Section 21
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xiv LIFE OF EUSEBIUS. method and device, to persecute the Catholic prelates.* Their first attack fell on Eustathius, bishop of the city of Antioch, eminent both for the glory of his confession, and for the rank he sustained amongst the advocates of the Nicene faith. Eustathius was, therefore, accused before the emperor of maintaining the Sabellian impiety, and of slan dering Helena Augusta, the emperor's mother. A numerous assembly of bishops was convened in the city of Antioch, in which Eusebius of Nicomedia, the chief and ring-leader of the whole faction, presided. In addition to the accusation advanced at this assembly by Cyrus bishop of the Beraeans, against Eustathius, of maintaining the impious doctrine of Sabellius, another! is devised against him of incontinency, and he is therefore expelled from his diocese. On this account, a very impetuous tumult arose at Antioch. The people divided into two factions, the one requesting that the episcopacy of the Antiochian church might be conferred on Eusebius of Caesarea, the other, that Eustathius their bishop might be restored, would have resorted to measures of violence, had not the fear and authority of the emperor and judges prevented it. The sedition being at length terminated, and Eustathius banished, our Eusebius, though entreated both by the people, and the bishops that were present, to undertake the adminis tration of the church at Antioch, nevertheless refused. And, when the bishops by letters written to Constantine, had acquainted him with their own vote, and with the suffrages of the people, Eusebius wrote his letters also to that prince, and Eusebius's resolution is highly commended in the emperor's answer. Eustathius, having been in this manner deposed, which occurred, as remarked in our annotations^ in the year 330, the Arians turned the vio lence of their fury on Athanasius ; and in the prince's presence they complained first of his ordination ; secondly, that he had exacted§ the impost of a linen garment from the provincials ; thirdly, that he had " Catholicos Jlntistites" are the words of Valesius ; but, doubtless, to be under stood here, as signifying, not the prelates of the Arian, or of any other seceding party, but of the orthodox church universally, according to the meaning of the terra catholicus, universal. •{-The story is given in Theodoret's Eccles. Hist. Booki. chap. 21. edit. Vales. See Life of Constantine, book 3, chap. 59, note e. § This calumny, the Meletians, instigated by Eusebius of Nicomedia, invented ; as Athanasius tells us in his Apology to Constantine. See his works, torn. 1, p. 778. Edit. Paris, 1627.