[Sidenote: Its results.]

Julian was gratified with a few unseemly wrangles, but the general result of his policy was unexpected. It took the Christians by surprise, and fairly shamed them into a sort of truce. The very divisions of churches are in some sense a sign of life, for men who do not care about religion will usually find something else to quarrel over. If nations redeem each other, so do parties; and the dignified slumber of a catholic uniformity may be more fatal to spiritual life than the vulgar wranglings of a thousand sects. The Christians closed their ranks before the common enemy. Nicenes and Arians forgot their enmity in the pleasant task of reviling the gods and cursing Julian. A yell of execration ran all along the Christian line, from the extreme Apollinarian right to the furthest Anomoean left. Basil of Caesarea renounced the apostate's friendship; the rabble of Antioch assailed him with scurrilous lampoons and anti-pagan riots. Nor were the Arians behind in hate. Blind old Maris of Chalcedon came and cursed him to his face. The heathens laughed, the Christians cursed, and Israel alone remembered Julian for good. 'Treasured in the house of Julianus Caesar,' the vessels of the temple still await the day when Messiah-ben-Ephraim shall take them thence.

[Sidenote: Return of Athanasius, Feb. 362.]

Back to their dioceses came the survivors of the exiled bishops, no longer travelling in pomp and circumstance to their noisy councils, but bound on the nobler errand of seeking out their lost or scattered flocks. Eusebius of Vercellae and Lucifer left Upper Egypt, Marcellus and Basil returned to Ancyra, while Athanasius reappeared at Alexandria. The unfortunate George had led a wandering life since his expulsion in 358, and did not venture to leave the shelter of the court till late in 361. It was a rash move, for his flock had not forgotten him. Three days he spent in safety, but on the fourth came news that Constantius was dead and Julian master of the Empire. The heathen populace was wild with delight, and threw George straight into prison. Three weeks later they dragged him out and lynched him. Thus when Julian's edict came for the return of the exiles, Athanasius was doubly prepared to take advantage of it.

[Sidenote: Council of Alexandria discusses:]

It was time to resume the interrupted work of the council of Seleucia. Semiarian violence frustrated Hilary's efforts, but Athanasius had things more in his favour, now that Julian had sobered Christian partizanship. If he wished the Galileans to quarrel, he also left them free to combine. So twenty-one bishops, mostly exiles, met at Alexandria in the summer of 362. Eusebius of Vercellae was with Athanasius, but Lucifer had gone to Antioch, and only sent a couple of deacons to the meeting.

[Sidenote: (1.) Returning Arians.]

Four subjects claimed the council's attention. The first was the reception of Arians who came over to the Nicene side. The stricter party was for treating all opponents without distinction as apostates. Athanasius, however, urged a milder course. It was agreed that all comers were to be gladly received on the single condition of accepting the Nicene faith. None but the chiefs and active defenders of Arianism were even to be deprived of any ecclesiastical rank which they might be holding.

[Sidenote: (2.) The Lord's human nature.]

A second subject of debate was the Arian doctrine of the Lord's humanity, which limited it to a human body. In opposition to this, the council declared that the Lord assumed also a human soul. In this they may have had in view, besides Arianism, the new theory of Apollinarius of Laodicea, which we shall have to explain presently.

[Sidenote: (3.) The words person and essence.]

The third subject before the council was an old misunderstanding about the term hypostasis. It had been used in the Nicene anathemas as equivalent to ousia or essence; and so Athanasius used it still, to denote the common deity of all the persons of the Trinity. So also the Latins understood it, as the etymological representative of substantia, which was their translation (a very bad one by the way) of ousia (essence). Thus Athanasius and the Latins spoke of one hypostasis (essence) only. Meantime the Easterns in general had adopted Origen's limitation of it to the deity of the several persons of the Trinity in contrast with each other. Thus they meant by it what the Latins called persona,[14] and rightly spoke of three hypostases (persons). In this way East and West were at cross-purposes. The Latins, who spoke of one hypostasis (essence), regarded the Eastern three hypostases as tritheist; while the Greeks, who confessed three hypostases (persons), looked on the Western one hypostasis as Sabellian. As Athanasius had connections with both parties, he was a natural mediator. As soon as both views were stated before the council, both were seen to be orthodox. 'One hypostasis' (essence) was not Sabellian, neither was 'three hypostases' (persons) Arian. The decision was that each party might keep its own usage.

[Footnote 14: Persona, again, was a legal term, not exactly corresponding to its Greek representative.]

[Sidenote: (4.) The schism at Antioch.]

Affairs at Antioch remained for discussion. Now that Meletius was free to return, some decision had to be made. The Eustathians had been faithful through thirty years of trouble, and Athanasius was specially bound to his old friends; yet, on the other hand, some recognition was due to the honourable confession of Meletius. As the Eustathians had no bishop, the simplest course was for them to accept Meletius. This was the desire of the council, and it might have been carried out if Lucifer had not taken advantage of his stay at Antioch to denounce Meletius as an associate of Arians. By way of making the division permanent, he consecrated the presbyter Paulinus as bishop for the Eustathians. When the mischief was done it could not be undone. Paulinus added his signature to the decisions of Alexandria, but Meletius was thrown back on his old connection with Acacius. Henceforth the rising Nicene party of Pontus and Asia was divided from the older Nicenes of Egypt and Rome by this unfortunate personal question.

[Sidenote: Fourth exile of Athanasius.]

Julian could not but see that Athanasius was master in Egypt. He may not have cared about the council, but the baptism of some heathen ladies at Alexandria roused his fiercest anger. He broke his rule of contemptuous toleration, and 'the detestable Athanasius' was an exile again before the summer was over. But his work remained. The leniency of the council was a great success, notwithstanding the calamity at Antioch. It gave offence, indeed, to zealots like Lucifer, and may have admitted more than one unworthy Arianizer. Yet its wisdom is evident. First one bishop, then another accepted the Nicene faith. Friendly Semiarians came in like Cyril of Jerusalem, old conservatives followed like Dianius of the Cappadocian Caesarea, and at last the arch-heretic Acacius himself gave in his signature. Even the creeds of the churches were remodelled in a Nicene interest, as at Jerusalem and Antioch, in Cappadocia and Mesopotamia.

[Sidenote: The Arians under Julian.]

Nor were the other parties idle. The Homoean coalition was even more unstable than the Eusebian. Already before the death of Constantius there had been quarrels over the appointment of Meletius by one section of the party, of Eunomius by another. The deposition of Aetius was another bone of contention. Hence the coalition broke up of itself as soon as men were free to act. Acacius and his friends drew nearer to Meletius, while Eudoxius and Euzoius talked of annulling the condemnation of the Anomoean bishops at Constantinople. The Semiarians were busy too. Guided by Macedonius and Eleusius, the ejected bishops of Constantinople and Cyzicus, they gradually took up a middle position between Nicenes and Anomoeans, confessing the Lord's deity with the one, and denying that of the Holy Spirit with the other. Like true Legitimists, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, they were satisfied to confirm the Seleucian decisions and re-issue their old Lucianic creed. Had they ceased to care for the Nicene alliance, or did they fancy the world had stood still since the Council of the Dedication?

[Sidenote: Julian's campaign in Persia (Mar. 5 to June 26, 363).]

Meanwhile the Persian war demanded Julian's attention. An emperor so full of heathen enthusiasm was not likely to forego the dreams of conquest which had brought so many of his predecessors on the path of glory in the East. His own part of the campaign was a splendid success. But when he had fought his way through the desert to the Tigris, he looked in vain for succours from the north. The Christians of Armenia would not fight for the apostate Emperor. Julian was obliged to retreat on Nisibis through a wasted country, and with the Persian cavalry hovering round. The campaign would have been at best a brilliant failure, but it was only converted into absolute disaster by the chance arrow (June 26, 363) which cut short his busy life. After all, he was only in his thirty-second year.

[Sidenote: Julian's character.]

Christian charity will not delight in counting up the outbreaks of petty spite and childish vanity which disfigure a noble character of purity and self-devotion. Still less need we presume to speculate what Julian would have done if he had returned in triumph from the Persian war. His bitterness might have hardened into a renegade's malice, or it might have melted at our Master's touch. But apart from what he might have done, there is matter for the gravest blame in what he did. The scorner must not pass unchallenged to the banquet of the just. Yet when all is said against him, the clear fact remains that Julian lived a hero's life. Often as he was blinded by his impatience or hurried into injustice by his heathen prejudice, we cannot mistake a spirit of self-sacrifice and earnest piety as strange to worldling bishops as to the pleasure-loving heathen populace. Mysterious and full of tragic pathos is the irony of God in history, which allowed one of the very noblest of the emperors to act the part of Jeroboam, and brought the old intriguer Maris of Chalcedon to cry against the altar like the man of God from Judah. But Maris was right, for Julian was the blinder of the two.



CHAPTER VII.

THE RESTORED HOMOEAN SUPREMACY.

[Sidenote: Effects of Julian's reign.]

Julian's reign seems at first sight no more than a sudden storm which clears up and leaves everything much as it was before. Far from restoring heathenism, he could not even seriously shake the power of Christianity. No sooner was he dead than the philosophers disappeared, the renegades did penance, and even the reptiles of the palace came back to their accustomed haunts. Yet Julian's work was not in vain, for it tested both heathenism and Christianity. All that Constantine had given to the churches Julian could take away, but the living power of faith was not at Caesar's beck and call. Heathenism was strong in its associations with Greek philosophy and culture, with Roman law and social life, but as a moral force among the common people, its weakness was contemptible. It could sway the wavering multitude with superstitious fancies, and cast a subtler spell upon the noblest Christian teachers, but its own adherents it could hardly lift above their petty quest of pleasure. Julian called aloud, and called in vain. A mocking echo was the only answer from that valley of dry bones. Christianity, on the other side, had won the victory almost without a blow. Instead of ever coming to grapple with its mighty rival, the great catholic church of heathenism hardly reached the stage of apish mimicry. When its great army turned out to be a crowd of camp-followers, the alarm of battle died away in peals of defiant laughter. Yet the alarm was real, and its teachings were not forgotten. It broke up the revels of party strife, and partly roused the churches to the dangers of a purely heathen education. Above all, the approach of danger was a sharp reminder that our life is not of this world. They stood the test fairly well. Renegades or fanatics were old scandals, and signs were not wanting that the touch of persecution would wake the old heroic spirit which had fought the Empire from the catacombs and overcome it.

[Sidenote: Jovian Emperor (June 27, 363).]

As Julian was the last survivor of the house of Constantine, his lieutenants were free to choose the worthiest of their comrades. But while his four barbarian generals were debating, one or two voices suddenly hailed Jovian as Emperor. The cry was taken up, and in a few moments the young officer found himself the successor of Augustus.

[Sidenote: Jovian's toleration.]

Jovian was a brilliant colonel of the guards. In all the army there was not a goodlier person than he. Julian's purple was too small for his gigantic limbs. But that stately form was animated by a spirit of cowardly selfishness. Instead of pushing on with Julian's brave retreat, he saved the relics of his army by a disgraceful peace. Jovian was also a decided Christian, though his morals suited neither the purity of the gospel nor the dignity of his imperial position. Even the heathen soldiers condemned his low amours and vulgar tippling. The faith he professed was the Nicene, but Constantine himself was less tolerant than Jovian. In this respect he is blameless. If Athanasius was graciously received at Antioch, even the Arians were told with scant ceremony that they might hold their assemblies as they pleased at Alexandria.

[Sidenote: The Anomoeans form a sect.]

About this time the Anomoeans organised their schism. Nearly four years had been spent in uncertain negotiations for the restoration of Aetius. The Anomoeans counted on Eudoxius, but did not find him very zealous in the matter. At last, in Jovian's time, they made up their minds to set him at defiance by consecrating Poemenius to the see of Constantinople. Other appointments were made at the same time, and Theophilus the Indian, who had a name for missionary work in the far East, was sent to Antioch to win over Euzoius. From this time the Anomoeans were an organized sect.

[Sidenote: Nicene successes.]

But the most important document of Jovian's reign is the acceptance of the Nicene creed by Acacius of Caesarea, with Meletius of Antioch and more than twenty others of his friends. Acacius was only returning to his master's steps when he explained one in essence by like in essence, and laid stress on the care with which 'the Fathers' had guarded its meaning. We may hope that Acacius had found out his belief at last. Still the connexion helped to widen the breach between Meletius and the older Nicenes.

[Sidenote: Valentinian Emperor.]

All these movements came to an end at the sudden death of Jovian (Feb. 16, 364.) The Pannonian Valentinian was chosen to succeed him, and a month later assigned the East to his brother Valens, reserving to himself the more important Western provinces. This was a lasting division of the Empire, for East and West were never again united for any length of time. Valentinian belongs to the better class of emperors. He was a soldier like Jovian, and held much the same rank at his election. He was a decided Christian like Jovian, and, like him, free from the stain of persecution. Jovian's rough good-humour was replaced in Valentinian by a violent and sometimes cruel temper, but he had a sense of duty and was free from Jovian's vices. His reign was a laborious and honourable struggle with the enemies of the republic on the Rhine and the Danube. An uncultivated man himself, he still could honour learning, and in religion his policy was one of comprehensive toleration. If he refused to displace the few Arians whom he found in possession of Western sees like Auxentius at Milan, he left the churches free to choose Nicene successors. Under his wise rule the West soon recovered from the strife Constantius had introduced.

[Sidenote: Character of Valens.]

Valens was a weaker character, timid, suspicious, and slow, yet not ungentle in private life. He was as uncultivated as his brother, but not inferior to him in scrupulous care for his subjects. Only as Valens was no soldier, he preferred remitting taxation to fighting at the head of the legions. In both ways he is entitled to head the series of financial rather than unwarlike sovereigns whose cautious policy brought the Eastern Empire safely through the great barbarian invasions of the fifth century.

[Sidenote: Breach between church and state.]

The contest entered on a new stage in the reign of Valens. The friendly league of church and state at Nicaea had become a struggle for supremacy. Constantius endeavoured to dictate the faith of Christendom according to the pleasure of his eunuchs, while Athanasius reigned in Egypt almost like a rival for the Empire. And if Julian's reign had sobered party spirit, it had also shown that an emperor could sit again in Satan's seat. Valens had an obedient Homoean clergy, but no trappings of official splendour could enable Eudoxius or Demophilus to rival the imposing personality of Athanasius or Basil. Thus the Empire lost the moral support it looked for, and the church became embittered with its wrongs.

[Sidenote: Rise of monasticism.]

The breach involved a deeper evil. The ancient world of heathenism was near its dissolution. Vice and war, and latterly taxation, had dried up the springs of prosperity, and even of population, till Rome was perishing for lack of men. Cities had dwindled into villages, and of villages the very names had often disappeared. The stout Italian yeomen had been replaced by gangs of slaves, and these again by thinly scattered barbarian serfs. And if Rome grew weaker every day, her power for oppression seemed only to increase. Her fiscal system filled the provinces with ruined men. The Alps, the Taurus, and the Balkan swarmed with outlaws. But in the East men looked for refuge to the desert, where many a legend told of a people of brethren dwelling together in unity and serving God in peace beyond the reach of the officials. This was the time when the ascetic spirit, which had long been hovering round the outskirts of Christianity, began to assume the form of monasticism. There were monks in Egypt—monks of Serapis—before Christianity existed, and there may have been Christian monks by the end of the third century. In any case, they make little show in history before the reign of Valens. Paul of Thebes, Hilarion of Gaza, and even the great Antony are only characters in the novels of the day. Now, however, there was in the East a real movement towards monasticism. All parties favoured it. The Semiarians were busy inside Mount Taurus; and though Acacians and Anomoeans held more aloof, they could not escape an influence which even Julian felt. But the Nicene party was the home of the ascetics. In an age of indecision and frivolity like the Nicene, the most earnest striving after Christian purity will often degenerate into its ascetic caricature. Through the selfish cowardice of the monastic life we often see the loving sympathy of Christian self-denial. Thus there was an element of true Christian zeal in the enthusiasm of the Eastern Churches; and thus it was that the rising spirit of asceticism naturally attached itself to the Nicene faith as the strongest moral power in Christendom. It was a protest against the whole framework of society in that age, and therefore the alliance was cemented by a common enmity to the Arian Empire. It helped much to conquer Arianism, but it left a lasting evil in the lowering of the Christian standard. Henceforth the victory of faith was not to overcome the world, but to flee from it. Even heathen immorality was hardly more ruinous than the unclean ascetic spirit which defames God's holy ordinance as a form of sin which a too indulgent Lord will overlook.

[Sidenote: New questions in controversy.]

Valens was only a catechumen, and had no policy to declare for the present. Events therefore continued to develop naturally. The Homoean bishops retained their sees, but their influence was fast declining. The Anomoeans were forming a schism on one side, the Nicenes recovering power on the other. Unwilling signatures to the Homoean creed were revoked in all directions. Some even of its authors declared for Arianism with Euzoius, while others drew nearer to the Nicene faith like Acacius. On all sides the simpler doctrines were driving out the compromises. It was time for the Semiarians to bestir themselves if they meant to remain a majority in the East. The Nicenes seemed daily to gain ground. Lucifer had compromised them in one direction, Apollinarius in another, and even Marcellus had never been frankly disavowed; yet the Nicene cause advanced. A new question, however, was beginning to come forward. Hitherto the dispute had been on the person of the Lord, while that of the Holy Spirit was quite in the background. Significant as is the tone of Scripture, the proof is not on the surface. The divinity of the Holy Spirit is shown by many convergent lines of evidence, but it was still an open question whether that divinity amounts to co-essential and co-equal deity. Thus Origen leans to some theory of subordination, while Hilary limits himself with the utmost caution to the words of Scripture. If neither of them lays down in so many words that the Holy Spirit is God, much less does either of them class him with the creatures, like Eunomius. The difficulty was the same as with the person of the Lord, that while the Scriptural data clearly pointed to his deity, its admission involved the dilemma of either Sabellian confusion or polytheistic separation. Now, however, it was beginning to be seen that the theory of hypostatic distinctions must either be extended to the Holy Spirit or entirely abandoned. Athanasius took one course, the Anomoeans the other, but the Semiarians endeavoured to draw a distinction between the Lord's deity and that of the Holy Spirit. In truth, the two are logically connected. Athanasius pointed this out in the letters of his exile to Serapion, and the council of Alexandria condemned 'those who say that the Holy Spirit is a creature and distinct from the essence of the Son.' But logical connection is one thing, formal enforcement another. Athanasius and Basil to the last refused to make it a condition of communion. If any one saw the error of his Arian ways, it was enough for him to confess the Nicene creed. Thus the question remained open for the present.

[Sidenote: Council of Lampsacus (364).]

Thus the Semiarians were free to do what they could against the Homoeans. Under the guidance of Eleusius of Cyzicus, they held a council at Lampsacus in the summer of 364. It sat two months, and reversed the acts of the Homoeans at Constantinople four years before. Eudoxius was deposed (in name) and the Semiarian exiles restored to their sees. With regard to doctrine, they adopted the formula like according to essence, on the ground that while likeness was needed to exclude a Sabellian (they mean Nicene) confusion, its express extension to essence was needed against the Arians. Nor did they forget to re-issue the Lucianic creed for the acceptance of the churches. They also discussed without result the deity of the Holy Spirit. Eustathius of Sebastia for one was not prepared to commit himself either way. The decisions were then laid before Valens.

[Sidenote: The Homoean policy of Valens.]

But Valens was already falling into bad hands. Now that Julian was dead, the courtiers were fast recovering their influence, and Eudoxius had already secured the Emperor's support. The deputies of Lampsacus were ordered to hold communion with the bishop of Constantinople, and exiled on their refusal.

Looking back from our own time, we should say that it was not a promising course for Valens to support the Homoeans. They had been in power before, and if they had not then been able to establish peace in the churches, they were not likely to succeed any better after their heavy losses in Julian's time. It is therefore the more important to see the Emperor's motives. No doubt personal influences must count for a good deal with a man like Valens, whose private attachments were so steady. Eudoxius was, after all, a man of experience and learning, whose mild prudence was the very help which Valens needed. The Empress Dominica was also a zealous Arian, so that the courtiers were Arians too. No wonder if their master was sincerely attached to the doctrines of his friends. But Valens was not strong enough to impose his own likings on the Empire. No merit raised him to the throne; no education or experience prepared him for the august dignity he reached so suddenly in middle life. Conscientious and irresolute, he could not even firmly control the officials. He had not the magic of Constantine's name behind him, and was prevented by Valentinian's toleration from buying support with the spoils of the temples.

Under these circumstances, he could hardly do otherwise than support the Homoeans. Heathenism had failed in Julian's hands, and an Anomoean course was out of the question. A Nicene policy might answer in the West, but it was not likely to find much support in the East outside Egypt. The only alternative was to favour the Semiarians; and even that was full of difficulties. After all, the Homoeans were still the strongest party in 365. They were in possession of the churches and commanded much of the Asiatic influence, and had no enmity to contend with which was not quite as bitter against the other parties. They also had astute leaders, and a doctrine which still presented attractions to the quiet men who were tired of controversy. Upon the whole, the Homoean policy was the easiest for the moment.

[Sidenote: The exiles exiled again.]

In the spring of 365 an imperial rescript commanded the municipalities, under a heavy penalty, to drive out the bishops who had been exiled by Constantius and restored by Julian. Thereupon the populace of Alexandria declared that the law did not apply to Athanasius, because he had not been restored by Julian. A series of dangerous riots followed, which obliged the prefect Flavianus to refer the question back to Valens. Other bishops were less fortunate. Meletius had to retire from Antioch, Eustathius from Sebastia.

[Sidenote: Semiarian embassy to Liberius.]

The Semiarians looked to Valentinian for help. He had received them favourably the year before, and his intercession was not likely to be disregarded now. Eustathius of Sebastia was therefore sent to lay their case before the court of Milan. As, however, Valentinian had already started for Gaul, the deputation turned aside to Rome and offered to Liberius an acceptance of the Nicene creed signed by fifty-nine Semiarians, and purporting to come from the council of Lampsacus and other Asiatic synods. The message was well received at Rome, and in due time the envoys returned to Asia to report their doings before a council at Tyana.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Procopius, Sept. 365.]

Meanwhile the plans of Valens were interrupted by the news that Constantinople had been seized by a pretender. Procopius was a relative of Julian who had retired into private life, but whom the jealousy of Valens had forced to become a pretender. For awhile the danger was pressing. Procopius had won over to his side some of the best legions of the Empire, while his connexion with the house of Constantine secured him the formidable services of the Goths. But the great generals kept their faith to Valens, and the usurper's power melted away before them. A decisive battle at Nacolia in Phrygia (May 366) once more seated Valens firmly on his throne.

[Sidenote: Baptism of Valens by Eudoxius (367).]

Events could scarcely have fallen out better for Eudoxius and his friends. Valens was already on their side, and now his zeal was quickened by the mortal terror he had undergone, perhaps also by shame at the unworthy panic in which he had already allowed the exiles to return. In an age when the larger number of professing Christians were content to spend most of their lives as catechumens, it was a decided step for an Emperor to come forward and ask for baptism. This, however, was the step taken by Valens in the spring of 367, which finally committed him to the Homoean side. By it he undertook to resume the policy of Constantius, and to drive out false teachers at the dictation of Eudoxius.

[Sidenote: Interval in the controversy (366-371).]

The Semiarians were in no condition to resist. Their district had been the seat of the revolt, and their disgrace at court was not lessened by the embassy to Rome. So divided also were they, that while one party assembled a synod at Tyana to welcome the return of the envoys, another met in Caria to ratify the Lucianic creed again. Unfortunately however for Eudoxius, Valens was entangled in a war with the Goths for three campaigns, and afterwards detained for another year in the Hellespontine district, so that he could not revisit the East till the summer of 371. Meanwhile there was not much to be done. Athanasius had been formally restored to his church during the Procopian panic by Brasidas the notary (February 366), and was too strong to be molested again. Meletius also and others had been allowed to return at the same time, and Valens was too busy to disturb them. Thus there was a sort of truce for the next few years. Of Syria we hear scarcely anything; and even in Pontus the strife must have been abated by the famine of 368. The little we find to record seems to belong to the year 367. On one side, Eunomius the Anomoean was sent into exile, but soon recalled on the intercession of the old Arian Valens of Mursa. On the other, the Semiarians were not allowed to hold the great synod at Tarsus, which was intended to complete their reconciliation with the Western Nicenes. These years form the third great break in the Arian controversy, and were hardly less fruitful of results than the two former breaks under Constantius and Julian. Let us therefore glance at the condition of the churches.

[Sidenote: New Nicene party in Cappadocia]

The Homoean party was the last hope of Arianism within the Empire. The original doctrine of Arius had been decisively rejected at Nicaea; the Eusebian coalition was broken up by the Sirmian manifesto; and if the Homoean union also failed, the fall of Arianism could not be long delayed. Its weakness is shown by the rise of a new Nicene party in the most Arian province of the Empire. Cappadocia is an exception to the general rule that Christianity flourished best where cities were most numerous. The polished vice of Antioch or Corinth presented fewer obstacles than the rude ignorance of pagi or country villages. Now Cappadocia was chiefly a country district. The walls of Caesarea lay in ruins since its capture by the Persians in the reign of Gallienus, and the other towns of the province were small and few. Yet Julian found it incorrigibly Christian, and we hear but little of heathenism from Basil. We cannot suppose that the Cappadocian boors were civilized enough to be out of the reach of heathen influence. It seems rather that the paganismus of the West was partly represented by Arianism. In Cappadocia the heresy found its first great literary champion in the sophist Asterius. Gregory and George were brought to Alexandria from Cappadocia, and afterwards Auxentius to Milan and Eudoxius to Constantinople. Philagrius also, the prefect who drove out Athanasius in 339, was another of their countrymen. Above all, the heresiarch Eunomius came from Cappadocia, and had abundance of admirers in his native district. In this old Arian stronghold the league was formed which decided the fate of Arianism. Earnest men like Meletius had only been attracted to the Homoeans by their professions of reverence for the person of the Lord. When, therefore, it appeared that Eudoxius and his friends were no better than Arians after all, these men began to look back to the decisions of 'the great and holy council' of Nicaea. There, at any rate, they would find something independent of the eunuchs and cooks who ruled the palace. Of the old conservatives also, who were strong in Pontus, there were many who felt that the Semiarian position was unsound, and yet could find no satisfaction in the indefinite doctrine professed at court. Here then was one split in the Homoean, another in the conservative party. If only the two sets of malcontents could form a union with each other and with the older Nicenes of Egypt and the West, they would sooner or later be the arbiters of Christendom. If they could secure Valentinian's intercession, they might obtain religious freedom at once.

[Sidenote: Basil of Caesarea.]

Such seems to have been the plan laid down by the man who was now succeeding Athanasius as leader of the Nicene party. Basil of Caesarea was a disciple of the schools of Athens, and a master of heathen eloquence and learning. He was also man of the world enough to keep on friendly terms with men of all sorts. Amongst his friends we find Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus, Libanius the heathen rhetorician, the barbarian generals Arinthaeus and Victor, the renegade Modestus, and the Arian bishop Euippius. He was a Christian also of a Christian family. His grandmother, Macrina, was one of those who fled to the woods in the time of Diocletian's persecution; and in after years young Basil learned from her the words of Gregory the Wonder worker. The connections of his early life were with the conservatives. He owed his baptism to Dianius of Caesarea, and much encouragement in asceticism to Eustathius of Sebastia. In 359 he accompanied Basil of Ancyra from Seleucia to the conferences at Constantinople, and on his return home came forward as a resolute enemy of Arianism at Caesarea. The young deacon was soon recognised as a power in Asia. He received the dying recantation of Dianius, and guided the choice of his successor Eusebius in 362. Yet he still acted with the Semiarians, and helped them with his counsel at Lampsacus. Indeed it was from the Semiarian side that he approached the Nicene faith. In his own city of Caesarea Eusebius found him indispensable. When jealousies arose between them, and Basil withdrew to his rustic paradise in Pontus, he was recalled by the clamour of the people at the approach of Valens in 365. This time the danger was averted by the Procopian troubles, but henceforth Basil governed Eusebius, and the church of Caesarea through him, till in the summer of 370 he succeeded to the bishopric himself.

[Sidenote: Basil bishop of Caesarea.]

The election was a critical one, for every one knew that a bishop like Basil would be a pillar of the Nicene cause. On one side were the officials and the lukewarm bishops, on the other the people and the better class of Semiarians. They had to make great efforts. Eusebius of Samosata came to Caesarea to urge the wavering bishops, and old Gregory[15] was carried from Nazianzus on his litter to perform the consecration. There was none but Basil who could meet the coming danger. By the spring of 371 Valens had fairly started on his progress to the East. He travelled slowly through the famine-wasted provinces, and only reached Caesarea in time for the great winter festival of Epiphany 372. The Nicene faith in Cappadocia was not the least of the abuses he was putting down. The bishops yielded in all directions, but Basil was unshaken. The rough threats of Modestus succeeded no better than the fatherly counsel of Euippius; and when Valens himself and Basil met face to face, the Emperor was overawed. More than once the order was prepared for the obstinate prelate's exile, but for one reason or another it was never issued. Valens went forward on his journey, leaving behind a princely gift for Basil's poorhouse. He reached Antioch in April, and settled there for the rest of his reign, never again leaving Syria till the disasters of the Gothic war called him back to Europe.

[Footnote 15: The father of Gregory of Nazianzus the Divine, who was bishop, as we shall see, of Sasima and Constantinople in succession, but never of Nazianzus.]

[Sidenote: Basil's difficulties.]

Armed with spiritual power which in some sort extended from the Bosphorus to Armenia, Basil could now endeavour to carry out his plan. Homoean malcontents formed the nucleus of the league, but conservatives began to join it, and Athanasius gave his patriarchal blessing to the scheme. The difficulties, however, were very great. The league was full of jealousies. Athanasius indeed might frankly recognise the soundness of Meletius, though he was committed to Paulinus, but others were less liberal, and Lucifer of Calaris was forming a schism on the question. Some, again, were lukewarm in the cause and many sunk in worldliness, while others were easily diverted from their purpose. The sorest trial of all was the selfish coldness of the West. Basil might find here and there a kindred spirit like Ambrose of Milan after 374; but the confessors of 355 were mostly gathered to their rest, and the church of Rome paid no regard to sufferings which were not likely to reach herself.

Nor was Basil quite the man for such a task as this. His courage indeed was indomitable. He ruled Cappadocia from a sick-bed, and bore down opposition by sheer strength of his inflexible determination. The very pride with which his enemies reproached him was often no more than a strong man's consciousness of power; and to this unwearied energy he joined an ascetic fervour which secured the devotion of his friends, a knowledge of the world which often turned aside the fury of his enemies, and a flow of warm-hearted rhetoric which never failed to command the admiration of outsiders. Yet after all we miss the lofty self-respect which marks the later years of Athanasius. Basil was involved in constant difficulties by his own pride and suspicion. We cannot, for example, imagine Athanasius turning two presbyters out of doors as 'spies.' But the ascetic is usually too full of his own plans to feel sympathy with others, too much in earnest to feign it like a diplomatist. Basil had enough worldly prudence to keep in the background his belief in the Holy Spirit, but not enough to protect even his closest friends from the outbreaks of his imperious temper. Small wonder if the great scheme met with many difficulties.

[Sidenote: Disputes with: (1.) Anthimus.]

A specimen or two may be given, from which it will be seen that the difficulties were not all of Basil's making. When Valens divided Cappadocia in 372, the capital of the new province was fixed at Tyana. Thereupon Bishop Anthimus argued that ecclesiastical arrangements necessarily follow civil, and claimed the obedience of its bishops as due to him and not to Basil. Peace was patched up after an unseemly quarrel, and Basil disposed of any future claims from Anthimus by getting the new capital transferred to Podandus.

[Sidenote: (2.) Eustathius.]

The dispute with Anthimus was little more than a personal quarrel, so that it was soon forgotten. The old Semiarian Eustathius of Sebastia was able to give more serious annoyance. He was a man too active to be ignored, too unstable to be trusted, too famous for ascetic piety to be lightly made an open enemy. His friendship was compromising, his enmity dangerous. We left him professing the Nicene faith before the council of Tyana. For the next three years we lose sight of him. He reappears as a friend of Basil in 370, and heartily supported him in his strife with Valens. Eustathius was at any rate no time-server. He was drawn to Basil by old friendship and a common love of asceticism, but almost equally repelled by the imperious orthodoxy of a stronger will than his own. And Basil for a long time clung to his old teacher, though the increasing distrust of staunch Nicenes like Theodotus of Nicopolis was beginning to attack himself. His peacemaking was worse than a failure. First he offended Theodotus, then he alienated Eustathius. The suspicious zeal of Theodotus was quieted in course of time, but Eustathius never forgave the urgency which wrung from him his signature to a Nicene confession. He had long been leaning the other way, and now he turned on Basil with all the bitterness of broken friendship. To such a man the elastic faith of the Homoeans was a welcome refuge. If they wasted little courtesy on their convert, they did not press him to strain his conscience by signing what he ought not to have signed.

[Sidenote: Apollinarius of Laodicea.]

The Arian controversy was exhausted for the present, and new questions were already beginning to take its place. While Basil and Eustathius were preparing the victory of asceticism in the next generation, Apollinarius had already essayed the christological problem of Ephesus and Chalcedon; and Apollinarius was no common thinker. If his efforts were premature, he at least struck out the most suggestive of the ancient heresies. Both in what he saw and in what he failed to see, his work is full of meaning for our own time. Apollinarius and his father were Christian literary men of Laodicea in Syria, and stood well to the front of controversy in Julian's days. When the rescript came out which forbade the Galileans to teach the classics, they promptly undertook to form a Christian literature by throwing Scripture into classical forms. The Old Testament was turned into Homeric verse, the New into Platonic dialogues. Here again Apollinarius was premature. There was indeed no reason why Christianity should not have as good a literature as heathenism, but it would have to be a growth of many ages. In doctrine Apollinarius was a staunch Nicene, and one of the chief allies of Athanasius in Syria. But he was a Nicene of an unusual type, for the side of Arianism which specially attracted his attention was its denial of the Lord's true manhood. It will be remembered that according to Arius the created Word assumed human flesh and nothing more. Eustathius of Antioch had long ago pointed out the error, and the Nicene council shut it out by adding was made man to the was made flesh of the Caesarean creed. It was thus agreed that the lower element in the incarnation was man, not mere flesh; in other words, the Lord was perfect man as well as perfect God. But in that case, how can God and man form one person? In particular, the freedom of his human will is inconsistent with the fixity of the divine. Without free-will he was not truly man; yet free-will always leads to sin. If all men are sinners, and the Lord was not a sinner, it seemed to follow that he was not true man like other men. Yet in that case the incarnation is a mere illusion. The difficulty was more than Athanasius himself could fully solve. All that he could do was to hold firmly the doctrine of the Lord's true manhood as declared by Scripture, and leave the question of his free-will for another age to answer.

[Sidenote: The Apollinarian system.]

The analysis of human nature which we find in Scripture is twofold. In many passages there is a moral division into the spirit and the flesh—all that draws us up towards heaven and all that draws us down to earth. It must be carefully noted (what ascetics of all ages have overlooked) that the flesh is not the body. Envy and hatred are just as much works of the flesh[16] as revelling and uncleanness. It is not the body which lusts against the soul, but the evil nature running through them both which refuses the leading of the Spirit of God. But these are practical statements: the proper psychology of Scripture is given in another series of passages. It comes out clearly in 1 Thess. v. 23—'your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Here the division is threefold. The body we know pretty well, as far as concerns its material form. The soul however, is not the 'soul' of common language. It is only the seat of the animal life which we share with the beasts. Above the soul, beyond the ken of Aristotle, Scripture reveals the spirit as the seat of the immortal life which is to pass the gate of death unharmed. Now it is one chief merit of Apollinarius (and herein he has the advantage over Athanasius) that he based his system on the true psychology of Scripture. He argued that sin reaches man through the will, whose seat is in the spirit. Choice for good or for evil is in the will. Hence Adam fell through the weakness of the spirit. Had that been stronger, he would have been able to resist temptation. So it is with the rest of us: we all sin through the weakness of the spirit. If then the Lord was a man in whom the mutable human spirit was replaced by the immutable Divine Word, there will be no difficulty in understanding how he could be free from sin. Apollinarius, however, rightly chose to state his theory the other way—that the Divine Word assumed a human body and a human soul, and himself took the place of a human spirit. So far we see no great advance on the Arian theory of the incarnation. If the Lord had no true human spirit, he is no more true man than if he had nothing human but the body. We get a better explanation of his sinlessness, but we still get it at the expense of his humanity. In one respect the Arians had the advantage. Their created Word is easier joined with human flesh than the Divine Word with a human body and a human soul. At this point, however, Apollinarius introduced a thought of deep significance—that the spirit in Christ was human spirit, although divine. If man was made in the image of God, the Divine Word is not foreign to that human spirit which is in his likeness, but is rather the true perfection of its image. If, therefore, the Lord had the divine Word instead of the human spirit of other men, he is not the less human, but the more so for the difference. Furthermore, the Word which in Christ was human spirit was eternal. Apart then from the incarnation, the Word was archetypal man as well as God. Thus we reach the still more solemn thought that the incarnation is not a mere expedient to get rid of sin, but the historic revelation of what was latent in the Word from all eternity. Had man not sinned, the Word must still have come among us, albeit not through shame and death. It was his nature that he should come. If he was man from eternity, it was his nature to become in time like men on earth, and it is his nature to remain for ever man. And as the Word looked down on mankind, so mankind looked upward to the Word. The spirit in man is a frail and shadowy thing apart from Christ, and men are not true men till they have found in him their immutable and sovereign guide. Thus the Word and man do not confront each other as alien beings. They are joined together in their inmost nature, and (may we say it?) each receives completion from the other.

[Footnote 16: Gal. v. 19-21.]

[Sidenote: Criticism of Apollinarianism.]

The system of Apollinarius is a mighty outline whose details we can hardly even now fill in; yet as a system it is certainly a failure. His own contemporaries may have done him something less than justice, but they could not follow his daring flights of thought when they saw plain errors in his teaching. After all, Apollinarius reaches no true incarnation. The Lord is something very like us, but he is not one of us. The spirit is surely an essential part of man, and without a true human spirit he could have no true human choice or growth or life; and indeed Apollinarius could not allow him any. His work is curtailed also like his manhood, for (so Gregory of Nyssa put it) the spirit which the Lord did not assume is not redeemed. Apollinarius understood even better than Athanasius the kinship of true human nature to its Lord, and applied it with admirable skill to explain the incarnation as the expression of the eternal divine nature. But he did not see so well as Athanasius that sin is a mere intruder among men. It was not a hopeful age in which he lived. The world had gone a long way downhill since young Athanasius had sung his song of triumph over fallen heathenism. Roman vice and Syrian frivolity, Eastern asceticism and Western legalism, combined to preach, in spite of Christianity, that the sinfulness of mankind is essential. So instead of following out the pregnant hint of Athanasius that sin is no true part of human nature (else were God the author of evil), Apollinarius cut the knot by refusing the Son of Man a human spirit as a thing of necessity sinful. Too thoughtful to slur over the difficulty like Pelagius, he was yet too timid to realize the possibility of a conquest of sin by man, even though that man were Christ himself.

[Sidenote: The Apollinarians.]

Apollinarius and his school contributed not a little to the doctrinal confusion of the East. His ideas were current for some time in various forms, and are attacked in some of the later works of Athanasius; but it was not till about 375 that they led to a definite schism, marked by the consecration of the presbyter Vitalis to the bishopric of Antioch. From this time, Apollinarian bishops disputed many of the Syrian sees with Nicenes and Anomoeans. Their adherents were also scattered over Asia, and supplied one more element of discord to the noisy populace of Constantinople.

[Sidenote: Last years of Athanasius (366-373).]

The declining years of Athanasius were spent in peace. Valens had restored him in good faith, and never afterwards molested him. If Lucius the Arian returned to Alexandria to try his chance as bishop, the officials gave him no connivance—nothing but sorely needed shelter from the fury of the mob. Arianism was nearly extinct in Egypt.

[Sidenote: Athanasius and Marcellus (before 371).]

One of his last public acts was to receive an embassy from Marcellus, who was still living in extreme old age at Ancyra. Some short time before 371, the deacon Eugenius presented to him a confession on behalf of the 'innumerable multitude' who still owned Marcellus for their father. 'We are not heretics, as we are slandered. We specially anathematize Arianism, confessing, like our fathers at Nicaea, that the Son is no creature, but of the essence of the Father and co-essential with the Father; and by the Son we mean no other than the Word. Next we anathematize Sabellius, for we confess the eternity and reality of the Son and the Holy Spirit. We anathematize also the Anomoeans, in spite of their pretence not to be Arians. We anathematize finally the Arianizers who separate the Word from the Son, giving the latter a beginning at the incarnation because they do not confess him to be very God. Our own doctrine of the incarnation is that the Word did not come down as on the prophets, but truly became flesh and took a servant's form, and as regards flesh was born as a man.' There is no departure here from the original doctrine of Marcellus, for the eternity of the Son means nothing more than the eternity of the Word. The memorial, however, was successful. Though Athanasius was no Marcellian, he was as determined as ever to leave all questions open which the great council had forborne to close. The new Nicenes of Pontus, on the other hand, inherited the conservative dread of Marcellus, so that it was a sore trial to Basil when Athanasius refused to sacrifice the old companion of his exile. Even the great Alexandrian's comprehensive charity is hardly nobler than his faithfulness to erring friends. Meaner men might cherish the petty jealousies of controversy, but the veterans of the great council once more recognised their fellowship in Christ. They were joined in life, and in death they were not divided.

[Sidenote: Death of Athanasius (373).]

Marcellus passed away in 371, and Athanasius two years later. The victory was not yet won, the goal of half a century was still beyond the sight of men; yet Athanasius had conquered Arianism. Of his greatness we need say no more. Some will murmur of 'fanaticism' before the only Christian whose grandeur awed the scoffer Gibbon. So be it that his greatness was not unmixed with human passion; but those of us who have seen the light of heaven shining from some saintly face, or watched with kindling hearts and solemn thankfulness some mighty victory of Christian faith, will surely know that it was the spirit of another world which dwelt in Athanasius. To him more than any one we owe it that the question of Arianism did not lose itself in personalities and quibbles, but took its proper place as a battle for the central message of the gospel, which is its chief distinction from philosophy and heathenism.

[Sidenote: Extinction of the Marcellians (375).]

Instantly Alexandria was given up to the Arians, and Lucius repeated the outrages of Gregory and George. The friends of Athanasius were exiled, and his successor Peter fled to Rome. Meanwhile the school of Marcellus died away. In 375 his surviving followers addressed a new memorial to the Egyptian exiles at Sepphoris, in which they plainly confessed the eternal Sonship so long evaded by their master. Basil took no small offence when the exiles accepted the memorial. 'They were not the only zealous defenders of the Nicene faith in the East, and should not have acted without the consent of the Westerns and of their own bishop, Peter. In their haste to heal one schism they might cause another if they did not make it clear that the heretics had come over to them, and not they to the heretics.' This, however, was mere grumbling. Now that the Marcellians had given up the point in dispute, there was no great difficulty about their formal reconciliation. The West held out for Marcellus after his own disciples had forsaken him, so that he was not condemned at Rome till 380, nor by name till 381.

[Sidenote: Confusion of: (1) Churches.]

Meanwhile the churches of Asia seemed in a state of universal dissolution. Disorder under Constantius had become confusion worse confounded under Valens. The exiled bishops were so many centres of disaffection, and personal quarrels had full scope everywhere. Thus when Basil's brother Gregory was expelled from Nyssa by a riot got up by Anthimus of Tyana, he took refuge under the eyes of Anthimus at Doara, where a similar riot had driven out the Arian bishop. Pastoral work was carried on under the greatest difficulties. The exiles could not attend to their churches, the schemers would not, and the fever of controversy was steadily demoralizing both flocks and pastors.

[Sidenote: (2.) Creeds.]

Creeds were in the same confusion. The Homoeans as a body had no consistent principle at all beyond the rejection of technical terms, so that their doctrinal statements are very miscellaneous. They began with the indefinite Sirmian creed, but the confession they imposed on Eustathius of Sebastia was purely Macedonian. Some of their bishops were Nicenes, others Anomoeans. There was room for all in the happy family presided over by Eudoxius and his successor Demophilus. In this anarchy of doctrine, the growth of irreligious carelessness kept pace with that of party bitterness. Ecclesiastical history records no clearer period of decline than this. There is a plain descent from Athanasius to Basil, a rapid one from Basil to Theophilus and Cyril. The victors of Constantinople are but the epigoni of a mighty contest.

[Sidenote: Hopeful signs.]

Hopeful signs indeed were not entirely wanting. If the Nicene cause did not seem to gain much ground in Pontus, it was at least not losing. While Basil held the court in check, the rising power of asceticism was declaring itself every day more plainly on his side. One schism was healed by the reception of the Marcellians; and if Apollinarius was forming another, he was at least a resolute enemy of Arianism. The submission of the Lycian bishops in 375 helped to isolate the Semiarian phalanx in Asia, and the Illyrian council held in the same year by Ambrose was the first effective help from the West. It secured a rescript of Valentinian in favour of the Nicenes; and if he did not long survive, his action was enough to show that Valens might not always be left to carry out his plans undisturbed.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE FALL OF ARIANISM.

[Sidenote: Prospects in 375.]

The fiftieth year from the great council came and went, and brought no relief to the calamities of the churches. Meletius and Cyril were still in exile, East and West were still divided over the consecration of Paulinus, and now even Alexandria had become the prey of Lucius. The leaden rule of Valens still weighed down the East, and Valens was scarcely yet past middle life, and might reign for many years longer. The deliverance came suddenly, and the Nicene faith won its victory in the confusion of the greatest disaster which had ever yet befallen Rome.

[Sidenote: The Empire in 376.]

In the year 376 the Empire still seemed to stand unshaken within the limits of Augustus. If the legions had retired from the outlying provinces of Dacia and Carduene, they more than held their ground on the great river frontiers of the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Rhine. If Julian's death had seemed to let loose all the enemies of Rome at once, they had all been repulsed. While the Persian advance was checked by the obstinate patriotism of Armenia, Valens reduced the Goths to submission, and his Western colleague drove the Germans out of Gaul and recovered Britain from the Picts. The Empire had fully held its own through twelve years of incessant warfare; and if there were serious indications of exhaustion in the dwindling of the legions and the increase of the barbarian auxiliaries, in the troops of brigands who infested every mountain district, in the alarming decrease of population, and above all in the ruin of the provinces by excessive taxation, it still seemed inconceivable that real danger could ever menace Rome's eternal throne.

[Sidenote: The Gothic war (377-378).]

But while the imperial statesmen were watching the Euphrates, the storm was gathering on the Danube. The Goths in Dacia had been learning husbandry and Christianity since Aurelian's time, and bade fair soon to become a civilized people. Heathenism was already half abandoned, and their nomad habits half laid aside. But when the Huns came up suddenly from the steppes of Asia, the stately Gothic warriors fled almost without a blow from the hordes of wild dwarfish horsemen. The Ostrogoths became the servants of their conquerors, and the heathens of Athanaric found a refuge in the recesses of the Transylvanian forests. But Fritigern was a Christian. Rome had helped him once before, and Rome might help him now. A whole nation of panic-stricken warriors crowded to the banks of the Danube. There was but one inviolable refuge in the world, and that was beneath the shelter of the Roman eagles. Only let them have some of the waste lands in Thrace, and they would be glad to do the Empire faithful service. When conditions had been settled, the Goths were brought across the river. Once on Roman ground, they were left to the mercy of officials whose only thought was to make the famished barbarians a prey to their own rapacity and lust. Before long the Goths broke loose and spread over the country, destroying whatever cultivation had survived the desolating misgovernment of the Empire. Outlaws and deserters were willing guides, and crowds of fresh barbarians came in to share the spoil. The Roman generals found it no easy task to keep the field.

[Sidenote: Battle of Hadrianople (Aug. 9, 378).]

First the victories of Claudius and Aurelian, and then the statesmanship of Constantine, had stayed for a century the tide of Northern war, but now the Empire was again reduced to fight for its existence. Its rulers seemed to understand the crisis. The East was drained of all available troops, and Sebastian the Manichee, the old enemy of Athanasius, was placed in command. Gratian hurried Thraceward with the Gaulish legions, and at last Valens thought it time to leave his pleasant home at Antioch for the field of war. Evil omens beset his march, but no omen could be worse than his own impulsive rashness. With a little prudence, such a force as he had gathered round the walls of Hadrianople was an overmatch for any hordes of barbarians. But Valens determined to storm the Gothic camp without waiting for his Western colleague. Rugged ground and tracts of burning grass delayed his march, so that it was long past noon before he neared the line of waggons, later still before the Gothic trumpet sounded. But the Roman army was in hopeless rout at sundown. The Goths came down 'like a thunderbolt on the mountain tops,' and all was lost. Far into the night the slaughtering went on. Sebastian fell, the Emperor was never heard of more, and full two-thirds of the Roman army perished in a scene of unequalled horror since the butchery of Cannae.

[Sidenote: Results of the battle.]

Beneath that crushing blow the everlasting Empire shook from end to end. The whole power of the East had been mustered with a painful effort to the struggle, and the whole power of the East had been shattered in a summer's day. For the first time since the days of Gallienus, the Empire could place no army in the field. But Claudius and Aurelian had not fought in vain, nor were the hundred years of respite lost. If the dominion of Western Europe was transferred for ever to the Northern nations, the walls of Constantinople had risen to bar their eastward march, and Christianity had shown its power to awe their boldest spirits. The Empire of the Christian East withstood the shock of Hadrianople—only the heathen West sank under it. When once the old barriers of civilization on the Danube and the Rhine were broken through, the barbarians poured in for centuries like a flood of mighty waters overflowing. Not till the Northman and the Magyar had found their limit at the siege of Paris [Sidenote: 888.] and the battle of the Lechfeld [Sidenote: 955.] could Europe feel secure. The Roman Empire and the Christian Church alone rode out the storm which overthrew the ancient world. But the Christian Church was founded on the ever-living Rock, the Roman Empire rooted deep in history. Arianism was a thing of yesterday and had no principle of life, and therefore it vanished in the crash of Hadrianople. The Homoean supremacy had come to rest almost wholly on imperial misbelief. The mob of the capital might be in its favour, and the virtues of isolated bishops might secure it some support elsewhere; but serious men were mostly Nicenes or Anomoeans. Demophilus of Constantinople headed the party, and his blunders did it almost as much harm as the profane jests of Eudoxius. At Antioch Euzoius, the last of the early Arians, was replaced by Dorotheus. Milan under Ambrose was aggressively Nicene, and the Arian tyrants were very weak at Alexandria. On the other hand, the greatest of the Nicenes had passed away, and few were left who could remember the great council's meeting. Athanasius and Hilary were dead, and even Basil did not live to greet an orthodox Emperor. Meletius of Antioch was in exile, and Cyril of Jerusalem and the venerated Eusebius of Samosata, while Gregory of Nazianzus had found in the Isaurian mountains a welcome refuge from his hated diocese of Sasima. If none of the living Nicenes could pretend to rival Athanasius, they at least outmatched the Arians.

[Sidenote: Gratian's toleration.]

As Valens left no children, the Empire rested for the moment in the hands of his nephew, Gratian, a youth of not yet twenty. Gratian, however, was wise enough to see that it was no time to cultivate religious quarrels. He, therefore, began by proclaiming toleration to all but Anomoeans and Photinians. As toleration was still the theory of the Empire, and none but the Nicenes were practically molested, none but the Nicenes gained anything by the edict. But mere toleration was all they needed. The exiled bishops found little difficulty in resuming the government of their flocks, and even in sending missions to Arian strongholds. The Semiarians were divided. Numbers went over to the Nicenes, while others took up an independent or Macedonian position. The Homoean power in the provinces fell of itself before it was touched by persecution. It scarcely even struggled against its fate. At Jerusalem indeed party spirit ran as high as ever, but Alexandria was given up to Peter almost without resistance. We find one or two outrages like the murder of Eusebius of Samosata by an Arian woman in a country town, who threw down a tile on his head, but we hardly ever find a Homoean bishop heartily supported by his flock.

[Sidenote: Gregory of Nazianzus.]

Constantinople itself was now the chief stronghold of the Arians. They had held the churches since 340, and were steadily supported by the court. Thus the city populace was devoted to Arianism, and the Nicenes were a mere remnant, without either church or teacher. The time, however, was now come for a mission to the capital. Gregory of Nazianzus was the son of Bishop Gregory, born about the time of the Nicene council. His father was already presbyter of Nazianzus, and held the bishopric for nearly half a century. [Sidenote: 329-374.] Young Gregory was a student of many schools. From the Cappadocian Caesarea he went on to the Palestinian, and thence to Alexandria; but Athens was the goal of his student-life. Gregory and Basil and Prince Julian met at the feet of Proaeresius. They all did credit to his eloquence, but there the likeness ends. Gregory disliked Julian's strange, excited manner, and persuaded himself in later years that he had even then foreseen the evil of the apostate's reign. With Basil, on the other hand his friendship was for life. They were well-matched in eloquence, in ascetic zeal, and in opposition to Arianism, though Basil's imperious ways were a trial to Gregory's gentler and less active spirit. During the quarrel with Anthimus of Tyana, Basil thought fit to secure the disputed possession of Sasima by making it a bishopric. [Sidenote: 372.] It was a miserable post-station—'No water, no grass, nothing but dust and carts, and groans and howls, and small officials with their usual instruments of torture.' Gregory was made bishop of Sasima against his will, and never fairly entered on his repulsive duties. After a few years' retirement, he came forward to undertake the mission to Constantinople. [Sidenote: 379.] The great city was a city of triflers. They jested at the actors and the preachers without respect of persons, and followed with equal eagerness the races and the theological disputes. Anomoeans abounded in their noisy streets, and the graver Novatians and Macedonians were infected with the spirit of wrangling. Gregory's austere character and simple life were in themselves a severe rebuke to the lovers of pleasure round him. He began his work in a private house, and only built a church when the numbers of his flock increased. He called it his Anastasia,—the church of the resurrection of the faith. The mob was hostile—one night they broke into his church—but the fruit of his labours was a growing congregation of Nicenes in the capital.

[Sidenote: Theodosius Emperor in the East (379).]

Gratian's next step was to share his burden with a colleague. If the care of the whole Empire had been too much for Diocletian or Valentinian, Gratian's were not the Atlantean shoulders which could bear its undivided weight. In the far West, at Cauca near Segovia, there lived a son of Theodosius, the recoverer of Britain and Africa, whose execution had so foully stained the opening of Gratian's reign. That memory of blood was still fresh, yet in that hour of overwhelming danger Gratian called young Theodosius to be his honoured colleague and deliverer. Early in 379 he gave him the conduct of the Gothic war. With it went the Empire of the East.

[Sidenote: End of the Gothic war.]

Theodosius was neither Greek nor Asiatic, but a stranger from the Spanish West, endued with a full measure of Spanish courage and intolerance. As a general he was the most brilliant Rome had seen since Julian's death. Men compared him to Trajan, and in a happier age he might have rivalled Trajan's fame. But now the Empire was ready to perish. The beaten army was hopelessly demoralized, and Theodosius had to form a new army of barbarian legionaries before the old tradition of Roman superiority could resume its wonted sway. It soon appeared that the Goths could do nothing with their victory, and sooner or later would have to make their peace with Rome. Theodosius drove them inland in the first campaign; and while he lay sick at Thessalonica in the second, Gratian or his generals received the submission of the Ostrogoths. Fritigern died the same year, and his old rival Athanaric was a fugitive before it ended. When the returning Ostrogoths dislodged him from his Transylvanian forest, he was welcomed with honourable courtesy by Theodosius in person at Constantinople. But the old enemy of Rome and Christianity had only come to lay his bones on Roman soil. In another fortnight the barbarian chief was carried out with kingly splendour to his Roman funeral. Theodosius had nobly won Athanaric's inheritance. His wondering Goths at once took service with their conqueror: chief after chief submitted, and the work of peace was completed on the Danube in the autumn of 382.

[Sidenote: Baptism of Theodosius.]

We can now return to ecclesiastical affairs. The dangerous illness of Theodosius in 380 had important consequences, for his baptism by Ascholius of Thessalonica was the natural signal for a more decided policy. Ascholius was a zealous Nicene, so that Theodosius was committed to the Nicene side as effectually as Valens had been to the Homoean; and Theodosius was less afraid of strong measures than Valens. His first rescript (Feb. 27, 380) commands all men to follow the Nicene doctrine 'committed by the apostle Peter to the Romans, and now professed by Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria,' and plainly threatens to impose temporal punishments on the heretics. Here it will be seen that Theodosius abandons Constantine's test of orthodoxy by subscription to a creed. It seemed easier now, and more in the spirit of Latin Christianity, to require communion with certain churches. The choice of Rome is natural, the addition of Alexandria shows that the Emperor was still a stranger to the mysteries of Eastern partizanship.

[Sidenote: Suppression of Arian worship inside cities.]

There was no reason for delay when the worst dangers of the Gothic war were over. Theodosius made his formal entry into Constantinople, November 24, 380, and at once required the bishop either to accept the Nicene faith or to leave the city. Demophilus honourably refused to give up his heresy, and adjourned his services to the suburbs. So ended the forty years of Arian domination in Constantinople. But the mob was still Arian, and their stormy demonstrations when the cathedral of the Twelve Apostles was given up to Gregory of Nazianzus were enough to make Theodosius waver. Arian influence was still strong at court, and Arian bishops came flocking to Constantinople. Low as they had fallen, they could still count among them the great name of Ulfilas. But he could give them little help, for though the Goths of Moesia were faithful to the Empire, Theodosius preferred the stalwart heathens of Athanaric to their Arian countrymen. Ulfilas died at Constantinople like Athanaric, but there was no royal funeral for the first apostle of the Northern nations. Theodosius hesitated, and even consented to see the heresiarch Eunomius, who was then living near Constantinople. The Nicenes took alarm, and the Empress Flaccilla urged her husband on the path of persecution. The next edict (Jan. 381) forbade heretical discussions and assemblies inside cities, and ordered the churches everywhere to be given up to the Nicenes.

[Sidenote: Council of Constantinople (May 381).]

Thus was Arianism put down, as it had been set up, by the civil power. Nothing now remained but to clear away the disorders which the strife had left behind. Once more an imperial summons went forth for a council to meet at Constantinople in May 381. It was a sombre gathering. The bright hope which lighted the Empire at Nicaea had long ago died out, and even the conquerors now had no more joyous feeling than that of thankfulness that the weary strife was coming to an end. Only a hundred and fifty bishops were present, all of them Easterns. The West was not represented even by a Roman legate. Amongst them were Meletius of Antioch, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus as elect of Constantinople, and Basil's unworthy successor, Helladius of Caesarea. Timothy of Alexandria came later. The Semiarians mustered thirty-six under Eleusius of Cyzicus.

[Sidenote: Appointments of Gregory, Flavian, and Nectarius.]

The bishops were greeted with much splendour, and received a truly imperial welcome in the form of a new edict of persecution against the Manichees. Meletius of Antioch presided in the council, and Paulinus was ignored. Theodosius was no longer neutral between Constantinople and Alexandria. The Egyptians were not invited to the earlier sittings, or at least were not present. The first act of the assembly was to ratify the choice of Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop of Constantinople. Meletius died as they were coming to discuss the affairs of Antioch, and Gregory took his place as president. Here was an excellent chance of putting an end to the schism, for Paulinus and Meletius had agreed that on the death of either of them, the survivor should be recognised by both parties as bishop of Antioch. But the council was jealous of Paulinus and his Western friends, and broke the agreement by appointing Flavian, one of the presbyters who had sworn to refuse the office. Gregory's remonstrance against this breach of faith only drew upon him the hatred of the Eastern bishops. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were glad to join any attack on a nominee of Meletius, and found an obsolete Nicene canon to invalidate his translation from Sasima to Constantinople. Both parties were thus agreed for evil. Gregory cared not to dispute with them, but gave up his beloved Anastasia, and retired to end his days at Nazianzus. The council was not worthy of him. His successor was another sort of man. Nectarius, the praetor of Constantinople, was a man of the world of dignified presence, but neither saint nor student. Him, however, Theodosius chose to fill the vacant see, and under his guidance the council finished its sessions.

[Sidenote: Retirement of the Semiarians.]

The next move was to find out whether the Semiarians were willing to share the victory of the Nicenes. As they were still a strong party round the Hellespont, their friendship was important. Theodosius also was less of a zealot than some of his admirers imagine. The sincerity of his desire to conciliate Eleusius is fairly guaranteed by his effort two years later to find a scheme of comprehension even for the Anomoeans. But the old soldier was not to be tempted by hopes of imperial favour. However he might oppose the Anomoeans, he could not forgive the Nicenes their inclusion of the Holy Spirit in the sphere of co-essential deity. Those of the Semiarians who were willing to join the Nicenes had already done so, and the rest were obstinate. They withdrew from the council and gave up their churches like the Arians. They comforted themselves with those words of Scripture, 'The churchmen are many, but the elect are few.'[17]

[Footnote 17: Matt. xx. 16.]

[Sidenote: Close of the council.]

Whatever jealousies might divide the conquerors, the Arian contest was now at an end. Pontus and Syria were still divided from Rome and Egypt on the question of Flavian's appointment, and there were the germs of many future troubles in the disposition of Alexandria to look for help to Rome against the upstart see of Constantinople; but against Arianism the council was united. Its first canon is a solemn ratification of the Nicene creed in its original shape, with a formal condemnation of all the heresies, 'and specially those of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, of the Arians or Eudoxians (Homoeans), of the Semiarians or Pneumatomachi; of the Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians, and Apollinarians.'

[Sidenote: The spurious Nicene creed.]

The bishops issued no new creed. Tradition indeed ascribes to them the spurious Nicene creed of our Communion Service, with the exception of two later insertions—the clause 'God of God,' and the procession of the Holy Spirit 'from the Son' as well as 'from the Father.' The story is an old one, for it can be traced back to one of the speakers at the council of Chalcedon in 451. It caused some surprise at the time, but was afterwards accepted. Yet it is beyond all question false. This is shown by four convergent lines of argument. In the first place, (1.) it is a priori unlikely. The Athanasian party had been contending all along, not vaguely for the Nicene doctrine, but for the Nicene creed, the whole Nicene creed, and nothing but the Nicene creed. Athanasius refused to touch it at Sardica in 343, refused again at Alexandria in 362, and to the end of his life refused to admit that it was in any way defective. Basil himself as late as 377 declined even to consider some additions to the incarnation proposed to him by Epiphanius of Salamis. Is it likely that their followers would straightway revise the creed the instant they got the upper hand in 381? And such a revision! The elaborate framework of Nicaea is completely shattered, and even the keystone clause 'of the essence of the Father' is left out. Moreover, (2.) there is no contemporary evidence that they did revise it. No historian mentions anything of the sort, and no single document connected with the council gives the slightest colour to the story. There is neither trace nor sign of it for nearly seventy years. The internal evidence (3.) points the same way. Deliberate revision implies a deliberate purpose to the alterations made. Now in this case, though we have serious variations enough, there is another class of differences so meaningless that they cannot even be represented in an English translation. There remains (4.) one more argument. The spurious Nicene creed cannot be the work of the fathers of Constantinople in 381, because it is given in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, which was certainly written in 374. But if the council did not draw up the creed, it is time to ask who did. Everything seems to show that it is not a revision of the Nicene creed at all, but of the local creed of Jerusalem, executed by Bishop Cyril on his return from exile in 362. This is only a theory, but it has all the evidence which a theory can have—it explains the whole matter. In the first place, the meaningless changes disappear if we compare the spurious Nicene creed with that of Jerusalem instead of the genuine Nicene. Every difference can be accounted for by reference to the known position and opinions of Cyril. Thus the old Jerusalem creed says that the Lord 'sat down at the right hand of the Father;' our 'Nicene,' that he 'sitteth.' Now this is a favourite point of Cyril in his Catecheses—that the Lord did not sit down once for all, but that he sitteth so for ever. Similarly other points. We also know that other local creeds were revised about the same time and in the same way. In the next place, the occurrence of a revised Jerusalem creed in the Ancoratus is natural. Epiphanius was past middle life when he left Palestine for Cyprus in 368, and never forgot the friends he left behind at Lydda. We are also in a position to account for its ascription to the council of Constantinople. Cyril's was a troubled life, and there are many indications that he was accused of heresy in 381, and triumphantly acquitted by the council. In such a case his creed would naturally be examined and approved. It was a sound confession, and in no way heretical. From this point its history is clearer. The authority of Jerusalem combined with its own intrinsic merits to recommend it, and the incidental approval of the bishops at Constantinople was gradually developed into the legend of their authorship.

[Sidenote: The rest of the canons.]

The remaining canons are mostly aimed at the disorders which had grown up during the reign of Valens. One of them checks the reckless accusations which were brought against the bishops by ordering that no charge of heresy should be received from heretics and such like. Such a disqualification of accusers was not unreasonable, as it did not apply to charges of private wrong; yet this clerical privilege grew into one of the worst scandals of the Middle Ages. The forged decretals of the ninth century not only order the strictest scrutiny of witnesses against a bishop, but require seventy-two of them to convict him of any crime except heresy. Another canon forbids the intrusion of bishops into other dioceses. 'Nevertheless, the bishop of Constantinople shall hold the first rank after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome.' This is the famous third canon, which laid a foundation for the ecclesiastical authority of Constantinople. It was extended at Chalcedon [Sidenote: 451.] into a jurisdiction over the whole country from Mount Taurus to the Danube, and by Justinian into the supremacy of the East. The canon, therefore, marks a clear step in the concentration of the Eastern Church and Empire round Constantinople. The blow struck Rome on one side, Alexandria on the other. It was the reason why Rome withheld for centuries her full approval from the council of Constantinople. [Sidenote: 1215.] She could not safely give it till her Eastern rival was humiliated; and this was not till the time of the Latin Emperors in the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Second edict defining orthodoxy.]

The council having ratified the Emperor's work, it only remained for the Emperor to complete that of the council. A new edict in July forbade Arians of every sort to build churches. Even their old liberty to build outside the walls of cities was now taken from them. At the end of the month Theodosius issued an amended definition of orthodoxy. Henceforth sound belief was to be guaranteed by communion, no longer with Rome and Alexandria, but with Constantinople, Alexandria, and the chief bishoprics of the East. The choice of bishops was decided partly by their own importance, partly by that of their sees. Gregory of Nyssa may represent one class, Helladius of Caesarea the other. The omissions, however, are significant. We miss not only Antioch and Jerusalem, but Ephesus and Hadrianople, and even Nicomedia. There is a broad space left clear around the Bosphorus. If we now take into account the third canon, we cannot mistake the Asiatic policy of endeavouring to replace the primacy of Rome or Alexandria by that of Constantinople.

[Sidenote: The Novatians.]

The tolerance of Theodosius was a little, though only a little, wider than it seems. Though the Novatians were not in communion with Nectarius, they were during the next half century a recognised exception to the persecuting laws. They had always been sound as against Arianism, and their bishop Agelius had suffered exile under Valens. His confession was approved by Theodosius, and several of his successors lived on friendly terms with liberal or worldly patriarchs like Nectarius and Atticus. They suffered something from the bigotry of Chrysostom, something also from the greed of Cyril, but for them the age of persecution only began with Nestorius in 428.

[Sidenote: Decay of Arianism.]

So far as numbers went, the cause of Arianism was not even yet hopeless. It was still fairly strong in Syria and Asia, and counted adherents as far west as the banks of the Danube. At Constantinople it could raise dangerous riots (in one of them Nectarius had his house burnt), and even at the court of Milan it had a powerful supporter in Valentinian's widow, the Empress Justina. Yet its fate was none the less a mere question of time. Its cold logic generated no such fiery enthusiasm as sustained the African Donatists; the newness of its origin allowed no venerable traditions to grow up round it like those of heathenism, while its imperial claims and past successes cut it off from the appeal of later heresies to provincial separatism. When, therefore, the last overtures of Theodosius fell through in 383, the heresy was quite unable to bear the strain of steady persecution.

[Sidenote: Teutonic Arianism: (1.) In the East.]

But if Arianism soon ceased to be a power inside the Empire, it remained the faith of the barbarian invaders. The work of Ulfilas was not in vain. Not the Goths only, but all the earlier Teutonic converts were Arians. And the Goths had a narrow miss of empire. The victories of Theodosius were won by Gothic strength. It was the Goths who scattered the mutineers of Britain, and triumphantly scaled the impregnable walls of Aquileia; [Sidenote: 388.] the Goths who won the hardest battle of the century, and saw the Franks themselves go down before them on the Frigidus. [Sidenote: 394.] The Goths of Alaric plundered Rome itself; the Goths of Gainas entered Constantinople, though only to be overwhelmed and slaughtered round the vain asylum of their burning church.

[Sidenote: (2.) In the West.]

In the next century the Teutonic conquest of the West gave Arianism another lease of power. Once more the heresy was supreme in Italy, and Spain, and Africa. Once more it held and lost the future of the world. To the barbarian as well as to the heathen it was a half-way halt upon the road to Christianity; and to the barbarian also it was nothing but a source of weakness. It lived on and in its turn perpetuated the feud between the Roman and the Teuton which caused the destruction of the earlier Teutonic kingdoms in Western Europe. The provincials or their children might forget the wrongs of conquest, but heresy was a standing insult to the Roman world. Theodoric the Ostrogoth may rank with the greatest statesmen of the Empire, yet even Theodoric found his Arianism a fatal disadvantage. And if the isolation of heresy fostered the beginnings of a native literature, it also blighted every hope of future growth. The Goths were not inferior to the English, but there is nothing in Gothic history like the wonderful burst of power which followed the conversion of the English. There is no Gothic writer to compare with Bede or Caedmon. Jordanis is not much to set against them, and even Jordanis was not an Arian.

[Sidenote: Fall of Teutonic Arianism.]

The sword of Belisarius did but lay open the internal disunion of Italy and Africa. A single blow destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals, and all the valour of the Ostrogoths could only win for theirs a downfall of heroic grandeur. Sooner or later every Arian nation had to purge itself of heresy or vanish from the earth. Even the distant Visigoths [Sidenote: 589.] were forced to see that Arians could not hold Spain. The Lombards in Italy were the last defenders of the hopeless cause, and they too yielded a few years later to the efforts of Pope Gregory and Queen Theudelinda. [Sidenote: 599.] Of Continental Teutons, the Franks alone escaped the divisions of Arianism. In the strength of orthodoxy they drove the Goths before them on the field of Vougle, [Sidenote: 507.] and brought the green standard of the Prophet to a halt upon the Loire. [Sidenote: 732.] The Franks were no better than their neighbours—rather worse—so that it was nothing but their orthodoxy which won for them the prize which the Lombard and the Goth had missed, and brought them through a long career of victory to that proud day of universal reconciliation [Sidenote: 800.] when the strife of ages was forgotten, and Arianism with it—when, after more than three hundred years of desolating anarchy, the Latin and the Teuton joined to vindicate for Old Rome her just inheritance of empire, and to set its holy diadem upon the head of Karl the Frank.

[Sidenote: Conclusion.]

Now that we have traced the history of Arianism to its final overthrow, let us once more glance at the causes of its failure. Arianism, then, was an illogical compromise. It went too far for heathenism, not far enough for Christianity. It conceded Christian worship to the Lord, yet made him no better than a heathen demigod. It confessed a Heavenly Father, as in Christian duty bound, yet identified Him with the mysterious and inaccessible Supreme of the philosophers. As a scheme of Christianity, it was overmatched at every point by the Nicene doctrine; as a concession to heathenism, it was outbid by the growing worship of saints and relics. Debasing as was the error of turning saints into demigods, it seems to have shocked Christian feeling less than the Arian audacity which degraded the Lord of saints to the level of his creatures. But the crowning weakness of Arianism was the incurable badness of its method. Whatever were the errors of Athanasius—and in details they were not a few—his work was without doubt a faithful search for truth by every means attainable to him. He may be misled by his ignorance of Hebrew or by the defective exegesis of his time; but his eyes are always open to the truth, from whatever quarter it may come to him. In breadth of view as well as grasp of doctrine, he is beyond comparison with the rabble of controversialists who cursed or still invoke his name. The gospel was truth and life to him, not a mere subject for strife and debate. It was far otherwise with the Arians. On one side their doctrine was a mass of presumptuous theorizing, supported by alternate scraps of obsolete traditionalism and uncritical text-mongering; on the other it was a lifeless system of spiritual pride and hard unlovingness. Therefore Arianism perished. So too every system, whether of science or theology, must likewise perish which presumes like Arianism to discover in the feeble brain of man a law to circumscribe the revelation of our Father's love in Christ.