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EDITOR'S NOTE
IN February 1856, when Arthur Penrhyn Stanley had been
Canon of Canterbury for nearly five years, he had published his
Memorials of Canterbury (1854), a Commentary on the Epistles to
the Corinthians (1855), and had just completed his Sinai and
Palestine^ the fruit of his travels in those regions in 1852-53. And
accordingly we find him writing to his friend Hugh Pearson to say
that the remaining work of his life would be either a history of the
chosen people, or a history of early Christianity, beginning from
the earliest times and continuing as late as possible. He was
enabled to carry out both these projects in a way which he could
not have foreseen at the time of writing ; for in December of the
same year he was appointed Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at Oxford. His biographer tells us that on the morning
after he had accepted the appointment he burst into his mother's
room exclaiming, " I have settled my first course. I shall begin
with Abraham ; he is the true beginning of ecclesiastical history."
A few days later he is writing again to Pearson outlining the plan
that was afterwards matured in the Lectures on the Eastern
Church. In February 1857, he delivered, with striking success,
as his inaugural course, the lectures comprised under the title
"Introduction" in this volume. They deal respectively with the
" province," the " methods," and the " advantages " of the study of
Church History, and there can be no better introduction to the
subject for any student than these three discourses taken together
with Bishop Collins's little hand-book, and an article by Dr. Harnack
in The Contemporary Review for August 1886. We shall see also
that these lectures are no less significant of Stanley himself than
helpful to his readers.
In the long vacation of 1857 just fifty years ago Stanley set
out from- Canterbury (where he continued to reside until a death in
February 1858 placed at his disposal a canonry in Christ Church,
Oxford), together with two young comrades and a courier named
Djarlieb, whose performance did not equal his promise. After a
short stay in Sweden, where Stanley was much struck by the
gorgeous vestments worn by Lutheran ministers, the little party
went on to Helsingfors and St. Petersburg, the professor being
268^52
viii Editor's Note
anxious to study at first hand the history of the Greek Church.
His task was difficult, for he was ignorant of the language, and
unable, even through the medium of one interpreter after another,
to grip the significance of the abundant symbolism and ceremony
that everywhere met him. At length, however, he found " 1'homme
pre'cieux," Michael Sukatin, one of the imperial judges ; to whose
kindness and invaluable help he bears generous testimony in his
letters. Through Sukatin he gained personal interviews with such
high authorities as Philaret, the Metropolitan of Moscow, and
what had threatened to be a somewhat barren pilgrimage became
a joyous and fruitful quest. The lateness of the season unfortun-
ately prevented the party from going beyond Moscow to Kieff,
and the "higher critic" may possibly on that account discern a
something lacking in the story of the conversion of the Slavonic
races (Lecture IX.) as compared with the narrative of the later
history of the Russian Church, which gathers round Moscow and
the Troitza monastery with the names of Sergius, Ivan the
Terrible and Nicon, and then round St. Petersburg and Peter the
Great. Stanley reached home in the second week of October,
and the lectures were delivered no long time afterwards. They
had, however, to wait for publication till March 1861, when they
saw the light through the " Sturm und Drang " of the Essays and
Reviews controversy, into which Stanley had flung himself with all
the ardour of his chivalrous, catholic and sensible spirit.
The whole work as we have it is in many ways our best memorial
of the great Dean. On the one hand the lectures on the Eastern
Church are significant of his method. Though not so finished and
elaborate as Sinai and Palestine^ or so personal and intimate as
the Memorials of Canterbury, he has made the dry bones live, and
the ikons and relics of the Greek Church become in his hands as
eloquent as the mummies and the papyri of Memphis under the spell
of our modern Egyptologists. And this vital, humanizing attainment
was, as his biographer points out, achieved " by methods which
were essentially part of himself. So far as was possible the history
was studied on the exact spot, and the appropriate atmosphere,
the local colour, the life-like details, are reproduced with picturesque
power. The relics of the past are treated as living human spirits,
or as the instruments of living human spirits, whose influence is at
work on all sides around us for our own and for all future ages.
Every similarity, contrast, or analogy, with whatever is most
familiar in our own institutions or life, is noted, so that new ideas
may be brought home to the most ordinary understanding. No
Editor's Note ix
effort is made to drag the reader over the whole field of Church
History ; the lesser events are only touched upon so as to preserve
the thread of continuity; the leading persons, the important
scenes, the critical stages, are studied in all the detail which is
possible, and stand out in overwhelming prominence by the
effacement of subordinate occurrences." Of this method of treat-
ment the lectures on the Council of Nicasa especially furnish
several striking examples.
On the other hand, the lectures, and especially the introductory
ones, are indicative of the temper of the man.
His successor, Dean Bradley, whose delightful Recollections of
Dean Stanley are themselves a tribute of perfection, points out
how, read in the light of his later works and letters, the intro-
ductory lectures " embody his whole views, his whole life, his whole
self." Mark his characteristic determination (p. 6) to begin his
story not with the Reformation or the Papacy or the Fathers,
but with the first dawn of the history of the Church in Ur of
the Chaldees ; and his equally characteristic protest against the
narrowing and depreciatory process by which a great theological
term like " church " has come to connote " not the whole congrega-
tion of faithful men dispersed throughout the world, but a priestly
caste, a monastic order, a little sect, or a handful of opinions."
"We cannot," said Stanley in a famous sermon preached in America,
" safely dispense even with the churches which we most dislike and
which in other respects have wrought most evil," and the man who
had an eye for resemblances rather than for differences, who could
thank Quakers, Baptists, and Presbyterians alike for their con-
tributions to the great treasury and stream of Christian life, who
passionately admired the great Switzer Zwingli, and upheld the
great laymen, Louis of France, Dante of Italy, and Milton of
England, as " the true interpreters, the true guides of the thoughts
and feelings of their respective ages," was courageous enough both
to begin and to conclude his first course of Regius Lectures with
a citation from the Baptist tinker of Bedford. He half humorously
said that when he had finished with the Greek Church and the
Jewish^Church he would " withdraw into the Church of England,"
and the breadth of his conceptions finds apt illustration in his
choice of the Orthodox Eastern Community as a subject. On the
night before he left Russia he had a long talk with his friend
Sukatin, and asked him of his hopes for the future of his Church.
The Russian replied, " What I chiefly expect and hope for is the
pacifying effect which will be produced on the controversies of the
x Bibliography
West when they come to a knowledge of a Church which has never
entered into those controversies, which has stood firm on the basis
of the early centuries before they rose, which has the deeply rooted
idea of the fixed and stable character of the ancient traditions,
without the slightest desire to proselytize." It cannot be said that
the Western Churches, quick and avid of progress, have been
particularly impressed or pacified by the spectacle of what with
all its good is but a petrified Church, but we can understand how
the hope of the Slav found an echo in the heart of the Teuton, for
the key to Stanley's whole position as a theologian was his abiding
and tenacious conviction " that in that virgin mine, the insufficiently
explored records, original records, of Christianity" (and he would
not have limited these to Holy Scripture), " there are still materials
for a new epoch : that . . . the existing materials, principles,
doctrines of the Christian religion are far greater than have ever
yet been employed, and that the Christian Church, if it ever be
permitted or enabled to use them, has a long lease of new life
and new hope before it."
Stanley left Oxford for Westminster in 1864. He carried with
him, and preserved inviolate to the end this faith and this hope, of
a new and greater future for the Church of Christ.
A. J. G.
The following are the works of A. P. Stanley :
The Gypsies, Prize Poem, Oxford, 1837 ; Life and Correspondence of
Dr. Arnold, 1844; Sermons on the Apostolic Age, 1847; Memorials of
Canterbury, 1854 ; Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians, 1855 ;
Sinai and Palestine, 1856 ; Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of
Ecclesiastical History, 1857 ; Canterbury Sermons, 1859 ; Freedom and
Labour (two sermons), 1860 ; Lectures on the History of the Eastern
Church, 1861 ; Sermons in the East, 1863 ; Lectures on the History of the
Jewish Church, three series, 1863, 1865, 1876 ; Memorials of Westminster
Abbey, 1868 ; Essays, chiefly on questions of Church and State, 1870 ;
Lectures on the Church of Scotland, 1872 ; Addresses and Sermons
delivered at St. Andrews, 1877 ; Addresses and Sermons delivered in the
United States and Canada, 1879 ; Christian Institutions, 1881. Many
sermons and addresses published separately.
For more recent work on the subject of these lectures, see
(a) H. M. Gwatkin, Studies in Arianism.
(b) P. J. Pargoire, L' Eglise Byzantine, 527-847.
(c) A. Harnack, What is Christianity? Lects. XII and XIII.
CONTENTS
EDITOR'S NOTE
PREFACE
PAGE
vii
INTRODUCTION
I
THE PROVINCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Description of Ecclesiastical History .....
I. Its first beginning ......
The History of Israel, the first period of the History of the
Church ..... .
Its peculiar interest .....
Its religious importance . . . . .
II. The History of Christendom, the second period of the History
of the Church .......
Relations of Civil and Ecclesiastical History . . .
Points of contact between them . . .
Points of divergence . . . . .
Stages of the History of the Christian Church . .
1. The Transition from the Church of the Apostles to the
Church of the Fathers . . . .
2. The Conversion of the Empire. The Eastern Church .
3. The Invasion of the Barbarians. The Latin Church .
4. The Reformation . . . . .
The French, German, and English Churches .
Conclusion. The late Professor Hussey . . .
General Chronological Table of the Periods of Church History
6
7
8
9
11
13
14
15
15
16
. 17
.18
19, 20
20, 21
21
II
x THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Dryness of Ecclesiastical History
Remedy to be found in a Historical View of the Church
I. History of Doctrines
II. History of Creeds and Articles .
III. History of Events and Persons
General Study
Detailed Study of great Events
The Councils
22
22
23
23
24
25
25
26
Xll
Contents
fAGE
Detailed Study of great Men . . . .26
Neander and his History . . . .26
Distinction of Characters . . . 27
Uses of this Method :
I. Gradation of Importance in Ecclesiastical
Matters . . . . .28
II. Combination of Civil and Ecclesiastical History 29
III. Caution against partiality . . .29
IV. Reference to Original Authorities . 31
Graves of the Covenanters . . 32
The Catacombs . . .32
Special Opportunities for this Study
I. In the Church of England . . -33
II. In the University of Oxford . . 34
III. In active Clerical life
Conclusion ....
Ill
THE ADVANTAGES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
I. Importance of Historical Facts in Theological Study .
II. Importance of a General View of Ecclesiastical History
III. Use of the Biography of Good Men
IV. Use of the general Authority of the Church
V. Better understanding of Differences and of Unity
VI. Evidence rendered to the Truth of Christianity
VII. Lessons from the Failings of the Church
VIII. Comparison of Ecclesiastical History with the Scriptures
IX. Future Prospect of the History of the Church .
Indications in History
Indications in Scripture
Conclusion ......
37
39
40
4i
43
44
45
49
50
51
LECTURE I
THE EASTERN CHURCH
Authorities for its History
I. Its General Divisions
i. The National Churches of the remote East
(a) Chaldsean or Nestorian Churches
Christians of S. Thomas
(ft) The Armenians
(c) The Syrians .
Jacobites Maronites .
(d) The Copts .
The Abyssinian Church
(i) The Georgians
59
60
61
62
64
Contents xiii
2. The Greek Church ....
Representative of Ancient Greece
Of early Greek Christianity
Of the Byzantine Empire
Constantinople .....
Church of Greece ....
3. Northern Tribes .....
(a) Danubian Provinces. Bulgaria. Servia. Wai
lachia and Moldavia. The Raitzen
() The Church of Russia
II. Historical Epochs .....
1. Period of the Councils ....
2. Rise of Mahometanism ....
3. Rise of the Russian Empire
III. General Characteristics .....
1. Speculative tendency of Eastern Theology
Rhetorical as opposed to logical .
Philosophical as opposed to legal .
2. Speculative tendency of Eastern Monachism
3. The Eastern Church stationary
In the Doctrine of the Sacraments
Baptism .....
Confirmation ....
Extreme Unction ....
Infant Communion ....
4. Absence of Religious Art in the East
5. The Eastern Church not Missionary
But not persecuting ....
6. Eastern Theology not systematised
7- Eastern Hierarchy not organised .
Independence of Laity
Study of Scripture . . .
Absence of a Papacy
Married Clergy ....
IV. Advantages of a Study of the Eastern Church .
1. Its Isolation from Western Controversy .
2. Its competition with the Latin Church
3. Its Illustrations of the Unity of Western Christendom
4. Its advantages over the Western Church .
5. Its use to the Church of England .
Note on the Doctrine of the Single and Double Procession
LECTURE II
THE COUNCIL OF NIC^EA, A.D. 325
Authorities for t/ie History
I. The Oriental Character of the Council .
II. Its general Interest
1. Historical Importance of Arianism
2. Importance of the Period .
XIV
Contents
The Nicene Council the first example of a General Council
(a) In its deliberative Character
(6) In its Imperial Character
(c) In its mixed Character
III. Peculiarities of the History
1. Contemporary Sources
2. Sources on both Sides
3. The Legends
4. The Characters
LECTURE III
THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL
The present appearance of Nicoea
I. The Occasion of the Council .
1. The Arian Controversy
Its abstract dogmatism
Its Polytheistic Tendencies .
Its Vehemence
2. Intervention of the Emperor
II. The Selection of the Place
Its Situation ....
Its Name ....
III. The Time of the Council
IV. Its Assemblage ....
Mode of travelling
Numbers .
Diversity of Characters
V. First Place of Meeting .
1. Alexandrian Deputies
Alexander .
Athanasius .
Arius . .
Coptic Hermits
2. Syrian and Assyrian Deputies
Eustathius of Antioch
Eusebius of Csesarea .
Macarius of Jerusalem
Deputies from Mesopotamia and Armenia
3. Deputies from Asia Minor and Greece
Leontius of Cassarea .
Eusebius of Nicomedia
Alexander of Byzantium
Acesius the Novatian
Marcellus of Ancyra .
Spyridion
Nicolas
4. Deputies from the West
Theophilus the Goth
The Roman Presbyters
Hosius of Cordova .
Contents
xv
VI. Preliminary Discussions .
The Theologians and the Layman
The Philosopher and the Peasant
Principle of Free Discussion .
PAGE
140
141
142
LECTURE IV
THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL
Arrival of the Emperor
Complaints of the Bishops
Hall of Assembly
Entrance of Constantine
The President ....
His Speech . .
The formal Opening .
The Rebuke to the Bishops .
Theological Divisions .
The Thalia and Creed of Arius
Legend of S. Nicolas .
Creed of Eusebius of Csesarea .
The Homoousion
The Controversy on ousia and hypostasis
Creed of Nicsea
The Subscription of Eusebius of Csesarea
of Eusebius of Nicomedia
Banishment of Arius .
Finality of Nicene Creed
Broken at Chalcedon
LECTURE V
THE CONCLUSION OF THE COUNCIL
I. The Paschal Controversy
1 . Decree of Settlement
2. Paschal Table
3. Festal Letters of Alexandria
II. The Melitian Controversy
III. The Canons
Apocryphal Canons
Reception of the Book of Judith
Twenty Genuine Canons
I. On Clerical Discipline
On Provincial Councils .
On Episcopal Ordination
On Metropolitan Privileges
On Jerusalem and Csesarea
On Translation .
On the Power of Deacons
XVI
Contents
2. On Public Worship
3. On Clerical Manners
Intercourse with religious Women
Protest of Paphnutius
4. On cases of Conscience
Amnesty
Official Letters and final Subscription
Legends
Imperial Banquet
Rebuke to Acesius
Farewell of the Emperor
Honours paid to Nicsea
Departure of the Bishops
Reception of the Decrees
Legends of Rome and Constantinople
General Conclusion :
1. Diversity of incidents
2. Effect of Individual Characters
3. Contrast of Legendary and Historical Accounts
4. Settlement of Theological Controversies
PAGE
. 184
. 184
. 185
. 185
. 187
. 187
. 187
. 1 88
. 188
. 190
. 190
. 191
. 192
. 192
192, 193
193
. 194
. 194
194
LECTURE VI
THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE. A.D. 312 338
Historical Position of Constantine
His Appearance .....
His Character ......
I. The First Christian Emperor
His Conversion ....
The Battle of the Milvian Bridge
His ambiguous Religion
His Christian Legislation
II. Founder of the Established Church
His Devotion and Preaching .
III. His last Visit to Rome ....
Crimes of the Imperial Family
1. Foundation of the Papal Power at Rome .
Absolution of Hosius .
of Sylvester .
Donation ....
2. Foundation of Constantinople
Its Situation ....
Its Importance in Ecclesiastical History
3. Foundation of the Holy Places in Palestine
Pilgrimage of Helena .
4. Restoration of Arius
Baptism and Death of Constantine
197
199
199
200
200
203
203
205
206
207
208
210
211
212
212
212
2I 4
215
217
2l8
218
219
221
Contents xvii
LECTURE VII
ATHANASIUS. A.D. 312 372
PAGE
I. Athanasius, as representing the Church of Egypt . . 227
His Appearance ....... 228
His Childhood . . . . . . .228
Archdeacon of Alexandria ... . 229
Consecration as Bishop . ..... 230
Importance of the See of Alexandria . . . 230
1. Conversion of Abyssinia ..... 231
2. Egyptian Hermits ...... 232
3. National feeling of Egypt . . 233
Scene of Athanasius's return to Alexandria . . 235
II. Contests of Athanasius with the Emperor . . 236
His Isolation, " contra mundum " .... 236
1. Independence against the Imperial Power . . 238
2. Personal, not Ecclesiastical, Opposition . . . 238
3. Arian Persecution ...... 239
Scene in the Church of S. Theonas . . . 240
His General Character . . . . . . 241
His Versatility . ...... 241
His Humour . ...... 242
Magical Reputation ...... 243
III. Athanasius as a Theologian . ... 244
1. Common to East and West .... 245
Athanasian Creed ...... 245
2. Founder of Orthodoxy ..... 245
Polemical Vehemence ..... 246
Defence of the Doctrine of the Incarnation . . 247
3. Discrimination of essential and unessential . . 249
In the Monastic Disputes .... 249
In Clerical Discipline ..... 249
In the Use and Disuse of the Homoousion . . 250
In the Controversy respecting "Person" and
"Substance" ..... 250
Council of Alexandria. . . . . . .251
Relations with S. Basil . . . . . .252
LECTURE VIII
MAHOMETANISM IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE EASTERN CHURCH
Prefatory Remarks on our Knowledge of Mahometanism . . 255
I. Its Connection with Western Churches .... 256
II. Its Connection with Eastern Churches .... 257
with their Rise . . . . .257
and their Ruin ..... 257
XV111
Contents
III. Point of Contact in History ....
1. Christians at Mecca ....
2. Sergius, monk of Bostra ....
3. Apocryphal Gospels ....
4. Christian Doctrines and Legends .
IV. Comparison with Sacred History
with Ecclesiastical History .
V. The Koran Compared with the Bible
1. Resemblances of Form ....
2. Contrasts between them, as regards
(a) Uniformity Variety
(b) Narrowness Diffusion
(c) Purity of Text Variations .
(d) Monotony Multiplicity
(<?) Exclusiveness Expansiveness
VI. Comparison of the Ecclesiastical System of Monometallism
that of the Christian Church
1. Its Relations to Protestantism
2. Its Relations to Catholicism
3. Its Oriental Character ....
In its worse and better Qualities
with
PAGE
258
259
259
259
260
260
261
262
262
263
264
265
266
267
267
267
269
272
272
LECTURE IX
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH
Authorities .......
I. Importance of the Church of Russia as an Eastern Church
II. Its Parallel with Western Christendom .
III. Its National Character .
Periods of its History ....
Its Foundation, A.D. 988 -1250 .
Missions of Constantinople
Conversion of Russia
1. Legendary Account S. Andrew, S. Antony
2. Historical Account .
Vladimir ....
Missions to convert him .
Mission from him to Constantinople
The Church of S. Sophia
Baptism of Vladimir at Cherson .
of the Russians at Kief .
1. Influence of Constantinople .
2. Veneration of Sacred Pictures
3. Effects of Authority .
4. Translation of the Bible into Sclavonic
Early Christian Princes of Russia
Will of Vladimir Monomachus
2 7 6
276
278
279
281
281
282
283
283
284
285
286
288
289
291
291
291
292
295
296
298
299
Contents xix
LECTURE X
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES
PAGE
The Middle Ages of Russia, A. D. 1250 1613 . . . 302
Moscow ........ 302
I. THE CZAR .... . 304
Cathedral of the Archangel at Moscow .... 305
Ivan the Terrible ...... 306
His Position in Ecclesiastical History . . . 306
II. THE METROPOLITANS . . . . . .310
Their general Character . . . . . 311
Martyrdom of S. Philip ..... 312
III. THE MONASTIC ORDERS . . . . . 313
1. The Hermits ...... 313
Basil Nicholas of Plescow . . . .315
2. The Monasteries . . . . . .316
IV. The Invasion of the Tartars, A. D. 12051472 . . .31?
The Troitza Monastery . . . . .318
S. Sergius ....... 319
Battle of the Don ...... 320
V. The Invasion of the Poles, A.D. 1606 1613 . . . 320
Siege of the Troitza ...... 322
Election of the Romanoff Dynasty . . . 323
LECTURE XI
THE PATRIARCH NICON
The Eastern Reformation ...... 325
Nicon, his Career, A.D. 1652 1684 . . . . .327
I. His Appearance and Character ..... 327
II. His Reforms ....... 329
Opposition to them ...... 335
III. His Personal History ...... 338
Friendship with the Czar Alexis .... 338
Quarrel ....... 341
Retirement . . . . . . -341
Convent of the New Jerusalem .... 342
Return . . . . . . -345
Resignation ....... 345
Trial ........ 346
Exile . . . . . . . 347
Return ....... 349
Death and Funeral ...... 350
XX
Contents
LECTURE XII
PETER THE GREAT AND THE MODERN CHURCH
OF RUSSIA
His Historical Importance, A.D. 1672 1725 .
His Appearance and Character
His Connection with the Eastern Church
His Religion .....
His Death-bed .
His Reforms .....
Abolition of the Patriarchate
The Rascolniks (Dissenters) . ,
The Starovers (Old Believers)
Their Grievances ....
Representatives of Old Russia
Settlement at Moscow
Modern State of Russian Church, A.D. 17251860
Demetrius of Rostoff
Ambrose of Moscow
Plato of Moscow ....
Innocent of Kamtschatka .
Philaret of Moscow ....
Professor at the Troitza Convent
Conclusion .....
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE ....
MAP OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES .
PLAN OF THE PATRIARCHAL CATHEDRAL OF Moscow
INDEX .....
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION
THE Introduction to this volume consists of three
Lectures delivered in the spring of 1857, when I entered upon
my duties as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. They are
reprinted, partly for the sake of presenting them in a more
correct form than that in which they first appeared, partly for
the sake of exhibiting the general plan under which will be
comprised any special Lectures like those which form the bulk
of the present volume.
It is my hope, if I may look so far forward into the future, to
fill up two of the departments indicated in the sketch of the
first Introductory Lecture. I have already devoted a large
share of each Academical year to Lectures on the History of
the Jewish Church, which 1 trust at no very distant period to
publish ; and it is my intention to appropriate at least a portion
of my remaining time to the History of the Church of England.
Meanwhile, it seemed to me that a course of instruction in
the History of the Eastern Church would not be unfitting.
The general reasons for this selection are given in the Lectures
themselves. The subject is one in which I had long felt an
interest, and which may, perhaps, gain from being approached
through a point of view more general than that usually taken in
the learned 'works that have been devoted to its consideration.
In the choice and the treatment of epochs of Eastern History
which appear in the following pages, I have been guided by
the necessities of the case, as well as by the wish to exemplify
some of the principles laid down in my Introductory Lectures.
The. form of Lectures J lent itself to this mode of handling the
subject; and, if the result should bear the appearance of a
didactic ^rather than of a historical work, I have endeavoured
to rectify this defect by the references to authorities which
begin, and by the chronological tables which end, the volume.
It so happens that one of these epochs (the Council of
1 Most of the Lectures are printed (with necessary corrections and ab-
breviations) as they were delivered. The First and Eighth are condensed
from two courses of Lectures.
B
2 -Preface
Nicsea)i 'tiipa-gh receiving .\much attention from French and
German writers, has never bee'ri thoroughly described by any
English historian. In this instance, therefore, I have gone
into every detail. I take this opportunity of mentioning some
of the subordinate topics to which allusions have been made
throughout the Lectures, and which might well be followed up,
in a supplemental volume on the Church of Constantinople
and Greece, properly so called. The Councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon have never, as far as I know, been described with
all the details which could be given. The life of Chrysostom
has never been fully told. The Iconoclastic controversy is full
of interest for the history both of art and religion. A full
account has yet to be given of the rupture between the Greek
and Latin Churches, and of the attempted reconciliation in
the council of Florence. The rise of the monastic community
of Athos, and of the dispute on the Light of Tabor, forms
a separate episode. The revival of the national church of
Greece contains many germs of hope for the future. A
continuous history of Greek theology, from its peculiarities in
the Eastern Fathers of the third and fourth centuries, through
the schools of Constantinople, down to its last great effort in
the revival of letters in the West, and its influence on the
Cambridge Platonic divines of the Church of England, and,
through them, on John Wesley, in the eighteenth century, is
still, I believe, a desideratum.
In regard to the relation of Christianity to the other religions
of the East, which must be considered as one of the most
important branches of the subject in connection with the
fortunes of Eastern Christendom, I have been restrained, by
my personal ignorance of the languages and customs of most
of those countries, from offering more than a few general
remarks on the one most directly connected with the Christian
Church and the Eastern branch of it, namely, Mahometanism.
But, if I may be permitted to refer to the labours of the
eminent scholar who has already done so much for elucidating
in this country the nature of Oriental religions, it is to be
hoped that Professor Max Miiller may be induced to give
us the benefit of his genius and learning in drawing forth
the mutual relations of the religions of Asia and the Christian
faith to each other, in their past history and in their future
prospects.
The Lectures on the Russian Church are intended as an
introduction to a sphere of history which probably will, in each
Preface 3
succeeding generation, grow in importance. If this volume
should fall into the hands of any of those Russians whose
hospitality I enjoyed during my stay at Moscow in 1857, I
trust that they will pardon, not only the inaccuracies in detail
which a stranger can hardly escape, but the divergence of the
general point of view from which a western European must
regard the Church and State of Russia. There is an expressive
proverb written over the house of Archbishop Plato in the
forests of the Troitza Convent, " Let not him who comes in here
carry out the dirt that he finds within." If this precept is
not altogether practicable for an impartial traveller, I can yet
truly say that my chief impressions are those of gratitude for
the intelligence and courtesy with which I was received, both
among laymen and ecclesiastics. It is a pleasure to me to
hope that those kind friends at Moscow, to whom I would
especially commend this part of my volume, may receive it as
a token of sincere hope and good will for their country in this
great crisis of its social existence, and its entrance on the
thousandth anniversary of the foundation of their Empire.
CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD :
March 6, 1861.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
THIS Edition contains a few corrections or confirmations
supplied by a visit to Constantinople and Mount Athos in the
summer of 1861, and to Alexandria in the spring of 1862.
INTRODUCTION
i
THE PROVINCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
WHEN Christian the Pilgrim, in his progress towards the
Celestial City, halted by the highway side at the Palace of
which the name was Beautiful, he was told, that " he should
not depart till they had shown him the rarities of that place.
And first they had him into the study, where they showed him
records of the greatest antiquity : " in which was "the pedigree
of the Lord of the hill, the Son of the Ancient of Days. . . .
Here also were more fully recorded the acts that he had done,
and the names of many hundreds that he had taken into his
service ; and how he had placed them in such habitations, that
could neither by length of days nor decays of nature be dissolved.
Then they read to him some of the worthy acts that some of
his servants had done ; as how they had subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the
sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in
fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Then they
read again in another part of the records of the house, how
willing their Lord was to receive in his favour any, even any,
though they in time past had offered great affronts to his person
and proceedings. Here also were several other histories of
other famous things, of all which Christian had a view ; as of
things both ancient and modern, together with prophecies and
predictions of things that have their certain accomplishment,
both to the dread and amazement of enemies, and~ the comfort
and solace of pilgrims."
These, simple sentences from the familiar story of our child-
hood, contain a true description of the subjects, method, and
advantages of the study of Ecclesiastical History, which I now
propose to unfold in preparation for the duties which I have
been called to discharge. And with this object, it will be my
endeavour in this opening Lecture to reduce to order the
treasures which were shown to solace and cheer the Pilgrim
5
6 The Province of
on his way, by defining the limits of the province on which
we are about to enter.
I. First, then, where does Ecclesiastical History commence ?
Shall we begin with the Reformation with the framework of
religion with which we ourselves are specially concerned ? Or
with the new birth of Christendom, properly so called, in the
foundation of modern Europe ? Or with the close of the first
century with the age of those to whom we accord the name
of our " Fathers " in the Christian faith ? In a certain sense,
each of these periods may be taken, and by different classes of
men always will be taken, respectively, as the boundaries of the
history of the Church. But, if we are fixing, not merely the
accidental limits of convenience, but the true limits involved in
the nature of the subject ; if Ecclesiastical History means the
History of the Church of God ; if that history is one united
whole ; if it cannot be understood without embracing within its
range the history of the events, of the persons, of the ideas
which have had the most lasting, the most powerful effect on
every stage of its course; we must ascend far higher in the
stream of time than the sixteenth, or the fifth, or the second
century, beyond the Reformers, beyond the Popes, beyond
the Fathers.
.... Far in the dim distance of primeval ages, is discerned
the first figure in the long succession which has never since
been broken, in Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchal chief,
followed by his train of slaves and retainers, surrounded by his
herds of camels and asses, moving westward and southward, he
knew not whither, the first Father of the universal Church,
Abraham, the founder of the Chosen People, the Father of the
Faithful, whose seed was to be as the sand upon the sea-shore,
as the stars for multitude.
Earlier manifestations doubtless there had been of faith and
hope ; in other countries also than Mesopotamia or Palestine
there were yearnings after a higher world. But the call of
Abraham is the first beginning of a continuous growth ; in his
character, in his migration, in his faith was bound up, as the
Christian Apostle well describes, all that has since formed the
substance and fibre of the history of the Church.
From this point, then, we start, and from this shall be pre-
pared to enter on the history of the people of Israel, as the true
beginning and prototype of the Christian Church. So in old
times it was ever held ; to the Apostolic age it could not be
otherwise ; even Eusebius, writing for a special purpose, is
Ecclesiastical History 7
constrained to commence his work by going back (almost in
the words with which I opened this Lecture) to "records of
the greatest antiquity, showing the pedigree of the Son of the
Ancient of Days," both divine and human ; and, in spite of the
ever-increasing materials of later times, the elder dispensation
has been included, actually or by implication, in some of the
greatest works on Ecclesiastical History. So it must be in the
nature of the case, however much, for the sake of convenience
or perspicuity, we may divide and subdivide what is in itself
one whole. Speaking religiously, the history of the Christian
Church can never be separated from the life of its Divine
Founder, and that life cannot be separated from the previous
history, of which it was the culmination, the explanation, the
fulfilment. Speaking philosophically, the history of the reli-
gious thoughts and feelings of Europe cannot be understood
without a full appreciation of the thoughts and feelings of
that Semitic race which found their highest expression in the
history of the Jewish nation.
Nor is it only for the sake of a mere formal completeness
that we must thus combine the old and the new in our histor-
ical studies. Consider well what that history is, what a field
it opens, what light it receives, what light it gives, by the mere
fact of being so regarded. So far from being exempt from the
laws of gradual progress and development to which the history
of other nations is subject, it is the most remarkable exemplifi-
cation of those laws. In no people does the history move
forward in so regular a course, through beginning, middle, and
end, as in the people of Israel. In none are the beginning,
middle, and end so clearly distinguished, each from each. In
none has the beginning so natural and so impressive a pre-
paration as that formed by the age of the Patriarchs. In none
do the various stages of the history so visibly lead the way to
the consummation, which, however truly it may be regarded
as the opening of a new order, is yet no less truly the end of
the old. And nowhere does the final consummation more
touchingly linger in the close, more solemnly break away into
new forms and new life, than in the last traces of the effects of
the Jewish race on the Apostolic age.
The form, too, of the sacred books of the Old Testament
is one of all others most attractive to the historical student.
Out of a great variety of documents, sometimes contempor-
aneous, sometimes posthumous, sometimes regular narratives,
sometimes isolated fragments, is to be constructed the picture
8 The Province of
of events, persons, manners, most diverse. The style and
language, of primitive abruptness, pregnant with meaning, are
eminently suggestive. The historical annals are combined with
rich and constant illustration, from what in secular literature
would be called the poets and orators of the nation. There is
everything to stimulate research, even did these remains con-
tain no more than the merely human interest which attaches to
the records of any great and ancient people.
But the sons of Israel, as we all know, are much more than
this. They are, literally, our spiritual ancestors : their imagery,
their poetry, their very names have descended to us ; their
hopes, their prayers, their psalms are ours. In their religious
life we see the analogy of ours ; in the gradual, painful, yet sure
unfolding of divine truth to them, we see the likeness of the
same light dawning slowly on the Christian Church. They are
truly " our ensamples." Through the reverses, the imperfec-
tions, the sins of His ancient Church, we see how " God at
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to our
fathers," bringing out of manifold infirmity the highest of all
blessings, as we trust that He may still, through like vicissitudes,
to the Church of the present and to the Church of the
future.
Political principles, we are told, are best studied in the
history of classical antiquity, because they are there discussed
and illustrated with a perfect abstraction from those particular
associations which bias our judgment in modern and domestic
instances. And so, in a still higher degree, in the history of
the Jewish Church, we find the principles of all religious and
ecclesiastical parties developed, not amidst names and events
which are themselves the subjects of vehement controversy,
but in a narrative of acknowledged authority, free from all the
bitterness of modern watchwords, and yet with a completeness
and variety such as within the same compass could be found
in no modern church or nation.
Reproduce this history with all the detail of which it is
capable. Recall Abraham resting under the oak of Mamre ;
Joseph amidst the Egyptian monuments ; Moses under the
cliffs of Horeb; Joshua brandishing his outstretched spear;
Samuel amidst his youthful scholars ; David surrounded by
his court and camp ; Solomon in his Eastern state ; the wild,
romantic, solitary figure of the great Elijah ; " the goodly
fellowship" of gifted seers, lifting up their strains of joy or
sorrow, as they have been well described, like some great
Ecclesiastical History 9
tragic chorus, as kingdom after kingdom falls to ruin, as hope
after hope dies and is revived again. Represent in all their
distinctness the several stages of the history, in its steady
onward advance from Egypt to Sinai, from Sinai to the
Jordan, from the Jordan to Jerusalem, from the Law to* the
Judges, from the Judges to the Monarchy, from the Monarchy
to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the great event to
which, not the Prophets only, but the yearnings of the whole
nation had for ages borne witness.
Let us not fear lest our reverence should be diminished by
finding these sacred names and high aspirations under the
garb of Bedouin chiefs and Egyptian slaves and Oriental
kings and Syrian patriots. The contrast of the ancient inward
spirit with the present degraded condition of the same outward
forms is the best indication of the source whence that spirit
came. Let us not fear lest we should, by the surpassing
interest of the story of the elder church, be tempted to forget
the end to which it leads us. The more we study the Jewish
history, the more shall we feel that it is but the prelude of a
vaster and loftier history, without which it would be itself
unmeaning. The voice of the old dispensation is pitched in
too loud a key for the ears of one small people. 1 The place of
the Jewish nation is too strait for the abode of thoughts which
want a wider room in which to dwell. The drama, as it rolls
on through its successive stages, is too majestic to end in any-
thing short of a divine catastrophe.
This is a brief but necessary sketch of the first part of our
subject. This is the ancient period of Ecclesiastical History.
Its full treasures must be unfolded hereafter. Its accessories
belong to other departments of study. The critical interpretation
of the sacred books in which the history is contained falls under
the province of General Theology and Exegesis ; the explan-
ation of the languages in which they are written I gladly leave
to the Professor of Hebrew and the Professor of Greek. But
the history itself of the chosen people, from Abraham to the
Apostles, belongs to this Chair by right ; 2 and, if health and
strength are spared to me, shall also belong to it in fact.
II. The fortunes, however, of the seed of Abraham after the
1 I am indebted for this expression to a striking sermon of Professor
Archer Butler (vol. i. p. 210).
2 I believe that I am correct in stating that in all other European
universities, where a Chair of Ecclesiastical History exists, the Jewish
history falls within its province.
B 2
io The Province of
flesh form but a small portion of the fortunes of his descendants
after the spirit : they are, as I have said, but the introduction
to the history which rises on their ruin. With the close of the
Apostolic age the direct influence of the chosen people expires ;
neither in religious nor in historical language can the Jewish
race from this time forward be said to be charged with any
divine message for the welfare of mankind. Individual in-
stances of long endurance, of great genius, of lofty character,
have indeed arisen amongst them in later times ; but, since the
days when the Galilean Apostle, S. John, slept his last sleep
under the walls of Ephesus, no son of Israel has ever exercised
any widespread or lasting control over the general condition of
mankind.
We stand, therefore, at the close of the first century, like
travellers on a mountain ridge, when the river which they have
followed through the hills is about to burst forth into the wide
plain. It is the very likeness of that world-famous view from
the range of the Lebanon over the forest and city of Damascus.
The stream has hitherto flowed in its narrow channel, its course
marked by the contrast which its green strip of vegetation pre-
sents to the desert mountains through which it descends. The
further we advance the more remarkable does the contrast
become ; the mountains more bare, the river-bed more rich and
green. At last its channel is contracted to the utmost limits ;
the cliffs on each side almost close it in ; it breaks through and
over a wide extent, far as the eye can reach, it scatters a flood
of vegetation and life, in the midst of which rise the towers and
domes of the great city, the earliest and the latest type of
human grandeur and civilisation.
Such is the view, backwards and forwards, and beneath our
feet, which Ecclesiastical History presents to us, as we rest on
the grave of the last Apostle and look over the coming ages of
our course. The Church of God is no longer confined within
the limits of a single nation. The life and the truth, con-
centrated up to this point within the narrow and unbending
character of the Semitic race, have been enlarged into the
broad, fluctuating, boundless destinies of the sons of Japheth.
The thin stream expands and loses itself more and more in the
vast field of the history of the world. The Christian Church
is merely another name for Christendom; and Christendom
soon becomes merely another name for the most civilised, the
most powerful, the most important nations of the modem
habitable world.
Ecclesiastical History n
What, then, it may be asked, is the difference henceforward
between Civil and Ecclesiastical History? How far are the
duties of this professorship separable from those of the Chair
of Modern History ?
To a great extent the two are inseparable ; they cannot be
torn asunder without infinite loss to both. It is indeed true
that, in common parlance, Ecclesiastical History is often con-
fined within limits so restricted as to render such a distinction
only too easy. Of the numerous theological terms, of which
the original sense has been defaced, marred, and clipped by
the base currency of the world, few have suffered so much, in
few has "the gold become so dim, the most fine gold so
changed," as in the word "ecclesiastical." The substantive
from which it is derived has fallen far below its ancient
Apostolical meaning, but the adjective " ecclesiastical " has
fallen lower still. It has come to signify, not the religious, not
the moral, not even the social or political interests of the
Christian community, but often the very opposite of these
its merely accidental, outward, ceremonial machinery. We call
a contest for the retention or the abolition of vestments
" ecclesiastical," not a contest for the retention or the abolition
of the slave trade. We include in " ecclesiastical history " the
life of the most insignificant bishop or the most wicked of
Popes, not the life of the wisest of philosophers or the most
Christian of kings. But such a limitation is as untenable in
fact as it is untrue in theory. The very stones of the spiritual
temple cry out against such a profanation of the rock from
which they were hewn. If the Christian religion be a matter,
not of mint, anise, and cummin, but of justice, mercy, and
truth ; if the Christian Church be not a priestly caste, or a
monastic order, or a little sect, or a handful of opinions, but
" the whole congregation of faithful men, dispersed through-
out the world ; " if the very word which of old represented the*
chosen "people" (Xaos) is now to be found in the "laity; " if
the Biblical usage of the phrase " Ecclesia " literally justifies
Tertullian's definition, Ubi tres sunt laid, ibi est ecclesia ; then
the range of the history of the Church is as wide as the
range of the world which it was designed to penetrate, as the
whole body which its name includes.
By a violent effort, no doubt, the two spheres can be kept
apart ; by a compromise, tacit or understood, the student of
each may avoid looking the other in the face ; under special
circumstances, the intimate relation between the course of
12 The Province of
Christian society and the course of human affairs may be
forgotten or set aside. Josephus the priest may pass over
in absolute silence the new sect which arises in Galilee to
disturb the Jewish hierarchy. Tacitus the philosopher may
give nothing more than a momentary glance at the miserable
superstition of the fanatics who called themselves Christians.
Napoleon the conqueror, when asked on the coast of Syria to
visit the holy city, may make his haughty reply, " Jerusalem
does not enter into the line of my operations." But this is
not the natural nor the usual course of the greatest examples
both in ancient and modern times. Observe the description
of the Jewish Church by the sacred historians. Consider the
immense difference for all future ages, if the lives of Joshua,
David, Solomon, and Elijah had been omitted, as unworthy of
insertion, because they did not belong to the priestly tribe ; if
the Pentateuch had been confined to the Book of Leviticus ; if
the Books of Kings and Chronicles had limited themselves to
the sayings and doings of Zadok and Abiathar, or even of
Nathan and Gad. Remember also the early chroniclers of
Europe ; almost all of them at once the sole historians of their
age, yet, even by purpose and profession, historians only of the
Church. Take but one instance, the Venerable Bede. His
' ' Ecclesiastical History of England " begins, not with the
arrival of Augustine, but with the first dawn of British civilis-
ation at the landing of Caesar ; and, for the period over which
it extends, it is the sufficient and almost the only authority for
the fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth.
In later times, since history has become a distinct science,
the same testimony is still borne by the highest works of
genius and research in this wide field. Gibbon's " Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire" is, in great part, however reluct-
antly or unconsciously, the history of " the rise and progress
of the Christian Church." His true conception of the grandeur
of his subject extorted from him that just concession which his
own natural prejudice would have refused ; and it was remarked
not many years ago, by Dr. Newman, that up to that time
England had produced no other Ecclesiastical History worthy
of the name. This reproach has since been removed by the
great work of Dean Milman; but it is the distinguishing
excellence of that very history that it embraces within its vast
circumference the whole story of mediaeval Europe. Even in
that earlier period when the world and the Church were of
necessity distinct and antagonistic, Arnold rightly perceived,
Ecclesiastical History 13
and all subsequent labours in this field tend to the same result,
that each will be best understood when blended in the common
history of the Empire which exercised so powerful an influence
over the development of the Christian society within its bosom,
whilst by that society it was itself undermined and superseded.
And the two chief historians of France and England in recent
times Guizot in his Lectures on French Civilisation, Macaulay
in his English History have both strongly brought out,
as necessary parts of their dissertations or narratives, the
religious influences which by inferior writers of one class have
been neglected, or by those of another class been rent from
their natural context.
Never let us think that we can understand the history of the
Church apart from the history of the world, any more than
that we can separate the interests of the clergy from the
interests of the laity, which are the interests of the Church
at large.
How to adjust the relations of the two spheres to each
other is almost as indefinite a task in history as it is in practice
and in philosophy. In no age are they precisely the same.
Sometimes, as in the period of the Roman Empire, the influ-
ence of one on the other is more by contagion, by atmosphere,
even by contrast, than by direct intercourse. Sometimes the
main interest of religious history hangs on an institution, like
Episcopacy ; on a war, like the Crusades ; on a person, like
Luther. In some periods, as in the middle ages, the combin-
ation of the secular and religious elements will be effected by
the political or the intellectual influence of the clergy. The
lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the lives of the
Prime Ministers of England are for five hundred years almost
indivisible. The course of European revolution for nearly a
thousand years moves round the throne of the Papacy. Or
again, the rise of a new power or character will, even in these
very ages, suddenly transfer the spiritual guidance of men to
some high-minded ruler or gifted writer, who is for the time
the true arbiter or interpreter of the interests and the feelings
of Christendom. In the close of the thirteenth century, it is
not a priest or a Pope, but a king and an opponent of Popes,
who stands forward as the acknowledged representative of the
Christian Church in Europe ; S. Louis in France, not Gregory
IX. at Rome. In the fourteenth century it is not a schoolman
or a bishop that we summon before us as the best exponent of
mediaeval Christianity; it is not the " seraphic " or the "angelic
14 The Province of
doctor," but the divine poet Dante, who reveals to us the feel-
ings and thoughts of the whole age respecting this world and
the next. And if we pass to our own country, he must be a
blind guide who would take us through the English Reform-
ation without seeing on every stage of it the impress of the iron
will and broad aims of Henry VIII. ; or who would portray the
English Church without recognising the comprehensive policy
of Elizabeth. Or yet again, of all our brilliant English divines
of the seventeenth century, there is not one who can be fairly
said to have exercised as much influence over the popular the-
ology of this nation, as has been undoubtedly exercised by
a half-heretic half-Puritan layman, the author of " Paradise
Lost."
These instances indicate with sufficient precision the devious
yet obvious path which, without losing sight of the wide horizon
on the one hand, or without undue contraction of his view
on the other, the student of Ecclesiastical History may safely
follow. If we may for a moment return to our former position
and imagine ourselves overlooking the broad expanse into
which the stream bursts forth from the mountains of its early
stages, our purpose henceforth will be, not so much to describe
the products of the forest or the buildings of the city which have
grown up on the banks of the river, but to track the river itself
through its various channels, under its overhanging thickets,
through the populous streets and gardens to which it gives life ;
to see what are its main, what its tributary streams ; what the
nature of its waters ; how far impregnated with new qualities,
how far coloured, by the various soils, vegetations, uses, through
which they pass ; to trace their secret flow, as they go softly
through the regions which they fertilise ; not finding them
where they do not exist, not denying their power where they do
exist ; to welcome their sound in courses however tortuous ; to
acknowledge their value however stained in their downward
and onward passage. Difficult as it may often be to find the
stream, yet when it is found it will guide us to the green pastures
of this world's wilderness, and lead us beside the still waters.
Three landmarks, at least, may be mentioned, by which this
course of Ecclesiastical History may be distinguished from that
of history generally.
First, there are institutions, characters, ideas, words, which
can be traced to the. religious, especially to the Christian, prin-
ciple in man, and to nothing besides. There are virtues and
truths now in the world, which can only be ascribed to the
Ecclesiastical History 15
influence of Christian society : and there are corruptions of those
virtues and of those truths, which have produced crimes and
errors to be ascribed also, though remotely and indirectly, to
the same source. There are events in the common course of
history revolutions, wars, divisions of races and nations
which in themselves can hardly be called religious, but which
have at least one aspect distinctly religious. There are also
institutions, customs, ceremonies, even vestures and forms of
ritual, in which, though originally pagan or secular, Christian
ideas have now become fixed so as to be inseparable from
them. All these it is the task of Ecclesiastical History to
adjust and discriminate.
Secondly, in every age, even the worst, there have been
beneath the surface latent elements of religious life and of active
goodness, which it will be our duty to bring to light, as the true
signs of a better world beyond, and of the Divine Presence
abiding with us even here, a Church, as it were, within a
Church; a "remnant," to use the language of the older
covenant.
Thirdly, the whole history of the Church, though usually
flowing in the tracks marked out for it by the great national and
geographical boundaries of the world, yet has a course, not
always, and therefore not of necessity, identical with the channel
of human civilisation. In the history of the Church as in that of
the world, in the history of the Christian Church as in that
of the Jewish, there is a distinct unity of parts, an onward
progress from scene to scene, from act to act, towards an end yet
distant and invisible ; a unity and a progress such as give con-
sistency and point to what would else be a mere collection of
isolated and disjointed facts.
Let us then, before we conclude, briefly notice the succes-
sive stages through which, eventually, our course of study must
lead us, and the interest especially attaching to each.
The first period is that which contains the great question,
almost the greatest which Ecclesiastical History has to answer,
How was the transition effected from the age of the Apostles to
the age of the Fathers, from Christianity as we see it in the New
Testament, to Christianity as we see it in the next century, and
as, to a certain extent, we have seen it ever since ?
No other change equally momentous has ever since affected
its fortunes, yet none has ever been so silent and secret. The
stream, in that most critical moment of its passage from the
everlasting hills to the plain below, is lost to our view at the
1 6 The Province of
very point where we are most anxious to watch it ; we may
hear its struggles under the overarching rocks ; we may catch
its spray on the boughs that overlap its course ; but the torrent
itself we see not, or see only by imperfect glimpses. It is not
so much a period for Ecclesiastical History as for ecclesiastical
controversy and conjecture. A fragment here, an allegory
there ; romances of unknown authorship ; a handful of letters
of which the genuineness of every portion is contested inch by
inch ; the summary examination of a Roman magistrate ; the
pleadings of two or three Christian apologists \ customs and
opinions in the very act of change ; last but not least, the
faded paintings, the broken sculptures, the rude epitaphs in the
darkness of the catacombs, these are the scanty, though
attractive, materials out of which the likeness of the early
Church must be reproduced, as it was working its way, in the
literal sense of the word, " under ground," under camp and
palace, under senate and forum, "as unknown, yet well
known ; as dying, and behold it lives."
This chasm once cleared, we find ourselves approaching the
point where the story of the Church once more becomes history
becomes once more the history, not of an isolated community,
or of isolated individuals, but of an organised society incor-
porated with the political systems of the world. Already, in
the close of the second and beginning of the third century, the
Churches of Africa, now seen for a few generations before their
final disappearance, exhibit distinct characters on the scene.
They are the stepping-stones by which we cross from the
obscure to the clear, from chaos to order. Of these the Church
of Carthage illustrates the rise of Christianity in the West, the
Church of Egypt that of Christianity in the East.
But the first great outward event of the actual history of the
Church is its conversion of the Empire ; and, in close connec-
tion with this, its first wide sphere in the face of mankind, is
the Oriental world out of which it sprang, and in which the
external forms of its early organisation can still be most clearly
studied. In the usages of the ancient systems which have
grown up on that soil Coptic, Greek, Asiatic we may still
trace the relics, the fossilised relics, of the Old Imperial
Church. 1 In the period of the first Councils, and in some
passages of the Byzantine Empire, the fortunes of the Eastern
Church are identified with the fortunes of Christendom. 2 Its
1 Lecture I. a Lect. II VII.
Ecclesiastical History 17
connection with the general course of Ecclesiastical History in
subsequent times depends chiefly on two developments of
religious life of a very different kind from each other, the rise
of Mahometanism, 1 and the rise of the Church and Empire of
Russia. 2
With the exception of these three periods or stages, and
viewed as part of the continuous history of the Church, Eastern
Christianity must be considered but as the temporary halting-
place of the great spiritual migration which, from the day that
Abraham turned his face away from the rising of the sun, has
been stepping steadily westward.
Another and a wider sphere was in store for the progress
of the Church than its own native regions ; another and a
nobler conquest than that of its old worn-out enemy on the
tottering throne of the Caesars. The Gothic tribes descended
on the ancient world ; the fabric of civilised society was
dissolved in the mighty crisis; the Fathers of modern Europe
were to be moulded, subdued, educated. By whom was this
great work effected ? Not by the Empire it had fled to the
Bosphorus; not by the Eastern Church its permanent con-
quests were in another direction. In the Western, Latin,
Roman clergy, in the missionaries who went forth to Gaul, to
Britain, and to Germany, the barbarians found their first
masters ; in the work of controlling and resisting the fierce
soldiers of the Teutonic tribes lay the main work, the real
foundation, the chief temptation of the Papacy. From the
day when Leo III. placed the crown of the new Holy Roman
German Empire on the head of Charlemagne, the stream of
human progress and the stream of Christian life, with whatever
interruptions, eddies, counter-currents, flowed during the next
seven centuries in the same channel. As the history of the
earlier stages revolved round the characters of the Fathers or
of the Emperors, so the history of the middle ages, with all
their crimes and virtues, revolved (it is at once the confession
of their weakness and their strength) round the character and
policy of the Popes. What good they did, and what good they
failed to do, by what means they rose, and by what they fell,
during that long period of their power, form the main questions
by which their claims must be tested.
And now a new revolution was at hand, almost as terrible in
its appearance and as trying in its results as any that had gone
1 Lect. VIII. 2 Lect. IX XII.
1 8 The Province of
before. The fountains of the great deep were again broken
up. New wants and old evils had met together. The failure
of the Crusades had shaken men's belief in holy places.
Long abuses had shaken their belief in Popes, bishops,
monasteries, sacraments, and saints. The revival of ancient
learning had revealed truth under new forms. The invention
of printing had raised up a new order of scribes, expounders,
readers, writers, clergy. Institutions which had guided the
world for a thousand years, now decayed and out of joint, gave
way at the moment when they were most needed. Was it
possible that the Christian Church should meet these trials as
it had met those which had gone before ? It had lived through
the fall of Jerusalem; it had lived through the ten persecutions ;
it had lived through its amalgamation with the Empire ; it had
lived through the invasion of the barbarians : but could it live
through the struggles of internal dissolution? could it live
through the shipwreck of the whole outward fabric of its
existence ? could the planks of the vessel, scattered on the
face of the raging flood, be so put together again as to form
any shelter from the storm, any home on the waters ? Did the
history of the Church come to an end, as many thought it
would, when its ancient organisation came to an ^ end, in the
great change of the Reformation ?
We know that it still lived on. That it survived at all is the
best proof which it has yet presented of its inherent vitality ;
that it survived, in a purified form, is the best pledge of its
future success. To ancient Christianity, to Byzantine Chris-
tianity, to Roman Christianity, was now added the fourth and
equally unmistakeable form of Protestant Christianity : like the
others, clothed in an outward shape of its own, and confining
itself specially to distinct branches of the European family, yet
also penetrating with its spirit institutions and nations outwardly
most repugnant to it. Amidst many conflicts, therefore, Eccle-
siastical History still continues in the general tracks that were
opened for it in the sixteenth century. Whatever political
troubles have agitated the world since that time, and whatever
changes may be fermenting in the inner heart and mind of the
Church, none have since altered its outward aspect and
divisions. In one repect a wide difference exists between the
history of Christendom, as it was before, and as it has been
since, the Reformation. Henceforward we cannot follow its
course as a whole : each country must have its own ecclesi-
astical as well as its own civil history. Italy, Spain, Sweden,
Ecclesiastical History 19
Holland, Geneva, Scotland, the very names have each, in
theological language, a peculiar pathos and significance
imparted by the Reformation. In each that great event
awakened a different note as it traversed their several chords.
Still there are three countries in which, beyond all others, the
religious history of Europe has been specially carried on.
It is in France that the fortunes of Christianity during the
last three centuries have been most visibly represented in the
brightest and in the darkest colours. The Galilean Church,
in the seventeenth century the most brilliant in Europe,
brilliant alike in its works of active mercy and in its almost
Augustan age of great divines, Vincent of Paul, Bossuet,
Fenelon, Pascal, became in the eighteenth century the
miserable parent, and then the victim, of the great convulsion
which, whilst it shook the belief of the whole of Europe, in
France for eleven years suppressed it altogether. The French
Revolution must always be considered as an epoch in the
religious history of man. Not only was its hostility to the
Christian faith the most direct that the world has seen since
the days of Julian ; not only did it spring, in great measure,
out of the corrupt state of the French clergy, the Church of
Dubois and of Talleyrand ; but it possessed in itself that
frightful energy which, as has been truly observed by its latest
exponent, 1 can only be likened to the propagation of a new
religion the wild fanaticism, the proselytism, the self-devotion,
the crimes, as though of a Western Mahometanism of what its
own disciples have often called it, an imitation, a parody, a
new, distorted edition of the Gospel. Not only is its history
instructive as a moral warning to all existing Churches, and as
an interpreter of the great religious storms of former ages, but
it changed the whole external constitution of the Church on
the Continent generally ; and, in the inward sifting and trial of
the religious thoughts of men, its effects can still now be felt,
even in countries the furthest removed from its immediate
influence.
Germany, the seat of the original movement of the Reform-
ation, has never lost the hold which it then first acquired on
the reason and imagination of mankind. Its collective power
as a Church has been too impalpable to attach itself to any
definite course of outward events. But its individual divines
have, more than any others, taken the place occupied by the
1 Tocqueville: L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, c. iii. Compare
Burke's "Thoughts on French Affairs," vol. iv. p. 10. (Bohn's Ed.)
2O The Province of
schoolmen of the middle ages. No others, within the last
hundred years, have exercised so powerful an influence over
the rest of Europe as the philosophical and critical theologians
of the German universities.
And this leads us finally to the third great ecclesiastical
system which stands alone and apart, yet with its own peculiar
mission, in the general fortunes of the Western Church. At
least for Englishmen, no Ecclesiastical History since the
Reformation can be so instructive as that of our own Church
of England. To see how, out of that wide shipwreck the
fragments of our vessel were again pieced together ; how far it
has realised the essential condition of the ark on the stormy
waters ; how far it has contained within itself the necessary,
though heterogeneous, elements of our national faith and
character ; how far it may still hope to do so ; what is its
connection with the past, what its hold upon the future ; this
is the last and most important task of the English ecclesiastical
historian. The peculiar constitution of our State has borne
the brunt and survived the shock of the French Revolution : it
is the hope of the peculiar constitution of our Church that it
should in like manner meet, overcome, and absorb the shock
of the new thoughts and feelings to which, directly or indirectly,
that last of European movements has given birth.
I have been induced thus, at the outset, to dwell on this broad
extent of prospect, first, because it is only by a just appreciation
of the whole that any part can be properly understood ; and,
secondly, because I wish to impress on my hearers the many
points of contact which Ecclesiastical History presents to the
various studies of this place. If at times it is impossible not
to be oppressed with the load which has to be taken from the
stores of the Pilgrim's Palace, it is a satisfaction to remember
that there are many travellers passing along the same road who
will, almost of necessity, lighten the burden and cheer the
journey by their common interest in the treasures borne away.
One such has been before me in this path, my lamented
predecessor. Personally, he was almost unknown to me. In
our mode of dealing with the subject before us we might have
widely differed. But I cannot enter on this office without
bearing my humble testimony to the conscientious industry
with which, as I have heard from those who attended his
Lectures, he guided them over the rugged way which he had
chosen for them ; without expressing my grateful sense of the
characteristic forethought and munificence with which he
Ecclesiastical History 21
bequeathed to this Chair the valuable endowment of his library.
Still more, I should be doing wrong both to him and to the
University, were I not to dwell for a moment on what I have
always understood was the chief ground of the respect which
he commanded in this place. He was emphatically a "just man;"
he possessed in an eminent degree that rare gift of public
integrity and fairness too rare in the world, too rare in the
Church, too rare in Ecclesiastical History, too rare even in great
seats of learning, not to be noticed when it comes before us,
especially when, as in the present case, it passes away with the
marked approbation and regret of all who witnessed it. In
times of much angry controversy he never turned aside from
his straightforward course to excite needless alarms. He never
stooped 1 to win theological favour by attacking unpopular
names. He never allowed any religious sentiment or fancy to
interfere with his manly and severe sense of truth and duty.
He showed that it was possible to be impartial without weak-
ness, and orthodox without bitterness. May the University
long remember that such was the character which she delighted
to honour ! May his successors in this Chair be encouraged
and enabled to act and to speak, in this most important
respect, according to his example !
For the sake of convenience I subjoin the leading chrono-
logical divisions, which to some extent cross the historical and
geographical divisions laid down in the foregoing Lecture.
I. The rise of the Christian Church. A.D. 30 312.
1. The Apostolic Age. 3070.
2. The transition from the Apostolic age. 70 160.
3. The Age of Persecution. 160312.
II. The Church of the Empire.
The Western Church. The Eastern Church.
I. The beginning of the I. The age of the Eastern Coun-
Roman Church and of cils. 312 781.
Latin Theology. 312 2. The rise of the Greek Empire
476. and Church. 3301453.
3. The rise of Mahometanism.
622 732.
4. The rise of the Russian
Church. 988 1700.
1 As one instance, it may suffice to record the remarkable Ordination
sermon on "The Atonement," preached by Professor Hussey in December,
1855, in which he defended the doctrine of an eminent theologian, at that
time the object of much vehement obloquy, and showed in guarded but
decisive terms its substantial identity with that of the ancient Fathers.
22 The Study of
III. The Church of the Middle Ages. 4761517.
1. Conversion of the Barbarians. 450 800.
2. The Papacy and the Crusades. 8001300.
3. The Western Councils and Preludes of the Reformation.
13001517.
IV. The Church of the Reformation. 1517 1789.
1. The crisis of the Reformation. 15171550.
2. The wars of the Reformation. 1550 1660.
3. The rise of Latitudinarianism, of Methodism, of Gallicanism,
and of German theology. 1660 1789.
V. The French Revolution. 17891815.
II
THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
IT is sometimes said, that of all historical studies that of
Ecclesiastical History is the most repulsive. We seem to be
set down in the valley of the Prophet's vision, strewn with
bones, and behold they are " very many " and " very dry ; "
skeletons of creeds, of churches, of institutions ; trodden
and traversed by the feet of travellers again and again ; the
scapegoat of one age lying lifeless by the scapegoat of
the next; craters of extinct volcanoes, which once filled the
world with their noise, and are now dead and cold ; the sait
shores of a barren sea, which throws up again dead and
withered the branches which the river of life had cast into
it full of beauty and verdure, the very reverse of that green
prospect which I set before you in my opening lecture ; the
more dreary, it may be said, from the wide extent into which
it spreads. " How are we to give interest to such a task ;
how shall the healing streams penetrate into those dead
waters ; how shall those dry bones live ? "
There may be many answers to this question, but I shall
content myself with the most obvious. Remember that of all
these things there is a history. These relics, these institutions,
these characters (take them at their worst), had each a part
to play amongst mankind ; they were men of flesh and blood
like ourselves, or they dwelt with men of flesh and blood like
ourselves ; they were living human spirits, or they were the
instruments of living human spirits ; however decayed, how-
ever antiquated they may be, yet in their very age they have
Ecclesiastical History 23
an interest which no novelty can give. We cannot, it is true,
enter on Ecclesiastical History, whether in its wider or its
narrower sense, with the feeling of fresh enthusiasm which
inspires the discoverers of unexplored regions, whether of
science or history, "the first who ever burst into the silent
sea," or secluded ruins, which no eye of man has seen before.
But we can enter upon it with the yet deeper delight which
fills our minds, as we feel rising beneath our feet the ground
of the Seven Hills; or as we gaze, knowing that hundreds
of thousands have gazed before us, on the everlasting outline
of the Pyramids. So view the history of the Church, even in
its most lifeless and withered forms ; so view it as part of a
whole, as once having lived, as living still in ourselves, as
destined to live on in future generations ; so prophesy over
its dry bones as they lie scattered and disjointed over the
surface of the world, and we shall soon hear " a noise and a
shaking," and "the bones will come together," each to each,
and " the breath will come into them, and they will live and
stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army."
Let me point out how this remedy is involved in the very
nature of the case. Take, for example, the history of doc-
trines and opinions. Many ecclesiastical histories contain
little else ; half of theology is taken up in stating them.
How immensely do they gain in liveliness, in power, in the
capacity of being understood and appreciated, if we view
them through the medium of the lives, characters, and cir-
cumstances of those who received and taught them ! Trace
the actual course of any opinion or dogma ; see the influences
by which it was coloured; compare the relative importance
attached to it at one period and another; ask how far the
words in which it has been expressed convey the same or a
different meaning to us or to our fathers; discover, if pos-
sible, its fountain-head in the time, the country, or the person
in which it first originated. Look at Augustinianism as it
arose in the mind of Augustine ; at Lutheranism as it was
conceived by Luther ; at Wesleyanism as it was set forth by
Wesley. It will cease to be a phantom, it will speak to us as
a man r if it is an enemy, we shall slay it more easily ; if a
a friend, we shall embrace it more warmly.
Still more is this the case with the kindred subject of
Confessions and Articles of Faith. If we regard them
merely in their cut and dried results, they may indeed serve
many useful ends ; they supply stakes to make hedges against
24 The Study of
intruders, planks to cross our enemy's trenches, faggots to
burn heretics. But go to the soil from which they sprang.
Watch them in their wild, native, luxuriant growth. Observe
the moss which has grown over their stems, the bough rent
away there and grafted in here, the branches inextricably
intertwined with adjacent thickets. So regarded, they will
not be less, but more of a shelter ; we shall not value them
the less for understanding them better. Figure to yourselves,
as you read any creeds or confessions, the lips by which they
were first uttered, the hands by which they were first written.
Hear the Apostles' Creed, as it summed up in its few simple
sentences the belief of Roman martyrs. Watch the Nicene
Bishops meeting each other, and their opponents, and the
Emperor Constantine, for the first time, on the shores of the
Bithynian lake. Listen to the triumphs of Clovis and Recared
over the Arians of France and Spain, the rising storms between
East and West, and you will more clearly catch the true
meaning of their echo in the old Latin hymn, Quicunque vult,
then first welcomed into the worship of Western Europe. Read
the Articles of the English Church in their successive mutila-
tions, excrescences, variations. Go to that most precious of
collegiate libraries in the sister University, where the venerable
autograph which contains them may still be seen ; look at the
signatures of those whose names are affixed : conceive the
persons whom those names represent : imagine them as any
one who has ever taken part in any council, or commission, or
committee, or conclave of any kind whatever, can and must
imagine them ; one sacrificing, another insisting on, a favourite
expression; a new turn given to one sentence, a charitable
colour thrown over another ; the edge of a sharp exclusion
blunted by one party, the sting of a bitter sarcasm drawn by
another. Start from this view, as certain as it can be made by
the facts of human nature and by the facts of history, both uni-
versal and particular. Regard confessions of faith in this their
only true historical light, and in that light many a new glimpse
will be obtained of their practical justice and moderation;
many a harsh expression will be explained, many a superfluous
scruple of honest minds will vanish away, many a foolish
controversy will be extinguished for ever.
But the proper material for Ecclesiastical History is, after
all, not institutions or opinions, but events and persons.
Leviticus and the Proverbs have their own special value, but
they are not reckoned amongst the " historical books " of
Ecclesiastical History 25
the Jewish Church. Bingham's learned work, however useful
as an auxiliary, contains "the antiquities," not the history of
the Christian Church. It is on its special incidents and char-
acters that the vitality of any history depends. How can we
best make ourselves acquainted with these ?
In this, as in so many other branches of knowledge, the
question can only be fully answered in each particular case.
Whatever way will best enable each man, in his own peculiar
situation, character, and opportunities, to remember and
understand, and profit, that is to him the best, and can be
taught only by consulting his own experience.
For general readers, the best general counsel which can
be given, is that which I have already indicated. Study the
history of the Church in connection with the collateral sub-
jects with which it is bound up : let us keep our eyes and ears
open to the religious aspects of history, and they will break in
upon us, we know not whence, or how.
Let us read also, whatever we do read, as elsewhere, so
here, in the works of eminent historians rather than in those
of writers without a name and without a character ; and yet
more, read, if possible, works which describe what they
describe at length and in detail, and which therefore leave
a lasting impression on the memory and imagination rather
than in the crowded pages of meagre abstracts, which are
forgotten as soon as read. Great works and full works, not
small works and short works, are in the end the best economy
of time, as well as of everything else.
But this leads me to what is on the whole, the most
instructive, though (it may be) not the only practicable, course
to be followed by those who wish, in the true sense of .the
word, to be " students " of Ecclesiastical History. We can-
not attempt to describe or to study every event in detail, for
time and labour would fail; we need not do it compendi-
ously, for this has been done to our hands again and again,
and of late years with such candour and research as to render
any further work of the kind superfluous. One method
remains to us, at once the most obvious and the most inter-
esting. ' Lay aside the lesser events, or read them only so
far as to preserve a continuous knowledge of the general
thread of the history : it is for this purpose that the briefer
narratives, when clearly and ably written, are of substantial
use. But study the greater events, scenes, places, and revo-
lutions in all the detail in which they can be represented to us.
26 The Study of
Take, for example, the General Councils of the Church.
They are the pitched battles of Ecclesiastical History. Ask
yourselves the same questions as you would about the battles
of military history. Ask when, and where, and why they
were fought. Put before "your minds all the influences of the
age, which there were confronted and concentrated from
different quarters as in one common focus. See why they
were summoned to Nicaea, to Constance, to Trent ; the locality
often contains here, as in actual battles, the key of their
position, and easily connects the Ecclesiastical History of the
age with its general history and geography. Look at the
long procession as it enters the scene of assembly; see who
was present, and who was absent. 1 Let us make ourselves
acquainted with the several characters there brought together,
so that we may recognise them as old friends if we meet them
again elsewhere. Study their decrees, 2 as expositions of the
prevailing sentiments of the time ; study them, as Mr. Froude
has advised us to study the statutes of our own ancient Par-
liaments ; see what evils are most condemned, and what
evils are left uncondemned ; observe how far their injunctions
are still obeyed, or how far set at nought, and ask in each
case the reason why. Read them, as I have just now noticed,
with the knowledge given to us by our own experience of all
synods of all kinds ; read them with the knowledge which each
gives of every other. Do this for any one Council, and you
will have made a deep hole into Ecclesiastical History.
And still more let this same rule be followed with regard
to persons. Take any one character. It may be we shall
be attracted towards him by some accidental connection ; it
may, and should rather, be on account of his pre-eminent
greatness. Do not let him leave you till you have, at any
rate, retained some one distinctive feature by which you will
know him again in the multitudes amongst which he will
else be lost; some feature of mind or person which he has,
and which others have not. 3
Many of us must have read, in part at least, Neander's
" History of the Christian Church," and will have admired, as
every one must admire, the depth, the tenderness, the delicacy
of Christian sentiment which pervades the whole of his vast
work, and fulfils his own beautiful motto, " It is the heart
which makes the theologian," Pectus theologum facit. Yet,
1 See Lecture III. 2 See Lecture V.
3 See Lectures VI. VII. XL XII.
Ecclesiastical History 27
without disparaging the value of such a mirror of Christian
history in such a character, we cannot help feeling that it is
often rather the theologian than the historian whose works
we read ; that it is often rather the thoughts, than the actual
persons and deeds, of men, that he is describing to us. They
are the ghosts of Ossian, rather than the heroes of Homer ;
they are refined, they are spiritualised, to that degree, that
their personality almost vanishes; the stars of heaven shine
through them : but we have no hold on their earthly frames ;
we can trace no human lineaments in their features, as they
pass before us. Let us endeavour to fill up this outline ;
however much of deeper interest it may have for the more
philosophical mind, it will hardly lay hold on the memory or
the affections of the more ordinary student, unless it is
brought closer to our grasp. How differently we learn to
estimate even Neander himself, according as we merely
regard him as a thinker of holy thoughts, the writer of a good
book, or as we see the venerable historian in his own proper
person, his black, shaggy, overhanging eyebrows, and his
strong Jewish physiognomy revealing the nation and religion
to which he first belonged, working at his history night and
day with insatiable ardour, to show to his unconverted country-
men what Christianity really was ; abstracted from all thought
of worldly cares, of food, and dress, and money, and time;
living, dying, buried in the affections, in the arms, of his
devoted pupils ! What by proximity of time we are enabled
to do for the historian, true research usually enables us to do
for those whom he describes. Watch their first appearance,
their education, their conflicts, their death-beds. Observe
their relative position to each other ; see what one did which
another would not have done, what one thought or said which
to another would have been heretical or superstitious ; or,
lastly, what all did, and said, and thought in common.
If I were to name one especial excellence amongst the
many which render Mr. Grote's great achievement so im-
portant an addition, not merely to Grecian History, but to
all historical study, of whatever kind, it would be the keen
discrimination with which he presents, not merely distinct
characters, but distinct types of character in the lineage of
the Grecian mind, whom before we had been accustomed
to regard much as we usually regard the fixed stars their
distance from each other being lost in comparison with the
distance from ourselves. In these contrasts and combinations
28 The Study of
of character we find exactly what is most needed in the history
of the Church. Here, even more than in common history,
we are apt to blend together the different persons of the story
under one common class. Yet here, even more than in
common history, we ought to keep each separate from each, if
we would learn the lessons they have to teach to the world.
Of ordinary readers, how few there are to whom the Fathers,
the Schoolmen, nay, even the Reformers, although divided as
classes, are not confounded as individuals ! How few there
are who can trace the descent, step by step, as the genealogy
(so to speak) of the Church is unrolled before us ! From
Ignatius to Cyprian, from Origen to Athanasius, from
Athanasius to Augustine, from Augustine to Bernard, from
Bernard to Aquinas, to Tauler, to Luther, how wide are the
gaps, how necessary the connection, how startling the differ-
ence ! Or, again, in the more outward history, how various
are the trains of association awakened by the successive re-
presentatives of the Empire and of the Papacy, in Constantine,
in Clovis, in Charlemagne, in Barbarossa, in Charles V. ; or,
on the other hand, in Gregory I., in Gregory VII., in Innocent
III., in Leo X., in Sixtus V. ! Each has his own message to
deliver ; each has his own work to perform ; each is a link in
that manifold chain which conveys the electric spark from
the first to the nineteenth century. It was a happy thought of
Eusebius, that he would trace the history of the various
ancient churches through the succession of Bishops, who in
those early times were literally the personifications of their
flocks. It is a yet happier arrangement, whenever the interest
of the history of the whole Church can be concentrated in the
still grander succession of those who have stood forth as the
overseers and guides of Christendom, whether by good or bad
eminence, not only from generation to generation, but from
century to century, and from age to age.
It is not without reason that I have thus recommended for
your study the selection of the detailed representation of some
one event, person, or institution, of commanding interest.
Not only will it furnish us with the best mode of giving life to
what is often a barren labour, but it will also be the best safe-
guard against many of the evils with which the student of
Ecclesiastical History is beset.
First, it is always useful to be reminded of the various
degrees of importance in the different events and institutions
of the Church. There is no more common error of theological
Ecclesiastical History 29
students than to regard everything connected with religion as
of equal significance. They will allow of no light or shade, no
difference between things essential and things unessential, no
proportion between means and ends, between things moral
and things ceremonial, between things doubtful and things
certain. Against this levelling tendency of ecclesiastical study,
History lifts up a warning which may be heeded when all else
fails. Believe that Athanasius and Augustine are worthier
objects of interest than Flavian or Optatus, and you will have
made one step towards believing that there is a gradation of
importance in the several controversies in which the Church
has been engaged. Believe that the invasion and conversion of
the barbarians was the great crisis and work of mediaeval re-
ligion, and you will have made a step towards believing that the
Church of Christ has higher aims than the disputes respecting
the observance of Easter, or the shape of the clerical tonsure.
Secondly, this combination of study round one main object
solves, in part, the difficulty which I noticed in my first
Lecture, respecting the relations of Civil and Ecclesiastical
History. The subordinate persons and events of each may be
easily divided from one another. But the greater characters
of necessity combine both elements; they are the meeting
points of the two spheres of human life ; they rise above the
point of divergence ; they show that in the most important
moments of social and individual action all the influences of
life, physical, intellectual, political, moral, come together; in
these cases, whatever we may do elsewhere, we cannot dis-
entangle the web without breaking it. Those divisions of
history which we sometimes see under the heads of " civil and
military," " political " and " religious," though convenient for
common wars or common controversies, yet utterly fail when
they touch an age like the Reformation, though possible in the
cases of Melanchthon or Jeremy Taylor, break down entirely
when applied to Luther or Oliver Cromwell. The unity of
purpose which is the main characteristic of any great mind,
the close connection of leading ideas which is the main
interest of any great age, is grievously marred when we have
to seek the disjointed fragments from different quarters, and
take up over and over again the thread of the same interrupted
story.
Thirdly, this same method will be a protection against the
prevailing sin of ecclesiastical historians exclusiveness and
partiality.
30 The Study of
It is well known that Eusebius openly avows his intention of
relating only those incidents in the lives of the martyrs of
Palestine which would reflect credit on the Church, and that
Milner constructs his whole history on the principle that he
will omit all mention of ecclesiastical wickedness, and record
only the specimens of ecclesiastical virtue. Such a process,
however edifying and useful for certain purposes, yet is never
wholly safe, and happily is rendered almost impossible as soon
as we wish to consider the full character and bearings of any
person or institution on which we are engaged. If once we are
inspired with a genuine desire of seeing the man as he really
was, if he was worth being seen at all, we shall not be satisfied
unless we see him altogether. Here, as in so many other
respects, the sacred history of the Jewish Church is our best
example. We there see, not the half, but the whole of David.
We are told not only of his goodness, but of his sins ; and we
can there judge how wonderfully the history of the Church has
gained by such a frank disclosure : how thin,- how pale in
comparison, would that biography have been, had the darker
side been suppressed, and the bright side only exhibited.
Such a completeness of view we are almost driven to take,
when we explore, not one, but all the sources whence our
knowledge can be drawn. 1 We may still lament that the story
of the lion is so often told only by the man, that the lives and
opinions of heretics can be traced only in the writings of the
orthodox, that the clergy have been so often the sole historians
of the crimes of the laity. But we shall have learned at least to
know that there is another side, even when that side has been
torn away or lost. We shall often find some ancient fragment
or forgotten parchment, like that which vindicates Edwy and
Elgiva from the almost unanimous calumny of their monastic
enemies. We shall see that in the original biographies of
Becket, partial though they be, enough escapes to reveal that
he is not the faultless hero represented to us in modem
martyrology.
The mere perusal of the indiscriminate praise and abuse
lavished on the same person by two opposite historians is
instructive, even for our guidance in the present. The mere
collection of the cross-fire of vituperation from modern parti-
sans is useful as teaching us distrust in any one-sided view of
the past. Selden, who knew well the danger and falsehood of
1 See Lecture II.
Ecclesiastical History 31
extremes, confines his advice on "ecclesiastical story" to this
single point to study the exaggerated statements of Baronius
on the one side, and of the Magdeburg Centuriators on the
other, and "be our own judges." Nor let any one suppose
that this conflict of evidence renders the attainment of
certainty impossible. Doubtless there are many points both
in sacred and in common history, both in civil and ecclesi-
} astical records, where we must be content to remain in sus-
pense. History will have left half its work undone, if it does
not teach us humility and caution. But essential truth can
almost always be found, truth of all kinds can with due
research be usually found : she lies, no doubt, in a well ; but
we may be sure that she is there if we dig deep enough. In
this labour teachers and students must all work together.
What one cannot discover, many at work on the same point
can often prove beyond doubt. Like Napoleon and his
comrades, when lost in the quicksands of the Red Sea, let each
ride out a different way, and the first that comes to firm ground
bid the others halt and follow him.
Fourthly, this method of study will enable us all from time to
time to set our foot on that firmest of all ground, which every
student of history ought to touch once in his life, original
authorities. We cannot do it always, but by the mere necessity
'' of exploring any one subject to the bottom we must do it at times.
It will be a constant charm of the history of the Chosen People
that there we shall rarely be absent from, at any rate, the nearest
approaches which can now be made to the events described.
But it will be a charm also in the minute investigation of any
point in the later history, that, however well told by modern
compilers, there is almost sure to be something in the original
records which we should else have overlooked. How inestimable
are the fragments of Hegesippus and the Epistle of the Church
of Lyons embedded in the rhetoric of Eusebius ! How lifelike,
in the dead partisanship of Strype, are the letters, injunctions,
and narratives of the actors whose words and deeds he so
feebly undertakes to represent !
And original records are not confined merely to contem-
| poraneous histories, nor even to contemporaneous literature,
sermons, poems, laws, decrees. Study the actual statues and
portraits of the men, the sculptures and pictures of the events :
if they do not give us the precise image of the persons and
things themselves, they give us at least the image left on those
who came nearest to them. Study their monuments, their
32 The Study of
gravestones, their epitaphs, on the spots where they lie. Study,
if possible, the scenes of the events, their aspect, their archi-
tecture, their geography ; the tradition which has survived the
history, the legend which has survived the tradition ; the
mountain, the stream, the shapeless stone, which has survived
even history and tradition, and legend.
Take two examples instead of a hundred. There are few
more interesting episodes in modern Ecclesiastical History
than that of the Scottish Covenanters. But the school in which
that episode must be studied is Scotland itself. The caves,
and moors, and moss-hags of the Western Lowlands ; the tales,
which linger still, of the black charger of Claverhouse, of the
strange encounters with the Evil one, of the cry of the plover
and peewit round the encampments on the hill-side, are more
instructive than many books. The rude gravestones which
mark the spots where those were laid who bore testimony
to "the covenanted work of reformation, and Christ's kingly
government of His house," bring before us in the most lively,
because in the most condensed, authentic, original form, the
excited feeling of the time, and the most peculiar traits of the
religion of the Scottish people. Their independence, their
fervour, their fierceness, may have belonged to the age. But
hardly out of Scotland could be found their stubborn endur-
ance, their thirst for vengeance, their investment of the
narrowest questions of discipline and ceremony with the
sacredness of universal principles. We almost fancy that we
see the survivors of the dead spelling and scooping out their
savage rhymes on the simple monuments, each catching from
each the epithets, the texts, the names, almost Homeric in the
simplicity and the sameness with which they are repeated on
those lonely tombstones from shore to shore of the Scottish
kingdom.
Or turn to a similar instance of kindred but wider interest.
What insight into the familiar feelings and thoughts of the
primitive ages of the Church can be compared to that afforded
by the Roman catacombs ! Hardly noticed by Gibbon or
Mosheim, they yet give us a likeness of the life of those early
times beyond that derived from any of the written authorities
on which Gibbon and Mosheim repose. Their very structure
is significant; their vast extent, their labyrinthine darkness,
their stifling atmosphere, are a standing proof both of the
rapid spread of the Christian conversions, and of the active
fury of the heathen persecutions. The subjects of the sculptures
Ecclesiastical History 33
and paintings place before us the exact ideas with which the
first Christians were familiar ; they remind us, by what they do
not contain, of the ideas with which the first Christians were
not familiar. We see with our own eyes the very stories from
the Old and the New Testament which sustained the courage
of the early martyrs, and the innocent festivities of the early
feasts of Christian love. The barbarous style of the sculptures,
the bad spelling, the coarse engraving of the epitaphs, impresses
upon us more clearly than any sermon the truth that God
chose the weak, and base, and despised things of the world,
to bring to nought the things which are mighty. He who is
thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the catacombs will be
nearer to the thoughts of the early Church than he who has
learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian
or of Origen.
And now, having set before you the method of the study
which, for all who enter upon it seriously, and in its general
features even for all who enter upon it superficially, is the most
desirable, let me briefly notice some of the special opportunities
which we ourselves possess for following up the study of all.
First, if there ever was a Church in which Ecclesiastical
History might be expected to flourish, it is the English.
Unlike almost all the other Churches of Europe, alone in its
constitution, in its origin, in its formularies, it touches all the
religious elements which have divided or united Christendom.
He may be a true son of the Church of England, who is able
to throw himself into the study of the first Four Councils to
which the statutes of our constitution refer, or of the mediaeval
times in which our cathedrals and parishes were born and
nurtured. He also may be a true son of the same who is able
to hail as fellow-workers the great reformers of Wittenburg, of
Geneva, and of Zurich, whence flowed so strong an influence
over at least half of our present formularies. But he is the
truest son of all who, in the spirit of this union, feels himself
free to sympathise with the several elements and principles of
good which the Church of England has thus combined, who
knows that the strength of a national Church, especially of the
Church of a nation like ours, lies in the fact that it has never
been surrendered exclusively to any one theological influence,
and that the Christian faith which it has inherited from all is
greater than the differences which it has inherited from each.
The Prayer-book as it stands is a long gallery of Ecclesias-
tical History, which, to be understood and enjoyed thoroughly,
34 The Study of
absolutely compels a knowledge of the greatest events and
names of all periods of the Christian Church. To Ambrose
we owe the present form of our Te Deum; Charlemagne breaks
the silence of our Ordination prayers by the Veni Creator
Spiritus. The Persecutions have given us one creed, and the
Empire another. The name of the first great Patriarch of
the Byzantine Church closes our daily service ; the Litany is the
bequest of the first great Patriarch of the Latin Church, amidst
the terrors of the Roman pestilence. Our collects are the joint
productions of the Fathers, the Popes, and the Reformers.
Our Communion Service bears the traces of every fluctuation
of the Reformation, through the two extremes of the reign of
Edward to the conciliating policy of Elizabeth, and the reac-
tionary zeal of the Restoration. The more comprehensive, the
more free, the more impartial is our study of any or every
branch of Ecclesiastical History, the more will it be in accord-
ance with the spirit and with the letter of the Church of
England.
Secondly, I cannot forbear to notice the special advantages
vouchsafed to all of us in this place as members of this great
University. Its libraries enable us to pursue our cross-ex-
amination of ancient witnesses, our reproduction of ancient
scenes and events through all the appliances of antiquarian and
artistic knowledge. Its peculiar mixture of various characters
and callings, students and studies, invites us to that fusion of
lay and clerical, of modern and ancient, of common and sacred,
which is so vital to a full understanding of our subject, yet
which would be so easily lost in institutions more purely theo-
logical, more strictly professional. But, besides all this, the
very place itself is teeming with history, if not of the more
universal Church, yet of the Church of our own country, to
which, sooner or later, our studies must be turned.
In those studies I trust that we shall find that " Alfred the
Great, our first Founder," did well to plant his seat of learning
beside the venerable shrine of St. Frideswide. We shall be
the better able to comprehend Duns Scotus and the schoolmen
as we stand in the ancient quadrangle of Merton, or listen
to the dim traditions of Brasenose. Mediaeval theology and
practice will stand out clearly in the quaint customs of Queen's,
and the romantic origin of All Souls. The founders of Exeter
and of New College will give us a true likeness of mediaeval
prelates, architects, warriors, statesmen, and bishops, all in
one, Wycliffe will assume a more distinct shape and form to
Ecclesiastical History 35
those who trace his local habitation as Master of Balliol.
Erasmus will not soon die out of our recollection when we
remember the little college of Corpus, which he hoped would
be to Great Britain what the Mausoleum was to Caria, and
what the Pyramids were to Egypt. The unfinished splendour
of Christ Church is the enduring monument of the magnificence
and of the fall of Wolsey. The Reformation will not be unaptly
represented to us in the day when the quadrangles were knee-
deep in the torn leaves of the scholastic divines, or when
Ridley and Latimer suffered for their faith beside the gateway
of Bocardo. Its successive retirements and advances have left
their traces in the foundation of Wadham, Trinity, and Jesus.
From St. John's began the counter reformation of Laud.
Magdalen and University are the two memorials of resistance
and subservience to James II. From Lincoln and Pembroke
sprang the great religious movement of Wesley and Whitfield,
and Oriel will not allow us to forget that we too have witnessed
a like movement in our own day, of various forms and various
results, already become historical, which will at least help us to
appreciate such events in former times, and to remember that
we too are parts of the Ecclesiastical History of our country.
Finally, this leads us to the reflection that there will be
probably many amongst my hearers who are looking forward
to an active life in the various ministrations, near and distant,
of the English Church. They too will have in their different
localities, in those from which they came hither, in those to
which they will go hence, the same atmosphere of ancient
times surrounding them, wherever their lot be cast. Our
Ecclesiastical History is not confined to Oxford or to any one
sacred city. Everywhere we shall find something to keep alive
in our recollections the growth and spread of the Christianity
of this great country. Almost every church and churchyard
has its own antiquities. Almost every parish and every sect
has its own strange spiritual experiences, past or present. In
almost every country and province we may study those august
trophies of Ecclesiastical History, instructive beyond those of
almost any other country, our cathedrals. I need name but
one, the'most striking and the most obvious instance, the cradle
of English Christianity, the seat of the English Primacy, my
own proud cathedral, the Metropolitan Church of Canterbury.
But, beyond any mere antiquarian interest, there must also
be many occasions, in the work of every English clergyman,
when the history of the Church may yield lessons of a practical
36 The Study of
and substantial value in his manifold duties and labours. What
those lessons are I shall trust in some measure to represent in
my next Lecture. Meanwhile, let me express the hope and the
stimulus which ought to be given by the thought that I shall
be addressing myself not merely to students but to those who
will have to turn their study into practice ; not merely to the
confined atmosphere of a lecture-room, but to a spirit blowing
out from us and in upon us, to and from the four winds of
heaven. There has been doubtless a tendency in past times
(perhaps there will be in all times) which recent measures have
wisely endeavoured to counteract, a tendency to absorb the
general functions of the University into the special departments
of ecclesiastical thought and education. But we must not for-
get that there is also an academical narrowness, and dryness,
and stiffness ; and that there is, on the other hand, an ecclesi-
astical breadth, and freedom, and warmth, which is for that
evil, if not the highest, at least to many of us the nearest,
remedy. To think that any words here spoken, any books here
studied, may enliven discourses and ministrations far away in
the dark corners of London alleys, in the free air of heaths and
downs in north or south, on western mountains or in eastern
fens ; that records of noble deeds achieved, and of wise sayings
uttered, long ago, may lend a point to practical precepts, or
soften needless differences, or raise dull souls heavenward, or
give a firmer grasp on truth ; this will of itself cheer many an
hour of labour here. In that labour and with that hope it is
for all of us to join. By constant communication of mutual
knowledge, by contribution of the results of the several re-
searches and gifts of all, students and learners will really be
to their Professor not only (according to the well-known and
now almost worn-out saying of Niebuhr) his wings, but also his
feet, and his hands, and his eyes. By bearing in mind the
large practical field in which our work may be afterwards used,
we shall all bring to the very driest bones of our study sinews,
and flesh, and blood, and breath, and spirit, and life.
Note on page 34.
For the statement respecting the Hymns of Te Deum Laudamus, and
Veni Creator Spiritus, see Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus, i. 213, 290.
Ecclesiastical History 37
in
THE ADVANTAGES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
IN my First Lecture, when defining the province of Ecclesi-
astical History, I was led to describe it in its widest extent ; in
my second, when stating the method by which life could be
given to the study, I was led to dwell upon its narrower limits.
And we must endeavour, in our future course, never, whilst
studying the parts, to forget the whole; nor ever so to lose
ourselves in the whole as to neglect the study of one or more
of the parts. Breadth without accuracy, accuracy without
breadth, are almost equal evils.
In the present Lecture I propose to consider some of the
chief practical advantages of the study.
Whatever may be the uncertainties of History, whatever its
antiquarian prejudices, whatever its imaginative temptations,
there is at least one sobering and enlarging effect always to be
expected from it that it brings us down from speculations and
fancies to what at least profess to be facts, and that those facts
transport us some little distance from the interests and the
illusions of the present. This is especially true of. History in
connection with Theology. As it is one of the main character-
istics of Christianity itself, that alone of all religions it claims to
be founded on historical fact ; that its doctrines and precepts
in great measure have been conveyed to us in the form of
history ; and that this form has given them a substance, a
vitality, a variety, which could, humanly speaking, have been
attained in no other way ; so we need not fear to confess that
the same connection has existed through all the subsequent
stages of the propagation of the religion. " The disciple is not
above his Master ; " Theology is not above Christianity : the
Christian Church is in many respects the best practical
exposition of the Christian Religion. Facts are still the most
powerful, the most solid, the most stubborn guides in the mazes
of speculation and casuistry ; they cut through difficulties
which arguments cannot overturn; they overturn theories
which will surrender to nothing else. Ecclesiastical History
is thus, as it were, the backbone of Theology. It keeps the
mind of the theological student in an upright state. Often as
facts are perverted, and twisted, and bent to meet a purpose,
38 The Advantages of
yet they offer a sterner resistance than anything else short of
the primary instincts of humanity.
They offer, too, not only the most convincing, but the
least irritating modes of persuasion, an advantage in theological
matters of no mean importance. The wrath which is kindled
by an anathema, by an opinion, by an argument, is often
turned away by a homely fact. It is like suddenly meeting an
enemy face to face, of whom we have known only by report ;
he is different from what we expected ; we cannot resist the
pressure of his hand and the glance of his eye ; he has ceased
to be an abstraction, he has become a person. How many
elaborate arguments respecting terms of salvation and terms of
communion are shivered to pieces, yet without offence, almost
without resistance, as they are " walked through " (if I may use
the expression) by such heathens as Socrates, such Noncon-
formists as Howard, such Quakers as Elizabeth Fry.
This applies more and more strongly as our range of facts is
enlarged. The more numerous and the more varied are the
objects which we embrace within our range of vision, the less
likely are we to place our trust in what Bacon well calls " the
idols of the cave," in which our own individual lot is cast.
It will be vain to argue, on abstract grounds, for the absolute
and indefeasible necessity of some practice or ceremony, of
which we have learnt from history that there is no instance for
one, two, three, or four hundred years, in the most honoured
ages of the Church. It will be vain to denounce as subversive
of Christianity, doctrines which we have known from biography
to have been held by the very saints, martyrs, and reformers
whom else we are constantly applauding. Opinions and views,
which, in a familiar and modified form, waken in us no shock of
surprise, or even command our warm admiration, will often for
the first time be truly apprehended when we see them in the
ritual or the creed of some rival, or remote, or barbarous
Church, which is but the caricature and exaggeration of that
which we ourselves hold. Practices which we insist on retaining
or repudiating, as if they involved the very essence of the
Catholic faith or of the Reformation, will appear less precious
or less dangerous, as the case may be, in the eyes of the
respective disputants, if history shows us clearly that we thereby
make ourselves, on the one hand, more papal than the Pope,
more Roman than Rome ; on the other hand, more Lutheran
than Luther, more Genevan than Calvin.
If this be the effect of the study of even isolated facts of
Ecclesiastical History 39
Christian history, much more will it result from the study of
the general phenomena which mark its course. There may be
a tendency in special subjects of ecclesiastical study to cramp
and narrow the mind, but there is none such in the more
general view, which embraces its relations to the world at large,
and which compels us to view the lay as well as the clerical
element of the Church, the broad secular framework in which
the whole Church itself is set.
It is always useful to see, as must be seen in any extensive
survey, how large a portion of our ecclesiastical diversities is
to be traced, not to religious causes, but to the more innocent,
and in one sense irresistible, influences of nation, of climate, of
race, of the general course of human affairs. The bitterness of
English partisanship will be greatly diminished in proportion
as we recognise the fact, that the divergence between the Church
of England and Nonconformists springs from differences not so
much of theological principle or opinion, as of social and
hereditary position. The greater divisions of Christendom
can be regarded "calmly and kindly," in proportion as we
are able to take in, as from a summit, the whole view of which
they form the intersecting lines. What seemed, near at hand,
to be mere deformities, from a more distant point are lost in
the sense of the vast prospect to which each feature con-
tributes its peculiar part. The most cursory view of the various
sects and Churches of the world will make us suspect that we
are not all truth and goodness, nor they all error and vice.
The very names of the chiefest among them, Greek and Latin,
Gallican, Anglican, will show us how much of the distinction
between them must be traced simply to national and
geographical influences.
Nor let it be supposed that a philosophical or a general
view of Ecclesiastical History is of necessity a cold or con-
temptuous view. There is, it is true, a melancholy feeling
suggested by any wide contemplation of Christendom. We
think of the contrast between the story as it might have been
and the story as it is. We ask what ought to have been
" more noble or more beautiful than the gradual progress of
the Spirit of light and love, dispelling the darkness of folly,
and subduing into one divine harmony all the jarring elements
of evil;" and we have in its place (if I may use words the
more touching from the keenness of regret with which they
were uttered) "no steady, unwavering advance of heavenly
spirits, but one continually interrupted, checked, diverted from
40 The Advantages of
its course, driven backward ; as of men possessed by some
bewildering spell, wasting their strength upon imaginary
obstacles, hindering each other's progress and their own, by
stopping to analyse and dispute about the nature of the sun's
light till all were blinded by it, instead of thankfully using its
aid to show them the right path onward." *
Most true, yet even in its very sadness containing grounds
of hope and consolation.
For, first though the course of Ecclesiastical History be
thus dark, there is always a bright side to be found in Eccle-
siastical Biography.
Study the lives, study the thoughts, and hymns, and prayers,
study the death-beds of good men. They are the salt, not
only of the world, but of the Church. In them we see, close
at hand, what on the public stage of history we see through
every kind of distorted medium and deceptive refraction. In
them we can trace the history if not of "the Catholic Church,"
at least of the " Communion of Saints." The Ac fa Sane forum
were literally, as a great French historian has observed, the
only light, moral and intellectual, of the centuries, from the
seventh to the ninth, which may without exaggeration be
called, "the dark ages." 2 "Their glories," it has been well
said, " shine far beyond the limits of their daily walk in life ;
their odours are wafted across the boundaries of unfriendly
societies ; their spiritual seed is borne away, and takes root and
bears manifold in fields far distant from the gardens of the
Lord where they were planted." 3 We have to be on our
guard against the proverbial exaggerations of biographers ;
we have to disentangle fable and legend from truth and fact.
But the profit is worth the risk; the work will be its own
reward. It is well known that, amidst the trials which beset
Henry Martyn the missionary, on his voyage to India, the
study in which he found his chief pleasure and profit was in
the kindly notices of ancient saints which form the redeeming
points of Milner's " History of the Church." "I love" (so he
writes in his diary) "to converse, as it were, with those holy
bishops and martyrs, with whom I hope, through grace, to
spend a happy eternity. . . . The example of the Christian
saints in the early ages has been a source of sweet reflection
to me. . . . The holy love and devout meditations of Augus-
1 Arnold's Miscellaneous Works, p. 286.
2 Guizot's Lectures on the Civilisation of France, c. xvii.
3 Wilson's Bampton Lect., p. 275.
Ecclesiastical History 41
tine and Ambrose I delight to think of. ... No uninspired
sentence ever affected me so much as that of the historian,
that to believe, to suffer, and to love, was the primitive
taste." 1 What he so felt and expressed may be, and has
been, felt by many others. Such biographies are the common,
perhaps the only common, literature alike of rich and poor.
Hearts, to whom even the Bible speaks in vain, have by such
works been roused to a sense of duty and holiness. However
cold the response of mankind has been to other portions of
ecclesiastical story, this has always commanded a reverential,
even an excessive attention.
Let us also remember, that what there is of instruction here
is exactly of the kind which we ought to expect. Christianity
affects the springs of action, rather than the actions them-
selves ; from its very beginning it has been seen in the lowly
rather than the lofty places of the world; in the manger of
Bethlehem, in the peasants of Galilee, in the caves and dens
of the earth : we may therefore fairly look for its chief in-
fluences out of the beaten track of history ; when we cannot
trace it on the great highway of the world, we may fairly
conclude that its effects will be found in the corners and
pathways of life :
" Sprinkled along the waste of years,
Full many a soft green isle appears :
Pause where we may along the desert road,
Some shelter is in sight, some sacred, safe abode."
On the other hand, if we turn from the case of individual
Christians to the case of the great masses of individuals which
form the main bulk of the Church, they too have a lesson to
teach, less palpable, but by no means to be despised, though
it has been sometimes pushed to exaggeration.
We know the old saying of Vincentius, "Quod semper,
quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," " Believe what has been
believed always, everywhere, and by everybody." It is need-
less to repeat the arguments by which it can be shown that,
in a literal sense, this axiom is always either untrue or
inappliGable. The solitary protest 2 is always to be honoured
the lonely martyr is avenged at last. Churches and nations,
and whole generations, often seem to lose their reason.
Baronius himself confesses that in the Church of the tenth
1 Memoir of Henry Martyn, pp. 127, 130, 136.
2 See Lecture VII.
C 2
42 The Advantages of
century there was no pilot to guide the helm, no captain to
command the crew, at the moment of its greatest need.
But still the maxim of Vincentius contains a certain element
of truth, which the facts of history entirely confirm. There is
a common sense in the Church as there is a common sense
in the world, which cannot be neglected with impunity ; and
there is an eccentricity in individuals and in sects which
always tends to lead us, if not into dangerous, at least into
crooked paths. The error which is held by great, ancient,
and national communities, often loses its mischief, and entirely
changes its meaning when it becomes part of the general
established belief. The truth which is held by a narrow sect
often becomes error from the mere fact of the isolation and
want of proportion in which it is held. 1 The strange folly of
Christians persecuting Christians was first introduced on a
large scale, not by the Orthodox, but by the heretics of the
fourth and fifth centuries. The fancies of Millenarians, however
innocent and natural, and however widely diffused among
small circles, have always been resisted by the robust sense
of the Universal Church. It is not, as a general rule, the
larger, but the lesser congregations of Christendom, that have
imposed the most minute and petty restrictions on opinion
and practice. Whilst the Imperial, venerable, Orthodox
Church of the whole East is content to repose on the short
Creed of the first Councils, the little Church and state of
Brunswick, under the auspices of Duke Julius, requires, or
did require till recently, from its ministers a stringent
subscription, not only to the three Creeds, the Augsburg Con-
fession, the Apology for the Confession, and the Smalcaldic
Articles, but to all that is contained in all th'e works of Luther,
in all the works of Melancthon, in all the works of Chemnitz.
The "Nine Articles" of "the Evangelical Alliance" impose
a joke on the freedom of thought and conscience far heavier
than that of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of
England.
In fact, the higher and wider is the sweep of vision the
i In the able essay by M. Renan, " On the Future of Religion " (Revue
des Deux Mondes, Oct. 15, 1860), where he considers the prospects of
the Catholic, the National, and the sectarian principle, I venture to think
that the gifted writer, in the preference which he awards to the third
of these principles, has overlooked the historical proofs of its inferiority
to either of the two former, in all that regards true toleration and compre-
hensiveness, whatever may have been its services in other respects.
Ecclesiastical History 43
more difficult it is to stumble at trifles, and make mountains
out of mole-hills. Power, no doubt, is often frightfully abused,
whether in the hands of ecclesiastics or of laymen ; but to both,
if there be any nobleness of character on which to work, it
brings far more moderation and largeness of heart than is
attainable by even better men in inferior stations. It was the
charity and the wisdom of the Popes which protected the Jews
in the middle ages against the fanatical attacks of individual
zealots. The royal heart of the young King Edward was
softer than the mercies even of a gentle prelate. Oliver
Cromwell, when he came to wield the power of Church and
State, of universities and of armies alike, was tolerant to a
degree which his humbler followers were incapable of imitating
or understanding.
It is difficult to express the deference due to these consider-
ations, without placing them above or below their just estimate.
But they form too obvious, too important, I may add, too
consoling, an inference from the course of ecclesiastical events,
to be omitted altogether. Let us receive the fact both as an
encouragement and as a caution. Whatever other charges
may be brought against the history of Christendom, and
however much it may have embraced within or alongside of
itself sallies of wild sectarianism, yet it cannot fairly be called
the history of Fanaticism, or even of enthusiasm. Grey hairs,
and high station, and long experience, whether of individuals
or of communities, have their own peculiar claims to respect.
The movement of the Church to perfection has in it an element
of solidity, of permanence, and of prudence, as well as of
fluctuation and progress and zeal.
But yet further, even when we consider more deeply the
darker points in our general view, a sense of unity emerges
from the midst of disunion, a sense of success from the midst
of failure. Errors and truths which we are apt to ascribe to
special sects, Churches, individuals, will often be seen to
belong really to characters and principles which underlie and
countersect the artificial distinctions on the surface of con-
troversy. The ingenious essays in which Archbishop Whately
traces "-the errors of Romanism " to the general fallacies latent
in every creed and every Church, might be extended to all
kinds of theological division. The celebrated treatise of
Bossuet on " the Variations of Protestantism " might be over-
laid by an instructive work on a larger basis, in a more
generous spirit, and with a nobler object, " the Variations of
44 The Advantages of
the Catholic Church," showing how wide a range of diversities
even the most ancient and exclusive communities have
embraced; how many opposing principles, practices, and
feelings, like the creeks or valleys of some narrow territory,
overlap, traverse, enfold, and run parallel with each other into
the very heart of the intervening country, where we should
least expect to find them. Reformers, before the Reformation ;
Popes, in chairs not of S. Peter; "new presbyter but old
priest writ large ; " " eld foes with new faces ; " heresy under
the garb of orthodoxy, orthodoxy under the garb of heresy;
they who hold, according to the ancient saying, TO, ai/oeriKo,
Ka$oA.i/c(os, and they also who hold TO, KaOoXiKa cupei-i/cSs;
strange companions will be thus brought together from the
east and from the west ; from the north and from the south.
Pelagius lurks under the mitre of Chrysostom or the cowl of
Jerome ; Loyola will find himself by the side of Wesley ; John
Knox will recognise a fellow worker in Hildebrand ; the
austerities of Benedict, the intolerance of Dominic, will find
their counterpart at Geneva and in Massachusetts; the
missionary zeal of the Arian Ulfilas, of the Jesuit Xavier, and
of the Protestant Schwarz will be seen to flow from the same
source. The judgment of history will thus far be able to
anticipate the judgment of Heaven, and to supersede with no
doubtful hand the superficial concords and the superficial
discords which belong to things temporal, by the true separ-
ation and the true union which belong to things eternal.
But it is not only as a matter of wisdom and charity, but as
a ground of Christian evidence, that a large view of ecclesi-
astical differences is specially useful. In the diversity of the
Church will be found a more powerful argument for the divine
origin of Christianity itself, than in the most perfect unity. It
is not, humanly speaking, surprising that a religion should
sustain itself from age to age in the same race and country.
We argue truly that such a restriction was needed as a support,
not for the strength, but for the infirmities of Judaism ; we
argue truly against the universal truth of Mahometanism, that
it has never been able permanently to establish itself in any
but an Eastern climate. But the distinguishing characteristic
of the Christian Church has been, that it has assumed different
forms, and yet not perished in the process ; that the gulf,
however wide, which separates Greek from Latin, and both
from Protestant, has yet not been wide enough to swallow up
the common Christianity which has been transmitted from one
Ecclesiastical History 45
to the other. And, in like manner, to recognise the influence
of races, institutions, and political convulsions on the history
of the Church is assuredly, not to diminish, but to exalt its
importance to men and to nations ; not to underrate its mission,
but to represent it in its full grandeur. Nothing less than one
of the prime agencies of the world could be so interwoven with
the progress of great events, or in its different manifestations
fall in so readily with the broad lines of demarcation which
Nature herself has drawn between the various branches of the
human family.
And, yet further, the very imperfections and failings of the
Church may tend to give us both a more sober and a more
hopeful view of its ultimate prospects. The alarms, the dangers,
the persecutions, the corruptions through which it has safely
passed, are so many guarantees that it is itself indestructible.
The fact that these obstructions to Christian truth and good-
ness are found not in one Church only, but in all, instead of
causing restlessness and impatience, ought to dispose us to
make the best of our lot, whatever it be. We learn that every
Church partakes of the faults, as well as of the excellences, of
its own age and country ; that each is fallible as human nature
itself ; that each is useful as a means, none perfect as an end.
To find Christ or Antichrist exclusively in any one community
is against charity and against humility, but, above all, against
the plain facts of history. Let us hold this truth firmly, and
we shall have then secured ourselves against two of the worst
evils which infest the well-being of religious communities, the
love of controversy and the love of proselytising.
Every such reflection forces us back on a consideration
which is both a chief safeguard and a chief advantage of
Ecclesiastical History, the comparison which it suggests
between what the Church is, and what in the Scriptures it was
intended to be ; between what it has been, and what from the
same source we 'trust that it may be.
It is hard to say whether, by such a comparison, the study
of the Bible or the study of Ecclesiastical History is most the
gainer.
What' is the history of the Church 1 but a long commentary
on the sacred records of its first beginnings ? It is a fulfilment
1 "The fulness of the stream is the glory of the fountain; and it is
because the Ganges is not lost among its native bills, but deepens and
widens until it reaches the ocean, that so many pilgrimages are made to its
springs." Bishop Thirlwall's Charge, 1857, p. 8l.
46 The Advantages of
of prophecy in the truest and widest sense of that word ; a
fulfilment, not merely of predictions of future events, but of
that higher and deeper spirit of prophecy which " makes
manifest the secrets of the heart." The thoughts and deeds of
good Christians are still, as in the Apostolic times, a living
Bible; an Epistle, a Gospel, " written on the hearts of men,
known and read of all men." The various fortunes of the
Church are the best explanation, as they are the best illustra-
tion, of the parables which unfold the course of the kingdom
of heaven. The failures of the Church are but the fulfilments of
the mournful, almost pensive, anticipations of its history (how
unlike the triumphant exaltations of so many human founders
of human sects !), " not peace, but a sword ; " "a fire kindled
on the earth ; " "a savour of death unto death."
The actual effects, the manifold applications, in history,
of the words of Scripture, give them a new instruction, and
afford a new proof of their endless vigour and vitality. Look
through any famous passage of the Old, or yet more of the
New Testament ; there is hardly one that has not borne fruit
in the conversion or some great saint, or in the turn it has given
to some great event. At a single precept of the Gospels,
Antony went his way and sold all that he had ; at a single
warning of the Epistles, Augustine's hard heart was melted
beneath the fig-tree at Milan ; a single chapter of Isaiah made
a penitent believer of the profligate Rochester. A word to S.
Peter has become the stronghold of the Papacy ; a word from
S. Paul has become the stronghold of Luther. The Psalter
alone, by its manifold applications and uses in after times, is a
vast palimpsest, written over and over again, illuminated,
illustrated, by every conceivable incident and emotion of men
and of nations; battles, wanderings, dangers, escapes, death-
beds, obsequies, of many ages and countries, rise, or may rise,
to our view as we read it.
Nor is it only in special passages that the history of the
Church sets before us the greatness of its origin. It is on
looking back upon a mountain range which we have left, that
we often for the first time understand its true character. The
peaks, which in a nearer view were all confused, now stand out
distinct ; the line of heights is drawn out in its full length ; the
openings and passes disentangle themselves from the surround-
ing valleys; the nearer and lesser objects now sink to their
proper level, as they are seen backed and overtopped by the
lofty range behind and above them. Even so do we, at the
Ecclesiastical History 47
distance of eighteen hundred years, see in many respects the
truths of Scripture with a clearer vision than they who lived
even amidst their recesses or at their very foot. We who have
traversed the long levels of Ecclesiastical History can see what
they of old time could not see, the elevation of those divine
words and acts, as compared with any that followed. We can
see, as they could not see, the wide circumference of objects,
which those words and acts overlooked, embraced, compre-
hended. We can distinguish, as they could not distinguish, the
relative importance, the due proportions, the general outline, of
the various heights, and can sketch our picture and direct our
steps accordingly.
The very extent of our departure from the original truth ; the
very violence which in successive ages has been put upon the
sacred words ; the attempts to warp them by false interpretation
or by false teaching, or to overlay them by theories or forgeries
of a later date, only bring us in a more lively and instructive
form what was the point from which we started, what is the differ-
ence of the point to which we have now arrived. In that coarse
but instructive tale in which Dean Swift described the develop-
ment of Ecclesiastical History, when the father's will is at last
brought to light by the three contending brothers, nothing could
more clearly impress upon them the sense of its true meaning
than the recollection of the artifices by which they had been
induced to discover in it the sanction of their own deviations
from it. " If not totidem sentcntiis, then toiidem verbis ; if not
totidem verbis, then totidem liter is" So, with hardly an exaggera-
tion, has Scripture often been handled. The next best clue to
reading an oracle straightforwardly and honestly, is to be aware
that we have been reading it backwards. The allegorical
interpretations given by the early Fathers are virtual confessions
that they have not attempted to expound the original meaning
of the sacred authors. The variations of reading or rendering,
which copyists or translators of later times have introduced
into the text of the Scriptures, are positive proofs that they
found the actual words insufficient to express the altered views
of their own age. The attention paid to passages manifestly of
secondary importance, and the neglect of passages manifestly
of the very highest importance, may serve as gauges both of
what we have hitherto lost and of what we may still hope to gain
in the application of the Scriptures to the wants of Ecclesiastical
History.
This peculiar relation of the Bible to the history of the
48 The Advantages of
Church invites one concluding train of thought. When,
sixteen years ago, a revered teacher stood in this place, and
after a survey of the field of Modern History, asked whether
there were in the existing resources of the nations of mankind
any materials for a new epoch, distinct from those which had
gone before, you may remember how he answered that there
were none. What if the same question be asked with regard
to the prospects of Ecclesiastical History ? We have seen that
four great phases have passed over the fortunes of the Church :
is there likely to be another? We are told that the resources of
nation and race are exhausted for the outer world in which our
history moves : are there any stores of spiritual strength yet
unexplored in the forces of the Christian Church ? With all
reverence and with all caution, may not the reflections which
we have just made encourage us to hope that such a mine does
exist, a virgin mine, in the original records of Christianity ? We
need not speculate on the probable destinies of any Christian
system or community now existing in the world ; we need not
determine whether, as our own Protestant historian has declared,
the Papacy may still be standing ages hence, 1 after England
shall have passed away ; or whether, with the chiefs of Italian
liberalism, we are to believe that it is steadily advancing year
by year to the grave already dug to receive it. Still less need we
compose volumes of future Ecclesiastical History out of fancied
interpretations of the Apocalypse, in defiance alike of all human
experience, all divine warnings. But a serious comparison of
the actual contents of the Scriptures with the actual course
of ecclesiastical events almost inevitably brings us to the
conclusion that the existing materials, principles, and doctrines
of the Christian Religion are far greater than have ever yet been
employed ; that the Christian Church, if it ever be permitted
or enabled to use them, has a long lease of new life, and
new hope before it, such as has never yet been enjoyed. Look
at the Bible on the one hand, and History on the other ; see
what are the points on which the Scriptures lay most emphatic
stress ; think how much of the sap and life of Christendom has
run to leaf, and not to fruit ; remember how constant is the pro-
test of Scripture, and, we may add, of the best spirits of the
universal Church, a.gainst preferring any cause of opinion or
ceremony to justice, holiness, truth, and love ; observe how
constantly and steadily all these same intimations point to One
1 Macaulay's Essays, vol. ii. p. 39.
Ecclesiastical History 49
Divine Object, and One only, as the centre and essence of
Christianity : we cannot, with these experiences, hesitate to say,
that, if the Christian Church be drawing to its end, or if
it continue to its end with no other objects than those which
it has hitherto sought, it will end with its acknowledged
resources confessedly undeveloped, its finest hopes of usefulness
almost untried and unattempted. It will have been like an
ungenial spring cut short in full view of the summer, a stately
vessel wrecked within the very sight of the shore.
It may be that the age for creating new forms of the Christian
faith is past and gone, that no new ecclesiastical boundaries will
henceforth be laid down amongst men. It is certain that in the
use of the old forms is our best chance for the present. Use
them to the utmost ; use them threadbare, if you will : long
experience, the course of their history, their age and dignity, have
made them far more elastic, far more available, than any that
we can invent for ourselves. But do not give up the study of the
history of the Church, either in disgust at what has been, or in
despair at what may be. The history of the Christian Church,
no less than of the Jewish, bears witness to its own incomplete-
ness. The words which describe its thoughts constantly betray
their deflection from the original ideas which they were meant
to express ; " Church, Gospel, Catholic, Evangelical," the very
word " Ecclesiastical," as I noticed in first speaking of it, are
now too often the mere shadows, sometimes even the exact
opposites, of their ancient, orthodox, spiritual meaning. We
need only trace the steps of their gradual descent to their
present signification, in order to see how far they, and we with
them, have to ascend again before we can reach the point from
which they started, the point to which we have still to attain.
Read, too, the expressions of the best and wisest Christians in
their best and wisest moments. Take them, not in the passion
of youth, not in the heat of controversy, not in the idleness of
speculation, but in the presence of some great calamity, or in
the calmness of age, or in the approach of death. Take that
admirable summary of mature Christian experience, which
ought to be in the hands of every student of Ecclesiastical
History^ one might well add, of every student of theology, of
every English minister of religion which is contained in
Baxter's review of his own narrative of his life and times. 1 See
how he there corrects the narrowness, the sectarianism, the
1 The whole passage may be conveniently read in Wordsworth's Eccle-
siastical Biography, vol. v. pp. 559-597.
50 The Advantages of
dogmatism of his youth, by the comprehensive wisdom acquired
in long years of persecution, of labour, and devotion. Let
us hope that what he has expressed as the result of his indi-
vidual experience, we may find and appropriate in the
collective experience of the old age of the Church.
Then turn and observe how with this best witness of
Christendom, the best witness of Christianity, as set forth in
the Scriptures, entirely agrees. Take any of the chapters of
the Old or New Testament, to which Prophets and Apostles
appeal as containing, in their judgment, the sum and substance
of their message ; take, above all, the summary of all Evangel-
ical and Apostolical truth in the Four Gospels. Read them
parallel with the so-called religious wars and controversies of
former ages. Read them parallel with the so-called enlighten-
ment, and the so-called religious sects and parties and journals,
of our own age. Read, and fear, and hope, and profit, by the
extent of the contrast.
Doubtless there is much in the study of the Scriptures that
is uncertain and difficult. But this is nothing in comparison
with the light they have still to give, both in checking our
judgment of the past, in guiding our judgment of the present
and future. We may in former times have gone too much by
their letter and too little by their spirit ; but it has been far
oftener our fault that we have gone neither by letter nor
by spirit; it has far oftener happened that, however much
the spirit may be above the letter, yet the letter is far beyond the
spirit in which we have often been accustomed to deal with it.
Each age of the Church has, as it were, turned over a new leaf
in the Bible, and found a response to its own wants. We have
a leaf still to turn, a leaf not the less new because it is so old,
not the less full of consequences because it is so simple.
Of all the advantages which Ecclesiastical History can yield,
this stimulus to a study of the Scriptures is the most important.
That study, except to a limited extent, does not fall within our
sphere ; the province of History, as such, will be sufficient to
employ us ; and it will indeed be an ample reward, if I can be
enabled, in any way, to give a new charm or a firmer basis to
this great subject. But it would be a reward and an object far
higher, if I could, in however slight a measure, make it point
to the grandeur and the truth of that which is beyond itself ;
if the study of the history of the Church should, by way of
contrast, or illustration, or comparison, rouse any one to a
deeper faith in the power and the design of the Bible, a
Ecclesiastical History 51
stronger belief in what it has already done, a higher hope and
clearer understanding of what its words may yet effect for us, l
in the chapters of living history in which we or the coming
generations may bear a part.
I ventured to commence this Introductory Course with the
description of the treasures which were shown to the pilgrim
in the palace by the highway-side ; I will close it with the
prospect which he beheld thence on the far distant horizon,
described in words too sacred, in part, perhaps, for us to use,
but not too sacred for the truth and the hope which I have
humbly, but in all seriousness, endeavoured to set before you
as the conclusion of the whole matter :
" Then I saw in my dream, that on the morrow he got up to
go forwards, but they desired him to stay till the next day also :
and then, said they, we will, ... if the day be clear, . . .
show you the Delectable Mountains : which, said they, would
further add to his comfort, . . . because they were nearer to the
desired haven than where at present he was. ... So he
consented and staid. When the morning was up, they had him
to the top of the house, and bid him look south. So he did,
and behold, ... at a great distance, ... he saw a most
pleasant mountainous country, beautified with woods, vine-
yards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also, with springs and fountains,
very delectable to behold. Then he asked the name of the
country. They said it was ' Immanuers Land ;'...' and it is
as common/ said they, ' as this hill is to and for all the pilgrims.
And when thou comest there, . . . from thence thou mayest
see to the gate of the Celestial City, ... as the shepherds
that live there will make appear/ "
1 For a defence of the study of the Bible, on similar grounds, see the
powerful and truly Christian arguments in the Essays of Dr. Temple and
Professor Jowett in " Essays and Reviews" (pp. 44-48, 404-418).
WORKS FOR REFERENCE, ON THE HISTORY
OF THE EASTERN CHURCH
THE following are the chief works which may be consulted with advantage
on the general condition of the Eastern Church :
1. Orient Christianas. By Michael le Quien. (French Dominican.)
1661 1732. An account of the Eastern dioceses, their extent, and
the occupants of their sees from their foundation to 1 732. 3 vols. folio.
2. Bibliotheca Orientalis. By Joseph Simon Assemanni. (Maronite
Archbishop, Librarian of the Vatican.) 1687 1768. An account
of the writers and manuscripts of Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and
^Ethiopia.
3. Liturgiarum Orientalium Collectio. By Eusebius Renaudot. (French
Jesuit.) 1646 1720. 2 vols. 4to.
4. Nomocanon. (Collection of the Ecclesiastical Laws of the Greek
Church, by Photius.) Edited at Paris, 1615.
5. Euchologium (sive Rittiale Gracum). Jacob Goar. 1647.
6. Codex Liturgicus Ecclesia Orientalis. H. A. Daniel. Leipsic, 1853.
7. Libri Symbolici Ecclesics Orientalis. (Collection of modern Con-
fessions of the Eastern Church.) Kimmel, at Jena, 1843.
8. Lives of the Eastern Saints are contained in the Menologium Gracum,
or in the Latin translations of Simeon Metaphrastes, in the Vita
Sanctorum of Laurence Surius. 1587.
9. Account of the eminent Writers of the Greek Church in Fabricius,
Bibliotheca Gnzca, vols. vii.-xii.
10. DC Graccc Ecdesice hodierno Statu. By Thomas Smith. 1698.
11. State of the Greek Church. By J. Covell, D.D. 1722.
12. Rites and Ceremonies of the Greek Church. By John King, Chaplain
at St. Petersburg. 1787.
13. History of the Holy Eastern Church. By John Mason Neale, M.A.,
Warden of Sackville College. Of this laborious and learned work
two portions only yet have appeared :
1. The Patriarchate of Alexandria. (See infra.)
2. The General Introduction. 2 vols. 8vo. 1850.
To this, rather than to more recondite sources, I have usually
referred the reader for the constitution and customs of the Oriental
Church. I may also mention an excellent essay on The Eastern
Church, which appeared as a review of Mr. Neale's work, in the
Edinb. Rev. vol. cvii. p. 322.
For the general sentiment of the Eastern Churches a few works out of
many are selected :
I. Dissertations on the Orthodox, or Eastern Communion. By William
Palmer, M.A., late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and
Deacon. 1853.
52
Works for Reference 53
2. Question Rcligieuse de r Orient et de f Occident. Moscow, 1856.
Lettres & un Ami sur f Office Dimn. St. Petersburg, 1850. By
Andrew Nicolaivitch Mouravieff.
3. Quelques Mots par un Chretien Orthodoxe. Paris, 1853 ; Leipsic,
1855, 1858. (See Lecture XII.)
4. Introduction to Orthodox Theology. By Macarius, Rector of the
Ecclesiastical Academy at St. Petersburg. Translated into French.
1857-
On more special subjects :
I. CHALDEANS AND NESTORIA.NS.
1. Bibliotheca Oricntalis, vol. iv. (Assemanni.)
2. The Nestorians and their Rituals. By the Rev. G. P. Badger.
1852.
II. ARMENIA.
I. Hist. d'Armlnic et tfEthiopie et des Indes. By Mathurin de La
Croze. (French merchant and scholar.) 1661 1739.
. 2. Haxthausen's Trans- Caucasia. Translated into English. 1854.
3. Histoire, Dogmes, Traditions, et Liturgie de PEglise Armtniane.
By E. Dulaurier. Paris, 1859.
III. SYRIA.
1. Bibliotheca Orient, vol. ii. (Assemanni.)
2. The Syrian Churches. By J. W. Etheridge. 1846.
IV. EGYPT.
1. Annales Patriarcharum Alexandrinorum. By Eutychius. (See
p. 98.)
2. Renaudot's Historia Patriarcharum Jacobitarum. 1713.
3. Lane's Modern Egyptians. (Supplement.) 1833.
4. Sharpe's Egypt. (From the earliest times to the Arab conquest.
1846.
5. Neale's Patriarchate of Alexandria. 2 vols. 8vo. 1847.
V. ABYSSINIA.
1. La Croze (ut supra).
2. Hist. ALthiopice. By Job Ludolf. (German lawyer.) 1624 1714.
3. Harris's Highlands of Ethiopia. 1844.
VI. GEORGIA.
1. Mosheim. Instit. Hist. Eccles. p. 632.
2. Chardin's Travels. Vol. i. pp. 171-174.
3. A Russian History of Georgia (by M. Jossilian) is highly spoken of.
VII. CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE GREEK CHURCH.
1 . The Byzantine Historians. Edited by Niebuhr.
2. Dufresne's Glossarium Med. et Injim. Grcscitatis.
3. History of the Byzantine Empire. By G. Finlay. 1853.
4. History of Greece, from 1453 to 1843. By G. Finlay. 1861.
5. De Greeds Illustribus (the Greek scholars of the fifteenth century).
By Humphrey Hody, D.D. 1742.
54 Works for Reference
VIII. RUSSIA.
See Prefaces to Lectures IX. X. XI. XII.
For a summary history of the Eastern Church, see
Gibbon, cc. 17, 20, 21, 23, 26-28, 32, 40, 47-49, 51, 54, 55, 60,
61, 66-68.
Gieseler's Ecclesiastical History (under the chapters, on "the Oriental
Churches").
LECTURES
ON
THE EASTERN CHURCH
LECTURE I
THE EASTERN CHURCH
THE Eastern Church occupies a vast field of Ecclesiastical
History. But it is a field rather of space than of time. It is
marked out rather by tracts of land and races of men than
by successive epochs in the progress of events, of ideas, or
of characters. Hence has arisen the frequent remark that,
properly speaking, the Eastern Church has no history. The
nations which it embraces have been, for the most part, so
stationary, and their life so monotonous, that they furnish few
subjects of continuous narration. The influence which it has
exercised on the onward course of religious opinion has been
so slight, that by tacit consent it has almost dropped out of the
notice of ecclesiastical historians. The languages in which its
records and its literature are composed are such as to repel even
the learned classes of the West ; even the Greek dialect of the
East after the sixth century becomes almost intolerable to the
eye and the ear of the classical student. Its system has
produced hardly any permanent works of practical Christian
benevolence. With very few exceptions, its celebrated names
are invested with no stirring associations. It seems to open
a field of interest to travellers and antiquarians, not to
philosophers or historians.
Is there anything in such a subject to repay the labour or
even the attention of a theological student? Had we not
better pass on at once to more fertile and more genial regions ?
Can any Englishman, can any Protestant, nay, can any
European, be fairly asked to look backwards on a field which
the course of civilisation seems to have left far behind ?
All this and much more may be said. Yet, on these very
grounds, I feel that the Professor of Ecclesiastical History is
bound, if possible, once for all, to cast that one backward
55
56 The Divisions of
glance, before he moves onward. Once plunged in the tur-
moil of the West, he will have no leisure to turn to the repose
of the East. And further, although few may enter into the
details of its history or constitution, there are some general
points of view from which the Eastern Church may be
profitably considered. Out of the blank which the larger part
of its annals presents, emerge some salient scenes and epochs
which beyond question touch the universal destinies of
mankind. There are some peculiar reasons why the study
even of the near West may always gain by the study of the
distant East.
This general view of the Oriental Church these leading
divisions in its history these reasons for devoting a short
space to its study it will be my endeavour to set forth in the
present Lecture.
I. I have said that the field of Eastern Christendom is a
comparatively untrodden field. It is out of sight, and there-
fore out of mind. But there is a wise German proverb which
tells us that it is good, from time to time, to be reminded
that "Behind the mountains there are people to be found."
" Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute." This, true of all large
bodies of the human family from whom we are separated by
natural or intellectual divisions, is eminently true of the whole
branch of the Christian family that lies in the far East. Behind
the mountains of our knowledge, of our civilisation, of our
activity behind the mountains, let us also say, of our
ignorance, of our prejudice, of our contempt, is to be found
nearly a third part of Christendom one hundred millions of
souls professing the Christian faith. Even if we enter no
further into their history, it is important to remember that they
are there. No theory of the Christian Church can be complete
which does not take some account of their existence. The
proper distances, the lights and shades of the foreground which
we ourselves occupy, of the prospect which we ourselves over-
look, cannot be rightly represented without bearing in mind
the enormous, dark, perhaps unintelligible, masses which form
the background that closes the retrospect of our view.
But the Oriental Church has claims to be considered over
and above its magnitude and its obscurity. By whatever name
we call it "Eastern," "Greek," or "Orthodox" it carries us
back, more than any other existing Christian institution, to the
earliest scenes and times of the Christian religion. Even
though the annals of the Oriental Patriarchates are, for the
the Eastern Church 57
most part, as regards the personal history of their occupants,
a series of unmeaning names, the recollections awakened by
the seats of their power are of the most august kind. Jerusalem,
Antioch, Alexandria, are centres of local interest which none
can see or study without emotion. And the Churches which
have sprung up in those regions retain the ancient customs of
the East, and of the primitive age of Christianity, long after
they have died out everywhere else. Look for a moment
at the countries included within the range of the Oriental
Churches. What they lose in historical they gain in geo-
graphical grandeur. Their barbarism and their degradation
have bound them to the local peculiarities from which the
more progressive Church of the West has shaken itself free.
It is a Church, in fact, not of cities and villages, but of
mountains, and rivers, and caves, and dens of the earth. The
eye passes from height to height, and rests on the successive
sanctuaries in which the religion of the East has intrenched
itself, as within huge natural fortresses, against its oppressors
Athos in Turkey, Sinai in Arabia, Mar Saba in Palestine,
Ararat in Armenia, the Cedars of Lebanon, the catacombs of
KierT, the cavern of Megaspelion, the cliffs of Meteora. Or we
see it advancing up and down the streams, or clinging to the
banks of the mighty rivers which form the highways and
arteries of the wide plains of the East. The Nile still holds
its sacred place in the liturgies of Egypt. The Jordan, from
Constantine downwards, has been the goal of every Eastern
pilgrim. Up the broad stream of the Dnieper sail the first
apostles of Russia. Along the Volga and the Don cluster the
mysterious settlements of Russian nonconformity.
In this natural framework with that strong identity of
religion and race so familiar to the East, so difficult to be
understood in the West may be traced three main groups of
Churches, which we will proceed to distinguish.
i. The first group contains those isolated fragments of an
earlier Christendom which emerge here and there from the
midst of Mahometanism and heathenism in Africa and Further
Asia. In the strict language of ancient theology they must
(with one exception) be called heretical sects. But they are
in fact the National Churches of their respective countries
protesting against the supposed innovations 1 of the see of
1 It must be remarked that a confusion runs through all these Churches
from a tripartite division, growing out of their relations with the Churches
from which they have parted, or which have parted from them : i. The
58 The Divisions of
Constantinople, and holding with a desperate fidelity to forms
and doctrines of earlier date. Easternmost of all the Eastern
Churches, easternmost in thought and custom always, and
usually easternmost in situation also, they supply, in the wild
and romantic interest of their position and of their habits, their
almost total want of theological literature or historical events.
The characteristic fable of Prester John the invisible Apostle
of Asia the imperial priestly potentate in the remote East, or
the remote South, 1 fills up in their traditions the vacant space
which in Europe was occupied by the Pope of Rome, and the
Emperor of Constantinople.
(a) The " Chaldean Christians," 2 called by their opponents
"Nestorians," are the most remote of these old separatists.
Only the two first councils, those of Nicaea and Constanti-
nople, have weight with them. The third of Ephesus
already presents the stumblingblock of the decree which
condemned Nestorius. Living in the secluded fastnesses of
Kurdistan, they represent the persecuted remnant of the
ancient Church of Central Asia. They trace their descent
to the eafliest of all Christian missions the mission of
Thaddseus to Abgarus. Their sacred city of Edessa is
identical with the cradle of all ecclesiastical history the
traditional birthplace of Abraham. In their present seclu-
sion they have been confounded, perhaps 3 have confounded
themselves, with the lost tribes of Israel. In their earlier
days they sent forth missions on a scale exceeding those of
any Western Church except the see of Rome in the sixth and
sixteenth centuries, and for the time redeeming the Eastern
Church from the usual reproach of its negligence in propa-
National or so-called heretical Church of each country. 2. The Orthodox
branch of each Church, in communion with the see of Constantinople,
called in the Eastern languages "the Church of Rome" (see p. 66).
3. The "United/ 3 or "Catholic" branch, consisting of converts to the
Roman Catholic Church. As a usual rule, most writers of the Greek or
Orthodox Church, as well as of our own, in speaking of these Churches,
mean only the second of these two divisions ; most writers of the Roman
Catholic Church only the third. For the sake of perspicuity, I confine
myself in each case to the first or national division in each of the groups of
which I speak. A masterly sketch of these heretical communions, with
the main authorities on each, is found in Gibbon, c. xlvii. One exception
to this classification will be noticed further on. The Georgian Church is
both National and Orthodox.
1 See Neale's Introduction, i. 114.
2 See Neale, i. 145 ; Layard's Nineveh, i. 240.
8 Asahel Grant's Nestorians, 109.
the Eastern Church 59
gating the Gospel. Their chief assumed the splendid title of
"Patriarch of Babylon," and their missionaries traversed the
whole of Asia, as far eastward as China, as far southward as
Ceylon. One colony alone remains of this ancient dominion,
in extent even greater than the Papacy. The Christians of
S. Thomas, as they are called, are still clustered round the
tomb of S. Thomas, whether the Apostle, or the Nestorian
merchant of the same name who restored if he did not found
the settlement. In the ninth century they attracted the notice
of Alfred, and, in the sixteenth century, of the Portuguese, and
it was in reaction from the missionaries of Portugal that they
finally exchanged their Nestorianism for the Monophysitism of
Egypt and Syria. 1
(b) The Armenians 2 are by far the most powerful, and
the most widely diffused, in the group of purely Oriental
Churches of which we are now speaking, and as such exer-
cise a general influence over all of them. Their home is the
mountain tract that encircles Ararat. 3 But, though distinct
from all surrounding nations, they yet are scattered far and
wide through the whole Levant, extending their episcopate,
and carrying on at the same time the chief trade of Asia.
A race, a church, of merchant princes, they are in quietness,
in wealth, in steadiness, the " Quakers " of the East, the
"Jews," if one may so call them, of the Oriental Church.
They were converted by Gregory the Illuminator in the
fourth century, whose dead hand is still used for continuing
the succession of the patriarchs. The seat of the patriarchate
is Etchmiazin, their sacred city. 4 Their canonical scriptures
include two books in the Old and two in the New Testament
acknowledged by no other Church ; the history of Joseph and
Asenath, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Epistle
of the Corinthians to S. Paul, and the third Epistle of S. Paul
to the Corinthians. 5 Of the extreme Oriental Churches, they
1 See Neale, i. 145 ; Buchanan's Christian Researches, 76 ; Swanston's
Memoirs in Journal of Asiatic Researches, i. 129, ii. 235, iv. 235, 248.
2 Neale, i. 65, 104. "The Armenian nation is widespread and
numerous as the waves of the sea. It is said to number fifteen millions
of souls. 'This may be an exaggeration ; but the existence of more than
eight millions we assert with confidence." Haxihauserts Transcaucasia,
298, 325-
3 For the appearance and traditions of Ararat, see Haxthausen's Trans-
caucasia, 190, 323.
4 Haxthausen, 283, 289, 304.
6 Curzon's Armenia, 225.
60 The Divisions of
furnish, by their wide dispersion, the closest links with the
West. The boundary of Russia runs across Mount Ararat.
The Protestant and the Papal missionaries have won from
them the most numerous converts. They call themselves
orthodox. They are divided from the Constantinopolitan
Church by an almost imperceptible difference, arising, it is
said, out of the accidental absence of the Armenian bishops
from the Council of Chalcedon, whose decrees were therefore
never understood, and therefore never received.
(c) The Church of Syria is the oldest of all the Gentile
Churches. 1 In its capital, Antioch, the name of " Christians "
first arose : in the age of persecution it produced Ignatius,
and, in the age of the Empire, John Chrysostom and John
of Damascus. In the claim of Antioch to be founded by
S. Peter, the Eastern Church 2 has often regarded itself as
possessing whatever privileges can be claimed by the see of
Rome on the ground of descent from the first Apostle. The
city itself became "the city of God." To the chief pastor
of Antioch alone in the world by right belongs the title of
"Patriarch." 3 The purely national Church of Syria is re-
presented by two very different communions. The first is
the Jacobite 4 or Monophysite Church, of which the patriarch
resides at Diarbekir. It has one peculiar custom, the trans-
mission of the same name from prelate to prelate. The
patriarch, doubtless after the first illustrious Bishop of
Antioch, is always called Ignatius. The other communion
of Syria is, in like manner, the representative both of a sect
and a nation. The Maronites, 5 so called from their founder
Maro in the fifth century, comprise at once the only relics
of the old Monothelite heretics, and the greater part of the
Christian population of Mount Lebanon. Their convents
overhang the Kadisha, the "Holy River" of the Lebanon,
1 The Church of Palestine can hardly be reckoned among the Churches
of the East which I am here considering. It is a mere colony of the
Greek Church, and its Patriarch, with the Greek Patriarchs of Antioch
and Alexandria, resides at Constantinople. Neale, i. 159.
2 Travels of Macarius, 222, 224. (For this work see Lecture XI.)
3 Neale, i. 126.
4 Ibid. 152, 153. In the doubtful derivation of their name from James
the Apostle, or James the heresiarch of the sixth century, there is the same
ambiguity as in the Christians of S. Thomas.
5 Ibid. 153. An interesting account of the Maronites, highly illustrative
of their connection with the French, as representatives of the Latin Church,
is given in the Journal of the Comte de Paris. (Damas et le Liban,
PP- 75-78.)
the Eastern Church 61
which derives its name probably from this monastic conse-
cration. The Cedars are under their especial charge. But
their main peculiarity is this, that, alone of all the Eastern
Churches, they have retained the close communion with the
Latin Church which they adopted in the twelfth century
through the Crusaders. Their allegiance is given to the see
of Rome, and their learning has borne fruit in the West,
through the labours of the two Assemans. They have lately
acquired a more tragical claim on our interest through the
atrocities perpetrated on their villages by their ancient
hereditary enemies the Druses, provoked, it may be, but
certainly not excused, by Maronite aggression, or Latin
intrigues.
(d) In the times of the early councils the Churches of
Syria and Egypt were usually opposed : now they are
united under the common theological name of Monophysite.
Both alike take their stand, not on the four, but on the three
first Councils, and reject the decrees of Chalcedon, and
protest against the heterodoxy, not only of the whole West,
but of the whole East besides themselves. But the Church of
Egypt is much more than the relic of an ancient sect. It is
the most remarkable monument of Christian antiquity. It
is the only living representative of the most venerable nation of
all antiquity. Within its narrow limits have now shrunk the
learning and the lineage of ancient Egypt. The language of
the Coptic services, understood neither by people nor priests,
is the language, although debased, of the Pharaohs. The
Copts are still, even in their degraded state, the most civilised
of the natives : the intelligence of Egypt still lingers in the
Coptic scribes, who are, on this account, used as clerks in the
offices of their conquerors, or as registrars of the water-marks
of the Nile.
They also represent the proud Church of old Alexandria.
Alexandria, though a Grecian city, still was deeply coloured by
its Egyptian atmosphere. Its old Coptic name of " Rhacotis "
still lingers in the Coptic liturgies and versions of Scripture.
The fanaticism of its populace was not Greek but Egyptian.
And in turn the peculiarities of the Alexandrian Church have
become the national war-cries of Egypt. The " Monophysite "
heresy of the Copts is an exaggeration of the orthodoxy of
Athanasius and Cyril. For this they denied the "human
nature of Christ ; " for this they broke off from the Byzantine
empire, and ultimately surrendered to the Saracens. The
62 The Divisions of
Patriarch of Alexandria now resides at Cairo. 1 There is still,
as in the first ages, a wide distinction between the bishops and
their head. He alone has the power of ordination : they, if
they ordain at all, act only as his vicars. The Coptic Church
alone confers ordination, not by imposition of hands, but by
the act of breathing. Alone also it has succeeded in preventing
the translation of bishops, 2 and preserves, in the most rigid
form, the nolo episcopari of the patriarch. 3
In the universal kiss interchanged throughout the whole of
a Coptic congregation; in the prominent part taken by the
children, who act as deacons ; in the union of social intercourse
with worship ; in the turbaned heads and unshod feet of the
worshippers, the Coptic service breathes an atmosphere of
Oriental and of primitive times found in none of the more
northern Churches even of the East.
But there is a daughter of the Coptic Church, yet farther
south, which is the extremest type of what may be called
Oriental ultramontanism. The Church of Abyssinia, founded
in the fourth century by the Church of Alexandria, furnishes
the one example of a nation savage yet Christian ; showing us,
on the one hand, the force of the Christian faith in main-
taining its superiority at all against such immense disadvantages,
and, on the other hand, the utmost amount of superstition
with which a Christian Church can be overlaid without perish-
ing altogether. One lengthened communication it has hitherto
received from the West the mission of the Jesuits. With this
exception it has been left almost entirely to itself. Whatever
there is of Jewish or of old Egyptian ritual preserved in the
Coptic Church, is carried to excess in the Abyssinian. The
likeness of the sacred ark, 4 called the ark of Zion, is the centre
of Abyssinian devotion. To it gifts and prayers are offered.
On it the sanctity of the whole Church depends. Circumcision
is not only practised, as in the Coptic Church, but is regarded
as of equal necessity with baptism. There alone the Jewish
Sabbath is still observed as well as the Christian Sunday: 6
1 The ancient titles of Pope and CEcumenical Judge seem now to belong,
not to the Coptic, but to the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria. For the title
* ' Pope " see Lecture III. The title of (Ecumenical Judge is derived ( i ) from
the right of the Alexandrian Church to fix the period of Easter (see Lecture
V. ), or (2) from Cyril's presidency in the Council of Ephesus.
2 Neale's Introd. i. 1 12, 119 ; Church of Alexandria, ii. 99-102.
3 See Lecture VII.
4 Harris's Ethiopia, iii. 132, 135, 137, 150, 156, 164.
* See Gobat's Abyssinia.
the Eastern Church 63
they (with the exception of a small sect 1 of the Seventh-day "
Baptists) are the only true "Sabbatarians" of Christendom.
The " sinew that shrank," no less than the flesh of swine, hare,
and aquatic fowl, is still forbidden to be eaten. Dancing still
forms part of their ritual, as it did in the Jewish temple. The
wild shriek which goes up at Abyssinian funerals is the exact
counterpart of that which Herodotus heard in ancient Egypt.
The polygamy of the Jewish Church lingers here after having
been banished from the rest of the Christian world.
Whatever, it may be added, of extravagant ritualism, of
excessive dogmatism, of the fatal division between religion and
morality, disfigures to so large an extent the rest of Oriental
Christianity, is seen in its most striking form in the usages of
Abyssinia. The endless controversies respecting the natures
of Christ, which have expired elsewhere, still rage in that
barbarous country. 2 The belief in the efficacy of external rites
to wash away sins is carried there to a pitch without a parallel.
The greatest festival of all the year is the vast lustration, almost
amounting to an annual baptism of the whole nation, 3 on the
feast of Epiphany. One saint, elsewhere unrecognised, appears
in the Ethiopian calendar ; Pilate is canonised, because he
washed his hands and said, " I am innocent of the blood of
this just man." 4 The moral creed of Abyssinia is said to be
thus summed up :
" That the Alexandrian faith is the only true belief.
" That faith, together with baptism, is sufficient for justification ;
but that God demands alms and fasting as amends for sin com-
mitted prior to the performance of the baptismal rite.
" That unchristened children are not saved.
" That the baptism of water is the true regeneration.
" That invocation ought to be made to the saints, because sinning
mortals are unworthy 'to appear in the presence of God, and
because, if the saints be well loved, they will listen to all prayer.
" That every sin is forgiven from the moment that the kiss of the
pilgrim is imprinted on the stones of Jerusalem ; and that kissing
the handof a priest purifies the body in like manner.
" That sins must be confessed to the priest, saints invoked, and
full faith reposed in charms and amulets, more especially if written
in an unkfiown tongue.
" That prayers for the dead are necessary, and absolution indis-
pensable ; but that the souls of the departed do not immediately
1 From this sect, I am told, a deputation went in 1853 to preach their
peculiar doctrine to the Taepings in China.
2 Harris, iii. 190. 3 Ibid. iii. 202. 4 Neale, i. 806.
6 4
The Divisions of
enter upon a state of happiness, the period being in exact accord-
ance with the alms and prayers that are expended upon earth."
This may have been coloured in passing through the mind
of the European traveller. But his consciousness of the
wretched state of the Church which he describes, gives more
weight to the words of hope with which he concludes 1 his
account :
" Abyssinia, as she now is, presents the most singular compound
of vanity, meekness, and ferocity ; of devotion, superstition, and
ignorance. But, compared with other nations of Africa, she un-
questionably holds a high station. She is superior in arts and in
agriculture, in laws, religion, and social condition, to all the
benighted children of the sun. The small portion of good which
does exist may justly be ascribed to the remains of the wreck of
Christianity, which, although stranded on a rocky shore, and
buffeted by the storms of ages, is not yet wholly overwhelmed ; and
from the present degradation of a people avowing its tenets, may be
inferred the lesson of the total inefficacy of its forms and profession,
if unsupported by enough of mental culture to enable its spirit and
its truth to take root in the heart, and bear fruits in the character of
the barbarian. There is, perhaps, no portion of the whole continent
to which European civilisation might be applied with better ultimate
results ; and although now dwindled into an ordinary kingdom,
Hdbesh, under proper government and proper influence, might
promote the amelioration of all the surrounding people, whilst she
resumed her original position as the first of African monarchies."
(e) There is one of these remote Eastern Churches, which
still maintains its original connection with the Orthodoxy of
Constantinople the Church and kingdom, called by the
ancients "Iberia," by the moderns "Gruzia" or "Georgia." 2
The conversion of their king, through the example or the
miracles of Nina, a Christian captive, was nearly simultaneous
with that of Constantine. Originally dependent on Antioch,
its allegiance was transferred to Constantinople. The nation
bore a considerable part in the Crusades, and memorials of its
princes long remained in the convents both of Palestine and
of Athos. At the beginning of this century Georgia was
annexed to Russia. 3
2. We are thus brought to the next group in Eastern
Christendom, the Orthodox Imperial Church, which some-
times gives its name to the whole. It is " the Great Church "
1 Harris, iii. 186. 2 See Neale, i. 61-65.
3 Ibid. i. 26-31.
the Eastern Church 65
(as it is technically called) from which those which we have
hitherto described have broken off, and those which we shall
proceed to describe have been derived.
The "Greek Church," properly so called, includes the
widespread race which speaks the Greek language, from its
southernmost outpost in the desert of Mount Sinai, through
all the islands and coasts of the Levant and the Archipelago ;
having its centre in Greece and in Constantinople. It re-
presents to us, in however corrupt and degraded a form, the
old, glorious, world-inspiring people of Athens, Thebes, and
Sparta. It is the means by which that people has been
kept alive through four centuries of servitude. It was no
Philhellenic enthusiast, but the grey-headed Germanus,
Archbishop of Patras, who raised the standard of Greek
independence : the first champion of that cause of Grecian
liberty, in behalf of which in our own country the past
generation was so zealous, and the present generation is
so indifferent. The sanctuary of the Greek race, which
is in a great degree the sanctuary and refuge of the whole
Eastern Church, is Athos "the Holy Mountain." 1 The
old Greek mythology which made the peak of Samothrace
the seat of the Pelasgic worship, and the many-headed
range of Olympus the seat of the Hellenic gods, left the
beautiful peninsula and noble pyramid of Athos to receive
the twenty monasteries which shelter the vast communities
of Greek, Ionian, Bulgarian, Servian, and Russian monks.
The Greek Church reminds us of the time when the tongue,
not of Rome, but of Greece, was the sacred language of
Christendom. It was a striking remark of the Emperor
Napoleon, that the introduction of Christianity itself was, in
a certain sense, the triumph of Greece over Rome; the last
and most signal instance of the maxim of Horace, "Grsecia
capta ferum victorem cepit." 2 The early Roman Church
was but a colony of Greek Christians or Grecised Jews.
The earliest Fathers of the Western Church, Clemens,
Irenaeus, Hermas, Hippolytus, wrote in Greek. The early
Popes were not Italians but Greeks. The name of " Pope "
is not Latin but Greek the common and now despised
name of every pastor in the Eastern Church. It is true that
1 See Urquhart's Spirit of the East, 157, 169, and an excellent descrip-
tion in the Christian Remembrancer, xxi. 288.
2 Bertrand's Memoirs of Napoleon, i. 206. Compare Dean Milman's
Latin Christianity, i. 27.
D
66 The Divisions of
this Grecian colour was in part an accidental consequence of
the wide diffusion of the Greek language by Alexander's
conquests through the East, and was thus a sign not so
much of the Hellenic, as of the Hebrew and Oriental char-
acter of the early Christian communities. But the advantage
thus given to the Byzantine Church has never been lost or
forgotten. It is a perpetual witness that she is the mother
and Rome the daughter. It is her privilege to claim a
direct continuity of speech with the earliest times, to boast
of reading the whole code of Scripture, old as well as new,
in the language in which it was read and spoken by the
Apostles. The humblest peasant who reads his Septuagint
or Greek Testament in his own mother tongue, on the
hills of Bceotia, may proudly feel that he has an access
to the original oracles of divine truth, which Pope and
Cardinal reach by a barbarous and imperfect translation;
that he has a key of knowledge, which in the West is only
to be found in the hands of the learned classes.
The Greek Church is thus the only living representative
of the Hellenic race, and speaks in the only living voice
which has come down to us from tfce Apostolic age. But
its main characteristic is its lineal descent from the first
Christian Empire. "Romaic," not '"Hellenic," is the name
by which, from its long connection with the Roman Empire
of Byzantium, the language of Greece is now known.
"Roman" ('Pco/mtos), not "Greek," is the name by which
(till quite recently) a Greek would have distinguished him-
self from the Mussulman population around him. "The
Church of Rome," in the language of the far East, is not,
as with us, the Latin Church, but the community which
adheres to the orthodox faith of the " New Rome " of Con-
stantinople. Not Athens, not Alexandria, not even Jeru-
salem, but Constantinople, is the sacred city to which the
eyes of the Greek race and of the Eastern Church are turned
at this day. We can hardly doubt that it was the point to
which the eyes of the whole Christian world were turned,
when at the opening of the fourth century it rose as the
first Christian city, at the command of the first Christian
Emperor, on a site which, by its unequalled advantages, was
naturally marked out as the capital of a new world, as the
inauguration of a new era. 1 The subsequent rise of the
1 See Lecture VI.
the Eastern Church 67
Papal city on the ruins of the old Pagan metropolis must
not blind us to the fact that there was a period in which the
Eastern and not the Western Rome was the true centre of
Christendom. The modern grandeur of S. Peter's must not
be permitted to obscure the effect which was produced on
the taste and the feelings of the sixth century by the
erection of S. Sophia. The learning of the Greek Church,
which even down to the eleventh century excelled that of
the Latin, in the fifteenth century directly contributed more
than any other single cause to the revival of letters and the
German Reformation. In Asia and in Constantinople it
has long sunk under the barbarism of its conquerors. But
in the little kingdom of independent Greece, the Greek
clergy is still, within narrow limits, an enlightened body. In
it, if in any portion of Eastern Christendom, lives the liberal,
democratic spirit of ancient Hellas. Athens, with all the
drawbacks of an ill-adjusted union between new and old ways
of thought, is now the centre of education and improvement
to the Greek clergy throughout the Levant.
3. The third group of the Eastern Church consists of
those barbarian tribes of the North, whose conversion by the
Byzantine Church corresponds to the converson of the
Teutonic tribes by the Latin Church.
(a) The first division embraces the tribes on the banks^of
the Lower Danube; the Sclavonic Bulgaria and Servia on
the South ; the Latin or Romanic Wallachia and Moldavia
on the north. 1 Bulgaria, which was the first to receive
Christianity from the preaching of Cyril and Methodius in
the ninth century, communicated it to the three 2 others.
Servia has since become independent of Constantinople,
under a metropolitan or patriarch of its own, and in the
reign of Stephen Dushan, in the twelfth century, presented
a miniature of an Eastern Christian Empire. The Church
of Wallachia and Moldavia is remarkable as being of Latin
origin, yet Greek in doctrine and ritual; a counterpoise to
the two Churches of Bohemia and Poland, which, being
Sclavonic by race, are Latin by religion. To these national
communities should be added the extensive colony of Greek
Christians who, under the name of "Raitzen," occupy large
1 Neale, i. 46, 47, 69.
2 The relations of the Bulgarian to the Byzantine Church are well stated,
though from a one-sided point of view, in a Greek pamphlet published at
Constantinople by Gregory, Chief Secretary of the Synod.
68 The Divisions of
districts in Hungary, and form the extreme westernmost
outposts of the Eastern Church. The ecclesiastical as well
as the political importance of these several religious bodies
has almost entirely turned on the position which they occupy
on the frontier land of the West and East. This is an im-
portance which will doubtless increase with each succeeding
generation. But in their past ecclesiastical history, the only
epochs fruitful of instruction will probably be found in the
more stirring moments of Servian history, 1 and in the con-
version 2 of Bulgaria.
(b) There remains the far wider field of the Church of Russia.
If Oriental Christendom is bound to the past by its Asiatic
and its Greek traditions, there can be no doubt that its bond
of union with the present and the future is through the greatest
of Sclavonic nations, whose dominion has now spread over the
whole East of Europe, over the whole North of Asia, over a
large tract of Western America. If Constantinople be the
local centre of the Eastern Church, its personal head is, and
has been for four, centuries, the great potentate who, under the
successive names of Grand-Prince, Czar, and Emperor, has
reigned at Moscow and St. Petersburg. Not merely by its
proximity of geographical situation, but by the singular gift of
imitation with which the Sclavonic race has been endowed,
is the Russian Church the present representative of the old
Imperial Church of Constantine. The Sclavonic alphabet is
Greek. The Russian names of emperor, saint, and peasant
are Greek. Sacred buildings, which in their actual sites in the
East have been altered by modern innovations, are preserved
for our study in the exact models made from them in earlier
days by Russian pilgrims. 3 And in like manner, customs and
feelings which have perished in Greece and Syria, may still be
traced in the churches and monasteries of the North. When
Napoleon called Alexander I., in bitter scorn, a Greek of the
Lower Empire, it was a representation of the Czar's position in
a fuller sense than Napoleon intended or would have admitted.
For good or for evil, as a check on its development or as a
spur to its ambition, the Church and Empire of Russia have
inherited the religion and the policy of the New Rome of the
Bosphorus far more fully than any western nation, even under
Charlemagne himself, inherited the spirit or the forms of the
Old Rome beside the Tiber. 4
1 See Ranke's Hist, of Servia. 2 See Lecture IX.
8 See Lecture XI. 4 See Lecture IX.
the Eastern Church 69
II. These are the geographical landmarks of the Eastern
Church. What are its historical landmarks ? From the dead
level of obscure names which these vast limits enclose, what
leading epochs or series of events can be selected of universal
and enduring importance?
1. The first great display of the forces of the Oriental
Church was in the period of the early Councils. The first
seven General Councils, with all their leading characters, were
as truly Eastern Councils, as truly the pride of the Eastern
Church, as those of Constance and Trent are of the Western.
Almost all were held within the neighbourhood, most under
the walls, of Byzantium. All were swayed by the language, by
the motives, by the feelings, of the Eastern world.
Yet these Oriental Councils were "general," were "CEcu-
menical," in a sense which fairly belonged to none besides.
No Western Council has so fully expressed the voice of
Christendom, no assembly, civil or ecclesiastical, can claim
to have issued laws which have been so long in force in so
large a portion of the civilised world, as those which emanated
from these ancient parliaments of the Byzantine Empire.
And if many of their decrees have now become virtually
obsolete, yet those of the first and most characteristic of the
seven are still cherished throughout the East, and through a
large portion of the West. If with Armenia and Egypt we
stumble at the decrees of Chalcedon, if with the Chaldsean
and Lutheran Churches we are startled by the language of
the fathers of Ephesus, if with the Latins we alter the creed
of Constantinople, yet Christendom, with but few exceptions,
receives the confession of the first Council of Nicaea as the
earliest, the most solemn, and the most universal expression
of Christian theology. In that assembly the Church and
Empire first met in peaceful conference : the confessors of
the Diocletian persecution came into contact with the first
prelates of an established church; the father of dogmatical
theology and the father of ecclesiastical history met for the
first time in the persons of Athanasius and Eusebius. The
General, Council of Nicaea may be considered both as the
most significant of all the seven, and also as the most striking
scene, the most enduring monument of the Oriental Church
at large. 1
2. It is characteristic of Eastern history, that we cannot
1 See Lectures II. III. IV. V.
70 The Epochs of
lay it out, as in the West, by regular chronological periods.
The second epoch of universal importance in Eastern Christen-
dom, is the birth and growth of Mahometanism. All great
religious movements, which run parallel, even though counter,
to Christianity, form a necessary part of ecclesiastical history.
But the religion of Mahomet is essentially interwoven with
the Eastern Church. Even without considering the directly
Christian influences to which the Arabian teacher was sub-
jected, no one can doubt that there are points which his
system, in common with that of the Eastern Church, owes
to its Oriental origin. In other points it is a rebound and
reaction against that Church, The history of the Greek and
Sclavonic races can only be understood by bearing in mind
their constant conflict with the Arabs, the Tartars, and the
Turks. 1
3. The conversion and establishment of the Russian Church,
and through the Russian Church of the Russian Empire, forms
the third and most fertile epoch of the history of Oriental
Christendom.
It is enough to indicate the successive stages in the growth
of the Empire, the rise and fall of the Patriarchate, the
tragical struggle of Alexis and Nicon, the singular develop-
ment of Russian dissent, the career and character of Peter
the Great, hardly less remarkable in its religious than in its
civil aspect. Every one of these events teems with dramatic,
some with European interest, and every one of them is bound
up with the history of the national Church, and therefore with
the history of Eastern Christianity. 2
III. These, then, are the principal divisions of the history,
properly so called. But before considering any single period
apart from the rest, it is important to observe the character-
istics which, more or less, are common to all the parts alike,
and which distinguish them all from the portion of Christen-
dom to which we ourselves belong, whether we give to it the
narrower name of the Latin, or the truer and more compre-
hensive title of the Western Church. In considering these
differences, it is not my intention to speak of the special points
which led, in the twelfth century, to the actual external separa-
tion between the Roman and Byzantine communions. The
true differences between the East and the West existed long
before their formal disruption, and would exist, in all proba-
1 See Lecture VII. 2 See Lectures IX. X. XL XII.
the Eastern Church 71
bility, long after any formal reunion. The disruption itself
was rather a consequence than a cause of their estrangement.
The theological pretexts, such as the doctrine of the Double
Procession, the usage of leavened l and unleavened bread, the
excommunications of Photius and Michael Cerularius, and
the failure of the last attempt at reconciliation in the Council
of Florence, were themselves aggravated by more general
grievances, 2 The jealousy of the two capitals of Rome and
Constantinople; the rival claims of the Eastern and Western
crusaders ; the outrage of the Fourth Crusade ; the antagonism
of Russia in earlier times to Poland, in later times to France,
have all contributed to the same result. But the internal
differences lie deeper than any of these external manifesta-
tions, whether theological or political.
i. The distinction which has been most frequently re-
marked is that of the speculative tendency of the Oriental,
and the practical tendency of the Western Church. This
distinction is deepseated in the contrast long ago described
by Aristotle between the savage energy and freedom of
Europe, and the intellectual repose and apathy of Asia. 3 It
naturally finds its point and expression in the theology of the
two Churches. Whilst the Western prides itself on the title of
the "Catholic," the Eastern claims the title of "Orthodox." 4
"The East," says Dean Milman, "enacted creeds, the West
discipline." The first decree of an Eastern Council was to
determine the relations of the Godhead. The first decree of
the Pope 5 of Rome was to interdict the marriage of the clergy.
All the first founders of theology were Easterns. Till the time
of Augustine, no eminent divine had arisen in the West ; till
1 See "Historia Concertationum de Pane Azymo et Fermentato," 1737,
by J. G. Hermann, pastor of Pegau in Saxony. Jenkins' Life of Cardinal
Julian, 302.
2 For the enumeration of dates and events in connection with these periods
of history, see the tabular statement at the end of this volume.
3 Arist. Pol. vii. 7.
4 The Eastern Church has a special celebration of "orthodoxy." On
"Orthodox Sunday," at the beginning of Lent, the anathemas against
heresy take the place of the curses on crimes and sins which mark the more
practical -services of our Ash- Wednesday. For example: "To Jacobus
Zanzalus the Armenian, Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria, to Severus the
Impious, to Paul and Pyrrhus of the same mind with Sergius the disciple
of Lycopetms Anathema, anathema, anathema." And on the other
hand, "For the orthodox Greek Emperors Everlasting remembrance,
everlasting remembrance, everlasting remembrance." Neale, ii. 874.
5 The Decretal of Siricius, A.D. 385. (Milman's Latin Christianity,
vol. i. 75.)
72 The Characteristics of
the time of Gregory the Great none had filled the Papal chair.
The doctrine of Athanasius was received, not originated, by
Rome. The great Italian Council of Ariminum lapsed into
Arianism by an oversight. The Latin language was inadequate
to express the minute shades of meaning for which the Greek
is admirably fitted. Of the two creeds peculiar to the Latin
Church, the earlier, that called " the Apostles'," is characterised
by its simplicity and its freedom from dogmatic assertions ; the
later, that called the Athanasian, as its name confesses, is an
endeavour to imitate the Greek theology, and by the evident
strain of its sentences reveals the ineffectual labour of the
Latin phrases, "persona" and " substantia," to represent the
correlative but hardly corresponding words by which the Greeks,
with a natural facility, expressed "the hypostatic union." And
still more, when we touch the period at which the divergence
between the two Empires threw the two Churches farther apart,
the tide of Grecian and Egyptian controversy hardly arrived
at the shores of Italy, now high and dry above their reach.
"Latin Christianity," says Dean Milman, "contemplated
with almost equal indifference, Nestorianism and all its prolific
race, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism. While
in this contest the two great patriarchates of the East, Con-
stantinople and Alexandria, brought to issue, or strove to bring
to issue, their rival claims to ascendency ; while council after
council promulgated, reversed, re-enacted their conflicting de-
crees ; while separate and hostile communities were formed in
every region of the East, and the fear of persecuted Nestorian-
ism, stronger than religious zeal, penetrated for refuge remote
countries, into which Christianity had not yet found its way :
in the West there was no Nestorian or Eutychian sect." 1
Probably no Latin Christian has ever felt himself agitated
even in the least degree by any one of the seventy opinions on
the union of the two natures which are said to perplex the
Church of Abyssinia. Probably the last and only question of
this kind on which the Latin Church has spontaneously
entered, is that of the Double Procession of the Spirit. The
very word "theology" (0eoXoyia) arose from the peculiar
questions agitated in the East. The Athanasian controversy
of Constantinople and Alexandria is, strictly speaking, /to-
logical ; unlike the Pelagian or the Lutheran controversies, it
relates not to man, but to God.
1 Latin Christianity, i. 137.
the Eastern Church 73
This fundamental contrast naturally widened into other
cognate differences. The Western theology is essentially
logical in form, and based on law. 1 The Eastern is rhetorical
in form and based on philosophy. The Latin divine succeeded
to the Roman advocate. The Oriental divine succeeded to
the Grecian sophist. Out of the logical and legal elements
in the West has grown up all that is most peculiar in
the scholastic theology of the middle ages, the Calvinistic
theology of the Reformation. To one or both of these causes
of difference may be reduced many of the divergences which
the theological student will trace in regard to dogmatic state-
ments, or to interpretations 2 of Scripture, between Tertullian
and Origen, between Prosper and Cassian, between Augus-
tine and Chrysostom, between Thomas Aquinas and John
Damascenus.
The abstract doctrines of the Godhead in the Alexandrian
creed took the place, in the minds of theological students,
which, in the schools of philosophy, had been occupied by
the abstract ideas of the Platonic system. The subtleties of
Roman law as applied to the relations of God and man, which
appear faintly in Augustine, more distinctly in Aquinas, more
decisively still in Calvin and Luther, and, though from a
somewhat larger point of view, in Grotius, are almost unknown
to the East. "Forensic justification," "merit," "demerit,"
" satisfaction," " imputed righteousness," " decrees," represent
ideas which in the Eastern theology have no predominant
influence, hardly any words to represent them. The few
exceptions that occur may be traced directly to accidental
gusts of Western influence. 3
Hence arises the apparent contradiction, that, whenever the
Eastern theologians enter on topics which touch not the
1 This is well put by Professor Maine (Ancient Law, 354-364. ) Com-
pare Hampden's Bampton Lectures, 25.
2 On this point I am anxious to acknowledge my obligations to the
learning of the Rev. F. C. Cook, now Preacher of Lincoln's Inn.
3 A curious exception occurs in the catechism of the Russian Church
drawn up iy the present Metropolitan of Moscow, where the beatitude
" Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness," is interpreted
of "imputed righteousness." (Doctrine of the Russian Church, p. 112,
translated by the Rev. W. Blackmore. ) But I am assured by the learned
translator that this is an unaccountable and almost solitary instance of this
mode of interpretation in the East. Another specimen of this exceptional
theology is perhaps to be found in the account of Peter's deathbed. See
Lecture XII.
D 2
74 The Characteristics of
abstract questions of the Divine essence, but the human
questions of grace and predestination, there is a more directly
moral and practical tone than often in corresponding treatises
of the Protestant West. Chrysostom's transcendent genius
and goodness would doubtless have lifted him above the
trammels of any local influence; but the admiration felt in
the East for his thoroughly practical homilies, which in the
West have often incurred the suspicion of Pelagianism, is
a proof of the general tendency of the Church which he so
powerfully represents.
A single instance illustrates the Eastern tendency to a high
theological view of the doctrine of the Trinity, combined with
an absence of any precision of statement in regard to mediation
or redemption. In the Western liturgies direct addresses to
Christ are exceptions. In the East they are the rule. In the
West, even in Unitarian liturgies, it is deemed almost essential
that every prayer should be closed "through Jesus Christ."
In the East, such a close is rarely, if ever, found. 1
2. The contrast between the speculative tendency of the
Eastern Church and the practical life of the Western, appears
not only in the theological, but in the ecclesiastical, and espe-
cially in the monastic, system of Oriental Christendom.
No doubt monasticism was embraced by the Roman Church,
even as early as the fifth century, with an energy which seemed
to reproduce in a Christian form the dying genius of stoical
philosophy. Still the East holds the chief place in the
monastic world. The words which describe the state are not
Latin but Greek or Syriac Hermit, monk, anchoret, monas-
tery, coenobite, ascetic, abbot, abbey. It was not in the
Apennines or on the Alps, but in the stony arms with which
the Libyan and Arabian deserts enclose the valley of the Nile,
that the first monasteries were founded. Anthony the Coptic
hermit, from his retreat by the Red Sea, is the spiritual father
of that vast community which has now overrun the world. His
disciple, Athanasius, was its first sponsor in the West. And
not only was monasticism born in the Eastern Church ; it has
also thriven there with an unrivalled intensity. Indeed, the
earliest source of monastic life is removed even further than
the Thebaid deserts, in the Manichean repugnance of the
distant East towards the material world, as it is exhibited
under its simplest form in the Indian Yogi or the Mussulman
1 Freeman, Principles of Divine Service, i. 373.
the Eastern Church 75
Fakir. It is this Oriental seclusion which, whether from
character, or climate, or contagion, has to the Christian world
been far more forcibly represented in the Oriental than in the
Latin Church. The solitary and contemplative devotion of
the Eastern monks, whether in Egypt or Greece, though broken
by the manual labour necessary for their subsistence, has been
very slightly modified either by literary or agricultural activity.
There have, indeed, been occasional examples of splendid
benevolence in Oriental monachism. The Egyptian monk,
Telemachus, by the sacrifice of himself, extinguished the
gladiatorial games at Rome. Russian hermits opposed the
securest bulwark against the savage despotism of Ivan. 1 But
these are isolated instances. As a general rule, there has
arisen in the East no society like the Benedictines, held in
honour wherever literature or civilisation has spread; no
charitable orders, like the Sisters of Mercy, which carry light
and peace into the darkest haunts of suffering humanity.
Active life is, on the strict Eastern theory, an abuse of the
system.
Nor is it only in the monastic life that the severity of
Eastern asceticism excels that of the West. Whilst the fasts
of the Latin Church are mostly confined to Lent, liable,
increasingly liable, to wide dispensations, exercised for the
most part by abstinence, not from all food, but only from
particular kinds of food, the fasts of the Eastern Church,
especially of its most remarkable branch, the Coptic, extend
through large periods of the year, are regarded as all but
indispensable and, for the time, repudiate all sustenance,
though with strange inconsistency they admit of drinking,
even to the grossest intoxication. And, finally, the wildest
individual excesses of a Bruno or a Dunstan seem poor beside
the authorised, national, we may almost say imperial, adora-
tion of the Pillar-saints of the East. Amidst all the contro-
versies of the fifth century, on one religious subject the
conflicting East maintained its unity, in the reverence of the
Hermit on the Pillar. The West has never had a Simeon
Stylites.
3. Another important difference between the two Churches
was one which, though in substance the same, may be
expressed in various forms. The Eastern Church was, like
the East, stationary and immutable; the Western, like the
1 See Lecture X. Compare Montalembert's Monks of the West, i.
38-133.
7 6
The Characteristics of
West, progressive and flexible. This distinction is the more
remarkable, because, at certain periods of their course, there
can be no doubt that the civilisation of the Eastern Church
was far higher than that of the Western. No one can read
the account of the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders
of the thirteenth century, without perceiving that it is the
occupation of a refined and civilised capital by a horde of
comparative barbarians. The arrival of the Greek scholars in
Europe in the fifteenth century was the signal for the most
progressive step that Western theology has ever made. And
in earlier ages, whilst it might still be thought that Rome, not
Constantinople, was the natural refuge of the arts of the
ancient classical world, the literature of the Church was almost
entirely confined to the Byzantine hemisphere. Whilst
Constantinople was ringing with the fame of preachers, of
whom Chrysostom was the chief, but not the only example,
the Roman bishops and clergy, till the time of Leo the Great,
never publicly addressed their flocks from the pulpit. But,
notwithstanding this occasional superiority, the Oriental
Church, as a whole, almost from the time that it assumed a
distinct existence, has given tokens of that singular immobility
which is in great part to be traced to its Eastern origin its
origin in those strange regions which still retain, not only
the climate and vegetation, but the manners, the dress, the
speech of the days of the Patriarchs and the Pharaohs. Its
peculiar corruptions have been such as are consequent not on
development but on stagnation ; its peculiar excellences have
been such as belong to the simplicity of barbarism, not to the
freedom of civilisation.
The straws of custom show which way the spirit of an
institution blows. The primitive posture of standing in prayer
still retains its ground in the East, whilst in the West it is only
preserved in the extreme Protestant communities by way of
antagonism to Rome. Organs and musical instruments are
as odious to a Greek or Russian, as to a Scottish Presbyterian.
Jewish ordinances still keep their hold on Abyssinia. Even
the schism 1 which convulsed the Russian Church nearly at the
same time that Latin Christendom was rent by the German
Reformation, was not a forward, but a retrograde movement a
protest, not against abuses, but against innovation. The
calendars of the Churches show the eagerness with which,
1 See Lectures XI. and XII.
the Eastern Church 77
whilst the one, at least till a recent period, placed herself at the
head of European civilisation, the other still studiously lags
behind it. The " new style," which the world owes to the
enlightened activity of Pope Gregory XIII., after having with
difficulty overcome the Protestant scruples of Germany, Den-
mark, and Switzerland, and last of all (with shame be it said)
of England and Sweden, has never been able to penetrate into
the wide dominions of the old Byzantine and the modern
Russian Empires, which still hold to the Greek Calendar,
eleven days behind the rest of the civilised world.
These contrasts might be indefinitely multiplied, sometimes
to the advantage of one Church, sometimes to the advantage
of the other. The case of the Sacraments and their accom-
paniments will suffice as final examples.
The Latin doctrine on this subject is by Protestants so
frequently regarded as the highest pitch of superstition by
Roman Catholics as the highest pitch of reverence of which
the subject is capable that it may be instructive to both to
see the contrast between the freedom and reasonableness of
the sacramental doctrine as held by Roman authorities, com-
pared with the stiff, the magical, the antiquarian character of
the same doctrine as represented in the East. We are ac-
customed to place the essence of superstition in a devotion to
the outward forms and elements as distinct from the inward
spirit which they represent, convey, or express. Let us, for a
moment, see which has in this respect most tenaciously clung
to the form, which to the spirit, .of the two great ordinances of
Christian worship.
There can be no question that the original form of baptism
the very meaning of the word was complete immersion in the
deep baptismal waters ; and that, for at least four centuries,
any other form was either unknown, or regarded, unless in
the case of dangerous illness, as an exceptional, almost a
monstrous case. To this form the Eastern Church still rigidly
adheres ; and the most illustrious and venerable portion of it,
that of the Byzantine Empire, absolutely repudiates and ignores
any other mode of administration as essentially invalid. The
Latin Church, on the other hand, doubtless in deference to the
requirements of a northern climate, to the change of manners,
to the- convenience of custom, has wholly altered the mode,
preferring, as it would fairly say, mercy to sacrifice ; and (with
the two exceptions of the cathedral of Milan, and the sect of the
Baptists) a few drops of water are now the Western substitute
78 The Characteristics of
for the threefold plunge into the rushing rivers or the wide
baptisteries of the East.
And when we descend from the administration itself of the
sacramental elements to their concomitant circumstances, still
the same contrast appears. In the first age of the Church it
was customary for the apostles to lay their hands on the heads
of the newly baptised converts, that they might receive the
"gifts of the Spirit." The "gifts" vanished, but the custom
of laying on of hands remained. It remained and was con-
tinued, and so in the Greek Church is still continued, at the
baptism of children as of adults. Confirmation is, with them,
simultaneous with the act of the baptismal immersion. But
the Latin Church, whilst it adopted or retained the practice
of admitting infants to baptism, soon set itself to remedy the
obvious defect arising from their unconscious age, by separat-
ing, and postponing, and giving a new life and meaning to
the rite of confirmation. The two ceremonies, which in the
Eastern Church are indissolubly confounded, are now, through-
out Western Christendom, by a salutary innovation, each made
to minister to the edification of the individual, and completion
of the whole baptismal ordinance.
In like manner the East retained, and still retains, the
apostolical practice mentioned by S. James for the sick to
call in the elders of the church, to anoint him with oil, and
pray over him, that he may recover. " The elders," that is, a
body of priests (for they still make a point of the plural
number), are called in at moments of dangerous illness, and
the prayer is offered. But the Latin Church, seeing that the
special object for which the ceremony was first instituted, the
recovery of the sick, had long ceased to be effected, deter-
mined to change its form, that it still might be preserved as an
instructive symbol. And thus the " anointing with oil " of
the first century, and of the Oriental Church, has become with
the Latins merely the last, " the extreme unction," of the
dying man.
Yet once again it became a practice in the Church, early
we know not how early for infants to communicate in the
Lord's supper. A literal application to the Eucharist of the
text respecting the bread of life, in the sixth chapter of S. John,
naturally followed on a literal application to baptism of the text
respecting the second birth in the third chapter ; and the actual
participation in the elements of both sacraments came to be
regarded as equally necessary for the salvation of every human
the Eastern Church 79
being. Here again the peculiar genius of each of the two
Churches displayed itself. The Oriental Churches, in con-
formity with ancient usage, still administer the Eucharist to
infants. In the Coptic Church it may even happen that an
infant is the only recipient. The Latin Church, on the other
hand, in deference to modern feeling, has not only abandoned,
but actually forbidden, a practice which, as far as antiquity is
concerned, might insist on unconditional retention.
4. There is yet another more general subject on which the
widest difference, involving the same principle, exists between
the two communions, namely, the whole relation of art to
religious worship. Let any one enter an Oriental church and
he will at once be struck by the contrast which the architecture,
the paintings, the very aspect of the ceremonial, present to the
churches of the West. Often, indeed, this may arise from the
poverty or oppression under which most Christian communities
labour whose lot has been cast in the Ottoman Empire ; but
often the altars may blaze with gold the dresses of the priests
stiffen with the richest silks of Brousa yet the contrast remains.
The difference lies in the fact that Art, as such, has no place
in the worship or in the edifice. There is no aiming at effect,
no dim religious light, no beauty of form or colour beyond
what is produced by the mere display of gorgeous and barbaric
pomp. Yet it would be a great mistake to infer from this
absence of art indeed no one who has ever seen it could infer
that this involves a more decided absence of form and of
ceremonial. The mystical gestures, the awe which surrounds
the sacerdotal functions, the long repetitions, the severance of
the sound from the sense, of the mind from the act, both in
priests and people, are not less, but more, remarkable than in
the churches of the West. The traveller who finds himself in
the interior of the Roman Catholic cathedral of Malta, after
having been accustomed for a few weeks or months to the
ritual of the convents and churches of the Levant, experiences
almost the same emotion as when he passes again from the
services of the Latin to those of the Reformed Churches. This
union of barbaric rudeness and elaborate ceremonialism is,
however, no contradiction ; it is an exemplification of an
important law in the human mind. There is no more curious
chapter in the history of the relation of the two Churches than
that of the Iconoclastic controversy of the ninth century. It is
true that the immediate effects of this controversy were
transient the sudden ebullition, not of a national or popular
8o The Characteristics of
feeling, but almost, as it would seem, of a Puritan, or even a
Mahometan, fanaticism in the breast of a single Emperor " a
mere negative doctrine," " which robbed the senses of their
habitual and cherished objects of devotion without awakening
an inner life of piety." The onslaught on the image-worship
of the Church passed away almost as rapidly as it had begun ;
and the fanaticism which the Emperor Leo had provoked, the
Empress Irene, through the second Council of Nicaea, effectu-
ally proscribed. But in the Eastern Church the spirit of Leo
has so far revived that, although pictures are still retained and
adored with even more veneration than the corresponding
objects of devotion in the West, statues are rigidly excluded ;
and the same Greek monk, who would ridicule the figures, or
even bas-reliefs, of a Roman Catholic church, will fling his
incense and perform his genuflexions with the most undoubting
faith before the same saint as seen in the paintings of his own
convent chapel.
The result is well given by Dean Milman :
" The ruder the art the more intense the superstition. The
perfection of the fine arts tends rather to diminish than to
promote such superstition. Not merely does the cultivation of
mind required for their higher execution, as well as the
admiration of them, imply an advanced state,' but the idealism,
which is their crowning excellence, in some degree unrealises
them, and creates a different and more exalted feeling. There
is more direct idolatry paid to the rough and illshapen image,
or the flat unrelieved and staring picture the former actually
clothed in gaudy and tinsel ornaments, the latter with the
crown of gold leaf on the head, and real or artificial flowers in
the hand than to the noblest ideal statue, or the Holy Family
with all the magic of light and shade. They are not the fine
paintings which work miracles, but the coarse and smoke-
darkened boards, on which the dim outline of form is hardly to
be traced. Thus it may be said that it was the superstition
which required the images rather than the images which formed
the superstition. The Christian mind would have found some
other fetiche to which it would have attributed miraculous
powers. Relics would have been more fervently worshipped,
and endowed with more transcendent powers, without the
adventitious good, the familiarising the mind with the historic
truths of Scripture, or even the legends of Christian martyrs,
which at least allayed the evil of the actual idolatry. Icono-
clasm left the worship of relics, and other dubious memorials
the Eastern Church 81
of the saints, in all their vigour, while it struck at that which,
after all, was a higher kind of idolatry. It aspired not to
elevate the general mind above superstition, but proscribed only
one, and that not the most debasing form." l
5. Another difference presents itself, arising partly from the
same causes, in the mode of dealing which the Eastern Church
adopts towards independent or hostile forms of religion.
In regard to missions, the inaction of the Eastern Churches
is well known. Whilst the Latin Church has sent out
missionaries for the conversion of England and Germany in the
middle ages, of South America, of India, and of China, down
to our own time ; whilst many Protestants pour the whole of
their religious energy exclusively into missionary enterprise, the
Eastern Churches, as a general rule, have remained content
with the maintenance of their own faith. The preaching of
Ulfilas to the Goths, of the Nestorian missions in Asia, and, in
modern times, of Russia in Siberia and the Aleutian Islands,
are but striking exceptions. The conversion of the Russian
nation was effected, not by the preaching of the Byzantine
clergy, but by the marriage of a Byzantine princess. In the
midst of the Mahometan East the Greek populations remain
like islands in the barren sea, and the Bedouin tribes have
wandered for twelve centuries round the Greek convent of
Mount Sinai probably without one instance of conversion to
the creed of men whom they yet acknowledge with almost
religious veneration as beings from a higher world.
Yet, if Eastern Christians have abdicated the glory of
missionaries, they are exempt from the curse of proselytism ;
and they have (with some mournful 2 examples to the contrary)
been free from the still darker curse of persecution. A re-
spectful reverence for every manifestation of religious feeling
has withheld them from violent attacks on the rights of con-
science, and led them to extend a kindly patronage to forms of
faith most removed from their own. The gentle spirit of the
Greek Fathers has granted to the heroes and sages of heathen
antiquity a place in the Divine favour, which was long denied
in the West. Along the porticoes of Eastern churches 3 are to
1 Latin Christianity, ii. 152, 153.
? The difficulty of arriving at the truth of the alleged Russian persecution
of the Roman Catholics in Poland renders any positive statement on this
subject next to impossible. In earlier times the worst persecution perhaps
was that of the Paulicians by Theodora, A.D. 835. (Gibbon, c. liv.)
3 They may be seen in several of the Moscow churches, and in the
Iberian monastery in Mount Athos.
82 The Characteristics of
be seen portrayed on the walls the figures of Homer, Solon,
Thucydides, Pythagoras, and Plato, as pioneers preparing the
way for Christianity. In the vast painting of the Last
Judgment, which covers the west end of the chief cathedral of
Moscow, Paradise is represented as divided and subdivided
into many departments or chambers, thus keeping before the
minds even of the humblest the great doctrine of the Gospel
which has often been tacitly dropped out of Western religion
" In my Father's house are many mansions." No inquisition,
no S. Bartholomew's massacre, no Titus Gates, has darkened
the history of any of the nobler portions of Eastern Christen-
dom. In Armenia, Henry Martin's funeral at Tokat is said to
have received all the honours of an Armenian archbishop. In
Russia, where the power and the will to persecute exist more
strongly, though proselytism is forbidden, yet the worship, not
only of their own dissenters, but of Latins and Protestants, is
protected as sacred. In the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, on the
confluence of the Volga and the Oka, the Mahometan mosque
and the Armenian church stand side by side with the orthodox
cathedral.
6. In like manner the theology of the East has undergone
no systematising process. Its doctrines remain in the same
rigid yet undefined state as that in which they were left by
Constantine and Justinian. The resistance to the insertion of
the words "filioque" was the natural protest of the unchanging
Church of the early Councils against the growth, whether by
development or by corruption, of the West. Even in points
where the Protestant Churches have gone back, as they believe,
to a yet earlier simplicity of faith, the Eastern Church still
presents her doctrines in a form far less repugnant to such a
simplicity than is the case with the corresponding statements in
the Latin Church. Prayers for the dead exist, but no elaborate
hierarchical system has been built upon their performance. A
general expectation prevails that by some unknown process the
souls of the sinful will be purified before they pass into the
Divine presence ; but this has never been consolidated into a
doctrine of purgatory. The Mother of our Lord is regarded
with a veneration which, in elevation of sentiment, equals any
of the devotions addressed to her in the West ; but it is too
abstract and indefinite to allot to her in the scheme of salvation,
or the protection of the Church, the powerful place which is so
precisely ascribed to her by Latin divines. The reverence for
her sanctity has never crystallised into the modern dogma of
the Eastern Church 83
the Immaculate Conception. Her death, encompassed as it is
by legend, is yet " the sleep " (KOI/^O-IS) of the Virgin, not her
"assumption." The boundary between the rhetorical, poetical
addresses to the saints, in the Eastern worship, and the actual
invocation of their aid, has never been laid down with precisian.
" Transubstantiation," if used at all as a theological term, is
merely one amongst many to express the reverential awe with
which the Eucharist is approached. It is not in the exact
repetition of the words of the original institution (as in the
Churches of Rome, of Luther, and of England), but in the
more general and more directly spiritual form of the invocation
of the Spirit, that the Eastern Church places the moment of the
consecration of the elements.
7. A similar turn is given to the institution of the Eastern
clergy, by the absence of the organising, centralising tendency
which prevailed in the West. It is not that their spirit is less
hierarchical than that of the Latin clergy. In some respects it
is more so, in proportion as it more nearly resembles the Jewish
type, of which the extreme likeness, as we have seen, is pre-
served in Abyssinia. The Greek priest concealed within the
veil of the sanctuary is far more entirely shut out from the
congregation than the Latin priest standing before the altar, in
the presence of the assembled multitude, who can at least
follow with their eyes his every gesture. For centuries in the
Church of Alexandria, and still in the Church of Armenia, the
dead hand of the first bishop has been employed as the instru-
ment of consecration in each succeeding generation. This is a
more carnal and literal representation of a priestly succession
than is to be found in any Western ordinations. But the
moment we enter into practical life, and even into the ground-
work of the theory of the two Churches, the powers and pre-
tensions of the Greek hierarchy shrink into nothing before
those of the Latin.
The authorised descriptions of the office at once bespeak a
marked difference. The lofty terms introduced into the Latin-
Church in the thirteenth century, and still retained in our
own, "Receive the Holy Ghost . . . whose sins thou
dost retain they are retained," fill the place which in the
Eastern Church is occupied by a simple prayer for the Divine
blessing. The expression of absolution, which in the Western
Church was in the same thirteenth century changed into the
positive form "I absolve thee," in the Eastern Church is still
as it always was, "May the Lord absolve thee." The inde-
84 The Characteristics of
pendent position conferred on the Western clergy by tithes is, at
least in one portion l of the Eastern Church, almost unknown.
However sacred the office whilst it is held, and however
difficult and discreditable it may be to lay it aside, yet it is not,
as in the Latin Church, indelible. An Eastern priest can
divest himself of his orders and become a layman. Although
confession to a priest is deemed necessary for all, yet it never
has descended into those details of casuistry which have in the
Latin Church made it so formidable an engine both for good
and evil. The scandals, the influence, the terrors, of the con-
fessional are alike unknown in the East.
The laity, on the other hand, have a part assigned to them in
the Eastern Church, which even in the Protestant Churches of
the West has been with difficulty recognised. The monastic
orders, although including many clergy, are yet in the East, to
a great extent, as they are never in the West, but as they were
entirely in early times, lay and not clerical institutions. The
vast community of Athos is, practically, a lay corporation
assisted by a small body of chaplains. The independent
manly assertion of religion which pervades the Mahometan
world 2 has not been lost in the Christian East. One special
rite that of the sacred unction of Confirmation, which, as we
have seen, is conferred simultaneously with baptism has been
explained with a force and eloquence which, on such a subject,
rings with the tone of a Tyndale or a Luther, as symbolising
the royal priesthood of every Christian. "It destroys the wall
of separation that Rome has raised between the ecclesiastic and
the layman, for we are all priests of the Most High priests
though not pastors 3 in different degrees." This explanation
of the ceremony may be doubtful ; but that it should be put
forth at all in connection with one of the most peculiar and
significant of the Oriental ecclesiastical rites, is an indication
of their general spirit.
In the study of the Scriptures, and the use of the liturgy in
the vernacular languages of the several nations that have
adopted Eastern Christianity, we have other traces, though less
direct, of the same tendency. It is true that in most Oriental
Churches these languages have, by the lapse of years, become
antiquated, or even dead, in the mouths of those who use
them ; and the clergy have been too timid or too apathetic to
meet the changing exigencies of time. But the principle is
1 See Lecture IX. 2 See Lecture VIII.
3 Quelques Mots, par un Chretien Orthodoxe, 1853, p. 53.
the Eastern Church 85
maintained, that the language l of each separate nation, not a
sacred language peculiar to the clergy, is the proper vehicle for
worship and religious life. And the study of the Bible, though
neglected from the barbarism of the present state of Oriental
Christendom, is nowhere discouraged. The Arabic translation
of the Scriptures, even in the Coptic Church, is listened to with
the utmost attention, and is taught in Coptic schools. In
Russia, the efforts of the Bible Society were welcomed by
Alexander I. ; and in Greece (until the breaking out of the
War of Independence) by the collective hierarchy of Con-
stantinople.
" God be praised," was the expression of a devout Russian
layman, in speaking of the scandals occasioned by the ignorance
of the Russian priesthood; "the Eastern Church has never
ruled that religious light and instruction are confined to the
clergy. It is still in our own power to redeem the future."
This aspect of the institution of the Oriental hierarchy is still
further brought out by two general points of contrast with the
position of the clergy of the West.
The centralisation of the West, as displayed in the Papacy,
is unknown to the East. The institution of the Patriarchates
is entirely Oriental. The very name carries us back to the
primitive East. The office, 2 though first recognised at the
Council of Chalcedon, has struck deep roots in the East, never
in the West. The august brotherhood of the "All Holy,"
" the Most Blessed/ 7 Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem, amidst the degradation which has beset
their little courts, still remains as a bond to the scattered
Churches of the* Levant. In the West, the very name has been
lost, and amongst all the titles of the Pope, that of " Patriarch "
is not one. This contrast between the aristocratical and
monarchical principles of the two Churches, partly the result of
the general tendencies just mentioned, has been encouraged by
the difference of the political circumstances of the respective
Churches. What Imperial Rome lost by the transfer of the
seat of government to the East, the Byzantine Empire gained.
What Papal Rome gained by the removal of a rival power and
splendour, that the Patriarch of Constantinople lost. As the
Pope filled the place of the absent Emperors at Rome, inherit-
ing their power, their prestige, the titles which they had them-
selves derived from the days of their paganism, so the Emperors
1 See Lecture IX. 2 See Gregory's Vindication.
86 The Characteristics of
controlled, guided, personified, the Church at Constantinople.
No one can read Eusebius's description of the Council of Nicsea
without feeling that, amongst all who were then assembled in
the hall, none occupied the same pre-eminence as the Emperor l
Constantine. Justinian and Theodora, great as they were in
legislating for the empire, exercised a hardly less important
influence in their determination, not only of the discipline but
of the doctrines of the Church ; and what Constantine and
Justinian began has been continued by the great potentates
who have ever since swayed the destinies of the Oriental
hierarchy. In Constantinople itself the Sultan still exercises
the right which he inherited from the last of the Caesars ; and
the virtual appointment and deposition of the patriarchs 2 still
places in his hands the government of the Byzantine Church
a power, no doubt, more scandalous and more pernicious in
the hands of the Mussulman than it was in the hands of the
Christian despot, but not more decided and absolute. And
how high a place is occupied by the Emperor of Russia 3 will
be seen in treating of the Russian Church especially.
Along with this difference in the position of the Papacy and
the Patriarchate, was another which affected the whole position
of the hierarchy itself. The Eastern Church at its outset basked
in the sunshine of Imperial favour a regular institution, forming
part of the framework of civilised society, secure from the
convulsion which shook the rest of the world in the invasion of
the northern barbarians. The Latin Church, entering on her
career amidst the crash of a falling Empire, and with successive
hordes of wild barbarians to control, instruct, and guide, was in
a far more trying position. Amongst the various steps for the
organisation of her clergy in this struggle the chief was the
enforcement of celibacy. This principle has not only never
been adopted in the East, but has been repudiated even more
positively than by Protestants. However fervent the Oriental
Church may have been at all times in its assertion of the ascetic
and monastic system, yet for the clerical body marriage is not
only permitted and frequent, but compulsory, and all but
universal. It is a startling sight to the traveller, after long
wanderings in the south of Europe, to find himself, amongst the
mountains of Greece or Asia Minor, once more under the roof of
1 See Lecture IV.
2 The Patriarch is elected by a Synod of Bishops. But the Porte is
always consulted.
8 See Lecture X.
the Eastern Church 87
a married pastor, and see the table of the parish priest furnished,
as it might be in Protestant England or Switzerland, by the
hands of an acknowledged wife. The bishops, indeed, being
selected from the monasteries, are single. But the parochial
clergy that is, the whole body of the clergy as such though
they cannot marry after their ordination, must always be married
before they enter on their office. 1 In one instance, that of the
Chaldaean or Nestorian Christians, the patriarch is allowed to
marry.
IV. These distinctions, which might be pursued to any
extent, and illustrated in every particular, will suffice to show
that the differences between the two divisions of Christendom,
although in some points superficial, are yet in principle more
radical than those which separate the other branches of the
Christian Church from each other.
It is this inward moral divergence, more than any outward
theological distinction or any local distance, which occasions
our ignorance and our indifference to the Eastern Church. But
it is from this very divergence that accrue the chief advantages
of the study of the Eastern Church.
i. The ecclesiastical history of the West is full of our own
passions, our own preconceived ideas and prejudices. We run,
round and round in the ruts of our own controversies ; every
object that we see has been long familiar to us ; every step that
we take is in footmarks of our own making. Every name is
coloured with some theological sympathy or antipathy ; every
sect and church is our personal enemy or ally.
This living interest the history of the Eastern Church can
never acquire. Yet it is refreshing to turn for a time to a
region where the incidents and the characters awaken no
feelings except those which are purely historical; where the
principles which agitate the Church at large can be traced
without the disturbing force of personal and national ani-
mosities. The names of Hildebrand, Loyola, Luther, Calvin,
carry with them each a tempest of its own, which scatters
commotion and excitement around its whole circumference.
But no one will be able to work himself into a frenzy in
defending even Chrysostom or Basil; no one will lose his
1 This has been so long an established custom, that, like the celibacy of
the Latin clergy, though not part of the doctrine, it is part of the discipline
of the Church. An exception, however, has occurred in the Russian Church
within the past year. A theological professor has been ordained, although
unmarried.
88 The Lessons of
temper or his chanty in deciding the claims of the false or
the true Demetrius, or in defending the cause of Stephen
Yavorski of Riazan against Theophanes Procopovitch of
Pshkoff.
And what is true of individual events or persons, is true
of the whole institution. It is not only unknown and there-
fore fresh to us, but it is compounded in such proportions,
and of such materials, as to turn the force and blunt the
edge of the implements of controversy with which in the
West we are always destroying one another. Many a keen
assailant of Popery or of Protestantism will find himself at
fault in the presence of a Church which is Protestant and
Catholic at once, sometimes in points where we least expect
to find the respective elements of discord or concord. It cuts
across the grain of our most cherished prejudices. Our well-
ordered phrases are thrown into confusion by encountering a
vast communion which, in some respects, goes so far ahead of
us, in others falls so far behind us. From such an experience
we may be taught that there is a region above and beyond
our own agitations. We may learn to be less positive in
pushing theological premises to their extreme conclusions.
We may find that there is a stubborn mass of fact against
which the favourite argument of driving our adversaries into
believing all or nothing is broken to pieces. It is useful to
find that churches and sects are not exactly squared accord-
ing to our notions of what our own logic or rhetoric would
lead us to expect. The discovery of the Syrian Christians
of S. Thomas on the shores of India was a fruitful source
of perplexity to both sections of European Christendom.
"Their separation from the Western world," says Gibbon,
" had left them in ignorance of the improvements or corrup-
tions of a thousand years ; and their conformity with the
faith and practice of the fifth century would equally disap-
point the prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant." Such
two-edged disappointments are amongst the best lessons of
ecclesiastical history ; and such are the disappointments
which not only the small community on the coast of Malabar,
but the whole Eastern Church, impresses on the inquirers of
the West, from whatever quarter they come.
2. Again, a knowledge of the existence and claims of the
Eastern Church keeps up the equipoise of Christendom.
The weight of authority, of numbers, of antiquity, has various
attractions for different minds. Some characters are self-poised
the Eastern Church 89
and independent. Loneliness and singularity in the present,
the hopes of a remote and ideal future, are to them the notes
of a true Church. But there are many who are in danger of
being thrown off their balance by the magnetic power of
those associations which appeal to the imaginative, the social,
the devotional parts of our nature.
The body with which we are most familiar as producing
this effect, is the ancient and energetic community whose
seat is at Rome. In it we usually see the chief impersonation
of high ecclesiastical pretensions, of an elaborate ritual, of
outward devotion, of wide dominion, of venerable tradition.
It is close at hand; and therefore, whether we attack or
admire, it fills the whole of our view. But this effect is
considerably modified by the apparition of the Eastern
Church. Turn from the Tiber to the Bosphorus : we shall
see that there are two kings in the field, two suns in the
heavens. That figure which seemed so imposing when it
was the only one which met our view, changes all its pro-
portions, when we see that it is overtopped by a vaster,
loftier, darker figure behind. If we are bent on having
dogmatical belief and conservative tradition to its fullest
extent, we must go not to the Church which calls itself
Catholic, but to the Church which calls itself Orthodox to
the Church which will die but never surrender the minutest
point which Council or Father has bequeathed to it. If we
are to make the most of monasticism as a necessary model
of Christian perfection, we ought not to stop short with the
Grande Chartreuse, or Monte Casino, when we can have
the seclusion of Mount Athos, or the exaltation of Simeon
Stylites. If we are to have the ancient theory of sacramental
forms carried out to its extreme limits, we must not halt
half-way with a Church which has curtailed the waters of
baptism, and deferred confirmation and communion to years
of discretion : we must take refuge in the ancient Eastern
ritual, which still retains the threefold immersion, which still
offers the rites of chrism and of the eucharist to the uncon-
scious touch of infancy.
Nay, beyond the Eastern Church itself, there is a further
East to which we must go if wisdom is to be sought, not in
moderation, but in extremes. The Greek Church is more
ceremonial than the Latin, but the Coptic is more ceremonial
than the Greek, and the Abyssinian is more ceremonial than
the Coptic. In the Church of Abyssinia we shall find the
90 The Lessons of
best, example of what many seek in a limited degree in the West
a complete sacrifice of the spirit of Christianity to the letter.
Remember, too, that if the voice of authority is confident
at Rome, it is hardly less confident at Constantinople and at
Moscow. Remember, that beyond the Carpathians, beyond
the Hsemus, beyond the Ural range, there are unbroken
successions of bishops, long calendars of holy men unknown
in the West, who can return anathema for anathema, as
well as blessing for blessing ; who can afford to regard even
Augustine and Jerome, not as canonised saints, only as " pious
Christians of blessed memory." Remember, that Athos can
boast its miraculous pictures and springs no less than Rimini
or Assisi. Remember, that in the eyes of orthodox Greeks
the Pope is not the representative of a faith pure and unde-
iiled, but (I quote l their own words) is " the first Protestant,"
"the founder of German rationalism." The Eastern patriarchs
speak in their solemn documents of the Papal supremacy as
" the chief heresy of the latter days, which nourishes now as
its predecessor Arianism nourished before it in the earlier ages,
and which, like Arianism, shall in like manner be cast down
and vanish away." 2 To a devout Russian the basilica of S.
Peter seems bare and cold and profane ; hardly deserving the
name of church a temple without an altar. Rome itself is
chiefly interesting to him because it reminds him of Moscow, 3
but even then, as he pathetically adds, "it is Moscow without
the Kremlin." The Pope of Rome has fallen out of the
mystic circle of the five patriarchs ; he has himself dropped
the name; his vacant place has been filled by the new
Patriarchate 4 of Moscow.
The fact of such wide-spread deeply rooted feelings remains
in all its length and breadth to be accounted for in any hypo-
thesis which we choose to frame of a universal Church.
Eastern Christendom, so considered, is one of the strongest
bulwarks against the undue claims or encroachments of any
Church or see of the West, whether at Rome, or Geneva, or
Canterbury.
3. Yet again, if we may make this use of the Greek Church
for purposes of war and of defence, we may also make use of it
1 Quelques Mots, par un Chretien Orthodoxe, 1853, p. 40.
2 Encyclic Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848, 5. (See Neale, ii.
1195.) Compare a similar Epistle, 1723, addressed to the English Non-
jurors (Lathbury's History of the Nonjurors, p. 350).
3 Mouravieff, Questions Religieuses, p. 270. 4 See Lecture X.
the Eastern Church 91
for purposes of peace and harmony. It is often observed, wit
regard to the most general features, of manners, geography,
and history, that the West can only be perfectly understood
after having seen the East. A green field, a rushing stream,
a mountain clothed with verdure from head to foot, will,
I believe, always assume a new interest in the eyes of one who
has come from the dry, bare, thirsty East. We trace a distinct-
ness, a vividness, a family likeness in these features of Western
Europe, which, until we have seen their opposites, almost
escape our notice. Like to this is the additional understanding
of our own portion of Christendom, gained by a contempla-
tion of its counterpoise in the Oriental Churches. However
great the differences between the various Western Churches,
there are peculiarities in common which imply deeper elements
of consanguinity and likeness than those which unite any of
them to the communities of the East. The variety, the stir,
the life, the turmoil, the "drive" as our American brethren
would call it, is, in every Western Church, contrasted with the
immobility, the repose, the inaction of Greece, of Syria, and
of Russia. It is instructive for the staunch adherents of the
Reformation to feel that the Latin Church, which we have
been accustomed to regard as our chief antagonist, has
after all the same elements of Western life and civilisation
as those of which we are justly proud; that, whatever it be
as compared with England or Germany, it is, as compared
with Egypt or Syria, enlightened, progressive, in one word,
Protestant. It is instructive for the opponents of the Reforma-
tion to see that in the Eastern section of the Christian Church,
vast as it is, the whole Western Church, Latin and German,
Papal and Lutheran, is often regarded as essentially one ; that
the first concessions to reason and freedom, which involve by
necessity all the subsequent stages, were made long before
Luther, in the bosom of the Roman Church itself; that the
Papal see first led the way in schism from the parent stock in
liberty of private judgment ; that some of the most important
points in which the Latin is now distinguished from the Greek
Church, ,have been actually copied and imported from the
new Churches of the Protestant West. To trace this family
resemblance between the different branches of the Occidental
Church is the polemical object of an able treatise by a zealous
member of the Church of Russia : 1 to trace it in a more
1 Quelques Mots, par un Chretien Orthodoxe, 1853 and 1854.
;
92 The Lessons of
friendly and hopeful spirit is a not unworthy aim of students
of the Church of England.
4. But it would be unjust to our Eastern brethren to draw
from them lessons merely of contrast and disparagement.
There are those, no doubt, who look on the Oriental Church
merely as the dead trunk, from which all sap and life have
departed, fit only to be cut down, because it cumbers the
ground. But it is also, beyond doubt, the aged tree, beneath
whose shade the rest of Christendom has sprung up. We may
ask whether its roots have not struck too widely and too
deeply in its native soil to allow of any other permanent form
of religious life, in those regions which does not in some
degree engraft itself on that ancient stem. 1 We may thankfully
accept even the sluggish barbarism and stagnation which have,
humanly speaking, saved so large and so venerable a portion
of the Christian world from the consolidation of the decrees of
Trent, and from the endless sub-divisions of Augsburg and
Geneva. We may reflect with satisfaction that should ever
the hour come for the re-awakening of the Churches of the
East, there is no infallible pontiff at Constantinople, no hierarchy
separated from the domestic charities of life, to prevent the
religious and social elements from amalgamating into one
harmonious whole. We may gratefully remember that there
is a theology in the world of which the free, genial mind of
Chrysostom is still the golden mouthpiece; a theology 2 in
which scholastic philosophy has had absolutely no part; in
which the authority alike of Duns Scotus and of Calvin is
unknown. Doubtless the future of the whole Church is to
be sought, not in the East, but in the West. But there is
a future also for the Church of the East. Have we not known
1 " Let foreigners bring us light, and we will thank them for it. But we
beg of them not to bring fire to burn our house about our ears." Saying
of a Greek bishop, recorded in Masson's Apology^for the Greek Church, p. 7.
In quoting this little work, which, though disfigured by some personal
partialities, contains much good sense and charity, I cannot forbear to
express my obligations to its author. To my intercourse with him at
Athens, now twenty years ago, I owe my first interest in the state of the
Greek Church.
2 "The Greeks of the humbler classes have a good acquaintance with
the Gospel History and the life of our Lord ; but they know nothing of
Substitution" Such was the lamentation of an excellent Presbyterian
minister who had been long resident amongst them, in answer to the
inquiry of an English traveller on the state of religious knowledge in the
East. What was thus said of the poor Greeks of the present day is no less
true of their most illustrious theologians in former time.
the Eastern Church 93
characters, venerable from age or station, who, with the most
immovable adherence to ancient hereditary forms of belief and
practice, yet, when brought into contact with the views of
a younger and more stirring generation, have by the very
distance from which they approach given it a new turn, showed
a capacity for enduring, tolerating, understanding it, such as we
should have vainly sought from others more nearly allied by
pursuits or dispositions? Such is, to an indefinite extent, the
position of the Eastern Christian towards the Western. Kept
aloof from our controversies, escaping our agitations, he comes
upon them with a freedom and freshness, which in the wear
and tear of the West can no longer be found. He has the
rare gift of an ancient orthodox belief without intolerance and
without proselytism. He is firmly and proudly attached to his
own Church and nation, yet has a ready and cordial recognition
to give to the faith of others. He knows, and we know, that,
although he may become a European, yet we can by no
possibility become Asiatics. And such a knowledge engenders
a confidence, which between rivals and neighbours is almost
unattainable. He stands on the confines of the East and
West, drawn eastward by his habits, by his lineage, by his
local position; drawn westward by the inevitable, onward,
westward progress of Christianity and of civilisation. In him,
therefore, we find a link between those two incommunicable
spheres, such as can be found nowhere else. The Greek race
may yet hand back from Europe to Asia the light which, in
former days, it handed on from Asia to Europe. The Sclavonic
race may yet impart by the Volga or the Caspian the civilisation
which it has itself received by the Neva and the Baltic.
And we, too, with all our energy and life, may learn
something from the otherwise unparalleled sight of whole
nations and races of men, penetrated by the religious sentiment
which visibly sways their minds even when it fails to reach
their conduct, which, if it has produced but few whom we
should call saints or philosophers, has produced through
centuries of oppression whole armies of confessors and martyrs.
We may_ learn something from the sight of a calm strength,
reposing "in the quietness and confidence" of a treasure of
hereditary belief, which its possessor is content to value for
himself, without forcing it on the reception of others. We
may learn something from the sight of Churches, where religion
is not abandoned to the care of women and children, but is
claimed as the right and the privilege of men ; where the Church
94 The Lessons of
reposes not so much on the force and influence of its clergy as
on the independent knowledge and manly zeal of its laity.
5. Yet once more if there is any Church which may be
expected to learn congenial and useful lessons from the study
of Eastern Christendom, it is our own. I do not lay stress on
the possible connection of the ancient British Church with
Eastern missionaries before the arrival of Augustine, nor on
the more certain influence of the East on the Anglo-Saxon
Church when Theodore of Tarsus sate on the throne of
Canterbury. These associations are too slight to sustain any
substantial argument. But there are likenesses between our
position and that of the Eastern Churches, which, amidst great
differences, may render the knowledge of their history specially
profitable in the study of our own. The national character
of our religion, which is at once our boast and our reproach,
finds a parallel even an exaggerated parallel in the Eastern
identification of nationality and creed, such as the larger ideas
of continental Europe will hardly tolerate or understand either
in us or in them. The relations of Church and State, as
portrayed in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, are avowedly based
on those of the ancient Church of Constantinople, and still
find their counterpart in the modern Church of Russia. If
the ecclesiastical commonwealth of our own little island, with
manifold contending principles within its pale, and manifold
sects multiplying without, can be better understood by the
sight of a like phenomenon, reproduced on a gigantic scale,
from different causes, in the remote East, let no one grudge us
this advantage from the consideration of the double-sided,
contradictory aspect of the Eastern Churches, or the vigour
and wide extension of the Eastern sects. And if ever the
question, often agitated, should be brought to issue, and any
changes should be attempted in the English Prayer-Book,
many scruples might be soothed by recurring to the model
of the Eastern Church. What has never been received into
the creeds or the services 1 of Churches venerable as those
of Oriental Christendom, cannot by any sound argument be
represented as indispensable to the character of the Church
of England.
1 I allude to the passages relating to Absolution in the Ordination and
Visitation Services, and the adoption of the Athanasian Creed. The
first two are mediaeval and Latin, as distinct from ancient and Catholic.
(See p. 83. ) The third is distinctly opposed to the Eastern Church. (See
Lecture VII.)
the Eastern Church 95
"I die in the faith of the Catholic Church, before the
disunion of East and West." Such was the dying hope of
good Bishop Ken. 1 It was an aspiration which probably no
one but an English Churchman would have uttered. We
may not be able to go along with the whole of the feeling
involved in the thought. But it expresses a true belief that
in the Church of England there is a ground of antiquity, of
freedom, and of common sense, on which we may calmly and
humbly confront both of the great divisions of Christendom,
without laying ourselves open to the charge of ignorant pre-
sumption, or of learned trifling, or of visions that can never
be realised. We know, and it is enough to know, that the
Gospel, the original Gospel, which came from the East and
now rules in the West, is large enough to comprehend
them both.
NOTE ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE PROCESSION OF THE
HOLY SPIRIT
THE question of the Double Procession furnishes so many illustrations of
the points laid down in the previous Lecture, that it may be well to devote
a few words to its history.
1. It brings out forcibly the contrast noticed above between the
systematising, innovating tendency of the West, and the simpler and
more conservative tendency of the East. The Western insertion of the
words "from the Son" (jiiioque) arose in the Spanish Church, from the
logical development of the Athanasian doctrine against the Arian Visigoths.
The Greek refusal to admit these words arose from the repugnance to any
change in the decrees or creeds laid down in the early Councils, analogous
to that which animated the Russian dissenters against Nicon and Peter.
(See Lecture XII.)
2. It well exemplifies the double-sided aspect of most theological
doctrines. Each of the two statements expresses a truth which the
other overlooks or omits. In the original statement of the Nicene or
Constantinopolitan Creed, which makes the Spirit to proceed from the
Father alone, is the necessary safeguard of the abstract unity of the
Godhead. It is urged that to make the Spirit proceed equally from both
the Persons in the Trinity, is to imply two principles or originating powers
in the Divine Essence. In the Western view, which associates the Son
with the Father, it is maintained that the addition of the disputed words
was needed, to assert the identity of the Father and the Son in all the acts
of redemption, and especially the identity of the Spirit of Christ with the
Spirit of God. Both statements may be reconciled if the former is
understood as applying to the abstract and eternal essence of the Deity,
the latter to the Divine operations in the redemption of man. If the word
"proceed" (eK7ropeiW0c) be used in a strictly scientific, or, it may be
1 Life of Ken, by a Layman, p. 509.
96 Note on the Double Procession
added, biblical sense, then the Greeks are in the right. If it be used
according to popular usage, then the Latins are not in the wrong.
3. It is an excellent specimen of the race of "extinct controversies."
For nearly a thousand years it seemed to the contending parties to be of
such importance as to justify the rent between East and West. It was
probably the chief reason for cherishing the Athanasian Creed and the
anathemas peculiar to that confession (see Lecture VII.). By the disputes
which it engendered at the Council of Florence, it largely contributed to
the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The capture of Constantinople on
Whitsunday was regarded in the West as a Divine judgment on the East
for its heresy in regard to the Spirit, whose festival was thus awfully
vindicated. Yet now the whole question is laid completely to rest. In
the West it is never seriously discussed. In the East it is remembered,
and will never, perhaps, be forgotten ; but it is more as a point of honour
than of faith ; it is more the mode of our Western innovation, than the
substance of our doctrine, that rouses their indignation. 1
1 For the details of the doctrine, see Adam Zernikoff, as quoted by
Neale, ii. 1154. Mouravieff, Questions Religieuses, 860.
LECTURE II
THE COUNCIL OF NIC/EA
THE authorities for the Council of Nicasa are as follows :
I. The original documents.
a. The Creed. \ , . ,, ., ~ .. .. ,
, Contained in Mansi s Councils, n. 025-
b. 1 he i wenty Canons. ^ 70I and the historians given below.
c. The Official Letters. J
1. Letter of Constantine, convoking the Bishops from Ancyra.
(Mr. Harris Cowper, Analecta Nicsena, 21.)
2. Letter of Constantine to the Bishops, denouncing the books of
Arius.
3. Letter of Constantine against Arius.
4. Letter of Constantine to the Bishops, containing the decree on
Easter.
5. Letter of the Council to the Church of Alexandria, on the three
points of debate.
6. Letter of Eusebius to the Church of Csesarea, Theod. i., explaining
his subscriptions.
7. Letters of Eusebius and Theognis, praying for readmission.
8. Letter of Constantine against Eusebius.
9. Letter of Constantine to Theodotus, warning him against Eusebius.
d. Apocryphal canons, subscriptions, letters, &c., given in
Mansi's Councils, ii. 710-1071.
II. Eye-witnesses.
a. Eusebius of Caesarea in the Life of Constantine, iii.
4-24; and in his Letter to the Church of Caesarea.
(Theod. i. 9.)
b. Athanasius.
1. The Tract on the Decrees of the Nicene Council.
2. Epistle to the Africans.
3. Orations against Arians.
4. On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia.
c. Eustathius of Antioch. A short extract in Theod. i. 8.
d. Auxano, a Novatian Presbyter, who had been present
as a boy. He told his experience to Socrates. (H. E.
ii. i.)
s. Old people alive in Jerome's time, whom he had seen.
(Adv. Lucif. c. 20.)
III. Historians of the next generation.
i. Rufinus. (H. E. i. 1-6.) A.D. 380 401.
97 E
98 The Council of Nicaea and
2. Ambrose. (De Fide.) A.D. 333 397.
(These are the only two Western authorities.)
3. Epiphanius. (Haer. Ixix.) A.D. 360 401.
4. Socrates. (H. E. i. 4-14.) A.D. 380 440.
5. Sozomen. (H. E. i. 15-28.) A.D. 380 443.
6. Philostorgius. (Arian Fragments.) A.D. 350 425.
7. Theodoret. (H. E. i. 1-13.) A.D. 394 458.
8. The lost history of the Council of Nicaea (in Syriac) by
Maruthas, Bishop of Tagrit or Maipherkin, in Meso-
potamia (A.D. 410), "Opus valdt aureum: sed proh
dolor ! necdum inventum." (Asseman. Biblioth. Orient,
i. pp. 177, 195.)
IV. Later Historians.
1. Gelasius of Cyzicus. (Fifth century.) Acts of the
Council, filled with imaginary speeches. The book
professes to be founded on an old MS. in his father's
house.
2. "Eutychius," otherwise "Sayd Ibn Batrik," of Cairo
A.D. 876 950. Arabic Annals of Alexandria, printed
by Pococke, and partly edited by Selden.
3. Gregory the Presbyter. (Tenth century.) " Panegyric of
the Nicene Fathers," printed in the Novum Auctarium
of Combefis, vol. ii. p. 547.
4. Nicephorus. A.D. 1390 1450. (H. E. from A.D. i
610.)
V. Modern Historians. Of these may be selected :
a. English.
1. Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," c. 21. i
2. Dean Milman's "History of Christianity under the Empire,"
vol. ii. pp. 431-448.
3. "Some Account of the Council of Nicea," by Bishop Kaye.
(18530
b. German.
1. Ittig's " History of the Council " (a brief documentary summary).
(1644-1710.)
2. Walch's "History of Heresies," vol. ii. 385-689. (1762.)
3. Hefele's "History of the Councils," book ii. (1855.)
c. French.
1. Tillemont's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. vi. (16371698.)
2. Fleury's "Ecclesiastical History," book iii. (1640 1723.)
3. Albert Prince de Broglie's "History of the Church and the
Empire in the Fourth Century," c. iv. (1857.)
the Seven General Councils 99
THE COUNCIL OF NIOEA AND THE SEVEN GENERAL COUNCILS
THE earliest important development of the Eastern Church
is the First General Council of Nicsea. This event I propose
to describe with all the particularity of detail of which it is
capable ; to describe it in such a way that it may remain fixed
in our memories ; to describe it as it appeared to those who
lived at the time. In this opening Lecture it will be my object
to vindicate the place which I have assigned to it in that portion
of Ecclesiastical History which I have undertaken to treat.
I. On the one hand we must consider its peculiar connection
with the Eastern Church. This connection it has in common
with the first Seven General Councils. The locality of these
great assemblies was always Eastern ; in most instances im-
mediately in the neighbourhood of the centre of Eastern
Christendom, within reach of Constantinople. Their decrees
were written, their debates were conducted, not in Latin, but
in Greek. They are still honoured by the Oriental Church
with a reverence which hardly any Western Council has received
in the West. The series of the Seven Councils is the constant
subject of the sacred paintings in the cathedrals of Russia, in
the monasteries of Athos, in the basilica l of Bethlehem. Each
can be traced by its peculiar arrangements, or by the Emperor
or Empress who presides. Once a year, on the first Sunday 2
in Lent, called Orthodox Sunday, all the seven Councils are
commemorated in one, the anniversary of the last : the service
and ceremonial of the Church is made to reproduce the image
of the ancient synods bishops, presbyters, and deacons, seated
round in the semicircular form in which the old pictures
represent them. The Eastern bishops still promise in the
service of consecration to observe their decrees ; and not only
is their memory preserved in learned or ecclesiastical circles,
but even illiterate peasants, to whom, in the corresponding class
of life in Spain or Italy, the names of Constance and Trent
would probably be quite unknown, are well aware that their
Church reposes on the basis of the Seven Councils, and retain
a hope that they may yet live to see an eighth General Council,
in which the evils of the time will be set straight. The subjects
1 At Bethlehem and in Russia, they are on the south side of the nave.
In Athos they are usually in the cloister or outer narthex. The most
remarkable of these representations is in the Iberian monastery.
2 Neale, Hist, of the Eastern Church, Introd. ii. 867.
ioo The Council of Nicaea and
discussed in the assemblies, and the occasions which called them
together, were specially Eastern and Greek. This could
hardly have been otherwise. The whole force and learning of
early Christianity was in the East. A general Council in the
West would have been almost an absurdity. With the
exception of the few writers of North Africa, there was no
Latin defender of the faith. With the exception of Tertullian,
there was not a single early heretic of eminence in the West.
The controversies on which the Councils turned all moved in
the sphere of Grecian and Oriental metaphysics. They were
such as no Western mind could have originated.
What may be said of all the Seven Councils, is true of the
earliest and greatest of them. The Council of Nicaea was held
not in a Western but an Eastern city. Of the three hundred
and eighteen bishops whose subscriptions were affixed to its
decrees, only eight at most came from the West. The language
of its creed is not only not Latin, but is almost untranslatable
into Latin. Grecised forms have been adopted for some of its
more subtle expressions. 1 Others have been modified in order
to be accommodated to their new garb. The one phrase
introduced by the Western Church, " filioque," 2 was only intro-
duced gradually, irregularly, and reluctantly in the West, and
has never been admitted into the East. In the Western
Church the ancient Latin, commonly called the "Apostles'
Creed," has been long since overlaid by later documents : by
the Creed of Pius V. in the Church of Rome, by the numerous
Confessions of Augsburg, London, Westminster, Geneva, in
the Protestant Churches. But throughout the Eastern Church
the Nicene Creed is still the one bond of faith. It is still
recited in its original tongue by the peasants of Greece. Its
recitation is still the culminating point of the service in the
Church of Russia. The great bell of the Kremlin tower sounds
during the whole time that its words are chanted. It is repeated
aloud in the presence of the assembled people by the Czar at
his coronation. It is worked in pearls on the robes of the
highest dignitaries of Moscow. One of the main grounds of
schism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the
Established Church of Russia 3 was, that the old dissenters
were seized with the belief that the patriarch Nicon had altered
one of the sacred words of the original text of the creed. The
1 e.g. Usia (for ovcrla) ; Homoiision ; Dominum vivificantem (for rb
idipiov, rb faoiroiovv).
2 See Lecture I. p. 95. 8 See Lecture XII.
the Seven General Councils 101
anniversary of the Council is still celebrated 'oii s*>ecia'l days.
Every article of the Nicene Creed is exhibited, according to
the fashion of the Russian Church, in little pictures, and thus
familiarised to the popular mind.
It is necessary to dwell on the Oriental character of the
Nicene Council and Creed, because we cannot rightly under-
stand it without bearing in mind its peculiar origin ; and also,
because, in justice to the Eastern Church, we must remember
that whatever value we attach to this venerable confession,
whatever reverence we pay to this great Council, is due, not to
our own sphere of Christendom, not to the Church of Rome,
but to that remote region with which we have now hardly any
concern. The position of the Nicene Creed in our Liturgy is
a perpetual memorial of the distant East. Other like memorials
remain in the " Kyrie eleison," the " Gloria in excelsis," parts
of the " Te Deum," and the prayer of S. Chrysostom. But
more remarkable than these, as a link uniting our worship with
that of Alexandria and Constantinople, is the Creed which was
elaborated by the Egyptian and Syrian Bishops at Nicaea.
II. But I have also to show that this Oriental assembly, this
Greek confession, have a place in the universal history of the
world.
To a certain degree, and perhaps by a kind of prescriptive
right, this general interest attaches, as their name would imply,
to all the Eastern Councils to which by the Greek, the Latin, or
the Protestant Churches the title of "general" or "oecu-
menical " has been conceded. The eight Councils, as
enumerated by the Latins, the seven as enumerated by the
Greeks, all turned on controversies producing more important
effects than have followed on any action of the Oriental Church
in later times. The doctrines of the first four were raised by
the Emperor Justinian to the level of the Holy Scriptures, and
their decrees to the rank of Imperial laws ; l and they have even
received a limited acknowledgment in the Church of England.
It is well known that in one of the earliest acts of Elizabeth,
which undoubtedly has considerable authority as expressive of
the mind of the foundress of the present constitution of our
Church' the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and
Chalcedon are raised as judges of heresy to the same level as
" the High Court of Parliament, with the assent of the English
1 "Dogmata, sicut sanctas scripturas accipimus, et regulas sicut leges
observamus." In Aulhenticis, collatione ix. tit. vi. De Ecclesiasticis
Regulis et Privilegiis. (Routh's Opusc. i. 363. )
IO2 The Council of Nicaea and
clergy in -their convocation,"! Even at the present day, in
spite of the vast accumulation of dogmatic statements in our
popular Western theology, it is acknowledged by many English
churchmen that "besides the decrees of the four General
Councils, nothing is to be required as matter of belief necessary
for salvation." 2
Still we cannot say that the importance of all these early
Councils is fully recognised. Their official decrees have never
gained a place, and are never even mentioned, in our
formularies. The fifth, sixth, and seventh are rarely named
by Protestant theologians. The fourth (that of Chalcedon) is,
as we have seen, rejected by a large part of the East. The
third (of Ephesus) is repudiated by the Chaldsean Christians ;
and its distinguishing formula, "The Mother of God," has
never been frankly accepted by Protestant Churches.
The Council of Constantinople was avowedly only an Eastern
assembly. Not a single Western bishop was present; and
its oecumenical character, after having been entirely passed
over by the Council of Ephesus, was only tardily acknowledged
by the Council of Chalcedon.
But with the Nicene assembly it is otherwise. Alone of all
the Councils, it still retains a hold on the mass of Christendom.
Its creed, as we just now saw, is the only creed accepted
throughout the Universal Church. The Apostles' Creed and
the Athanasian Creed have never been incorporated into the
ritual of the Greek Church. But the Nicene Creed, Greek
and Eastern though it be, has a place in the liturgies and
confessions of all Western Churches, at least down to the end
of the sixteenth century. It was regarded at the time, and
long afterwards, even by Councils which chafed under the
acknowledgment, as a final settlement of the fundamental
doctrines of Christianity ; and so in a certain sense it has been
regarded by many theologians of later times.
And, if we examine the relations of this Council to the
history of the period, its superiority to the later Councils will
still hold good.
i. Eutychianism, Nestorianism, Apollinarianism, represent
sects which, except in the remote East, have not, nor have ever
had, any lasting significance. But the Arian sect, the occasion
of the Nicene Council, though it also has now long been laid
1 i Eliz. c. i.
2 Bishop Taylor's "Advice to his Clergy," quoted in the Enchiridion
Theologicum, i. 348, and in the Oxford Controversial Sermons of 1856.
the Seven General Councils 103
to sleep, yet for three hundred years after the date of its origin
was a considerable power, both political and religious; and
this, not only in the Eastern regions of its birth, but in our
own Western and Teutonic nations. The whole of the vast
Gothic population which descended on the Roman Empire,
so far as it was Christian at all, held to the faith of
the Alexandrian heretic. Our first Teutonic version of the
Scriptures was by an Arian missionary, Ulfilas. The first
conqueror of Rome, Alaric, the first conqueror of Africa,
Genseric, were Arians. Theodoric the Great, King of Italy,
and hero of the Nibelungen Lied, was an Arian. The vacant
place in his massive tomb at Ravenna is a witness of the
vengeance which the Orthodox took on his memory, when on
their triumph they tore down the porphyry vase in which his
Arian subjects had enshrined his ashes. The ferocious
Lombards were Arians till they began to be won over by their
queen Theodelinda, at the close of the sixth century. But the
most remarkable strongholds of Arianism were the Gothic
kingdoms of Spain and Southern France. In France, it
needed all the power of Clovis, the one orthodox chief of the
barbarian nations, to crush it on the plains of Poitiers. In
Spain, it expired only in the sixth century, when it was
renounced by King Recared in the basilica of Toledo. But
even in that "most Catholic" kingdom its traces have been
thought to remain in the heretical names which elsewhere in
Europe had ceased to exist. The favourite divine of Philip
II., the first librarian of the Escurial, was "Arias Montanus."
And of the intensity of the Spanish struggle between the
ancient expiring heresy and the new triumphant orthodoxy,
three memorials still remain in all Western liturgies, including
our own. One is the constant recitation of what was then
considered the orthodox formula "Gloria Patri, et Filio et
Spiritui Sancto " at the close of every psalm. Another is the
practice (adopted from the Eastern Church) of reciting the
Nicene Creed in its present place before the administration of
the Eucharist, to guard that ordinance against Arian intruders.
The third is the insertion of the words " filioque " into the
Creed a3 an additional safeguard for the Creed itself. 1 These
three innovations (as they then were) are all said to have
proceeded from the Councils of Toledo, in their reaction from
the vanquished Arianism.
1 See Lecture VII.
IO4 The Council of Nicaea and
It implies an immense vitality inherent in the orthodox
doctrine established at Nicaea, that it should have won its way
against such formidable antagonists, and should have securely
seated itself in the heart of the Church for so many subsequent
centuries.
Constantine, indeed, and even at intervals Athanasius
himself, endeavoured to moderate the zeal to which the eager
partisans on both sides pursued their quarrel at the time ; and
looking back from later times, Erasmus 1 in the Reformation,
and Bishop Kaye in our own age, have regarded the controversy
as carried to a pitch beyond any bounds which faith or wisdom
could reasonably sanction. But the importance of its actual
effects at the time, and for some centuries afterwards, on the
opinions and the feelings of Christendom, can hardly be
overstated, and the final result is one of those victories which
go far to justify the cause itself.
Nor has the interest of the controversy entirely ceased with
the final extermination of the Arian sect by the sword of
Clovis, and the conversion of Recared and Theodelinda.
From that time no doubt the continuous existence of the Arian
tradition was broken ; and no system of opinions which has
since arisen can be considered as in any true historical sense
the representative of the old Alexandrian and Gothic heresy.
The Arianism (as it is sometimes called) of Milton, of Whiston,
and of Sir Isaac Newton, differed in three important particulars
(which shall shortly be described 2 hereafter) from the system
of Arius and Eusebius. Nothing is more needed in Eccle-
siastical history than to guard against the illusion of inferring
an identity of belief and feeling, merely from an identity of
name. The Anabaptists of the nineteenth century are hardly
more different from the Anabaptists of the sixteenth, than the
Arians of the seventeenth century were from the Arians of
the fourth.
Still the fundamental principle of the old Arianism, as
separate from the logical form and the political organisation
which it assumed, has hardly ever departed from the Church. 3
It has penetrated where we should least expect to find it.
The theological opinions of many who have thought themselves,
and been thought by others, most orthodox, have been deeply
coloured by the most conspicuous tendencies of the doctrine
1 See Ittig's Council of Nicea, xlvii. 2 See Lecture III.
3 On this more general aspect of the controversy, I shall enlarge in
Lecture VII.
the Seven General Councils 105
of Arius. Often men have been attacked as heretics, only
because they agreed too closely with the doctrine of Athanasius.
" Ingemuit orbis et miratus est se esse Arianum," is a process
which has been strangely repeated, more than once, in the
course of ecclesiastical' history. To track such identity under
seeming differences, and such differences under seeming
identity, is a duty prescribed to the Christian theologian by
the very highest authority.
2. But over and above the magnitude of the question dis-
cussed between Arius and Athanasius, there are other consider-
ations which make the first Nicene Council a fruitful field of
ecclesiastical study.
It was the earliest great historical event, so to speak, which
had affected the whole Church since the close of the Apostolic
age. In the two intervening centuries there had been many
stirring incidents, two or three great writers, abundance of
curious and instructive usages. But all was isolated and frag-
mentary. Even the persecutions are imperfectly known. We
are still in the catacombs : here and there a light appears to
guide .us ; here and there is the authentic grave of a saint and
a martyr, or the altar or picture of a primitive assembly ; but
the regular course of ecclesiastical history is still waiting to
begin, and it does not begin till the Council of Nicsea. Then,
for the first time, the Church meets the Empire face to face.
The excitement, the shock, the joy, the disappointment, the
hope of the meeting communicate themselves to us. It is one
of those moments in the history of the world which occur once,
and cannot be repeated. It is the last point whence we can
look back on the dark, broken road of the second and third
centuries, of which I have just spoken. It is the first point
whence we can look forward to the new and comparatively
smooth and easy course which the Church will have to pursue
for two centuries, indeed, in some sense, for twelve centuries
onwards. The line of demarcation between the Nicene and
the ante-Nicene age, is the most definite that we shall find till
we arrive at the invasion of the barbarians.
The form, too, which this decisive event assumed, is memor-
able as -the first of a series of events which have now become
extinct. The Council of Nicaea is the first "General Council"
the first of that long series of eighteen synods which ended,
and in all probability has ended for ever, in the Council of
Trent. In the church in which was held the last session
of that latest of the Councils, is a vaunting inscription, which
E 2
io6 The Council of Nicaea and
unconsciously conveys the truth that this was the end of the
succession, of which it brought up the rear :
"SACRA LIMINA INGRESSUS
INFRA QILE POSTREMUM
SPIRITUS SANCTUS
DEUS .ETERNUS MUNIFICUS
SOLATOR ECCLESI^E CATHOLICS
PER CONCILIUM MAGNUM LEGITIMUM
ORACULA EFFUDIT,
QUISQUIS ES
MlTTE TIBI PR^EOPTARI
NlC^EAM, CONSTANTINOPOLIM)
CHALCEDONEM, LUGDUNUM,
-VlENNAM, CONSTANTIAM,
FLORENTIAM.
ROMA IPSA HOC NOMINE
TlBI PAR NON MAJUS DEDIT."
Wide as was the difference between the first and the last,
yet still there is a family likeness, which renders each an
illustration of the other; and which, therefore, renders the
study of any one of them a study of all. Of all the institutions
recorded in ecclesiastical history they are, or ought to be, the
most significant. And, if the first Council of Nicaea be the
one which, by its antiquity and its sanctity, commands the
most general homage, we shall have in its sessions the advantage
of observing a Council under the most favourable circumstances.
There are three characteristics which were fixed in the Council
of Nicsea, and which it shared more or less with all that followed.
(a) First, as its name implies, it is the earliest example of
a large assembly professing to represent the voice and the
conscience of the whole Christian community. Meetings and
synods there had been before, but this was the first open
inauguration of them in the face of day. Its title at the time
was, in contradistinction to all which had gone before "The
Great and Holy Synod."
It was the decisive sanction of the doctrine that a free and
numerous assembly is the best channel for arriving at Christian
truth. Obviously this was not the necessary or only course
to have been pursued. In heathen ages, and also in many
Christian ages, decisions have been sought in particular spots,
or from particular persons, oracles, hermits, shrines, gifted
the Seven General Councils 107
men, sovereigns, bishops, popes. But none of these courses
were adopted in the first times of the Church. Even as far
back as the apostolic age the most important question which
agitated the Christian community was determined, not, indeed,
by a gathering of different Churches, but still by an assembly
in some respects far more democratic than any which succeeded.
The Council of Jerusalem consisted not only of the apostles
and elders, but of the brethren also. It was a decision of the
whole Church of Jerusalem, laity as well as clergy. This, as
far as we know, was the last instance of such an extension of
the legislative body of the Church. But the principle of a
popular as distinguished from an individual authority was
recognised in all the provincial synods, and was finally adopted
on the grandest scale at the Nicene Council. Freedom and
deliberation were thus proclaimed to be the best means of
deciding a question of high Christian doctrine. Whether the
means succeeded or not, is not now the question. But it is
remarkable that in that age of despotism and political inactivity
it should have been adopted at all. As it has been said that
the early Christian bishops were the only likenesses of the
tribunes of the ancient Roman republic, so it may be said that
the Councils were the only likenesses of the ancient Roman
senates. The old spirit of liberty, which had died away or
been suppressed everywhere else, revived, or was continued,
in the ecclesiastical synods of the Empire, just as now in
France, free discussion, banished from all other places, still
maintains its hold in the literary and scientific meetings of the
Institute. The Christian Church is not the only religious
system which has had the courage to intrust its highest interests
to the decision of large and, at times, tumultuous assemblies ;
it is 6ne of the curious parallels often observed between
Christianity and the outward forms of the wide-spread religion
of Buddhism, that there also general councils 1 have been called
to decide questions of faith and discipline. But this is the
only parallel. Nothing of the kind existed in ancient Paganism,,
and nothing of the kind has arisen in modern Mahomedanism.
Whatever might be the disadvantages and weaknesses attendant
upon tHe institution, the Christian Church must have the credit
of having made the effort of giving to all its members a voice
in the settlement of its highest interests, and of uniting all the
1 Fort he Buddhist councils see Tumour's translation of the Mahawanso,
i. 11-43. The first council was held B.C. 543 ; the second, B.C. 443 ; the
third, B.C. 309.
io8 The Council of Nicaea and
various elements of which it was composed, from time to time,
for one common purpose.
And they are also the first precedents of the principle of
representative government. The Nicene Council, like those
which followed, and (with the exception of that recorded in
the Acts of the Apostles) like those which preceded, consisted
chiefly, if not exclusively, of bishops. But the bishops at that
time were literally the representatives 1 of the Christian com-
munities over which they presided. They were elected by
universal suffrage, and they considered themselves responsible
to their constituents, to a degree which at times reminds us,
even painfully, of the vices of modern constitutional govern-
ment. Eusebius felt himself bound to explain to his diocese
at Csesarea the grounds on which he had given his vote at
Nicaea; and at Chalcedon, so intense was the fear of their
countrymen entertained by the Egyptian bishops, that they
threw themselves in an agony at the feet of the Council, with
the cry of, "Spare us kill us here if you will but do not
send us home to certain death. The whole province of Egypt
will rise against us." 2
(b) Another characteristic of a General Council first exempli-
fied at Nicsea is stated in somewhat polemical language, but
still with substantial truth, in the well-known words of the
2ist of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England:
" General Councils may not be gathered together but by the
commandment and will of Princes."
What the Article here states controversially as against the
Church of Rome, was a recognised fact and principle in the
historical constitution of a General Council. It was almost
implied in the meaning of the word. An "CEcumenical
Synod," that is, an "Imperial gathering" from the whole
oiKovpcvT}, or Empire (for this was the technical meaning of
the word, even in the Greek 3 of the New Testament), could
be convened only by the Emperor. This was assumed as a
matter of course in the case of Nicaea, and indeed of all the
Eastern Councils. Not only no single bishop, but no single
prince 4 (unless we take the word in its most ancient sense),
1 lvTo\cis. Mansi, Concil. vii. 58.
2 See Mansi, Concil. vii. 57.
3 See Luke ii. I.
4 We must bear in mind, that in the sixteenth century the word " prince "
was used for "sovereign," as, e.g., in the case of Elizabeth, and probably
it was here used in its classical sense for the ' ' Princeps " or Roman Emperor.
the Seven General Councils 109
was sufficient to convene a general assembly from all parts of
that vast territory. A Council was part, as it were, of the
original constitution of the Christian Empire; and however
much disputed afterwards in the entanglement of civil and
ecclesiastical relations in the West, the principle has never
been wholly abandoned. When the Western Empire fell, the
Eastern Emperor still retained the inalienable right ; and when
the Eastern Emperor became inaccessible to the needs of
European Christendom, and a new "Holy Roman Empire"
was erected in the West, then the Emperor of Germany (solely,
or, more properly, conjointly with his Byzantine brother)
succeeded to the rights of Constantine. We shall see in the
forms of the Council of Nicsea the earliest precedents, not so
much of our ecclesiastical synods as of our parliaments, con-
vened by the writ of the sovereign, opened by his personal
presence, swayed by his personal wishes and advice. And if
we look from the first to the fourth General Council, of which
the forms are more fully preserved, and in which perhaps the
independence both of the Roman citizen and of the Christian
bishop had sunk to a lower pitch, we shall see in the reception
of the Emperor Marcian and the Empress Pulcheria, who
came with their whole court to ratify the decrees of Chalcedon,
something more than a mere nominal presidency. The as-
sembled bishops exclaimed (and here I give the words as
reported at the time) "To Marcian, the new Constantine,
the new Paul, the new David, long years long years to our
sovereign lord David. . . . You are the peace of the world,
long life. Your faith will defend you. Thou honourest Christ.
He will defend thee. Thou hast established orthodoxy. . . .
To the august Empress, many years. You are the lights of
orthodoxy. . . . Orthodox from her birth, God will defend
her. Defender of the faith, may God defend her. Pious,
orthodox enemy of heretics, God will defend her. Thou hast
persecuted all the heretics. May the evil eye be averted from
your Empire. Worthy of the faith, worthy of Christ. So are
the faithful sovereigns honoured. . . . Marcian is the new
Constantine, Pulcheria is the new Helena. . . . Your life is
the safety of all ; your faith is the glory of the churches. By
thee the world is at peace; by thee the orthodox faith is
established ; by thee heresy ceases to be : long life to the
Emperor and Empress." 1
1 Mansi, vii. 170.
no The Council of Nicaea and
This secular character (I use the word in no invidious sense),
thus stamped upon the institution of Councils from the first,
they never lost. Western Christendom, separated from the
Byzantine Imperial court, and never completely subjugated to
its own Imperial head in Germany, was not equally depen-
dent on the Emperor for its general assemblies. But they
were still cast in the same Imperial mould. The sanction of
the Emperor was still required. 1 An appeal to a General
Council was the half temporal, half spiritual weapon which the
Emperors and Kings of Europe always held in reserve as a
rejoinder to a Papal interdict. Even so submissive a sovereign
as Philip II. did not hesitate to use the threat to the refractory
Paul IV. Even so late as the Council of Constance, the
Emperor Sigismund appeared in person. In the Council of
Trent, the ambassadors of all the courts of Europe were there
to represent their absent masters. The Imperial ambassador
sits in the highest place, the French the next, and the Spaniard,
unwilling to concede the second place to any one but the most
Catholic king, sits proudly aloof in the centre.
It is important to notice this control and admixture of
secular and lay authority, not only allowed but courted by the
highest and most venerable of ecclesiastical synods, because it
may tend to reconcile sensitive churchmen of our own country
to a like control over English convocations, or Scottish general
assemblies. 2 It further reminds us how the Councils of the
Church, in -the time of their grandeur, were mixed up with the
general history of the world, and thus became the expression of
the age. The Council of Nicsea was, in the eyes of its con-
temporaries, far the most important gathering that had taken
place in the Roman Empire in the time of Constantine, or
even since the virtual suppression of the Roman senate. The
Council of Constance was at least as closely interwoven with
all the passions and feelings of the fifteenth century, as the
Congress of Vienna could have been with those of the
nineteenth. It is well also to remember that this intimate
connection of the Councils with the constitution of the ancient
Empire, furnishes one strong ground for the prediction, which
1 The first Pope, said to have called a Council, is Pelagius IT., A.D. 587.
But the Epistle in which the right is claimed is a forgery. (Robertson, i.
547, 2nd ed. )
2 See " The Councils of the Church," by Dr. Pusey written with the
express intention of allaying the alarms of English churchmen occas : oned
by the theological decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
the Seven General Councils in
I ventured to make just now, that in all probability a General
Council will never be held again. According to the only
precedents universally recognised, an GEcumenical Synod
cannot be summoned except by the Emperor, and the
" Emperor," in that sense of the word in which alone he could
be made available, has ceased to exist. There is now no
longer an Empire of the West ; the modern Empire of Austria
and the modern Empire of France are merely separate
kingdoms under lofty titles. There is, in a truer sense, an
Emperor of the East. But no one will suppose it probable
that the authority of the Russian Czar would ever be recognised
in the kingdoms or Churches of the West, even putting aside
the intense ecclesiastical animosity with which the Latin
Church would regard any such attempt. General Councils were
part and parcel of the Imperial Constitution of Europe but
with the dissolution of that venerable fabric they have, we may
be almost sure, been laid aside in their ancient form never to
reappear.
(c) And this prepares us to consider the remaining portion of
the somewhat harsh, but still, as I said, incontestable, de-
scription of them in the language of the twenty-first Article.
" When they be gathered together " (at that time, we may here
observe, the Article contemplated the recurrence of the event
as not entirely impossible), " forasmuch as they be assemblies
of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and word
of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in
things pertaining unto God." It is absolutely necessary to
claim the freedom of criticism on which these words insist.
With every disposition to honour these assemblies, with every
desire to make allowance for their weaknesses, and to esteem
the results of their labours, it is impossible to understand
them rightly, or even to do justice to their merits, without
remembering throughout that they were assemblies of fallible
men, swayed by the good and evil influences to which all
assemblies are exposed.
We need not adopt the extreme terms of condemnation into
which Gregory Nazianzen l was driven, irritated, no doubt, by
the excesses which he himself witnessed : " I never yet saw a
council of bishops come to a good end." " I salute them afar
off, since I know how troublesome they are." " I never more
will sit in those assemblies of cranes and geese." It is enough
1 Ep. 124, 136 j Carm. xvii. 91.
H2 The Council of Nicaea and
to remember, in the wise language of Dean Milman, how
almost inevitable is the disappointment which we experience
on finding the repulsive aspect which Christianity assumes in
the very assemblies which should represent it in its best
and most attractive form. "A General Council," he justly
observes, 1 " is not the cause but the consequence of religious
dissension. It is unnecessary, and could hardly be convoked,
but on extraordinary occasions to settle some questions which
have already violently disorganised the peace of Christendom.
It is a field of battle in which a long train of animosities and
hostilities is to come to an issue. Men, therefore, meet with
all the excitement, the estrangement, the jealousy, the anti-
pathy, engendered by a fierce and obstinate controversy. They
meet to triumph over their adversaries, rather than dispassion-
ately to investigate truth. Each is committed to his opinions,
each exasperated by opposition, each supported by a host of
intractable followers, each probably with exaggerated notions
of the importance of the question, and that importance seems
to increase, since it has demanded the decision of a general
assembly of Christendom."
Let us approach the Council of Nicoea with these humbler
expectations, and we shall be agreeably surprised to find how
many incidents of moderation and charity and simplicity it
contains amidst much fierce animosity, and much pardonable
enthusiasm.
There is a well-known, perhaps somewhat flippant, passage,
in which Jortin remarks on the possible motives by which
such an assembly would be influenced: "It may be," he
says, " by reverence to the Emperor, or to his councillors and
favourites, or the fear of offending some great prelate (as the
Bishop of Alexandria or of Rome), who had it in his power to
insult, vex, and plague all the bishops within and without his
jurisdiction ; by the dread of passing for heretics, and of being
calumniated, reviled, hated, anathematised, excommunicated,
imprisoned, banished, fined, beggared, starved, if they refused
to submit ; by the love of peace and quiet ; by the hatred of
contention ; by compliance with an active body and imperious
spirit ; by a deference to the majority ; by a love of dictating
and domineering, of applause and respect; by vanity and
ambition ; by a total ignorance of the question in debate, or
a total indifference about it ; by private friendships ; by enmity
1 Latin Christianity, i. 156.
the Seven General Councils 113
and resentment ; by old prejudices ; by hopes of gain ; by an
indolent disposition; by good nature and the fatigue of attend-
ing ; by the desire to be at home, &c., &c., &c." * Many of
these feelings may doubtless have been at work in the sittings
of Nicsea ; indeed the passage must have been partly suggested
by the enumeration of motives in the history of Eusebius. 2
But we have every reason to suppose that such passions had
far less control over the Council of Nicaea than over those
which followed. It would be easy to multiply instances of the
crimes and follies which disfigured the Christian assemblies
of later times. We need not dwell on the exceptional case of
the murder of John Huss at Constance, or repeat how at the
second Council of Ephesus the Bishop of Constantinople was
trampled down and stamped to death by the Bishop of
Alexandria. But it may be well to give one authentic scene
from the Council of Chalcedon, in numbers and in dignity
far the most distinguished of the Seven. 3 I quote from the
Report of the Council itself. The moment is that of the
Imperial officers ordering that Theodoret, the excellent Bishop
of Kars, well known as the commentator and ecclesiastical
historian, should enter the assembly : " And when the most
reverend Bishop Theodoret entered, the most reverend the
Bishops of Egypt, Illyria, and Palestine shouted out ' Mercy
upon us ! the faith is destroyed. The canons of the Church
excommunicate him. Turn him out ! turn out the teacher
of Nestorius ! ' On the other hand, the most reverend the
Bishops of the East, of Thrace, of Pontus, and of Asia, shouted
out * We were compelled [at the former Council] to subscribe
our names to blank papers ; we were scourged into submission.
Turn out the Manichaeans. Turn out the enemies of Flavian ;
turn out the adversaries of the faith ! ' Dioscorus, the most
reverend Bishop of Alexandria, said 'Why is Cyril to be
turned out? It is he whom Theodoret has condemned.'
The most reverend the Bishops of the East shouted out
'Turn out the murderer Dioscorus. Who knows not the
deeds of Dioscorus?' . . . The most reverend the Bishops
of Egypt, Illyria, and Palestine, shouted out 'Long life
to the Empress ! ' The most reverend the Bishops of the
East shouted out 'Turn out the murderers!' The most
reverend the Bishops of Egypt shouted out 'The Empress
turned out Nestorius ; long life to the Catholic Empress ! The
1 Remarks on Eccl. History, i. 188. 2 Eus. V. C. iii. 6.
8 Mansi, vi. 590, 591.
H4 The Council of Nicaea and
Orthodox synod refuses to admit Theodoret.'" Theodoret
then being at last received by the Imperial officers, and taking
his place, the most reverend Bishops of the East shouted out
" ' He is worthy worthy.' The most reverend the Bishops
of Egypt shouted out ' Don't call him bishop, he is no bishop.
Turn out the fighter against God; turn out the Jew/ The
most reverend the Bishops of the East shouted out 'The
Orthodox for the synod. Turn out the rebels ; turn out the
murderers.' The most reverend the Bishops of Egypt ' Turn
out the enemy of God. Turn out the defamer of Christ.
Long life to the Empress, long life to the Emperor, long life to
the Catholic Emperor ! Theodoret condemned Cyril. If we
receive Theodoret, we excommunicate Cyril.'"
At this point the Imperial Commissioners who were present
put a stop to the clamour, as unworthy a meeting of Christian
bishops. We shall, doubtless, agree with them. My object
in recalling so scandalous a scene has been, first, that we may
not form too high a standard of what we are to expect from
the first Council j secondly, that we may be the better able to
do justice to its undoubted superiority over the conduct of the
later assemblies.
But we must not forget the good as well as the evil which
the Councils and not least that of Nicaea shared with all
large assemblies of fallible men everywhere ; namely, the
unconscious moderation which springs up from bringing two
parties face to face with each other. No doubt violent and
extreme partisans are often exasperated against one another
by personal contact and conflict. But the vast mass of inter-
vening shades of opinion is by such meetings drawn more
closely together. Probably no Council has separated without
making some friends who were before enemies, and some
friends closer than before. Such, in an eminent degree, was
the express object and result of the Apostolic Council at Jeru-
salem. No doubt even then there was the separation between
Paul and Barnabas, and the quarrel between Paul and Peter.
But on the whole the assembly brought together, instead of
dividing asunder, the true servants of Christ. It agreed to
tolerate, without approving or condemning, the differences
which it was called to adjudge. The Jewish Apostles gave the
right hand of fellowship to the Apostle of the Gentiles. The
Church of Jerusalem determined not to lay upon the Gentiles
the yoke which it was willing to bear itself. Assemblies so
minded, and so deciding, have doubtless been very rare. But
the Seven General Councils 115
both in intention and effect the Council of Nicaea partook
largely of that first Apostolic example. The estimation in which
we at this moment hold the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea,
is a proof of the kindly feeling which then gathered round
him and his party, and which has never since been entirely
dissipated. The professed object of those who directed the
decisions of the Council was to include as wide a number as
possible ; and every succeeding Council and creed (with what-
ever provocation or justification for doing so) has yet been a
narrowing of the basis on which the first Council took its
stand.
III. Such being the general interest of the Council of
Nicaea, there are several peculiarities in its history which render
the study of it instructive in detail.
1. The original narratives are in great measure derived from
contemporary sources. The Acts, indeed, or Reports of the
Council (such as are preserved in the case of the Councils of
Ephesus and Chalcedon), never existed, or have perished.
But the decrees and the official letters of the Council and of the
Emperor remain ; and we have the accounts, more or less
perfect, of not less than four eye-witnesses.
2. Both amongst these eye-witnesses, and amongst the later
historians, we have the help which in all history, especially
ecclesiastical history, is much to be desired, of the representa-
tions of both sides. As in the history of the Council of Trent
we have the double account of Pallavicini and Sarpi, so here we
have the double account of Athanasius and Eusebius. Gibbon
longs for a Sarpi at Nicaea. But, in fact, we have a Paul Sarpi,
not indeed as regards wisdom or learning, but certainly as
regards his indifference, if not hostility, to the successful party
of the Council, in Eusebius himself. Without entering into the
much-disputed question of the precise shade of his Arianism,
there can be no doubt of his leaning to that side ; and so far,
therefore, it cannot be said that the defeated party have been
left without a spokesman ; and on the same side we must add
the fragments from the avowed Arian, Philostorgius. The
Meletians, in like manner, (to take a smaller section of the
Council,") are represented by Epiphanius ; the Novatians, by
the aged informant of Socrates. Of the three chief historians
of the next generation, two (Socrates and Sozomen) are not
clergymen, but laymen and lawyers ; and of these Socrates is at
times quite remarkable for his philosophical candour ; and the
third, Theodoret, although a bishop and a theologian, belonged
n6 The Council of Nicaea
to the moderate party in the Church, and had at one time been
himself under a grave suspicion of heresy.
3. The legendary tales which have been formed on the basis
of the historical facts have a twofold interest. They well
represent those two classes which Arnold has described in his
history of Rome, 1 " equally remote from historical truth, but in
all other respects most opposite to each other; the one
imaginative but honest, playing with facts, and converting
them into a wholly different form, but addressing itself also to
a different part of the mind; not professing to impart exact
knowledge, but to quicken and raise the perception of what is
beautiful and noble ; the other, tame and fraudulent, deliberately
corrupting truth, in order to minister to national or individual
vanity, but substituting in the place of reality the represent-
ations of interested or servile falsehood." To the former of
these classes belongs, in the old Roman history, the legend
of the fall of Veii ; in the history of Nicsea, the legends of the
different saints who were present. To the latter belong, in
the Pagan history, the pretended victory of Camillus over the
Gauls ; in the Christian history, the inventions intended to
exalt the see of Rome, or to blacken the character of the
Arians. 2 Both are instructive. The former convey to us a
sense of the deep impression made by the Council on the
popular mind. The latter exhibit to us what the history would
have been (but is not) had it taken place according to the
theories and wishes of later times.
4. The details which, from whatever quarter, we thus gain of
the Nicene Council are far more important than they would be
in any other Council. They disclose to us a section of the
different layers of society in that period. The effect of this is,
that we share in the good fortune of those who attended the
Council, and through their eyes become personally acquainted
with many of the most famous personages of that age some
famous in all ages. Most of them we shall sufficiently see in
the Council itself. 3 But there are two whose eminence so far
transcends the limits of that particular event, and the under-
standing of whose characters is so necessary for the understand-
ing of the whole event, as to demand a special notice. It will
be worth while to have known something of the Council, if
only it enables us to take a nearer view of two men so
extraordinary as Constantine 4 and Athanasius. 5
1 i. 393. 2 Lectures III. and V. 3 Lecture III.
4 Lecture VI. 6 Lecture VII.
LECTURE III
THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL
IN the close of the month of May, 1853, it was my good
fortune to be descending, in the moonlight of an early morning,
from the high wooded steeps of one of the mountain ranges of
Bithynia. As the dawn rose, and as we approached the foot of
these hills, through the thick mists which lay over the plain,
there gradually broke upon our view the two features which
mark the city of Nicsea.
Beneath us lay the long inland lake the Ascanian Lake
which, communicating at its western extremity by a small
inlet with the Sea of Marmora, fills up almost the whole
valley; itself a characteristic of the conformation of this
part of Asia Minor. Such another is the Lake of Apollonius,
seen from the summit of the Mysian Olympus. Such another
is the smaller lake seen in traversing the plain on the way from
Broussa.
At the head of the lake appeared the oblong space enclosed
by the ancient walls, of which the rectangular form indicates
with unmistakable precision the original founders of the city.
It was the outline given to all the Oriental towns built by
the successors of Alexander and their imitators. Alexandria,
Antioch, Damascus, Philadelphia, Sebaste, Palmyra, were all
constructed on the same model of a complete square, inter-
sected by four straight streets adorned with a colonnade on
each side. This we know to have been the appearance of
Nicsea, 1 as founded by Lysimachus and rebuilt by Antigonus.
And this is still the form of the present walls, which, although
they enclose a larger space than the first Greek city, yet are
evidently as early as the time of the Roman Empire ; little later,
if at all, than the reign of Constantine. Within their circuit
all is now a wilderness ; over broken columns, and through
tangled thickets, the traveller with difficulty makes his way
to the wretched Turkish village of Is-nik (eis Nucatav), which
occupies the centre of the vacant space. In the midst of this
village, surrounded by a few ruined mosques on whose sum-
mits stand the never-failing storks of the deserted cities of the
East, remains a solitary Christian church, dedicated to " the
1 Strabo, xii. 565.
117
'
n8 The Council of Nicaea
Repose of the Virgin." Within the church is a rude picture
commemorating the one event which, amidst all the vicissitudes
of Nicaea, has secured for it an immortal name.
To delineate this event, to transport ourselves back into the
same season of the year, the chestnut woods then as now
green with the first burst of summer, the same sloping hills, the
same tranquil lake, the same snow-capped Olympus from far
brooding over the whole scene, but, in every other respect, how
entirely different ! will be my object in this Lecture.
The meeting of a General Council is, as I have elsewhere
said, in ecclesiastical history, what a pitched battle is in military
history, and similar questions naturally rise in speaking of each.
I. The first question is, Why was it fought ?
Two opposite forces concurred in bringing about the Council
of Nicaea.
i. The first was the Arian controversy. To enter into the
details of the contest would lead me too far away from the
subject, and they have been told sufficiently in histories acces-
sible to all. But three points must be briefly mentioned to
mark its precise connection with the events of the time.
First : It was distinguished from all modern controversies on
like subjects by the extremely abstract region within which it
was confined. The difficulties which gave rise to the heresy of
Arius had but a slight resemblance to those which have given
birth to the opinions which have borne his name in modern
times. He was led to adopt his peculiar dogma from a fancied
necessity arising out of the terms "Father" and "Son;"
" begotten " and " unbegotten." The controversy turned on the
relations of the Divine Persons in the Trinity, not only before
the Incarnation, before Creation, before Time, but before the
first beginnings of Time. " There was " the Arian doctrine did '
not venture to say "a time" but "there was when He was
not." It was the excess of dogmatism founded upon the most
abstract words in the most abstract region of human thought.
Secondly : A serious cause of the apprehension which the
Arian doctrine excited, when the Orthodox considered the
ultimate consequences to which it might lead them, was not so
much its denial or infringement of the Divinity of Christ
(although the controversy naturally opened into this further
question) as its making two gods l instead of one, and thus
relapsing into Polytheism. Polytheism, Paganism, Hellenism,
1 For this "polytheism" of the Arians, see Dr. Newman's note on
Athanasius's Treatises, i. p. 221, and Dr. Pusey's note on Joel iii. 9, p. 137.
Meeting of the Council 119
was the enemy from which the Church had just been delivered
by Constantine ; and this was the enemy under whose dominion
it was feared that the dividing, dogmatising spirit of Arius might
bring them back. Greece and the East, far more than Italy and
the West, were the true native seats of the old Pagan idolatries,,
and therefore the Eastern, far more than the Western, Church
was sensitive on the subject of anything that tended, even
remotely, to revive the multiplication of deities. " I believe in
God" was the usual formula of the Western creeds. But,,
irrespectively of the Council of Nicaea, the formula of the Eastern
creeds was "I believe in one 1 God" Whether or not the
Polytheistic conclusion was fairly to be deduced from the Arian
doctrine, it is certain that this was the inference which the
Orthodox party feared, and to this fear peculiar significance was-
given by the time and place in which the Arian doctrine first
arose.
Thirdly (which is the most important point in reference to
the actual convention of the council), was the intense vehemence
with which the controversy was carried on. When we perceive
the abstract questions on which it turned, when we reflect that
they related not to any dealings of the Deity with man, not even,
properly speaking, to the- Divinity or the Humanity of Christ,
nor to the doctrine of the Trinity (for all these points were
acknowledged by both parties), but to the ineffable relations of
the Godhead before the remotest beginning of time, it is difficult
to conceive that by inquiries such as these the passions of
mankind should be roused to fury. Yet so it was at least in
Egypt, where it first began. All classes took part in it, and
almost all took part with equal energy. " Bishop rose against
Bishop," says Eusebius, "district against district, only to be
compared to the Symplegades dashed against each other on a
stormy day." 2 So violent were the discussions that they were
parodied in the Pagan theatres, and the Emperor's statues were
broken in the public squares in the conflicts which took place.
The common name by which the Arians and their system were
designated (and we may conclude that they were not wanting in
retorts) was the maniacs the Ariomaniacs, the Ariomania; 3
and their frantic conduct on public occasions afterwards goes
1 See Rufinus in Symb. 4, and the note in Professor Heurtley's Harmonia
Symbolica, p. 127. The same feeling appears in the earnestness of the
Eastern Church in behalf of the Single Procession. See Lecture I. p. 95..
2 Eus. V. C. iii. 4. .
8 See Newman's note on Athanasius's Treatises, i. 91.
I2O The Council of Nicaea
far to justify the appellation. Sailors, millers, and travellers
sang the disputed doctrines at their occupations or on their
journeys : x " every corner, every alley of the city " (this is said
afterwards of Constantinople, but must have been still more true
of Alexandria) " was full of these discussions the streets, the
market-places, the drapers, the money-changers, the victuallers.
Ask a man 'how many oboli,' he answers by dogmatising on
generated and ungenerated being. Inquire the price of bread,
and you are told, ' The Son is subordinate to the Father/ Ask
if the bath is ready, and you are told * The Son arose out of
nothing.'" 2
2. This was one side of the scene. On the other side arose
a power and a character hitherto unknown in the Christian
Church. The Emperor of the world now for the first time
appeared in the arena of theological controversy. He entered
upon his relations to the Church as a traveller enters a new
country with high expectations, with hasty conclusions, with
bitter disappointments. Of all these disappointments none
was so severe as that which he_ felt when first he became
acquainted with the fact that the Christian as well as the
heathen commonwealth was torn by factions. It had broken
upon him gradually first at Aries, then at Rome, when the
African controversy of the Donatists was brought before him.
But the culminating point was their wild outbreak, as it must
have seemed to him, in the important province of Egypt. We
know his feelings from himself. In the celebrated letter which
he addressed to the Alexandrian Church however much it
may have been suggested or modified by one or other of his
episcopal advisers the sentiments are so like what he expressed
on other occasions, that we may fairly adopt them as his own.
He describes (as usual, with the attestation of an oath 3 ) his
mission of uniting the world under one head. He expresses the
hope with which he turned from the distracted West to the
Eastern regions of his empire, as those from which Divine light
had first sprung. " But, oh ! divine and glorious Providence,
what wound has fallen on my ears nay, rather on my heart ! "
And then, with an earnestness which it is difficult not to believe
sincere, and with arguments which modern theologians have
visited with the severest condemnation, but which the ancient
and Orthodox historian, Socrates, has not hesitated to call
1 See Lecture IV.
2 Greg. Nyss. de Deitate Fil. iii. 466. (Neander, iv. 61.)
3 See Lecture VL
Meeting of the Council 121
" wonderful and full of wisdom," l he entreats the combatants
" to abandon these futile and interminable disputes, and to
return to the harmony which became their common faith."
" Give me back my calm days, and my quiet nights ; light and
cheerfulness instead of tears and groans." He had come as far
as Nicomedia, the capital of the East ; he entreats them to open
for him the way to the East, and to enable him to see them and
all rejoicing in restored freedom and unity. 2 His letter was in
vain. The controversy had gone too far. The wound could
be healed only by an extraordinary remedy. That remedy the
Emperor was determined to provide. With the ardent desire
for enforcing unanimity on those whom he was now called to
govern, he combined a vague but profound reverence for the
character and powers of the heads of the Christian community.
From the union of these two feelings sprang (as he himself tells
us, "by a divine inspiration") the first idea of convening a
Council of the representatives of the whole Church. He may
have been advised by the clergy 3 who were about him ; but he
declares, and his declaration is confirmed by history, that the
main conception, under God, was due to himself only. And if
the idea was his, still more exclusively so was its execution. Not
till many years afterwards was the claim put forward, that
Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, had combined with him in convening
the assembly. 4 The little gatherings in each diocese, often
hardly more in numbers than the meeting of the vestry of a
large parish, had been called together in former times by the
Bishops of the respective dioceses. But the gathering of the
Bishops themselves, from all parts of the Empire, could be
effected only by a central authority which they all alike
acknowledged ; and in the beginning of the fourth century that
authority could be found nowhere but in the Emperor.
Complimentary letters, accordingly, were addressed by him to
all the Bishops. One of these has been preserved. It alludes
to some similar intention (of which no other record exists) on
the part of a small assembly of eighteen Bishops, which had met
at Ancyra, in Galatia, nine years before, and then proceeds at
once to name the place where the Council should meet. 5
II. This leads us to ask what caused the selection of the
1 i. 8 : Oavfj-affra Kai <ro(f>las fj.effrd. None of the ancient historians condemn
the letter.
2 Eus. V, C. ii. 68-73. - Ruf. i. i.
4 Mansi (Cone. ii. 637).
6 Anal. Nic. 21, or " Syriac Miscellanies," p. i.
122 The Council of Nicaea
locality. In General Councils, as in battles, this has always
been a very important question. Look at Trent. Its situation
immediately under the Alps, yet on the Italian side, exactly
expresses the peculiarity of the assembly convened there. It
was to be as near the dominions of the Emperor as was possible,
without being altogether out of reach of the dominions of the
Pope. It was to come as close to the confines of Protestantism
as it could without crossing the barriers which parted it from
them. Look at Pisa. It seems, so say those concerned in the
event, 1 " as if the place was made for a council ; " a fertile plain
abounding in gardens and vineyards for provisions and wine ; a
river communicating with the sea accessible to French, Italians,
and Germans. Look at Constance. Here, again, was a frontier
situation a free city, therefore, to a certain extent, neutral
between the contending parties on the banks of a large lake,
which would both furnish easy mode of access, and also assist
in furnishing provisions for so great an assemblage, especially
fish in time of Lent. A name, too, of happy omen " Con-
stantia," which alone is said to have induced the Pope to
consent to the locality.
Not unlike to the motives which determined these sites of
the great Western Councils, were those, as far as we can see,
which determined the site of the chief Council of the East.
One reason is expressly alleged by the Emperor himself its
healthy situation. 2 The mortality which took place amongst
the Bishops at Ephesus, the violent disputes which raged
amongst the medical authorities at Trent, as to the salubrity of
the place, show the importance attached to this ground of selec-
tion. It is not, however, the reason which might have been
expected in the case of Nicsea. The rich alluvial plain had a
character for insalubrity, especially in summer, 3 the very season
when the Council was assembled ; and, according to tradition,
as we shall see, two Bishops died during the session. But
there were also political and religious reasons. Constantinople
was not yet founded ; by the time of the second Council, this,
the capital of the Eastern Empire, was at once chosen for the
gathering of the Eastern Church. But, although the precise
locality of the capital was not yet fixed, yet its general atmo-
sphere, so to speak, hung already over the shores of thePropontis.
Already this was the resort of the Eastern Caesars; and
Nicomedia, the ancient capital of Bithynia, only twenty miles
1 L'Enfant, Concile de Pise, ii. 26. z Syriac Misc. p. I.
3 Strabo, xii. p. 565.
Meeting of the Council 123
from Nicaea, had, since the time of Diocletian, been chosen as
the capital of the East. Nicomedia was probably rejected for
two reasons. As in the case of Constance and Trent, a city not
actually the seat of government would be more appropriate for
the purpose of a sacred assembly. And again, considering the
controversy at stake, it would hardly have been fitting to have
held the meeting in Nicomedia, where the Bishop, Eusebius,
had taken so active a part in defence of one of the combatants,
and had already convoked a synod of Arian Bishops l in the
neighbourhood. The second capital of Bithynia, therefore,
Nicaea, naturally presented itself; its lake furnished means of
access from the Propontis, and it was sufficiently near the Im-
perial residence. " The Bishops of Italy, and from the rest of
the countries of Europe, are coming " these are the Emperor's
own words "and I shall be at hand as a spectator and
participator in what is done." 2 Finally, the name, as afterwards
in the case of Constance, was highly important. It was
" Nicsea," the city of " victory," or "conquest." Its coins bore
a figure of Victory. This fell in with Constantine's favourite
title and watchword. 3 He was just fresh from the victory, over
his second rival, which caused him to assume the surname of
Nicetes the Victor, or the Conqueror. The motto seen, or
alleged to be seen, in the apparition of the cross before his
earlier victory, was the same word, eV TOVTW vt/ca " By this
conquer ; " and Eusebius specially dwells on the strains of
conquest 4 and victory, which harmonised with the name of the
place, and regards the Council itself as a thank-offering for the
victory just gained by the Emperor over all his enemies. 5 " It
was a city, "he says, "fitting for the synod called after Victory,
' the City of Victory,' or ' Nicaea.' " 6
III. We are thus brought to the next point in connection
with the convention of the Council, its date. The year of
Christ 325 was the twentieth year of the reign of Constantine,
reckoning from the 25th of July, 306, when he had been pro-
claimed at York. Every tenth year of an Imperial reign was
celebrated with solemn games and festivities, in recollection of
1 Soz. L 15. 2 Analecta Nic. 2i._ 3 See Lecture VI.
* V. C. iv. 47 : J) <rvvo8os tiriviicios %v . . . eirl r}\v Kar' e-^dpwv Kal
iro\eiJ.l(av VIK V eVl r^s NiKotas OUTTJS tiriTeXovffct. Compare Eus. Laud.
Const, v. 1 8.
6 V. C. iii. 7 : Tt ? G.VTOV ffcoTTJpi rrjs KO.T' t^QpSav Kal
Tf'is averidei -^apiffri] lov.
V. C. iii. 6. : viKirjs firuvvfj-oS) TJ Nt/caTa.
124 The Council of Nicaea
the original conditions under which Augustus accepted the
Imperial power, namely, that it should be renewed at the end of
every ten years. 1 " The memory of this comedy," says Gibbon,
" was preserved to the latest ages of the Empire ; " and, in the
case of Constantine, it was characteristically blended with
the events following his conversion. Of the Decennalia, or
celebration of his tenth year, we have no account. But the
Tricennalia, or thirtieth year, was marked by the dedication of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem ; 2 and the
Vicennalia, or twentieth year, was expressly chosen as the time
in which the solemnities of the first (Ecumenical Council might
act the part usually played by mere pomp and festivity. 3 And
if under any circumstances this would have been appropriate,
much more so was it in the peculiar conjuncture of this anni-
versary. It was little more than a year since Constantine, by
the victory over Licinius to which I have just referred, became
Emperor of the East as well as of the West. An Eastern
Council would, in fact, have been almost impossible before this
time, and accordingly the Arian controversy was of necessity
allowed to roll on, unchecked, for five years, till the restoration
of peace and the close of the civil war enabled the Emperor to
turn his attention to the subject, and to make his last attempt
to heal it. The year of the meeting of the Council, therefore,
of itself, indicates the state of the world at large. In place and
time alike, it marks the final victory of Constantine over his
enemies, the settlement of the Eastern Empire, and the
connection of that Empire with the fortunes of the Eastern
Church.
The actual month and day of the meeting are more difficult
to ascertain. The date of the opening varies from May 20 to
May 29, June 14 and June 19. It is enough for our purpose
to know that it took place somewhere near Whitsuntide, at the
beginning of the summer. This was the usual time of the
gathering of the Eastern Councils, 4 and was probably fixed
with a view to the reopening of the navigation of the Mediter-
ranean, when the winter storms were over and the warm weather
1 Dio Cass. iii. 16. 2 Eas. V. C. iv. 47.
8 Eus. V. C. iv. 47 ; Soz. H. E. i. 25.
4 The Greeks call the Sunday after Ascension Day "The Sunday of the
Holy Fathers," or of the "318 Theophori at Nic?ea." Heinichen on Eus.
V. C. iii. 15. Smith, De Ecclesise Grsecoe hodierno Statu, p. 76. The
Syrians celebrate it on July I ; the Armenians on Sept. 7 ; the Egyptians
on Nov. 5. See Lecture V.
Meeting of the Council 125
rendered travelling easy. In this instance the time would be
further narrowed by the desire of the Emperor to combine it
with the 25th of July, the anniversary of his accession, with
which, as we shall see, the formal proceedings of the Council
were closed, though the members appear not to have dispersed
till the 25th of August. 1
IV. It was, then, at such a time and to such a place, with
the feelings inspired by such a conjuncture as I have described,
that, in the close of May or beginning of June, Nicasa was ap-
proached by the representatives of the Christian Church from
every part of the Eastern Empire, and from a few spots of the
Western also. The mode of their travelling must be observed,
not only as characteristic of the manners of the time, but as
decisive of the authority by which they were summoned.
Letters were addressed, doubtless, on this as on a previous
lesser occasion in the West, to the civil authorities, enjoining
the supplies necessary for the journey. The posting arrange-
ments of the empire made such a convention far more easy
than would have been the case at any period in the middle
ages. The great lines of communication were like railroads,
straight as arrows, from one extremity of the Empire to the
other. From Bordeaux to Constantinople, a few years later,
we have the record of two hundred post stations (/xovai) and
ninety-one inns ; an inn at the interval of every half-day's
journey. 2 Each Bishop was to have two presbyters and three
slaves 3 as his retinue. They travelled partly in public
carriages, 4 partly on horses, asses, and mules, provided for
the purpose, both for riding and carrying baggage. 5 The
precedent thus established was never dropped, and the
summoning of a Council was always known throughout the
Empire by the stir along the roads in every direction. At
later Councils we hear of the indecent haste with which
Bishops might be seen 6 galloping at full speed to reach the
appointed place in time, the horses knocked up by their
impatience, or at times detained, as would not unfrequently
1 Alexander (of Byzantium ?) describes it as ending in September (Photius,
Bib. 473) ; according to the later Greek traditions it lasted three (Phot. Bib.
473) or six" years (ib. 66). See Beveridge's Synodicon, ii. 42.
2 Itin. Burd. p. 548. See Dr. Newman's notes on Ath. Hist. Tracts,
i. 50.
3 Eus. H. E. x. 8.
4 Eus. H. E. x. 5 : Srj/t^o-toj/ ox^a. V. C. iii. 6 : 5f]/ui.6(rios Sp6fj.cs.
5 Theod. H. E. i. 6 : opevtrt Kal ovois Kal iip.i6vois Kal
6 Ammian. xxi. 16.
126 The Council of Nicasa
happen at the end of an Eastern spring, by the flooding of
rivers. 1
This (varied no doubt by the arrival in vessels across the
Ascanian Lake) must have been the general aspect of the
gathering of the Council of Nicsea. They came, says Eusebius,
as fast as they could run, in almost a frenzy of excitement and
enthusiasm. 2 The actual crowd must have been enough to
have metamorphosed the place. It was indeed a number far
below the enormous crowds which beset the later Councils.
At Nicasa the highest calculation, in the distorted accounts of
later times, fixes the number at more than 2ooo. 3 This, if we
include all the presbyters and attendants, is probably correct.
The actual number of Bishops, variously stated in the earlier
authorities as 2i8, 4 25o, 5 270,^ or 3oo, 7 was finally believed to
have been 320 or 3i8, 8 and this in the Eastern Church has so
completely been identified with the event that the Council is
often known as that of "the 318." It is a proof of the import-
ance of the event, that even so trivial a circumstance as the
number should be made the groundwork of more than one
mystical legend. In the Greek numerals it was T I H ; i. e.
T for the cross, I H, for the sacred name 'fyo-ov?. 9 It was 10
also supposed that their number was prefigured in the 318
slaves of Abraham. It became the foundation of seeking
mystical numbers for the later Councils. The greatest of
all the Eastern Councils, in numbers and dignity, that of
Chalcedon, prided itself on being just double that of Nicaea,
636. The Council of Constantinople, which deposed Ignatius
and exalted Photius in the ninth century, prided itself on
being exactly the same number, 318. The Alexandrians,
after two Arabian historians, 11 giving the sum total of the
Council as 2348, represent the rest as the grand gathering
of all the heretics of the world, Sabellians, Mariolaters, Arians,
1 As at the Council of Ephesus. (Robertson, i. 445.)
2 V. C. iii. 6 : old TWOS curb vv<ro"r]s edeov ol Travres ev TrpoOv/j-ta irctfrf}.
3 2340 (Macrizi, 31) ; 2848 (Mansi, ii. p. 1073 ; Eutychius, Ann. i.
440).
4 Anal. Nic. 34. 6 Eus. V. C. iii. 8.
6 Eustathius (apud Theod. i. 8), who, however, adds that he had not
examined the matter closely.
7 Athan. Hist. Monach. c. 66 ; Apol. c. Arian. c. 23, 25 ; De Synod.
c. 43.
8 Athan. ad. Afr. c. 2 ; Soc. i. 8 ; Soz. i. 17 j (320) Theod. i. 7.
9 Ambrose, De Fide, i. 18. 10 Ibid. i. I.
11 Macrizi, 31 ; Eutychius, Ann. i. 440.
Meeting of the Council 127
and that the 318 were the Orthodox and steadfast minority.
Two still stranger stories in connection with the number will
appear as we proceed. 1
But it was the diversity of the persons, and the strongly
marked characters dividing each from each, which, more than
any mere display of numbers, constituted their peculiar interest.
In the conventional pictures of the Council, such, for example,,
as that which still exists at Nicaea, the figures are almost in-
distinguishable from each other, with the exception of the
small knot of Arians, who are represented as grouped together
in the centre, bearing the marks of their discomfiture in their
looks of extreme disgust, and the sign of their heresy in the
coal-black colour of their complexions. But this was far from
being the true aspect of the assembly as it was first seen,
before the theological differences had been fully developed,
and whilst the natural differences were the most prominent.
Eusebius, himself an eye-witness, as he enumerates the various-
characters from various countries, of various age and position,
thus collected, compares the scene either with the diverse
nations 2 assembled at Pentecost, or with a garland of flowers
gathered in season, of all manner of colours, woven together as
a peace-offering after the tranquillisation of the Empire ; 3 or
with a mystic dance, in which every actor performs a part of
his own, 4 to complete a sacred ceremony. There were present,
the learned and the illiterate, courtiers and peasants, old and
young, aged Bishops on the verge of the grave, beardless
deacons just entering on their office ; 5 and it was an assembly
in which the difference between age and youth was of more
than ordinary significance; for it coincided with a marked
transition in the history of the world. The new generation
had been brought up in peace and quiet. They could just
remember the joy diffused through the Christian communities by
the edict of toleration published in their boyhood ; but they had
themselves suffered nothing. Not so the older, and by far the
larger part of the assembly. They had lived through the last
and worst of the persecutions, and they now came like at
regiment out of some frightful siege or battle, decimated and
mutilated by the tortures or the hardships they had undergone.
There must have been some of the aged inhabitants of Nicaea
who remembered the death 6 of the two martyrs, Tryphon and
Respicius, who, in the reign of Decius, had been dragged
1 Lecture V. a V. C. iii. 7. 3 Ibid. iii. 7.
4 Ibid. iii. 8, 9. 6 Ibid. iii. 8. 6 See Tillemont, iii. 33.
128 The Council of Nicsea
through the streets of the city, bleeding from their wounds,
in the depth of winter. There must be some who retained
from their grandfathers the recollection of that still earlier
and more celebrated persecution in Bithynia, recorded by
Pliny in his letters to Trajan. Most of the older members
must have lost a friend or a brother. Many still bore the
marks of their sufferings. Some uncovered their sides and
backs to show the wounds inflicted by the instruments of
torture. On others were the traces of that peculiar cruelty
which distinguished the last persecution, the loss of a right
eye, or the searing of the sinews of the leg, 1 to prevent
their escape from working in the mines. 2 Both at the time
and afterwards, it was on their character as an army of
confessors and martyrs, 3 quite as much as on their character
as an CEcumenical Council, that their authority reposed.
In this respect no other Council could approach them, and,
in the whole proceedings of the assembly, the voice of an old
confessor was received almost as an oracle.
V. They assembled in the first instance in one of the chief
buildings of Nicaea, apparently for the purpose of a thanks-
giving and a religious reunion. Whether it was an actual
church may be questioned. Christians, no doubt, there had
been in Bithynia for some generations. Already in the
second century Pliny had found them in such numbers that
the temples were deserted, and .the sacrifices neglected. But
it would seem that on this occasion a secular building was
fitted up as a temporary house of prayer. At least the
traditional account of the place where their concluding
prayers were held exactly agrees with Strabo's account of the
ancient gymnasium of Nicsea. It was a large building,
shaped like a basilica, with an apse at one end, planted in
the centre of the town, and thus commanding down each
of the four streets a view of the four gates, and therefore
called " Mesomphalos," the "Navel" of the city. 4 Whether,
however, this edifice actually was a church or not, its use
as such on this occasion served as a precedent for most
of the later Councils. From the time of the Council of
Chalcedon, they have usually been held within the walls
of churches. But for this, the first Council, the church, so
1 Eus. H. E. viii. 12.
2 Chrysostom, i. 609. 3 Ibid. i. 609.
4 See Strabo (xii. 565) ; and Gregory the Presbyter, De Patr. Nic.
Cone., as quoted in Mansi, ii. 727.
Meeting of the Council 129
far as it was a church, was only used at the beginning and
the end.
After these thanksgivings were over, the members of the
assembly must have been collected according to the divisions
which shall now be described.
i. The groupe which, above the rest, attracts our attention,
is the deputation from the Church of Egypt. Shrill above
all other voices, vehement above all other disputants,
" brandishing their arguments," as it was described by one
who knew them well, 1 "like spears, against those who
sate under the same roof, and ate off the same table as
themselves," were the combatants from Alexandria, who
had brought to its present pass the question which the
Council was called to decide. Foremost in that groupe in
dignity, though not in importance or in energy, was the
aged Alexander, whose imprudent sermon had provoked the
quarrel, and whose subsequent vacillation had encouraged it.
He was the Bishop, not indeed of the first, but of the most
learned, see of Christendom. He was known by a title
which he alone officially bore in that assembly. He was
"the Pope." "The Pope of Rome" was a phrase which
had not yet emerged in history. But "Pope of Alexandria"
was a well-known dignity. Papa, that strange and uni-
versal mixture of familiar endearment and of reverential awe,
extended in a general sense to all Greek Presbyters and all
Latin Bishops, was the special address which, long before the
names of patriarch or of archbishop, was given to the head of
the Alexandrian Church. 2
In the Patriarchal Treasury at Moscow is a very ancient
1 Theod. i. 6.
2 This peculiar Alexandrian application of a name, in itself expressing
simple affection, is thus explained : Down to Heraclas (A.D. 230), the
Bishop of Alexandria, being the sole Egyptian bishop, was called "Abba"
(father), and his clergy "Elders." From his time more bishops were
created, who then received the name of " abba," and consequently the name
of "Papa" (ab-aba, pater patrum = grandfather) was appropriated to the
Primate. The Roman account (inconsistent with facts) is that the name
was first -given to Cyril, as representing the Bishop of Rome in the
Council of Ephesus (Suicer, in voce). The name was fixed to the Bishop
of Rome in the 7th century. It has been fantastically explained as : i.
Poppcea, from the short life of each pope. 2. Pa, for Pater. 3. Pap, suck.
4. Pap, breast. 5. Pa (Paul) Pe (Peter). 6. ircnra? ! (admiration). 7.
Papos, "keeper" (Oscan). 8. Pappas, chief slave. 9. Pa(\er) Pa(tnss,).
10. Pa, sound of a father's kiss. See Abraham Echellensis, De Origine
Nom. Papse, 60.
F
130 The Council of Nicaea
scarf, or " omophorion," said to have been given by the
Bishop of Nicaea in the seventeenth century to the Czar
Alexis, and to have been left to the Church of Nicsea by
Alexander of Alexandria. It is white, and is rudely worked
with a representation of the Ascension ; possibly in allusion
to the first Sunday of their meeting. This relic, true or
false, is the nearest approach we can now make to the bodily
presence of the old theologian. The shadow of death is
already upon him ; in a few months he will be beyond the
reach of controversy.
But close 1 beside the Pope Alexander is a small insig-
nificant 2 young man, of hardly twenty-five years of age, of
lively manners 3 and speech, and of bright, serene coun-
tenance. Though he is but the Deacon, the chief Deacon, 4
or Archdeacon, of Alexander, he has closely riveted the
attention of the assembly by the vehemence of his argu-
ments. He is already taking the words out of the Bishop's
mouth, and briefly acting in reality the part he had before,
as a child, 5 acted in name, and that, in a few months, he
will be called to act both in name and in reality. In
some of the conventional pictures of the Council his humble
rank as a Deacon does not allow of his appearance. But his
activity and prominence 6 behind the scenes made enemies
for him there, who will never leave him through life. Any
one who has read his passionate invectives afterwards may
form some notion of what he was when in the thick of his
youthful battles. That small insignificant Deacon is the great
Athanasius.
Next after the Pope and Deacon of Alexandria, we must
turn to one of its most important Presbyters the parish
priest of its principal church, which bore the name of
Baucalis, and marked the first beginnings of what we
should call a parochial system. 7 In appearance he is the
1 Gelas. ii. 7 ; Theod. i. 26 ; Soc. i. 8. 8 Julian, Ep. 51.
3 Greg. Naz. Or. 219. 4 See Lecture VII.
5 See Lecture VI. 6 Ath. Apol. c. Ar. 6 ; Soz. i. 17.
7 It was the earliest church in Alexandria. It contained the tomb of
S. Mark, and in it took place the election of the patriarch. It stood near
the sea shore, on a spot which derived its name (Boucalia) from the
pasturage of cattle. (Neale's Hist, of the Alex. Church, i. 7, 9.) It stood
on the shores of the present harbour. The mosque which was built from
its remains, and which bore the name of " the Thousand Pillars," was
pulled down by the late Viceroy of Egypt. I saw the last traces of it
in 1862.
Meeting of the Council 131
very opposite of Athanasius. He is sixty years of age, very
tall and thin, and apparently unable to support his stature;
he has an odd way of contorting and twisting himself,
which his enemies compare to the wrigglings of a snake. 1
He would be handsome but for the emaciation and deadly
pallor of his face, and a downcast look, imparted by a weak-
ness of eyesight. At times his veins throb and swell, and
his limbs tremble, as if suffering from some violent internal
complaint, the same, perhaps, that will terminate one day
in his sudden and dreadful death. There is a wild look
about him, which at first sight is startling. His dress and
demeanour are these of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long
coat with short sleeves, 2 and a scarf of only half size, such
as was the mark of an austere life ; and his hair hangs in a
tangled mass over his head. He is usually silent, but at
times breaks out into fierce excitement, such as will give the
impression of madness. Yet, with all this, there is a sweet-
ness in his voice, and a winning, earnest manner, which
fascinates those who come across him. Amongst the religi-
ous ladies of Alexandria he is said to have had from the
first a following of not less than seven hundred. This
strange, captivating, moon-struck giant is the heretic Arius,
or, as his adversaries called him, the madman of Ares, or
Mars. 3 Close beside him was a groupe of his countrymen,
of whom we know little, except their fidelity to him, through
good report and evil : Saras, like himself a presbyter, from
the Libyan province ; Euzoius, a deacon of Egypt ; Achillas,
a reader ; 4 Theonas, Bishop of Marmarica in the Cyrenaica ;
and Secundus, Bishop of Ptolemais, in the Delta. 5
These were the most remarkable deputies from the Church
of Alexandria. But from the interior of Egypt came characters
of quite another stamp ; not Greeks, nor Grecised Egyptians,
but genuine Copts, 6 speaking the Greek language not at all,
or with great difficulty ; living half or the whole of their lives in
the desert ; their very names taken from the heathen gods of the
1 This description is put together from the two different, but not irre-
concilable, accounts given in Epiphanius (Ixix. 3), and in the letter
ascribed to Constantine in Gelasius, iii. I. (Mansi, ii. 930.)
2 The monks wore no sleeves, to indicate that their hands were not to
be employed in injury. Soz. H. E. iii. 14.
3 'Api/j.dvf]5, in later Greek, was a phrase for war frenzy.
4 For these three names see Jerome Adv. Lucif. ii. 192.
6 Theod. i. 7.
6 Antony could not speak Greek. Soz. i. 13.
132 The Council of Nicaea
times of the ancient Pharaohs. One was Potammon, Bishop of
Heracleopolis, far up the Nile ; the other, Paphnutius, Bishop
of the Upper Thebaid. Both are famous for the austerity of
their lives. Potamrnon 1 (that is, "dedicated to Ammon") had
himself visited the hermit Antony; Paphnutius (that is,
" dedicated to his God ") had been brought up in a hermitage. 2
Both, too, had suffered in the persecutions. Each presented
the frightful spectacle of the right eye dug out with the sword,
and the empty socket seared with a red-hot iron. Paphnutius,
besides, came limping on one leg, his left having been ham-
strung. 3
2. Next in importance must be reckoned the Bishops of
Syria and of the interior of Asia; or, as they are sometimes
called in the later Councils, the Eastern Bishops, as distin-
guished from the Church of Egypt. Then, as afterwards, there
was rivalry between those branches of Oriental Christendom ;
each, from long neighbourhood, knowing each, yet each tending
in an opposite direction, till, after the Council of Chalcedon, a
community of heresy drew them together again. Here, as in
Egypt, we find two classes of representatives scholars from
the more civilised cities of Syria; wild ascetics from the
remoter East. The first in dignity was the orthodox Eustathius,
who either was, or was on the point of being made, 4 Bishop of
the capital of Syria, the metropolis of the Eastern Church,
Antioch, then called " the city of God." He had suffered in
heathen persecutions, and was destined to suffer in Christian
persecutions also. 5 But he was chiefly known for his learn-
ing and eloquence, which was distinguished by an antique
simplicity of style. One work alone has come down to us, on
the " Witch of Endor."
Next in rank, and far more illustrious, was his chief suf-
fragan, the metropolitan of Palestine, the Bishop of Csesarea,
Eusebius. We honour him as the father of ecclesiastical
history as the chief depositary of the traditions which con-
nect the fourth with the first century. But in the Bishops at
Nicsea his presence awakened feelings of a very different kind.
1 Three of that name were at Sardica. (Ath. Apol. c. Ar. 50.)
2 eV affK-rfT-npiy. The same word that in the Russian Church is abridged
into sheet. See Lecture XI.
3 Rufin. i. 4 : " Sinistro poplite succiso." See also Soc. i. II.
4 The very intricate question of the date of Eustathius's appointment to
Antioch is well discussed in Tillemont, vii. 646. It seems most probable
that he was appointed just at this crisis.
5 Soz. ii. 19.
Meeting of the Council 133
He alone of the Eastern Prelates could tell what was in the
mind of the Emperor; he was the clerk of the Imperial
closet; he was the interpreter, the chaplain, the confessor of
Constantine. And yet he was on the wrong side. Two
especially, we may be sure, of the Egyptian Church were on
the watch for any slip that he might make. Athanasius (what-
ever may have been the opinions of later times respecting the
doctrines of Eusebius) was convinced that he was at heart an
Arian. 1 Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly
in the days of persecution, and was ready with that most fatal
taunt, which, on a later occasion, he threw out against him,
that, whilst he had thus suffered for the cause of Christ,
Eusebius 2 had escaped by sacrificing to an idol.
If Eusebius was suspected of Arianism, he was supported by
most of his suffragan bishops in Palestine, of whom Paulinus
of Tyre, 3 and Patrophilus of Bethshan (Scythopolis), were the
most remarkable. One, however, a champion of Orthodoxy,
was distinguished, not in himself, but for the see which he
occupied once the highest in Christendom, in a few years
about to claim something of its former grandeur, but at the
time of the Council known only as a second-rate Syro-Roman
city Macarius, Bishop of ^Elia Capitolina, that is, "Jerusalem."
From Neocaesarea, a border fortress on the Euphrates, 4 came
its confessor Bishop, Paul, who like Paphnutius and Potammon,
had suffered in the persecutions, but, more recently, under
Licinius. His hands were paralysed by the scorching of the
muscles of all the fingers with red-hot iron. Along with him
were the Orthodox representatives of four famous Churches,
who, according to the Armenian tradition, travelled in company. 5
Their leader was the marvel, " the Moses," as he was termed,
of Mesopotamia, James, or Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis. 6 He had
lived for years as a hermit on the mountains ; in the forests
during the summer, in caverns during the winter : browsing on
roots and leaves like a wild beast, and like a wild beast clothed
in a rough goat-hair cloak. This dress and manner of life,
even after he became bishop, he never laid aside; and the
1 De Syn. c. 17. 2 Epiph. cxviii. 7 ; Ath. Apol. 8.
8 Theod. i. 4, 7. 4 Ibid. i. 6.
6 Moses Choren. ii. 87. To these must be added Maruthas, Bishop of
Tagrit, namesake of the future historian of the Council. (Assem. Bibl.
Or. i. 195.) See p. 98.
6 Theod. Philoth. iii. 11-14. ^ ris aptffrevs ol irpdpaxos aird<rr)s
<t>d\ayyos. See Biblioth. Patrum, v. p. clviii.
134 The Council of Nicaea
mysterious awe which his presence inspired was increased by
the stories of miraculous power, which, we are told, he
exercised in a manner as humane and playful as it was
grotesque ; as when he turned the washerwoman's hair white,
detected the impostor who pretended to be dead, and raised an
army of gnats against the Persians. His fame as a theologian
rests on disputed writings. 1
:The second was Ait-allaha ("the brought of God," like the
Greek " Theophorus "), who had just occupied the see of
Edessa, and finished the building of the cemetery of his
cathedral. 2
The third was Aristaces, said to be the cousin of Jacob of
Nisibis and son of Gregory the Illuminator, founder of the
Armenian Church. 3 He represented both his father the
Bishop, and Tiridates the King, of Armenia ; the Bishop and
King having received a special invitation from Constantine, 4
and sent their written professions of faith by the hands of
Aristaces.
The fourth came from beyond the frontier, the sole
representative of the more distant East. " John the Persian,"
who added to his name the more sounding title, here
appearing for the first time, but revived in our own days as the
designation of our own Bishops of Calcutta, "Metropolitan
of India." 6
A curious tradition related that this band, including eleven
other obscure names from the remote East, were the only
members of the Nicene Council who had not sustained some
bodily mutilation or injury. 6
3. As this little band advanced westward, they encountered
a remarkable personage, who stands at the head of the next
groupe which we meet the Prelates of Asia Minor and Greece.
This was Leontius of Cresarea in Cappadocia. From his
1 Theod. Philoth. iii. 1108-1116 ; Bibl. Patr. v. iii.-clii.
2 Chronicon Edess. ap. Assemani Biblioth. Or. i. 394. His name is
written Ettilaus, ALtholaus, j&tolus, in the Nicene subscriptions, and
Authalius in Moses Choren. ii. 87. Rabalas, Chronicle of Amrou,
Asseman. iii. 588.
3 See Le Quien, Oriens Christ, ii. 1251 ; Bibl. Patr. v. cliii.
4 Moses Choren. ii. 86.
6 Eus. V.C. iii. 7 : f/^rj 5e Kctl Hfpffrjs eiriffKOTros ffvv6$<p irapriv. In Gelas.
Cyz. called John. In the Coptic version (Spicil. Solesm. 533) he is made
the Bishop of Persis, a city in Mesopotamia. Has his name, thus em-
phatically stated, any connection with Presler John?
6 Acta SS. Jan. 13, 781.
Meeting of the Council 135
hands, it was said, Gregory of Armenia had received ordination,
and from his successors in the see of Caesarea had desired that
every succeeding Bishop of Armenia should receive ordination
likewise. 1 For this reason, it may be, Aristaces and his
company sought him out. They found Leontius already on
his journey, and they overtook him at a critical moment. 2 He
was on the point of baptising another Gregory, father of a
much more celebrated Gregory, the future Bishop of Nazianzum.
A light, it was believed, shone from the water, which was only
discerned by the sacred travellers.
Leontius was claimed by the Arians, but still more decidedly
by the Orthodox. 3 Others, of the same side, are usually
named as from the same region, amongst them Hypatius of
Gangra, whose end we shall witness at the close of these events,
and Hermogenes the deacon, afterwards Bishop of Csesarea,
who acted as secretary of the Council.
Eusebius of Nicomedia, afterwards of Constantinople, The-
ognis of Nicsea, 4 Maris of Chalcedon, and Menophantus of
Ephesus, were amongst the most resolute defenders of Arius.
It is curious to reflect that they represent the four sees of the
four Orthodox Councils of the Church. The three last named
soon vanish away from history. But Eusebius of Nicomedia,
friend, namesake, perhaps even brother of the Bishop of
Csesarea, was a personage of high importance both then and
afterwards. As Athanasius was called "the great" by the
Orthodox, so was Eusebius by the Arians. 5 Even miracles
were ascribed to him. 6 Originally Bishop of Beyruth (Bery-
tus), he had been translated 7 to the see of Nicomedia, then
the capital of the Eastern Empire. He had been a favourite
of the Emperor's rival Licinius, 8 and had thus become inti-
mate with Constantia, the Emperor's sister, the wife, now the
widow, of Licinius. Through her and through his own dis-
tant relationship with the Imperial family, he kept a hold on
the court which he never lost, even to the moment when he
stood by the dying bed of the Emperor, years afterwards, and
received him into the Church. We must not be too hard on
1 -Moses Choren. ii. 87.
2 Greg. Naz. Or. xviii. c. 12, 13.
8 Ath. ad Episc. JEg. c. 8 ; Philostorgius, i. 9.
4 Theod. i. II. He says : Qe6yvios Ni/cams OUTTJS tiriffxoiros.
6 Philostorg. Fragm. i. 9.
6 See Neale's Alexandrian Church, i. 123.
7 Theod. i. 19.
8 Athan. Apol. c. Arian. 6 ; Ammian. Marcell. xxii. 9, 4.
136
The Council of Nicaea
the Christianity of Eusebius, if we wish to vindicate the
baptism of Constantine. 1
Not far from the great prelate of the capital of the East,
would be the representative of what was now a small Greek
town, but in five years from that time would supersede
altogether the glories of Nicomedia. Metrophanes, 2 Bishop
of Byzantium, was detained by old age and sickness, but
Alexander, his presbyter, himself seventy years of age, was
there with a little secretary of the name of Paul, not more
than twelve years old, one of the readers and collectors of
the Byzantine Church. 8 Alexander had already corresponded
with his namesake of Alexandria on the Arian controversy, 4
and was apparently attached firmly to the Orthodox side.
Besides their more regular champions, the Orthodox party
of Greece and Asia Minor had a few very eccentric allies.
One was Acesius, the Novatian, "the Puritan," summoned by
Constantine from Byzantium with Alexander, from the deep
respect entertained by the Emperor for his ascetic character.
He was attended by a boy, Auxanon, who lived to a great age
afterwards as a presbyter in the same sect. 6 This child was
then living with a hermit, Eutychianus, on the heights of the
neighbouring mountain of the Bithynian Olympus, and he
descended from these solitudes to attend upon Acesius. From
him we have obtained some of the most curious details of the
Council.
Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, was, amongst the Bishops, the
fiercest opponent of Arius, and when the active Deacon of
Alexandria was not present, seems to have borne the brunt of
the arguments. 6 Yet, if we may judge from his subsequent
history, Athanasius could never have been quite at ease in
leaving the cause in his hands. He was one of those awkward
theologians, who never could attack Arianism without falling
into Sabellianism ; and in later life he was twice deposed from
his see for heresy, once excommunicated by Athanasius him-
self; and in the present form of the Nicene creed one clause
(that which asserts that " the kingdom of Christ shall have no
end ") is said to have been expressly aimed at his exaggerated
language. 7
And now come two, who in the common pictures of the
1 See Lecture VI. 2 Photius, Biblioth. 471.
3 Ibid. 471. 4 Neale, i. 130.
5 Soc. i. 13. 6 Ath. Apol. c. Ar. 23, 32.
7 Ibid, de Syn. 24, 26.
Meeting of the Council 137
Council always appear together, of whom the one probably
left the deepest impression on his contemporaries, and the
other, if he were present at all, on the subsequent traditions of
the Council. From the island of Cyprus there arrived the
simple shepherd Spyridion, a shepherd both before and after
his elevation to the episcopate. Strange stories were told by
his fellow-islanders to the historian Socrates of the thieves
who were miraculously caught in attempting to steal his sheep,
and of Spyridion's good-humoured reply when he found them
in the morning, and gave them a ram that they might not have
sat up all night for nothing. Another tale, exactly similar to
the fantastic Mussulman legends which hang about the sacred
places of Jerusalem, told how he had gained an answer from
his dead daughter Irene to tell where a certain deposit was
hidden. 1 Two less marvellous but more instructive stories
bring out the simplicity of his character. He rebuked a
celebrated preacher at Cyprus for altering in a quotation from
the Gospels the homely word for " bed " into " couch."
" What ! are you better than He who said ' bed,' 2 that you
are ashamed to use His words ? " On occasion of a wayworn
traveller coming to him in Lent, finding no other food in the
house, he presented him with salted pork; and when the
stranger declined, saying that he could not as a Christian
break his fast "So much the less reason,' 7 he said, "have
you for scruple ; to the pure, all things are pure." 3
A characteristic legend attaches to the account of his journey
to the Council. It was his usual practice to travel on foot.
But on this occasion the length of the journey, as well as the
dignity of his office, induced him to ride, in company with his
deacon, on two mules, a white and a chestnut. One night, on
his arrival at a caravanserai where a cavalcade of Orthodox
bishops were already assembled, the mules were turned out to
pasture, whilst he retired to his devotions. The bishops
had conceived an alarm lest the cause of Orthodoxy should
suffer in the Council by the ignorance or awkwardness of
the Shepherd of Cyprus when opposed to the subtleties of the
Alexandrian heretic. Accordingly, taking advantage of this
encounter, they determined to throw a decisive impediment in
his way. They cut off the heads of his two mules, and then,
as is the custom in Oriental travelling, started on their journey
1 Ruf. i. 5 ; compare " Sinai and Palestine," p. 179.
2 Kpd&&a.TOv altered into ffKi^irovs. Soz. i. 1 1.
8 See Tillemont, vi. 688-696.
F 2
138
The Council of Nicaea
before sunrise. Spyridion also rose, but was met by his
terrified deacon, announcing the unexpected disaster. On
arriving at the spot, the saint bade the deacon attach the heads
to the dead bodies. He did so, and, at a sign from the
Bishop, the two mules with their restored heads shook them-
selves as if from a deep sleep, and started to their feet.
Spyridion and the deacon mounted, and soon overtook the
travellers. As the day broke, the prelates and the deacon
were alike astonished at seeing that he, performing the
annexation in the dark and in haste, had fixed the heads on
the wrong shoulders; so that the white mule had now a
chestnut head, and the chestnut mule had the head of its
white companion. Thus the miracle was doubly attested,
the bishops doubly discomfited, and the simplicity of Spyridion
doubly exemplified. 1
Many more stones might be told of him, but (to use the
words of an ancient writer who has related some of them)
"from the claws you can make out the lion." 2 Of all the
Nicene fathers, it may yet be said that in a certain curious
sense he is the only one who has survived the decay of time.
After resting for many years in his native Cyprus, his body
was transferred to Constantinople, where it remained till a
short time before the fall of the Empire. It was thence
conveyed to Corfu, where it 3 is still preserved. Hence, by
a strange resuscitation of fame, he has become the patron
saint, one might almost say the Divinity, of the Ionian
islands. Twice a year in solemn procession he is carried
round the streets of Corfu. Hundreds of Corfiotes bear his
name, now abridged into the familiar diminutive of "Spiro."
The superstitious veneration entertained for the old saint is
a constant source of quarrel between the English residents
and the native lonians. But the historian may be pardoned
for gazing with a momentary interest on the dead hands,
now black and withered, that subscribed the Creed of
Nicaea.
Still more famous (and still more apocryphal, at least in
1 Another version of this legend (which appeared in the 1st edition of
this work) ascribes the decapitation to the A nans. But the more usual
version is that here given. I heard it both in Mount Athos and at Corfu,
and it is told at length in an Italian MS. Life of S. Spyridion, communi-
cated to me by the kindness of a friend in Corfu.
2 Photius, Biblioth. 471.
3 It was brought by the great family of the Bulgaris, who are said to be
descendants of his sister.
Meeting of the Council 139
his attendance at Nicaea), is Nicolas, Bishop of Myra. Not
mentioned by a single ancient historian, he yet figures in the
traditional pictures of the Council as the foremost figure of
all. Type as he is of universal benevolence to sailors, to
thieves, to the victims of thieves, to children, known by
his broad red face, and flowing white hair, the traditions
of the East always represent him as standing in the midst of
the assembly, and suddenly roused by righteous indignation to
assail the heretic Arius with a tremendous box on the ear. 1
4. One more groupe of deputies closes the arrivals. The
Nicene Council was, as I have often said, a Council of the
Eastern Church; and Eastern seemingly were at least 310
of the 318 Bishops. But the West was not entirely unre-
presented. Nicasius from France, Marcus from Calabria,
Capito from Sicily, Eustorgius from Milan (where a vener-
able church is still dedicated to his memory), Domnus of
Stridon in Pannonia, were the less conspicuous deputies of
the Western provinces.
But there were five men whose presence must have been
full of interest to their Eastern brethren. Corresponding to
John the Persian from the extreme East, was Theophilus
the Goth from the extreme North. His light complexion
doubtless made a marked contrast with the tawny hue and
dark hair of almost all the rest. They rejoiced to think
that they had a genuine Scythian amongst them. 2 From all
future generations of his Teutonic countrymen he may claim
attention, as the predecessor and teacher of Ulphilas, 3 the
great missionary of the Gothic nation. 4
Out of the province of Northern Africa, the earliest cradle
of the Latin Church, came Caecilian, Bishop of Carthage. A
few years ago he had himself been convened before the two
Western Councils of the Lateran and of Aries, and had there
been acquitted of the charges brought against him by the
Donatists.
If any of the distant Orientals had hoped to catch a sight
of the Bishop of the " Imperial City," they were doomed to
disappointment. Doubtless, had he been there, his position
as prelate of the capital would have been, if not first, at
least among the first. But Sylvester 5 was now far advanced
in years; and in his place came the two presbyters, who,
1 See Tillemont, vi. 688. Comp. Lecture IV.
2 Eus. V. C. iii. 7. 8 Soc. ii. 41. 4 See Lecture IX.
6 Sozomen (1. 17), by mistake, says "Julius."
140 The Council of Nicaea
according to the arrangement laid down by the Emperor,
would have accompanied him had he been able to make the
journey. In this simple deputation later writers have seen
(and perhaps by a gradual process the connection might be
traced) the first germ of legati a latere. But it must have
been a very far-seeing eye which in Victor and Vincentius,
the two unknown elders, representing their sick old Bishop,
could have detected the predecessors of Pandulf or of Wolsey.
With them, however, was a man who, though not long for-
gotten, was then an object of deeper interest to Christendom
than any Bishop of Rome could at that time have been. It
was the world-renowned Spaniard, as he is called by Eusebius ;
the magician from Spain, 1 as he is called by Zosimus ; Hosius,
Bishop of Cordova. He was the representative of the western-
most of European Churches ; but, as Eusebius of Cassarea
was the chief counsellor of the Emperor in the Greek Church,
so was Hosius in the Latin Church, as we shall see hereafter
in the darkest and most mysterious crisis of Constantine's
life. With some there present he was personally- acquainted.
The Alexandrian deputies had already seen him, when he had
come to their city charged with the Emperor's pacificatory
letter to Alexander and Arius. He and Eusebius must have
been regarded as the most powerful persons in the assembly.
He had still thirty years of life to run, yet he was already
venerable with years and sufferings and honours. He had
been a confessor in the persecutions of Maximin; he was
received, Athanasius tells us, with profound reverence, as
that "Abrahamic old man, well called Hosius, 2 the 'Holy;" 3
and probably no one then present would have thought of
inquiring whether any portion of his authority was derived
from the absent Bishop of Rome. This claim for him has
been set up in later times; and it is possible that, as he was
certainly charged with the secrets of the Roman Emperor,
so he may have been with those of the Roman Bishop. But
such was not the impression produced on the contemporary
witnesses of the scene; his own high character, his intimacy
with Constantine, and his theological learning, were sufficient
of themselves to have secured for him the position which he
occupied there, as in all the other Councils of the age.
VI. It was probably by degrees that these different arrivals
took place, and the lapse of two or three weeks must be
1 See Lecture VI.
2 Apol. Ap. Ar. 44 ; De Fuga, 5 ; Ad. Mon. 42-45.
Meeting of the Council 141
supposed, for the preparatory arrangements, before the Council
was formally opened. This interval was occupied by eager
discussions on the questions likely to be debated. The first
assemblage had been, as we have seen, within the walls of a
public building. But the other preliminary meetings were
held, as was natural, in the streets or colonnades in the open
air. The novelty of the occasion had collected many strangers
to the spot. Laymen, philosophers, heathen as well as Chris-
tian, might be seen joining in the arguments on either side, 1
orthodox as well as heretical. There were also discussions
amongst the Orthodox themselves as to the principle on which
the debates should be conducted. The enumeration of the
characters just given shows that there were two very different
elements in the assembly, such indeed as will always constitute
the main difficulty in making any general statements of theology
which shall be satisfactory at once to the few and to the many.
A large number, perhaps the majority, consisted of rough,
simple, almost illiterate men, like Spyridion the shepherd,
Potammon the hermit, Acesius the puritan, who held their
faith earnestly and sincerely, but without much conscious
knowledge of the grounds on which they maintained it, in-
capable of arguing themselves, or of entering into the argu-
ments of their opponents. These men, when suddenly brought
into collision with the acutest and most learned disputants of
the age, naturally took up the position that the safest course
was to hold by what had been handed down, without any
further inquiry or explanation. A story somewhat variously
told is related of an encounter of one of these simple characters
with the more philosophical combatants, which, in whatever
way it be taken, well illustrates the mixed character of the
Council, and the choice of courses open before it. As Socrates
describes the incident, the disputes were running so high, from
the mere pleasure of argument, that there seemed likely to be
no end to the controversy ; when suddenly a simple-minded
layman, who by his sightless eye, or limping leg, bore witness
of his zeal for the Christian faith, stepped amongst them, and
abruptly- said : " Christ and the Apostles left us, not a system
of logic, nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth, to be guarded
by faith and good works." " There has," says Bishop Kaye 2
1 Soc. i. 8 : fKdTfpcp juepet crvvtiyopzlv irpodvfji.ovp.fvoi. This disproves the
representation that the philosophers were all on the Arian side, as in later
historians and in the Athenian pictures.
2 " Some Account of the Council of Nioea," p. 39.
142 The Council of Nicaea
in recording the story, " been hardly any age of the Church in
which its members have not required to be reminded of this
lesson." On the present occasion the bystanders, at least for
the moment, were struck by its happy application; the dis-
putants, after hearing this plain word of truth, took their
differences more good-humouredly, and the hubbub of con-
troversy subsided.
Another version of the same story, or another story of the
same kind, with a somewhat different moral, is told by Rufinus
and Sozomen, 1 and amplified by later writers. The disputants,
or rather disputant (for one is specially selected), is now not
a Christian theologian, but a heathen philosopher, to whom,
in later writings, is given the suspicious name of Eulogius, 2
" Fairspeech." He was a perfect master of argument; the
moment that he seemed to be caught by one of his opponents,
he slipped out of their hands like an eel or a snake. 3 His
opponent is, in this story, not a layman, but an aged bishop
or priest (and here the later account identifies him with the
shepherd Spyridion). Unable to bear any longer the taunts
with which the philosopher assailed a group of Christians,
amongst whom he was standing, he came forth to refute him.
His uncouth appearance, rendered more hideous by the muti-
lations he had undergone in the persecutions, provoked a roar
of laughter from, his opponents, whilst his friends were not a
little uneasy at seeing their cause intrusted to so unskilled a
champion. But he felt himself strong in his own simplicity.
" In the name of Jesus Christ," he called out to his antagonist,
" hear me, philosopher. There is one God, maker of heaven
and earth, and of all things visible and invisible : who made
all things by the power of His Word, and by the holiness of
His Holy Spirit. This Word, by which name we call the Son
of God, took compassion on men for their wandering astray,
and for their savage condition, and chose to be born of a
woman, and to converse with men, and to die for them, and
He shall come again to judge every one for the things done in
life. These things we believe without curious inquiry. Cease
therefore the vain labour of seeking proofs for or against what
is established by faith, and the manner in which these things
may be or may not be ; but, if thou believest, answer at once
to me as I put my questions to you."
The philosopher was struck dumb by this new mode of
1 Ruf. i. 3 ; Soz. i. 18. 2 Gelasius, iii. 13.
8 Ruf. i. 3 : " Velut anguis lubricus."
Meeting of the Council 143
argument. He could only reply that he assented. "Then,"
answered the old man, " if thou believest this, rise and follow me
to the Lord's house, 1 and receive the sign of this faith." The
philosopher turned round to his disciples, or to those who had
been gathered round him by curiosity. " Hear," he said, " my
learned friends. So long as it was a matter of words, I opposed
words to words, and whatever was spoken I overthrew by my
skill in speaking ; but when, in the place of words, power came
out of the speaker's lips, words could no longer resist power,
man could no longer resist. If any of you feel as I have felt,
let him believe in Christ, and let him follow this old man in
whom God has spoken." Exaggerated or not, 2 this story is
a proof of the magnetic power of earnestness and simplicity
over argument and speculation.
The tradition which identified the simple disputant with
Spyridion grew in later times into the form which it bears in
all the pictures of the Council, and which is commemorated
in the services of the Greek Church. Aware of his incapacity
of argument, he took a brick and said, " You deny that Three
can be One. Look at this : it is one, and yet it is composed
of the three elements of fire, earth, and water." As he spoke,
the brick resolved itself into its component parts : the fire flew
upward, the clay remained in Spyridion's hand, and the water
fell to the ground. The philosopher, or (according to some
accounts) Arius himself, was so confounded, as to declare
himself converted on the spot. 3
These tales represent probably the feeling of a large portion
of the Council the sound, unprofessional, untheological, lay
element which lay at the basis of all their weakness and their
strength. The historian Socrates is very anxious to prove that
the assembly was not entirely composed of men of this kind,
and he points triumphantly to the presence of such men as
Eusebius of Caesarea. No proof was necessary. The sub-
sequent history of the Council itself is a sufficient indication
1 Ruf. i. 3 : " Ad dominicum." This shows that they were outside the
building : see p. 130.
2 See-a similar story of Alexander of Byzantium, who was present at the
Council (Soz. i. 17), and of S. Francis Xavier (Grant's Bampton Lectures,
p. 272).
3 In the MS. Italian Life of S. Spyridion before quoted, the speech with
the philosopher is lengthened into a history of the Old and New Dispensa-
tions, and the miracle of the brick is reported as taking place afterwards
with Arius. But in the pictures of the Council, in Mount Athos and at
Nicsea, it is as I have represented.
144 The Council of Nicaea
that, however small a minority might be the dialecticians and
theologians, yet they constituted the life and movement of the
whole. Socrates dwells with evident pleasure l on the circum-
stance that the ultimate decisions were only made after long
inquiry, and that everything was stirred to the bottom.
Gelasius, in the next century, so far from being satisfied with
the summary treatment of the disputant by the old confessor,
introduces a second philosopher, of the name of Phaedo, who
has a pitched battle with five Bishops, 2 Hosius included, whose
arguments are drawn out at full length. This, though fabulous
in its details, is doubtless true in its substance. The frenzy of
argument was too vehement to be restrained. Heretics and
Orthodox alike felt themselves compelled to advance.
We may wish, with Bishop Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Kaye,
that it had been otherwise. But there is a point of view from
which we may fully sympathise with the course that was taken.
All the elements which go to make up the interest of theology
were involved: love of free inquiry, desire of precision in
philosophical statements, research into Christian antiquity,
comparison of the texts of Scripture one with another. Tradi-
tional and episcopal authority was regarded as insufficient for
the establishment of the faith. The well-known clause of the
Twenty-first Article does but express the principle of the
Nicene fathers themselves : " Things ordained by them as
necessary for salvation have neither strength nor authority
unless it may be declared that they are taken out of Holy
Scripture." The battle was fought and won by quotations,
not from tradition, but from the Old and New Testament.
The overruling sentiment was, that even ancient opinions were
not to be received without sifting and inquiry. 3 The chief
combatant and champion of the faith was not the Bishop of
Antioch or of Rome, nor the Pope of Alexandria, but the
Deacon Athanasius. The eager discussions of Nicsea present
the first grand precedent for the duty of private judgment,
and the free, unrestrained exercise of Biblical and historical
criticism. 4
1 L 9-.
2 Hosius, Leontius, Eusebius, Macarius, and Eupsychius (of Tyana).
(Gelas. iii. 14-23.)
3 Soz. i. 17, 25.
4 It has been often maintained that the decisions of the Council were
based on authority, not on argument. It is certain that some of the
reasonings of Athanasius rest on the general reception of the Nicene
doctrines, rather than on their intrinsic truth. (See the quotations and
Meeting of the Council 145
And now, on the morrow of the discussion between the
peasant and the theologians, 1 the day arrived when the Council
was to begin its work in earnest, the day when they should
at last see the great man at whose bidding they were met
together, and to whose arrival many looked forward as the
chief event of the assembly. 2 The Emperor was on his way to
Nicaea, and would be there in a few hours to open the Council
in person.
inferences in Keble's Sermons, pp. 392-394.) But the whole tenour of the
narrative in Eusebius, Socrates, and Sozomen points to the conclusion that
the existing tradition was alleged, not as authority, but as historical
evidence, and that it was alleged subordinately to the argument from the
Bible itself. Compare especially the paragraph at the close of Sozom. i.
17 : of Se IffxvplCovro j3ouAf)s. Ibid. i. 25 : /ierd "f)Tr)<riv a/cptjSfj Kal
pdffavov irdvTwy ruv a/jupififaow SoiciiJ.aade'io'a.v. A slight reminiscence of
this aspect of the Council is preserved in the picture of it in the Iberian
monastery at Athos, where the heretics are represented as eagerly poring
over the arguments of the Orthodox.
1 Soc. i. 8. 2 Eus. V. C. iii. 6.
LECTURE IV
THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL
THE Emperor had already been at Nicaea on the 23rd of
May, as we happen to learn by an edict dated from that city
against usurers in Palestine. 1 Probably he had come before
the arrival of the Bishops, to ascertain that fit preparations
were made for their reception. He had then, as it would
seem, returned to Nicomedia, to celebrate his victory over
Licinius. If he waited for the actual anniversary, he must
have remained there till the 3rd of July, and consequently
could not have arrived at Nicasa till the 5th. The earlier
dates, however, for the opening of the Council the i4th or
the i Qth of June are inconsistent with so long a delay. We
must be content, therefore, to leave the precise day in doubt.
The first news that greeted him on his arrival must have
been an unpleasing surprise. He had no sooner taken up his
quarters in the Palace at Nicaea, then he found showered in
upon him a number of parchment rolls, or letters, containing
complaints and petitions against each other from the larger
part 2 of the assembled Bishops. We cannot ascertain wih
certainty whether they were collected in a single day, or went
on accumulating day after day. 3 It was a poor omen for the
unanimity which he had so much at heart.
We may indeed make some excuses. We may remember
how, even in prison, the English Reformers maintained an
unceasing strife with each other on the dark points of Calvinism.
We are expressly told, both by Eusebius and Sozomen, that
one motive 4 which had drawn many to the Council was the
hope of settling their own private concerns, and promoting
their own private interests. It was the practice to seize the
opportunity of solemn processions 5 of the sovereigns to temples
and afterwards to churches, as even now of the Sultans to
mosques, in order to lay wait with petitions, as the only means
of catching their attention. There, too, were the pent-up
grudges and quarrels of years ; which now for the first time
1 Cod. Theod. i. p. xxv.
z Soc. i. 8 : ol Tr\eioves. This contradicts the later notion that the
Arians were the only complainants.
3 Soc. i. 8.
4 Eus. V. C. iii. 6 ; Soz. i. 17. B See Dufresne, UptoSos.
146
Opening of the Council 147
had an opportunity of making themselves heard. Never before
had these remote, often obscure, ministers of a persecuted sect
come within the range of Imperial power. He whose presence
was for the first time so close to them, bore the same authority
of which the Apostle had said that it was the supreme earthly
distributor of justice to mankind. Still, after all due allowance,
it is impossible not to share in the Emperor's astonishment
that this should have been the first act of the first (Ecumenical
Assembly of the Christian Church. Constantine received the
letters in silence. 1 His reply we shall hear, when at his own
time he chooses to give it.
The meetings of the representatives, which had up to this
time been in the church, or gymnasium, or in separate localities,
were henceforth to be solemnised in the Imperial residence
itself. It is with reluctance that later controversialists, ac-
customed to the idea of a Council meeting only within
consecrated walls, will admit of this transference. But the
fact is undoubted, and is in accordance not only with the
paramount importance of the Emperor on this occasion, but
with the precedent already established in the little Council in
the Lateran Palace at Rome, and afterwards confirmed by the
two Councils held in the vaulted room called the " Trullus " in
the palace at Constantinople. Tradition points out the spot,
marked by a few broken columns, at the south-west angle of
the walls, close by the shores of the lake. A solitary plane 2
tree grows on the ruins. The chamber prepared for their
reception was a large oblong hall, 3 in the centre of the palace
the largest that it contained. Benches 4 were ranged along
the walls on 5 each side for those of lower dignity, and seats, or
chairs, for those of higher ; along these were ranged the 300
prelates, perhaps with their assistant deacons and presbyters.
In the centre of the room, on a seat or throne, was placed
a copy of the Holy Gospels, 6 as the nearest approach to the
1 It is probably this scene (with another later incident) which led the
first Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford to describe the Nicene fathers
as a set of demoniacs, driven by evil furies and malignant passions. (Peter
Martyr,~Comm. on I Kings xii.)
2 I have been informed by the present Bishop of Nicaea that this tree is
supposed to stand on the site of the throne.
3 Eus. V. C. iii. 10. 4 Theod. i. 7 ; Eus. V. C. iii. 10.
6 Niceph. viii. 16.
6 Westcott on the Canon, 496. This at least was the custom of the
later Councils, as of Ephesus. (Ib. 175.) See Suicer, Evo77eA.toj/ } p. 1227;
and so it is in the picture at Nicsea.
148 The Council of Nicaea
presence of Christ Himself. Every eye was fixed on one
small vacant stall or throne, carved in wood, richly gilt, such
as was usually 1 occupied by the sovereign at the Circus or
Hippodrome now placed in the upper end of the hall,
between the two ranges of seats. The long-sustained dis-
putations, the eager recriminations, were at last hushed into
a deep silence. Not a voice broke the stillness of that
expectation which precedes the coming of a long wished-for,
unknown spectacle, the onward march of a distant pro-
cession. 2 Presently a stir was heard, first one, then another,
and then a third, of the officers of the court dropped in.
Then the column widened. But still the wonted array of
shields and spears 3 was absent. The heathen guards were not
to enter the great Christian assembly which had, as it were,
consecrated the place where it sate. Only those courtiers
who were converted to the Christian faith were allowed to
herald the approach of their master. At last a signal from
without probably a torch raised by the "cursor," or avant-
courier 4 announced that the Emperor was close at hand.
The whole assembly rose and stood on their feet ; and then
for the first time set their admiring gaze on Constantine, the
Conqueror, the August, the Great. He entered. His towering
stature, 5 his strong-built frame, his broad shoulders, his hand-
some features, were worthy of his grand position. 6 There
was a brightness in his look and a mingled expression of
fierceness and gentleness 7 in his lion-like eye which well
became one who, as Augustus before him, had fancied, and
perhaps still fancied, himself to be the favourite of the Sun-god
Apollo. The Bishops were further struck by the dazzling,
perhaps barbaric, magnificence of his dress. Always careful of
his appearance, he was so on this occasion in an eminent
degree. His long hair, false or real, was crowned with the
imperial diadem of pearls. His purple or scarlet robe blazed
with precious stones and gold embroidery. He was shod no
doubt in the scarlet shoes 8 then confined to the Emperors,
1 Eus. V. C. iii. 10 : /caflior/xa. See Dufresne in voce.
2 Ibid. iii. 10 : irpo65ov. The word always used for the Imperial pro-
cessions. Dufresne in voce.
3 The appearance of a single guard (speculator) at the Council of Tyre
was the subject of much remark. (Ath. Apol. c. Arian. 8.)
4 For the torches carried by the avant-couriers, see Eus. Paneg. i. I.
6 Eus. V. C. iii. 10. 6 See Lecture VI.
7 Cedrenus, i. 472.
8 " Campagi." See Mr. Payne Smith's note on John of Ephesus, p. 56.
Opening of the Council 149
now perpetuated in the Pope and Cardinals. Many of the
Bishops had probably never seen any greater functionary than
a remote provincial magistrate, and gazing at his splendid figure
as he passed up the hall between their ranks remembering
too what he had done for their faith and for their Church,
we may well believe that the simple and the worldly both
looked upon him as though he were an angel of God, descended
straight from Heaven. 1 Yet the awe was not exclusively on
their side. 2 However imperfect may have been Constantine's
religion, yet there can be little doubt that, as far as it went, it
was devout even to superstition. It was a solemn moment for
him to find himself for the first time in the midst of the
representatives of the great community of which he had so
recently professed himself a sincere adherent. Whatever
sacredness had before in his eyes attached to flamens and
augurs, now in a still higher degree he transferred to the
venerable men who stood before him, and whose very looks,
whose very disfigurements, bore witness to the earnestness and
energy of their young and vigorous faith. The colour rushed
to the Emperor's cheeks. 3 We cannot forget how far more
innocent and ingenuous was this first Imperial blush, than that
which became memorable, ages afterwards, in the great Council
of the Latin Church the "blush of Sigismund" observed at
Constance, remembered at Worms. It was the genuine ex-
pression of Constantine's excitement and emotion. As he
advanced up the hall he cast his eyes down, his steps faltered,
and when he reached the throne allotted to him, he stood
motionless, till the Bishops beckoned to him to be seated. He
then sat down, and they followed his example.
If he was still anxious as he looked round on so many
strange faces, he must have been reassured as he looked on
his right hand and his left. Which of the Bishops occupied
these places of honour has been vehemently disputed in later
times, and it is still further complicated by the ambiguity of
the use of the words. Was the chief seat on the right-hand
side of the Emperor, or the right-hand side of the hall?
Apparently, as the Emperor's seat was not permanently there,
1 Eus. V. C. iii. 10. That this feeling was not peculiar to Eusebius, may
be gathered from the expressions collected by Dr. Newman in his learned
note on Athanasius's Tracts, i. 59. In the picture in the Iberian convent
at Athos, the Sacred Dove hovers over the head (not of the Bishops, but)
of the Emperor.
8 See Lecture VI. 8 Eus. V. C. iii. 10.
150 The Council of Nicaea
and as the Bishops were arranged irrespectively of his entrance,
the latter of these two meanings must be adopted. The
left-hand place has been usually assigned to Hosius of Cor-
dova; and in a picture of the Nicene Council which adorns
the Escurial library, the Church of Spain, in her zeal for this
her eldest and most distinguished son, makes the very most of
him. But Roman writers, eager to claim the first place for
him, as the supposed representative of the Papal see, 1 have
ingeniously argued that the left, and not the right, was, with
the ancient Romans, the place of honour; and further, what
is also undoubted although inconsistent with the argument
just used that the left-hand side of the hall would give him
the right-hand side of the Emperor. 2 The right-hand post has
been naturally more contested. In the picture of the Nicene
Council at Nicsea itself, and also in the annals of the Alexandrian
Church, 3 it is filled by Alexander of Alexandria. Theodoret 4
gives it to Eustathius of Antioch. But there can be little
doubt that, as on one side of the Emperor sat his Western
favourite Hosius, so on the other side, his Eastern favourite
Eusebius. Twice over Eusebius has himself told us so ; and
from him 5 we know how, as soon as Constantine and the
assembly were seated, he rose from his place, and in metrical
prose, if not in actual verses, recited an address to the Emperor,
and then a hymn of thanksgiving to the Almighty for the
victory over Licinius, of which the anniversary had so lately
been celebrated. Eusebius resumed his seat, and again a deep
silence prevailed. All eyes were fixed on Constantine. He
cast round one of those bright glances of which he was
master; and then, after a momentary self-recollection, addressed
1 In ancient pictures it is observed of S. Peter and S. Paul, of the
Virgin and S. John, that S. Peter and the Virgin are on the left hand of
the Saviour. (Baronius, 52-60 ; Bellarmine, De Cone. i. 19 ; in Mansi, ii.
73-)
2 In the Council of Chalcedon, the Legates of Rome, with the Bishops
of Constantinople and Antioch, sat on the left, and the Bishops of
Alexandria and Jerusalem on the right, of the Imperial officers. But there
they ranged themselves according to their opinions. (Tillemont, xv. 649.)
3 Eutych. Ann. i. 444.
4 i. 7. He must have had some ground for this ; as Eustathius was
evidently one of his chief authorities for the events of the Council.
5 Eus. V. C. i. I j iii. i ; Soz. i. 18. A short speech, supposed to be
the one now spoken, but really written by Gregory of Neocsesarea in the
seventh century, is preserved in Fabricius, Biblioth. Gr. ix. 132. Its use
of the words fda oixria ev rpicriv inroffTda-effi is fatal to its genuineness.
Nicephorus (viii. 16) and Epiphanius Scholasticus (ii. 5) give the first
speech to Eustathius, the second to Eusebius.
Opening of the Council 151
them in a short speech, exhorting concord and unanimity.
It was in Latin, on so solemn an occasion he would not
depart from the Imperial language, in which long afterwards
the laws even of his new capital were written, and, therefore,
very few of those present could have understood it. But there
was a gentleness and sweetness in his voice which arrested the
attention of all ; and as soon as it was concluded the Imperial
dragoman or interpreter translated l it into Greek.
" It has, my friends, been the object of my highest wishes,
to enjoy your sacred company, and having obtained this,
I confess my thankfulness to the King of all, that in addition
to all my other blessings He has granted to me this greatest of
all I mean, to receive you all assembled together, and to see
one common harmonious opinion of all. Let, then, no envious
enemy injure our happiness, and, after the destruction of the
impious power of the tyrants by the might of God our Saviour,
let not the Spirit of evil overwhelm the Divine law with
blasphemies ; for to me far worse than any war or battle is
the civil war of the Church of God ; yes, far more painful than
the wars which have raged without. As, then, by the assent
and co-operation of a higher power, I have gained my victories
over my enemies, I thought that nothing remained but to give
God thanks, and to rejoice with those who have been delivered
by us. But since I learned of your divisions, contrary to all
expectations, I gave the report my first consideration; and
praying that this also might be healed through my assistance,
I called you all together without delay. I rejoice at the mere
sight of your assembly ; but the moment that I shall consider
the chief fulfilment of my prayers will be when I see you all
joined together in heart and soul, and determining on one
peaceful harmony for all, which it should well become you
who are consecrated to God, to preach to others. Do not,
then, delay, my friends ; do not delay, ministers of God, and
good servants of our common Lord and Saviour, to remove all
grounds of difference, and to wind up by laws of peace every
link of controversy. Thus will you have done what is most
pleasing to the God who is over all, and you will render the
greatest boon to me, your fellow-servant." 2
1 Eus. V. C. iii. 13 : v<ppfjn)veuovros. As late as the Council of
Chalcedon, the Emperor Marcian spoke in Latin, which was then
translated into Greek. (Mansi, vii. 127.) A false speech of Constantine
is given in Gelas. iii. 7.
Eus. V. C. iii. 12.
152 The Council of Nicaea
The Council was now formally opened, and the Emperor
gave permission to the presidents of the assembly to commence
their proceedings.
In the Egyptian traditions this was enlarged into a formal
authorisation of the legal powers of the Council. He gave to
them, it was said, his ring, his sword, and his sceptre, with the
words, " To you I have this day given power over my empire,
to do in it whatever you think fit for the promotion of religion
and for the advantage of the faithful." 1 This, no doubt, is
a later invention. But it is probably so far correct that the
Emperor's intention was to constitute them into an indepen-
jdent body for the settlement of these questions, however
much his personal influence controlled their decisions, and
his authority might be needed for the ratification of their
decrees. 2
The plural number used by Eusebius to designate the
presidency of the Council, renders it probable that the two
Bishops of the leading sees, Alexandria and Antioch, 3 must
be amongst those intended; the general testimony points to
Hosius as another, who, from the causes already mentioned,
would naturally be what he is expressly styled by Athanasius,
leader of all the Councils ; and to these, by his own account,
we must add Eusebius of Csesarea.
From this moment the flood-gates of debate were opened
wide ; and from side to side recriminations and accusations
were bandied to and fro, without regard to the Imperial
presence. He remained unmoved amidst the clatter of angry
voices, turning from one side of the hall to the other, giving
his whole attention to the questions proposed, bringing together
the violent partisans. He condescended to lay aside his stately
Latin, and addressed them in such broken Greek as he could
command, still in that sweet and gentle voice, praising some,
persuading others, putting others to the blush, but directing
all his energies to that one point, which he has himself
described as his aim, a unanimity of decision. 4 We have
it on his own authority, that he reckoned himself as one of
1 Eutych. i. 443.
2 Athanasius (Apol. c. Ar. c. 9) is full of horror at a count having
presided at the Council of Tyre. Technically speaking, this was incon-
sistent with the precedents of Nicaea. But the Emperor's officers appeared
frequently in the Council of Chalcedon. Mansi, vi. 822.
3 In Facundus, i. i, xi. I, Eustathius is president.
4 Eus. V. C. iii. 13.
Opening of the Council 153
the number as a bishop for the time being; 1 and that he
took an active part in the discussion. It was probably in this
first session that he put a stop to those personal quarrels, of
which he had already had the earliest instalment on his arrival
on the preceding day. 2 We cannot doubt, from the eagerness
with which their complaints had been handed in, that this
must have been the uppermost thought in the minds of most
of the assembly when the debates began, and their expectation
would be raised to a high pitch when the Emperor produced
before the Council, from the folds of his mantle, 3 the petitions
on their papyrus or parchment rolls. He pointed to them as
they lay, bound up and sealed with his Imperial ring; and
then, after declaring with a solemn oath 4 (his usual mode of
attestation) that he had not read one of them, he ordered
a brazier 5 to be brought in, in which they were burnt at once
in the presence of the assembly. Three speeches are given by
the different historians on the occasion, each probably expressive
of three different turns which the Emperor's mind may have
taken. According to Socrates, after having dwelt on the
importance of dismissing those personal disputes, if they hoped
to arrive at a conclusion on the great matter which had called
them together, he added 6 just this one pregnant remark, as
the parchments were smouldering in the flames "It is the
command of Christ, that he who desires to be himself forgiven,
must first forgive his brother." 7 According to Theodoret and
Rufinus, there was mingled with this feeling of disgust at the
want of Christian concord in them, and with the desire for it
in his own mind, something of the almost superstitious awe
1 Soc. i. 9. (30.)
2 In this I follow the account of Socrates, because,
(a) He is more precise in his statement of the days than the others.
(b) His account is confirmed by Gelasius, and not absolutely contradicted
by Rufinus and Sozomen.
(c) The mention of the purple robe in Theodoret, i. 10, agrees with the
Emperor's dress on the first day.
(d) The incident naturally finds a place in the general scene described by
Eusebius, V. C. iii. 13.
(e) The -impression conveyed by Eusebius, V. C. iii. 12, is that the
greater part of the assembly then saw Constantine for the first time.
3 Rufinus, H. E. i. 2 : "In sinu suo continens."
4 For his oath, see Lecture VI. B Niceph. viii. 17.
6 Soc. i. viii. 20 : fasnr&v fj.6voi/.
7 Dioscorus, President of the (Robber) Council of Ephesus, rejected
like complaints for a very different reason. See the excellent remarks of
Theodoret, Ep. 147.
154 The Council of Nicaea
which animated him, as we have already seen, in the presence
of the Christian clergy. Perhaps, also, he may have intended
a stroke of that quiet humour which was one of the happiest
characteristics of his public speeches. 1 " You have been made
by God priests and rulers, to judge and decide . . . and have
ven been made Gods, so highly raised as you are above
men ; for it is written * I have said ye are Gods, and ye are
all the children of the Most High;' 'and God stood in the
congregation of the gods, and in the midst He judges the
gods.' 2 You ought really to neglect these common matters,
and devote yourselves to the things of God. It is not for me
to judge of what awaits the judgment of God only." 'And as
the libels vanished into ashes, he urged them "Never to let
the faults of men in their consecrated offices be publicly
known, to the scandal and temptation of the multitude."
"Nay," he added, doubtless spreading out the folds of his
Imperial mantle as he spoke, even though I were with my own
eyes to see a bishop in the act of gross sin, 3 I would throw my
purple robe over him, that no one might suffer from the sight
of such a crime." *
The theological controversy which followed, though doubtless
lightened and sweetened by this abrupt disentanglement of it
from bitter personal grievances, was more difficult to terminate.
And we have no continuous account of the mode in which
it was conducted. We know not whether it lasted weeks or
days. 4 Of the two eye-witnesses, one (Eusebius) tells us next
to nothing ; the other ( Athanasius) writes with such a special
purpose, that it is hard to extract from him the actual facts.
Still certain incidents transpire, and those, in however frag-
mentary a manner, I shall now endeavour to describe.
We have hitherto viewed the Council in its national divisions,
and in its arrangement of outward precedence. We now pro-
ceed to view it as it broke itself up into theological parties. 5
The Orthodox side would be represented by the Alexandrian
Bishop and his deacon Athanasius ; the extreme right being
occupied by the exaggerated vehemence of Marcellus of
Ancyra. 6
1 Victor, 23 : "Irrisor potius quam blandus." 2 Ruf. i. 2.
3 Theod. i. 10. That gross licentiousness was one of the complaints
brought forward may be gathered from the charges brought against
Eustathius of Antioch and Athanasius.
4 Ruf. i. 5 : " Per dies singulos agitabatur conventus."
5 This is well given in Hefele, i. 273.
6 Ath. Apol. c. Arian. 23, 32. Cyril. Alex. torn. v. pt. i. p. 4.
Opening of the Council 155
The opposite party would be represented by the three
Bithynian Bishops, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis, and
Maris, with those prelates of Palestine and Asia Minor who
had committed themselves to the same view, deepening on
the extreme left into Arius himself supported by his two
boldest adherents, Theonas and Secundus.
The great mass of the assembled Bishops 1 would occupy
the centre between these two extremes; shading off on the
one side, through men like Leontius and Hosius, into the
party of Alexander and Athanasius ; and on the other, through
men like Eusebius of Csesarea and Paulinus of Tyre, into the
extreme Arian party of the Bithynian Bishops. 2
The discussion was, like those which had preceded it, based
on the principle of free inquiry, and not of authority. The
duty so hateful to theological adversaries of "exact state-
ment," " searching trial," and "hearing both sides," is repeatedly
and expressly mentioned, both in the narratives and documents
of the Nicene assembly. 3
Small as the Arian minority eventually appeared to be, it
is clear, from the account of the debates which followed the
opening of the Council, that they must have had a hope of
victory.
It may have been this confidence that caused their ruin.
At least it appears that the chief recoil against them was
occasioned by the overweening subtlety or rashness of their
1 Neander (iv. 40) well points out the unfairness of Athanasius in
ignoring this large intermediate party.
2 The Arian bishops are thus reckoned by Philostorgius :
i. Sentianus of Boreum. 13. Athanasius of Anazarbus.
2.. Dachius of Berenice. 14. Tarcodinatus of
3. Secundus of Theuchira. 15. Leontius
4. Zopyrus of Barca. 16. Longianus of Cappadocia.
5. Secundus of Ptolemais. 17. Eulalius
6. Theonas of Marmarica. 18. Basil of Amasia ^j
7. Meletius of Thebes. 19. Meletius of Se- [- Pontus.
8. Patrophilus of Scythopolis. bastopolis
9. Eusebius of Cczsarea, 20. Theognis of Niccea.
10. Paulinus of Tyre, 21. Maris of Chalcedon.
11. Amphion of Sidon. 22. Eusebius the Great of Nico-
12. Narcissus of Irenopolis media. See Walch, i. 471.
(Neronias}.
The names in italics are also mentioned by Theodoret (i. 5, 7) ;
Theodoret of Ileraclea is added by Gelasius of Cyzicus (ii. 7) ; and
Theodorus of Laodicea, Gregory of Berytus, and Aerius of Lydda by
Theodoret (i. 5).
3 Soc. i. 9, passim.
156 The Council of Nicaea
own statements, which were all more or less aggressive.
Arius, though as a presbyter he had no seat in the Council,
was frequently called upon to express his opinions, 1 and was
usually confronted with Athanasius. 2 It was now, apparently,
that the Council first heard the songs which Arius had written
under the name of Thalia 3 for the sake of popularising his
speculations with the lower orders. The songs were set to
tunes, or written in metres, which had acquired a questionable
reputation from their use in the licentious verses of the
heathen poet Sotades, ordinarily used in the low revels or
dances of Alexandria ; and the grave Arius himself is said, in
moments of wild excitement, to have danced like an Eastern
dervish, whilst he sang these abstract statements in long
straggling lines, of which about twenty are preserved to us. 4
To us the chief surprise is that any enthusiasm should have
been excited by sentences 5 such as these: "God was not
always Father; once he was not Father; afterwards He became
Father." But, in proportion to the attraction which they
possessed for the partisans of Arius, was the dismay which
they roused in the minds of those by whom the expressions
which Arius thus lightly set aside were regarded as the watch-
words of the ancient faith. The Bishops, on hearing the song,
raised their hands in horror, and, after the manner of Orientals,
when wishing to express their disgust at blasphemous words,
kept their ears fast closed, and their eyes fast shut. 6
It was doubtless at this point that occurred the incident,
whatever it be, embodied in the legend which I have before
noticed, of the sudden outbreak of fury in Nicolas, Bishop of
Myra, who is represented in the traditional pictures of the
Council as dealing a blow with all his force at Arius's jaw.
It is this incident, real or imaginary, that gave some colour to
the charge of violence brought by Peter Martyr against the
Nicene fathers. But the story itself bears witness to the
1 Ruf. i. 5. He was there by the Emperor's command. (Ib. i. I.)
2 See Lecture III. p. 130. A fictitious "Dispute of Athanasius and
Arius" is found in Athanasius's works, ii. p. 205.
3 Soc. i. 9, 29. Apollinarius did the same. His songs were sung at
banquets, and at work, and by women weaving. Soz. vi. 25.
* Ath. Or. c. Ar. i. 4.
B The extracts are given in Ath. Or. c. Ar. i. 5.
6 Ath. Or. c. Ar. i. 7. Ath. ad Ep. in Egypt. 13 : fKpdrovv ras aitozs.
Conf. Acts vii. 56 : ffvvfa-^ov ra SIT a. This incident has given rise to the
groundless complaint of the Polish theologian, Sandius, that Arius was
condemned unheard.
Opening of the Council 157
humane spirit which exalts this earliest Council above its
successors. The legend, best known in the West, goes on to
say that for this intemperate act S. Nicolas was deprived of his
mitre and pall, which were only restored to him long afterwards
by the intervention of angels ; so that in many old pictures he
is represented as bareheaded, and with his shoulders uncovered. 1
But in the East, the story assumes a more precise and more
polemical form. The Council, it is said, on Arius's appeal,
imprisoned and deprived the Bishop of Myra. But in prison,
the Redeemer, whose honour he had vindicated, appeared with
His mother : the One restored to him the Gospel, the other
the pall ; and with these credentials he claimed and obtained
his freedom. 2 It is not often that the contradiction between
Christ as He is in the Evangelical history, and Christ as He
is in the fancies of theologians, is so strongly brought out.
At this same conjuncture it must have been that the first
draft of a Creed was produced in the Council, signed by the
eighteen 3 extreme Arian partisans. Its contents are not
given. But it was received with tumultuous disapprobation ;
the document, was torn to pieces, and the subscribers, all
except Theonas and Secundus, gave up Arius on the spot,
and he was removed from the assembly.
These violent attacks and explosions were, however, in all
probability, mere episodes in the assembly. The main object
of the Emperor in convening the Council was not to lengthen
divisions, but to secure a unanimous signature to its final
report. Like our own Elizabeth, he regarded the points at
issue as of less moment than the formation of one compact
Imperial Church. As may be seen in public meetings and
discussions of every-day occurrence, the devotion of any one
leading person to this single aim is almost sure to succeed.
Two powerful efforts were made for this purpose by the
Emperor's two chief advisers the supporters of what I have
called the central party, the cross benches of the assembly;
and from a combination of these two the desired result was
finally brought to pass.
1 Nauclerus, Chronographia, 506. Molanus, Hist. Sacr. Imag. iii. 53.
(Ittig, 38.) Molanus interprets the absence of mitre and pall as an
indication of the schism and degradation of the Greek Church.
2 This version I heard in Mount Athos. The vision in the prison is
a frequent subject of pictures there.
3 Theod. i. 6. For the eighteen Bishops see p. 155. It was probably
from combining this minority with the round numbers of the majority that
the traditional number of 318 was attained.
158 The Council of Nicaea
The solution of the difficulty was sought in the production
of an ancient Creed, which had existed before the rise of the
controversy. Excellent and obvious as such a solution always
is, this seems to have been the first attempt of the kind. It
was proposed by Eusebius of Caesarea. He announced that
the confession of faith which he was about to propose was
no new form it was the same which he had learned in his
childhood from his predecessors in the see of Csesarea l during
the time that he was a catechumen, and at his baptism, and
which he taught for many years, as Presbyter and as Bishop.
It had been approved by the Emperor, 2 the beloved of
Heaven, who had already seen it. It accorded with his own
view, that Divine things cannot be precisely described in
human language. He held strongly the modern theological
doctrine, that the Finite can never grasp the Infinite. 3
This Creed was as follows : " I believe in one God, the
Father Almighty, Maker of all things both visible and in-
visible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God,
God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten
Son, the Firstborn of every Creature, begotten of the Father
before all worlds, by whom also all things were made. Who
for our salvation was made flesh, and lived amongst men, and
suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the
Father, and shall come in glory to judge the quick and the
dead. And we believe in One Holy Ghost. Believing each
of them to be and to have existed, the Father, only the Father,
and the Son, only the Son, and the Holy Ghost, only the Holy
Ghost : As also our Lord sending forth His own disciples to
preach, said, 'Go and teach all nations, baptising them into
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost j' concerning which things we affirm that this is so,
and that we so think, and that it has long so been held, and
that we remain steadfast to death for this faith, anathematising
every godless heresy. That we have thought these things
from our heart and soul, from the time that we have known
ourselves, and that we now think and say thus in truth, we
testify in the name of Almighty God, and of our Lord Jesus
Christ, being able to prove even by demonstration, and to
persuade you that in past times also thus we believed and
preached."
We recognise at once the basis of the present Nicene Creed,
1 Ath. de Decret. Syn. Nic. 32. 2 Ibid.
3 Eus. Eccl. Theol. i. 12. (Neander, Hist. iv. 35.)
Opening of the Council 159
and it is a pleasing reflection that this basis was the Creed of
the Church of Palestine. We have Eusebius's express declar-
ation that it was what he had himself always been taught in
his own native city of Csesarea in the plains of Sharon ; and
the fact that this declaration occurs in a letter to the in-
habitants of that very place is a guarantee for the truth of
his statement. An additional confirmation is supplied by its
likeness to the Creed preserved by Cyril, in the neighbouring
Church of Jerusalem. One phrase, which dropped out of the
Creed in its subsequent passage through the Council, must
have had a touching sound as repeated amongst the hills and
valleys of the Holy Land ; " who for our salvation lived
amongst men."
The Emperor had read and approved this Confession. The
Arian minority were willing to adopt it. But this very fact
was in the eyes of the opposite party a fatal difficulty. They
were determined to find some form of words which no Arian
could receive. They seemed to see sinister glances, to hear
dark mutterings interchanged among their opponents, 1 as this
or that Orthodox expression was mentioned ; on every term,
" God," " Image," " Power," was put some interpretation which
just eluded the desired meaning. Texts were quoted from
Scripture, and even from the Shepherd of Hermas, to show
the large sense of the disputed words. At last the weapon
which they had been seeking to cut off the head of their
enemy, was suddenly drawn from his own scabbard. 2 A letter
was produced from Eusebius of Nicomedia, in which he
declared that to assert the Son to be uncreated would be to-
say that He was " of one substance " (6/xoovo-tov) with the
Father and therefore that to say " He was of one substance,"
was a proposition evidently absurd.
The letter produced a violent excitement. There was the
very test of which they were in search. The letter was torn
in pieces 3 to mark their indignation, and the phrase which
1 Ath. de Dec. Syn. Nic. c. 19, 20; ad Afros, 5, 6: rovQopv^ovra.5 Kal
Siavevovras rols 6(p6aAfj.o'is.
2 Ambrose de Fide, iii. 15.
3 Eustathius apud Theod. i. 7. The document here mentioned has been
identified sometimes with the Creed of Arius, described in page 157 ;
sometimes with that of Eusebius of Csesarea in page 158; but the first
supposition is disproved by the order of events, and the second by the
mention of Nicomedia in the work of Ambrose de Fide, iii. 15. Com p.
Neander, iv. 40.
160 The Council of Nicaea
he had pledged himself to reject became the phrase which
they pledged themselves to adopt.
The decisive expression " of one substance " was not alto-
gether unknown. It was one of those remarkable words
which creep into the language of philosophy and theology, and
then suddenly acquire a permanent hold on the minds of
men. " Predestination," " Original Sin," " Prevenient Grace,"
"Atonement;" there is an interest attaching to the birth,
the growth, the dominion of words like these, almost like
that which attaches to the birth and growth and dominion of
great men or great institutions. Such a phrase was the sin-
gular compound " Homoousion : " in its native Greek, though
abstract, yet simple, and, in its own metaphysical element,
almost natural ; but in the Latin and Teutonic languages
becoming less and less intelligible, though even there, as
" Consubstantial," " of one substance," retaining a force,
which the contemporary phrases like " Circumincession " and
"Projection" have entirely lost. The history of the word is
full of strange vicissitudes. 1 It was born and nurtured, if not
in the home, at least on the threshold, of heresy. It first
distinctly appeared in the statement, given by Irenaeus, of the
doctrines of Valentinus, 2 then for a moment acquired a more
Orthodox reputation in the writings of Dionysius 3 and Theo-
gnostus of Alexandria; then it was coloured with a dark
shade by association with the teaching of Manes ; 4 next pro-
posed as a test of Orthodoxy at the Council of Antioch against
Paul of Samosata ; and then by that same Council was con-
demned as Sabellian.
On the present occasion it is said to have been first talked
over at Nicomedia when Alexander met with Hosius on his
way to the Council. 5 The immediate cause of its selection
in the Council we have already seen. As soon as it was put
forth a torrent of invective was poured out against it by the
Arians. It was, so they maintained, unscriptural, heretical,
materialistic. It was Sabellian. It was Montanistic. It
denied the separate existence of the Son. 6 It implied a
1 For a 'general account of it, see Suicer's Thes. in voce ; Newman's
Arians, c. ii. 4 ; Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. ii. i, 16.
2 Adv. Hser. .'. 5, I ; i. 5, 5. The Dialogue of Origen contra Marcion.
A.D. 230, and the treatise "Pcemander," A.D. 120, to which Bull refers
-as containing the expression, are by recent writers ascribed to a later age.
3 Apud. Ath. de Syn. 43. 4 Ath. de Syn. 16.
5 Philost. i. 7. 6 Soc. i. 23.
Opening of the Council 161
physical cohesion of the various parts of the Godhead. 1 On
the other hand, Athanasius and his friends retorted, that it
was not more unscriptural than the dogmatic language of
Arius himself; that if it was not found in Scripture in the
actual form in which they proposed it, it was found at least
in compound words and in roots of words : if not 6/xoovonos,
Homoousios, at least there were Periousios and Epiousios ;
if not ousia itself, there was ovo-a aet, "always existing." 2
If it had been used by heretics, and been condemned as
heretical, this had been in another sense. It had been de-
fended by at least one Orthodox 3 writer of former times. It
was found in sense, if not in words, 4 both in Scripture and
in the Fathers. If the acceptance of it seemed to savour of
recent Sabellianism, the rejection of it seemed to involve
Polytheism, and a return to the ancient Paganism. 5
The historian Socrates, 6 looking back on this and similar
debates from the next century, compares the combatants to
two armies engaged in a battle at night, neither knowing the
meaning of the other's terms ; each agreeing in the personal
existence of the Son, and acknowledging the Unity of God
in Three Persons, yet unable to agree or to rest in their com-
mon belief. Nor was this view altogether alien from the
calmer judgment of the great Athanasius himself. He, as
Bishop Kaye has well observed, 7 rarely if ever uses the
disputed word in his own statements of the truth ; he avoids
it as if it had a dangerous sound ; and also, with a modera-
tion and an insight unusual in the chief of a theological
party, he is willing, unlike the extremer partisans of his
school, to surrender the actual word if it cause offence to
weaker brethren, and if there was reason to suppose that the
same sense was intended.
The course of many centuries has taken out of this famous
word alike its heretical associations and its polemical bitter-
ness. At the time, it indicated the exact boundary, the
water-mark, which the tide of controversy had reached.
When Hosius 8 had been at Alexandria with Constantine's
letter of pacification, he had endeavoured to mediate between
the contending parties, by attacking the Sabellian as well as
1 As of particles of gold in a mass, of a child to a parent, of a tree to
A root. Soc. i. 8.
2 Ambrose de Fid. iii. 15. 8 Ath. de Syn. 43.
4 Ibid. i. 270. 6 Soc. i. 23. Ibid.
7 Kaye on Nicsea, p. 57. See Lecture VII. 8 Soc. iii. 7.
G
1 62 The Council of Nicaea
the Arian controversialists. Two words had then come into
antagonism, of which one was closely connected with the
epithet now about to be introduced ousia and hypostasis.
These words, which in the Greek of that time were almost
identical in meaning, and of which the Latin language
almost used the one (sub-stantia = hypostasis) as the trans-
lation of the other (ousia\ were just beginning to show the
divergences which afterwards dragged them to the opposite
points of the theological compass. When, therefore, the
" Homoousion " appeared in the Nicene debates, it seemed
a favourable opportunity for the advocates of the several
meanings of these two cognate words to press on the Council
this decision also. But the leading members of the assembly
had gone as far as they could. If Athanasius showed in
youth the same moderation on this question that he after-
wards displayed in age, 1 he must have thrown his weight into
the decision at which the Council arrived, to allow not a
word to be said on the subject. The phrase ousia was just
named in the Creed itself. But the phrase hypostasis was
mentioned only in allusion to a condemned error, and in
such a context as to confound the two terms together, and,
so far as in the Council lay, to render impossible the anti-
thesis between ousia and hypostasis (substance and person),
which was made the basis of later confessions.
To the formula, as thus limited, the consent of the Emperor
was now to be obtained. He would be led to acquiesce in
the term Homoousion from the motives which had guided him
throughout. He saw that the Creed of Eusebius could never,
in its original form, gain the assent of the Orthodox, that is,
the most powerful part of the assembly. He trusted that by
this insertion they might be gained, and yet that, under the
pressure of fear and favour, the others might not be altogether
repelled. He therefore took the course the most likely to
secure this result, and professed himself the patron 2 and also
the interpreter of the new phrase. The various sections that
gathered round Eusebius of Caesarea had, on a previous
occasion, been forced into dead silence by their own divisions. 3
But now, by their acceptance of the Emperor's terms of peace,
they, in their turn, checked the vehemence of their opponents ;
and another silence, no less profound, fell on the chief speakers
of the Orthodox party. 4 In this silence, the time was now
1 See Lecture VII. 2 Eus. ad Cses. (Theod. i. 12).
8 Ath. de Dec. Nic. Syn. c. 3. 4 Eustath. apud Theod. i. 8.
Opening of the Council 163
come for the other counsellor of Constantine to come forward.
On the left-hand side of the hall, Hosius of Cordova l rose and
announced the completion of the Faith or Creed of the Council
of Nicsea. The actual Creed was written out 2 and read,
perhaps in consideration of Hosius's ignorance of Greek, by
Hermogenes, a priest or deacon of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who
appears, at least on this occasion, to have acted as secretary to
the Council. In the copies shown at the Council of Chalcedon,
the 1 9th of June was the date affixed. 3 But this does not seem
to have been formally incorporated in the Creed, in order (it
was said) to avoid the inference that the faith which it professed
was the creation of any single month or day. 4
6 " We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker 6
of all things both visible and invisible :
" And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten
of the Father, 7 only begotten that is to say, of the substance of
the Father, God of God? Light of Light, very God of very God,
begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by
whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things in
earth who for us men and for our salvation came down 9 and
was made flesh, 10 and was made man, 11 suffered, 12 and rose
again on the third day ; 13 went up into the heavens, and is to
come again 14 to judge the quick and dead. 15
"And in the Holy Ghost. 16
" But those that say, ' there was when He was not] and ' before
He was begotten He was not] and that l He came info existence
from what was not] or who profess that the Son of God is of a
1 Ath. ad Monach. 42 : OVTOS Iv NiKaia, Trier iv ee'0TO.
2 Basil, Epp. 8 1 and 244. In the picture before described in the
Iberian convent at Mount Athos, Athanasius is represented as seated on the
ground, in his deacon's dress, writing out the Creed.
3 Mansi, vi. 957.
4 This is contrasted with the precise date affixed by the Arians to the
Creed of Ariminum. Ath. de Syn. c. 3, 4, 5.
5 The parts which have since been added to the text of the Creed are
inserted in the notes. The parts which have been since omitted are in
italics.
6 " of heaven and earth " 7 " before all worlds "
8 Seep. 171. 9 "from the heavens"
"of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary " See p. 171.
"and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and "
12 ' ' and was buried " 13 " according to the Scriptures "
14 "with glory" 16 "and of his kingdom there shall be no end."
16 Here follows the addition, from the words "the Lord, the Giver of
Life," to the words " the life of the world to come. Amen."
164
The Council of Nicaea
different .* person' or l substance 1 (erepas vTroo-rao-ew? 17 ovo-tas 1 ),
or that He is created^ or changeable^ or variable^ are anathematised
by the Catholic Church."
In this "the Faith set forth at Nicaea," we have the altered
shape in which the Creed of Csesarea was established as the
Creed of the whole Church. Compared with the Creed of
which it is a modification, or with the later enlargements
of which mention shall be made presently, its most striking
feature is extreme abruptness of form, which well indicates
the desire of its framers not to go a hair's breadth beyond
what was needed for the special occasion.
To the Emperor it had been already exhibited in private,
and was now doubtless exhibited publicly. According to the
Egyptian traditions, 2 the Bishops, on presenting him with the
Creed, girt on his side the sword which he had given into their
hands at the beginning of the Council, saying " This Christian
Faith (or Creed) do thou now openly profess and defend."
Fabulous as this story probably is, yet something of the kind may
have occurred as the basis of a like practice in the Russian
Church when the Czar pronounces the Creed at his coronation.
But there was a more substantial exemplification of the lesson
which the story no doubt was meant to convey. Whether from
the awe which Constantine entertained for the persons of
Christian Bishops, or from his desire to enforce unanimity in
the Church at any cost, he, now that the Creed was determined,
entirely changed his tone respecting the doctrines against which
it was levelled. With the rapidity with which some remarkable
men, even of high intelligence and wide views, throw themselves
from one state of mind into another, seeing only for the time
that which is immediately before them, and seeming to forget
that they have ever held opposite language or opposite opinions,
Constantine not only received the decision of the Bishops 3 as
a divine inspiration, but issued a decree of banishment against
all who refused to subscribe the Creed, denounced Arius and
his disciples as impious, and ordered that he and his books
should follow the fate of the Pagan Porphyry ; that he and his
school should be called Porphyrians, and his books burned,
under penalty of death to any one who perused them. 4
1 Ruf. i. 6: "ex alii subsistentia aut substantial' I have used
* ' person " as the recognised equivalent of vv6ffra<ris. The Authorised
Version has "person " in Heb. i. 3, "substance" in Heb. xi. i.
2 Eutychius, i. 444. 8 Ruf. L 5 ; Soc. L 9, 30.
4 Soc. L 9, 31, 32.
Opening of the Council 165
In the Council itself the feelings which the recitation of the
Creed excited must have been various. To the more simple
and illiterate of the assembly it probably conveyed the general
impression of a noble assertion of the greatness and divinity
of the Saviour of mankind. But the more learned disputants of
Alexandria probably fixed their attention on the three debated
points, (two of which have since dropped out of the Creed
altogether,) namely, the Homoousion, the definition of the
words "only begotten," and the anathema. To see how these
portions would be received by those against whom they were
aimed was now the critical question.
As the Creed of Nicaea is the first deliberate composition
of Articles of Faith, so the signatures at Nicsea form the first
example of subscription to such articles. The actual sub-
scriptions remained till the beginning of the next century, 1
and some* imperfect lists have been preserved in various forms.
At the head of all these lists is Hosius of Cordova : "So I
believe, as above written ; " followed by the Bishop of Rome
as represented by his two presbyters. " We have subscribed
for our Bishop, who is the Bishop of Rome. So he believes
as above is written." 2
But the main question was whether those who would have
been satisfied to adopt the Creed of Eusebius without these
additions, could be satisfied to adopt it with them. There
was much hesitation. It is impossible, at this distance of
time, and with the imperfect accounts of the transaction, to
judge how far the recusants were influenced by an attachment
to the positive dogma of Arius, or how far they were sincerely
scandalised by an expression which appeared to them to savour
of Sabellianism or Manicheism ; or again how far their
reluctance was occasioned by scruples of their own or from
fear of offending their constituents. Eusebius describes in his
own case what probably took place more or less in the case of
many others. He took a day for consideration. 8 He deter-
mined to consult what we should call the " animus imponentis "
the mind of the imposer. This was easy enough. It was
his own- master, the Emperor. Constantine declared that the.
word, as he understood it, involved no such material unity of
the Persons in the Godhead as Eusebius feared might be
deduced from it. In this sense, therefore, the Bishop of
Caesarea adopted the test, and vindicated his adoption of it in
1 Epiph. Haer. Ixix. n. Jer. adv. Lucif. 20 (ii. 193).
2 Spicil. Soles, i. 516. 8 Ath. de Dec. Nic. Syn. 3.
1 66 The Council of Nicaea
a letter to his diocese. The anathemas against the dogmatic
statements of Arius presented perhaps a more serious difficulty.
But here again Eusebius wrote to his Syrian flock that there
was a sense in which he could fairly condemn the use of these
expressions, even though he might agree in the truth which
they had been intended to express. They were none of them
scriptural terms, and as such were (so the Orthodox party
themselves had justly pointed out) liable to the same objections
as those which Eusebius and his friends had brought against
the homoousion. And in this view he was further fortified by
the suggestion of the Emperor, that in two of the expressions
(" there was when He was not," and "before He was begotten
He was not "), taken literally, there was a contradiction with
the doctrine held even by Arius himself, "that the Son was
begotten before all worlds, and that there must have been a
potential existence even before the actual creation." With
these reasonings, which much resembled those which
reconciled the Jansenists to the Papal Bull condemning the
opinions of Jansenius, Eusebius satisfied himself, and hoped
to satisfy his excitable congregation in Palestine. Others of
the same, or even more extreme views, including Paulinus,
Menophantus, Patrophilus, and Narcissus, followed his example.
They even sprang forward in eager repudiation of the con-
demned l dogma.
Eusebius of Nicomedia, with the two other Bithynian
Bishops, of Nicaea and of Chalcedon, 2 was less accommodating ;
indeed he had committed himself more deeply, both to Arius
personally, and to the condemnation of the test. In this
difficulty he consulted not the Emperor, but his own special
patroness the Princess Constantia, widow of Licinius, then
living at Nicomedia. No doubt her views, though more
decidedly Arian 3 than her brother's, leaned to . the same
general conclusion of a wish for uniformity ; and she persuaded
them to comply, urging (what it is said the Bishops themselves
urged some years afterwards to Constantine himself) that they
must be unwilling by their individual scruples to protract a
t controversy which had already caused him so much anxiety,
and which, they feared, might, if continued, have the effect of
driving him back in disgust to his original Paganism. 4
1 Eustath. apud Theod. i. 8 : irpoirri^ffavTes avade^arl^ouffi. TCL
pet/u.evoi' S6y/j.a. Rufinus (i. 5) makes 17 the first, and 6 the final, recalci-
trants.
2 Soc. i. 8. 8 See Lecture VI. 4 Soz. iii. I, 9.
Opening of the Council 167
There were two stories circulated in after times respecting
this signature, which cannot both be literally true, but which
curiously represent the feelings of the time. One, apparently
proceeding from the Orthodox party, described how, in later
years, Eusebius and his friends had bribed the keeper of the
Imperial archives to let them have access to the documents of
the Council, in order to erase their names ; l and that Eusebius
had then openly repudiated the homoousion, and in the presence
of the Emperor torn off a piece of his dress, and said, " What
I thus see divided I will never believe to be of the same
substance." Another story proceeded from the extreme Arian
party, savouring of that peculiar bitterness with which the more
eager partisans of a failing cause attack its more moderate and
more conciliating adherents. According to them, the advice
of Constantia took a more precise form. The fact, remarked
by Gibbon, that the controversy between homoousion and
homoiousion turned upon the use of a single letter, would
naturally occur (so it was said) to the quick mind of the
Princess, not merely as a mental, but as a physical and literal
solution of the difficulty ; and accordingly Eusebius, Theognis,
and Maris satisfied their consciences, and the wishes of their
Imperial patron and patroness, by dexterously inserting an iota
into the text of the Creed, 2 and then subscribing it without
scruple.
They still, however, refused their assent to the anathemas, on
the ground already noticed, that though the opinions con-
demned were false, they were not the opinions held by Arius,
as they knew from personal knowledge of the man himself.
This partial assent, however, did not satisfy the Emperor.
Against Eusebius of Nicomedia there was, besides, a personal
grudge, as having favoured the rebel Licinius. He and
Theognis, therefore, were deposed from their sees, Amphion
and Chrestus were substituted for them, and the edict of
banishment was issued. Once more they entreated the power-
ful favour of Constantia, or of her party, with the Emperor ;
and, on their sending to the Council a final submission and
explanation of their difficulties, were received, and subscribed all
the decrees. The date of this last act is not easy to ascertain,
but it must have been before the close of the Council. 8
1 Soz. iii. 21.
2 Philost. i. 8. Snip. Severus (ii. 40) says, probably from this story, that
the Arians generally satisfied the Council by substituting Spot- for &p.oov<riov.
3 Soc. i. 14 (42) ; Theod. i. 19. The long negotiations about these
1 68 The Council of Nicaea
There remained 1 only the extreme section of the Arian
party the Bishops Theonas and Secundus, Arius himself, the
deacon Euzoius, the reader Achillas, and the presbyter Saras.
Secundus seems to have agreed in the general doctrine of the
Creed, but refused to sign the anathemas. He left the
Council after an indignant remonstrance against Eusebius of
Nicomedia for his first subscription. " Thou hast subscribed
to escape banishment, but within the year thou shalt be as I
am." His prediction was only partially fulfilled. The five
companions were banished indeed, in pursuance of the Imperial
decree, to Galatia and Illyria. But in the rapid turns of
fortune or of disposition which seem to have accompanied the
decision of the Nicene Council, not unlike th'ose at the period
of the English Reformation they were, before the close of the
assembly, recalled, 2 and were favourably received after sub-
scription to the Nicene decrees. So we are informed by
Jerome, 8 on the authority of old men still living in his time,
who had been present at the Council, and of the authentic
acts of the Council, where their names were still to be seen.
Arius himself disappeared before the close of the Council.
His book, Thalia, was burnt on the spot ; and this example
was so generally followed, that it became a very rare work.
Sozomen had heard of it, but had never seen it. 4 Constantine,
also, if the letter be really his, condescended to an invective
against him, mixed in almost equal proportions of puns on his
name, of jests on his personal appearance, of eager attacks
upon his doctrine, and of supposed prophecies against him in
the Sibylline books ; and his letter (or documents correspond-
ing to it) was posted up in the different towns of the empire. 5
Bishops seem to imply that at least a month must have passed between the
drawing up of the Creed and the dissolution of the Council.
1 The tradition of a distinction between the mass of the Arian party and
a few obstinate impenitents, is preserved in a picture of the Council in the
Iberian convent at Mount Athos. A crowd of heretics are represented as
being admitted to re-union ; whilst a smaller band is driven into a tower or
prison by an Imperial officer armed with a stout club.
2 It is not expressly stated that Theonas and Secundus were recalled
before the end of the Council. Philostorgius (i. 8) says they were recalled
afterwards when the Emperor became Arian. But the name of Secundus
appears amongst the signatures. (Godef. ad I.)
8 Adv. Lucif. c. 20. So also Socrates justly infers from the letter of
Eusebius and Theognis (i. 14).
4 Soz. i. 22.
8 Broglie (i. 398) places this letter before the Council, relying on Epi-
phanius (Haer. lix. 9). But Epiphanius's account is evidently a confusion
Opening of the Council 169
Yet the immediate fate of Arius himself is involved in mystery.
In the official letter of the Council to the Alexandrian Church,
it is studiously concealed. In the traditions of the remote
East, he was believed to have died on the spot under the curse
of Jacob of Nisibis. 1 But, in fact, he was allowed to return,
to be received with Theonas and Euzoius, either before the
conclusion of the Council, or shortly after, with no further
penalty than a prohibition against returning to Alexandria. 2
A singular custom in Alexandria commemorated this prohibition.
There alone in Christendom, no presbyter was allowed to
preach. 3
This general amnesty, after such a struggle, and after the
announcement of measures in appearance so severe, is to be
ascribed to two causes. The first is that feeling of goodwill
which I before 4 described as the almost necessary result of
any general gathering of men not wholly devoured by faction.
The distance between Arius and Marcellus, on the two extremes,
was so broken by the intervening stages of opinion, that it was
probably found almost impossible to refuse to one shade of
opinion what had been granted to another. In this respect
the clemency of the Council of Nicaea stood out in strong relief
against the severity of later Councils, the savage treatment of
Nestorius at Ephesus, or of Huss at Constance ; and remained
a standing protest, to which S. Jerome could justly appeal,
against the harsh intolerance of the Luciferians, who, rather
than receive a single Bishop tainted with Arianism, would have
excommunicated the whole Christian world.
But there was also another reason which facilitated the
amnesty in the case of the Nicene Council. It is evident that
both at the time and long afterwards their decision of the
orthodox faith was looked upon as final. What, indeed,
the Mussulman chroniclers 5 imagine that the doctrines of
of the earlier with the later relations of the Emperor to Arius, and the
testimony of Socrates (i. 9, 15) is decisive the other way : Uavr]yupiK<t>Tpov
ypdtyas travra-fcov Kara ir6^.eis irpoffedrjKf, StaKcafAcpScav /col ry rrjs elpcavelas
ijdei StajSaAAcuv avr6v. This passage (i) confirms the genuineness of the
Emperor's letter ; (2) gives some explanation of it, as a mere ironical and
rhetorical display ; and (3) shows that it was written after the Council.
1 Biblioth. Patr. v. p. civ.
8 Hieron. c. Lucif. 20, ii. 192 ; Soc. i. 14, 2 ; Soz. ii. 16.
3 Soc. v. 22 (298). Philostorgius (ii. i) says that Alexander was in-
duced by Constantine to subscribe a formula renouncing the homoottsion ;
that on this Arius communicated with him ; but that Alexander once more
returned to his former position.
4 See Lecture II., p. 114. 5 Hist. Patr. Alex. 76.
G 2
170 The Council of Nicaea
Christianity, unsettled before, were settled once for all at Nicaea,
this is an exaggeration. But it is certain that the Creed of
Nicaea was meant to be an end of theological controversy.
The " Word of the Lord, which was given in the CEcumenical
Council of Nicaea," says Athanasius, " remaineth for ever."
Those who had drawn it up were emphatically the fathers of
Nicaea. To it was applied the text, " Remove not the ancient
landmark which thy fathers have set." 1 No addition was
contemplated ; it was of itself sufficient to refute every heresy.
They believed, and their immediate successors believed,
that they were, under Constantine, beginning the final stage of
the Church's history. This belief continued, even after the
growth of new controversies and the convention of new
Councils might have seemed to call for a new Profession of
Faith. Particular Churches retained their special Creeds.
But the Nicene Creed remained the one public confession.
The Council of Sardica declared that it was amply sufficient,
and that no second Creed should ever appear. 2 When the
next General Council met in 381 at Constantinople, although
it had to confront two new heresies those of Apollinarius
and Macedonius it did not venture to do more than recite
the original Creed of Nicaea. The additions which now appear
in that Creed, and which are commonly ascribed to the Fathers
of Constantinople, did probably then make their appearance.
But they were not drawn up by that Council. They are found
seven years before in the writings of Epiphanius ; 3 and although
they may have been put into the exact form in which we now
see them at the Council, perhaps by Gregory of Nyssa, 4 they
were not set forth as its Creed, and are first called by that name
when quoted by the Imperial officers at Chalcedon in 43 1. 6
The divines of Ephesus showed their sense of the finality of
the Nicene Creed still more strongly. After reciting it aloud in
its original simple form, they decreed, as if foreseeing the
alterations to which the growing spirit of controversy might
lead, that henceforward no one should " propose, or write, or
compose any other Creed than that defined by the Fathers in
the city of Nicaea," under pain of deposition from the clerical
office if they were clergy, and of excommunication if they were
laymen. It was not till the next Council, the Fourth General
1 Dr. Newman's note on Athanasius's Treatises, i. p. 19.
2 Ath. Tom. ad Antioch. 3, 4. 3 Epiph. Ancor. 120.
4 Niceph. H. E. xii. 3.
6 See the case clearly put in Tillemont, ix. 494.
Opening of the Council 171
Council, at Chalcedon, that the original exclusive supremacy
of the old Nicene Creed was impaired. Then, for the first
time, amidst much remonstrance, 1 the additions of Constan-
tinople were formally acknowledged, and the enlarged Creed,
in its present form, was received, though not as superseding the
original Creed of the First Council, and with a protest against
any further changes. It is said that the ancient Eastern sects,
both Monophysite and Nestorian, still bear witness to the fact,
that no additions had up to this time been made. The Creed,
as they recite it, is that of Nicaea alone. In the West, even as
late as the seventh century, 2 it was retained in the Church of
Spain. But the principle was broken through, and the way
was opened for still further modifications. The Constantino-
politan Creed, as set forth at Chalcedon, gradually rose, from
its co-ordinate position, into the place and name of the Creed
of Nicaea. The original Arian controversy was now so far in
the distance, that the polemical elements were regarded as
unnecessary. The new form of the Creed not only dropped
some of the emphatic phrases defining the term " begotten of
the Father," but also abandoned the anathemas against the
condemned dogmas. 3 On the other hand, the expressions
which it added concerning the Incarnation and Passion, though
at the time probably intended only as slight amplifications,
contain germs which in later ages have fructified into vast
dogmatic systems. And the enlarged description of the
attributes of the Spirit gave an opening to the deliberate
addition of the words " and the Son " to the doctrine of the
Procession which rent asunder the Churches of East and West.
In the Western versions of the Creed, besides this one
important alteration, others appeared of less moment, but not
to be overlooked. " God of God " was reinserted from the old
Nicene Creed. " By the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary " was
another variation. The abstract neutrality of the original (TO
Kvpiov, TO coo7roiow) was transformed into "Dominum vivifi-
cantem" in the Latin, and "the Lord and Giver of Life" in
the English version. " Holy," as an epithet of the Catholic
1 Thej-emonstrances are given in Mansi, vi. 630, 631, 641 ; the adop-
tion of the new Creed, vi. 958, vii. 22, 23 ; the principle of its adoption,
vii. 114, 115. The difficulties are well given in Tillemont, xiv. 442.
2 Mansi, x. 778.
3 The only Church in the East, which, whilst adopting the Constant!
nopolitan Creed, retains the anathemas of the Nicene, is said to be the
Armenian. Their last appearance in the West is in the Creed of Gregory
of Tours. (Greg. Tur. i. I.)
172 The Council of Nicaea
Church, probably from inadvertence, has been omitted in the
English.
Such have been the changes of the most unchangeable of
all the Creeds. So slight a check has even the solemn decree
of the Council of Ephesus been able to place on the growth of
controversy, and the modification of the work of the Council of
Nicaea. That decree has often been quoted as a condemnation
of the numerous confessions of faith which have in later times
been introduced : the so-called " Athanasian," in the seventh
century; the Tridentine, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican
Articles in the sixteenth. So far as these confessions are
regarded as terms of communion, they no doubt (as Burnet
urged in the case of the Athanasian Creed) 1 run counter to the
spirit of the Council of Ephesus. But the substitution of the
Creed 2 as set forth at Chalcedon for that set forth at Nicsea,
though a less important, is a more direct, as it is a more
universal, violation of the Ephesian decree. We might, if we
chose, vex ourselves by the thought that every time we recite
the Creed in its present altered form we have departed from
the intention of the Fathers of Nicaea, and incurred deprivation
and excommunication at the hands of the Fathers of Ephesus.
We might insist on returning to the only Catholic form of the
Creed, such as it was before it was corrupted at Constantinople,
Chalcedon, Toledo, and London. But there is a more religious,
as well as a more rational, inference to be drawn from this
long series of unauthorised innovations. Every time that the
Creed is recited, with its additions and omissions, it conveys to
us the wholesome warning, that our faith is not of necessity
bound up with the literal text of Creeds, or with the formal
decrees of Councils. It existed before the Creed was drawn
up ; it is larger than the letter of any Creed could circumscribe. 3
The fact that the whole Christian world has altered the Creed
of Nicaea, and broken the decree of Ephesus, without ceasing
to be Catholic or Christian, is a decisive proof that common
sense, after all, is the supreme arbiter and corrective even of
CEcumenical Councils.
1 Macaulay's England, iii. 473.
2 That the Ephesian decree applied to the Constantinopolitan (or
Chalcedonian) additions, was perceived by Cardinal Julian at the Council
of Ferrara. (Jenkins* Life of Cardinal Julian, p. 291.)
3 This is well put in Archbishop Thomson's " Lincoln's Inn Sermons"
(xii.), and Dr. Temple's Essay on "The Education of the World," p. 41.
LECTURE V
THE CONCLUSION OF THE COUNCIL
Two questions remained for the decision of the Council,
now nearly forgotten ; but one of them, at the time, occupying
almost an equal share of attention with the theological contro-
versy just concluded ; the other, no doubt, to those who were
specially concerned, as interesting, as to us it is tedious and
trivial.
I. The first of these, in importance, if not in order of dis-
cussion, was the question of Easter. It was the most ancient
controversy in the Church. It was the only one which had
come down from the time when the Jewish and Christian
communities were indistinguishable. It was the only one
which grew directly out of events in the Gospel history. Its
very name (the " Quartodeciman, " the "Fourteenth-day,"
controversy) was derived, not from the Christian or Gentile,
but the Jewish, calendar. The briefest statement of it will here
suffice. Was the Christian Passover (for the word was still
preserved, and by the introduction of the German word
" Easter," we somewhat lose the force of the connection) to be
celebrated on the same day as the Jewish, the fourteenth day
of the month Nisan; or on the following Sunday? This
was the fundamental question, branching out into others as
the controversy became entangled with the more elaborate
institution of the Christian fast of forty days, as also with the
astronomical difficulties in the way of fixing its relations to the
vernal equinox. On one side were the old, historical, aposto-
lical traditions ; on the other side, the new, Christian, Catholic
spirit, striving to part company with its ancient Jewish birth-
place. The Eastern Church, at least in part, as was natural,
took the former, the Western the latter, view. At the time
when the Council was convened at Nicaea, the Judaic time was
kept by- the Churches of Syria, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, and
Proconsular Asia ; the Christian time by the Churches of
the West, headed by Rome, and also, as it would seem, the
Eastern Churches of Egypt, Greece, Palestine, and Pontus.
It was a diversity of practice which probably shocked
the Emperor's desire for uniformity almost as much as
the diversity of doctrine. The Church appeared (this was the
173
174 The Council of Nicaea
expression of the time) " to go halting on one leg." 1 " The
sight of some Churches fasting on the same day when others
were rejoicing, and of two Passovers in one year, was against
the very idea of Christian unity." " The celebration of it on
the same day as was kept by the wicked race that put the
Saviour to death was an impious absurdity." The first of these
reasons determined that uniformity was to be enforced. The
second determined that the older, or Jewish, practice must
give way to the Christian innovation.
i. We know nothing of the details of the debate. Probably
the combined influence of the Churches of Rome and of
Egypt, of Hosius and of Eusebius, backed by the authority of
the Emperor, was too great for resistance. It was sometimes
said afterwards that the Council had made the selection of the
day a matter of principle. But this was not the case. The
only principle which had really guided them was, that, in a matter
of indifference, the minority must give way to the majority. 2
In one point the form of the Decree on Easter agreed with
that of the Creed ; no date was affixed. In another point it
differed. Whereas the Creed was prefaced with the words,
"So believes the Catholic Church," the Decree was pre-
faced with the words, which are also found in Constantine's
letter, 3 "It has been determined by common consent" (ISo^c
Koivy yWy-n?), apparently to show that this was a matter of mere
outward arrangement. And it was probably couched in this
form in order to avoid the necessity of imposing penalties on
those who were at first reluctant to give up their ancient
customs. 4
The Decree took more immediate and undisputed effect
than the Creed. Arianism, as we have seen, lingered long,
both in the Empire and in the surrounding nations. But the
observance of Easter, from that time, was reduced to almost
complete uniformity. Cilicia had already given way before
the Decree was issued. Mesopotamia and Syria accepted the
Decree at a solemn Council held at Antioch within twenty
years. 5
Three small sects, 6 indeed, in each of those provinces, still
1 Ath. ad Afros, c. 5 :
2 Soc. v. 22 (64) ; an admirable and instructive passage.
8 Eus. V. C. iii. 18.
4 See Ideler, Technische Chronologic, ii. 204. 5 Tillemont, vi. 666.
6 The Novatians of Constantinople (Soc. v. 21), the Audians in Mesopo-
tamia (Epiph. Hser. 70), the remaining Quartodecimans in Asia Minor
{ib. 50). See Hefele, i. 320, 321.
Conclusion of the Council 175
maintained their protest against the innovation of the Nicene
Council as late as the fifth century, almost after the fashion of
the modern Dissenters of Russia ; abjuring the slightest inter-
course with the established Churches which had made the
change, and ascribing the adoption of the Nicene Decree to
the influence of the Emperor Constantine, fixing the day to
suit the Emperor's birthday, much as the corresponding
communities in Russia ascribe the alterations l against which
they protest, to the influence of Peter. But these were
isolated exceptions. Through the rest of the Church the
Jewish observance died out. Whatever subsequent troubles
arose concerning the observance of Easter had no connection
with this original diversity ; and the Nicene Council may fairly
claim the credit of having extinguished at least one bitter
controversy, which had once seemed interminable, and of
laying down at least one rule, which is still observed in every
Church, East and West, Protestant and Catholic.
2. Even in details the mode of observance which still pre-
vails was then first prescribed. Besides the original and more
important question, whether the Paschal Feast should be
observed on the Jewish or the Christian day, had arisen
another question, occasioned by the difficulty of rightly
adjusting the cycle of the lunar year ; from which it resulted
that, even amongst those who followed the more general
Christian practice, Easter was observed sometimes twice or
three times, sometimes not at all. It was now determined,
once for all, that the Sunday should be kept which fell most
nearly after the full moon of the vernal equinox. For the
facilitation of this observance two measures were taken ; one
of which is remarkable as still guiding the calculations of
Christendom, the other as having given rise to an important
custom long since obsolete.
What English child has not at odd moments turned over
the leaves, of his Prayer-book to wonder at the table of the
Golden Number, and the directions for finding Easter-day?
That table first originated in the Council-chamber of Nicaea ;
perhaps in the desire of the Emperor Constantine to soothe
the wounded feelings of his favourite counsellor. When the
task of adapting the cycle of the lunar year to the Paschal
question was proposed, the Council would naturally turn to the
most learned of its members to accomplish the work. This
1 See Lecture XII.
1 7 6
The Council of Nicaea
was unquestionably Eusebius of Caesarea. 1 He had paid
special attention to chronology; and his general knowledge
was such as, in the eyes of the historian Socrates, of itself to
redeem the assembly from the charge of illiterate ignorance. 2
He had just been sorely tried by the insertion of the un-
welcome Homoousion into the Creed which he had proposed
to the Council; he was probably suspected of having given
but divided assent to the Creed as it now stood. It is
creditable to the justice and the wisdom of the Council, that
they should not have allowed their recent disputes and wide
theological differences to stand in the way of intrusting this
delicate task, as they must have thought it, to the man who on
general grounds was most fitted to undertake it.
He devoted himself to the work, and in the course of it
composed an elaborate treatise on the Paschal Feast, which he
presented to his Imperial master, who gratefully acknowledged
it as a gigantic, almost inconceivable, enterprise; 3 and gave
orders, that, if possible, it should be translated into Latin for
the use of the Western Church.
3. Whilst this work was preparing, and also for the sake of
those whose arithmetical powers were unequal to the calculation
which it might involve, the Council looked to another quarter
for immediate and constant help. If Eusebius of Csesarea was
the most learned individual at hand, the most learned body
represented at Nicsea was the Church of Alexandria. It is
interesting to see how the ancient wisdom of Egypt still
maintained its fame even in Christian theology. By a direct
succession, the Bishops of Alexandria had inherited the
traditions of astronomical science, that first appear in the
fourteenth century before the Christian era, on the painted
ceilings of the temples of Thebes. On them, therefore, was
imposed the duty 4 of determining the exact day for the
celebration of each successive Easter ; and of announcing it
for each following year, by special messengers sent immediately
after the Feast of Epiphany, to all the towns and monasteries
within their own jurisdiction, as well as to the Western Church
through the Bishop of Rome, and to the Syrian Church
through the Bishop of Antioch.
So absolute was their authority in this matter, that even
1 Tillemont, vi. 668. 2 See Lecture II.
8 Eus. V. C. iv. 34, 35.
* It had already existed as a custom. See Neale's Alexandrian Church,
i. 68.
Conclusion of the Council 177
though they were certainly proved to have made erroneous
calculations and fixed the festival wrongly, the Roman Bishop
had no redress, except by appealing to the Emperor, and
entreating him to admonish the Bishop of Alexandria to use
more caution, and so to preserve the whole Christian Church
from falling into error. The first result of this arrangement
is known to us in the "Festal" or "Paschal" Letters of
Athanasius, who succeeded to the see of Alexandria the year
after the decision of the Council. From that year for a period
of thirty years, these letters (preserved to our day by the
most romantic series 1 of incidents in the history of ancient
documents) exhibit to us the activity with which, amidst all his
occupations, Athanasius carried out the order which he had
heard, as a deacon, enjoined by the Council on his aged
master Alexander.
The Coptic Church still looks back with pride to the age
when its jurisdiction was thus acknowledged by all Christian
sees. Gradually the high position of the most learned of
Churches has drifted to other regions. The Bishops of Rome,
who once received from the Popes of Alexandria decrees
unalterable even by the Roman see, in their turn became
the depositaries of science, and in their turn accordingly
reformed the calendar of the Christian world, and imposed it,
gradually, but successfully, on the reluctant Churches, even of
the Protestant confessions. And now the wave of learning in
its onward movement has left Rome high and dry, as it had
left Alexandria before ; and, if similar problems of mixed
philosophy and religion have again to be imposed on the world
by the most learned of its representatives, those representatives
will now certainly not be found either in Italy or in Egypt. 2
II. Another question which the Council had to settle was
that of the Melitian 3 schism. "I have not leisure," says
Gibbon, "to pursue the obscure controversy which seems to
have been misrepresented by the partiality of Athanasius and
the ignorance of Epiphanius." Every one who has looked
into the matter will feel the force of this remark. But, as
1 Dr. Cureton's Preface to "The Festal Letters of Athanasius."
2 There is one point in regard to the settlement of the Paschal question,
which seems entirely to have escaped the Nicene Fathers, but which
probably, owing to their want of foresight, will, with each succeeding
century, widen the divergence between civil and ecclesiastical usages.
How many collisions and complications might have been avoided, had
Easter been then, once for all, made a fixed, instead of a movable, festival 1
8 MfXirios is the name in Athanasius, MeA?jTios in Epiphanius.
1 7 8
The Council of Nicaea
there must have been a small knot of persons in the Council
who were vehemently agitated by the question, we must briefly
enter into its merits. 1 It began in one of those numerous
difficulties belonging to a generation which at the time of the
Council was passing away. We often hear it said that the
period of persecution was a period of purity in the Church.
This, unfortunately, must be taken with considerable reserv-
ation. Whilst one class of evils was repressed, another class
was provoked and aggravated. In the Christian world of the
third century, a controversy arose out of the persecutions,
which tended to embitter every relation of life, namely, the
mode of treating those who, in a moment of weakness, had
abjured or compromised their faith. No weapon of polemics,
even in the Nicene Council itself, was so pointed as the charge
or suspicion of having "lapsed." No allies were so important,
even in the support of abstract theological or chronological
speculations, as those who had " confessed " and suffered for
the faith. The Novatian, the Donatist, and finally the Melitian
schisms were so many phases of this excited feeling. Melitius
was Bishop of Lycopolis (Osioot), the present capital of Upper
Egypt. He had taken the severer view of the cases of the
lapsed, whilst his episcopal brother of Alexandria, Peter, had
leaned to the milder side. The quarrel had broken out in
prison. Peter, stretching out his episcopal mantle like a sail,
had caused his deacon to proclaim, "Those who are for
me, let them come to me ; those who are for Melitius, to
Melitius." Each set up his own Church and succession of
Bishops. Peter's communion in Alexandria retained the title
of the "Church Catholic." 2 Melitius's, in distinction, was
styled the " Church of the Martyrs." His orthodoxy was un-
doubted, and he had the credit of having first called attention
to the heresy of Arius. He was probably one of those men
who spend their lives in picking holes in the conduct or
opinions of their neighbours, and who have so keen a scent
for the weaknesses and the errors of others, that they never
attend to their own. He became, with his following of in-
dependent Bishops, the head of a Nonjuring community, a
thorn in the side of the Bishops of Alexandria hardly less
1 The three classes of documents on which this controversy rests are
well set forth by Hefele, i, 337, 338.
2 The word was here probably used in its more restricted sense of
"parochial," "established," Church, See Pearson on the Creed (note
on Art. 9).
Conclusion of the Council 179
vexatious than Arius ; and as years rolled on, and as increasing
troubles made strange bedfellows, the Melitian schismatics and
the Arian heretics, 1 once deadly enemies, became sworn allies
against their common enemy Athanasius.
This, however, was still far in the distance. The Council
had to decide only on the facts of the case as they then were.
They were gifted neither with the divine insight into coming
events, which could have enabled them to anticipate the
future, nor with the wicked desire to push to their possible
extremities all the tendencies of an innocent sect. They acted
according to what at the time appeared the dictates of charity
and prudence, and if, during the next thirty years, their judg-
ment might seem to have been a mistake, by the end of the
next century the total extinction of the sect ratified its real
and permanent wisdom. Melitius was to retain his title and
rank in his own city, but not to ordain. Those ordained by
him were to resume their functions after a second ordination,
and to take their places below those ordained by the Bishop
of Alexandria. Any future ordinations were to be made with
the consent of the same authority. 2
Melitius and his party belong to that prying, meddlesome,
intolerant class, who least of all men have a right to claim
toleration at the hands of their opponents or at the hands of
posterity. Yet even characters such as these must receive the
just allowance which they deny to others; and we may well
admire the liberal treatment which they received from the
Council of Nicaea. By what means it was brought about we
know not. But we cannot err in supposing that it was agree-
able to the general temper of Constantine ; and we may also
conjecture that it was accelerated by the general respect for
the venerable confessor Paphnutius, himself an adherent of the
Melitian party.
One person present must have been deeply mortified by this
result. Athanasius, who up to this point had carried all before
him, now saw a blow aimed at the supremacy of the see of
Alexandria, which, both as the archdeacon of its Bishop, and
the champion of its faith, he had so strenuously defended.
Afterwards, if not at the time, he revenged himself by the
taunt, 3 which we now know to be the reverse of the truth, that
Melitius had compromised himself by compliance with heathen
1 It is said, however, that before this (Epiph. Haer. 69) Theonas had
been appointed by Melitius.
2 Soc. i. 9. 3 See Hefele, i. 331.
180 The Council of Nicaea
sacrifices : " O that Melitius had never been received by the
Church ! By some means or other," he says, with an un-
mistakable bitterness, 1 "the Melitians were received, but the
reason I need not tell." He was clearly in a minority in
the Council. However much in his later life we may rejoice
that Athanasius stood firm against the world, we may fairly
rejoice that on this occasion Athanasius stood alone against
the Church, and that the Church stood and prevailed against
Athanasius.
III. The main grievances of the Christian world, all more
or less connected with the Church of Egypt, had been remedied.
There still remained the correction of abuses such as have ever
since occupied, in name at least, the chief attention of every
General Council. Little as is the notice that these regulations
attract, compared with the special controversies which called
the Council together, they have a peculiar interest of their
own. They give us an insight into the customs and morals of
the age ; and the extent to which they are observed or neglected
now, gives us a measure of the nearness or of the distance of
our relations to the Council.
The Apocryphal Canons of Nicsea fill forty books. They
are translated into Arabic, and are received by the Eastern
Church as binding with the validity of Imperial laws. They
are, in fact, a collection of all the customs and canons of the
Oriental Church, ascribed to the Nicene Council, as all good
English customs to Alfred. 2 But the authentic Canons are
only twenty in number, filling only three or four pages. There
are, indeed, a few points mentioned in connection with the
Council which are not contained in these Canons. Four such
usages are thus cited by the writers of the next two generations,
namely : the injunction to offer the Eucharist fasting ; the per-
mission of appeal from episcopal jurisdiction to the higher
"apostolical" sees; the revision of the decrees of former
Councils by those that followed; the prohibition of second
marriage to the clergy, and of two bishops in the same see. 8
According to an old tradition, the Canon of Scripture was
now fixed. The Canonical and the Apocryphal books were
placed together near the Holy Table, with a prayer that the
canonical might be found above, and the others below. 4 This
was no doubt a mere popular representation. It is a mark of
1 Athan. Apol. c. Arian, 58, 71. 2 Hefele, i. 344-350.
8 See the question discussed, Mansi, ii. 734 ; Broglie, ii. 428.
4 Mansi, ii. 749.
Conclusion of the Council 181
the wisdom of the Nicene, and indeed of all the early Councils,
that they never ventured to define the limits of the sacred
books. But that some discussion on the subject took place,
may be inferred from Jerome's belief 1 that the Book of Judith
was there and then recognised as canonical. Such a recognition,
or even the belief in such a recognition, probably had great
weight in determining for many centuries the reception of that
most doubtful of all the Apocryphal writings. Nor has its
reception been barren of results. It has answered the purpose
of opening the minds of thoughtful theologians in the Church
of Rome to the shades and degrees of canonicity and inspiration.
In France, its perusal as a sacred book nerved the hand of
Charlotte Corday to the assassination of Marat.
From these doubtful points we proceed to the consideration
of the twenty Canons, so far as they bear on the history of the
Council.
They may be divided, for convenience, into four groups :
i. Those which relate to clerical jurisdiction bring out, more
forcibly perhaps than any others, the inequality of observance
which those ancient decrees have received. They are the 4th,
5th, 6th, yth, 1 5th, i6th, and i8th.
The fifth Canon breathes an air of ante-Nicene simplicity.
It is intended to act as a check on the tyranny of individual
Bishops, to guard against the unjust exclusion of any one from
the Church through the party spirit (<iJWei/aa), or the narrow-
mindedness (fUKpoi/a>x*.), or the personal dislike (d^oYa), of the
Bishop of any particular diocese. To remedy this, all questions
of excommunication are to be discussed in Provincial Councils
to be held twice a year, once in the autumn, once before
Easter, in order that the offerings at the Easter communion
might be made with good consciences and good will towards
each other. The whole of this machinery has necessarily
passed away. 2 But the Decree renders a striking testimony to
the care with which the rights of individuals were guarded, and
to the belief in the ancient Evangelical doctrine of forbearance
and forgiveness.
The fourth Canon is still observed through the greater
part of Christendom. It enjoined that, at the consecration
(" ordination," as it was then termed) of a Bishop, no less than
1 Epist. iii.
3 An atfempt to revive "this pearl of reformatory decrees," as it has
been called, was made in the Council of Basle. See the Life of Cardinal
Julian, by the Rev. R. Jenkins, p. 227.
1 82 The Council of Nicaea
three Bishops should be concerned, as representing the absent
Bishops of the province, who might be detained by pressing
business or the length of the journey. On the observance of
this Canon in the consecration of Archbishop Parker of Canter-
bury, on its neglect in the consecration of Archbishop Petersen
of Upsala, depends the different degree of validity and regularity
which is attached by scrupulous churchmen to the orders of
the Church of England and of the Church of Sweden.
The 6th, ;th, i5th, and i8th Canons, could we but look
under their surface, each probably represents a fierce debate,
in which we almost seem to see the very combatants engaged.
The two highest dignitaries in the Council were Alexander
of Alexandria, and Eustathius of Antioch. The jurisdiction of
the former had been assailed, as we have seen, by Melitius.
It was this, probably, which led to the sixth Canon, confirming
to him and to his brother Metropolitans whatever ancient
privileges they had possessed over the Bishops in their re-
spective provinces. In this Canon we see the first germ of
the yet undeveloped Patriarchates of the East ; and, in the one
precedent selected for such a jurisdiction, we see the organisa-
tion already formed of what was to become the Patriarchate of
the West. "This," the Council says, "is to be laid down as
is the custom in the parallel case of the Bishop of Rome" 1
In later times, and especially at the Council of Chalcedon,
this decree was made the ground of exalting the primacy of
the Roman see above that of Constantinople, which of course
had not been mentioned at Nicsea. But it is a remarkable
instance of the cautious and deliberate spirit of the Nicene
Council that the settlement of the jurisdiction refers to no
grounds, historical or doctrinal, for its decision, but simply
appeals to established usages in words which have since become
almost proverbial, "Let ancient customs prevail," (TO, a
This confirmation, limited as it was, of long prestige,
naturally led to a claim on the part of another see, which
was itself soon to aspire to an equality with the others, but now
only sought a humble recognition of its former grandeur.
The seventh Canon ran thus, and it discloses a slight passage
at arms between Eusebius of Caesarea and Macarius of
1 Rufinus (i. 6) adds: "ut vel ille ^Egypti, vel hie suburbicariarum
ecclesiarum solicitudinem gerat." By "suburbicariarum " were meant the
churches of the Italian prefecture, specially under the vicariate of Rome,
viz. Southern Italy and the islands. Greenwood, 1. 188.
Conclusion of the Council 183
Capitolina, not yet " Jerusalem : " " As custom and ancient
tradition have obtained that the Bishop of ^Elia should be
honoured, let him bear his proper honour," so far Macarius
gained his point, but (and here we cannot mistake the inter-
vention of his superior, the Metropolitan of Csesarea,) "always
saving the rights of the Metropolitan." So closely was the
ecclesiastical organisation framed on the arrangements of the
Empire, that even the parent Church of Christendom could
not take precedence, even in the Holy Land, of the merely
secular seat of the Roman government. It was the same spirit
which guided William the Conqueror in his selection of the
Norman fortresses, rather than the Saxon sanctuaries, as the
sees of the Bishoprics of England. But in this case we catch
the relation of the sees of Csesarea and Jerusalem on the very
edge of their turn. Before another ten years, ^Elia Capitolina
had not only become Jerusalem, but the Holy Sepulchre had
been discovered, and Macarius was more than compensated
for any concessions he may have made to Eusebius at Nicsea ;
and by the next century his see had become a patriarchate,
while Csesarea remained an inferior bishopric.
The fifteenth Canon struck at a custom which prevailed, as
it would seem, largely even at that early time, and which, in
spite of this canon, was continued, and probably will continue
as long as the Church itself. It prohibits absolutely the
translation of any Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon, from one city
to another. There were at least two high personages in the
Council, who must have winced under this decree, the
orthodox Eustathius of Antioch l and the heterodox Eusebius
of Nicomedia. But they would have had their revenge if they
could have seen how soon the decree would have spent its
force. Eusebius himself, who had subscribed this very decree,
was translated a few years afterwards from Nicomedia to
Constantinople, 2 and it was thought so heroic a virtue in
Eusebius of Csesarea to have declined a translation to the see
of Antioch, that Constantine declared him in consequence fit
to be a Bishop, not of a single city, but of the whole world. 3
By the close of the century it was set aside as if it had never
existed, and there is probably no Church in Europe in which
the convenience or the ambition of men has not proved too
strong for its adoption. If the translation of Bishops has now
1 Eustathius had been translated from Berrhoea, and Eusebius from
Berytus. See Hefele, i. 404.
2 Theod. i. 19. 3 Soz. ii. 19.
1 84
The Council of Nicsea
become the exception, yet the translation, the promotion, of
Presbyters and Deacons from place to place, has been so
common as to escape all notice.
The eighteenth Canon, on the other hand, touches an evil
which has vanished, and hardly left a trace behind. Later
ages have been accustomed to the domination of Popes,
Bishops, Presbyters. But the Church of the Nicene age was
vexed with the peculiar presumption of the order of Deacons.
Being usually the confidential attendants of the Bishops, they
were in the habit i of taking their place among the Presbyters,
and of receiving the Eucharist even before the Bishops them-
selves. This the Council of Nicsea strongly reproves, and
glances at certain places and cities where the reproof was
specially needed. One young Deacon, we know, there was
present in the Council, whose prominent activity on this
occasion provoked the envy of many of his superiors. But it
is probable that the place specially alluded to was not Alex-
andria, but Rome. The Bishop Sylvester, as we have seen,
was absent. But his two Presbyters, Victor and Vincentius,
were present. We learn from Jerome how the Roman
Deacons took especial advantage of their master's dignity to
lord it over the Roman Presbyters, and it is not too much to
suppose that the two aggrieved Presbyters took the opportunity
of urging what in the Bishop's presence would have been un-
necessary or inexpedient.
2. One regulation alone, the twentieth Canon, related to
worship : that which enjoins that on every Sunday, and in
daily worship between Easter and Pentecost, the devotions
of the people shall be performed standing. Kneeling is for-
bidden. The almost universal violation of this Canon in
Western Churches, at the present day, illustrates our remote-
ness from the time and country of the Nicene Fathers. To
pray standing was, in public worship, believed to have been
an apostolical usage. It is still the universal practice in the
Eastern Church, not only on Sundays, but week-days. But
in the West kneeling has gradually taken its place; and the
Presbyterians of Scotland, and at times the Lutherans of
Germany, are probably the only Occidental Christians who
now observe the one only rubric l laid down for Christian worship
by the First CEcumenical Council.
3. The Canons which relate to the manners and morals of
1 Rufinus (i. 6) omits it.
Conclusion of the Council 185
the clergy naturally carry us back to evils long extinct. But
they are all distinguished by a remarkable prudence and
moderation; namely, the ist, 2nd, 3rd, and ryth.
The ist is aimed against acts * of excessive asceticism,
which had led to scandalous consequences. The 2nd re-
strains the rapid transition of converts from heathenism to
baptism, and from baptism to ordination. The ryth, with
the strong feeling of those times against usury, forbids the
clergy to make money by exorbitant interest. The 3rd Canon
guarded against the scandals which might arise from the
ancient practice of the intimate companionship of the clergy
with religious ladies. 2 " No Bishop, no Presbyter, no Deacon,
no one holding any clerical office, is to have with him a
woman of this kind, unless it be his mother, sister, or aunt,
or such persons as are entirely beyond suspicion." But con-
nected with this decree was an abortive attempt, which
discloses to us one of the most interesting scenes of the
Council. A proposition was made, enjoining that all married
clergy (according to one report, including even sub-deacons)
were to separate from their wives. It was in substance
the same measure that was afterwards proposed and carried
in the Spanish Council of Illiberis, and it is therefore not
improbable that it was brought forward on this occasion
by the great Hosius. It was also, we are told, supported by
Eustathius of Antioch. 3 But every distinguished member of
the Council in turn seems to have met with a rebuff. The
opposition came from a most unexpected quarter. From
amongst the Egyptian Bishops stepped out into their midst,
looking out of his one remaining eye, and halting on his
paralysed leg, the old hermit-confessor, Paphnutius or Paph-
nute. With a roar of indignation rather than with a speech, 4
he broke into the debate : " Lay not this heavy yoke on the
clergy. ' Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.'
By exaggerated strictness you will do the Church more harm
than good. All cannot bear such an ascetic rule. The wives
themselves will suffer from it. Marriage itself is continence.
It is enough for a man to be kept from marriage after he has
been ordained, according to the ancient 5 custom ; but do not
1 See Bingham, xiii. 8 ; Beveridge, Synod, ad 1. note 44 ; Athan.
Tracts, ed. Newman, ii. 250-252.
2 ffvvfiffdKrai, also called ayair^Tal. See Bingham, vi. 2, 13.
8 Synod. Gangr. 4. (Hefele, i. 417.)
4 Soc. i. ii : l&6a fidKpa. 5 Apost. Const, vi. 17.
1 86 The Council of Nicaea
separate him from the wife whom once for all he married when
he was still a layman." His speech produced a profound
sensation. 1 His own austere life of unblemished celibacy gave
force to every word that he uttered ; he showed that rare
excellence of appreciating difficulties which he himself did not
feel, and of honouring a state of life which was not his own.
He has been rewarded by the gratitude of the whole Eastern
Church, which still, according to the rule which he proposed,
allows and now almost enjoins marriage on all its clergy before
ordination, without permitting it afterwards. 2 The Latin Church
has rushed into the opposite extreme ; but, owing to Paphnute's
victory, must have been conscious from the first that it was
acting in defiance of the well-known intention of the Fathers of
Nicsea. The story has been denied, and explained away.
Even the candid French layman who has last written the
account of the Council throws it into an appendix. 3 As early
as the fifth century it is omitted in the one Latin historian of
these events. But its authenticity is beyond dispute; 4 and
even in the West the wise Egyptian hermit has not been for-
gotten. An aged Cardinal, at the Council of Basle 5 (though,
unfortunately, with less success than Paphnutius), expressed
himself so nearly in the same way that we can hardly help
supposing a reminiscence of this incident. Yet later, in the
reign of Mary, when Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, was tried
before the Bishops of London, Winchester, Durham, Llandaif,
and Chichester, and the question of the marriage of priests was
discussed, " My Lord Chancellor and many with him cried out
that Master Hooper had never read the Councils. ' Yes, my
Lord,' quoth Hooper, 'and my Lord of Chichester, to-day,
knoweth that the great Council of Nice, by the means of one
Paphnutius, decreed that no minister should be separated from
his wife.' But such clamour and cries were used, that the
Council of Nice was not seen." 6
1 James of Nisibis (if his Sermons are genuine) took the same view,
Serm. xviii. s. 9, 383. (Routh, Opusc. i. 403.)
2 It was an Egyptian tradition that the decree was carried so far as
related to Bishops, the separation having been previously enforced in regard
to Patriarchs ; who, however, did not exist till long after the Council.
Eutych. Ann. 450.
3 Broglie, ii. 430.
4 For the arguments against the genuineness of the story, and a candid
and complete refutation of them, see Hefele, i. 417.
5 Milman's Latin Christianity, vi. 260.
6 Foxe (Wordsworth, Eccl. Biog. ii. 452).
Conclusion of the Council 187
4. The remaining decrees for the most part sprang from the
same agitations as those which had produced the Melitian
schism. They were the settlements of cases of conscience
which arose in dealing with those who had given way in the
recent persecutions. They remind us that we are still on the
border land between the persecuted and the established age of
the Church. They steer for the most part the same middle
course, as in the case of the Melitians. On the one hand, the
offenders are rigidly excluded from the clerical office, yet
gently admitted to communion. On the other hand, the
austere Puritan or Novatian sectaries, who, like the Melitians,
had separated from the Church rather than communicate with
their fallen brethren, are allowed to re-enter the Church
with re-ordination, or even to retain their orders in remote
cities and villages.
In this decree we can dimly discern two characters of the
Council on opposite sides. One is Acesius, 1 who was then a
Bishop of the Novatians, and who would doubtless defend the
interests of his sect. The other is Hypatius of Gangra. He
was probably a vehement opponent of the Novatians ; for,
many years afterwards, he was attacked by a gang of Novatian
ruffians, in a pass near Gangra, and pelted and stoned to death. 2
The incident is curious, as showing the savage character of
the sect. But, on this occasion, the modified reception of the
Novatians by the Council may be considered as its final act of
toleration. As every rule admits of an exception, so even the
general amnesty of the Council (in the igth Canon) excepted
from the general favour the small sect of the disciples of Paul
of Samosata. "Synodus Nicaena," says Jerome, in his argu-
ment against the Luciferians, 3 " omnes haereticos suscepit praeter
Pauli Samosateni discipulos."
The Council had now completed its labours. The settle-
ment of the Arian and the Paschal controversies was embodied
in a letter of the Emperor to the Churches generally. The
settlement of the Melitian controversy was expressed in a letter
of the Council to the Church of Egypt. The Creed and the
twenty Canons were written in a volume, and again subscribed
by all the Bishops. Some singular legends adorn this stage
of the proceedings. It was believed in later times 4 that two of
the 318 Bishops, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, who had entirely
concurred in the views of the Council, had died before the
1 See Lecture III. 2 Menolog. March 31.
8 c. 26. 4 Niceph. H. E. viii. 23.
1 88 The Council of Nicaea
close of its sessions, and been buried in the cemetery of Nicaea.
When the day for the final subscription arrived, the Bishops
took the volume to the grave of the two dead men, addressed
them, as Mussulmans still address their dead saints, and
solemnly conjured them, that, if now in the clearness of the
Divine Presence they still approved, they would come and sign
with their brethren the decrees of the Faith. They then sealed
the volume, and laid it on the tomb, leaving blank spaces for
the signatures, watched in prayer all night, and returned in the
morning, when, on breaking the seal, they found the two sub-
scriptions, "We, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, fully concurring
with the first Holy and (Ecumenical Synod, although removed
from earth, have signed the volume with our own hands.' ; A
bolder attempt to give a supernatural sanction to the decrees
was retained in another story, 1 preserved in the Alexandrian
Church, as derived from the courtiers of the Palace. " When
the Bishops took their places on their thrones, they were 318 ;
when they rose up to be called over, it appeared that they were
319 ; so that they never could make the number come right,
and whenever they approached the last of the series, he imme-
diately turned into the likeness of his next neighbour." This
truly Oriental legend expresses, in a daring figure, what was
undoubtedly the belief of the next generation of the Church,
that the Holy Spirit had been present to guide their deliberations
aright.
We return to the actual history. The Emperor had now
accomplished his wish. The three controversies had been extin-
guished. The Christian world, as he hoped, had been reduced
to peace and uniformity. The twentieth anniversary of his
accession was come round. The 25th of July, celebrated
throughout the Empire with games and festivities, was appointed
by hini for a solemn banquet to the assembled Bishops. Not
one was missing. The sight exceeded all expectation. The
Imperial guards, who had not entered the chamber where
the Council had been assembled, were now drawn up round the
vestibule of the Palace with their swords drawn. The Bishops,
many of whom had only seen the bare steel of the Roman
swords in the hands of their executioners and torturers, might
well have started at the sight. Eusebius thinks it necessary to
tell us that they passed through the midst of them without any
signs of fear, and reached the room prepared for their reception,
1 Spicil. Solesm. i. 523.
Conclusion of the Council 189
apparently the same as that in which they had met for debate.
Instead of the seats and benches, couches or chairs or mattings 1
were placed along each side ; and in the midst was a table for
the Emperor, with a favoured few. " It might have seemed,"
says Eusebius, who no doubt was one of these, " the likeness of
the kingdom of Christ the fancy of a dream, rather than a
waking reality." The Emperor himself presided, and, as the
feast went on, called to him one Bishop after another, and
loaded each with gifts, in proportion to his deserts. Three are
specially named, as marked out for peculiar honour. James of
Nisibis (so ran the Eastern tale 2 ) saw angels standing round
the Emperor, and underneath his purple 3 robe discovered a
sackcloth garment. Constantine, in return, saw angels minister-
ing to James, placed his seat above the other Bishops, and
said : " There are three pillars of the world, Antony in Egypt,
Nicolas of Myra, James in Assyria." The two other incidents
are as certainly historical, as this is legendary. Paphnutius was
lodged in the Palace. The Emperor had often sent for him to
hear his stories of the persecution ; and now it was remarked
how he threw his arms round the old man, and put his lips to
his eyeless socket, as if to suck out with his reverential kiss the
blessing which, as it were, lurked in the sacred cavity, 4 and
stroke down with his Imperial touch 5 the frightful wound;
how he pressed his legs and arms and royal purple to the
paralysed limbs, and put his own eyeball into the socket.
Acesius, the Novatian, too, had come at Constantine's special
request ; in the hope, no doubt, that the genial atmosphere of
the Council would soften his prejudices against the Established
Church of the Empire. It was probably on the occasion of
this banquet that the dialogue took place which was reported
to the historian Socrates by the eye-witness Auxano. " Well,"
said the Emperor, "do you agree with the Creed and the
settlement of the Paschal question ? " " There is nothing new,
your Majesty," replied Acesius, " in the decisions of the Council,
for it is thus that from the beginning, and from the apostolical
times, I have received both the definition of the faith, and the
1 Theod. i. 10. 2 Biblioth. Patr. p. civ.
3 See Lecture IV. p. 148.
4 Theodoret (i. 10) speaks of the Emperor doing this to all who had lost
their right eye ; but Rufinus (i. 4) and Socrates (i. n) fix it specially to
Paphnutius. Gregory of Csesarea (De Pat. Nic. 316) names the banquet,
but extends it to all.
* Ruf. i. 4.
190 The Council of Nicaea
time of the Paschal Feast." " Why, then," said the Emperor,
"do you still remain separate from the communion of the
Church ? " The old dissenter could not part with his griev-
ance ; he entrenched himself within his unfailing argument ; he
poured forth an animated description of the doings in the
Decian persecution, and of the strictness of primitive times,
which the Church had surrendered. " None," he said, " who
after baptism have sinned the sin, which the Divine Scriptures
call the sin unto death, have a right to partake in the Divine
mysteries. They ought to be moved to perpetual repentance.
The priests have no power to forgive them ; only God, who
alone has the right to pardon sins." So spoke the true ancestor
of the Puritans of all ages, the true mouthpiece of that narrow
spirit, which thinks itself entitled to pronounce on the sins
which can never be forgiven ; which makes a show of charity
in delivering over its adversaries to what are called, as if in
bitter irony, the uncovenanted mercies of God. The Emperor,
for once, was not overawed. His natural common sense came
to the rescue. He replied, with that short dry humour which
stamps the saying as authentic : " Ho ! ho ! Acesius ; plant a
ladder, and climb up into heaven by youjrself." x
These are the last actual words which we have from the
Emperor on this solemn occasion, so characteristic, so full of
instruction for the Puritans and sectarians of all times, that we
might well take leave of him with those words on his lips. But
quite in accordance with their general spirit is the farewell
speech, of which the substance only has been preserved to us,
made by him to the assembled Bishops, on one of the days
immediately before their departure. As they stood in his
presence, he renewed, with the additional experience which the
last month had afforded, his exhortations to mutual peace.
" Let them avoid their bitter party strifes [here, no doubt, he
looked at the deputation from Alexandria] ; let them not envy
any one distinguished amongst the Bishops for wisdom [here
he would glance alternately at the detractors of Athanasius and
of his own Eusebius] ; but regard the merit of every single
individual as common property. Let not those who were
superior look down on their inferiors [here a look at Acesius].
God only could judge who were really superior. Perfection
was rare everywhere, and therefore all allowance must be made
for the weaker brethren [here a glance of commendation to
1 Soc. i. 10.
Conclusion of the Council 191
Paphnutius] ; slight matters must be forgiven ; human infirmi-
ties allowed for ; concord prized above all else. Factions only
caused the enemies of the faith to blaspheme. In all ways
unbelievers must be saved. It was not every one who would
be converted by learning and reasoning [here he may have
turned to Spyridion and the philosopher]. Some join us from
desire of maintenance [this he said in accordance with a well-
known principle which he was wont to commend] ; some for
preferment ; some for presents : nothing is so rare as a real
lover of truth. We must be like physicians, and accommodate
our medicines to the diseases, our teaching to the different
minds of all." l Finally, he begged their earnest prayers to
Heaven for himself ; and dismissed them on their journey to
their several homes with letters to all the provinces through
which they passed, with the injunction to celebrate his own
twentieth year by liberal support to the returning prelates. He
also ordered that in every city a yearly allowance of provisions
should be made for the widows and nuns, and other sacred
ministers. This endowment lasted, though in a diminished
amount, to the middle of the fifth century. 2
Another decree ordered that corn should be exported to those
countries where it was rare, for the purpose of the sacramental
elements. This led afterwards to violent recriminations between
the Arians and Athanasius, as the head of the great corn-country
of Egypt. 3
Before the end of August, Nicaea was restored to its former
state, but the fame of the Council still lingered on the spot.
It was said that they had met for the last time in a building in
the centre of the town probably the same as that which had
received them on their first arrival to pray for their own safe
return, and for the welfare of the city. Tradition pointed out a
spring, which was believed to have sprung up in consequence in
the centre of the apse. 4 When the Arians held a synod at Nice
in Thrace, it was in the hope that under the common name of
the Nicene Creed their own views might receive a better recep-
tion. 5 When the Fourth General Council was summoned, it
1 Bus. V.'C. 321.
2 It was suspended by Julian, and reduced to one third by Jovian.
Theod. i. n.
3 See Lecture VII., and Tillemont, viii. 32.
4 Greg. Caes. 365. For the supposed inspiration of these parting
prayers and acclamations, see Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent,
ii. 747-
6 Soc. ii. 29. See Mansi, ii. 727.
192 The Council of Nicaea
had been the Emperor Marcian's first wish to have it, not at
Chalcedon, but within the sacred walls of Nicsea. The last
Council which has been acknowledged as oecumenical both by
the Greek and the Latin Church received no doubt additional
weight from its being held at Nicsea, the scene of the first and
greatest of them all. It was supposed to have given the city
impregnable strength when attacked by the Persians. When a
prisoner was taken who came from Nicaea, it was a security for
his being well treated by his captors. 1
The prelates returned, as they went, at the public expense.
Some, it is said, 2 were specially commissioned to carry the
decrees of the Council to the different provinces of the Empire.
The only reception of which any detailed mention is preserved,
is that in the Armenian Church. Aristaces is said to have met
his father Gregory and King Tiridates at Velasabata, and
delivered to them the Nicene Canons. 3 To these Gregory
added a few rules, and then retired into a mountain cave, and
never appeared again, leaving the diocese to Aristaces. The
hymn of praise said to have been used on occasion of this event
is still preserved in the Armenian Church : 4 " We glorify Him
who was before all ages, adoring the Holy Trinity, and the one
only Divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now
and ever, through ages of ages. Amen."
The day celebrated in the different Churches as the anniver-
sary of the Council was probably that on which these decrees
and letters were published.
Two legends, characteristic of the Churches of the East and
West, mark the interest which each attached to the reception of
these decrees. When they arrived at Rome, so runs the Latin
story, Sylvester convened, with Constantine's consent, another
Council of 277 Bishops, in which the Nicene decrees were
enforced by the Pope's authority, and in which a number of
minute regulations were inserted, descending even to the
material of which the dress of Roman deacons was to be
made. 5 It is one of the fables by which the Roman Church
has endeavoured to establish a precedent for its authority over
1 Tillemont, vi. 287. The Council, afterwards divided into the two
of Ariminum and Seleucia, was to have met at Nicsea. Theod. ii. 26 ;
Soz. iv. 16.
2 The names are given in Photius, Biblioth. 471 j Gelas. iii. 27.
3 Moses Choren. ii. 87, 88.
4 I am glad to refer for this quotation to the compendious but learned
History of the Fourth Century, by the Rev. W. Bright, p. 27.
6 Anast. Vit. Pont. p. 36.
Conclusion of the Council 193
Councils, as the like fables of the Donation of Constantine, and
the false Decretals, were intended to establish its authority over
princes and kingdoms. Like all such fables it recoils on its
framers. The best proof that no such authority existed is the
necessity of so manifest a fiction to supply the place of facts.
The Eastern legend is far more pleasing, and may possibly
have some slight foundation of truth. Before the Bishops
finally left Nicsea, Constantine, it was said, announced that he
had one favour to beg. They granted it. It was that they
would return with him to Byzantium to see Metrophanes, the
aged Bishop of that city, whom he called his father ; and to
bless by their presence the new city which he was about to
found. 1 They came ; and on the Sunday they met both the
Emperor and the Bishop of the future capital of the Eastern
Church. The Emperor then adjured the aged prelate to name
his successor. Metrophanes replied, with a smiling countenance,
that a week since it had been intimated to him in a dream, how
ten days from that time his end would come, and he accordingly
named Alexander of Byzantium his successor, and the boy
Paul 2 to be the successor of Alexander. Then turning to the
Bishop of Alexandria : " You too, my brother," he said, " shall
have a good successor." And, taking the young deacon
Athanasius by the hand: "Behold," said he, "the noble
champion of Christ ! Many conflicts will he sustain, in
company not only with my successor Alexander, but even with
my next successor Paul." With these words he laid his pall on
the Holy Table for Alexander to take ; and in seven days after-
wards, on the 4th of June, expired in his nyth year. Such,
according to the Byzantine tradition, was the inauguration of
the next two great events of Eastern ecclesiastical history, the
Foundation of the City and Church of Constantine, and the
Commencement of the Pontificate of Athanasius.
So ended the Council of Nicaea. There remain some general
inferences to be deduced from this detailed account of its
history.
i. Fragmentary as the narrative has been, every one must
have observed how various are the incidents that it embraces.
Every party has had its turn ; every one, as the story has gone
on, must have heard something, I trust, congenial to his own
predilections ; something also, I trust, which has been distasteful.
1 "Which he had founded," is the version in Photius. "To make it
a patriarchal city," Hist, of Alex. Patr. 79.
2 See Lecture III. p. 136.
H
194 The Council of Nicaea
This is as it should be. This it is which makes us sure that we
are reading, not a mere conventional legend, but a real chapter
of human life ; grave and gay, high motives and low, wise sayings
and foolish. This also makes us feel that we are still far back
in the first ages of the history of the Church. The elements of
thought and feeling which at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, at the
Second Council of Nicaea, at Florence, or at Trent, are narrowed
into a single channel, or excluded altogether, are here all
blended in one mixed stream. Every Church feels that it has
some standing-place in the Council Chamber at Nicaea. In this
the highest sense, the Council was truly (Ecumenical.
2. It is impossible not to notice the powerful influence
exercised over the results of the Council by personal character.
Take away Constantine, Athanasius, Eusebius of Caesarea,
Hosius, Paphnutius, and how materially its conclusions would
have varied ! It is a truth enforced upon us both by history
and experience, yet often put aside by theological speculations
in former days, and by philosophical speculations in the present.
3. I have before spoken of the advantage of contrasting the
later apocryphal representations of the Council with the earlier
ones. We have now seen what the contrasts are. The pro-
fusion of miraculous portents, fanciful legends, and rhetorical
exaggerations in the later versions, sets off the simplicity and
the vividness of the old accounts. The claims of the Roman
Church, which occupy so large a space in the later Roman
annals, have no place in the true contemporary accounts of the
Council. In the descriptions of Eusebius and Athanasius, the
Bishop of Rome is an old man kept away by illness, who would
have had a high, perhaps the highest, place, as Bishop of the
capital city, if he had been there. This is all. The later
additions represent the Council as convened by him, its decrees
as confirmed by him, and a separate Council as convoked
by him at Rome to receive them. By the difference between
the two statements, we can judge of the difference between the
earlier and the later systems. Again, in the earlier accounts,
the heathen philosophers are attracted by curiosity; in the
later, they are hired by the Arians : in the earlier, the mutual
complaints are made by the Orthodox Bishops ; in the later,
they are made by the Arians. By the difference between the
two accounts, we can judge of the growth of theological calumny.
4. Finally, let me briefly touch on the settlement of the
general controversies which gave occasion to the Council's
convention. 
