The time had now come for Hilary, holding these views of Arianism and of the Faith, to take an active part in the conflict. We have seen that he was not at Milan; he was therefore not personally compromised, but the honour of the Church compelled him to move. He exerted himself to induce the bishops of Gaul to withdraw from communion with Saturninus, and with Ursacius and Valens, disciples of Arius during his exile on the banks of the Danube thirty years before, and now high in favour with Constantius, and his ministers, we might almost say, for the ecclesiastical affairs of the Western provinces. We do not know how many bishops were enlisted by Hilary against Saturninus. It is probable that not many would follow him in so bold a venture; even men of like mind with himself might well think it unwise. It was almost a revolutionary act; an importation of the methods of Eastern controversy into the peaceful West, for this was not the constitutional action of a synod but the private venture of Hilary and his allies. However righteous and necessary, in the interests of morality and religion, their conduct may have seemed to them, to Constantius and his advisers it must have appeared an act of defiance to the law, both of Church and State. And Hilary would certainly not win favour with the Emperor by his letter of protest, the First Epistle to Constantius, written about the end of the year 355. He adopts the usual tone of the time, that of exaggerated laudation and even servility towards the Emperor. Such language was, of course, in great measure conventional; we know from Cicero’s letters how little superlatives, whether of flattery or abuse, need mean, and language had certainly not grown more sincere under the Empire. The letter was, in fact, a singularly bold manifesto, and one which Hilary himself must have foreseen was likely to bring upon him the punishment which had befallen the recusants at Arles and Milan. He begins (§ 1) in studiously general terms, making no mention of the provinces in which the offenses were being committed, with a complaint of the tyrannical interference of civil officers in religious matters. If there is to be peace (§ 2), there must be liberty; Catholics must not be forced to become Arians. The voice of resistance was being raised; men were beginning to say that it was better to die than to see the faith defiled at the bidding of an individual. Equity required that God-fearing men should not suffer by compulsory intercourse with the teachers of execrable blasphemy, but be allowed bishops whom they could obey with a good conscience. Truth and falsehood, light and darkness could not combine. He entreated the Emperor to allow the people to choose for themselves to what teachers they would listen, with whom they would join in the Eucharist and in prayer for him. Next (§ 3) he denies that there is any purpose of treason, or any discontent. The only disturbance is that caused by Arian propagators of heresy, who are busily engaged in misleading the ignorant. He now (§ 4) prays that the excellent bishops who have been sent into exile may be restored; liberty and joy would be the result. Then (§ 5) he attacks the modern and deadly Arian pestilence. Borrowing, somewhat incautiously, the words of the Council of Sardica, now twelve years old, he gives a list of Arian chiefs which ends with “those two ignorant and unprincipled youths, Ursacius and Valens.” Communion with such men as these, even communion in ignorance, is a participation in their guilt, a fatal sin. He proceeds, in § 6, to combine denunciation of the atrocities committed in Egypt with a splendid plea for liberty of conscience; it is equally vain and wicked to attempt to drive men into Arianism, and an enforced faith is, in any case, worthless. The Arians (§ 7) were themselves legally convicted long ago and Athanasius acquitted; it is a perversion of justice that the condemned should now be intriguing against one so upright and so faithful to the truth. And lastly (§ 8) he comes to the wrong just done at Milan, and tells the well-known story of the violence practiced upon Eusebius of Vercelli and others in the ‘Synagogue of malignants,’ as he calls it. Here also he takes occasion to speak of Paulinus of Treves, exiled for his resistance at Arles two years before, where he “had withstood the monstrous crimes of those men.” The conclusion of the letter is unfortunately lost, and there are one or more gaps in the body of it; these, we may judge, would only have made it more unacceptable to Constantius.