It illustrates a condition of things which are suggestive of the simplicity of the early Church, when we find that in spite of his being a married man and a father—and in spite of Cyprian’s and of Tertullian’s praises of celibacy—Hilary was heartily chosen and almost forced into the episcopate. In this position he exhibited “all the excellent qualities of the great bishops.” We are told that he was “gentle and peaceable, given particularly to an ability to persuade and to influence.” With these he joined “a holy vigor which held him firm against rising heresies.” And Cassian says that Hilary “had all the virtues of an incomparable man.” The fact, after all, speaks for itself more loudly than these commendations. He was so much one of themselves that the people of Poitiers would not have selected him, if they had not known him to be the best man for the mitre.
From this time began that career of stainless honor which has outlasted the very walls which echoed his voice. He was known from Great Britain to the Indies. He ranks second only to Athanasius as a defender of the faith; and—as we already noted—he is classed by Jerome with the great bishop of Hippo whose portrait is given to us so vividly in Charles Kingsley’s _Hypatia_. And to us of our century and of our convictions in favor of charity and culture, it is particularly praiseworthy that he never gave up his secular scholarship, and that he never flagged or faltered in defending opinions which were as large and liberal as they were undeniably orthodox. He was an oak which stood against the blast unshaken, and which yet held, in the heart of its great branches, sweet nests of singing birds and leafy coverts of shade and peace.
Hilary was not suffered to be inactive. It was the period at which the Arian heresy was in full incandescence. No one holding the opinions of the Bishop of Poitiers could well remain neutral. He had—in conformity with a custom soon to become a law—separated his life from that of his home; but he appears always to have cherished a warm love for his wife and child. This placed him, however, in perfect freedom from other cares, and at liberty to devote himself to the eradication of false doctrine. Constantius, the Emperor, was an Arian, and this made the perplexity of the position very great. An honest man might ruin all by his blunt independence—but an honest man dare not be silent. And, besides, Hilary had neither attended the Synod of Arles (353) nor that of Milan (355), and was somewhat out of the ecclesiastical tide.