to appease the furious contests of rival theologians by counselling imitation of the tolerant spirit in which heathen philosophers dispassionately criticised the conflicting theories of divergent schools. But this prudent advice failed to influence men convinced that misapprehension of divinity involves perdition; and Constantine, therefore, summoned a General Council of bishops to determine and enforce the Creed of Christendom.

Three hundred and eighteen bishops assembled at Nicea in Bithynia (A.D. 325), in response to the imperial summons; and the successors of Galilean apostles, oblivious of the Son of Man, discussed, with angry recrimination, in the presence of a Roman Emperor, the Eonic substance of the phantom Logos, as the supreme question for the salvation of mankind.

The majority of the bishops, holding rather hazy views on a subject clear to demonstration in the eyes of an Arius or Athanasius, would have gladly accepted some form of compromise admitting diversity of opinion within the Christian Church; but Constantine, influenced by the enemies of Arius, and desirous of combining spiritual with imperial despotism through a Catholic hierarchy subservient to his will, adopted the doctrine of Homoousia, and demanded its episcopal ratification under the penalty of his serious displeasure.

Seventeen Arian bishops at first resisted the will of Constantine; but all eventually yielded to the pressure of the temporal power, except Theonas of Lybia and Secundus of Ptolemais, who were deposed and banished, in company with Arius, whose books were committed to the flames, and their possession denounced under the penalty of death. The Consub

stantialists therefore triumphed, and voted the Homoousia in the following formula:

'We believe in one only God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.

And in one only Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, only-begotten of the Father (Monogenes), that is of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, True God of True God, Begotten and not created; consubstantial (óμoóvotos) with the Father; by whom all things are, as well in heaven as on earth; who came down for us men and for our salvation, who was incarnate and became man, who suffered, who was raised the third day, and ascended into heaven; who will come again to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit.

As to those who say, "There was a time when he was not; and before he was begotten he was not; and he was made out of nothing; " or who pretend that the Son of God is of another essence or substance, that he is created, or mutable, or alterable, the Catholic Apostolic Church anathematises them.'

According to this Creed, the lineal descendant of Gnosticism, the Council of Nicæa knew nothing of the incomprehensible Trinity of future generations. Its members simply affirmed the existence of one Supreme God, identified Jesus with the Eonic Monogenes, as the secondary Deity through whom all things came into being, voted him the attribute of eternity through Homoousia, and finally gave official recognition to the existence of the Holy Spirit, without attempting to define his origin, status, or relationship with the Father and the Son. The final evolution of a consubstantial Trinity, even in

the age of Athanasius, was, therefore, still a problem of the future, and the immediate test of orthodoxy lay in the Shibboleth of Homoousia.

The Creed of Nicæa, unknown to Jesus and his apostles, necessarily made them, as heretics, the objects of episcopal imprecation. From this famous Council, therefore, dates the era of separation between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Creed of the Empire; let us, therefore, henceforth give to the Faith of Galilee the name of Jesuism, and abandon the sullied title of Christianity to sacerdotal systems, which have forsaken the simplicity of Nazareth.

Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicæa earned the gratitude of posterity by protesting against the official anathema, and preferring deposition and exile to complicity with spiritual and imperial despotism. The historian, Eusebius of Cæsarea, subscribed the Nicene creed with the mental reservation that Homoousia may be read Homoiousia, expressing, not identity, but similarity of substance admitting of degrees in the essence of Divinity. How profound must have been the amazement of heathen contemporaries, on learning from rival missionaries, that the true Faith had become a question of acceptance or rejection of a single letter in the alphabet!

The extant works of Eusebius, in harmony with the theosophy of Tertullian and Origen, reproduce the fiction that the Being, who appeared in human form to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, was the pre-existent Logos, because being called God and Lord, he could not have been a subordinate angel, and it is irrational to suppose that the uncreated and unchangeable essence of

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the Almighty God could be changed into the form of a man, to deceive spectators with the phantom of a created substance. Eusebius furthermore speaks of the Son as the Prince and Leader of the Host of heaven, the Angel of the mighty Council, the Agent of the Father's secret will, the Second Cause of the universe, who has received power, honour, and even divinity from the Father.1 When we consider that this is the language of an eminent Bishop of the fourth century, who subscribed the creed of Nicæa, how marvellous the modern credulity which accepts the so-called creed of Athanasius as the veritable faith of primitive Christians.

It is important to observe, in justice to the Church of Rome, that spiritual despotism was not initiated at Nicea by the Bishop, but by the Emperor of Rome; and future Popes simply inherited the pontifical throne of the Cæsars.

The creed of Nicæa failed to establish Catholicism, and during the long interval of chaotic theology which preceded the uniformity of ignorance and superstition controlled by a spiritual despotism, ecclesiastical history is but the record of conflicting doctrines, contending factions, and violent interventions of the temporal power, at the call of a fierce fanaticism, which interpreted Christianity through maledictions, persecutions, and massacre.

In the course of their controversies with the Arians, Consubstantialists eventually recognised the necessity of being more explicit respecting the Holy Spirit, and at the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, they accordingly interpolated the creed of Nicæa with the following clause :

1 Eccles. Hist. Book I. 1.

'We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord who gives life; who proceeds from the Father; who must be worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son; who spoke by the prophets.'

This change in the status of the Holy Spirit, accepted by modern piety as a divine mystery, was effected through the arbitrary conclusions of men quite as ignorant on the subject as ourselves; and discloses the strange confusion into which they had fallen respecting the original fiction of divine emanations. The Paraclete is declared to be a direct emanation from the Father, and therefore the Eonic brother of the Logos, who ceases to be Monogenes, the only-begotten, the title assigned to him in the opening words of the creed! The Paraclete also becomes the giver of life, although this divine office is specially assigned to the Logos by Pseudo-John. The lapse of fifty years had obviously left the Council of Constantinople but a hazy impression of Nicene theosophy, and yet their self-destructive formula is accepted by modern Christians as veritable gospel.

This slovenly work of Byzantine creed-makers, in due time evoked new controversies on the procession. of the Holy Spirit, resulting in a fresh addition to the Nicene creed, in the famous formula 'filioque,' which transformed the Paraclete into an Emanation from both the Father and the Son, without any perceptible alleviation of theological embarrassment. For if the Father and the Logos are one, the Paraclete becomes Monogenes the only-begotten; and if they are two, the Eonic birth of Paracletus involves the prodigy of dual paternity. This Æonic innovation was never accepted