Help With Reading Eighteenth Century Historians

After bringing comparisons between Plato and early fourth century Christian theologians (having to do with what Objectivists would understand as The Mind/Body Split), Gibbon proceeds to two distinctions between Plato and his 'ists and the Christians. The second one addresses "the authority of the church", and renders this passage:

"A metaphysical argument became the cause or pretence of political contests; the subtleties of the Platonic school were used as the badges of popular factions, and the distance which separated their respective tenets was enlarged or magnified by the acrimony of dispute. As long as the dark heresies of Praxeas and Sabellius laboured to confound the Father with the Son, the orthodoxy might be excused if they adhered more strictly and earnestly to the distinction than to the equality of the divine persons. But as soon as the heat of controversy had subsided and the progess of the Sabellians was no longer an object of terror to the churches of Rome, of Africa, or of Egypt, the tide of theological opinion began to flow with a gentle but steady motion toward the contrary extreme; and the most orthodox of doctors allowed themselves the use of the terms and definitions which had been censured in the mouth of the sectaries."

This, ladies and gentlemen, comes with all emphases original at pp. 682-683 of volume I of Oliphant Smeaton's edition of "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire" (Modern Library -- Random House). It precipitates this footnote:

"Socrates acknowledges that the heresy of Arius proceeded from his strong desire to embrace an opinion the most diametrically opposite to that of Sabellius."

Do not, dear readers, confabulate this Socrates -- the late fourth century writer -- with the Greek sage of some seven-plus centuries earlier. I'm just telling you: Gibbon simply presses on as if one knows these things.

Okay, then.