by nature mild and winning, and also learned and singularly apt at persuasion, applied himself to the task with a greater diligence and skill.’ They do not appear to have travelled in company; the cities to be visited were too numerous and their own time, eager as they must have been to reach their homes, too short. But their journey seems to have been a tri- umphal progress; the bishops were induced to renounce their compromise with error, and the people inflamed against heresy, so that, in the words of Rufinus74, ‘these two men, glorious luminaries as it were of the universe, flooded Illyricum and Italy and the Gallic provinces with their splendour, so that even from hidden nooks and corners all darkness of heresy was banished.’ In the passage just quoted Rufinus directly connects the publication of Hilary’s master- piece, usually called the De Trinitate, with this work of reconciliation. After speaking of his success in it, he proceeds, ‘Moreover he published his books Concerning the Faith, composed in a lofty style, wherein he displayed the guile of the heretics and the deceptions practiced upon our friends, together with the credulous and misplaced sincerity of the latter, with such skill that his ample instructions amended the errors not only of those whom he en- countered, but also of those whom distance hindered him from meeting face to face.’ Some of the twelve books of which the work is composed had certainly been published during his exile, and it is possible that certain portions may date from his later residence in Gaul. But a study of the work itself leads to the conclusion that Rufinus was right in the main in placing it at this stage of Hilary’s life; this was certainly the earliest date at which it can have been widely influential. The title which Hilary gave to his work as a whole was certainly De Fide, Concerning the Faith, the name by which, as we saw, Rufinus describes it. It is probable that its contro- versial purpose was indicated by the addition of contra Arianos; but it is certain that its present title, De Trinitate, was not given to it by Hilary. The word Trinitas is of extraordin- arily rare occurrence in his writings; the only instances seem to be in Trin. i. 22, 36, where he is giving a very condensed summary of the contents of his work. In the actual course of xxxi his argument the word is scrupulously avoided, as it is in all his other writings. In this respect he resembles Athanasius, who will usually name the Three Persons rather than employ this convenient and even then familiar term. There may have been some undesirable connotation in it which he desired to avoid, though this is hardly probable; it is more likely that both Athanasius and Hilary, conscious that the use of technical terms of theology was in their times a playing with edged tools, deliberately avoided a word which was unnecessary, though it might be useful. And in Hilary’s case there is the additional reason that to his mind the antithesis of truth and falsehood was One God or Two Gods75; that to him, more than to 74 Op. cit. i. 31. The recantation of Liberius and of the Italian bishops may be read in Hilary’s 12th Fragment. 75 E.g. Trin. i. 17. 45 The Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers.