THE WORLD BECOMES ARIAN.

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this the twenty bishops assented, blindly overlooking the fact that in admitting that the Son was not a creature like other creatures, they did indeed place him among the creatures, and admitted the very point upon which the Arians had all the time insisted. Thus all were brought to "the unity of the faith." The council broke up, and the bishops departed to their homes.

The council was past, and no sooner did the Arians find themselves secure, than they loudly proclaimed the victory which they had gained. They gloried in the fact that the great council of Rimini had not declared that the Son was not a creature, but only that he was not like other creatures. They affirmed that it was, and always had been, their opinion that the "Son was no more like the Father than a piece of glass was like an emerald." Upon examination of the creed, the twenty bishops were obliged to confess that they had been entrapped. They renounced the creed, and publicly retracted "all they had said, done, or signed, repugnant to the truths of the Catholic Church."- Bower.32

The companion council which was called at Seleucia, met September 27, 359, but as there were three distinct parties, besides individuals who differed from all, there was amongst them such utter confusion, tumult, and bitterness, that after four days of angry debate, in which the prospect became worse and worse, the imperial officer declared that he would have nothing more to do with the council, and told them they could go to the church if they wanted to, and “indulge in this vain babbling there as much as they pleased." The parties then met separately, denounced, condemned, and excommunicated one another, and sent their deputies to Constantius, who spent a whole day and the greater part of the night, December 31, 359, in securing their signatures to the confession of faith which he had approved. The emperor's confession was then published throughout the whole empire, and all bishops were commanded to sign it, under penalty * Id., par. 24, 25.

32

of exile upon all who refused.

This order was executed

with the utmost rigor in all the provinces of the empire, and very few were found who did not sign with their hands. what they condemned in their hearts. Many who till then had been thought invincible, were overcome, and complied with the times; and such as did not, were driven, without distinction, from their sees into exile, and others appointed in their room, the signing of that confession being a qualification indispensably requisite both in obtaining and keeping the episcopal dignity. Thus were all the sees throughout the empire filled with Arians, insomuch that in the whole East not an orthodox bishop was left, and in the West but one; namely, Gregory, bishop of Elvira in Andalusia, and he, in all likelihood, obliged to absent himself from his flock and lie concealed."- Bower. 33

Thus Constantius had succeeded much more fully than had his father, in establishing "the unity of the faith." That faith was the original Arian. And Arianism was now as entirely orthodox, and, if the accommodated sense of the word be used, as entirely Catholic, as Athanasianism had ever been.

66

Having like his father, by the aid of the bishops, united the world under one head," and brought the opinions respecting the Deity to a condition of "settled uniformity," the emperor Constantius died the following year, A. D. 361.

33 Id., par. 28.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE

THE CATHOLIC FAITH RE-ESTABLISHED.

HE emperor Constantius was succeeded by Julian, who restored paganism as the religion of the emperor and the empire, and exerted his influence, though not his power, in favor of its restoration as the religion of the people.

Julian refused to take any part whatever in the strifes of the church parties, "saying that as he was not so well acquainted with the nature of their disputes as a just and impartial judge ought to be, he hoped they would excuse him, lest he should be guilty of some injustice.” — Bower.1 He therefore directed them to settle their differences among themselves. To this end he issued an edict of toleration to all classes of Christians, and recalled from banishment all the bishops and clergy who had been banished by Constantius.

Thus there was restored to the afflicted empire a condition of peace and quietness such as had not been for fifty years. And because of his refusal to allow himself and his authority to be made the tool of the riotous and bigoted church parties -to this more than to any other one thing, is to be attributed the spiteful epithet of "the apostate," which ever since has been affixed to his name. Pagan though he was, if he had like Constantine assumed the hypocritical mask and had played into the hands of the dominant church party, there is no room for doubt that he might, like Constantine, have been an orthodox emperor, with the title of "the great."

1"History of the Popes," Liberius, par. 29.

Under the circumstances, it would be almost surprising if Julian had been anything else than what he was. His own father, an uncle, and seven of his cousins, were the victims of a murder instigated by the dying Constantine and faithfully carried out by Constantius. Julian himself, though only six years of age, by the care of some friends barely escaped the same fate. Constantius was his cousin, and, as emperor, assumed the place of his guardian. "His place of education had been a prison, and his subsequent liberty was watched with suspicious vigilance." — Milman.” He had seen the streets of the chief cities of the empire run with blood, in the savage strifes of church parties. Over the bodies of slaughtered people he had seen bishops placed upon thrones of episcopal ambition. Such impressions forced upon his young mind, confirmed by more than twenty years' observation of the violent and unchristian lives of Constantius, and hundreds of ecclesiastics, and multitudes of the populace, all professing to be living repositories of the Christian faith, all this was not the best calculated to convince him of the virtues of the imperial religion.

It is indeed charged that, in issuing the edict of toleration, and the recall of the exiled ecclesiastics, Julian's motive was to vent his spite against Christianity, by having the church parties destroy one another in their contentions. Even if this be true, if he was to be guided by the experience and observations of his whole life, he is hardly to be blamed for thinking that there was some prospect of such a result. No such result followed, however, because when the prospect of imperial favor, and patronage, and power, was gone, the church parties had nothing to contend for; because "party passions among the Christians would, undoubtedly, never have risen to so high a pitch, had it not been for the interference of the State. As this disturbing and circumscribing influence of a foreign power now fell away of itself, and the church was left to follow out naturally its own de2 History of Christianity," book iii, chap. vi, par. 9.

JOVIAN, VALENTINIAN, AND VALENS.

385

velopment from within itself, the right relations were everywhere more easily restored."— Neander.

Julian died June 26, A. D. 363, beyond the River Tigris, of a wound received in a war with Persia, after a reign of one year, eight months, and twenty-three days. Upon his death, the army in the field elected Jovian emperor, and returned to Antioch. The emperor was no sooner arrived at Antioch than the ecclesiastical commotion was again renewed. The leaders of the church parties endeavored to out-do one another in their eager haste to secure his support; "for the heads of each party assiduously paid their court to the emperor, with a view of obtaining not only protection for themselves, but also power against their opponents." - Socrates.*

Among the first of these came the party of Macedonius of Constantinople, with a petition that the emperor would expel all the Arians from their churches, and allow them to take their places. To this petition Jovian replied, "I abominate contentiousness; but I love and honor those who exert themselves to promote unanimity." This somewhat checked the factious zeal. Another attempt was made, but Jovian declared "that he would not molest any one on account of his religious sentiments, and that he should love and highly esteem such as would zealously promote the unity of the church." A pagan philosopher in an oration in honor of the emperor, rebuked these parties with the observation that such persons worshiped the purple and not the Deity, and resembled the uncertain waves of the sea, sometimes rolling in one direction and again in the very opposite way; and praised the emperor for his liberality in permitting every one freely to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.5

Jovian, though guaranteeing a general toleration, himself professed the Nicene Creed, and a particular preference

3"History of the Christian Religion and Church," Vol. ii, Section First, part i, A, par. 74.

"Ecclesiastical History," book iii, chap. 25.

5 Id.