DISGRACEFUL CHARACTER OF THE BISHOPRIC. 243

away the sacred mystery, and paraded his execrable heresy.'

16

On account of Paul's heresy, a council of eighty bishops was assembled at Antioch. Paul was excommunicated, pronounced deposed from the bishopric, and the council on their own authority appointed a successor. Their assumed authority to appoint a successor without consulting the membership of the church of Antioch, caused yet a larger number to take sides with Paul, because such proceeding was decidedly irregular.

At this time Zenobia was queen of the East, and with her Paul was rather a favorite. Under her protection and upon the irregularity of the proceedings of the council, he openly for four years defied the decrees of the council, and held his place as bishop of Antioch. When Aurelian, in a. D. 270, went to the East to dethrone Zenobia, the bishops appealed to him to enforce their decrees and remove Paul. Aurelian referred the case for decision to the bishops of Rome and Italy. Before this controversy was ended, Dionysius died, and his successor, Felix, decided against Paul. Then according to the decree that Aurelian had already pronounced, Paul was removed from the office and emoluments of the bishopric of Antioch.

We do not know whether the charges brought against Paul were all true or not, as those who made the charges were all his enemies. But whether they were true or not, is not particularly important; because if they were true, it is not to the credit of the bishopric of that time, for they clearly involve other bishops in the most serious moral delinquencies of Paul. On the other hand if the charges were not true, then that a company of eighty bishops should falsely make such charges, is scarcely less to the credit of the bishopric of the time, than the other would be if it were true.

In either case, therefore, it is certain that the statement of Eusebius of the condition of the bishopric in 302, when the Diocletian persecution began, is strictly true. "They were sunk in negligence and sloth, one envying and reviling an16 Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History," book vii, chap. xxx.

other in different ways, and were almost on the point of taking up arms against each other, and were assailing each other with words as with darts and spears, prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising up against people, and hypocrisy and dissimulation had arisen to the greatest height of malignity." Also some who appeared to be pastors were inflamed against each other with mutual strifes, only accumulating quarrels and threats, rivalship, hostility, and hatred to each other, only anxious to assert the government as a kind of sovereignty for themselves.

The Scripture was fulfilled. There had come a falling away; there was a self-exaltation of the bishopric; and THE

TIME WAS COME WHEN THE MAN OF SIN SHOULD BE REVEALED.

CHAPTER X.

THE RELIGION OF CONSTANTINE.

MUCH

UCH research and great effort have been made to discover the time of Constantine's conversion to Christianity. One writer dates it at his accession in 306, another in 312, another in 321, yet another not till 323, and still another about 327. Others put it at his death-bed baptism, while still others insist that he never was a Christian. When he became a Christian, or whether he ever did, is an interesting question even at this time, and we propose to set forth as fully as in our power lies, facts by which any person can decide this question.

We have already given the history of Constantine's accession and onward to the defeat of Maxentius. We have also shown that at the time of his accession to the throne he was a devout worshiper of the sun. We have related how an incursion of the Franks into Gaul drew him from Arles to the Rhine, and gave Maximian an opportunity to usurp the imperial authority in his absence; and how he was called by this usurpation from his war with the Franks to save his own imperial authority. As he was about to return to the Rhine to enter again upon the war with the Franks, he received the intelligence that they had retired from Gaul to their own country; and to express his gratitude-A. D. 308"he gave public thanks in a celebrated temple of Apollo, probably at Autun (Augustodunum), and presented a magnificent offering to the god."-Neander.1

166 History of the Christian Religion," Vol. ii, Section First, part i, A, par. 11.