a man, venerable in his appearance, severe in his habits, monastic in his dress; a subtle logician and a commanding orator. This man openly maintained, that the Son was essentially and totally distinct from the Father; that there was a time when he was not; that he was the first and noblest of all created beings; was a mutable creature, and capable, as men are, both of sin and holiness. He preached continually to a crowded audience, and presented his doctrine to every one with whom he associated in private.

He soon gained many proselytes, both among the common people and men of rank and influence. Alexander, his bishop, assembled two councils, the last contained an hundred ministers, which condemned his opinions and excluded him from the fellowship of the Church.

Spiritual war was now proclaimed, which soon terribly raged throughout the Christian world. Arius retired into Palestine, and opened a correspondence with many eminent men, whom he endeavoured to bring over to his faith. Among his warmest admirers and greatest supporters, was Eusebius of Nicomedia, the metropolis, where the Emperor usually resided. Constantine beheld the breach with grief. He wished to have one great, harmonious, splendid, religious empire. He wrote to the two parties and exhorted them to peace. But it was in vain. He then called an immense council of 318 bishops from all parts of Christendom, to meet at Nice, in Bithynia. They were convened in the year 325 and supported solely at his expense. Such a council had never before been witnessed. It was the first general council. The Emperor himself came in to it, threw their mutual accusations into the fire and exhorted them to peace. This being in vain, the doctrine of Arius was canvassed and condemned. He was deposed, excommunicated, and

forbidden to enter Alexandria.

Such is the fact which the records of ecclesiastical history present us-That, in the year 325, a denial of the real divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, was considered, by almost all the Christian Church, a deadly heresy. If Unitarianism was the faith of the Apostles and early Christians, when was their faith supplanted? Why have we no record of the change? Why was not the change, which must have been well known at this period, appealed to by Arius in his defence? Pliny says, in his day, the Christians worshipped Christ as God. Those who did this, were slain for the testimony of Jesus. Those who denied his divinity, were not persecuted by the Pagans.

In this council, a creed was adopted called the Nicene creed. The dispute concerning Easter was finally adjusted. The or

dination of new converts was forbidden;-also the translation of bishops, priests and deacons from one city to another. The Meletian controversy, for a time was settled. The Novatians were invited to return to the bosom of the Church, as they held nothing at yariance with the fundamental doctrines. Attempts were made to put upon the clergy the yoke of perpetual celibacy, but did not succeed.

Something of the fear of God, and a spirit of discipline was therefore existing. And how could it be otherwise? It was a council of martyrs. Many of them had passed through the fires of persecution, and bore on their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus. One appeared debilitated by the application of hot irons to both his hands. Others, appeared, deprived of their right eyes. Others, of a leg.

Arius was deposed, but not silenced. He and his friends made the most vigorous efforts to persuade the Christian world that they had been unjustly condemned, and to gain a restoration to their former rank and privileges. The sister of the Emperor favoured their cause. In her last moments, she prevailed on Constantine to recal Arius from banishment; to repeal the laws which had been made against him and his party, and even to permit them, in various ways, to oppress the leading members of the Nicene, council. This was done in the year 330. But Athanasius, the successor of Alexander, in the bishopric of Alexandria, refused to receive Arius as a presbyter under him. For his firmness, he was, in turn, deposed and banished into Gaul. The Church in Alexandria, however, was true to its principles, and, though Arius had been reinstated with great solemnity, they would have no connexion with him. Constantine then ordered him to Constantinople. He had supposed that all would be peace, for he had been made to believe that Arius was unjustly condemned; that there was no essential difference between him and his accusers. He now required his opinion of the Nicene creed. Arius, without hesitation, subscribed it, and swore to his sincerity in doing it. The Emperor could never conceive of men's subscribing to the same words, who had entirely different views. This was the case in that period. The Church said that Christ was God. The Arians allowed it, but in the same sense, that rulers and angels are styled gods in scripture. Deluded by the apparent frankness of Arius, Constantine ordered Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, to receive him to communion. Alexander could not resist, but gave himself to fasting and prayer. The Arians were flushed with success; but while parading in triumph through the streets

of the city, Arius was seized with anguish in his bowels, retired by himself, and suddenly expired, A. D. 336.

Soon after, Constantine, who had been the instrument in the hand of God, of amazing changes in the religious world, went to his eternal reward, having first received baptism, which had now superstitiously attached to it saving efficacy, from the hands of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia.

His successor, Constantius, favored the cause of the Arians. He entered heartily into their views, and from the year 337 to 361, violently persecuted their opposers. Athanasius, who, after a banishment of more than two years, had returned, was obliged to flee to Rome. A number of his friends were scourged and imprisoned. The greatest severities were inflicted upon many ministers who held to the Nicene creed. Some were banished, others loaded with irons, and scourged to death. The Arians multiplied creeds upon creeds, labouring so to express themselves, that no essential difference might appear between them and others; and multitudes might be able to subscribe without disturbing their consciences. Among those who were induced to this, was Liberius, bishop of Rome. The Arians filled all the high places in the Church, and were exceedingly ambitious of wealth and power. Eusebius of Nicomedia, the zealous friend of Arius was made Patriarch of Constantinople.

In the year 349, Constantius was constrained by the popular voice, to reinstate Athanasius in his see. It was a moment of triumph to his friends. But his enemies determined his utter destruction, and accused him of the foulest crimes. Athanasius retired to the deserts and secreted himself among some monks, who refused to betray him to his persecuting adversaries. For nearly 40 years Arianism reigned especially in the East, almost without check, and it became a proverb, "All the world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against all the world."

Constantius died in the year 361. His successor Julian, was no friend to Christianity in any shape, and all parties were obliged, for a season, to hide themselves in the dust. Jovian, the next emperor, was a Trinitarian, and in his reign, almost the whole world renounced the Arian system. Valentinian and Valens, two brothers, succeeded Jovian. The former was the patron of the Trinitarians, the latter of the Arians. Valens renewed in the East the spirit of persecution, and many were

banished.

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Gratian and Honorius, the next emperors, were active in pressing Paganism and extending Christianity. But their successor, Theodosius, who came to the empire in 379, entered on

the boldest measures both for destroying idolatry and establishing an uniform religious faith. He drove the Arians with terrible violence from their churches, and exposed them to the greatest calamities throughout his dominions. Unquestionably it was a most criminal abuse of authority; but he seemed to have no idea that religion is to be established in the minds of men by reason and not by force, and but little experimental acquaintance with that system he was so zealous to establish.

No sooner had the Arians attained to the high places than they split into various parties. They could not agree among themselves in their views of the character of Christ. A multitude of new sects sprang up among them, under the names of semi-arians, eusebians, aetians, eunomians, acasians, psathyrians, &c. &c. who were as hostile to each other, as they were to the Nicene party.

The Arian controversy also produced a multitude of other sects, which, for a time, distracted the Christian world; but which have long since passed away and been lost like the tumultuous waves in the ocean.

As the secular arm had now, for many years, been turned against different portions of the professed followers of Christ, the Pagans came out of their dens and took courage. They rejoiced in the contentions among Christians; and when they saw the Arians depose those who had deposed them, they said, "The Arians have come over to our party." One bold and daring effort more, therefore, Satan determined to make to drive Christianity from the earth and regain the seat of empire. Julian had been educated a Christian, was a public reader in the church of Nicomedia, and zealous for Christianity, though he probably was never acquainted with the true spirit of the Gospel. But, through his enmity to the Constantine family and the artifices of the philosophers, he apostatized from his professed faith and bent the whole force of his empire to the reinstitution of pagan idolatry. He was a man of great talents, simulation and cunning, and he pursued those measures which must have ended in the extermination of Christianity had it not been the cause of God. For he not only repealed the laws made against idolatry, opened the heathen temples, raised up an immense priesthood, and set the whole machinery of Paganism in motion throughout his vast empire; but he laboured, in a thousand ways, to undermine Christianity, by destroying its moral influence. He made the Christians continually the object of ridicule, calling them Galileans; shut up their schools; took from them their civil and religious privileges; broke up the clergy by depriving them of their incomes, and burdening

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them with taxes and civil duties; befriended the Jews; reformed the morality of Paganism to make it acceptable to the pious, and used every ensnaring artifice, to draw over the unwary. He abstained from open persecution, because he saw that the blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the Church. But if he did not take away life, he deprived it of all its enjoyment. But Julian found that there was a power above him. In defiance of heaven, he undertook to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. "He committed the conduct of the affair" says Ammianus Marcellinus, a writer of that period and an enemy to Christianity, "to Alypius of Antioch, who set himself to the vigorous execution of his charge, and was assisted by the governor of the province; but horrible balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place inaccessible to the scorched workmen from time to time, and the element resolutely driving them to a distance, the enterprize was dropped." Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and Chrysostom, who lived at the same time and the ecclesiastical historians of the next age, all attest the same facts.

To what depression the Church would have been reduced by so formidable an enemy had he lived to old age, none call tell. A kind providence removed him from the stage after a reign of one year and eight months, in the 32d year of his age. He had attempted the conquest of the Persians, and was killed by a Persian lance. Conscious of his fate, he filled his hand with his blood, and casting it into the air, said, "O, Galilean, thou hast conquered."

This was the last persecution of Christianity by Pagan Rome. Pagans, however, beyond the bounds of the empire, continued to defend their ancient superstitions by arms, and massacred multitudes who bore the Christian name. This was particularly the case in Persia, where, from the year 330 to 370, a most destructive persecution raged and an incredible number of Christians were put to death-the Magi and the Jews persuading Sapor the monarch, that the Christians were friendly to the Roman emperor.

The fourth century produced some men of eminent learning and piety. Among these were, in the east, Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, to whom we are indebted for the best history of the Church; Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, the firm and powerful opponent of Arianism; Basil, surnamed the great, bishop of Cæsarea, an eminent controversialist; Ephraim, the Syrian, a man of much sanctity of life and conversation, whose moral writings were an honor to the age; and John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, one of the most able preachers