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There remains one work of Hilary to be considered. This was a history of the Arian controversy in such of its aspects as had fallen under his own observation. We know from Jerome’s biography of Hilary that he wrote a book against Valens and Ursacius, containing an account of the Councils of Rimini and Seleucia. They had been his adversaries throughout his career, and had held their own against him. To them, at least as much as to Constantius, the overthrow of his Asiatic friends was due, and to them he owed the favour, which must have galled him, of permission to return to his diocese. Auxentius was one of their allies, and the failure of Hilary’s attack upon him made it clear that these men too, as subjects of Valentinian, were safe from merited deposition. Their worldly success was manifest; it was a natural and righteous task which Hilary undertook when he exposed their true character. It was clear that while Valens and Valentinian lived—and they were in early middle life—there would be an armed peace within the Western Church; that the overthrow of bishop by bishop in theological strife would be forbidden. 

The pen was the only weapon left to Hilary, and he used it to give an account of events from the time of that Council of Arles, in the year 353, which was the beginning for Gaul of the Arian conflict. He followed its course, with especial reference to Ursacius and Valens, until the year 367, or at least the end of 366; the latest incident recorded in the fragments which we possess must have happened within a few months of his death. The work was less a history than a collection of documents strung together by an explanatory narrative. It is evident that it was not undertaken as a literary effort; its aim is not the information of future generations, but the solemn indictment at the bar of public opinion of living offenders. It must have been, when complete, a singularly businesslike production, with no graces of style to render it attractive and no generalisations to illuminate its pages. Had the whole been preserved, we should have had a complete record of Hilary’s life; as it is, we have thirteen valuable fragments, to which we owe a considerable part of our general knowledge of the time, though they tell us comparatively little of his own career. ‘The commencement of the work has happily survived, and from it we learn the spirit in which he wrote.

 He begins with an exposition of St. Paul’s doctrine of faith, hope, and love. He testifies, with the Apostle, that the last is the greatest. The inseparable bond, of which he is conscious, of God’s love for him and his for God, has detached him from worldly interests. He, like others, might have enjoyed ease and prosperity and imperial friendship, and have been, as they were, a bishop only in name and a burden upon the Church. But the condition imposed was that of tampering with Gospel truths, wilful blindness to oppression and the condonation of tyranny. Public opinion, ill-informed and unused to theological subtleties, would not have observed the change. But it would have been a cowardly declension from the love of Christ to which he could not stoop. He feels  the difficulty of the task he undertakes. The devil and the heretics had done their worst, multitudes had been terrified into denial of their convictions. The story was complicated by the ingenuity in evil of the plotters, and evidence was difficult to obtain. The scene of intrigue could not be clearly delineated, crowded as it was with the busy figures of bishops and officers, putting every engine into motion against men of apostolic mind. The energy with which they propagated slander was the measure of its falsehood. They had implanted in the public mind the belief that the exiled bishops had suffered merely for refusing to condemn Athanasius; that they were inspired by obstinacy, not by principle. Out of reverence for the Emperor, whose throne is from God, Hilary will not comment upon his usurped jurisdiction over a bishop, nor on the manner in which it was exercised; nor yet on the injustice whereby bishops were forced to pass sentence upon the accused in his absence. 

In this volume he will give the true causes of trouble, in comparison of which such tyranny, grievous though it be, is of small account. Once before—this, no doubt, was at Béziers—he had spoken his mind upon the matter. But that was a hasty and unprepared utterance, delivered to an audience as eager to silence him as he was to speak. He will, therefore, give a full and consecutive narrative of events from the council of Arles onwards, with such an account of the question there debated as will shew the true merits of Paulinus, and make it clear that nothing less than the Faith was at stake. He ends his introduction by warning the reader that this is a work which needs to be seriously studied. The multitude of letters and of synods which he must adduce will merely confuse and disgust him, if he do not bear in mind the dates and the persons, and the exact sense in which terms are used. Finally, he reminds him of the greatness of the subject. This is the knowledge of God, the hope of eternity; it is the duty of a Christian to acquire such knowledge as shall enable him to form and to maintain his own conclusions

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The Emperor’s first refusal to interfere with Auxentius is a ‘command that the Church of the Milanese, which confesses that Christ is true God, of one divinity and substance with the Father, should be thrown into confusion under the pretext, and with the desire, of unity.’ The canons of Rimini are described as those of the Thracian Nicæa; Auxentius’ protest that he had never known Arius is met by the assertion that he had been ordained to the presbyterate in an Arian Church under George of Alexandria. Hilary refuses to discuss the Council of Rimini; it had been universally and righteously repudiated. His ejection from Milan, in spite of his protests that Auxentius was a liar and a renegade, is a revelation of the mystery of ungodliness. For Auxentius had spoken with two contrary voices; the one that of the confession which Hilary had driven him to sign, the other that of Rimini. His skill in words could deceive even the elect, but he had been clearly exposed. Finally  Hilary regrets that he cannot state the case to each bishop and Church in person. He begs them to make the best of his letter; he dares not make it fully intelligible by circulating with it the Arian blasphemies which he had assailed. He bids them beware of Antichrist, and warns against love and reverence for the material structure of their churches, wherein Antichrist will one day have his seat. Mountains and woods and dens of beasts and prison and morasses are the places of safety; in them some of the Prophets had lived, and some had died. He bids them shun Auxentius as an angel of Satan, an enemy of Christ, a deceiver and a blasphemer. ‘Let him assemble against me what synods he will, let him proclaim me, as he has often done already, a heretic by public advertisement, let him direct, at his will, the wrath of the mighty against me; yet, being an Arian, he shall be nothing less than a devil in my eyes. Never will I desire peace except with them who, following the doctrine of our fathers at Nicæa, shall make the Arians anathema and proclaim the true divinity of Christ.’

These are the concluding words of Hilary’s last public utterance. We see him again giving an unreserved adhesion, in word as well as in heart, to the Nicene confession. It was the course dictated by policy as well as by conviction. His cautious language in earlier days had done good service to the Church in the East, and had made it easier for those who had compromised themselves at Rimini to reconcile themselves with him and with the truth for which he stood. But by this time all whom he could wish to win had given in their adhesion; Auxentius and the few who held with him, if such there were, were irreconcilable. They took their stand upon the Council of Rimini, and their opponents found in the doctrine of Nicæa the clear and uncompromising challenge which was necessary for effective warfare. But if Hilary’s doctrinal position is definite, his theory of the relations of church and State, if indeed his indignation allowed him to think of them, is obscure. An orthodox Emperor was upholding an Arian, and Hilary, while giving Valentinian credit for personal good faith, is as eager as in the worst days of Constantius for a severance. We must, however, remember that this manifesto, though it is the expression of a settled policy in the matter of doctrine, is in other respects the unguarded outpouring of an injured feeling. And here again we find the old perplexity of the ‘inward evil.’ Auxentius is represented as in the church and outside it at the same time. He is an Antichrist, a devil, all that is evil; but Hilary is threatened and it is the Church that threatens, submission to an Arian is enforced and it is the church which enforces it. And if Auxentius had adhered to the confession which Hilary had induced him to sign, all objection to his episcopate would apparently have ceased. The time had not come, if it ever can come, for the solution of such problems. Meantime Hilary did his best, so far as words could do it, to brush aside the sophistries behind which Auxentius was defending himself. The doctrine of Rimini is named that of Nicæa, in Thrace, where the discreditable and insignificant assembly met in which its terms were settled; the Church of Alexandria under the intruder George is frankly called Arian. It was an appeal to the future as well as an apology for himself. 

But certainly it could not move Valentinian, nor can Hilary have expected that it should. And, after all, Valentinian’s action was harmless, at least. By Hilary’s own confession, Auxentius had no influence for evil over his flock, and these proceedings must have warned him, if he needed the warning, that abstinence from aggressive Arianism was necessary if he would end his days in peace. The Emperor’s policy remained unchanged. At the Roman Council of the year 369 the Western bishops formally annulled the proceedings of Rimini, and so deprived Auxentius of his legal position. At the same time, as the logical consequence, they condemned him to deposition, but Valentinian refused to give effect to their sentence, and Auxentius remained bishop of Milan till his death in the year 374. He had outlived Hilary and Eusebius, and also Athanasius, the promoter of the last attack upon him; he had also outlived whatever Arianism there had been in Milan. His successor, St. Ambrose, had the enthusiastic support of his people in his conflicts with Arian princes. The Church could have gained little by Hilary’s success, and yet we cannot be sure that, in a broad sense, he failed. So resolute a bearing must have effectually strengthened the convictions of Valentinian and the fears of Auxentius.

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This attack by Hilary and his friends was, according to him, the attempt of a handful of men to break up the unity attained by the labours of that great assembly of six hundred bishops. He declared his firm assent to all its decisions; every heresy that it had condemned he condemned. He sent with his address a copy of the Acts of the Council, and begged the Emperor to have them read to him. Its language would convince him that Hilary and Eusebius, bishops long deposed, were merely plotting universal schism. This, with his own account of the proceedings before the commission and a short statement of his belief, forms his appeal to the Emperor. It was composed with great skill, and was quite unanswerable. His actual possession of the see, the circumstances of the time, the very doctrine of the Church—for only a Council could undo what a Council had done—rendered his position unassailable. And if he was in the right, Hilary and his colleague were in the wrong. Nothing but success could have saved them from the humiliation to which they were now subjected, of being expelled from Milan and bidden to return to their homes, while the Emperor publicly recognised Auxentius by receiving the Communion at his hands. Yet morally they had been in the right throughout. 

The strong legal position of Auxentius and the canons of that imposing Council of six hundred bishops behind which he screened himself had been obtained by deliberate fraud and oppression. He and his creed could not have, and did not deserve to have, any stability. Yet Valentinian was probably in the right, even in the interests of truth, in refusing to make a martyr of Auxentius. There would have been reprisals in the East, where the Catholic cause had far more to lose than had Arianism in the West; and general considerations of equity and policy must have inclined him to allow the Arian to pass the remainder of his days in peace. But we cannot wonder that Hilary failed to appreciate such reasons. He had thrown himself with all his heart into the attack, and risked in it his public credit as bishop and confessor and first of Western theologians. Hence his published account of the transaction is tinged with a pardonable shade of personal resentment. It was, indeed, necessary that he should issue a statement. The assault and the repulse were rendered conspicuous by time and place, and by the eminence of the persons engaged; and it was Hilary’s duty to see that the defeat which he had incurred brought no injury upon his cause. He therefore addressed a public letter ‘to the beloved brethren who abide in the Faith of the fathers and repudiate the Arian heresy, the bishops and all their flocks.’ He begins by speaking of the blessings of peace, which the Christians of that day could neither enjoy nor promote, beset as they were by the forerunners of Antichrist, who boasted of the peace, in other words of the harmonious concurrence in blasphemy, which they had brought about. 

They bear themselves not as bishops of Christ but as priests of Antichrist. This is not random abuse, but sober recognition of the fact, stated by St. John, that there are many Antichrists. For these men assume the cloak of piety, and pretend to preach the Gospel, with the one object of inducing others to deny Christ. It was  the misery and folly of the day that men endeavoured to promote the cause of God by human means and the favour of the world. Hilary asks bishops, who believe in their office, whether the Apostles had secular support when by their preaching they converted the greater part of mankind. They were not adorned with palace dignities; scourged and fettered, they sang their hymns. It was in obedience to no royal edict that Paul gathered a Church for Christ; he was exposed to public view in the theatre. Nero and Vespasian and Decius were no patrons of the Church; it was through their hatred that the truth had thriven. The Apostles laboured with their hands and worshipped in garrets and secret places, and in defiance of senate or monarch visited, it might be said, every village and every tribe. Yet it was these rebels who had the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; the more they were forbidden, the more they preached, and the power of God was made manifest. But now the Faith finds favour with men.

The Church seeks for secular support, and in so doing insults Christ by the implication that his support is insufficient. She in her turn holds out the threat of exile and prison. It was her endurance of these that drew men to her; now she imposes her faith by violence. She craves for favours at the hands of her communicants; once it was her consecration that she braved the threatenings of persecutors. Bishops in exile spread the Faith; now it is she that exiles bishops. She boasts that the world loves her; the world’s hatred was the evidence that she was Christ’s. The ruin is obvious which has fallen upon the Church. The time of Antichrist, disguised as an angel of light, has come. The true Christ is hidden from almost every mind and heart. Antichrist is now obscuring the truth that he may assert falsehood hereafter. Hence the conflicting opinions of the time, the doctrine of Arius and of his heirs, Valens, Ursacius, Auxentius and their fellows. Their preaching of novelties concerning Christ is the work of Antichrist, who is using them to introduce his own worship. This is proved by a statement of their minimising and prevaricating doctrine, which has, however, made no impression upon the guileless and well-meaning laity. Then comes Hilary’s account of his proceedings at Milan, strongly coloured by the intensity of his feelings.

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 Hilary’s account of the proceedings must certainly be accepted. But, though his moral and dialectical victory was complete, it is obvious that he had gained no advantage for his cause. He had taunted Auxentius as an adherent of Arius. Auxentius had an immediate reply, which put his opponent in the wrong. We cannot doubt that he spoke the truth, when he said that he had never known Arius; and it certainly was the case, that in the early years of the fourth century, inadequate statements of the doctrine of the Trinity were widely prevalent and passed without dispute. It was also true that the dominant faction at the court of Constantius, of which Auxentius had been a leader, had in the most effectual way disclaimed complicity with Arianism by ejecting its honest professors from their sees and by joining with their lips in the universal condemnation of the founder of that heresy. But if this was their shame, it was also, in such circumstances as those of Auxentius, their protection. And Auxentius held one of the greatest positions in the church, and even in the state, now that Milan was to be, so it seemed, the capital of the West. The spirit of the government at that time was one of almost Chinese reverence for official rank; and it must have seemed an outrage that the irresponsible bishop of a city, mean in comparison with Milan, should assail Auxentius in such terms as Hilary had used. 

Even though he had admitted, instead of repudiating, the affinity with Arius, there would have been an impropriety in the use of that familiar weapon, the labelling of a party with the name of its most discredited and unpopular member. We may be sure that Auxentius, a man of the world, would derive all possible advantage from this excessive vehemence of his adversary. In the debate itself, where Hilary would have the advantage not only of a sound cause, but of greater earnestness, we cannot be surprised that he won the victory. Auxentius was probably indifferent at heart; Hilary had devoted his life and all his talents to the cause, but such a victory could have no results, beyond lowering Auxentius in public esteem and self-respect. It does not appear from his words or from those of Hilary, that the actual creed of Rimini was imported into the dispute. It was on it that Auxentius relied; if he did not expressly contradict its terms, the debate became a mere discussion concerning abstract truth. The legal standard of doctrine was no more affected by his unwilling concession than it had been a few years before by the numerous repudiations, prompted by Hilary and Eusebius, of the vote given at Rimini. The confession which Hilary annexed in triumph to his narrative was the mere incidental expression of a private opinion, which Auxentius, in his further plea, could afford to leave unnoticed.

The commissioners no doubt made their report privately to the Emperor. We do not know its tenour, but from the sequel we may be sure that they gave it as their opinion that Auxentius was the lawful bishop of Milan. Some time passed before Valentinian spoke. Whether Hilary took any further steps to influence his decision is unknown; but we possess a memorial addressed ‘to the most blessed and glorious Emperors Valentinian and Valens’ by Auxentius. The two brothers were, by mutual arrangement, each sovereign within his own dominion, but they ruled as colleagues, not as rivals; and Auxentius must have taken courage from the thought that it would seem unnatural and impolitic for the elder to seize this first opportunity of proclaiming his dissent from the cherished convictions of the younger, by degrading one of the very school which his brother delighted to honour. For what had been proposed was not the silent filling of a vacant place, but the public ejection of a bishop whose station was not much less prominent than that of Athanasius himself, and his ejection on purely theological grounds. Constantius himself had rarely been so bold; his acts of oppression, as in Hilary’s case, were usually cloaked by some allegation of misconduct on the victim’s part. But Auxentius had more than the character of Valens and political considerations on which to rely. In the forefront of his defence he put the Council of Rimini.

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The immediate predecessor of Auxentius was the Catholic Dionysius, and we cannot suppose that this is a fair description of Hilary’s followers. But it is probable that the malcontents were not numerous, for none but enthusiasts would venture into apparent schism on account of a heresy which was certainly not conspicuous. How long Hilary was allowed to continue his efforts is unknown. Valentinian reached Milan in the November of 364, and left it in the Autumn of the following year; and before his departure his decision had frustrated Hilary’s purpose. We only know that, as soon as the matter grew serious, Auxentius appealed to the Emperor. There was no point more important in the eyes of the government than unity within the local Churches, and Auxentius, being formally in the right, must have made his appeal with much confidence. His success was immediate. The Emperor issued what Hilary calls a ’grievous edict,’ the terms of which Hilary does not mention. He only says that under the pretext, and with the desire, of unity, Valentinian threw the faithful Church of Milan into confusion. In other words, he forbade Hilary to agitate for a separation of the people from their bishop.

But Hilary, silenced in the city, exerted himself at court. With urgent importunity, he tells us, he pressed his charges against Auxentius, and induced the Emperor to appoint a commission to consider them. In due time this commission met. It consisted of two lay officials, with ‘some ten’ bishops as assessors. Hilary and Eusebius were present, as well as the accused. Auxentius pleaded his own cause, beginning with the unfortunate attack upon his adversaries that they had been deposed by Council, and therefore had no locus standi as accusers of a bishop. This was untrue; Hilary, we know, had been banished, but his see had never been declared vacant, nor, in all probability, had that of Eusebius. They were not intruders, like Auxentius, though even he had gained some legality for his position from the death of Dionysius in exile. The failure of this plea was so complete that Hilary, in his account of the matter, declares that it is not worth his while to repeat his defence. Next came the serious business of the commission. This was not the theological enquiry after truth, but the legal question whether, in fact, the teaching of Auxentius was in conformity with recognised standards. 

Hilary had asserted that his creed differed from that of the Emperor and of all other Christians, and had asserted it in very unsparing language. He now maintained his allegation, and, in doing so, gave Auxentius a double advantage. For he diverged into the general question of theology, while Auxentius stuck to the letter of the decisions of Rimini; and the words of Hilary had been such that he could claim to be a sufferer from calumny. Hilary’s account of the doctrinal discussion is that he forced the reluctant Auxentius by his questions to the very edge of a denial of the Faith; that Auxentius escaped from this difficulty by a complete surrender, to which Hilary pinned him down by making him sign an orthodox confession, in terms to which he had several times agreed during the course of the debate; that Hilary remitted this confession through the Quæstor, the lay president of the commission, to the Emperor. This document, which Hilary says that he appended to his explanatory letter, is unfortunately lost. The brief account of the matter which Auxentius gives is not inconsistent with Hilary’s. He tells us that he began by protesting that he had never known or seen Arius, and did not even know what his doctrine was; he proceeded to declare that he still believed and preached the truths which he had been taught in his infancy and of which he had satisfied himself by study of Scripture; and he gives a summary of the statement of faith which he made before the commission. But he says not a word about the passage of arms between Hilary and himself, of his defeat, and of the enforced signature of a confession which contradicted his previous assertions.

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‘Whether a fresh title stood before the later hymns, which clearly belong to another, we cannot say; the collection is too short for this to be probable. It is obvious that, if we have in this manuscript the remains of a hymn-book for actual use, it was, like ours, a compilation; brief as it was, it may have been as large as the cumbrous shape of ancient volumes would allow to be cheaply multiplied and conveniently used. Many popular treatises, as for instance some by Tertullian and Cyprian, were quite as short. Who the compiler may have been must remain unknown. We must attach some importance to the evidence of the manuscript which has restored to us the De Mysteries and the Pilgrimage of Silvia; and we may reasonably suppose that this collection was made in the time, and even with the sanction, of Hilary, though we cannot accept him as the author of any of the three hymns which remain.

The spurious letter to his imaginary daughter Abra was apparently written with the ingenious purpose of fathering upon Hilary the morning hymn, Lucis Largitor splendide. This is a hymn of considerable beauty, in the same metre as the genuine Ambrosian hymns. But there is this essential difference, that while in the latter the rules of classical versification as regards the length of syllables are scrupulously followed, in the former these rules are ignored, and rhythm takes the place of quantity. This is a sufficient proof that the hymn is of a later date than Ambrose, and, a fortiori, than Hilary. There remains the so-called evening hymn, which has been supposed to be the companion to the last. This, again, is alphabetical, and contains in twenty-three stanzas a confession of sin, an appeal to Christ and an assertion of orthodoxy. The rules of metre are neglected in favour of an uncouth attempt at rhythm. Latin appears to have been a dead language to the writer, who adorns his lines with little pieces of pagan mythology, and whose taste is indicated by his description of heretics as ‘barking Sabellius and grunting Simon.’ The hymn is probably the work of some bombastic monk, perhaps of the time of Charles the Great; unlike the other four, it cannot possibly date from Hilary’s generation.

Omitting certain fragments of treatises of which Hilary may, or may not, have been the author, we now come to his attack upon Auxentius of Milan, and to the last of his complete works. Dionysius of Milan had been, as we saw, a sufferer in the same cause as Hilary. But he had been still more hardly treated; he had not only been exiled, but his place had been taken by Auxentius, an Eastern Arian of the school favoured by Constantius. Dionysius died in exile, and Auxentius remained in undisputed possession of the see. He must have been a man of considerable ability; perhaps, as we have mentioned, he was the creator of the so-called Ambrosian ritual, and certainly he was the leader of the Arian party in Italy and the further West. The very fact that Constantius and his advisers chose him for so great a post as the bishopric of Milan proves that they had confidence in him. He justified their trust, holding his own without apparent difficulty at Milan and working successfully in the cause of compromise at Ariminum and elsewhere. Athanasius mentions him often and bitterly as a leader of the heretics; and he must be ranked with Ursacius and Valens as one of the most unscrupulous of his party. While Constantius reigned Auxentius was, of course, safe from attack. But at the end of the year 364 Hilary thought that the opportunity was come. Since his last entry into the conflict Julian and his successor Jovian had died, and Valentinian had for some months been Emperor. He had just divided the Roman Empire with his brother Valens, himself choosing the Western half with Milan for his capital, while he gave Constantinople and the East to Valens. The latter was a man of small abilities, unworthy to reign, and a convinced Arian; Valentinian, with many faults, was a strong ruler, and favoured the cause of orthodoxy. But he was, before all else, a soldier and a statesman; his orthodoxy was, perhaps, a mere acquiescence in the predominant belief among his subjects, and it had, in any case, much less influence over his conduct than had Arianism over that of Valens. It must have seemed to Hilary and to Eusebius of Vercelli that there was danger to the Church in the possession by Auxentius of so commanding a position as that of bishop of Milan, with constant access to the Emperor’s ear; and especially now that the Emperor was new to his work and had no knowledge, perhaps no strong convictions, concerning the points at issue. As far as they could judge, their success or failure in displacing Auxentius would influence the fortunes of the Church for a generation at least. It would, therefore, be unjust to accuse Hilary as a mere busy-body. He interfered, it is true, outside his own province, but it was at a serious crisis; and his knowledge of the Western Church must have assured him that, if he did not act, the necessary protest would probably remain unmade.

Hilary, then, in company with his any Eusebius, hastened to Milan in order to influence the mind of Valentinian against Auxentius, and to waken the dormant orthodoxy of the Milanese Church. For there seems to have been little local opposition to the Arian bishop: no organized congregation of Catholics in the city rejected his communion. On the other hand, there was no militant Arianism; the worship conducted by Auxentius could excite no scruples, and in his teaching he would certainly avoid the points of difference. He and his school had no desire to persecute orthodoxy because it was orthodox. From their point of view, the Faith had been settled in such a way that their own position was unassailable, and all they wished was to live and to let live. And we must remember that the Council of Rimini, disgraceful as the manner was in which its decision had been reached, was still the rule of the Faith for the Western Church. Hilary and Eusebius had induced a multitude of bishops, amid the applause of their flocks, to recant; but private expressions of opinion, however numerous, could not erase the definitions of Rimini from the records of the Church. It was not till the year 369 that a Council at Rome expunged them. The first object of the allies was to excite opposition to the Arian, and in this they had some success. Auxentius, in his petition to the Emperor, which we possess, asserts that they stirred up certain of the laity, who had been in communion neither with himself nor with his predecessors, to call him a heretic. 

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Hilary’s own opinion concerning the use of hymns can best be learnt from his Homilies of Psalms 64 and 65. In the former the Church’s delightful exercise of singing hymns at morning and evening is one of the chief tokens which she has of God’s mercy towards her. In the latter (§ 1) we are told that sacred song requires the accompaniment of instrumental harmonies; that the combination to this end of different forms of service and of art produces a result acceptable to God. The lifting of the voice to God in exultation, as an act of spiritual warfare against the devil and his hosts, is given as an example of the uses of hymnody. It is a means of putting the enemy to flight; ‘Whoever he be that takes his post outside the Church, let him hear the voice of the people at their prayers, let him mark the multitudinous sound of our hymns, and in the performance of the divine Sacraments let him recognise the responses which our loyal confession makes. Every adversary must needs be affrighted, the devil routed, death conquered in the faith of the Resurrection, by such jubilant utterance of our exultant voice. The enemy will know that this gives pleasure to God and assurance to our hope, even this public and triumphant raising of our voice in song.’ Original composition, both of words and music, is evidently in Hilary’s mind; and we can see that he is rather recommending a useful novelty than describing an established practice. It is a remarkable coincidence that the five hymns which are called his are, in fact, a song of triumph over the devil, and a hymn in praise of the Resurrection, which are, so their editor thinks, actually alluded to in the Homily cited above; a confession of faith; and a morning hymn and one which has been taken for an evening hymn. These are exactly the subjects which correspond to Hilary’s description.

But, when we come to the examination of these hymns in detail, the gravest doubts arise. The first three were discovered in the same manuscript to which we owe the De Mysteries. They formed part of a small collection, which cannot have numbered more than seven or eight hymns, of which these three only have escaped, not without some mutilation. That which stands first is the confession of faith, the matter of which contains nothing that is inconsistent with Hilary’s time. But beyond this, and the fact that the manuscript ascribes it to Hilary, there is nothing to suggest his authorship. It is a dreary production in a limping imitation of an Horatian metre; an involved argumentative statement of Catholic doctrine, in which it would be difficult to say whether verse or subject suffers the more from their unwanted union. The sequence of thought is helped out by the mechanical device of an alphabetical arrangement of the stanzas, but even this assistance could not make it intelligible to an ordinary congregation. And the want of literary skill in the author makes it impossible to suppose that Hilary is he; classical knowledge was still on too high a level for an educated man to perpetrate such solecisms.

In the same manuscript there follow, after an unfortunate gap, the two hymns to which it has been suggested that Hilary alludes in his Homily on Psalm 65, those which celebrate the praises of the Resurrection and the triumph over Satan. The former is by a woman’s hand, and the feminine forms of the language must have made it, one would think, unsuitable for congregational singing. There is no reason why the poem should not date from the fourth century; indeed, since it is written by a neophyte, that date is more probable than a later time, when adult converts to Christianity were more scarce. It has considerable merits; it is fervid in tone and free in movement, and has every appearance of being the expression of genuine feeling. It is, in fact, likely enough that, if it were written in Hilary’s day, he should have inserted it in a collection of sacred verse. Concerning its authorship the suggestion has been made that it was written by Florentia, a heathen maiden converted by Hilary near Seleucia, who followed him to Gaul, lived, died, and was buried by him in his diocese. The story of Florentia rests on no better authority than the worthless biography of Hilary, written by Fortunatus, who, moreover, says nothing about hymns composed by her. Neither proof nor disproof is possible: unless we regard the defective Latinity as evidence in favour of a Greek origin for the authoress. The third hymn, which celebrates the triumph of Christ over Satan, may or may not be the work of the same hand as the second. It bears much more resemblance to it than to the laborious and prosaic effusion which stands first. The manuscript which contains these three hymns distinctly assigns the first, and one or more which have perished, to Hilary:

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In his Homily on Psalm 138, 4, Hilary briefly mentions the Patriarchs as examples of faith and adds, ‘but these are matters of which we must discourse more suitably and fully in their proper place.’ This is a promise to which till of late no known work of our writer corresponded. Jerome had, indeed, informed us that Hilary had composed a treatise entitled De Mysteriis, but no one had connected it with his words in the Homily. It had been supposed that the lost treatise dealt with the sacraments, in spite of the facts that it is Hilary’s custom to speak of types as ‘mysteries,’ and that the sacraments are a theme upon which he never dwells. But in 1887 a great portion of Hilary’s actual treatise on the Mysteries was recovered in the same manuscript which contained the more famous Pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Silvia of Aquitaine. It is a short treatise of two books, unhappily mutilated at the beginning, in the middle and near the end, though the peroration has survived. The title is lost, but there is no reason to doubt that Jerome was nearly right in calling it a tractatus, though he would have done better had he used the plural. It is written in the same easy style as the Homilies on the Psalms, and if it was not originally delivered as two homilies, as is probable, it must be a condensation of several discourses into a more compact form. The first book deals with the Patriarchs, the second with the Prophets, regarded as types of Christ. The whole is written from the point of view with which Hilary’s other writings have made us familiar. Every deed recorded in Scripture proclaims or typifies or proves the advent of the incarnate Christ, and it is Hilary’s purpose to display the whole of His work as reflected in the Old Testament, like an image in a mirror. He begins with Adam and goes on to Moses, deriving lessons from the lives of all the chief characters, often with an exercise of great ingenuity. For instance, in the history of the Fall Eve is the Church, which is sinful but shall be saved through bearing children in Baptism; the burning bush is a type of the endurance of the Church, of which St. Paul speaks in 2 Cor. iv. 8; the manna was found in the morning, the time of Christ’s Resurrection and therefore of the reception of heavenly food in the Eucharist. They who collect too much are heretics with their excess of argument. In the second book we have a fragmentary and desultory treatment of incidents in the lives of the Prophets, which Hilary ends by saying that in all the events which he has recorded we recognise ‘God the Father and God the Son, and God the Son from God the Father, Jesus Christ, God and Man.’ The peroration, in fact, reads like a summary of the argument of the De Trinitate. Of the genuineness of the little work there can be no doubt. Its language, its plan, its arguments are unmistakably those of Hilary. The homilies were probably delivered soon after he had finished his course on the Psalms, of which they contain some reminiscences, such as we saw are found in the later Homilies on the Psalms of earlier passages in the same. In all probability the subject matter of the De Mysteriis is mainly drawn from Origen. It is too short, and too much akin to Hilary’s more important writings, to cast much light upon his modes of thought. He has, indeed, no occasion to speak here upon the points on which his teaching is most original and characteristic.

In this same manuscript, discovered by Gamurrini at Arezzo, are the remains of what professes to be Hilary’s collection of hymns. He has always had the fame of being the earliest Latin hymn writer. This was, indeed, a task which the circumstances of his life must have suggested to him. The conflict with Arianism forced him to become the pioneer of systematic theology in the Latin tongue; it also drove him into exile in the East, where he must have acquainted himself with the controversial use made of hymnody by the Arians. Thus it was natural that he should have introduced hymns also into the West. But if the De Trinitate had little success, the hymns were still more unfortunate. Jerome tells us that Hilary complained of finding the Gauls unteachable in sacred song; and there is no reason to suppose that he had any wide or permanent success in introducing hymns into public worship. If Hilary must have the credit of originality in this respect, the honour of turning his suggestion to account belongs to Ambrose, whose fame in more respects than one is built upon foundations laid by the other. And if but a scanty remnant of the verse of Ambrose, popular as it was, survives, we cannot be surprised that not a line remains which can safely be attributed to Hilary, though authorities who deserve respect have pronounced in favour of more than one of the five hymns which we must consider.

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But the chief interest of the comparison between the writings of these two Fathers upon the Psalms lies in the insight which it affords into their respective modes of thought. Fragmentary as they are, Origen’s words are a manifestly genuine and not inadequate expression of his mind; and Hilary, a recognised authority and conscious of his powers, has so moulded and transformed his original, now adapting and now rejecting, that he has made it, even on the ground which is common to both, a true and sufficient representation of his own mental attitude. The Roman contrasts broadly with the Greek. He constantly illustrates his discourse with historical incidents of Scripture, taken in their literal sense; there are few such in Origen. Origen is full, as usual, of praises of the contemplative state; in speculation upon Divine things consists for him the happiness everywhere promised to the saints. Hilary ignores abstract speculation, whether as a method of interpretation or as a hope for the future, and actually describes the contemplation of God’s dealings with men as merely one among other modes of preparation for eternal blessings. In the same discourse he paraphrases the words of Origen, ‘He who has done all things that conduce to the knowledge of God,’ by ‘They who have the abiding sense of a cleansed heart.’ Though he is the willing slave of the allegorical method, yet he revolts from time to time against its excesses in Origen; their treatment of Psalm 126, in the one case practical, in the other mystical, is a typical example. Hilary’s attention is fixed on concrete things; the enemies denounced in the Psalms mean for him the heretics of the day, while Origen had recognised in them the invisible agency of evil spirits. The words ‘Who teacheth my hands to fight’ suggest to Origen intellectual weapons and victories; they remind Hilary of the ‘I have overcome the world’ of Christ. In fact, the thought of Hilary was so charged with definite convictions concerning Christ, and so impressed with their importance that his very earnestness and concentration betrays him into error of interpretation. It would be an insufficient, yet not a false, contrast between him and Origen to say that the latter distorts, with an almost playful ingenuity, the single words or phrases of Scripture, while Hilary, with masterful indifference to the principles of exegesis, will force a whole chapter to render the sense which he desires. And his obvious sincerity, his concentration of thought upon one great and always interesting doctrine, his constant appeal to what seems to be, and sometimes is, the exact sense of Scripture, and the vigour of his style, far better adapted to its purpose than that of Origen; all these render him an even more convincing exponent than the other of the bad system of interpretation which both have adopted. Sound theological deductions and wise moral reflections on every page make the reader willing to pardon a vicious method, for Hilary’s doctrine is never based upon his exegesis of the Psalms. No primary truth depends for him upon allegory or mysticism, and it may be that he used the method with the less caution because he looked for nothing more than that it should illustrate and confirm what was already established. Since, then, the permanent interest of the work is that it shews us what seemed to Hilary, as a representative of his age, to be the truth, and we have in it a powerful and original presentation of that truth, we can welcome, as a quaint and not ungraceful enlivening of his argument, this ingenuity of misinterpretation. And we may learn also a lesson for ourselves of the importance of the doctrine which he inculcates with such perseverance. Confronting him as it did, in various aspects, at every turn and in the most unlikely places during his journey through the Psalter, his faith concerning Christ was manifestly in Hilary’s eyes the vital element of religion.

The Homilies on the Psalms have never been a popular work. Readable as they are, and free from most of the difficulties which beset the De Trinitate, posterity allowed them to be mutilated, and, as we saw, only a portion has come down to us. Their chief influence, like that of the other treatise, has been that which Hilary has exercised through them upon writers of greater fame. Ambrose has borrowed from them liberally and quite uncritically for his own exposition of certain of the Psalms; and Ambrose, accredited by his own fame and that of his greater friend Augustine, has quite overshadowed the fame of Hilary. The Homilies may, perhaps, have also suffered from an undeserved suspicion that anything written by the author of the De Trinitate would be hard to read. They have, in any case, been little read; and yet, as the first important example in Latin literature of the allegorical method, and as furnishing the staple of a widely studied work of St. Ambrose, they have profoundly affected the course of Christian thought. Their historical interest as well as their intrinsic value commands our respect.

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Unhappily the remains of Origen’s work upon the Psalms, though considerable, are fragmentary, and of the fragments scattered through Catenæ no complete or critical edition has yet been made. Still, insufficient as the material would be for a detailed study and comparison, enough survives to enable us to form a general idea of the relation between the two writers. Origen composed Homilies upon the Psalter, a Commentary upon it, and a summary treatise, called the Enchiridion. The first of these works was Hilary’s model; Origen’s Homilies were diffuse extemporary expositions, ending, like Hilary’s, with an ascription of praise. It is unfortunate that, of the few which survive, all treat of Psalms on which Hilary’s Homilies are lost. But it is doubtful whether Hilary knew the other writings of Origen upon the Psalter. We have ourselves a very small knowledge of them, for the Catenæ are not in the habit of giving more than the name of the author whom they cite. Yet it may well be that some of the apparent discrepancies between the explanations given by Hilary and by Origen are due to the loss of the passage from Origen’s Homily which would have agreed with Hilary, and to the survival of the different rendering given in the Commentary or the Enchiridion; some, no doubt, are also due to the carelessness and even dishonesty of the compilers of Catenæ in stating the authorship of their selections. But though it is possible that Hilary had access to all Origen’s writings on the Psalms, there is no reason to suppose that he possessed a copy of his Hexapla. The only translation of the Old Testament which he names beside the Septuagint is that of Aquila; he is aware that there are others, but none save the Septuagint has authority or deserves respect, and his rare allusions to them are only such as we find in Origen’s Homilies, and imply no such exhaustive knowledge of the variants as a possessor of the Hexapla would have.

A comparison of the two writers shews the closeness of their relation, and if we had Origen’s complete Homilies, and not mere excerpts, the debt of Hilary would certainly be still more manifest. For the compilers of Catenæ have naturally selected what was best in Origen, and most suited for short extracts; his eccentricities have been in great measure omitted. Hence we may err in attributing to Hilary much that is perverse in his comments; there is an abundance of wild mysticism in the fragments of Origen, but its proportion to the whole is undoubtedly less in their present state than in their original condition. Hilary’s method was that of paraphrasing, not of servile translation. There is apparently only one literal rendering of an extant passage of Origen, and that a short one; but paraphrases, which often become very diffuse expansions, are constant. But a just comparison between the two must embrace their differences as well as their resemblances. Hilary has exercised a silent criticism in omitting many of Origen’s textual disquisitions. He gives, it is true, many various readings, but his confidence in the Septuagint often renders him indifferent in regard to divergencies which Origen had taken seriously. The space which the latter devotes to the Greek versions Hilary employs in correcting the errors and variations of the Latin, or in explaining the meaning of Greek words. But these are matters which rather belong to the next chapter, concerning, as they do, Hilary’s attitude towards Scripture. It is more significant of his tone of mind that he has omitted Origen’s speculations on the resurrection of the body, preserved by Epiphanius, and on the origin of evil. Again, Origen delights to give his readers a choice of interpretations; Hilary chooses one of those which Origen has given, and makes no mention of the other. 

This is his constant habit in the earlier part of the Homilies; towards the end, however, he often gives a rendering of his own, and also mentions, either as possible or as wrong, that which Origen had offered. Or else, though he only makes his own suggestion, yet it is obvious to those who have Origen at hand that he has in his mind, and is refuting for his own satisfaction, an alternative which he does not think good to lay before his audience. A similar liberty with his original occurs in the Homily on Psalm 135, 12:—‘The purposes of the present discourse and of this place forbid us to search more deeply.’ This must have seemed a commonplace to his hearers; but it happens that Origen’s speculations upon the passage have survived, and we can see that Hilary was rather making excuses to himself for his disregard of them than directly addressing his congregation. Apart from the numerous instances where Hilary derives a different result from the same data, there are certain cases where he accepts the current Latin text, though it differed from Origen’s Greek, and draws, without any reference to Origen, his own conclusions as to the meaning. These, again, seem to be confined to the latter part of the work, and may be the result of occasional neglect to consult the authorities, rather than a deliberate departure from Origen’s teaching.