sense of extreme urgency could have induced Hilary to make. Yet even now he avoids the mistake of Liberius. He offers to sign no compromising creed; he only proposes that all modern creeds be consigned to the same oblivion. It was, in effect, the offer of another compromise in lieu of the Homoean; though Hilary makes it perfectly clear what is, in his eyes, the only sense in which this simple and primitive confession can honestly be made, yet assuredly those whose doctrine most widely diverged would have felt able to make it. That the proposal was sincerely meant, and that his words, uncompromising as they are in assertion of the truth, were not intended for a simple defiance of the enemy, is shewn by the list of heretics whom he advances, in § 9, in proof of his contention that all error claims to be based on Scripture. Three of them, Montanus, Manichæus and Marcion, were heretics in the eyes of an Arian as much as of a Catholic; the other three, Marcellus, Photinus and Sabellius, were those with whom the Arians were constantly taunting their adversaries. Hilary avoids, deliberately as we may be sure, the use of any name which could wound his opponents. But bold and eloquent and true as the appeal of Hilary was, it was still less likely that his petition for a hearing in Council should be granted than that he should be allowed to disprove the accusations which had led to his exile. The Homoean leaders had the victory in their hands, and they knew it, if Hilary and his friends were still in the dark. They did not want conciliation, but revenge, and this appeal was foredoomed to failure. The end of the crisis soon came. The Semiarian leaders were deposed, not on the charge of heresy, for that would have been inconsistent with the Homoean position and also with their acquies- cence in the Homoean formula, but on some of those complaints concerning conduct which were always forthcoming when they were needed. Among the victims was not only Basil of Ancyra, Hilary’s friend, but also Macedonius of Constantinople, who was in after days to be the chief of the party which denied the true Godhead of the Holy Ghost. He and his friends were probably unconscious at this time of the gulf which divided them from such men as Hilary, who for their part were content, in the interests of unity, with language which understated their belief, or else had not yet a clear sense of their faith upon this point. In any case it was well that the final victory of the true Faith was not won at this time, and with the aid of such allies; we may even regard it as a sign of some short-sightedness on Hilary’s part that he had thrown himself so heartily into their cause. But he, at any rate, was not to suffer. The two Eastern parties, Homoean and Semiarian, which alternately ejected one an- other from their sees, were very evenly balanced, and though Constantius was now on the xxv side of the former, his friendship was not to be trusted. The solid orthodoxy of the West was an influence which, as Hilary had hinted, could not be ignored; and even in the East the Nicenes were a power worth conciliating. Hence the Homoeans gave a share of the Semiarian spoils to them65; and it was part of the same policy, and not, as has been quaintly 65 Cf. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 182. 37 The Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers.