CONSULS OF GOD
had sought to arrive at more than a covenant of toleration with the heathens. They saw in the old gods, images representative of faith in One Power which, despite the changing world, is everywhere active and present, governing all things throughout every transformation. The philosophers were found to have voiced truth that sprang from a wisdom they had received in advance from the Eternal Word, who had since become Man in Christ. Myth was viewed as a guide toward the Logos; and the mysteries were believed to foreshadow im- aginatively the spirit of the new Kingdom.
Eusebius in the East and Augustine in the West considered Chris- tianity historically and essentially in agreement with what before its coming had always been the veritable religion of mankind. The Church was Catholic and therefore at each moment of its existence embraced the whole of history and the whole of human nature. To it belonged both body and soul and the sum-total of the living. From its Founder it had inherited the obligation to embrace all peoples, though He had predicted also that by no means all would welcome that embrace. From the beginning it would remain a field both flourishing and untidy, producing both grain and weeds. The length of time it took Christianity to assimilate pagan tradition made a very sombre impression upon many men of the time. They saw that in its agony declining Rome threatened to destroy its rescuer, too. At the close of the 4th century the Christian Emperors Gratian in the West and Theodosius in the East declared the practice of the heathen religion a punishable offense. The Church could not avoid receiving on board its ship, without quarantine, the masses who now clung to a myriad wrecks. It had to take them as they were. Con- temporaries wrote almost morbid descriptions of the worldliness they beheld descending upon the Church. Salvian asked whether virtually the whole of the Christian community might not be termed the "mask of vice." The morals of the barbarians were, he maintained, putting those of Christian Rome to shame. Yes, the Vandals of Spain and Africa were compelled to rid the cities of Christian houses of prostitu- tion!
When the Germans poured like two tidal waves over Eastern and Western sections of the Empire, they invigorated even as they devas- tated the soil. As mercenaries they had long since permeated the
EARLY
