doctrine. Another passage, where the scholarship seems to indicate the work of an inferior hand, is Trin. x. 40, in which there is a singular misunderstanding of the Greek Testament84. The writer must have known Greek, for no manuscript of the Latin Bible would have sug- gested his mistake, and therefore he must have written in early days. It is even possible that Hilary himself was, for once, at fault in his scholarship. Yet, at the most, the interpolations are few and, where they seriously affect the sense, are easily detected85. Not many authors of antiquity have escaped so lightly in this respect as Hilary. Hilary certainly intended his work to be regarded as a whole; as a treatise Concerning the Faith, for it had grown into something more than a refutation of Arianism. He has carefully avoided, so far as the circumstances of the time and the composite character of the treatise would allow him, any allusion to names and events of temporary interest; there is, in fact, nothing more definite than a repetition of the wish expressed in the Second Epistle to Constantius, that it were possible to recur to the Baptismal formula as the authoritative statement of the Faith86. It is not, like the De Synodis; written with a diplomatic purpose; it is, though cast inevitably in a controversial form, a statement of permanent truths. This has involved the sacrifice of much that would have been of immediate service, and deprived the book of a great part of its value as a weapon in the conflicts of the day. But we can see, by the selection he made of a document to controvert, that Hilary’s choice was deliberate. It was no recent creed, no confession to which any existing body of partisans was pledged. He chose for refutation the Epistle of Arius to Alexander, written almost forty years ago and destitute, it must have seemed, of any but an historical interest. And it was no extreme statement of the Arian position. This Epistle was ‘far more temperate and cautious87’ than its alternative, Arius’ letter to Eusebius. The same wide outlook as is manifest in this indif- ference to the interests of the moment is seen also in Hilary’s silence in regard to the names of friends and foes. Marcellus, Apollinaris, Eudoxius, Acacius are a few of those whom it must have seemed that he would do well to renounce as imagined friends who brought his cause discredit, or bitter enemies to truth and its advocates. But here also he refrains; no names are mentioned except those of men whose heresies were already the commonplaces of controversy. And there is also an absolute silence concerning the feuds and alliances of the day. No notice is taken of the loyalty of living confessors or the approximation to truth of well-meaning waverers. The book contains no sign that it has any but a general object; it is, as far as possible, an impersonal refutation of error and statement of truth. 84 St. Luke xxii. 32, where ἐδεήθην is translated as a passive. Christ is entreated for Peter. There seems to be no parallel in Latin theology. 85 E.g. the cento from the De Trinitate attached to the Invective against Constantius. 86 ii. I. 87 Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, ii. v. 2. 50 The Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers.