| dc.description.abstract | The Church and State came first into relationships of
alliance during the reign of Constantine, and thus the events, which occurred then and immediately thereafter, present us with a field of study wherein we may hope to discover the essential
principles of their antagonism and their co- partnership. With the
purpose of studying those principles in action this study of
"The Church in the Roman Empire under the Constantians" has been
undertaken. Our attempt is to trace the various phases of policy
adopted by the successive emperors towards the Church and to
elucidate their motives, character and tendencies, and also to
exhibit how the Church reacted under these influences and developed
her own distinctive principles of polity in the process of
adjusting herself to the new relations. The surprising feature of
this age was not that the Empire adopted the new religion, but that some quality in the new faith kept the church in isolation from the
general administration and left her an allied but equal sovereign
power. The principles which caused her to seek to do this and
the methods by which she accomplished it are, we consider, our main concern in dealing with this period of history. We have
also sought to show how the various points of controversy emerged
one by one, which have formed the subject of debate upon the
question of Church and State from that day to this. How the
early Fourth Century Church dealt with them and her opinion upon
them may not certainly be regarded as determinative, but it cannot
but be important for the student of the subject. We have thus
attempted to analyse her consciousness upon these topics with
particular care. Of necessity in our attempt to elucidate the
details of our special subject there has had to be said much about
the Arian controversy and other general subjects connected with
these reigns. Our effort has not been, however, to deal with the
theological aspects of that great debate or to put on record a general narrative of events throughout our period, but to present a special study of the effects of the impact of the two great forces
brought into contact by the policy of the Constantians. The general
history of the time and especially that of the krian controversy
have formed the subject of very many special works, but so far as
is known to the author, a review of the period from our special
point of view,while forming the subject of chapters or portions of
larger works has not been itself delimited for a special review,
and where it has been so treated,has been often marred by an
excessive Roman Catholic partisanship or by a superficial acceptance
of the current idea that the story is entirely one of decadent
secularisation. Ordinary text -books are content with this word
without further enquiry as to what secularisation may mean and
wherein its evil consists. Our effort has been to probe into this process of secularisation in order to discover what elements in it were the
Church's protective armour to resist the encroachment of the world and what the effects of that encroachment itself, also we have sought to consider what was her attitude to the new duties made possible by State alliance and to the new resources opened up to her by that alliance, and have endeavoured to detect what her conception of her spiritual autonomy might be, and what amount of accomodation it would by methods and ideals of government, she thought consistent therewith. As her absorbing problem was the theological one we
have no theoretical statement upon this topic,
for St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei is the first elaborate pronouncement upon the subject. It marks in our opinion , however, a certain modification of view suggested by the
St .Augustine's fall of Rome. The earlier one can only be extracted from fugitive
statements or from inferences drawn from her actions. The feelings
bred by the first period of her interrelation are however so important in our opinion that they justify close consideration of
this sort. | en |
