull fights of Southern Europe, especially in Spain.
* Thus Augustine, foi example. Tract, in Joann. xxv. c. 10, laments that tha church filled itself daily with those who sought Jesus not for Jesus, but for earthly profit. Comp. the similar complaint of Eusebius, Vita Const. 1. iv. c. 54.
126 TIIIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
stroke. With the secuhirizing process, therefore, a pf^ganiziiig tendency went hand in liand.
Yet the pnre spirit of Christianity could by no means be polluted by this. On the contrary it retained even in the darkest days its faithful and steadfast confessors, conquered new provinces from time to time, constantly reacted, both within the established church and outside of it, in the form of monasticism, against the secular and the pagan influences, and, in its very struggle with the prevailing corruption, produced euch church fathers as Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Augustine, such exemplary Christian mothers as Nonna, Antlmsa, and Monica, and such extraordinai-y saints of the desert as Anthony, Pachomius, and Benedict. New enemies and dangers called forth new duties and virtues, which could now unfold themselves on a larger stage, and therefore also on a grander scale. Besides, it must not be forgotten, that the tendency to secularization is by no means to be ascribed only to Constantino and the influence of the state, but to the deeper source of the coiTU]it heart of man, and did reveal itself, in fact, though within a much narrower compass, long before, imder the heathen emperors, especially in the intervals of repose, when tlie earnestness and zeal of Christian life slumbered and gave scope to a worldly spirit.
The difference between the age after Constantino and the age before consists, therefore, not at all in the cessation of true Christianity and the entrance of false, but in the preponderance of the one over the other. The field of the church was now much larger, but with much good soil it included far more that was stony, barren, and overgrown with weeds. The line between church and world, between regenerate and unregenerate, between those who were Christians in name and those who were Christians in heart, was more or less obliterated, and in place of the former hostility between the two parties there came a fusion of them in the same outward comniunic>n of baptism and confession. This brought the conflict betweeu light and darkness, truth and falsehood, Christ and antichrist, liito the bosom of Christendom itself.