"We beseech Thee to curse and confound the Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, Jacobites, Iconoclasts, and all heretics and schismatics."'1 'The eternal generation of the Word is not found in Scripture, nor is He called the Son of God upon any account antecedent to the incarnation.' So says Dr. Bennet, and so say some other writers on both sides of the controversy. 2 Surely those writers had much to say for themselves.

Dr. Jortin conveys his own sentiments in the following passage:Scripture, say the Protestants, is the only rule of faith in matters pertaining to revealed religion, and they say well. Whatsoever is not clearly delivered there may be true, but cannot be important. Hæc mea est sententia, neque me ex câ ullius unquam aut docti, aut indocti movebit oratio.' 8

It has been said very truly by a Roman Catholic writer of the doctrine of Trinity in Unity, that in attempting to combine them 'you gain nothing but a mystery, which you can describe as a notion, but cannot depict as an imagination. . . . And hence, perhaps, it is that the latter doctrine is never spoken of as a mystery in the New Testament, which is addressed far more to the imagination and affections than to the intellect.' Rightly so addressed, because Christ and his Apostles wished to teach a religion; Athanasius to

1 Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i.

p. 376

3 Ibid. pp. 364, 365.

found and maintain a church. We shall see how far he succeeded in this purpose.

One thing is certain. The unhappy decision of the Council of Nice was the signal for centuries of bloodshed. Thousands of human beings died to confirm or contradict a doctrine which none of them understood.

77

ESSAY VI.

RISE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME.

THE day which saw the support of the Roman Emperor given openly and avowedly to the Christian religion ought, many Christians will think, to have inaugurated peace and good-will upon earth. That the consequences were so far from fulfilling this expectation may be attributed to several causes, which I will endeavour to enumerate.

The personal character of Constantine abounded in pride and ostentation, but was entirely wanting in humanity, and was disgraced by enormous crimes.

Constantine had many natural advantages, and he improved them by care and cultivation. He was tall, handsome, with a manly countenance and an agreeable voice; he studied war so successfully as to become a victorious general; and he preached sermons so effectively as to induce a bishop to declare that he was inspired. On the other hand, he imitated the worst emperors among his predecessors in listening to spies, in giving faith to their monstrous inventions, and in putting to death without pity the objects of their calumnious charges. It was at the instigation of spies, or prompted by their reports, that he sacrificed the

life of his son Crispus, and that, a few years afterwards, he put to death his wife, the Empress Fausta. The grounds of accusation and the names of the accusers have, in both instances, been hidden in mystery; and so far was this secrecy carried that the historian of his life, the Bishop Eusebius, does not even relate or allude to the fact of these cruel and unnatural executions. The Christian profession of Constantine was delayed till near the moment of his death, apparently from the belief, common in the Church at that age, that the rite of baptism washed away all crimes and all sins, whether of commission or omission, for which the baptized person was answerable previous to the reception of that holy sacrament.

It was another misfortune for the Roman Empire, and indeed for Christians all over the world, that instead of embracing consistently the doctrines whether of Athanasius or of Arius, Constantine fluctuated from one to the other, and thus encouraged a bloody conflict, which, having its rise not only in his own inconsistencies, but in the opinions and conduct of his sons and nephews, spread massacre, revolution, and war over the world for many generations. It was no wonder, therefore, that the subjects of Constantine, witnesses of the pomp of their emperor, gazing at his newly invented diadem covered with precious stones, his silken garments, his oriental magnificence, and beholding at the same time the crimes perpetrated within the walls of his palace, should brand by a scathing epigram the blaze of jewels which recalled Diocletian, and the murders which

repeated the memory of Nero.

Hence an inscription was found one day over the gates of the Palatine:

Saturni aurea sæcula quis requirat?

Sunt hæc gemmea, sed Neroniana.1

In the twentieth year of Constantine's reign, the Council of Nice had been held; the Arian doctrine had been condemned as heresy; Arius himself had been proscribed by the pen of the emperor, and forbidden to return to Alexandria. At a later period Constantine gave an audience to his favourite sister Constantia, whose husband and whose son he had put to death. At her prayer he agreed to restore Arius and the Arian party. In the thirtieth year of his reign a fresh council was held at Tyre; at this council Eusebius of Cæsarea, the Arian, presided; the church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated, and it was ordered, at the bidding of Constantine, that Arius should be received in triumph at Constantinople. On the very day of the expected triumph, Arius died in a sudden and horrible manner.

The various revolutions in the life of Athanasius, his triumph at Nice, his defeat at Tyre, his wonderful influence at Rome, his popular ovation at Alexandria, his vast energy and ability, are recorded by Gibbon, and expatiated upon by the historians of the Church. Yet Arianism, nourished by the vacillation of Constantine, upheld by the plausibility of its doctrine and by the protection of great princes, stood its ground in the world for several centuries. The first conqueror of

1 Sidon. Apollinar. Gibbon, vol. iii., 8vo, chap. xviii.