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PAGE LIST OF WORKS ix

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 169

INDEX 173

LIST OF WORKS.

The following works will be found useful by students who are willing to pursue the subject further. Some of special interest or importance are marked with an asterisk.

MODERN WRITERS.

For special use:--

NOTE.

The Conversion of the Goths, which gives the best side of Arianism, has been omitted as belonging more properly to another volume of the series.

THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY.

Arianism is extinct only in the sense that it has long ceased to furnish party names. It sprang from permanent tendencies of human nature, and raised questions whose interest can never perish. As long as the Agnostic and the Evolutionist are with us, the old battlefields of Athanasius will not be left to silence. Moreover, no writer more directly joins the new world of Teutonic Christianity with the old of Greek and Roman heathenism. Arianism began its career partly as a theory of Christianity, partly as an Eastern reaction of philosophy against a gospel of the Son of God. Through sixty years of ups and downs and stormy controversy it fought, and not without success, for the dominion of the world. When it was at last rejected by the Empire, it fell back upon its converts among the Northern nations, and renewed the contest as a Western reaction of Teutonic pride against a Roman gospel. The struggle went on for full three hundred years in all, and on a scale of vastness never seen again in history. Even the Reformation was limited to the West, whereas Arianism ranged at one time or another through the whole of Christendom. Nor was the battle merely for the wording of antiquated creeds or for the outworks of the faith, but for the very life of revelation. If the Reformation decided the supremacy of revelation over church authority, it was the contest with Arianism which cleared the way, by settling for ages the deeper and still more momentous question, which is once more coming to the surface as the gravest doubt of our time, whether a revelation is possible at all.

Unlike the founders of religions, Jesus of Nazareth made his own person the centre of his message. Through every act and utterance recorded of him there runs a clear undoubting self-assertion, utterly unknown to Moses or Mahomet. He never spoke but with authority. His first disciples told how he began his ministry by altering the word which was said to them of old time, and ended it by calmly claiming to be the future Judge of all men. And they told the story of their own life also; how they had seen his glory while he dwelt among them, and how their risen Lord had sent them forth to be his witnesses to all the nations. Whatever might be doubtful, their personal knowledge of the Lord was sure and certain, and of necessity became the base and starting-point of their teaching. In Christ all things were new. From him they learned the meaning of their ancient scriptures; through him they knew their heavenly Father; in him they saw their Saviour from this present world, and to him they looked for the crown of life in that to come. His word was law, his love was life, and in his name the world was overcome already. What mattered it to analyse the power of life they felt within them? It was enough to live and to rejoice; and their works are one long hymn of triumphant hope and overflowing thankfulness.

It was easier for the first disciples to declare what their own eyes had seen and their own hands had handled of the Word of Life, than for another generation to take up a record which to themselves was only history, and to pass from the traditional assertion of the Lord's divinity to its deliberate enunciation in clear consciousness of the difficulties which gathered round it when the gospel came under the keen scrutiny of thoughtful heathens. Whatever vice might be in heathenism, there was no want of interest in religion. If the doubts of some were real, the scoffs of many were only surface-deep. If the old legends of Olympus were outworn, philosophy was still a living faith, and every sort of superstition flourished luxuriantly. Old worships were revived, the ends of the earth were searched for new ones. Isis or Mithras might help where Jupiter was powerless, and uncouth lustrations of the blood of bulls and goats might peradventure cast a spell upon eternity. The age was too sad to be an irreligious one. Thus from whatever quarter a convert might approach the gospel, he brought earlier ideas to bear upon its central question of the person of the Lord. Who then was this man who was dead, whom all the churches affirmed to be alive and worshipped as the Son of God? If he was divine, there must be two Gods; if not, his worship was no better than the vulgar worships of the dead. In either case, there seemed to be no escape from the charge of polytheism.

The key of the difficulty is on its other side, in the doctrine of the unity of God, which was not only taught by Jews and Christians, but generally admitted by serious heathens. The philosophers spoke of a dim Supreme far off from men, and even the polytheists were not unwilling to subordinate their motley crew of gods to some mysterious divinity beyond them all. So far there was a general agreement. But underneath this seeming harmony there was a deep divergence. Resting on a firm basis of historic revelation, Christianity could bear record of a God who loved the world and of a Redeemer who had come in human flesh. As this coming is enough to show that God is something more than abstract perfection and infinity, there is nothing incredible in a real incarnation, or in a real trinity inside the unity of God. But the heathen had no historic revelation of a living hope to sustain him in that age of failure and exhaustion. Nature was just as mighty, just as ruthless then as now, and the gospel was not yet the spring of hope it is in modern life. In our time the very enemies of the cross are living in its light, and drawing at their pleasure from the well of Christian hope. It was not yet so in that age. Brave men like Marcus Aurelius could only do their duty with hopeless courage, and worship as they might a God who seemed to refuse all answer to the great and bitter cry of mankind. If he cares for men, why does he let them perish? The less he has to do with us, the better we can understand our evil plight. Thus their Supreme was far beyond the weakness of human sympathy. They made him less a person than a thing or an idea, enveloped in clouds of mysticism and abolished from the world by his very exaltation over it. He must not touch it lest it perish. The Redeemer whom the Christians worship may be a hero or a prophet, an angel or a demi-god--anything except a Son of God in human form. We shall have to find some explanation for the scandal of the incarnation.

Arianism is Christianity shaped by thoughts like these. Its author was no mere bustling schemer, but a grave and blameless presbyter of Alexandria. Arius was a disciple of the greatest critic of his time, the venerated martyr Lucian of Antioch. He had a name for learning, and his letters bear witness to his dialectical skill and mastery of subtle irony. At the outbreak of the controversy, about the year 318, we find him in charge of the church of Baucalis at Alexandria, and in high favour with his bishop, Alexander. It was no love of heathenism, but a real difficulty of the gospel which led him to form a new theory. His aim was not to lower the person of the Lord or to refuse him worship, but to defend that worship from the charge of polytheism. Starting from the Lord's humanity, he was ready to add to it everything short of the fullest deity. He could not get over the philosophical difficulty that one who is man cannot be also God, and therefore a second God. Let us see how high a creature can be raised without making hint essentially divine.

The Arian Christ is indeed a lofty creature. He claims our worship as the image of the Father, begotten before all worlds, as the Son of God, by whom all things were made, who for us men took flesh and suffered and rose again, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and remains both King and God for ever. Is not this a good confession? What more can we want? Why should all this glorious language go for nothing? God forbid that it should go for nothing. Arianism was at least so far Christian that it held aloft the Lord's example as the Son of Man, and never wavered in its worship of him as the Son of God. Whatever be the errors of its creed, whatever the scandals of its history, it was a power of life among the Northern nations. Let us give Arianism full honour for its noble work of missions in that age of deep despair which saw the dissolution of the ancient world.

Nevertheless, this plausible Arian confession will not bear examination. It is only the philosophy of the day put into a Christian dress. It starts from the accepted belief that the unity of God excludes not only distinctions inside the divine nature, but also contact with the world. Thus the God of Arius is an unknown God, whose being is hidden in eternal mystery. No creature can reveal him, and he cannot reveal himself. But if he is not to touch the world, he needs a minister of creation. The Lord is rather such a minister than the conqueror of death and sin. No doubt he is the Son of God, and begotten before all worlds. Scripture is quite clear so far; but if he is distinct from the Father, he is not God; and if he is a Son, he is not co-eternal with the Father. And what is not God is creature, and what is not eternal is also creature. On both grounds, then, the Lord is only a creature; so that if he is called God, it is in a lower and improper sense; and if we speak of him as eternal, we mean no more than the eternity of all things in God's counsel. Far from sharing the essence of the Father, he does not even understand his own. Nay, more; he is not even a creature of the highest type. If he is not a sinner, , his virtue is, like our own, a constant struggle of free-will, not the fixed habit which is the perfection and annulment of free-will. And now that his human soul is useless, we may as well simplify the incarnation into an assumption of human flesh and nothing more. The Holy Spirit bears to the Son a relation not unlike that of the Son to the Father. Thus the Arian trinity of divine persons forms a descending series, separated by infinite degrees of honour and glory, resembling the philosophical triad of orders of spiritual existence, extending outwards in concentric circles.

Indeed the system is heathen to the core. The Arian Christ is nothing but a heathen idol invented to maintain a heathenish Supreme in heathen isolation from the world. Never was a more illogical theory devised by the wit of man. Arius proclaims a God of mystery, unfathomable to the Son of God himself, and goes on to argue as if the divine generation were no more mysterious than its human type. He forgets first that metaphor would cease to be metaphor if there were nothing beyond it; then that it would cease to be true if its main idea were misleading. He presses the metaphor of sonship as if mere human relations could exhaust the meaning of the divine; and soon works round to the conclusion that it is no proper sonship at all. In his irreverent hands the Lord's deity is but the common right of mankind, his eternity no more than the beasts themselves may claim. His clumsy logic overturns every doctrine he is endeavouring to establish. He upholds the Lord's divinity by making the Son of God a creature, and then worships him to escape the reproach of heathenism, although such worship, on his own showing, is mere idolatry. He makes the Lord's manhood his primary fact, and overthrows that too by refusing the Son of Man a human soul. The Lord is neither truly God nor truly man, and therefore is no true mediator. Heathenism may dream of a true communion with the Supreme, but for us there neither is nor ever can be any. Between our Father and ourselves there is a great gulf fixed, which neither he nor we can pass. Now that we have heard the message of the Lord, we know the final certainty that God is darkness, and in him is no light at all. If this be the sum of the whole matter, then revelation is a mockery, and Christ is dead in vain.

The great persecution had been raging but a few years back, and the changes which had passed since then were enough to stir the enthusiasm of the dullest Christian. These splendid paragraphs are the song of victory over the defeat of the Pharaohs of heathenism and the deliverance of the churches from the house of bondage. 'Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.' There is something in them higher than the fierce exultation of Lactantius over the sufferings of the dying persecutors, though that too is impressive. 'The Lord hath heard our prayers. The men who strove with God lie low; the men who overthrew his churches have themselves fallen with a mightier overthrow; the men who tortured the righteous have surrendered their guilty spirits under the blows of Heaven and in tortures well deserved though long delayed--yet delayed only that posterity might learn the full terrors of God's vengeance on his enemies.' There is none of this fierce joy in Athanasius, though he too had seen the horrors of the persecution, and some of his early teachers had perished in it. His eyes are fixed on the world-wide victory of the Eternal Word, and he never lowers them to resent the evil wrought by men of yesterday. Therefore neither lapse of time nor multiplicity of trials could ever quench in Athanasius the pure spirit of hope which glows in his youthful work. Slight as our sketch of it has been, it will be enough to show his combination of religious intensity with a speculative insight and a breadth of view reminding us of Origen. If he fails to reach the mystery of sinlessness in man, and is therefore not quite free from a Sabellianising view of the Lord's humanity as a mere vesture of his divinity, he at least rises far above the barren logic of the Arians. We shall presently have to compare him with the next great Eastern thinker, Apollinarius of Laodicea.

Thus the new theory made a great sensation at Alexandria, and it was not without much hesitation and delay that Alexander ventured to excommunicate his heterodox presbyter with his chief followers, like Pistus, Carpones, and the deacon Euzoius--all of whom we shall meet again. Arius was a dangerous enemy. His austere life and novel doctrines, his dignified character and championship of 'common sense in religion,' made him the idol of the ladies and the common people. He had plenty of telling arguments for them. 'Did the Son of God exist before his generation?' Or to the women, 'Were you a mother before you had a child?' He knew also how to cultivate his popularity by pastoral visiting--his enemies called it canvassing--and by issuing a multitude of theological songs 'for sailors and millers and wayfarers,' as one of his admirers says. So he set the bishop at defiance, and more than held his ground against him. The excitement spread to every village in Egypt, and Christian divisions became a pleasant subject for the laughter of the heathen theatres.

The next step was to secure outside support. Arius betook himself to Caesarea in Palestine, and thence appealed to the Eastern churches generally. Nor did he look for help in vain. His doctrine fell in with the prevailing dread of Sabellianism, his personal misfortunes excited interest, his dignified bearing commanded respect, and his connection with the school of Lucian secured him learned and influential sympathy. Great Syrian bishops like those of Caesarea, Tyre, and Laodicea gave him more or less encouragement; and when the old Lucianist Eusebius of Nicomedia held a council in Bithynia to demand his recall, it became clear that the controversy was more than a local dispute. Arius even boasted that the Eastern bishops agreed with him, 'except a few heretical and ill-taught men,' like those of Antioch and Jerusalem.

The Eastern Emperor, Licinius, let the dispute take its course. He was a rude old heathen soldier, and could only let it alone. If Eusebius of Nicomedia tried to use his influence in favour of Arius, he had small success. But when the battle of Chrysopolis laid the Empire at the feet of Constantine, it seemed time to get the question somehow settled.

For nearly twenty years after the middle of the third century, the Roman Empire seemed given over to destruction. It is hard to say whether the provinces suffered more from the inroads of barbarians who ravaged them almost at their will, or from the exactions of a mutinous soldiery who set up an emperor for almost every army; yet both calamities were surpassed by the horrors of a pestilence which swept away the larger part of mankind. There was little hope in an effete polytheism, still less in a corrupt and desponding society. The emperors could not even make head against their foreign enemies. Decius was killed in battle with the Goths, Valerian captured by the Persians. But the Teuton was not yet ready to be the heir of the world. Valerian left behind a school of generals who were able, even in those evil days, to restore the Empire to something like its former splendour. Claudius began by breaking the power of the Goths at Naissus in 269. Aurelian made a firm peace with the Goths, and also recovered the provinces. Tetricus and Zenobia, the Gaulish Caesar and the Syrian queen, adorned the triumph of their conqueror. The next step was for Diocletian to reform the civil power and reduce the army to obedience. Unfortunately his division of the Empire into more manageable parts led to a series of civil wars, which lasted till its reunion by Constantine in 323. His religious policy was a still worse failure. Instead of seeing in Christianity the one remaining hope of mankind, he set himself at the end of his reign to stamp it out, and left his successors to finish the hopeless task. Here again Constantine repaired Diocletian's error. The edict of Milan in 312 put an end to the great persecution, and a policy of increasing favour soon removed all danger of Christian disaffection.

When Constantine stood out before the world as the patron of the gospel, he felt bound to settle the question of Arianism. In some ways he was well qualified for the task. There can be no doubt of his ability and earnestness, or of his genuine interest in Christianity. In political skill he was an overmatch for Diocletian, and his military successes were unequalled since the triumph of Aurelian. The heathens saw in him the restorer of the Empire, the Christians their deliverer from persecution. Even the feeling of a divine mission, which laid him so open to flattery, gave him also a keen desire to remedy the social misery around him; and in this he looked for help to Christianity. Amidst the horrors of Diocletian's persecution a conviction grew upon him that the power which fought the Empire with success must somehow come from the Supreme. Thus he slowly learned to recognise the God of the Christians in his father's God, and in the Sun-god's cross of light to see the cross of Christ. But in Christianity itself he found little more than a confirmation of natural religion. Therefore, with all his interest in the churches, he could not reach the secret of their inner life. Their imposing monotheism he fully appreciated, but the person of the Lord was surely a minor question. Constantine shared the heathen feelings of his time, so that the gospel to him was only a monotheistic heathenism. Thus Arianism came up to his idea of it, and the whole controversy seemed a mere affair of words.

But if he had no theological interest in the question, he could not overlook its political importance. Egypt was always a difficult province to manage; and if these Arian songs caused a bloody tumult in Alexandria, he could not let the Christians fight out their quarrels in the streets, as the Jews were used to do. The Donatists had given him trouble enough over a disputed election in Africa, and he did not want a worse than Donatist quarrel in Egypt. Nor was the danger confined to Egypt; it had already spread through the East. The unity of Christendom was at peril, and with it the support which the shattered Empire looked for from an undivided church. The state could treat with a definite organisation of churches, but not with miscellaneous gatherings of sectaries. The question must therefore be settled one way or the other, and settled at once. Which way it was decided mattered little, so that an end was made of the disturbance.

In this temper Constantine approached the difficulty. His first step was to send Hosius of Cordova to Alexandria with a letter to Alexander and Arius representing the question as a battle of words about mysteries beyond our reach. In the words of a modern writer, 'It was the excess of dogmatism founded upon the most abstract words in the most abstract region of human thought.' It had all arisen out of an over-curious question asked by Alexander, and a rash answer given by Arius. It was a childish quarrel and unworthy of sensible men like them, besides being very distressing to himself. Had the dispute been really trifling, such a letter might have had a chance of quieting it. Instead of this, the excitement grew worse.

Constantine enlarged his plans. If Arian doctrine disturbed Alexandria, Meletius of Lycopolis was giving quite as much trouble about discipline farther up the Nile, and the old disputes about the time of Easter had never been effectually settled. There were also minor questions about the validity of baptism administered by the followers of Novatian and Paul of Samosata, and about the treatment of those who had denied the faith during the persecution of Licinius. Constantine, therefore, invited all Christian bishops inside and outside the Empire to meet him at Nicaea in Bithynia during the summer of 325, in order to make a final end of all the disputes which endangered the unity of Christendom. The 'city of victory' bore an auspicious name, and the restoration of peace was a holy service, and would be a noble preparation for the solemnities of the great Emperor's twentieth year upon the throne.

The idea of a general or oecumenical council may well have been Constantine's own. It bears the mark of a statesman's mind, and is of a piece with the rest of his life. Constantine was not thinking only of the questions to be debated. However these might be settled, the meeting could not fail to draw nearer to the state and to each other the churches of that great confederation which later ages have so often mistaken for the church of Christ. As regards Arianism, smaller councils had been a frequent means of settling smaller questions. Though Constantine had not been able to quiet the Donatists by means of the Council of Arles, he might fairly hope that the authority of such a gathering as this would bear down all resistance. If he could only bring the bishops to some decision, the churches might be trusted to follow it.

An imposing list of bishops answered Constantine's call. The signatures are 223, but they are not complete. The Emperor speaks of 300, and tradition gives 318, like the number of Abraham's servants, or like the mystic number which stands for the cross of Christ. From the far west came his chief adviser for the Latin churches, the patriarch of councils, the old confessor Hosius of Cordova. Africa was represented by Caecilian of Carthage, round whose election the whole Donatist controversy had arisen, and a couple of presbyters answered for the apostolic and imperial see of Rome. Of the thirteen great provinces of the Empire none was missing except distant Britain; but the Western bishops were almost lost in the crowd of Easterns. From Egypt came Alexander of Alexandria with his young deacon Athanasius, and the Coptic confessors Paphnutius and Potammon, each with an eye seared out, came from cities farther up the Nile. All these were resolute enemies of Arianism; its only Egyptian supporters were two bishops from the edge of the western desert. Syria was less unequally divided. If Eustathius of Antioch and Macarius of AElia were on Alexander's side, the bishops of Tyre and Laodicea with the learned Eusebius of Caesarea leaned the other way or took a middle course. Altogether there were about a dozen more or less decided Arianizers thinly scattered over the country from the slopes of Taurus to the Jordan valley. Of the Pontic bishops we need notice only Marcellus of Ancyra and the confessor Paul of Neocaesarea. Arianism had no friends in Pontus to our knowledge, and Marcellus was the busiest of its enemies. Among the Asiatics, however, there was a small but influential group of Arianizers, disciples of Lucian like Arius himself. Chief of these was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was rather a court politician than a student like his namesake of Caesarea, and might be expected to influence the Emperor as much as any one. With him went the bishops of Ephesus and Nicaea itself, and Maris of Chalcedon. The Greeks of Europe were few and unimportant, but on the outskirts of the Empire we find some names of great interest. James of Nisibis represented the old Syrian churches which spoke the Lord's own native language. Restaces the Armenian could remind the bishops that Armenia was in Christ before Rome, and had fought the persecutors in their cause. Theophilus the Goth might tell them the modest beginnings of Teutonic Christianity among his countrymen of the Crimean undercliff. John the Persian, who came from one or another of the many distant regions which bore the name of India, may dimly remind ourselves of the great Nestorian missions which one day were to make the Christian name a power in Northern China. Little as Eusebius of Caesarea liked some issues of the council, he is full of genuine enthusiasm over his majestic roll of churches far and near, from the extremity of Europe to the farthest ends of Asia. Not without the Holy Spirit's guidance did that august assembly meet. Nor was its meeting a day of hope for the churches only, but also for the weary Empire. In that great crisis the deep despair of ages was forgotten. It might be that the power which had overcome the world could also cure its ancient sickness. Little as men could see into the issues of the future, the meaning of the present was beyond mistake. The new world faced the old, and all was ready for the league which joined the names of Rome and Christendom, and made the sway of Christ and Caesar one.

It seems to have been understood that the council was to settle the question by drawing up a creed as a test for bishops. Here was a twofold novelty. In the first place, Christendom as a whole had as yet no written creed at all. The so-called Apostles' Creed may be older than 340, but then it first appears, and only as a personal confession of the heretic Marcellus. Every church taught its catechumens the historic outlines of the faith, and referred to Scripture as the storehouse and final test of doctrine. But that doctrine was not embodied in forms of more than local currency. Thus different churches had varying creeds to form the basis of the catechumen's teaching, and placed varying professions in his mouth at baptism. Some of these were ancient, and some of widespread use, and all were much alike, for all were couched in Scripture language, variously modelled on the Lord's baptismal formula . At Jerusalem, for example, the candidate declared his faith:

in the Father; in the Son; in the Holy Spirit; and in one Baptism of Repentance.

The Roman form, as approximately given by Novatian in the middle of the third century, was,

I believe in God the Father, the Lord Almighty; in Christ Jesus his Son, the Lord our God; and in the Holy Spirit.

Though these local usages were not disturbed, it was none the less a momentous step to draw up a document for all the churches. Its use as a test for bishops was a further innovation. Purity of doctrine was for a long time guarded by Christian public opinion. If a bishop taught novelties, the neighbouring churches met in conference on them, and refused his communion if they proved unsound. Of late years these conferences had been growing into formal councils of bishops, and the legal recognition of the churches by Gallienus had enabled them to take the further step of deposing false teachers. Aurelian had sanctioned this in the case of Paul of Samosata by requiring communion with the bishops of Rome and Italy as the legal test of Christian orthodoxy. But there were practical difficulties in this plan of government by councils. A strong party might dispute the sentence, or even get up rival councils to reverse it. The African Donatists had given Constantine trouble enough of this sort some years before; and now that the Arians were following their example, it was evident that every local quarrel would have an excellent chance of becoming a general controversy. In the interest, therefore, of peace and unity, it seemed better to adopt a written test. If a bishop was willing to sign it when asked, his subscription should be taken as a full reply to every charge of heresy which might be made against him. On this plan, whatever was left out of the creed would be deliberately left an open question in the churches. Whatever a bishop might choose to teach , he would have full protection, unless some clause of the new creed expressly shut it out. This is a point which must be kept in view when we come to estimate the conduct of Athanasius. Thus however Constantine hoped to make the bishops keep the peace over such trumpery questions as this of Arianism seemed to him. Had it been a trumpery question, his policy might have had some chance of lasting success. For the moment, at any rate, all parties accepted it, so that the council had only to settle the wording of the new creed.

The Arians must have come full of hope to the council. So far theirs was the winning side. They had a powerful friend at court in the Emperor's sister, Constantia, and an influential connection in the learned Lucianic circle. Reckoning also on the natural conservatism of Christian bishops, on the timidity of some, and on the simplicity or ignorance of others, they might fairly expect that if their doctrine was not accepted by the council, it would at least escape formal condemnation. They hoped, however, to carry all before them. An Arianizing creed was therefore presented by a score or so of bishops, headed by the courtier Eusebius of Nicomedia. They soon found their mistake. The Lord's divinity was not an open question in the churches. The bishops raised an angry clamour and tore the offensive creed in pieces. Arius was at once abandoned by nearly all his friends.

This was decisive. Arianism was condemned almost unanimously, and nothing remained but to put on record the decision. But here began the difficulty. Marcellus and Athanasius wanted it put into the creed, but the bishops in general saw no need of this. A heresy so easily overcome could not be very dangerous. There were only half a dozen Arians left in the council, and too precise a definition might lead to dangers on the Sabellian side. At this point the historian Eusebius came forward. Though neither a great man nor a clear thinker, he was the most learned student of the East. He had been a confessor in the persecution, and now occupied an important see, and stood high in the Emperor's favour. With regard to doctrine, he held a sort of intermediate position, regarding the Lord not indeed as a creature, but as a secondary God derived from the will of the Father. This, as we have seen, was the idea then current in the East, that it is possible to find some middle term between the creature and the highest deity. To a man of this sort it seemed natural to fall back on the authority of some older creed, such as all could sign. He therefore laid before the council that of his own church of Caesarea, as follows:--

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, light from light, life from life, the only-begotten Son, the first-born of all creation, begotten of the Father before all ages,-- by whom also all things were made; who for our salvation was made flesh, and lived among men, and suffered, and rose again the third day, and ascended to the Father, and shall come again in glory, to judge quick and dead; And in the Holy Spirit.

Had the council been drawing up a creed for popular use, a short and simple document of this kind would have been suitable enough. The undecided bishops received it with delight. It contained none of the vexatious technical terms which had done all the mischief--nothing but familiar Scripture, which the least learned of them could understand. So far as Arianism might mean to deny the Lord's divinity, it was clearly condemned already, and the whole question might now be safely left at rest behind the ambiguities of the Caesarean creed. So it was accepted at once. Marcellus himself could find no fault with its doctrine, and the Arians were glad now to escape a direct condemnation. But unanimity of this sort, which really decided nothing, was not what Athanasius and Marcellus wanted. They had not come to the council to haggle over compromises, but to cast out the blasphemer, and they were resolved to do it effectually.

Hardly a more momentous resolution can be found in history. The whole future of Christianity was determined by it; and we must fairly face the question whether Athanasius was right or not. Would it not have been every way better to rest satisfied with the great moral victory already gained? When heathens were pressing into the church in crowds, was that a suitable time to offend them with a solemn proclamation of the very doctrine which chiefly kept them back? It was, moreover, a dangerous policy to insist on measures for which even Christian opinion was not ripe, and it led directly to the gravest troubles in the churches--troubles of which no man then living was to see the end. The first half century of prelude was a war of giants; but the main contest opened at Nicaea is not ended yet, or like to end before the Lord himself shall come to end it. It was the decision of Athanasius which made half the bitterness between the Roman and the Teuton, between Christianity and Islam to this day. Even now it is the worst stumbling-block of Western unbelief. Many of our most earnest enemies would gladly forget their enmity if we would only drop our mysticism and admire with them a human Christ who never rose with power from the dead. But we may not do this thing. Christianity cannot make its peace with this world by dropping that message from the other which is its only reason for existence. Athanasius was clearly right. When Constantine had fairly put the question, they could not refuse to answer. Let the danger be what it might, they could not deliberately leave it open for Christian bishops to dispute whether our Lord is truly God or not. Those may smile to whom all revelation is a vain thing; but it is our life, and we believe it is their own life too. If there is truth or even meaning in the gospel, this question of all others is most surely vital. Nor has history failed to justify Athanasius. That heathen age was no time to trifle with heathenism in the very citadel of Christian life. Fresh from the fiery trial of the last great persecution, whose scarred and mutilated veterans were sprinkled through the council-hall, the church of God was entering on a still mightier conflict with the spirit of the world. If their fathers had been faithful unto death or saved a people from the world, their sons would have to save the world itself and tame its Northern conquerors. Was that a time to say of Christ, 'But as for this man, we know not whence he is'?

Athanasius and his friends made a virtue of necessity, and disconcerted the plans of Eusebius by promptly accepting his creed. They were now able to propose a few amendments in it, and in this way they meant to fight out the controversy. It was soon found impossible to avoid a searching revision. Ill-compacted clauses invited rearrangement, and older churches, like Jerusalem or Antioch, might claim to share with Caesarea the honour of giving a creed to the whole of Christendom. Moreover, several of the Caesarean phrases seemed to favour the opinions which the bishops had agreed to condemn. 'First-born of all creation' does not necessarily mean more than that he existed before other things were made. 'Begotten before all worlds' is just as ambiguous, or rather worse, for the Arians understood 'begotten' to mean 'created.' Again, 'was made flesh' left it unsettled whether the Lord took anything more than a human body. These were serious defects, and the bishops could not refuse to amend them. After much careful work, the following was the form adopted:--

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, an only-begotten-- that is, from the essence of the Father God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, being of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things on earth: who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, was made man, suffered, and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, cometh to judge quick and dead; And in the Holy Spirit.

But those who say that 'there was once when he was not,' and 'before he was begotten he was not,' and 'he was made of things that were not,' or maintain that the Son of God is of a different essence or created or subject to moral change or alteration-- these doth the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematize.

Our accounts of the debate are very fragmentary. Eusebius passes over an unpleasant subject, and Athanasius up and down his writings only tells us what he wants for his immediate purpose. Thus we cannot trace many of the Arian objections to the creed. Knowing, however, as we do that they were carefully discussed, we may presume that they were the standing difficulties of the next generation. These were four in number:--

'Of one essence' is Sabellian. This was true; and the defenders of the word did not seem to care if it was true. Marcellus almost certainly used incautious language, and it was many years before even Athanasius was fully awake to the danger from the Sabellian side.

The words 'essence' and 'of one essence' are not found in Scripture. This is what seems to have influenced the bishops most of all.

'Of one essence' is contrary to church authority. This also was true, for the word had been rejected as materializing by a large council held at Antioch in 269 against Paul of Samosata. The point, however, at present raised was not that it had been rejected for a good reason, but simply that it had been rejected; and this is an appeal to church authority in the style of later times. The question was one of Scripture against church authority. Both parties indeed accepted Scripture as supreme, but when they differed in its interpretation, the Arians pleaded that a word not sanctioned by church authority could not be made a test of orthodoxy. If tradition gave them a foothold , they thought themselves entitled to stay; if Scripture condemned them , Athanasius thought himself bound to turn them out. It was on the ground of Scripture that the fathers of Nicaea took their stand, and the works of Athanasius, from first to last, are one continuous appeal to Scripture. In this case he argues that if the disputed word is not itself Scripture, its meaning is. This was quite enough; but if the Arians chose to drag in antiquarian questions, they might easily be met on that ground also, for the word had been used or recognised by Origen and others at Alexandria. With regard to its rejection by the Syrian churches, he refuses all mechanical comparisons of date or numbers between the councils of Antioch and Nicaea, and endeavours to show that while Paul of Samosata had used the word in one sense, Arius denied it in another.

The council paused. The confessors in particular were an immense conservative force. If Hosius and Eustathius had been forward in attacking Arianism, few of them can have greatly wished to re-state the faith which had sustained them in their trial. Now the creed involved something like a revolution. The idea of a universal test was in itself a great change, best softened as much as might be. The insertion of a direct condemnation of Arianism was a still more serious step, and though the bishops had consented to it, they had not consented without misgiving. But when it was proposed to use a word of doubtful tendency, neither found in Scripture nor sanctioned by church authority, it would have been strange if they had not looked round for some escape.

Yet what escape was possible? Scripture can be used as a test if its authority is called in question, but not when its meaning is disputed. If the Arians were to be excluded, it was useless to put into the creed the very words whose plain meaning they were charged with evading. Athanasius gives an interesting account of this stage of the debate. It appears that when the bishops collected phrases from Scripture and set down that the Son is 'of God,' those wicked Arians said to each other, 'We can sign that, for we ourselves also are of God. Is it not written, All things are of God?' So when the bishops saw their impious ingenuity, they put it more clearly, that the Son is not only of God like the creatures, but of the essence of God. And this was the reason why the word 'essence' was put into the creed. Again, the Arians were asked if they would confess that the Son is not a creature, but the power and eternal image of the Father and true God. Instead of giving a straightforward answer, they were caught whispering to each other. 'This is true of ourselves, for we men are called the image and glory of God. We too are eternal, for we who live are always. And powers of God are many. Is He not the Lord of powers ? The locust and the caterpillar are actually "my great power which I sent among you." He is true God also, for he became true God as soon as he was created.' These were the evasions which compelled the bishops to sum up the sense of Scripture in the statement that the Son is of one essence with the Father.

So far Athanasius. The longer the debate went on, the clearer it became that the meaning of Scripture could not be defined without going outside Scripture for words to define it. In the end, they all signed except a few. Many, however, signed with misgivings, and some almost avowedly as a formality to please the Emperor. 'The soul is none the worse for a little ink.' It is not a pleasant scene for the historian.

Now that a general agreement had been reached, it was time for Constantine to interpose. He had summoned the council as a means of union, and enforced his exhortation to harmony by burning the letters of recrimination which the bishops had presented to him. To that text he still adhered. He knew too little of the controversy to have any very strong personal opinion, and the influences which might have guided him were divided. If Hosius of Cordova leaned to the Athanasian side, Eusebius of Nicomedia was almost Arian. If Constantine had any feeling in the matter--dislike, for example, of the popularity of Arius--he was shrewd enough not to declare it too hastily. If he tried to force a view of his own on the undecided bishops, he might offend half Christendom; but if he waited for the strongest force inside the council to assert itself, he might safely step in at the end to coerce the recusants. Therefore whatever pleased the council pleased the Emperor too. When they tore up the Arian creed, he approved. When they accepted the Caesarean, he approved again. When the morally strong Athanasian minority urged the council to put in the disputed clauses, Constantine did his best to smooth the course of the debate. At last, always in the interest of unity, he proceeded to put pressure on the few who still held out. Satisfactory explanations were given to Eusebius of Caesarea, and in the end they all signed but the two Egyptian Arians, Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of Marmarica. These were sent into exile, as well as Arius himself; and a qualified subscription from Eusebius of Nicomedia only saved him for the moment. An imperial rescript also branded the heretic's followers with the name of Porphyrians, and ordered his writings to be burnt. The concealment of a copy was to be a capital offence.

Other subjects decided by the council will not detain us long, though some of its members may have thought one or two of them quite as important as Arianism. The old Easter question was settled in favour of the Roman custom of observing, not the day of the Jewish passover in memory of the crucifixion, but a later Sunday in memory of the resurrection. For how, explains Constantine--how could we who are Christians possibly keep the same day as those wicked Jews? The council, however, was right on the main point, that the feasts of Christian worship are not to be tied to those of Judaism. The third great subject for discussion was the Meletian schism in Egypt, and this was settled by a liberal compromise. The Meletian presbyter might act alone if there was no orthodox presbyter in the place, otherwise he was to be a coadjutor with a claim to succeed if found worthy. Athanasius would have preferred severer measures, and more than once refers to these with unconcealed disgust. The rest of the business disposed of, Constantine dismissed the bishops with a splendid feast, which Eusebius enthusiastically likens to the kingdom of heaven.

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