Christian Rome soon became a great instrument in God's hands for extending the influence of the Church even amongst little-known and uncivilized nations; and as persecution ceased to try the earnestness of those who embraced the religion of Christ, and the name of Christian came to be treated with respect instead of with scorn, the Church began to assume a position somewhat like that which she holds in our own day. [Sidenote: Discipline relaxed.] The profession of {68} Christianity under these circumstances was naturally more of a matter of course with many of those who had grown up under its shadow, than when, in earlier times, such a profession was likely to involve loss and suffering, and even death itself, and discipline was gradually and necessarily relaxed from the severity needful in the days of persecution. Section 2. _Internal Trials of the Church._ [Sidenote: Heresy gathers strength in prosperity,] The Church being thus firmly settled and delivered from outer enemies, was now to find troubles within. Even from the days of St. John the Divine heresies respecting the Person of our Blessed Lord had been rife; but these open denials of the Divinity of the Great Head of the Church had been successfully opposed without their leaving behind them any very lasting trace. [Sidenote: and is of a more dangerous nature.] Errors of a more subtle class followed, amounting in reality to unbelief in our Saviour's Godhead, but expressing that unbelief by assailing the teaching of the Church respecting His nature as Very God or as Very Man. [Sidenote: Arianism.] This species of error culminated in the heresy of Arius, who denied that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity was co-equal, co-eternal, and of One Substance with the Father, and whose false teaching was more widely listened to and followed than that of any of his predecessors in misbelief. Arianism, and various forms of error consequent upon it, long afflicted the Church, especially in the East, and the Emperor Constantine himself seems at one time to have had a leaning towards the theories of Arius. {69} Section 3. _The General Councils._ [Sidenote: The remedy provided for heresy.] The full tide of the Arian heresy was, however, not suffered to come upon the Church without a barrier being raised up by God to stem the torrent. The Emperor Constantine was providentially guided to call together a Council of Bishops from every part of the world, to decide what was and always had been the Faith of the Church respecting the Nature of our Blessed Lord. This is the first instance of what are known by the name of General Councils of the Church. Other councils, called provincial synods, had indeed been frequently held from the earliest times; but they were of a much more limited and partial character, and their decrees were binding only on the province in which they were held, and not on the Church at large. [Sidenote: Nature of General Councils.]