There remains one work of Hilary to be considered. This was a history of the Arian controversy in such of its aspects as had fallen under his own observation. We know from Jerome’s biography of Hilary that he wrote a book against Valens and Ursacius, containing an account of the Councils of Rimini and Seleucia. They had been his adversaries throughout his career, and had held their own against him. To them, at least as much as to Constantius, the overthrow of his Asiatic friends was due, and to them he owed the favour, which must have galled him, of permission to return to his diocese. Auxentius was one of their allies, and the failure of Hilary’s attack upon him made it clear that these men too, as subjects of Valentinian, were safe from merited deposition. Their worldly success was manifest; it was a natural and righteous task which Hilary undertook when he exposed their true character. It was clear that while Valens and Valentinian lived—and they were in early middle life—there would be an armed peace within the Western Church; that the overthrow of bishop by bishop in theological strife would be forbidden. The pen was the only weapon left to Hilary, and he used it to give an account of events from the time of that Council of Arles, in the year 353, which was the beginning for Gaul of the Arian conflict. He followed its course, with especial reference to Ursacius and Valens, until the year 367, or at least the end of 366; the latest incident recorded in the fragments which we possess must have happened within a few months of his death. The work was less a history than a collection of documents strung together by an explanatory narrative. It is evident that it was not undertaken as a literary effort; its aim is not the information of future generations, but the solemn indictment at the bar of public opinion of living offenders. It must have been, when complete, a singularly businesslike production, with no graces of style to render it attractive and no generalisations to illuminate its pages. Had the whole been preserved, we should have had a complete record of Hilary’s life; as it is, we have thirteen valuable fragments There are fifteen in the collection, but the second and third which are as long as the rest together, and are obviously extracts from the same work, are not by Hilary. He expressly says (Fragm. i. § 6) that he will commence with the council of Arles and the exile of Paulinus. These documents narrate at great length events which began six years earlier, and with which Hilary and his province had no direct concern. This proves that the fragments are not a portion of the Liber adversus Ursacium et Valentem. Internal evidence proves not less clearly that they cannot be excerpts from some other work of Hilary. In Fragm. ii. § 21 we are told that apparently in the year 349, Athanasius excommunicated Marcellus of Ancyra. It is of course, notorious that he never did so; the mistake is one which Hilary could not possibly have made. None the less, these fragments are both in themselves and in the documents which they embody, one of our most important authorities for the transactions they narrate, and are indisputably contemporary and authentic. Nor is there any reasonable doubt as to the genuineness of the thirteen. Those of them which reveal the inconstancy of Liberius have been assailed by some Roman Catholic writers, though they are accepted by others. The same suspicion has extended to others among the fragments, because they are found in company with these revelations concerning Liberius. But the doubts have been suggested by the wish to disbelieve., to which we owe a considerable part of our general knowledge of the time, though they tell us comparatively little of his own career. ‘The commencement of the work has happily survived, and from it we learn the spirit in which he wrote. He begins (Fragment i. §§ 1, 2) with an exposition of St. Paul’s doctrine of faith, hope, and love. He testifies, with the Apostle, that the last is the greatest. The inseparable bond, of which he is conscious, of God’s love for him and his for God, has detached him from worldly interests. He, like others (§ 3), might have enjoyed ease and prosperity and imperial friendship, and have been, as they were, a bishop only in name and a burden upon the Church. But the condition imposed was that of tampering with Gospel truths, wilful blindness to oppression and the condonation of tyranny. Public opinion, ill-informed and unused to theological subtleties, would not have observed the change. But it would have been a cowardly declension from the love of Christ to which he could not stoop. He feels (§ 4) the difficulty of the task he undertakes. The devil and the heretics had done their worst, multitudes had been terrified into denial of their convictions. The story was complicated by the ingenuity in evil of the plotters, and evidence was difficult to obtain. The scene of intrigue could not be clearly delineated, crowded as it was with the busy figures of bishops and officers, putting every engine into motion against men of apostolic mind. The energy with which they propagated slander was the measure of its falsehood. They had implanted in the public mind the belief that the exiled bishops had suffered merely for refusing to condemn Athanasius; that they were inspired by obstinacy, not by principle. Out of reverence for the Emperor, whose throne is from God (§ 5), Hilary will not comment upon his usurped jurisdiction over a bishop, nor on the manner in which it was exercised; nor yet on the injustice whereby bishops were forced to pass sentence upon the accused in his absence. In this volume he will give the true causes of trouble, in comparison of which such tyranny, grievous though it be, is of small account. Once before—this, no doubt, was at Béziers—he had spoken his mind upon the matter. But that was a hasty and unprepared utterance, delivered to an audience as eager to silence him as he was to speak. He will, therefore (§ 6), give a full and consecutive narrative of events from the council of Arles onwards, with such an account of the question there debated as will shew the true merits of Paulinus, and make it clear that nothing less than the Faith was at stake. He ends his introduction (§ 7) by warning the reader that this is a work which needs to be seriously studied. The multitude of letters and of synods which he must adduce will merely confuse and disgust him, if he do not bear in mind the dates and the persons, and the exact sense in which terms are used. Finally, he reminds him of the greatness of the subject. This is the knowledge of God, the hope of eternity; it is the duty of a Christian to acquire such knowledge as shall enable him to form and to maintain his own conclusions. The excerpts from the work have evidently been made by some one who was interested in Italy and Illyricum rather than in Gaul, and thought that the documents were more important than the narrative. Hence Hilary’s character is as little illustrated as the events of his life. Nor can the date of the work be precisely fixed. It is clear that he had already taken up his final attitude of uncompromising adherence to the Nicene Symbol; that is to say, he began to write after all the waverers had been reclaimed from contact with Arianism. He must, therefore, have written the book in his latest years; and it is manifest that after he had brought the narrative down to the time of his return from exile, he continued to add to it from time to time even till the end of his life. For the last incident recorded in the Fragments, the secession from the party of Valens and Ursacius of an old and important ally, Germinius of Sirmium, must have come to his knowledge very shortly before his death. He had had little success in his warfare with error; if he and his friends had held their own, they had not succeeded either in synod or at court in overthrowing their enemies; and it is pleasant to think that this gleam of comfort came to brighten the last days of Hilary This correspondence which Hilary has preserved (Fragm. xiii.–xv.) is interesting as shewing how difficult it must have been for the laity to determine who was, and who was not, a heretic, when all parties used the same Scriptural terms in commendation of themselves and condemnation of their opponents. It begins with a public letter in which Germinius makes a declaration of faith in Homoeousion terms, without any mention of the reasons which had induced him to depart from the Homoean position. This is followed by a reproachful letter, also intended for publicity, from Valens, Ursacius, and others. They had refused to attend to the rumour of his defection; but now are compelled, by his own published letter, to ask the plain question, whether or not he adheres to ‘the Catholic Faith set forth and confirmed by the Holy Council at Rimini.’ If he had added to the Homoean formula, which was that the Son is ‘like the Father,’ the words ‘in substance’ or ‘in all things,’ he had fallen into the justly condemned heresy of Basil of Ancyra. They demand an explicit statement that he never had said, and never would say, anything of the kind; and warn him that he is gravely suspected, complaints of his teaching having been made by certain of his clergy to neighbouring bishops, which they trust will be proved groundless. Germinius made no direct reply to this letter, but addressed a manifesto to a number of more sympathetic bishops, containing the scriptural proofs of the divinity of Christ and recalling the fact that the Homoean leaders, before their own victory, had acquiesced in the Homoeousian confession. Any teaching to the contrary is the work, not of God, but of the spirit of this world, and he entreats those whom he addresses to circulate his letter as widely as possible, lest any should fall through ignorance into the snares of the devil. Germinius was assured of safety in writing thus. Valentinian’s support of Auxentius had proved that bishops might hold what opinions they would on the great question provided they were not avowed Arians. Germinius had been a leader of the Homoean party, and it is at least possible that his change of front was due to his knowledge that the Emperor, though he would not eject Homoeans, had no sympathy with them and would allow them no influence. In fact, the smaller the share of conscience, the greater the historical interest of Germinius’ action as shewing the decline of Homoean influence in the West.. The news must have reached Gaul early in the year 367, and no subsequent event of importance can have come to his knowledge.