Be that as it may, it is plain that the Catholic Church, in devoting her energies to the suppression of the Gnostic heresies, lost much of the missionary power which till then had seemed all-conquering. During the two centuries which elapsed between the siege of Jerusalem under Vespasian and the accession of Aurelian, the Church had raised herself from the position of a tiny Jewish sect to that of the foremost among the many religions of the Roman Empire. A brief but bloody persecution under Diocletian convinced the still Pagan Emperors of the impossibility of suppressing Christianity by force, and the alliance which they were thus driven to conclude with it enabled the Church to use successfully against the Gnostics the arm which had proved powerless against the Catholics[78]. Yet the triumph was a costly one, and was in its turn followed by a schism which rent the Church in twain more effectually than the Gnostic speculations could ever have done. In the West, indeed, the Latin Church was able to convert the barbarians who extinguished the Western half of the Roman Empire; but in the East, Christianity had to give way to a younger and more ardent faith. How far this was due to the means taken by the Church to suppress Gnosticism must still be a matter of speculation, but it is certain that after her first triumph over heresy she gained no more great victories. Footnote 1: Col. ii. 18. Footnote 2: Lightfoot, _St Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians_, pp. 90 _sqq._ Footnote 3: So A. Jülicher in _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Gnosis. Footnote 4: Irenaeus, _op. cit._ Bk I. c. 23, p. 214, Harvey. Salmon in _Dict. of Christian Biog._ _s.v._ Nicolaitans, thinks this an idea peculiar to Irenaeus alone and not to be found in the older source from which he drew his account of the other Gnostics. Footnote 5: The Canonical Apocalypse was probably written after the siege of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D., while the first unmistakable mention we have of St John’s Gospel is by Theophilus of Antioch a hundred years later. Earlier quotations from it are anonymous, _i.e._ they give the words of the Gospel as in the A.V. but without referring them to any specified author. See Duchesne, _Early Christian Church_, Eng. ed. pp. 102, 192. Footnote 6: Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk IV. c. 22, says that the Church was untroubled by heresy until the reign of Trajan. Footnote 7: Hegesippus (see last note) in his account of the martyrdom of “James the Brother of the Lord,” _op. cit._ Bk II. c. 23. Footnote 8: See Schmiedel, _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Community of Goods. Cf. Lucian, _de Mort. Peregrini_, c. XIII, and Mozley’s comments in _Dict. Christian Biog._ _s.v._ Lucianus. Footnote 9: _Maran atha._ See _Epistle of Barnabas_, c. XXI. Footnote 10: Winwood Reade, _op. cit._ pp. 237 _sqq._ Footnote 11: