In a word, they were like a spirit in the body, but a spirit of uncleanness and of sordid gain.  If they hated the Gentile, they could love his vices notwithstanding.  If the old missionary zeal of Israel was extinct, they could still purvey impostures for the world.  Jewish superstitions were the plague of distant Spain, the despair of Chrysostom at Antioch.  Thus the lower moral tone of Arianism and especially its denial of the Lord’s divinity were enough to secure it a fair amount of Jewish support as against the Nicenes.  At Alexandria, for example, the Jews were always ready for lawless outrage at the call of every enemy of Athanasius.

[Sidenote:  (3.) The court.]

The court also leaned to Arianism.  The genuine Arians, to do them justice, were not more pliant to imperial dictation than the Nicenes, but the genuine Arians were only one section of a motley coalition.  Their conservative patrons and allies were laid open to court influence by their dread of Sabellianism; for conservatism is the natural home of the impatient timidity which looks round at every difficulty for a saviour of society, and would fain turn the whole work of government into a crusade against a series of scarecrows.  Thus when Constantius turned against them, their chiefs were found wanting in the self-respect which kept both Nicene and Arian leaders from condescending to a battle of intrigue with such masters of the art as flourished in the palace.  But for thirty years the intriguers found it their interest to profess conservatism.  The court was as full of selfish cabals as that of the old French monarchy.  Behind the glittering ceremonial on which the treasures of the world were squandered fought armies of place-hunters great and small, cooks and barbers, women and eunuchs, courtiers and spies, adventurers of every sort, for ever wresting the majesty of law to private favour, for ever aiming new oppressions at the men on whom the exactions of the Empire already fell with crushing weight.  The noblest bishops, the ablest generals, were their fairest prey; and we have no surer witness to the greatness of Athanasius or Julian than the pertinacious hatred of this odious horde.  Intriguers of this kind found it better to unsettle the Nicene decisions, on behalf of conservatism forsooth, than to maintain them in the name of truth.  There were many ways of upsetting them, and each might lead to gain; only one of defending them, and that was not attractive.

[Sidenote:  (4.) Asia.]

Nor were Constantius and Valens without political reasons for their support of Arianism.  We can see by the light of later history that the real centre of the Empire was the solid mass of Asia from the Bosphorus to Mount Taurus, and that Constantinople was its outwork on the side of Europe.  In Rome on one side, Egypt and Syria on the other, we can already trace the tendencies which led to their separation from the orthodox Eastern Church and Empire.  Now in the fourth century Asia