The policy of the Byzantine court had given to primitive Christianity a paganized form, which it had spread over all the idolatrous populations constituting the empire.  There had been an amalgamation of the two parties.  Christianity had modified paganism, paganism had modified Christianity.  The limits of this adulterated religion were the confines of the Roman Empire.  With this great extension there had come to the Christian party political influence and wealth.  No insignificant portion of the vast public revenues found their way into the treasuries of the Church.  As under such circumstances must ever be the case, there were many competitors for the spoils—­men who, under the mask of zeal for the predominant faith, sought only the enjoyment of its emoluments.

Ecclesiastical disputes.  Under the early emperors, conquest had reached its culmination; the empire was completed; there remained no adequate objects for military life; the days of war-peculation, and the plundering of provinces, were over.  For the ambitious, however, another path was open; other objects presented.  A successful career in the Church led to results not unworthy of comparison with those that in former days had been attained by a successful career in the army.

The ecclesiastical, and indeed, it may be said, much of the political history of that time, turns on the struggles of the bishops of the three great metropolitan cities—­Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome—­for supremacy:  Constantinople based her claims on the fact that she was the existing imperial city; Alexandria pointed to her commercial and literary position; Rome, to her souvenirs.  But the Patriarch of Constantinople labored under the disadvantage that he was too closely under the eye, and, as he found to his cost, too often under the hand, of the emperor.  Distance gave security to the episcopates of Alexandria and Rome.

Ecclesiastical disputes.  Religious disputations in the East have generally turned on diversities of opinion respecting the nature and attributes of God; in the West, on the relations and life of man.  This peculiarity has been strikingly manifested in the transformations that Christianity has undergone in Asia and Europe respectively.  Accordingly, at the time of which we are speaking, all the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire exhibited an intellectual anarchy.  There were fierce quarrels respecting the Trinity, the essence of God, the position of the Son, the nature of the Holy Spirit, the influences of the Virgin Mary.  The triumphant clamor first of one then of another sect was confirmed, sometimes by miracle-proof, sometimes by bloodshed.  No attempt was ever made to submit the rival opinions to logical examination.  All parties, however, agreed in this, that the imposture of the old classical pagan forms of faith was demonstrated by the facility with which they had been overthrown.  The triumphant ecclesiastics proclaimed that the images of the gods had failed to defend themselves when the time of trial came.