But men soon relapsed into their former discord; and it is now our painful task to point out the rise and growth of this dissension through the succeeding eras of history. For thus only--by considering, in every period, man’s relation, or, rather, his opposition, to the divine revelation--is it possible, amid the rapid progress of the widening disagreement, to trace the divine order which rules amid the anarchy of mind, and to follow it along its path of light up to its appointed end, and to its close and conclusion. In the first three or four centuries of Christianity, this spirit of opposition showed itself in two different forms. In the one, the new and simple faith was first of all perverted into a chaos of philosophical fictions of an old Asiatic character.[38] In the other, a secret and half infidelity hid itself behind a veil of words,[39] against which the faith must defend itself behind an outwork of words also; and in this period of history, a subtile and refined logomachy first of all attained to a great and lasting importance for mankind. In this dispute, the simple foundation of the faith was indeed maintained and defended, in its purity and integrity, against all hostile attacks; but the first-love lost much of its freshness and ardor. Consequently the new life, which sprung up with the new faith, was unable to fulfill the hopes which at its first rise men had reasonably entertained of it, and, by reforming the corrupt civilization of the old Roman world, to renew it entirely in God. Accordingly, an alien and purely physical element had to be associated with it. The northern nations were called in to infuse fresh energy into the worn-out races of England.