The Christians of the Eastern Empire maintained the primitive religion, and persevered in their original opposition to bearing arms in war, and to slavery, and to private-property rights, and so added nothing to the military power of Licinius, except their constantly increasing communal wealth. Licinius simply left the Church at peace, and was not consummate politician enough to use its vast resources in aid of his government, as Constantine had done, by inducing the Christians to abandon the primitive organization of the Church and become Roman subjects in everything except the mere article of faith. When Ulfilas, the Goth, converted his barbarous countrymen, and transformed the fierce and warlike tribes into peaceful and settled peoples among whom war, slavery, polygamy, and private property, were unknown, and among whom no king was recognized but Christ, Constantine declared war against them, and pursued them with fire and sword until they were forced to adopt Roman laws and customs, and agreed by treaty to supply a permanent force of forty thousand young men to the imperial army; and, after that, he caused Ulfilas himself to be ordained a bishop, and sent him back to his own people to teach the imperial religion instead of Christianity. But this profound and atheistic policy was too deep for the Emperor Licinius; and Constantine knew well that, according to the primitive Christianity, a whole Christian province would not furnish a single recruit to his rival’s legions, since no Christian would bear arms. Eusebius of Cæsarea, who had prepared the way for Constantine to become the head of the Church in the Western Empire, was the emperor’s chosen friend and constant counselor, and the ruler of Rome never forgot that the bishop had, first of all men, invited his attention to the fact that the despised and persecuted Christians constituted already a body of men so numerous, so virtuous, and so prosperous, as to hold the balance of power between any factions which might divide the Roman people just as soon as the legal disabilities which both concealed their numbers and fettered their influence might be removed by imperial favor.