[Sidenote:  Fall of Teutonic Arianism.]

The sword of Belisarius did but lay open the internal disunion of Italy and Africa.  A single blow destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals, and all the valour of the Ostrogoths could only win for theirs a downfall of heroic grandeur.  Sooner or later every Arian nation had to purge itself of heresy or vanish from the earth.  Even the distant Visigoths [Sidenote:  589.] were forced to see that Arians could not hold Spain.  The Lombards in Italy were the last defenders of the hopeless cause, and they too yielded a few years later to the efforts of Pope Gregory and Queen Theudelinda. [Sidenote:  599.] Of Continental Teutons, the Franks alone escaped the divisions of Arianism.  In the strength of orthodoxy they drove the Goths before them on the field of Vougle, [Sidenote:  507.] and brought the green standard of the Prophet to a halt upon the Loire. [Sidenote:  732.] The Franks were no better than their neighbours—­rather worse—­so that it was nothing but their orthodoxy which won for them the prize which the Lombard and the Goth had missed, and brought them through a long career of victory to that proud day of universal reconciliation [Sidenote:  800.] when the strife of ages was forgotten, and Arianism with it—­when, after more than three hundred years of desolating anarchy, the Latin and the Teuton joined to vindicate for Old Rome her just inheritance of empire, and to set its holy diadem upon the head of Karl the Frank.

[Sidenote:  Conclusion.]

Now that we have traced the history of Arianism to its final overthrow, let us once more glance at the causes of its failure.  Arianism, then, was an illogical compromise.  It went too far for heathenism, not far enough for Christianity.  It conceded Christian worship to the Lord, yet made him no better than a heathen demigod.  It confessed a Heavenly Father, as in Christian duty bound, yet identified Him with the mysterious and inaccessible Supreme of the philosophers.  As a scheme of Christianity, it was overmatched at every point by the Nicene doctrine; as a concession to heathenism, it was outbid by the growing worship of saints and relics.  Debasing as was the error of turning saints into demigods, it seems to have shocked Christian feeling less than the Arian audacity which degraded the Lord of saints to the level of his creatures.  But the crowning weakness of Arianism was the incurable badness of its method.  Whatever were the errors of Athanasius—­and in details they were not a few—­his work was without doubt a faithful search for truth by every means attainable to him.  He may be misled by his ignorance of Hebrew or by the defective exegesis of his time; but his eyes are always open to the truth, from whatever quarter it may come to him.  In breadth of view as well as grasp of doctrine, he is beyond comparison with the rabble of controversialists who cursed or still invoke his name.  The gospel was truth and life to him, not a mere subject for