history, what a pitched battle is in military history;"⚫ nor can it be denied that the parallel has ever held good in respect of the passion, and sometimes even the personal violence, brought to the decision of the points at issue. The controversy to be decided in the present case was that raised by ARIUS, a native of Cyrenaica, and presbyter of Alexandria, respecting the divine nature of Jesus Christ. The debate, which has lasted from the time when St. John wrote his Gospel down to our own day, had come by this time to involve "the excess of dogmatism founded upon the most abstract words in the most abstract region of human thought." Not content with the mystery of the Deity, taught without explanation by John and Paul, concerning the Divine Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God, God manifested in the flesh, divines imbued with the spirit of oriental subtlety speculated on the manner in which the terms Father, Son, and Only-begotten could be explained, and in which the Holy Trinity could subsist as three co-equal persons and yet one God. In the year 318, Alexander, the Patriarch of Alexandria, having asserted in a conference with his clergy the unity of substance in the persons of the Trinity, was accused by Arius of falling into the error of Sabellius, who had taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost were but manifestations of the One God. Arius maintained that the Son derived his being from the Father, within the limits of time, though before the creation of the universe; that thus the Son was the first of created beings, though infinitely above all others; and that he was endowed by the Father with such a plenitude of divine attributes, as rightly to be called God, though in a secondary sense. The character of Arius, whom Alexander himself had raised to the highest place among his clergy, and the fame of his ascetic piety, soon gained him numerous adherents among the clergy and people who shared his fervid African temperament; and he enlisted the populace on his side by embodying his dogmas in songs which were sung by sailors on their watches, by millers at their work, and by travellers on the road. Condemned by a synod of 100 African bishops in A.D. 321, Arius travelled about, propagating his doctrines, as a persecuted man. The excitement which ensued throughout Egypt is thus described by Eusebius :-"Bishop

Stanley, Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, p. 83. The reader is referred to the Lectures ii.-vi. for a most exhaustive and graphic account of the Council of Nice, and the whole relations of Constantine to Christianity.

rose against bishop, district against district, only to be compared to the Symplegades dashed against each other on a stormy day." What was afterwards said of Constantinople, when the dispute had reached its height, must have been true of Alexandria thus early : "Every corner, every alley of the city, was full of these discussions the streets, the market-places, the drapers, the moneychangers, the victuallers. Ask a man, How many oboli ?-he answers by dogmatizing on generated and ungenerated being. Inquire the price of bread, and you are told, the Son is subordinate to the Father. Ask if the bath is ready, and you are told, The Son arose out of nothing.'

Meanwhile the views of Arius found favour in the imperial city of Nicomedia, whose bishop, Eusebius, absolved him from the Alexandrine excommunication, convened a synod in Bithynia on his behalf, and wrote a letter to Constantine in his favour.† The emperor attempted the part of a mediator, in a letter to the Alexandrian Church, which throws a most interesting light upon the state of his mind at this epoch (A.D. 324). "He describes (as usual, with the attestation of an oath) his mission of uniting the world under one head. He expresses the hope with which he turned from the distracted West to the Eastern regions of his empire, as those from which Divine light had first sprung. But, oh! divine and glorious Providence, what wound has fallen on my ears-nay, rather on my heart! And, with an earnestness which it is difficult to believe not sincere, and with arguments, which modern theologians have visited with the severest condemnation, but which the ancient and orthodox historian Socrates has not hesitated to call wonderful and full of wisdom, he entreats the combatants to abandon these futile and interminable disputes, and to return to the harmony which became their common faith. Give me back my calm days and my quiet nights; light and cheerfulness instead of tears and groans. He had come as far as Nicomedia, the capital of the East; he entreats them to open for him the way to the East, and to enable him to see them and all rejoicing in restored freedom and unity." When this appeal had proved in vain, and a western bishop, Hosius of Corduba, sent to

In allusion to their dogma, that the Son, like the material universe, was created out of nothing, the Arians were called Exoukontians (from the phrase oùк Ŏvtwv, out of what does not exist).

+ Eusebius must not be confounded with his more celebrated namesake, the bishop of Cæsarea, who was also inclined to Arianism.

Euseb. Vit. Const. ii. 68-73; Stanley, Eastern Church, p. 87.

make inquiries at Alexandria, had returned with a report unfavourable to Arius, Constantine himself conceived "by a kind of divine inspiration"-for such are his own words-the first idea of convening a Council of the representatives of the whole Church. Let it never be forgotten that, whether for good or for evil, the first attempt to fix a standard of Catholic doctrine, by the voice of the majority in a representative assembly of the whole Curch, was the first fruit of the union of the supreme civil and ecclesiastical authority. The Council of Nicæa, like all the eighteen general councils that followed it, down to that of Trent, was called into existence by the State. By this first example a General Council was exhibited as "part of the original constitution of the Christian empire," and the doctrine was established that " General Councils may not be gathered together but by the commandment and will of princes." The importance of the epoch is not exaggerated by Dean Stanley:-" It was the earliest great historical event, so to speak, which had affected the whole Church since the close of the apostolic age. In the two intervening centuries, there had been many striking incidents, two or three great writers, abundance of curious and instructive usages. But all was isolated and fragmentary. Even the persecutions are imperfectly known. We are still in the catacombs: here and there a light appears to guide us; here and there is the authentic grave of a saint and a martyr, or the altar or picture of a primitive assembly; but the regular course of ecclesiastical history is still waiting to begin, and it does not begin till the Council of Nicæa. Then, for the first time, the Church meets the Empire face to face. The excitement, the shock, the joy, the disappointment, the hope of the meeting, communicate themselves to us. It is one of those moments in the history of the world which occur once, and cannot be repeated. It is the last point whence we can look back on the dark, broken road of the second and third centuries. It is the first point whence we can look forward to the new and comparatively smooth and easy course which the Church will have to pursue for two centuries, indeed, in some sense, for twelve centuries onwards. The line of demarcation between the Nicene and the ante-Nicene age is the most definite that we shall find till we arrive at the invasion of the barbarians."

* Article xxi. of the Church of England. Dean Stanley points out that this was almost implied in the phrase, "Ecumenical Synod," that is, an "Imperial Gathering;" for the technical meaning of the word olkovμérn (literally, the inhabited world) was the Roman Empire, even in the Greek of the New Testament. (Luke ii. 1.)

In obedience to the imperial letters, 318 bishops, each attended by two presbyters or deacons and three slaves (this, at least, was the retinue allowed), assembled at Nicæa about Whitsuntide of the year 325. Amongst its most important members, Alexandria was represented by the Patriarch, or Pope, Alexander, by the Heresiarch Arius, and his destined opponent, ATHANASIUS, "a small, insignificant young man, of hardly twenty-five years of age, and of bright, serene countenance. Though he is but the deaconthe chief deacon, or archdeacon t-of Alexander, he has closely

* Like the Bishop of Rome at a later age (but not yet), the Patriarch of Alexandria was already called officially THE POPE. "Papa, that strange and universal mixture of familiar endearment and of reverential awe, extended in a general sense to all Greek Presbyters and all Latin bishops, was the special address which, long before the name of patriarch or archbishop, was given to the head of the Alexandrian Church. This peculiar application of a name, in itself expressing simple affection, is thus explained: -Down to Heraclas (A.D. 230), the Bishop of Alexandria, being the sole Egyptian bishop, was called Abba (father), and his clergy Elders. From his time more bishops were created, who then received the name of Abba; and consequently the name of PAPA (ab-aba, i.e., pater patrum=grandfather) was appropriated to the primate. The Roman account (inconsistent with facts) is that the name was first given to Cyril, as representing the Bishop of Rome in the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431). The name was fixed to the Bishop of Rome in the seventh century." (Stanley.)

This was "an office very different from that which is called by the same name among ourselves. It was then literally what the word implies, the Chief of the Deacons,' the head of that body of deacons whose duty it is to attend upon the bishop. Of this kind is the office which still bears the name in the Eastern Church, and which is rendered illustrious to Eastern Christians by the two great names of Archdeacon Stephen and Archdeacon Athanasius." Athanasius, who was probably a Copt, or pure Egyptian, had attracted the attention of Alexander, and been appointed to his office, in consequence of a most singular event. From the windows of a lofty house, in which Alexander was entertaining his clergy, his attention was attracted by a game in which some children were engaged on the sea-shore. On being brought to the bishop, they reluctantly confessed that they had been enacting a baptism, and that one of them, having been chosen by them to play the part of a bishop, had dipped them in the sea. Finding that this boy-bishop had administered the sacrament with all the proper forms, he pronounced the sacrament valid, himself added the oil of confirmation, and, struck with the knowledge and gravity of the boy-bishop, he took him under his own charge. "This little boy was Athanasius, already showing the union of seriousness and sport which we shall see in his after years. That childish game is the epitome of the ecclesiastical feelings of his time and of his country. The children playing on the shore, the old man looking at them with interest, these, indeed, are incidents which belong to every age of the world. But only in the early centuries could have been found the immersion of the baptised, the necessity of a bishop to perform the ceremony, the mixture of freedom and superstition which could regard as serious a sacrament so lightly performed. In the Coptic Church is there the best likeness of this Eastern reverence for the sacred acts of children. A child still draws the lots in the patriarchal elections. By children is still performed the greater part of their innocent child-like services." In a few weeks after the close of the Council of Nicæa, Alexander died, and Athanasius was elected to succeed him in the see of Alexandria.

riveted the attention of the assembly by the vehemence of his arguments. He is already taking the words out of the bishop's mouth, and briefly acting in reality the part he had before, as a child, acted in name, and that in a few months he will be called to act both in name and in reality." Besides the other Egyptian bishops and presbyters, amongst whom were the firmest friends of Arius, there appeared his fanatic enemies, the wild ascetic hermits. from the interior, "not Greeks, nor Grecized Egyptians, but genuine Copts, speaking the Greek language not at all, or with great difficulty; living half or the whole of their lives in the desert; their very names taken from the heathen gods of the times of the ancient Pharaohs." Among the Syrian bishops, the one next in rank to Eustathius, Patriarch of Antioch, but of far higher personal distinction, was EUSEBIUS, Bishop of Cæsarea and Metropolitan of Palestine. "We honour him as the father of ecclesiastical history-as the chief depositary of the traditions which connect the fourth with the first century. But in the bishops at Nicæa his presence awakened feelings of a very different kind. He alone of the Eastern prelates could tell what was in the mind of the emperor; he was the clerk of the imperial closet; he was the interpreter, the chaplain, the confessor of Constantine." He was strongly suspected of Arianism, and was supported by most of his suffragan bishops from Palestine. The remoter East sent as its representatives James, Bishop of Nisibis, whose ascetic sanctity and miraculous fame had earned for him the name of the Moses of Mesopotamia; his cousin Aristaces, Bishop of Armenia, and, from beyond the frontier of the empire, John the Persian, who bore the title of Metropolitan of India. Among the prelates of Asia Minor was Eusebius, Bishop of the imperial city of Nicomedia, and two who had already obtained a fabulous reputation, Nicolas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia, and Spiridion of Cyprus, since the patron saint of the Ionian Islands. In short, the Council of Nicæa was in substance a synod of the Eastern Church. Of its 318 bishops, no less than 310 came from the division of the empire embraced in the name of Hellenism, and which soon formed the Greek empire.

Of the Latin Church, Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, himself too aged for the journey, sent the two presbyters who should have attended him. "In this simple deputation later writers have seen (and perhaps by a gradual process the connexion might be traced) the first germ of legati à latere. But it must have been a very far-seeing eye which in Victor and Vincentius, the two unknown