Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/78

70 this axiom is always either untrue or inapplicable. The whole Church at Ariminum was amazed to find itself Arian; Athanasius stood against the world, and the world against Athanasius. The solitary protest is always to be honoured—the lonely martyr is avenged at last. Churches and nations, and whole generations, often seem to lose their reason. Baronius himself confesses that in the Church of the tenth century there was no pilot to guide the helm, no captain to command the crew, at the moment of its greatest need.

But still the maxim of Vincentius contains a certain element of truth, which the facts of history entirely confirm. There is a common sense in the Church, as there is a common sense in the world, which cannot be neglected with impunity; and there is an eccentricity in individuals and in sects which always tends to lead us, if not into dangerous, at least into crooked paths. The very error, which is held by great, ancient, and national communities, often loses its mischief, and entirely changes its meaning, when it becomes part of the general established belief. The very truth, which is held by a narrow sect, often becomes error from the mere fact of the isolation and want of proportion in which it is held. The strange folly of Christians persecuting Christians was first introduced, not by the orthodox, but by the heretics, of the fifth century. The fancies of Millenarians, however innocent and natural, and however widely