The composite character of the treatise, which must still for convenience be called the De Trinitate, is manifest. The beginnings of several of its books, which contain far more preliminary, and often rhetorical, matter than is necessary to link them on to their predecessors, point to a separate publication of each; a course which was, indeed, necessary under the literary conditions of the time. This piecemeal publication is further proved by the elaborate summaries of the contents of previous books which are given as, e.g., at the beginning of Trin. x.; and by the frequent repetition of earlier arguments at a later stage, which shews that the writer could not trust to the reader’s possession of the whole. Though no such attention has been devoted to the growth of this work as Noeldechen has paid to that of the treatises of Tertullian, yet some account of the process can be given. For although Hilary himself, in arranging the complete treatise, has done much to make it run smoothly and consecutively, and though the scribes who have copied it have probably made it appear still more homogeneous, yet some clues to its construction are left. The first is his description of the first book as the second (v. 3). This implies that the fourth is the first; and when we examine the fourth we find that, if we leave out of consideration a little preliminary matter, it is the beginning of a refutation of Arianism. It states the Arian case, explains the necessity of the term homoousios, gives a list of the texts on which the Arians relied, and sets out at length one of their statements of doctrine, the Epistle of Arius to Alexander, which it proceeds to demolish, in the remainder of the fourth book and in the fifth, by arguments from particular passages and from the general sense of the Old Testament. In the sixth book, for the reason already given, the Arian Creed is repeated, after a vivid account of the evils of the time, and the refutation continued by arguments from the New Testament. In § 2 of this book there is further evidence of the composite character of the treatise. Hilary says that though in the first book he has already set out the Arian manifesto, yet he thinks good, as he is still dealing with it, to repeat it in this sixth. Hilary seems to have overlooked the discrepancy, which some officious scribe has half corrected Similarly in iv. 2 he alludes to the first book, meaning that which we call first, though, as we saw, in v. 3 he speaks of our fifth as his second.. The seventh book, he says at the beginning, is the climax of the whole work. If we take the De Trinitate as a whole, this is a meaningless flourish; but if we look on to the eighth book, and find an elaborate introduction followed by a line of argument different from that of the four preceding books, we must be inclined to think that the seventh is the climax and termination of what has been an independent work, consisting of four books. And if we turn to the end of the seventh, and note that it alone of all the twelve has nothing that can be called a peroration, but ends in an absolutely bald and businesslike manner, we are almost forced to conclude that this is because the peroration which it once had, as the climax of the work, was unsuitable for its new position and has been wholly removed. Had Hilary written this book as one of the series of twelve, he would certainly, according to all rules of literary propriety, have given it a formal termination. In these four books then, the fourth to the seventh, we may see the nucleus of the De Trinitate; not necessarily the part first written, for he says (iv. 1) i.e. in the passage introduced as a connecting link with the books which now precede it, when the whole work was put into its present shape. that some parts, at any rate, of the three first books are of earlier date, but that around which the whole has been arranged. It has a complete unity of its own, following step by step the Arian Creed, of which we shall presently speak. It is purely controversial, and quite possibly the title Contra Arianos, for which there is some evidence, really belongs to this smaller work, though it clung, not unnaturally, to the whole for which Hilary devised the more appropriate De Fide. Concerning the date of these four books, we can only say that they must have been composed during his exile. For though he does not mention his exile, yet he is already a bishop (vi. 2), and knows about the homoousion (iv. 4). We have seen already that his acquaintance with the Nicene Creed began only just before his exile; he must, therefore, have written them during his enforced leisure in Asia.