Introduction: On the Life of St. Athanasius

Introduction: On the Life of St. Athanasius

INTRODUCTION,

ON THE LIFE OF ST. ATHANASIUS.

Tue ' Orations of St. Athanasius against the Arians' are here reprinted from the Benedictine text, in a form which, it is hoped, will prove convenient to students of theology.

It seems desirable to prefix to them some account of the life of their ever-memorable author.

I; Those who think of studying the life of St. Athanasius will need no prefatory assurance of its grandeur.

They will probably know something of it, to begin with,—enough to make them desirous of knowing more.

The name, a household word through Christendom,—the story, in its merest outline so impressive,

— the character, which compelled even Gibbon' to acknowledge its majesty,—these are elements of unique, unfailing interest, independently of the attractiveness which all adherents of a great religion must find in the record of such great things done for its cause.

It would be hardly less superfluous to disclaim any expectation of doing justice in a few pages to so broad and lofty a theme.

What will be attempted is, to describe this career in its 1 Gibbon, iii. 69 (c. a1). b

ii On the Life main features, by way of introducing the student to the fuller narratives of Montfaucon or Tillemont; to show, in some degree, from the words of Athanasius himself, and especially from his autobiographical fragments, what the real man was in his own personality,—what he thought, and felt, and aimed at,— how he worked, how he suffered, how, in the long run, he overcame.

To conceal that sympathy for his side in the Arian contest, which is involved in the confession of the Nicene faith, would be a paltry and foolish affectation: but, on the other hand, it must never be forgotten that the memory of a hero is not honoured by hero-worship, and that the example of a saint has sometimes been dimmed by hagiology.

Athanasius was born at Alexandria; in the words of the Emperor Constantius, that city contained his ' paternal home' ;' and his father's tomb is known to have been situated in its outskirts".

Of his family circumstances we know but little: one of his relations lived to suffer persecution from his enemies in A.D. 340°; and his own declaration to Constantine, at a crisis of his life, must be taken to mean that he was, at any rate, not wealthy'.

The time of his birth can be approximately determined by observing, that his recollections of the ' persecution under Maximian,' in a. D. 303-5, were imperfect®, and that he was comparatively young when consecrated in a.p. 326, but that he was old enough to receive some theological instruction from teachers who suffered under Maximin Daza in a.p. 311°, and that he seems to have written his first theological work as early as a.p. 318.

Thus we infer that he was born about A.D. 297: a conclusion which bears on the famous anecdote first told by Rufinus of Aquileia, who must have heard it from contemporaries of Athanasius when he visited Egypt about

A.D. 372".

Alexander, bishop of Alexandria,—so runs the story,—after finishing a festival service in commemoration of his martyred predecessor, Peter, was expecting some of his

1 Ath. Apol. c. Ari. 51.

3 Soe. iv. 13.

$ Ath. Hist. Ari. 13.

* Apol. c, Ari. 9.

5 Hist. Ari. 64.

® De Incarn. 56.

" Rufin, H. E.i, 14; Soc. i, 15; Soz. ii, 17.

of St. Athanasius. iii clergy to dine with him in a house standing near the sea.

Looking out towards the shore, he saw a party of boys who were evidently imitating Church ceremonies; after watching them for a while with interest, he observed that they were enacting a mimic baptism.

This, he thought, was going too far: he caused them to be brought in, and, with some difficulty, elicited from them that one of their number, named Athanasius, had been officiating as a bishop, and others as priests and deacons; and that some boys, who were still ranked among catechumens in the Church, had been 'baptized,' with careful observance of the prescribed forms.

Upon which, after consulting the clergy, Alexander resolved to treat this baptism as valid, only adding the episcopal imposition of hands, and the application of chrism to the forehead,—in one word, confirmation.

He then, it is added, exhorted the parents of the young Officiants to train them up for actual Church ministry; and the ' boy-bishop,' in particular, having been duly sent to school, was 'given back' to Alexander as a ' deposit,' and 'bred up, like another Samuel, in the temple.'

The story has a tender, old-world gracefulness, which commended it to the author of the 'Lyra Innocentium'.' But even if we suppose, with Hefele', that there had been a real intention, not to play, but 'to do what the Church meant to have done,' the account given by Rufinus appears incompatible with the fact that Athanasius must have been about sixteen at the accession of Alexander®.

Still, it is likely enough that bishop Peter had discerned in the boy some promise of a high vocation, and had exhorted his parents to watch over it; and it is certain that Alexander did become his kind and fatherly patron, took him into his house, and employed him as a secretary.

The position involved some signal advantages.

It was much to be admitted, in youth, to 1 See the verses on ' Enacting Holy Rites,' at p. 187.

2 Hefele, Hist. of Councils, b. ii, c. 2. s. 25.

3 Alexander became bishop in a.D. 313; Peter had been martyred in

A.D, 311,

iv On the Life the confidence of the ' Archbishop?' or ' Pope?' of Alexandria, the occupant of 'the Evangelical throne,' the second bishop in the Church, whose authority over the bishops of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, was virtually both patriarchal and metropolitical®; and to 'live, as a son with a father',' under the roof of a prelate beloved for his 'gentle disposition®, must have been a happiness often thankfully remembered amid the storms and conflicts of later life.

Such was the introduction of Athanasius, probably soon after A. D. 313, to the threshold of his ministry.

He was eminently qualified to make full use of all his opportunities; and they were many and various, All his antecedents had exercised his powers of observation.

He had been bred up in a home ruled by Christian influences, but amidst the many-sided life of that vast city®, so 'full of stirs,' an intellectual as well as a commercial meeting-place' for various nationalities, a scene of collisions, and also of fusions, between widely diverse elements.

Whenever he traversed the broad street that ran from the Sungate southwards', or looked around him at the Tetrapylon, the Alexandrian 'Carfax,' he would find something new in the aspects of that strange population, so frivolous and restless, so bitterly contentious and feverishly excitable®: or in the south1 The title of Archbishop first appears in a document of a.p. 326, and seems to be applied to Alexander.

Ath. Apol. c. Ari. 71.

2 On this title, signifying 'dear father,' and given to all bishops, but specially to the bishop of Alexandria, see Ath. Apol. 64; Euseb. vii. 7 ;

Pearson, Vind, Ign. i. c. 11 (vol. i. p. 304); Routh, Rell. Sacr. iii. 235.

3 Cf. Con. Nic. can.6; Synes. Ep.67; Mansi, Conc. vii. 55. See Valesius, Obs. Eccl. in Soc. et Soz. iii. 9; Le Quien, Or. Chr. ii. 353; Neale, Introd.

East. Ch. i, rrr.

* So St. Cyril of Alex. says, Epist. 1., to the Monks.

> Ruf. i. 1; Neale, Hist. Alex. i. 115.

® Cf. Josephus, B, Jud. iv. 11. §; Ammianus Marcell. xxii. 16. 7; Greg.

Naz, Orat. xxi. 7.

7 See Merivale, Hist. Rom. viii. 235 ; Jowett on Epist. of St. Paul, i. 452; Vacherot, L'Ecole d'Alex. i, 103.

8 Strabo, xvii. 1.

* Ammian, xxii. 11. 3; Dion Chrys, Orat. xxxii.; Dion Cass, xxxix. 58 ; Hadrian ap. Vopiscus, in Hist. Aug. Scr. ii. 719 ;

Soc. vii. 13.

of St. Athanasius.

Vv western quarter he might see the forces of Alexandrian Paganism', of its worship and of its thought, concentrated in the towering pile of the Serapeion?, which, long years afterwards, was to be literally the stronghold of its furious despair'.

If he turned to the south-east, he would reach the Jewish district, where the indestructible race which at one time held two-fifths of the city, and gloried in its grand synagogue and in the legal authority of its ethnarch', still, after many losses and sufferings®, held its own,—with its proverbial sharpness in overreaching a Gentile customer', and its sleepless watchfulness for an opportunity of striking at the Church'.

To the north of this ' Jewry'

Athanasius passed much time, as a young student, in the 'Didascaleion' or Catechetical School*, so famous for a line of teachers including such names as Dionysius, Origen, and Clement: its traditions would encourage and urge him to become acquainted with Greek literature®; and thus,—apparently in the neighbouring Museum", the ancient seat of the Alexandrian university, —he learned 'grammar,' logic, and thetoric4, read the Homeric poems", made some progress in Platonic studies *', and perhaps acquired the principles of Roman law**, His mind was prepared for future meditation on the 1 See Ath. c. Gent. 10, 23; de Incarn. 45.

2 Rof. ii. 23; Clem. Alex. Protrept. 48; Ammianus, xxii. 16. 12.

See Milman, Hist. Chr, iii. 68.

3 Soz. vii. 15.

4 Philo, in Flacc. 8; Jos. Ant. xiv. 7.2.

See Milman, Hist. Jews, ii. 133.

5 Philo, in Flacc. 9, Legat. 19; Jos. B. Jud. ii. 18. 8; Euseb. iv. 2.

6 Ath. Orat. c. Ari. iii, 35.

7 Ath. Encycl. 3.

8 Euseb. v. 10; vi. 3, 15, 26; Jerome, de Vir. Illustr. 36; Soz. iii. 15.

® Euseb. vi. 18; vii. 7.

Comp. Soc. iii. 16.

10 See Ammian. xxii. 16. 15; Matter, L'Ecole d'Alex. i. 287, 301; Newman, Hist. Sketches, p. 95 sq.; Merivale, Hist. Rom. viii. 234.

The Museum had been Seats injured in the Seresteion of the Bruchion quarter in A.D. 272.

11 Newman, in Athan. Treatises (Lib, Fath. iS i, 52.

12 See Ath. c, Gent. 16.

13 See Ath. de Incarn. 2, 43; c. Gent. 19.

Sulpicius Severus, ii. 36, even calls him 'jurisconsultum,'

vi On the Life hypotheses of pantheism and materialism, and eagerly took hold of the arguments from design to a Creator, and from yearnings after immortality to the existence of the soul'.

But all his early studies were subordinated to the object of becoming 'a scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven.'

Christian theology constituted his chief interest?; and he must have already exhibited that high endowment which alone could make versatility truly powerful, and manifold cultivation truly precious,—a commanding and elevating simplicity of aim.

And whatever he learned as an ecclesiastical student would come home to him with special meaning and vitality when he remembered how often the streets of his native city had been reddened with Christian blood.

Those vivid anecdotes of Alexandrian martyrdom or confessorship*, which we read in the pages of Eusebius (whom Athanasius, as a boy, may have seen in Alexandria about a.p. 309) must have been familiar to all

Alexandrian Church-people: and Athanasius must have been told, in his own childhood, how fierce a persecution had been lately rekindled,—how some of the brethren had been literally cut in pieces for their faith*.

A deep impression, probably, was made on his mind by what he would hear of Phileas bishop of Thmuis, who suffered in a.p. 306, proclaiming his faith in the Divinity of the Crucified®: some years later, as we have seen, he listened to teachers who were soon to die for the same confession : and he may well have connected the stedfastness of his own bishop Peter with devotedness to One who, as Peter expressed it, 'being by nature God, became by nature Man®,'

His acquaintance, whatever was its extent, with such heroic souls, would tend to form in such a soul as his the heroism not less true, nor less religious, which was to bear him so well through the 'long tragedy"' of the future; it would fill him once for all with a deep sense of the realities of Christianity ; and 1 Ath. c, Gent. 27, 28, 30, 33.

3 See Theod. i. 26.

® Euseb. vi. 2, 3, 5) 41.

4 Tb, viii. 12, Cf. Ath. de Incarn. 27.

5 Ruinart's Act. Sinc. p. §19, ed. 1859.

See Euseb. viii. 10.

® Routh, Rell. Sacr. iv. 48.

7_ Hooker, E.,.P. viya..5.

of St. Athanasius. vii his public course is best appreciated when we recognize in him the confessor's spirit.

And even after the persecution was over, he would have frequent evidence of the hostility which Christianity, although again a 'licensed religion,' was still called upon to face. Those sharp Alexandrian mockeries which had not spared even kings and emperors were levelled ceaselessly at a religion which affirmed an Incarnation and gloried in a Cross}, and whose votaries had lately been hurried in masses to a death of ignominy and torture.

But another experience of a very different kind, most fruitful in its consequences, did much to intensify the religious convictions of Athanasius: this was his acquaintance with Antony.

He tells us, in his 'Life?' of the great hermit, that he had often seen him; and although that reading of one passage which makes him say that he 'for some time attended on him, and poured water upon his hands,' may be considered doubtful, we know that afterwards Athanasius was described as an 'ascetic*,' and that when in later days of trouble he took shelter among the monks of Egypt, he found himself perfectly at home.

He contracted an extreme admiration for monasticism, which will not surprise us if we consider that the spiritual enthusiasm of Christianity had found a most emphatic, although a one-sided expression, in such a life as was being led by men who had fled from a town-society at once tainted and brutalized beyond modern conception', and had imitated the first Christians by actually 'giving up all' for Christ.

In the character of St. Antony, the morbid and eccentric elements of monasticism were largely counteracted by a rare amount of wisdom, humility, and love.

His sound moral judgment', 'his serene courage, his deep tenderness, even the outward charm

1 Ath, de Incarn. 1, &c.

2 «Tts substantial integrity' is undoubted.

Newman, Ch. of Fathers, p.

176; Kingsley's ' Hermits, p. 22, See Cave, Hist. Lit. i. 193.

Such a book, indeed, would be likely to receive additions, in the way of marginal notes, from readers who had anecdotes of their own respecting Antony.

8 Ath. Apol. c. Ari. 6.

4 St. Chrys. in Oppugn. Vit. Mon. iii. 11.

5 See his sayings in Coteler. Eccl. Gr. Monum. i. 340 sq.

viii On the Life of a face that never lost its bright tranquillity, and that would seem especially radiant when,—as Athanasius perhaps saw him,—he stood, conspicuous by his white cloak newly washed,

© in the very path of the Alexandrian preefect in the last days of the persecution ®,—all this union of strength and .sweetness would act irresistibly on the imagination and affection of such a youth as Athanasius: nor is it fanciful to think that in subsequent trials he may often have recalled Antony's sentiment, once expressed in Egyptian to younger monks, that 'the longest life of religious labours was nothing to the ages of ages and the crown','

But we must now look briefly at Athanasius's first appearance as a theologian.

He wrote, for the benefit of a convert from Heathenism, a work consisting of two essays, 'Against the Gentiles' and 'On the Incarnation of the Word.'

It appears that its date must be placed earlier than a.p. 319; for it does not allude to the Arian controversy, which broke out in that year.

The first of the two treatises offers a refutation of Heathenism, and then argues constructively to Monotheism, and to the recognition of the Divine Son and Word.

It exhibits the lively play of a young author's mind', together with a characteristic attention to different aspects of one truth®, and a not less characteristic boldness in retorting on Pagans the charge of 'fatuity,' and in analyzing the various apologies advanced for a refined and sublimated polytheism.

In the second treatise, Athanasius begins by stating the primary truth of the existence of one supreme Creator, and then shows how, as being all-good, He gave to man reason as a shadow of His own Word, and after 'man's first disobedience,' applied the one remedy for the ruin by a combination of Divine justice and benignity in the personal intervention of that Word, His Son, whose human life was absolutely spotless, and whose death was a world-redeeming sacrifice.

The Cross—Athanasius argues— 1 Vit. Ant. 67.

2 Tb. 46.

2 Ib. 16; * See the variety of illustrations, c. Gent. 5, 8, 31, 38, 43.

5 E, g. see c. Gent. r, 45, 33) 35.

of St. Athanasius. ix was indispensable, as the truest enhancement of Christ's glory ; and His resurrection could alone account for the moral triumphs of His religion.

What mankind needed, an Incarnate God could alone bestow, and Christ alone has bestowed it: the success of His work in the regeneration of humanity is a manifest proof of His Divine Sonship and true Godhead.

After dwelling triumphantly on this great subject, the writer urges his friend to study the Scriptures, but to remember that a preparation of heart and will is a condition of appreciating their sense ; and so concludes a treatise of which Mohler! has said that it was the first attempt ever made to present the doctrines and facts of Christianity in a philosophically religious form.

'By the sure tact of his noble and Christian nature, Athanasius refers everything to the Person of the Redeemer: everything rests upon Him: He appears throughout.' Already, in Dorner's words, he exhibited his 'intensely fervid' consciousness of 'the vital centre of Christianity' as constituted by 'the living Person of the God-Man, the Redeemer, in His totality?;' a consciousness which went with him through life, lay at the root of his theological eminence, and supplied the chief motive for his earnestness in the controversy which broke out, as it appears, almost immediately after he had completed his first work, and— although somewhat under the usual age—had been ordained a deacon.

II.

It was in a.p. 319 that archbishop Alexander was informed of the dissemination, among Alexandrian Church-people', of strange opinions derogatory to the dignity of the Son of God.

1 In his ' Athanasius the Great.'

2 Dorner, Person of Christ, 1st'per. 2nd ep. sect. 2.c. 3.

Cf. 3rd ep.s. 2. c. I (vol. ii. E. T. pp. 248, 333).

See his analysis of the De Incarnatione.

' By the depth of his view of the fundamental idea of Christianity, Athanasius reminds us of the best Fathers of the second century .... he surpasses them all, however, in clearness and scientific precision;' (p. 259.)

3 Soz. i. 15.

x On the Life Their author, it appeared, was Arius, a priest of mature age, who, after a period of misdirected and factious activity, had attained a high position as pastor of the oldest church in Alexandria!. He was respected for his ascetic life, and admired for his eloquent preaching and dialectical ability; while his influence was enhanced by a dignified demeanour and a voice full of persuasive charm'.

A private conversation between the bishop and the presbyter had no effect: and Alexander found it necessary to assemble the clergy, and address them on the Unity of the Father and the Son.

Arius, having by this time secured a large amount of support, boldly challenged the bishop's statements', as involving that Sabellian confusion of the Son's personality with the Father's, which Dionysius, the most venerated of Alexandrian ' Popes,' had resisted with so much energy.

He then argued that since a father must needs be prior to a son, the Son of God must once have been nonexistent, and afterwards', at a period inconceivably remote, have been called, by the Divine fiat, 'out of what had not previously existed.'

The consequence,' perhaps, was not expressed, but was inevitable: this 'Son' was only a creature, though of all creatures the most ancient and the most exalted.

Such was Arianism in its outset: it rested on the assumption that the relation of priority and posteriority attaching to a human parent and child must hold good in regard to a Divine

Fatherhood and a Divine Sonship®; and (as was afterwards repeatedly observed) it ended by destroying the reality of that Fatherhood and Sonship, inasmuch as no identity of nature could exist between the One Creator and the highest product of His creative will®.

1 Alexandria already possessed what we ¢all the parochial system, Epiph.

Her. 69.1, 2.

2 ibs 3- ® Soci 5:5; ' The 'generation' of the Son was thus viewed by Arius as an event, whereas the Catholic doctrine views it as an eternal fact in the Divine life.

' Thus,.a rationalistic element lay at the root of the theory, although Arius was less consistently rationalistic than Eunomius, Soc. iv. 7.

6 Athan. Orat. i.9, 15, 26; ii. 2,5; de Decr. 10.

See Newman, Arians, p213, ed, 1871.

Of course, the 'identity of nature' in a parent and child is inadequate to represent the inseparable unity of 'he Divine ' coinherence.'

of St. Athanasius. xi The clerical conference having come to no result,—a re- - markable fact, which we may ascribe to the popularity of Arius, to a dread of 'Sabellianizing,' and to the influence of Origenistic modes of thought in the direction of an excessive

Subordinationism,—Alexander formally summoned the priests and deacons of the city to sign a letter, in which he exhorted the partizans of Arius to 'renounce their impiety.'

This vigorous step was followed up by the assembling of a Council of his suffragan bishops, nearly 1oo in number, which drew forth from Arius and his friends, among whom were two prelates, a fuller exposition of their belief!, and thereupon passed sentence of excommunication and anathema.

Arius retired to Palestine, where he met with a certain degree of countenance from Eusebius the historian, bishop of Cesarea: but he was more effectively befriended by another Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia in Bithynia, 'under whose direction' he wrote a cautiously worded letter of self-justification to ' Alexander his blessed Pope and bishop,' in which he spoke of the Son as 'God's perfect creature,' but 'not as other creatures,' and as 'born and created apart from time, and so as to be unchangeable ;' and criticized, as unspiritual and degrading, any language which derived Him from the Divine essence*.

Alexander and his clergy were exposed to many annoyances at home from Arian intriguers*, and from flippant Arian talkers, who asked the women whom they met in the streets whether a son could exist before he was born*.

There were many letters to be written in defence of the doctrine denied by Arius, and in order to expose his real meaning: the most important of these, the ' Encyclical®,' has been assigned, on internal evidence,

! Including (Soc. i. 6) the statements that the Son was called the Word after an eternal impersonal Word,—was created to be an instrument in creating,—did not thoroughly know the Father.

The assertion that He was capable of change from good to evil was hastily made, and soon recalled.

2 See Athan. de Synodis, 16.

8 Theod. i. 4.

* Ath. Orat. i. 22.

5 Soc. i.6.

The style of the Encyclical is unlike that of the letter of Alexander to Alex. of Byzantium, Theod. i. 4; Newman, Ari. p. 446.

xii On the Life to the hand of Athanasius, now, apparently, archdeacon of Alexandria}.

Addressing itself to all Christian prelates, the letter insisted that the propositions of Arius were at variance alike with Scripture and with continuous Christian teaching : and in one sentence, eminently 'Athanasian,' called on its readers to 'hold aloof, as Christians, from those who spoke or thought in opposition to Christ.'

Athanasius was among the forty-four deacons who, with thirty-six priests, signed this letter, as they had signed the earlier one: we cannot doubt that his constant sympathy and ready assistance were a powerful support to Alexander; but to ascribe them merely to loyal feeling for a superior, or grateful feeling for a benefactor, to polemical interest, or to ecclesiastical conservatism, or even to zeal for sincerely held opinions, would be gravely to misread his character, and to lose the lesson of his life.

Constantine might say, in his letter to Alexander and Arius', that they were wrangling over a trivial question: Athanasius discerned the true greatness of the issue, in regard to Christianity*,—and to Christ.

He knew that while Arianism promised much to various minds,—a rational theology, or a just estimate of some

Scriptural texts, or a barrier against heretical or materializing conceptions of Deity,—yet in fact it was radically incoherent', offered no permanent standing-ground, conceded either too much or too little as to the position of the Saviour', showed an apparent tendency to Ditheism®, and therefore an affinity to Paganism, sought to measure the Infinite by human formulas, wrested some texts and ignored others, exaggerated the force of some Christian writers' dicta, while virtually opposing the broad stream of Christian tradition and the foundationprinciples of the Christian faith, which, by affirming the Divine Unity, the distinct personality of the Son, and His

Divinity, included Him within 'the one indivisible essence',' and 1 Theod. i. 25, 'leader of the choir of deacons.' aiSocriny.

' Bp. Kaye on Counce. of Nicza, p. 151.

* See Waterland, Works, ii. 36 (Serm. 1), Dorner, Person of Christ, vol. ii. p. 243, E. Tr.

5 See Chr. Remembrancer, Jan. 1847, p. 168.

® Ath. Orat, iii. 16; de Syn. 50.

7 Newman, Ari. p. 260,

of St. Athanasius. xiii presented to Christians a Christ whom they could consistently

_ adore.

He saw, therefore, that what was really involved was the belief in a really Divine Redeemer: and that Arianism was working in the interests of non-Christian thought, and of heresy such as of old had been stigmatized as 'God-denying?'

We who can look back on the strange history of Arianism since his time can appreciate, in some sense, the greatness of the struggle in which, thus early in life, he found himself involved.

A theory which was to show a vitality so tenacious, an activity so versatile, to fight a long battle with the Church of the fourth century, to win a dominion among barbaric races, to hold Spain until the latter years of the sixth century, to start up after long slumbers amid the confusions of the sixteenth, to mould the belief of Milton and of Newton, to claim 'a home for itself in the Church of England in the person of Samuel

Clarke', to task the energies of such a foe as Waterland, to confront ' Trinitarianism' in a royal presence', and to leave a deep mark on Irish Presbyterianism,—such a theory, however unsatisfactory to reason, however repulsive to piety and to faith, must needs have been formidable when it first spoke out, and called forth Athanasius as its adversary.

And it was his intense conviction that Christ was God Incarnate, and that His absolute claim on the devotion of Christian souls was at stake in the strife with Arius, which made Athanasius strong to meet the challenge.

That strength was acknowledged when, in the summer of A. D. 325, Athanasius appeared and spoke in the Nicene Council, not as properly one of its members', but as one of the ecclesiastics who were present in attendance on their bishops, and were allowed to contribute to the discussions.

'He contended earnestly,' says Theodoret', 'for the apostolic doctrines, and was applauded by their champions, while he

1 Euseb. v. 28.

Cf. Ath. Orat. i. 38; iii. 51.

2 Liddon, Bamp. Lect. p, 18.

8 See Waterland's Works, i. 78.

4 The constituent members of the synod were bishops, or delegates of absent bishops.

5 Theod. i. 26, Compare Ath. Apol. 6.

Xiv On the Life earned the hostility of their opponents.'

We can picture him as he stood forth beside Alexander, while all eyes were gradually attracted towards that slight figure which Julian afterwards petulantly sneered at', and that beautiful countenance which Julian's great Christian fellow-student compared to the face of anangel?: we can imagine how he appealed, for the eternity and real Divinity of the Son, to Scripture and to immemorial Christian consciousness ; how he mentally distinguished the various elements of the Council,—the large orthodox majority, including several whom he venerated as confessors in heathen persecution,—the ' moderate orthodox,' so to speak, who thought that his bishop might have been too stringent in dealing with Arius,—the Arianizers, of whom some were represented by the metropolitan of Czsarea, and others, more pronounced, by him of Nicomedia,—and the very few thoroughgoing Arians; how his keen eyes watched, and his memory registered, the confusions and anxieties, the private conferences, the whispers, the significant looks, of the ' Eusebians,' as they agreed to accept, with a view to the proposed doctrinal formulary, Biblical phrases regarding the Son, which they could interpret in their own sense®.

He was probably prepared to find that their evasive ingenuity made it necessary, in the interests of 'the sense of Scripture',' to insert into the formulary, or Creed, one or two phrases outside the area of Scripture language.

'Let us say, The Son is begotten of the Father, Only-begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father.'

The word ouwsza had been variously employed, in Greek philosophy®, for an individual substance, for a genus or species, or for matter.

Christian writers had used it for the nature or 1 Julian, Epist. 51.

2 St. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxi. 9.

$ Ath. de Decr. 20; ad Afros, 5; Theod.i.8.

The Eusebians, at first, presented a document which was 'torn in pieces' as 'perverse' and heterodox, Theod. I. c.

* Ath. de Decr.21.

On Athanasius's profound reverence for Scripture, see de Decr. 32; c. Gent.1; ad ep. Aig. 4; de Syn. 6.

5 Newman, Arians, p. 190; Ath. Treatises, i.152; Hussey on Soc. iii. 7; Zeller on Stoics and Epicureans, E, Tr. p. 121.

of St. Athanasius.

XV being of God, and in this sense Eusebius of Nicomedia had denied that the Son was begotten of the Father's ous¢a): for that very reason, the leaders of the majority determined to affirm what he denied, and proposed to intensify the statement by adding that the Son was ' of one essence with the Father, — the famous phrase Homoousion.

This latter proposal, as Athanasius must have seen, was fraught with difficulty.

In the first place, the term was a philosophical one, and, as such, might prove an embarrassing auxiliary to Christian truth.

Again, it had been applied to individual members of one class?; viewed in this aspect, it might seriously compromise the strict Monotheism which lay at the root of Christianity.

Thirdly, as ousca had sometimes been used for the being of God, considered in the light of what we call His personality, homoouston might, to some minds, suggest Sabellianism*.

Fourthly, it had been associated by Gnostics with the idea of partition of an existing

'essence, and this sense had been invidiously imposed on it by Paul of Samosata, the heretical bishop of Antioch.

And this very sophism, dexterously put forward by Paul, had induced his judges in the Council of Antioch (A.D. 269) to forbear using the term'; so that it could be described as, to that extent, discountenanced by Church authority.

In reply to these arguments it could be said, 'The term is now put forward under necessity, in order to protect Scriptural terms from abuse: and it will be quite possible so to use it as not to encumber the faith with philosophic speculations®.

Moreover, the context of our proposed Creed, and the very form of the word itself, will guard against any Sabellianizing perversion; and any materialistic

1 Theod. i. 6.

Contrast Theognostus of Alexandria, 'The Son is from the Father's essence, as a beam from light,' Athan. de Decr. 25.

See too Tertull. adv. Prax. 4.

2 Bull, Def. Nic. b. ii.c.1.s.2; Newman, Arians, p. 192 sq.; Liddon, Bamp. Lect. p. 430.

3 Routh, Rell. S. iii. 323; Waterland, i. 285; Ath. Treat. i. 203.

* Athan. de Syn. 45; Bull, D.N. ii. 1.10; Routh, Rell. S. iii. 361; Newman, Arians, p. 197.

*, 5 Ath. de Syn. 51.

6 St. Ambrose, de Fide, iii. 126,

xvi On the Life sense will be excluded by the primary Christian conception of God as a Spirit and as One.

It was as fallaciously used that the term was set aside at Antioch: it has been used in a sound sense by great teachers'; and in that sense, as affirming the Son to be "ruly the Son, therefore truly God, uncreated and eternal?,—and therefore as a bulwark against Arianism *,—it is now proposed for the Council's acceptance.'

These arguments prevailed: the 'Nicene Creed' was drawn up', with anathemas appended to it against the maintainers of the several points of Arianism; and so the doctrinal question was settled, and, as Athanasius regarded it, 'the cause of religiousness towards Christ was upheld °'

Two other questions, far less momentous, but not insignificant, were brought before the Council.

(1) In regard to the long-standing ' Paschal controversy,' it was decided that Easter should always be kept on a Sunday,—that this Sunday should always be subsequent to the 14th day of the Jewish month,— and that the vernal equinox should be reckoned as preceding that r4th day®, More particular information, in regard to each year, was to be furnished by the bishop of Alexandria, with the help of Alexandrian science, to the Church of Rome, and by that church to 'remoter churches'.'

(2) The other case was that of the schismatic Egyptian bishop Meletius, and his partizans.

His character has always been more or less problematical.

Athanasius, writing in a. D. 356, or, as some think, in A. D. 361, says that it is fifty-five years since Meletius began his schism*; and in another work, written about 4.p. 350-2, he tells us that Meletius began it because he had been condemned

1 See Ath. de Decr. 25. Cf. Tertullian, adv. Prax. 4.

2 Ath. de Decr. 20; de Syn. 41, &c.

3 Euseb. of Nicom. had treated it as manifestly inadmissible; St. Ambrose, de Fid. iii. 125, * See it in Soc. i. 8; compare the differences between it and the revised edition put forth by the Council of Constantinople in a. p. 381.

® Ath. de Syn. 54; comp. ib. 45,48; de Decr. 20; Ep, ad Jov.1 sq.; ad Afros, 11.

® See Hefele, Hist. of Councils, b. ii. c. 2. s. 37.

7 St. Leo, Ep. 121.

8 Ath. ad ep. Hg, 22.

of St. Athanasius. xvii in a Council, by bishop Peter, for various offences, and especially for an act of apostasy during persecution!: on the other hand,

Epiphanius (evidently relying on Meletian information) describes Meletius as a brave confessor, who broke off from Peter's communion out of zeal against an indulgent treatment of lapsed Christians*.

The authorities followed'by Epiphanius are in various points proved to be untrustworthy: but some documents, first published by Maffei in the eighteenth century', represent Meletius as having ordained some clergy outside his own diocese, on the pretext of an emergency caused by the persecution, and as having been censured by some eminent confessors, and by Peter, for this irregularity.

The charge of apostasy was unknown to the Nicene Council, which regarded Meletius as having gone wrong through 'impetuosity :' it may have gradually arisen out of the fact that he had come into collision with other prelates who became martyrs: and Athanasius, it seems, was too ready to believe a story which affixed a brand on the founder of a vexatious schism.

The Meletians, in a. D. 325, were numerous, but showed some desire to be reconciled to the Church.

The Council thought it best to treat them generously; their chief was received into communion ; and all their other bishops were allowed to retain their episcopal rank, after receiving 'a holier imposition of hands,'— probably a reinstating benediction*,

— and to succeed to any sees that became vacant, if they were duly 'chosen by the people,' and approved by the see of Alexandria®, Athanasius thought this course too lenient.

'In the Council of Nicza the Meletians were, on whatever grounds,—for it is needless now to state the reason,—received

* into the Church .... Would that Meletius had never been so admitted *!'

1 Ath. Apol. c. Ari. 59.

2 Epiph. Her. 68.

3 See Routh, Rell. Sacr. iv. 91 sq.; Hefele, Councils, ii. 2. so.

* Tillemont, vi. 814.

Valesius takes it of re;ordination, SE SOC. Is Qe § Ath. Apol. 59, 71.

xviii On the Life On returning to Egypt, Alexander carried out this resolution of the Council, after receiving from Meletius a list of his twentynine episcopal supporters, with a statement of the number of Meletian clergy in Alexandria and the neighbourhood.

Within 'five months' afterwards! Alexander lay on his death-bed. Athanasius was absent, having probably been sent by Alexander to Constantine's court, on some Church business?: and we are told on the authority of Apollinaris of Laodicea*, whose father was an Alexandrian, and who was on friendly terms with Athanasius, that the dying prelate called for Athanasius by name.

A namesake of his, one of the priests who stood around the bed, replied to the summons.

Alexander paid no heed to him, but again and again repeated, 'Athanasius!' then, when no one answered, he mustered strength to say, 'You think you have escaped, but there is no escape for you?' thereby intimating, says Apollinaris, 'that Athanasius was summoned to the struggle.'

No one, indeed, could wonder either that Alexander should thus recommend his faithful deacon as his successor, or that in so doing he should augur for him a career of difficulty and conflict.

When Athanasius returned, the suffragan bishops met for the election; ana, as they afterwards testified *, the great body of Alexandrian Churchmen, assembled in the church, persisted, for 'many nights and days,' in expressing their wishes,—' Give us Athanasius, the good, the devout, the true Christian, one of the ascetics! he will be a bishop indeed!'

The majority of the prelates voted for him, 'in the sight and amid the acclamations of the people.'

This testimony is the more emphatic, in that it does not conceal the fact that the bishops were not unanimously disposed in favour of the young archdeacon.

Thus, in the words of Gregory Nazianzen °, ' by the suffrage of the whole people,'—a phrase which cannot mean less than the earnest resolute manifestation of 1 Ath. Apol. 59.

2 Epiph. Heer. 68. 6.

$ Soz. ii, 17.

' Encyclic. of Egyptian Bishops in Ath. Apol. 6; Gibbon, iii, 71.

5 Greg, Naz. Orat. xxi. 8.

of St. Athanasius. xix their desire, constituting morally, if not formally, what was otherwise called a 'choice ''—'not according to the villainous fashion afterwards prevalent, nor by bloodshed and tyranny, but in a manner apostolic and spiritual, was Athanasius elevated to the throne of.Mark.'

Such evidence disposes of the Arian stories that 'six or seven bishops' clandestinely elected Athanasius,', or that he took possession of a church at nightfall, and compelled two bishops whom he found there to perform his consecration®.

But was there, it may be asked, azy innovation on preceding Alexandrian usage in the circumstances of his appointment?

According to Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria about six centuries after this period, 'St. Mark appointed twelve presbyters to continue with the patriarch, and to fill up the see when vacant by choosing out of their own body, on whose head the other eleven were to lay hands, bless him, and appoint

(or make) him patriarch: which custom lasted until the time of Alexander, who forbade any such appointment by presbyters for the future, and ordered that on a patriarch's death the bishops should meet, and make a new one, not being restricted in their choice to members of the Alexandrian presbytery: and so the old institution came to an end'.'

On this it is to be observed that Eutychius is a late writer, and a very credulous one®: and that his statement looks like an exaggeration of Jerome's, who says that, 'until the times of Heraclas and of Dionysius, the presbyters of Alexandria used to nominate as bishop one chosen from among themselves, and placed (by them) in a higher rank, just as an army might make an imperator, or deacons choose an archdeacon®,

Here Jerome dates 1 Cf. Eus. Vit. Con. iii.62; Athan. Apol. 30; St. Ambrose, Ep. 63. 2;

St. Chrys. de Sacerd. iii.

15.

See Pusey on Councils, p. 42.

2 Ath. Apol. 6.

8 Philostorgius, ii. 11.

* Eutychius, Annal. ed. Pocock, i. 331.

5 See mistakes of his cited by Pearson, Vindic. Ignat. i. 294; cf. Neale, Hist. Alex. ii. 181; Skinner's Prim. Truth and Order, p. 298.

6 St. Jerome, Epist. 146.

Cc 2

XX On the Life the change some seventy years earlier than the time mentioned by Eutychius: he says nothing about ordination or consecration; but his illustrations suggest the subsequent confirmatory action of a higher authority than the presbyters',—and if he did not imagine consecration to have been omitted, he must have supposed bishops to have performed it'.

Probably, therefore, he believed that by the old mode of choosing the Alexandrian prelates, the Alexandrian presbyters alone elected, and also were alone eligible*.

Eutychius himself may have meant that the presbyters used to designate the bishop-elect, or solemnly approve of his appointment*: if he thought that they consecrated him, the supposition is excluded by other and better -evidence, e.g. by the fact that in a.p.

324, a synod at Alexandria pronounced the ' ordinations' performed by the schismatic presbyter Colluthus to be invalid, because he was only a presbyter*: not to say that if Alexander had deprived the presbytery of the 'right' to ordain their bishop, the enemies of Athanasius would certainly have made the novel mode of his appointment an element in their charges against him.

The consecration of Athanasius must, according to his own date for the death of Alexander, be assigned to a.p. 326.

The index appended (by some Alexandrian writer unknown) to his 'Festal Letters' goes wrong in giving a.p. 328 as the year, but 1 'Quid enim,' he asks, 'facit, excepté ordinatione, episcopus, quod presbyter non facit?' Epist. 146.

2 Not that such a custom, if it existed, was invariable.

Cf. Sollerius, Act. SS., Junii, v. 8; Neale, Hist. Alex. i, 12.

5 See Echellensis, Eut. Vind. p. 40, 19.

Yet cf. Renaudot, Lit. Or. i. 380.

; * Athan. Apol. c. Ari. 12, 74, 76. The ' presiding elders' who, according to Firmilian, had ' power to ordain,' seem, by the context, to have been bishops (St. Cypr. Ep. 75.7), and the statements of Hilary the Deacon (on Eph. iv. 11), and of the author of certain ' Questiones' on O. and N. T.

(app. to vol. iii, of St. Aug.) qu. 101, that in Egypt, if a bishop is not present, 'presbyteri consignant,' or 'consecrat presbyter,' clearly refer to Confirmation: Hooker, vii, 6.4.

See also Bingham, ii, 3. 7.

of St. Athanasius. xxi may be right in naming, as the day, the 14th of Pauni?, that is, the 8th of June.

The day must, at any rate, be subsequent to May 2, 326; for on May 2, 373, he had, according to Cyril of Alexandria, been bishop for 'forty-six whole years?) not fortyseven.

Gregory of Nazianzus, who wrote a panegyric on his character, and would fain have written a memoir of his life, may have allowed somewhat too little for the gradual development of powers and graces in one who became a bishop at about thirty, and closed his career at about seventy-six.

But we may well believe that the outlines of that splendid picture are applicable to Athanasius at the opening of his episcopate ; that he was not only too noble to become arrogant in his new dignity, but that he already began to show something of that harmony of excellences which Gregory regards as his special glory; the business-like vigour in general administration which _was consistent with discriminating and sympathetic attention to particular cases; the strictness which was not rigid, the gravity which could melt into geniality, the force which would make itself respected, the tenderness which could not but be loved.

Already, doubtless, he was finding his way to various minds and hearts, with somewhat of a Pauline versatility:

'setting an example more persuasive than any eloquence, yet so eloquent as to have little occasion for severity: stimulating these, restraining the ardour of those: guarding some against a fall, raising up others who had fallen: able to keep on a low level with commonplace minds, yet to soar high above the more aspiring: hospitable to strangers, kindly to supplicants,'

(here Gregory applies to him some titles of Gentile gods,) 'accessible to all, slow to anger, quick in sympathy, pleasant in conversation, and still more pleasant in temper, effective

1 On the Egyptian months, see Festal Epist: of St. Ath., Lib. Fath. p. xiii.; L'Art de vérif. les Dates depuis J. C. i. 52.

2 St. Cyril Alex. Epist. 1.

$ St. Greg. Orat. xxi. 5.

Xxil On the Life alike in discourse and in action, assiduous in devotions, helpful to Christians of every class and age, a theologian with the speculative, a comforter of the afflicted, a staff to the aged, a guide of the young, a physician to the sick ;—relieving the wants of the poor, and assisting the rich to use their riches wisely : a defender of widows, a father of orphans, a promoter of Christian marriage and a sanctifier of married life,—one who became all things to all men, that he might gain all, or at least the greater number,—in short, such a prelate as Paul described by anticipation, when, in writing to Timothy, he showed what a bishop ought to be'.'

Ill.

The first three or four years of his episcopate were tranquil enough to allow him full time for work of a purely pastoral character, which definitively secured his moral position amid his flock: and it is usual to place within them an event which brought him into connection with mission work of a specially interesting kind. 'He had but recently,' says Rufinus ?, ' received the episcopate',' when a visitor from 'Ethiopia' or Abyssinia desired to see him, and told a story 'stranger than fiction.'

His name was Frumentius: he was a Christian, born at Tyre.

Years before, he and his brother Atdesius, then mere boys, had accompanied their kinsman and guardian, Meropius, on a journey to Ethiopia.

On their return, their vessel put in for necessaries at a port in the Red Sea.

Meropius and all the 1 St. Greg. Orat. xxi. 9, 10, 36.

? Ruf. i.g. He heard the story from Adesius, long afterwards, at Tyre.

Cf. Soc. i. 19; Soz. ii. 24; Theod. i. 23.

® There are difficulties about the date, chiefly caused by the date which, according to Ammianus, xxi. 4. 23, seems required for the journey of Metrodorus, which, according to Rufinus, preceded that of Meropius.

But Rufinus may be in error on this point.

Tillemont, vii. 710.

Hussey would place Frumentius' mission later: on Soc. i. 19.

of St. Athanasius. xxiii sailors were slaughtered by the barbarians; but the two children, who were found sitting under a tree on the shore and learning their lessons, were spared, and carried to the Ethiopian king.

In his household, at the capital city of Axum, they grew up to manhood; Addesius became his cup-bearer, Frumentius his secretary and accountant.

At his death they were made guardians of his two sons, whose names, as another document tells us*, were Aizan and Sazan.

Frumentius acted as regent of the kingdom, and used his powers to provide places of worship for Christian residents, and to familiarize the natives with Christian ideas.

When the princes grew up, they and their mother entreated the brothers to stay on with them, but each, for his own reasons, withstood the request: Addesius longed for his Phoenician home, and hastened thither; Frumentius simply said, 'It is not right to conceal the Lord's work,' and thereupon repaired to Alexandria to ask its 'Pope' that a bishop might be sent to watch over the Christian congregations in Ethiopia.

Athanasius assembled a synod of prelates, laid the case before them, and said significantly, looking at Frumentius,

'Can we find such a man as /Azs, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?'

All assented.

Frumentius was consecrated, and returned to Axum, where he so laboured as to earn the title of 'Father Salama, the door of mercy, who illuminated the darkness of Ethiopia with the brightness' of the light of Christ?.'

The Meletians, now headed by a bishop named John Arcaph®, had not been conciliated by the Nicene decision.

They renewed their intrigues, especially in the Thebaid, where Meletius had lived as bishop; and it was not improbably about _ this time that Athanasius resolved to visit southern Egypt, and to go as far as Syene.

When his vessel, ascending the Nile, had nearly passed through the diocese of Tentyra in the second

Thebaid, he found himself near a place which had very recently 1 Ath, Apol ad Const. 31.

? See Bened. Vit. S. Ath.

3 See Ath. Apol. 65, 71.

xxiv On the Life become the seat of a new institution, the cloister-life of monks living in community.

The eremitic life had in Antony's case been modified by the formation of groups of disciples, who came to practise their spiritual 'training' in separate cells near his own mountain retreat.

A further step was naturally taken when Pachomius, who had begun life as a young Pagan soldier, and had been won over to Christianity by the kindness which he and his comrades received from the Christians of Thebes, gathered round him a small band of ascetics, who dwelt with him at Tabenne, on the eastern bank of the Nile?,

The monastery thus founded became, in truth, the parent of all conventual houses,—of Monte Cassino and of the ' Studium,' of the Troitska and of Fulda, of Marmoutier, of Cluny, of St. Alban's.

Pachomius proved himself a great organizer: his discipline was minute and exacting, but its spirit was equitable, morally elevating, and thoroughly Christian.

The brethren were exhorted to regard self-will as the worst of evils, to persevere in their 'training' without being so 'insane' as to be proud of it, to 'keep the Lord ever in sight' by the remembrance of His Cross and the expectation of His return.

Their community, it seems, like others which soon became offshoots from it, was divided into a number of 'families,' each occupying one house, and discharging in rotation the common duties and labours, although specially employed in some one occupation. Everything at Tabenne was prescribed by rule; the twelve prayers and psalms for midnight, for day-time, for evening,—the afternoon service in the church,—the Eucharist on Sunday and Saturday,—the addresses, meditations, confessions, penances, times of silence and of work, of eating and of sleeping, followed each other with absolute uniformity.

But when the archbishop approached the place, all its inmates came forth to greet him with processional psalmody; he stood up in his boat, and gazed on the orderly train of monastic figures, each

? See Tillemont, vii. 177.

* See his Rule and Admonitions in Galland. Bibl. Patr, iv. 718 sq.

of St. Athanasius. e's attired in the 'sheep-skin' cloak, the sleeveless tunic, the linen girdle, the woollen cowl: if he looked for Pachomius himself, it was in vain, for the abbot, fearing lest he should be presented to Athanasius to be ordained priest, hid himself in the throng, but contrived to .see the face of his 'Pope,' and predicted that he 'would have much to endure in the cause of true religion.'

This foresight ere long began to be verified.

Arianism was . Tecovering from the blow dealt to it at Nica.

'Eusebius of Nicomedia had regained favour with Constantine!:

Arius himself was allowed to present a statement of belief, inadequate, but not heterodox, and on the strength of it was relieved from his sentence of exile*.

Eustathius, the zealously anti-Arian ° bishop of Antioch, was.'attacked by an Arianizing cabal on a variety of charges, deposed, and banished'; other orthodox prelates were similarly got rid of, and Athanasius himself was menaced, first by some movements of Meletian activity, which he understood as betokening an alliance between Meletians and Arians ®, and against which, we are told, he employed the aid of the civil power*; and next by a demand, on the part of Eusebius, that he would readmit Arius to communion.

His answer was decisive: 'I cannot communicate with persons who have invented a heresy in contradiction of the truth, and have been anathematized by the Cicumenical Council'.'

Eusebius appealed to Constantine: it was easy to stir up the jealousy of an autocrat by asking whether his just and gracious intentions towards a priest who had suffered so much from misrepresentation were to be nullified by one self-opinionated prelate.

The emperor sent two officers of his household with a peremptory mandate to Athanasius.

'Since you are informed of my 1 The story told by Soc. i. 8,14, appears untrustworthy.

2 Soc. i. 25, 26.

3 «Full of zeal for the truth,' Ath. Hist. Ari.-4.

4 See Ath. l.c.; Soc. i. 24; Theod. i, 21; Eus. Vit. Con. ili. 59.

5 Ath. Apol. 59.

- 6 Epiph. Her. 68. 6.

7 Ath. Apol. 59; Soc. i, 27.

xxvi On the Life will, give admission into the Church to all who desire it.

If I find that you have hindered any, I shall instantly send some one to depose you.'

Athanasius replied by a letter, in which he urged 'that there could be no communion between the Catholic Church and a heresy that was fighting against Christ.'

This emphatic language had its effect, and Eusebius was obliged to employ his Meletian friends as accusers of the intractable archbishop.

Three of them appeared at court, and charged Athanasius with taxing Egypt to provide linen vestments— apparently albs*—for the church of Alexandria.

But two of his own priests, being on the spot, refuted this calumny; and Constantine wrote to him, condemning his accusers and summoning him to court.

He repaired to Nicomedia, but was there seized with a long and distressing illness?, and also obliged to rebut a second charge, that he had sent a purse of gold to a rebel named Philumenus. A third, which became more famous, was levelled principally at one of his priests as his agent, and ran thus :—'A priest named Ischyras was wont to officiate in a hamlet of the Mareotis, named The Peace of Sacontararum.

One day, while he was in the act of offering the oblations at the Eucharist, Macarius, a priest sent by Athanasius, rushed into the church, threw down the holy table, and broke the chalice*.' Athanasius, on hearing of this charge, met it promptly.

Ischyras, he said, was not a priest'; he was a man of no good character, who had received a pretended ordination from the schismatic priest Colluthus, but had been readmitted into the Church on condition that he should live asalayman.

For a time he did so; afterwards he got possession, not of a church,—for his little village had none,—but of a cottage belonging to an orphan boy, wherein he performed the service before a small congregation, consisting chiefly of his own kindred.

Athanasius, while making his visitation of 1 Sicharia.

See Neale, Introd. East. Ch. i. 306.

2 Fest. Ep. for 332.

§ See Ath. Apol. 11, 28, 37, 41, 63, 74, 76.

# See Soc. i. 27.

of St.

Athanasius.

XXvii the Mareotis, attended by a large body of clergy and laity, heard of this irregularity, and sent Macarius, together with the "priest of the district, to bring Ischyras before him.

Macarius arrived at the place on a common week-day, when there would be no Eucharist*: he found that Ischyras was ill in bed, and therefore communicated the archbishop's message through his father.

On recovering, Ischyras found that his relatives would no longer attend his ministry ; vexation drove him to join the Meletians, who were glad to gain an adherent in the Mareotis ; and thus the story of 'the broken chalice' was concocted.

The emperor, holding a court of inquiry at Psammathia near Nicomedia, was satisfied with the explanations given on this charge and on that of disloyal traffickings.

Athanasius, in his next ' Festal' letter, written after the usual time, announced that the accusers had been ' driven away in disgrace ;' and on returning home brought with him an imperial letter? reflecting on them with much severity.

After a while, however, the tale was renewed, and was sometimes told as if Athanasius himself had been guilty of the alleged sacrilege*.

Ischyras, however, being censured by his friends, came to the archbishop, and besought his communion.

Athanasius naturally reproached him for his conduct.

He answered, 'weeping,' that he had been compelled, even with blows, by three Meletian bishops, to circulate the slander.

'God knows, no chalice was broken, nor holy table overturned.'

He put this statement into writing, and gave it to Athanasius in the presence of thirteen clergy*; but his absolution was delayed until his sincerity should be fully tested °; and this treatment, however just, threw him back, and gave the Meletians a fresh opportunity for spreading the story and bringing it again before the emperor's cognizance.

But at the same 'time a darker calumny was invented, which ascribed to the 1 Ath. Apol. 11.

It was usual in Egypt to celebrate the Eucharist only on Sundays, Saturdays, and holydays.

Cf. Mansi, Cone, ili. 1252.

2 Addressed to the Catholic people of Alexandria, 3 Ath. Apol.17, 68, 74.

4 Tb. 64.

5 Ib. 74.

XXVili On the Life archbishop of Alexandria the combined guilt of murder and of magic.

Arsenius, a Meletian bishop, living at Hypsele in the Thebaid, unexpectedly disappeared, and was reported to have been killed by Athanasius, and dismembered for purposes of sorcery.

'Here,' said the narrators, showing a little wooden box containing a dead man's hand, 'is all that we can recover of Arsenius'.'

At a time when the dread of magic was so intense', this grotesquely hideous charge would soon find credence among the ignorant sectarians of Upper Egypt, who regarded Athanasius with mingled hatred and fear: but others, who should have known better, were startled, and Athanasius, to his astonishment, found himself summoned in the emperor's name by the Censor Dalmatius, Constantine's half-brother, to meet this charge at Antioch.

At first he treated the order with indifference; but, finding that the emperor was in earnest, he wrote to the Egyptian bishops requesting that search might be made for Arsenius, and sent one of his deacons to prosecute the inquiry*®, The deacon, a man of prompt action, went straight to the Thebaid, fell in with a monk of Hypsele and three other persons, and made them confess that the missing man was concealed in a monastery at Ptemencyrcis, on the eastern bank of the Nile.

They contrived, however, to give instant warning to its superior, Pinnes, who sent Arsenius down the Nile into Lower Egypt, under the care of a monk named Helias.

When the deacon arrived at Ptemencyrcis, he found Arsenius gone, but seized Pinnes, and also Helias, who had returned, and carried them before one of the three military commanders of Egypt, who was stationed at Alexandria.

'Then,' wrote Pinnes to John Arcaph in a curious letter, which the archbishop's agents, no doubt, intercepted, 'I was no longer able to deny, but confessed, that Arsenius was alive, and had mo? been 1 Theod.i..30; Soci. 27.

2 Comp. Euseb. vii. 10; Theod. iii, 26; Ammian. xxviii. 1, xxix. 2, See Gibbon, iii 2,3 ; Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, E. Tr. ii. 214.

8 Ath. Apol. 65; Soz. ii, 23.

of St. Athanasius.

XXix killed ...I tell you this, father, that you may not resolve to accuse Athanasius; for I said that he was alive, and 'had been

"hidden with us: and all this is now known in Egypt, and can no longer be a secret.'

The next point, of course, was to track the dead-alive: and the next scene of this strange drama is laid in a tavern at Tyre®, where the servants of a man of consular dignity, named Archelaus, heard another customer say casually that Arsenius was hidden in a particular house.

They noted the speaker's face, informed their master, and thus enabled the friends of Athanasius® to search the house, where a man was found secreted, who protested that he was not Arsenius.

But when placed 'in court' before Paul, the bishop, who had known Arsenius of old, he was, in Tillemont's quaint language, 'convicted of being himself*;' and thereupon wrote, for himself and his. clergy, to his 'blessed and beloved

Pope Athanasius,' promising to renounce the schism, and remain stedfast in the communion of the Catholic Church, and in obedience to the see of Alexandria,

'Very soon, if God permit, we will visit your Grace.

I, Arsenius, pray that you may be strong in the Lord for many years®.'

'I reported,' says Athanasius, 'to the emperor the discovery of Arsenius, and reminded him of what he had heard in Psammathia about Macarius: on which he stopped the proceedings of the censor's court, and wrote, condemning the movement against me as calumnious, and commanding the Eusebians, who were coming into the East as my accusers, to return®,'

He also wrote a letter 'to the Pope Athanasius ',' which he was 'to read aloud frequently in public,' and in which the Meletians were stigmatized as reckless and malignant slanderers, and were warned that any new offences of theirs would be dealt with by the emperor himself with all the rigour of State law.

Letters of 1 Ath, Apol. 67.

2 Soc. i. 29.

8 Ath. Apol. 65.

4 Tillemont, viii. 27.

5 Ath. Apol. 69.

8 Ib, 65.

7 Ib. 68.

The letter ends, 'May God have you in His keeping, beloved brother,'

xix On the Life sympathy and congratulation flowed in from friends of Athanasius.

In his 'Apology against the Arians,' our main authority for these events, he produces one letter from the venerable Alexander, bishop of Thessalonica*, who had received a letter from Athanasius by the hands of a promising youth named Sarapion, but had also heard from his own deacon, then at Constantinople, of the exposure of 'the calumniator Arcaph.'

Arcaph himself now found it expedient to profess repentance, and to request communion with Athanasius ; and Constantine, on receiving a letter from him to that effect, replied in such gentle terms as showed Arcaph to have been a power ®, So ended the conspiracy, for a time, at the close of a.p. 332.

Athanasius, in announcing the Easter-day of a. p. 333, could write with the fresh joyousness of one relieved from a great anxiety.

After a single passing reference to 'heretics and schismatics,' he dwelt on the moral and spiritual purposes of the coming festival, and inculcated, as accompaniments of the preceding fast, 'prayers, alms, charity,—above all, a conciliatory disposition."

Such a disposition was not shared by his old opponents: they began to weave new webs, and Eusebius of Nicomedia was able to persuade Constantine that the recent charges against the bishop of Alexandria required the cognizance of an ecclesiastical Council.

Such a Council was summoned to meet at Ceesarea, under the auspices of the historian Eusebius; but delays were interposed,—it did not meet until a. p. 334,—and 'during thirty months,' as Sozomen tells us, Athanasius, in spite of urgent citations, refused to attend an assembly from which he could expect no justice'.

The refusal, however respectfully worded, was of course represented as contumacy'; and in the summer of A.D, 335 Athanasius was peremptorily commanded by Constantine to appear at a Council to be holden at Tyre 5, pre1 Ath. Apol. 66, 16.

*01b.270, $ Soz. ii. 25.

* Theod. i, 28: cf. Ath. Apol. 77.

5 Ath. Apol. 71.

of St. Athanasius.

XXxXi paratory to the solemn dedication of the newly finished church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem}.

To Tyre, accordingly, just ten years after the opening of the Nicene Council, Athanasius repaired with forty-eight of his suffragans.

Their impetuous Egyptian temperament, already incensed against the slanderers of their 'father,' blazed out uncontrolled when they found themselves 'ushered into the assembly, not by deacons, but by a registrar of charges ?, and saw Macarius dragged in chains before the Council',

Ischyras standing among the accusers, the Arianizing bishop of Antioch presiding, and six other prelates, notoriously hostile to Athanasius, seated as judges.

To these men they took formal exception in a legal document, which Athanasius handed in, but which the court would not receive*.

He himself, as an accused person, was kept standing; and that sight was too much for Potammon, bishop of the Egyptian see of Heraclea, who had been specially honoured at Nicza as having been a confessor in the persecution.

He passionately addressed Eusebius of Czsarea: 'Do you sit there, and is Athanasius, in his innocency, to have you for his judge?

Intolerable!

You and I were once imprisoned together; I lost an eye in the cause of the truth; you bear no trace of a wound.

How did you escape, save by some guilty compromise®?'

The imputation, —in which, apparently, Paphnutius, another confessor-bishop, joined *,—was probably groundless; it naturally provoked Eusebius to retort, 'If you can domineer in this fashion among us, what may you not have done against your opponents in your own country?'

By one account, Paphnutius was more successful in detaching Maximus, bishop of Jerusalem, from - what he tersely characterized as 'a council of malignants,' and convincing him, by some earnest words in a low voice, that Athanasius had been wronged by calumny'.

The attack now formally made on Athanasius touched no 1 Soc. i. 28.

2 Ath. Apol. 8.

SAMs bie * See Ath. Apol. 77 sq.; Soc. i. a1.

5 Epiph. Her. 68. 7.

6 Ath. Apol. &.

7 Rufin. i. 17; Soz. ii, 25; yet see Soc. ii. 8,

XXXii On the Life point of doctrine; for it did not then suit the Eusebian policy to call in question the Nicene faith, but to weaken that faith indirectly by blackening the character of its great representative.

The former charges were revived and amplified; Ischyras protested that when his 'church' was attacked, its sacred books were burned'.

The charge (already mentioned) of uncanonical and lawless acquisition of the Alexandrian bishopric was urged in detail.

'Athanasius,' proceeded the accusers', 'has deposed, excommunicated, and subjected to military cruelties, a bishop named Callinicus, for suspecting him in the matter of the chalice', has thrown down his episcopal chair', and given his see to a priest who had been deposed.

He has falsely accused Ischyras of having pelted the emperor's statues, and thus occasioned his imprisonment, in contempt of his priestly character.'

Five Meletian bishops declared that having been deceived by him, they had quitted his communion, and had then been imprisoned by his means®.

To these charges, by one account, was added that of immorality, an accusation which, if made, was promptly and signally confounded *®. Some of the charges were not pressed; others he refuted; as to others, he asked for time, in order to procure exculpatory evidence ; Macarius could not be convicted of any outrage', and Ischyras, on being cross-examined, admitted that he was, lying sick on the day in question', and that his ' congregation' included no more than seven persons®.

But the Eusebians vehemently put aside the testimony offered by the Egyptian bishops, not without menacing language towards those of the judges who were disposed to give it a hearing '°; on the other hand, a paper was read, purporting to come from a number of Alexandrian Churchmen whose consciences would not allow them to attend church when Athanasius officiated ™.

A considerable impression was made on some of his reputed ' See Ath. Apol. 46.

9 Against this, see Ath. Apol. 5.

$ Soz. ii. 25 ; Philost. ii, 11.

* Ath. Apol. 17.

5 Soz. 1. c, ® Rufin. i. 17; Soz. 1. c.

7 Ath. Apol. 72.

® Ib. 46.

* Ib. 77.

10 Ib. 7, 8 4 Soz. Lc.

of St.

Athanasius.

XXxiii friends*; and the previous detection of Arsenius in that very city was intrepidly explained as a mere imposture.

'The man discovered was a counterfeit.

Look 'at this box—look at the murdered victim's hand!' A cry of horror broke forth; Athanasius, who was prepared even for this, looked round with calm self-possession.

'Does any one here,' he asked, ' know Arsenius by sight?'

'We dd know him well,' cried several voices.

He turned aside, and led forward a man closely muffled up, with head bent down.

'Raise your head.'

The figure obeyed, and showed the features of Arsenius.

'Is not this he?' Athanasius asked; and then deliberately lifted up the cloak, first from one hand, then, after a pause, from the other.

'You see he has two hands; where was the third cut off??'

For the moment, he enjoyed a triumph: Arcaph ran out of the court, but his associates exclaimed, 'It is another case of magical illusion :' amid the uproar that followed, the Count Dionysius, who acted as imperial commissioner, and had a certain sense of justice, secured the safety of Athanasius by hurrying him away*.

It was, however, resolved to drop the case of Arsenius, and to press that of Ischyras, by obtaining a committee of inquiry which, with the Council's authority, should proceed to the Mareotis.

The Egyptian bishops in vain remonstrated: and four days after two Meletians had been sent on to prepare evidence', the Council was induced to empower six thorough-going Eusebians® to act in the matter,' and report.

Two of these men, Valens and Ursacius, were destined to be conspicuous: they were Westerns who had been instructed by Arius, had been degraded from the priesthood, and, although still very young, had been appointed to bishoprics in Pannonia for their zeal in the Arian cause®', The 1 Soz. ii. 25.

2 Soc. i. 29.

Or, as Theod: i. 30, ' Two hands, and only two, has each man received from the Creator.'

Athanasius briefly alludes to the scene in Apol 72.

See Dean Stanley's description, East. Ch. p. 286.

S8Sozmlace * Ath. Apol. 77, 78.

5 Ib. 72 sq.

8 See Ath. Apol. 13, 41; ad Ep. &g. 7; Hilar. Fragm, 2. 12. d

XXXiv On the Life commissioners left Macarius at Tyre, under strict guard, but took Ischyras with them, as 'a sharer in lodging, board, and wine-cup!:' when they opened their court in the Mareotis, unbelievers were allowed to be present at an inquiry which touched on the Christian mysteries, while presbyters were rigidly shut out®, Philagrius, prefect of Egypt, who had become an Arian, was there, with heathen soldiers, to intimidate the witnesses °, among whom were persons who could not have been present

-at what purported to be an Eucharistic celebration '*, yet even so, the evidence given included some damaging statements °.

An inquiry of such an ex parée character called forth indignant protests from the Alexandrian and Mareotic clergy®; these documents are extant, and one of them is dated on the 1oth of Thoth, i.e. Sept. 7, All remonstrance, however, was disregarded: four Alexandrian priests were exiled'; the Pagan rabble were allowed to insult the Alexandrian Catholics on a fast-day *, and the commissioners, returning to Tyre, presented their report.

Athanasius had not waited for them.

He had already convinced Dionysius of the unfair composition of the committee °; his suffragans demanded that the case should be reserved for the emperor's hearing *®; and some of them exclaimed to Alexander of Thessalonica, 'The wild beasts are just going to spring upon us™!'

Alexander wrote to Dionysius, speaking of Athanasius as the victim of a conspiracy; and the count sent on his letter to be read by the ' Eusebians,' exhorting them (not for the first time) to be careful that their proceedings were not vitiated by injustice". But Athanasius regarded them as already vitiated ; and 'resolved,' as Gibbon expresses it, 'to make a bold and dangerous experiment,—whether the throne was in1 Ath. Ap. 14, 73.

Selb ra 7 3703:

Cy EN hsn eee 4 Ib. 14, 31.

5 Tb. 28, 83.

6 Ib. 73-76; they were 51 in all.

T Tb. 17, 40. eI DAT Bs 2 Iba 7a. eel Ds ZO) 1 Tb. 80.

™% Tb. 81, It seems from c.g that Dionysius after this took a strong line against Athanasius,

of St.

Athanasius.

XXXV accessible to the voice of truth!'

Accompanied by five of his suffragans, he took the first vessel for Constantinople, and suddenly presented himself in the midst of the road when the emperor was riding into his new capital.

Not recognizing him at first sight, Constantine, on learning from his attendants who the petitioner was, and what was his grievance, refused to hear him, and was nearly ordering him to be removed: but Athanasius persisted, and requested 'only this, that either a lawful

Council should be assembled, or the members of the Tyrian Council should be summoned to meet him before the emperor 2.'

Constantine thought the latter proposal reasonable: and so it was, that, after the majority at Tyre had received the Mareotis report, and condemned Athanasius partly on the strength of it, partly as having abandoned his own cause', had adjourned to Jerusalem, and amid the splendour of the great dedication festival* had recognized Arius as having proved himself orthodox °, they were startled by an imperial letter, expressing some displeasure and mistrust, and summoning them to Constantinople*®.

The gathering at Jerusalem broke up in much disorder: but the two Eusebii, Theognis, Patrophilus, Valens, and Ursacius, obeyed the mandate', were confronted with Athanasius, prudently suppressed the case of Ischyras, and presented a new charge of a political kind,—that Athanasius had threatened to stop the Alexandrian corn-ships bound for Constantinople *.

The emperor's passionate jealousy was excited: Athanasius answered, 'I never said so; and as a poor man in a private station, I could not have said so.'

'He did say it,' replied Eusebius of Nicomedia: 'he is rich and powerful, and can do anything *.'

Athanasius attempted a rejoinder, but Constantine would hear nothing more, and sent him away to Trier or Treves, 'the capital of Gaul', and the seat of government of 1 Gibbon, iii. 73.

2 Ath. Apol. 9, 86.

5' Soc, 1. 32.

4 Eus, V. C. iv. 43; Soz, i126.

5 Ath. Apol. 84.

6 Ib. 86.

Ua boptsye a fey 9\Tb. 9.

10 Ath, Hist. Ari. 33.

xxxvi On the Life his eldest son Constantine, who received the primate of Egypt with all respect and cordiality *, in the opening of a. p. 336.

IV.

The first exile of Athanasius lasted nearly two years anda half; it was a time of rest, not of suffering.

The scene was very new to him; transferred on a sudden to the distant North, he found himself in a city already venerable, which could be described as 'an illustrious abode of sovereigns Ke and which showed to him in their freshness many features of Roman grandeur, some of which it still exhibits to the modern visitor in their decay*.

Maximin, the bishop', an orthodox prelate, became his fast friend; and Athanasius was present when the services of great festivals were held in a large basilica before its completion and dedication®.

His 'wants were abundantly supplied *®;' he had with him some Egyptian 'brethren,' and kept up a correspon'nce with friends at home, although at the risk of having his ietters seized in order to find fresh matter for attack'.

We can imagine him walking under the ' broad walls *' of the city, pondering the news just received, of his people's success in resisting the return of Arius ®, of the failure of their attempts, and of Antony's, in petitioning for his own !,

—of the terrible end of the heresiarch™, of the long-deferred baptism of Constantine, and of his death, on Whitsunday in a. p.

337%.

At the beginning of a.p. 338 he wrote a Festal letter, announcing the coming Easter as one which he would keep with ? Ath, Apol, 87.

? Ammianus, xv. 11.9. ' Urbe excellentissima,' Salvian, de Gub. Dei, vi. 8.

8 The Porta Nigra, the amphitheatre, &c.

* Ath. Apol. ad Con. 3; ad Ep. &g. 8.

5 Ath. Apol. ad Const. 15.

® Ath. Apol. c. Ari. 87.

T Ath. Fest. Ep. ro.

* Ausonius, Nob, Urb. 4.

® Soc. i, 37; Soz. ii. 29.

BSOZ i105 Le 4 Ath, Ep, ad Serap.

3; ad Ep, 2g.19.

Milman, Hist. Chr. ii. 382, is unjust to Athanasius, 4 Eus. V. C, iv. 62 sq.

of St. Athanasius.

XXxvii his flock in a real, though not a local, fellowship of joy.

Into One passage he seems to pour his whole spirit, in its faith, tenderness, and devotion: reminding his 'beloved ones' that they must needs pass through trouble into comfort,—that antichristian hostility must be expected and encountered,—that the man who lived in Christ was sure of victory +.For more than a year, the late emperor's death produced no change.in the archbishop's condition.

At length, on June 17, 338°, Constantine II., who, in the partition of the empire, had a certain precedence over his brothers Constantius and .Constans, the sovereigns of the East and of Italy, wrote from Trier to the Alexandrian Catholics, informing them that he was but carrying out his father's ' intentions *' by resolving to 'restore' Athanasius, and thus to satisfy their 'longings' for the return of so admirable a teacher*.

In this he appears to have assumed the consent of Constantius: he took Athanasius with him to Viminacium *, an important town of Upper Meesia, on the high road to Constantinople.

Here the three emperors met, and concurred in the restoration of the bishop of Alexandria, who spent a short time in Constantinople, where he was present when the Arianizing Macedonius brought an accusation against the orthodox bishop Paul, who himself had lately returned from his exile in Pontus®.

From the 'new Rome,'

Athanasius travelled to Czsarea in Cappadocia, when he again ~ had a conversation with Constantius; and in November he was once more at home.

'The people ran in crowds to see his face; the' churches were full of rejoicing; thanksgivings were offered up everywhere; the ministers and clergy thought that _day the happiest of their lives.'

But his enemies bestirred 1 Ath. Fest. Ep. 10.

2 For this date, see Newman, Hist. Tracts of St. Ath,, p. xii.; Hefele, Hist. Counc. b. 3. s. 52; Hussey on Soc. ii. 3.

3 Ath. Apol. 87.

Constantine represents his father as having had a benevolent purpose in sending Athanasius into Gaul.

See too ib. 9. | * «Exponent of the adorable law,' .

. 'his far-famed virtue,' &c.

5 Ath, Ap, ad Const. 5.

6 Ath, Hist. Ari. 7.

7 Ath, Apol. 7.

XXXVili On the Life themselves afresh, ' took long journies,' ' wrote letters of deadly import,' in order to press on 'the three emperors'' attention * two new charges,—that he had sold for his own purposes the corn given by Constantine for the support of widows in Libya and in Egypt ?, and that on his return he had caused some persons to be banished, and others to be executed*.

Constantius wrote to him in angry remonstrance, assuming the truth of the former charge'; but Athanasius, in letters to him and to Constans °, disproved both.

The corn had been duly distributed; and the recent punishment of some offenders had been the act of the prefect, on grounds purely temporal, and while Athanasius was still passing through Syria ; 'e caused no imprisonment, no bloodshed,—not a man in Alexandria was banished for his sake *.'

But Constantius, who was soon to be 'his scourge and torment,' fell more and more under the influence of his great enemy, the Nicomedian Eusebius, now transferred to the see of Constantinople, which had been vacated by the second expulsion of Paul®.

A second expulsion of Athanasius was now meditated, and it was resolved to do what had been impracticable in a. p. 336,—to place a new bishop on the Alexandrian throne.

The Eusebians, in this project, could appeal to ecclesiastical principles, and represent Athanasius as having ignored the sentence of a Council, and resumed his see on the ground of an imperial mandate®.

The charge did not come gracefully from men who had relied so much on Court influence; but it was not without some technical force, although Athanasius might justly plead that the assembly at Tyre had forfeited all moral authority.

The person fixed on to supersede him was Pistus, who, as a priest, had been deposed by Alexander for adhering to Arius (Athanasius being one of those who 'asAth, Apol. 3, 6,18; Hist. Ari. 9; cp. Fest. Ep. rr.

2 Tb, 18. eTiba uss Sb res 5 Ap. ad Const. 4.

® Ath, Apol. 5.

™ Hooker, E. P. v. 42. 2.

® Ath, Hist, Ari. 7, * Ath. Apol. 8; Soc, ii, 3.

See Neale, Hist. Alex. i, 172,

of St. Athanasius.

XxX KE sented' to his deposition), and had, after the Nicene Council, - received consecration from the excommunicated Arian bishop

Secundus?.

The Eusebians also thought it worth while to make further use of Ischyras: by virtue of an imperial order they built him a church, and even made him, against rule, bishop of his little village; but they could not supply him with a flock ?.

And now, in the latter part of a.p. 339, the Eusebians applied to the Western Church, and especially to Rome as its head, on behalf of their nominee Pistus.

A priest and two deacons appeared as their envoys before Julius, bishop of Rome, requesting him to write a letter of communion to Pistus%, and presenting a letter which contained various charges against Athanasius *, who, on the-other hand, having already written an 'encyclical' letter in his own name, which induced many foreign prelates to anathematize his intended rival *, assembled a council of his suffragans from Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis §, and procured from it an 'encyclical,' which he sent by the hands of some priests to Rome.

The two deputations being thus confronted with each other, Julius learned the facts as to the character of Pistus, and thereupon declined to write to him; and the Mareotis report, shown to him by the Eusebian envoys, condemned itself in his eyes as unfair, and he afterwards sent it to Athanasius'.

Unable to withstand the evidence from Egypt, the senior of these envoys 'decamped by night, in spite of illness*;' the two others 'requested Julius to call a Council, and to act, if he so pleased, as judge®.'

Thereupon Julius wrote to both parties, inviting them to a Council to be held, says Athanasius, 'at the place which we might

1 Ath, Apol. 24.

2 Ib. 12, 41, 85.

It is repeatedly observed that he had never been really a priest, even among the Meletians.

Froma letter of Athanasius to bishop Serapion, of about this date, it appears that some Meletians claimed to be in Church communion, (Fest. Ep.) * Tb./24. a tba

5 Ath, Encycl. 6.

6 Included in Ath. Apol. 3-19.

7 Ath, Apol. 27, 83.

8 Tb, 24.

, 9 Ib. 20.

xl On the Life choose?'

But soon afterwards, at the beginning of a. D. 340, the Alexandrian Church was startled by a formal announcement from the prefect Philagrius, that a new bishop was coming 'from the court' to be installed by military power ; not Pistus, who might now seem too obnoxious,—but a Cappadocian named Gregory, who had been appointed by Eusebian bishops at Antioch",

'Such a proceeding,' says Athanasius, 'was unheard of.'

The people showed their affection for their own bishop by resorting more than ever to the churches, and indignantly protested to the other magistrates and to the whole city that this new attack upon him arose from no ecclesiastical ground of offence, but from the mere wantonness of Arian hatred*.

Gregory was known to be an Arian, and a fellow-countryman of Philagrius: according to his namesake of Nazianzus, he had studied at Alexandria, and received kindness from Athanasius'.

Philagrius replied by encouraging a crowd of the lowest Pagan townspeople, together with Jews, and countrymen armed with clubs, to break into the church of St. Quirinus, and perpetrate atrocious cruelties and profanations.

Hideous orgies were carried on in the baptistery, copies of Scripture burned, the holy table defiled by heathenish sacrifices, the stores of wine, oil, and candles pillaged, monks, virgins, and widows maltreated or even slain, and the church itself set on fire'.

Athanasius was residing in the precincts of the church of St. Theonas: he knew that he' was specially aimed at, and, in hope of preventing further outrage, he anticipated the Easter baptisms in the case of a number of catechumens, and then withdrew, on March 19, to a place of concealment in the neighbourhood, where he began to write an encyclical, descriptive of these horrors.

'Four days later,' according to the index of 1 Ath. Hist. Ari. 9.

To this first invitation Julius refers in Ath.

Apol. 30.

? Ath, Encycl. 2; Apol. 30.

Not, as Soc. thought, ii. 10, by the ' Dedication Council' of a.p. 341.

5 Ath. Encycl. 2.

* Greg. Orat. xxi. 15.

® Ath, Encycl. 3, 4; Hist. Ari. 10,

of St. Athanasius.

. xli the Festal Letters', 'Gregory entered the city as bishop.'

- The latter part of Lent? was a time of 'Arian persecution: on Good Friday, Gregory punished the abhorrence shown at his entry into a church by causing Philagrius to scourge publicly thirty-four persons, one of whom, a virgin, had her psalter in her hand*, Easter-day, to the delight of the Pagans', was selected as a time for throwing Catholics into prison; captains of vessels were subjected to violence, in order to make them convey Gregory's letters of communion: clergy were hindered from baptizing or from visiting the sick: lay people could not pray in their own houses undisturbed: an indictment signed by Pagans and Arians, accusing Athanasius of capital crimes, was given to Philagrius for transmission to the emperor.

Athanasius; after finishing and despatching his encyclic, which is still extant, sailed for Rome in the Easter season of A.D. 340°.

On arriving at Rome, Athanasius 'laid his case before the Church °,' and exhibited documents in support of it': he was at once admitted to communion, pending the proposed inquiry into his conduct, and 'spent his time,' for the most part, 'in the Church services.'

He had with him two Egyptian monks, one of whom, Ammonius, is said to have shown no interest in any Roman buildings except the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul®.

But their presence in the city, and their bishop's enthusiasm for monasticism as represented by Antony, made a strong impression on Roman Church society, and abated the 1 The Index assigns these events to A.D. 339, but this date does not allow time enough for the proceedings as to Pistus.

2 Athanasius was anxious to make his people keep a Lent of forty days, -as did all other churches.

Ep. to Serap. in Fest. Ep. am 3 Ath, Encycl. 4.

* «They abhor that day,' ib. 5.

5 This is Hefele's view. 'The simple hypothesis' (Gibbon, iii. 75), of one visit of Athanasius to Rome at this period is now generally adopted.

He wrote a Fest. Ep. for a.p. 341 'from Rome,' therefore must have gone to Rome in A.D. 339 or A.D. 340: the latter date is the more probable one.

6 Ath. Ap. ad Const. 5.

7 Ath, Apol. 28, 8 Soc. iv. 23.

For a description of this old St. Peter's, see Fergusson, Hist. Archit. i. 363.

- :

xlii On the Life prejudices there existing against the name and the appearance of a monk: so that when Gibbon says that ' Athanasius introduced into Rome the knowledge and practice of the monastic life, he records the inauguration of a vast European movement, and represents the great Alexandrian exile as the spiritual ancestor, in some sense, of Benedict, of Columban, and of Bernard, and of all the founders and reformers of monastic communities in the West.

Athanasius received great kindness, not only from Julius, who soon learned to admire and love him?, but from Eutropia, the sister of Constantine

I., from Abuterius, Sperantius, and many other excellent persons; and he associated with Marcellus, the exiled bishop of Ancyra, whom he had seen at Nicza, and who, having been deposed by the Eusebians at the end of a. p. 335, on a charge of Sabellianizing, had taken refuge, like himself, at Rome'.

Julius appears to have sent two priests, Elpidius and Philoxenus, in the summer of this year, to Antioch with a letter for the Eusebians, in which he again invited them to a Council, naming the ensuing December as the time and Rome as the place'

He wrote in his own name, but expressed the mind, as he him- : self says, 'of all the bishops in Italy ®.'

On arriving at Antioch his legates were kept for months without an answer: the Eusebians were embarrassed by learning that Athanasius was at Rome, and were not disposed to meet him under circumstances unfavourable to their interests*.

They stimulated Philagrius and Gregory to new severities': Potammon, against whom they had a special grievance, was beaten so brutally that he died soon after: Sarapammon, another confessor-bishop, was exiled: others were imprisoned, others made to labour at 'public works:' monks and virgins were beaten by a duke's

1 Gibbon, iv, 308.

See Jerome, Epist. 127.5.

Cf. Milman, Lat. Chr. i.

70, 412, ed. x, 2 Ath, Apol. 53.

8 Ath. Ap. ad Const. 7.

* Ath. Apol. 21.

See Hefele, Hist. Counc. b. 3. s. 54.

5 Ath. Apol. 26.

6 Tb. 20; Hist. Ari. 11.

" Ath, Hist. Ari. 12,13.

Antony wrote to remonstrate with Gregory, but his letters met with insult.

Ib.14.

See also Vit. Ant. 69,

of St. Athanasius. xliii order in Gregory's presence: the widows and the poor were deprived of their church-dole: the aunt of Athanasius, dying at this time, would have been 'cast away unburied' if her friends had not evaded Gregory's order.

Such were the tidings that saddened Athanasius, when, at the beginning of a.p. 341, he wrote 'from Rome' his Festal letter.

The Roman envoys, detained at Antioch until January?, were then sent home with a letter in which their church was spoken of in high terms, but their bishop's invitation referred to in a tone of cavil.

The Eusebians complained that Julius had written by himself, and not to all the Easterns; had presumed on the secular greatness of his own city*; had proposed a revision of the Tyrian Council's judgment; had ignored the disturbed state of the East, and given them too short notice of the proposed

Council; and had fraternized with Athanasius and Marcellus.

— Julius was annoyed by this letter, but kept-it to himself for a long time', hoping that some of the Eusebians would yet arrive, and make the public reading of it unnecessary.

Months passed, and no one came; on the contrary, the Eusebians took advantage of the dedication ® of a new basilica at Antioch, called from its splendour 'the Golden Church,' to hold, probably in August, a large Council of ninety-seven bishops, many of whom were neither positively Arian nor strongly attached to Nicene rulings®.

The result was a confirmation of the sentence against Athanasius,—a series of canons, the fourth of which was aimed at his case as having disregarded his ' deposition,'—and three creeds framed in language partly indefinite, partly all but Nicene'.

Of this 'Dedication Council' no } 1 Fest. Ep.13.

'These things happen in order to test us... In all - things let us praise Christ, and so, through Christ, we shall be delivered.'

? Ath. Apol. 25.

8 Ib.; comp. Soz. iii, 8. They evidently recognized no supreme power in the Roman see, :

* Ath. Apol, 21.

5 Soc. ii. 8; Soz, iii. 5; cp. Euseb. Vit. Con. iii. 50.

6 See Hefele, b. 3. s. 56.

Athanasius treats them all as practically Arianizers; de Syn. 22.

Contrast St. Hilary, de Syn. 32.

7 Ath, de Syn, 22,

xliv On the Life information had reached Rome, when, in November, Julius resolved to wait no longer, and held a Council of more than fifty bishops in the church of the presbyter Vito'. The Eusebian letter was read, and gave great offence: the documents of the Athanasian case, supported by the later oral evidence of Egyptian priests, and of bishops and priests from other countries, among whom probably was Asclepas of Gaza?, produced a decisive impression.

Athanasius was formally recognized as innocent, and as in communion with the Italian Church.

Marcellus was acquitted of heresy on the strength of his own declarations; but these, as we can see, were too vague to be really adequate *, and apparently the Western prelates did not understand how his anti-Arian zeal had hurried him into the use of language which implied that the Word, though eternal, was impersonal, that the title 'Son of God' belonged to the merely human Christ in whom the Word was 'actively' manifested, and that this manifestation would have an end when the Word returned into its original repose in God'.

If this was really his meaning, he deceived the Council when he said that he thought with the Church as to Christ; for the Christ, according to this theory, was no more truly Divine than the Word was

'subsistent.'

But he may not have consciously realized the full scope of his own speculations; at any rate, he was accepted as orthodox: and Julius®, by desire of the Council, wrote to the Eusebians a letter which is extant, in which he went over the whole case, and observed, temperately but firmly, that after he had, by desire of their envoys, given notice of a Council, they ought not to have treated the Alexandrian see as vacant ; that if bishops were accused of offences, 'information should have been given to us all, that so a just sentence might proceed from all;' but that, in particular, complaints affecting Alex1 Ath. Apol. 20.

Vito had been a legate at Nicza.

2 Ath, Apol. 44; note in Hist. Tr. p. 69.

® Ath, Apol. 32.

* See Ath. Orat. iv.; comp. Euseb. c. Mare. ii. 1, &c.

See Newman, Athan. Treat. ii. 504; Dorner, Person of Christ, ii. 272, E. Tr.

5 Ath. Apol, 20-35,

'of St. Athanasius. xlv andria should, according to usage, have been referred to the - Church of Rome}.

It is not improbable that Athanasius employed some part of his leisure, at this period, in writing the 'Exposition of Faith,' which is one of his undoubted works, and appears to belong to this stage of the Arian controversy.

It begins in the form -of a creed, 'We believe in one unbegotten God, Father Almighty, Maker of all things...and in one Onlybegotten Word, Wisdom, Son,... eternally begotten, ... but a Word not uttered, not immanent? (i.e. not like a spoken word or a thought), not an efflux, not a fraction... not a product*, but a Son perfect in Himself, living and acting, ... equal to the Father in honour and glory... very God from very God... Almighty from Almighty... He was begotten ineffably, inconceivably,' &c.

The phrase 'Man of the Lord' occurs, as applied to Christ in His Humanity: it was afterwards laid aside by St. Augustine as inaccurate, though not indefensible *.

Athanasius refers briefly to the Holy Spirit, anathematizes 'the doctrines contrary to this' faith, and then goes more into detail, disowning alike Sabellianism and the Tritheistic notion of 'three hypostases dzvzded from each other®;' affirming that the Son as such is uncreate, and that only as to His humanity could He be said to be 'created §, and that 'the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father, is ever in the hands of the Father who sends and of the Son who brings It.'

The concluding doxology is 'to the Father through the Son.'

We may also consider in this place his tract 'On the text, Ad things are delivered unto Me,' &c. (St. Luke x. 22), which must, at any rate, have been written (whether at Alexandria

1 Ath. Apol. 30, 35.

His claims are exaggerated by Soc. ii.15, 17; Soz. iii. 8, 10.

Cf. Hist. Tracts of Ath. p. 56; Hussey, Papal Power, p. 7.

2 ob mpopopindy, odx évbiaberov.

Cf. Newman, Arians, p. 203.

3 ore mpoBoany.

Cf.

Newman, Arians, p. 195.

* St. Aug. Retract. i.19.8; Jerome, c. Ruf. ii. 20; Aquin. Sum. iii. 16. 3.

'Homo' was often used for Christ's Manhood.

5 Comp. Dionysius of Rome, ap. Routh, Rell. Sacr. iii. 374.

6 So, here and in his ' Orations,' he explains Prov. viii. 22, LXX.

xlvi On the Life or at Rome) before the Nicomedian Eusebius, who had been translated to Constantinople, died in a.p. 3427.

In this tract (the beginning of which appears to be lost) Athanasius, expressly controverting the use made of this text by Eusebius and other Arians, interprets it, not of our Lord's pre-existence, but of His Mediatorial office and powers; guarding, at the same time, against the notion that the Father, in granting those powers to the Son as Man, parted with aught of His own sovereignty.

He insists on such texts as St. John xvi. 15, Isaiah ix. 62; 'asserts the undivided natural oneness' of the Son with the Father; and, very remarkably, adopts the phrase 'three perfect hypostases*' in reference to the one coequal* adorable Trinity, 'undivided, yet united without confusion.

In one place he speaks of the Word as 'conjoined to the Man,' but in a sense, clearly, which gives no support to Nestorianism®.

The tract is characterized by a fervid eloquence in regard to the benefits of the Incarnation ®, and to the inscrutable mystery of the nature of God'.

Athanasius remained at Rome until the summer of a. D. 343, when, 'in the fourth year' from his arrival, he received a letter from the young emperor Constans , who, for about the same period since the slaughter of Constantine II., had been sole sovereign of the West.

He had formerly obtained from Athanasius some 'bound copies' of the Scriptures; and had recently, under the influence of bishop Maximin, repulsed four

Eusebian prelates sent from the East to influence him against Athanasius, and to show him a new creed which all but con1 Soc. ii. 12.

2 «In illud, Omnia,' 5; 'Strong God,' &c., 8 Generally he makes hypostasis=ousia.

Dr. Newman, in the 3rd ed. of his ' Arians,' p. 446 sq., considers that Athanasius did not use the word in two substantially different senses, but in two aspects (so to speak) of one, * He expressly denies an inferiority of the Son and Spirit as to Godhead, c.6.

Comp. the Quicungue.

® Cf. Ath. Orat. iii. 30, &c.

® 'By suffering He refreshed us, by hungering He fed us,' &c.

7 He refers to the Seraphim veiling their faces, Isa. vi. 2.

8 Ath, Ap. ad Const. 4.

of St.

Athanasius. xl vii fessed the Homoousion'.

He now desired Athanasius to meet him at Milan.

'On inquiring the cause,' says Athanasius, 'I learned that some bishops had gone to his court, and asked him to write to Constantius, in order to a new Council.

Accordingly, I went to Milan, and received great kindness from him; for he condescended to see me,' in company with Protasius, bishop of Milan, behind the curtain of the presencechamber, but within hearing of his 'master of the offices,'— to say that he had written according to this request.

By the emperor's direction, Athanasius went into Gaul in order to meet Hosius, the venerated bishop of Cordova, and accompany him to Sardica, where the two sovereigns had by this time agreed to assemble the new Council on the border line of East and West.

In this Mcesian city, within the Eastern Illyricum, about a hundred and seventy prelates met, a small majority being Western, towards the end of the year a.p. 343%.

It soon appeared that united action was impossible.

The majority, ignoring the Councils of Tyre and Antioch, and regarding the whole case as open, treated Athanasius as innocent, or, at least, as not yet proved guilty; and he 'joined them in celebrating the Divine mysteries*'

The Eusebian 1 See Ath. de Syn. 25; Soz. iii. 10; Hilar. Fragm, iii. 27.

2 The discoveries of the Maffeian Fragment and the Festa] Letters have had the effect of throwing back the dates of the Sardican Council and the second return of Athanasius.

The received date of a.p. 347 for the Council (Soc., Soz.) is proved to be too late (even apart from the difficulty as to Euphrates of Cologne).

For Athanasius's return was some time after the death of Gregory, which was (says Athanasius, in Hist. Ari. 21) some ten months after the deposition of Stephen of Antioch, which was soon after the Easter subsequent to the Council,

But, not to say that the Fragment gives Oct. a.p. 346 for Athanasius's return, the nineteenth Festal

Letter, for a.p. 347, was written after it.

Therefore the Council cannot be placed later than the end of a.p. 344, which is Mansi's date, received by Gieseler; and cf. Newman, Hist. Tracts, p. vi.

But Hefele's date, the end of A.D. 343, is more probable. The ' Macrostich' Confession was presented by four Eusebian deputies at Milan in the spring of a.p. 345 (Ath. de Syn.

26; Hil. Fragm. 5.4).

It could not have been presented within four months after the Sardican Council.

See Hefele, b. iv. s. 58.

3 Hil. Fragm. iii, 14.

xlviii On the Life minority,—of whom the chiefs were Stephen of Antioch, Menophantus of Ephesus, Acacius, and Narcissus—on reaching

Sardica, had simply announced their arrival, and then shut themselves up in the lodgings provided for them at the palace, and refused to join their brethren until the persons whom they denounced as convicted men, such as Athanasius,

Marcellus, Asclepas, and Lucius of Hadrianople, should be deprived of seats in the Council'.

The answer was, that the Council was prepared to go into all the cases which could be

- submitted to it: each party would be free to implead the other'.

Witnesses were ready to attest the sufferings of the orthodox, to tell of forged letters and of organized terrorism ; even to exhibit wounds inflicted, and hands that had been fettered, by Eusebian violence®.

<A series of messages, charges, and recriminations went on for many days: Athanasius and Marcellus repeatedly expressed their readiness to confront their adversaries, who on their part refused to appear until the sentences passed by their own Councils were treated as final.

Hosius invited some of them to meet him, assured them that nothing was settled, that there should be full hearing and discussion, that if they convicted Athanasius, he should be condemned ; 'and even if you fail,' said Hosius, ' yet still object to communicating with him, I will persuade him to come with me into Spain.'

This signally liberal offer, in which Athanasius had acquiesced', was rejected: and in the end the Eusebians withdrew from Sardica on an idle pretext, and, in spite of a formal summons from that majority, established themselves as a Council at Philippopolis® further within the Eastern empire, renewed the sentences against Athanasius, betrayed their theological anzmus by accusing him of blasphemy', put forth new sentences against Julius, Hosius, and others, drew up an encyclic, and adopted a creed which Socrates treats with great

1 Ath. Apol. 48; Hil. Fr. 3. 17.

? Ath. Apol. 36.

3 Ib. 45.

* Ath, Hist. Ari. 44.

Selbe 26.

® Ammian. xxi, Io, 3.

T Hil. Fr. 3. 23.

of St.

Athanasius. xlix injustice by describing it as ultra-Arian'.

The prelates at Sardica proceeded with their inquiry, heard evidence, went through the Mareotis report, recognized in consequence the innocence of Athanasius", accepted from Marcellus an explanation of his own impugned writings', and excommunicated eleven Eusebian bishops, as men who 'separated the Son from the Father, and so merited separation from the Catholic

Church.'

They enacted several canons, including the famous ones providing for a reference, in certain circumstances, to the bishop of Rome, in 'honour of St. Peter's memory,' so that he might make arrangements for the rehearing of a prelate's cause*.

It need hardly be added that they would have no creed but the Nicene.

They drew up an encyclical, preserved by Athanasiuss—wrote to the two emperors,—and sent letters of sympathy to the suffragans of Athanasius and the Churchmen of Alexandria, urging the faithful 'to contend earnestly for the sound faith and the innocence of Athanasius,' and to remember that 'although the Catholic Church had suffered many an outrage, yet he that endured to the end should be saved®.'

Such was the judgment of this great Western Council in the case of Athanasius; but, of course, it was powerless to replace him in his see.

It could not influence the Arian sovereign of the East: in fact, the bold line taken at Sardica provoked the advisers of Constantius to fresh severities ; and the Alexandrian magistrates received orders to behead Athanasius, or certain of his clergy expressly named, if they should come near the city®.

Five Alexandrian clergy were banished into Armenia.

Many 1 Soc. ii. 20.

2 Valesius remarks that they said nothing of Paul of Constantinople, and supposes that he had previously—for the third time—regained his see (Obs.

Eccl. ii. 7).

See Theod. ii. 5.

3 Not a sufficient one; see it in Ath. Apol. 47.

* On this see Hussey on Papal Power, p. 3.

5 Apol. 37-43.

Maffei published 'letters of the Council and of Athanasius' to the Church in the Mareotis, and one 'of Athanasius' to the Alexandrian clergy.

Hefele rejects them.

6 Hist. Ari. 19. e

] On the Life Catholics, we are told, were terrified into dissembling their belief; many fled into the deserts, in order to avoid the dominant party'.

The Council, supported by Constans, endeavoured to move Constantius by sending to him two delegates, Vincent, bishop of Capua, and Euphrates of Cologne'.

They reached Antioch at Easter, a.p. 344.

Stephen, the Arian patriarch of Antioch, devised an atrocious plot against Euphrates.

It was detected, and led to his deposition; and Constantius, in an honest revulsion of feeling, recalled the banished clergy from Armenia, and wrote to stop the persecution of Athanasius' adherents*,

Athanasius, himself still kept under his ban, had gone from Sardica to Naissus, and thence, at the invitation of Constans, to Aquileia.

There, in company with the bishop Fortunatian (for, he observes, he never saw Constans alone), he was admitted to more than one audience; and whenever Constans mentioned Constantius, he replied in terms respectful towards the latter*.

Of his sojourn in this city, near the walls of which Constantine II. had met his tragical end, we read, that on one occasion, a large church, while still undedicated, was filled by a large congregation, including Constans, who retained, amid his moral deterioration, a respect for religion which combined with his personal kindness to affect

Athanasius' judgment of his character'.

He is said to have peremptorily® urged his brother to reinstate Athanasius.

The death of the intrusive bishop Gregory, about February a. p.

345', gave Constantius a plea for yielding the point.

He therefore wrote, after 'a long time," to Athanasius, affecting Hist. Ari, 18, 20.

? The deposition of Euphrates, by a Council of Cologne, 'for denying that Christ was God,' is dated in the 'Acts' a.p. 346.

But this date must be too early; for the Acts make Servatius, bishop of Tungri, say that he had rebuked Euphrates in the presence of Athanasius, who in that case could not have allowed him to be appointed a delegate from Sardica.

Mansi, ii.1371.

Hefele doubts the whole story, b. 5. s.69.

8 Hist. Ari. 20, 21; Theod. ii. 9.

* Ath. Ap. ad Con. 3, 4.

5 Ap. ad Con. 15, 7; cf. Hist. Ari. 44; Ammian. xvi. 7. 5.

® Soc. ii. 22: but the letter there given js untrustworthy.

™ Hist. Ari. 21.

Not by murder, as Theod. ii. 4.

of St. Athanasius. li to be anxious for the Western emperor's assent to an act of his own free clemency.

He wrote two other letters', and employed six 'counts' to write encouragingly to the exile; and Athanasius, after receiving these letters at Aquileia, made up his mind, at last?, to act on these assurances; but not until

Constantius could tell Constans that he had been ' expecting Athanasius for a year.'

Invited by Constans to Trier, Athanasius made a diversion on his journey in order to see

Rome again; it was six years since he had been cordially welcomed by Julius, who now poured forth his generous heart in a letter of congratulation for the Alexandrian Church, one of the most beautiful documents in the whole Athanasian series.

He dwelt on the well-tried worth of Athanasius, on his own happiness in gaining such a friend, on the steady faith which the Alexandrians had exhibited, on the rapture, 'the multitudinous greetings, the glorious festivity, which would gladden their hearts on the day of his brother's return:' and concluded by invoking for his 'beloved brethren' the blessings ' which eye had not seen, nor ear heard*.'

Athanasius travelled northward, about midsummer; visited Constans, passed through Hadrianople*, where he saw the graves of ten slaughtered Catholics ; proceeded to Antioch, and saw Constantius for the third time®.

The reception was gracious : the emperor valued himself on his impassive demeanour®.

Athanasius maintained a grave selfrespect, and, without vilifying his enemies, firmly desired leave to confront them'.

'No,' said Constantius, 'God knows, I will never again credit such accusations; and all records of past charges shall be erased.'

This latter promise he at once fulfilled, by orders sent to the authorities in Egypt; and he wrote letters in favour of the archbishop to the clergy of Egypt and 1 Apol. 51; Hist. Ari. 22.

2 His slowness in coming to this conclusion is certainly somewhat surprising.

3 Apol. 53.

Soc. ii. 23, in his version of the letter, inserts eulogistic phrases which Athanasius' text does not give.

* Hist. Ari. 18.

5 Ap. ad Con. 5.

6 Ammian. xvi. 10. 9.

7 Ap. ad Con. 1. c,; Hist. Ari. 22, 44.

lii On the Life the laity of Alexandria.

One thing he asked, that Athanasius would allow the Alexandrian Arians a single church.

Athanasius promptly replied that he would do so, if a church might be granted at Antioch to the ' Eustathian' body, which kept aloof from the crypto-Arian bishop Leontius, and had enjoyed the intense satisfaction of seeing the great confessor take part in their services, which were held in a private house.

The emperor would have agreed to this concession; but his advisers stood in the way'.

From Antioch Athanasius proceeded to the Syrian Laodicea, where a young and accomplished 'reader' in its church, Apollinaris, soon to be unhappily famous, welcomed him enthusiastically, and thereby offended George, the Arian bishop, who had been deposed from the priesthood by Alexander*.

Athanasius halted next at Jerusalem, where an orthodox Council of sixteen bishops, summoned not by the metropolitan of Czsarea, but in virtue of the honorary precedency of the see of St. James, met to do him honour, and to congratulate his Church®,

And now he had but to return home, and enjoy the welcome which that Church was eager to give.

He touched Egyptian ground once more at Pelusium, and warned the people against Arian craft; and entered his own city, according to the Festal Index, on October 21 (Paophi 24), a.p. 346.

We see in Gregory Nazianzen's panegyric* a picture of the vast mass of population,

* See Soc. ii. 23; Soz. iii. 20, The Eustathians were called after bishop Eustathius ; see above, p. xxv.

For Leontius, see De Fuga, 26; Theod. ii.

10, 24; Hooker, v. 42.9.

Many of the orthodox continued to worship in his churches, where the spirit of Catholic belief and devotion was kept up by two laymen, Flavian and Diodore.

Constantius' absolute dependence on his advisers is scornfully noted in Hist. Ari. 69, 70.

* Soc. ii. 46. For this George see Ath. de Syn. 17.

* See Ath. Apol. 57; Soz. iii. 22.

On the dignity of the see of Jerusalem, cf. the seventh Nicene canon.

* Greg. Naz, Orat. xxi. 28, 29 It appears that Gregory's description, which he connects with the third return, should rather belong to the second.

The Festal Index favours this view: it is taken by Montfaucon and Mohler, though not by Tillemont and Neale.

The grandeur of the

of St. Athanasius. liii distributed into its several classes, and streaming forth, 'like another Nile,' to meet him at some distance from Alexandria}; the faces gazing from every eminence at the well-known form, the ears strained to catch his accents, the voices rising in emulous plaudits, the hands clapping, the air fragrant with incense, the ground spread with carpets, the city festal with banquets and blazing with illuminations—all that made this return of Athanasius the standard in after times for any grand popular display.

'It is like the day when Pope Athanasius came home!'

It was what Julius had anticipated—a day of ' glorious festivity,' a day such as leaves an ineffaceable impression of splendour, triumph, intense unmitigated joy.

The ' Arian History?' says little of the exterior brilliancy of his restoration, but dwells with real beauty of style and tone on its practical results in multiplying acts of charity, in deepening religious earnestness, and in sanctifying family life while it stimulated exceptional self-devotion®.

Many, we are told, gave themselves up to 'care for the things of the Lord,' in consecrated celibacy: others made their houses seem like churches, and worked energetically among the poor.

Thus the exuberant enthusiasm of his reception had a real effect in raising the moral and religious tone of his people.

Characteristically, the kindhearted Gregory dwells on his hero's gentle bearing towards old opponents, and his peace-making zeal in allaying feuds: many persons who had been frightened into siding with the Arians, came by night to him with their excuses: 'they had always been faithful to him at heart.' popular demonstration seems certainly most suitable to a return which had the fullest measure of imperial sanction. Dean Stanley connects it with the first return (East. Ch. p. 274).

1 ¢Chereu,' i.e. 'Chereus' land' (cf. Vit. Ant. 86), was 'the first outpost of the city' (Stanley, East. Ch. p. 274).

'Usque ad centesimum lapidem,' says the Latin version of the Festal Index.

"Cage.

2 Pat eee did not live to hear of this return; but Orsisius his successor sent to Athanasius some monks of Tabenne, whom the archbishop welcomed with great kindness (Act. SS., Maii, vol. iii. 326).

liv On the Life V; His roth Festal Letter, for a.p. 347, begins with a thanksgiving for having been 'brought from distant lands, and ends with information as to recent appointments of bishops, among whom was Arsenius, now canonically established at Hypsele ; others were doubtless Catholics, whom the archbishop had set in the places of Arians'.

The Egyptian prelates, in council, received the decrees of Sardica.

More than 400 bishops of different countries, including Britain, were now in communion with Athanasius; he had a multitude of their ' letters of peace' to answer?, It was a time 'of deep and wondrous peace',' which lasted for a few years. Valens and Ursacius had already, it seems, anathematized Arianism before a Council at Milan ; but they deemed it expedient to do more.

In a.p. 347 they appeared at Rome, and presented to Julius a humble apologetic letter; having already written in a different strain to Athanasius, briefly announcing that they were 'at peace with him*"

He believed at the time that they were sincere; they afterwards ascribed their act to fear of Constans®.

This motive, if it existed, was ere long removed; the revolt of Magnentius 1 Soz., iii. 21, says that he was accused of having made similar substitutions even while passing through foreign countries.

Both Soz. and Socr., ii. 24, say that he was charged with ordaining in the dioceses of other bishops in Egypt.

Yet see Hussey on Soc. 1.c.

Le Quien holds that he had a right to perform ordinary episcopal functions throughout Egypt.

Or.

Chr, ii. 359.

So Neale, Intr. East. Ch. i. rrr.

2 Hist. Ari. 28.

3 Tbs, * See Newman's note, Hist. Tracts, p. 86 (Apol. 19): cf. Apol. 2; Hist.

Ari, 26, 44.

As Westerns, they naturally treated the bishop of Rome with much greater deference than the bishop of Alexandria; and even in their statement to Julius they betray their distrust of Athanasius.

That they should retract, from motives of policy, was for them no unnatural course.

Compare Hil. Fragm. 2, 20.

5 Hist, Ari. 29.

of St. Athanasius. lv brought Constans to an ignominious death at the foot of the - Pyrenees, in February a.p. 350.

This tragedy was a severe shock to Athanasius'.

He received, indeed, a letter from Constantius, assuring him of continued favour, and encouraging him to pursue his episcopal work.

'Our will and pleasure is that you should at all times remain in your own place as bishop®'

The Alexandrian authorities were also commanded to suppress any "plotting against Athanasius.'

Thereupon, in presence: of high state officers, including the bearers of these letters, Athanasius desired his people, assembled in church, 'to pray for the safety of the most religious Constantius Augustus.'

The response was at once made, 'O Christ, help Constantius *!'

He had leisure for writing, and made good use of it.

His letter to a friend 'on the Nicene Definition, i.e. on the soundness of the great Council's doctrinal statements, is referred to this period of his life, and professes to answer the question,

Why the Council used the non-scriptural phrases, 'of the essence' and 'co-essential ;;—-a question proposed by that class of Arians who were followers of Acacius, the successor of Eusebius of Czsarea, and whose formula was the Homoion,— that the Son was simply 'like' to the Father*.

Athanasius had 'argued against them fully in a former letter,' now lost.

In the extant letter he begins by enforcing a point which, to his mind, lay at the root of the matter.

If our Lord's Sonship is not real or natural, then—whatever distinctions' may be.invented—it is ejusdem generts with ours.

If it is more than this, then it is natural, therefore eternal and Divine.

The names given to the Son,—he proceeds,—confirm this; e. g. ' Word,' ' Wisdom,'—for He is the one Word of God.

The phrases used by the Council were not, indeed, taken from Scripture, but employed to guard that semse of Scripture which, but for heretical

1 He spoke of Constans to Magnentius' envoys with tears, Ap. ad Con. 9.

2 Ath. Ap. ad Con. 23; Hist. Ari. 24, 51.

8 Ap. ad Con. Io, 33.

* Newman, Arians, p. 314.

5 De Decr. 7, 9:

lvi On the Life evasiveness, might have been expressed—as the Council at first meant to express it—in Scripture words'.

They do not profess to explain the inexplicable, but to preserve it from being explained away*.

They agree, more or less verbally, with the language of earlier Church writers*: for 'the Creed of the Council is the faith of the Catholic Church.'

As for 'nonscriptural' phrases, what of the Arian term 'Ingenerate'?

It is capable of several senses; taken in one, it implies proper Arianism; taken in another, it simply contrasts God with His works, and does not set Him forth as Father.

To this treatise Athanasius subjoins the letter in which Eusebius of Czsarea explained to his own people his acceptance of the Homoousion.

In another theological essay, 'On the Sentiments of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria,' Athanasius undertook to show that the Arians had no right to claim his great predecessor as on their side.

True, Dionysius had said, in one of his letters, 'The Son was made...

. is alien in essence from the Father, as the vine from the husbandman, the ship from the shipwright ; and, as made, He was not before He came into being.'

But, Athanasius contends, let the circumstances, and the rest of his language, be considered.

He was opposing Sabellianism, and urging the distinction between the Son and the Father; and for this purpose was dwelling exclusively on one side of the truth, that which relates to Christ's Manhood'.

When his words were made matter of complaint 'before his namesake, the Roman bishop Dionysius,' he wrote a ' Refutation and Defence,' the very title of which is significant, and in which he distinctly admitted the eternity of the Son, as such, as involved in the eternity of the Father; cited illustrations used by him, which ! De Decr. 19 sq.

Above, p. xiv.

2 De Decr. 32.

8 Theognostus, the Dionysii, Origen: see the defence of Origen in c. 27.

He is cited as owning the Son's eternity.

And cf. Routh, Rell. Sac. iv. 354.

* This is what Athanasius here means by ' economy.'

'The apostles,' he says, 'argued from the Manhood to the Godhead,' c. 8.

Cf. de Decr.

25.

On the two Divine and human spheres of Christ's action, comp. de Sent. Dion. 9 with Orat. iii, 32, &c.

of St. Athanasius.

Ivii agreed with the idea expressed by 'co-essential ;' and spoke of -the Word as wot 'a thing made.'

Thus, by anticipation, he condemned Arianism*.

Athanasius concludes with a prayer that 'all who are gone gel may renounce their impiety and recognize the truth.'

He brought out, at this time, although he afterwards made additions to it, the great narrative called his ' Apology against the Arians*,' embodying and commenting upon a number of, documents of the highest value.

It may have been about this time that he chose the blind scholar Didymus, already renowned for vast and varied learning, and for his persuasive advocacy of Nicene doctrine, to preside over the Catechetical School'.

When Magnentius sent envoys to Constantius, one of them visited Alexandria; and Athanasius, in speaking to him of Constans, burst into tears.

He at first had some apprehension of danger from Magnentius; but it was soon evident that his real danger was from the Arianizing advisers of Constantius.

Valens and Ursacius, having now recanted their recantation, were ready to form new plots; and Liberius, the new bishop of Rome, was plied with letters against him, which were outweighed, in the judgment of a Roman synod, by an encyclic of eighty Egyptian prelates; and Rome remained faithful to his cause*. This was in a.D. 352; and Athanasius, in May a.p. 353, thought it advisable to send five bishops®, one of them being

1 Domer does not think Athanasius' pleading satisfactory, although he says that Dionysius did not consciously deny the Son's Deity (Person of Chr. vol. ii. p. 178, E. T.) Dionysius does not expressly say, 'I was referring to the Manhood.'

See Neale, Hist. Alex. i. 7§, 121.

2 In the Bollandist Life (Act. SS., May 2), the ' Apology against Arians,' is called the Syllogus, or collection of documents, &c., framed about a. p.

342, and afterwards appended to the Arian History 'ad Monachos.'

The old name of Second Apology is, at all events, clearly misapplied.

8 Jerome, de Vir. Ilustr. 109 ; Soz. iii. 15.

See Tillemont, x. 389.

* See Liberius' letter to Constantius, Hil. Fragm. 5.

Another letter, in which Liberius is made to say that he had put Athanasius out of his communion for refusing to come to Rome when summoned, may be rejected as a forgery.

De Broglie, L'Egl. et Emp. ii. 1. 233.

5 Soz. iv. 9, and Fragm, Maff.

viii On the Life his friend Serapion of Thmuis, and three presbyters, to disabuse Constantius of bad impressions as to his conduct.

Five days later, May 23, Montanus, a 'silentiary' or palace chamberlain, arrived with an imperial letter forbidding him to send envoys, but purporting to grant a request from himself to visit the court of Milan.

Athanasius, detecting an attempt to decoy him, replied that as he had never made such a request, he could not think it right to use a permission granted under a misconception ; but that if the emperor sent him a definite order, he would set forth at once*, Montanus departed; and the next news that Athanasius received from Europe was such as to make him forget all personal danger.

The Western usurper had been finally overthrown in August; and Constantius, having gone to Arles for the winter, was induced by the Arians to hold there, instead of at Aquileia, the Council which Liberius and many Italian bishops had requested him to assemble'.

The event was disastrous; Vincent, the Roman legate, was induced to join with other prelates in condemning Athanasius ; but Paulinus of Trier had inherited Maximin's stedfastness, and preferred exile to the betrayal of a just cause °.

In the Lent of a.p. 354, the Alexandrian churches were so crowded that some persons suffered severely, and the people urged Athanasius to allow the Easter services to be held in a large church which was still unfinished, called the Cesarean.

The case was peculiar': the church was being built on ground belonging to the emperor; to use it prematurely, without his leave, might be deemed a civil offence; to use it before dedication, an ecclesiastical impropriety.

Athanasius tried to persuade the people to put up-with the existing inconvenience ; they answered they would rather keep Easter in the open country.

Under these circumstances, he gave way.

The 1 Ap. ad Const. 19-21.

* See Liberius' letter to Hosius in Hil. Fragm. 63. The spurious letter referred to above begins ' Studens paci,' and forms Fr. 4.

® Hil. Fr. r. 6.

* Ap. ad Const. 15; Epiph. Heer, 69. 2.

of St. Athanasius. lix Arianizers were habitually courtiers, and ready, on occasion, to be formalists likewise; and this using of the undedicated

'imperial church was one of several charges now urged at court against their adversary, and dealt with in his 'Apology to Constantius;' the others being that he had stimulated Constans to quarrel with his brother, had corresponded with Magnentius, and that he had not come to Italy on receiving the letter

'brought by Montanus. A letter which he wrote before the Easter festival of this year, or perhaps of a.p. 353, is particularly

_ interesting ; he seeks to recall Dracontius, a monk who had been elected to a bishopric 1, and had weakly fled from his new duties.

The earnestness, good sense, and affectionateness of this letter are very characteristic of Athanasius.

He dwells repeatedly on the parable of the Talents, reminds Dracontius of solemn obligations, blames his reliance on bad advisers, . quotes cases of monks who have become bishops, and warns him against imagining the monastic life to be the one sphere of Christian self-denial*.

And the calm contemplation of fastapproaching trials, which would make a severe demand on Christian men's endurance, corresponds exactly to that ' discernment' of the 'signs' of A.p. 354-5, in which Athanasius cannot have been wanting.

For, in the spring of a.p. 355, he would hear of the success of Constantius in terrorizing the great majority of a large Council at Milan, which had been summoned at the urgent desire of Liberius.

A few faithful men, such as Eusebius of Vercelle, Lucifer of Caliaris, Dionysius of Milan, after a momentary weakness, and Maximus of Naples, who was suffering at the time from illness, alone refused to condemn Athanasiys *;. and in standing out against the incurable tyrannousness of Cesarism,

1 «Tn fear of the present crisis,' ad Drac. 3. He said that his voice was bad, ib. 5. 'Come hither,' writes Athanasius, 'to us who love you

. and when you minister in the churches, remember us.'

Dracontius obeyed, and lived to be banished.

Ath. Hist. Ari. 72.

2 « We know of bishops who do, and of monks who do not, fast ;' c. 9.

8 Hist. Ari. 32-34; Marc. et Faust. Lib., in Sirmond. i, 141.

Ix On the Life as thus exhibited, must have felt themselves to be contending both for civil justice and for Nicene orthodoxy'.

That some coup d'éfat was meditated against Athanasius . must have been evident, not only from the emperor's passionate eagerness to have him condemned, and from the really brutal persecution which began to rage throughout the empire against those who adhered to his communion', but from the appearance at Alexandria, in July or August, a. D. 355, of an imperial notary, named Diogenes*, who, though he brought no express orders, and had no interview with Athanasius, used every effort to get him out of the city.

Failing in this, he departed in December; and on January 5, 356, Syrianus, a general, with another notary named Hilarius, entered Alexandria. The Arian party exulted in their approaching triumph; Athanasius asked

Syrianus if he had brought any letter from the emperor.

He said he had not. The archbishop referred him to the guarantee of security which he had himself received; and the presbyters, the laity, and the majority of all the inhabitants, supported him in demanding that no change should be made without a new imperial letter—the rather that they themselves were preparing to send a deputation to Constantius.

The prefect of Egypt and the provost of Alexandria were present at this interview

;and Syrianus, at last, promised 'by the life of the emperor' that he would comply with the demand.

This was on January 18; and for more than three weeks all was quiet.

But about midnight on Thursday, February 8, when Athanasius was at a night-long vigil service in the large church of St. Theonas, preparatory to the Friday service, Syrianus, with Hilarius, and Gorgonius the head of the police force, beset the church with 1 «The arts of the court party,' says Neander (iv. 72, E. T.), 'were aimed not barely against the person, but also against the doctrines of Athanasius.'

He adds that 'it was not the State, it was only the Church, which in those times of despotism and servility had such men to show' as these brave confessors.

2 «Whatever provocations had been given by the orthodox party were far surpassed by the violence and unrelenting bitterness of the Arians.' Stanley,

East. Ch. p. 282.

Hist. Ari, 31.

3 Ath, Ap. ad Const. 22.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixi a large body of soldiers', 'I sat down,' says Athanasius 2, "on my throne,' (which would be at the extreme end of the church,) 'and desired the deacon to read the Psalm' (our 136th), 'and the people to respond, For His mercy endureth for ever®, and then all to depart home.'

This majestic 'act of faith' was hardly finished, when the doors were forced, and the soldiers rushed in with a fierce shout, clashing their arms, discharging their arrows, and brandishing their swords in the light of the church lamps.

Some of the people in the nave had already departed, others were trampled down or mortally injured; others cried to the archbishop to escape.

'I said I would not do so, until they had all got away safe.

So I stood up, and called for prayer, and desired all to go out before me .

. and when the greater part had gone, the monks who were there, and certain of the clergy, came up to me and carried me away *.' And then, he adds, he passed through the mass of his enemies unobserved, thanking God that he had been able to secure in the first instance his people's safety, and afterwards his own.

As on a former occasion, he deemed it his duty to accept an opportunity of escape, especially when the sacrifice of his life would have been ruinous to the cause of the Church in Egypt *; and he therefore repaired to a place of concealment in the country, 'hiding himself,' as the Arian

History ® employs the prophet's words, 'for a little moment, until the indignation should be overpast.'

1 Comp. Ath. Ap. de Fuga, 24; Ap. ad Const. 25.

Cf. Lyra Apost. p: 121, 'In the dark night, mid the saints' trial sore,' &c.

2 Ap. de Fug4, 24.

Comp. Hist. Ari. 81, the protest of the Catholic laity, Feb. 12.

3 His love for, and practical knowledge of, the Psalter is beautifully shown in his Letter to Marcellinus, although his Comments on the Psalms are not very striking.

He was wont to have the Psalms recited rather than sung, 'tam modico flexu vocis faciebat sonare lectorem psalmi,' &c.

St. Aug. Confess. x. 50.

4 The protest says that he faiated: and this, at the last moment of such a scene, and amid such a pressure and confusion, is not unlikely.

Soc. ii.

11 erroneously connects this scene with Gregory's intrusion.

5 See Augustine, Ep. 228. 6.

8 ¢, 48.

Ixii On the Life On leaving Alexandria, Athanasius at first thought of appealing in person to Constantius, who could not, he tried to hope, have sanctioned the late outrage.

But he was deterred by the news of one woe following upon another'.

Bishops of the West who had refused to disown him were. suffering under tyranny, or had been hurried into exile.

Among the latter class was the Roman bishop himself, who had manfully spurned both gifts and menaces?; and Hosius, for addressing to Constantius a remonstrance full of pathetic dignity *, had been sent for to, and detained at, Sirmium.

Then came news which touched Athanasius more closely.

It was given out that one George ', a Cappadocian of evil reputation and ruthless temper, was coming to supersede him; and that a vague creed, purporting to be simply-Scriptural®, but in fact ignoring the Nicene doctrine, was to be proposed for his suffragans' acceptance.

This last report set him at once to work, with characteristic promptitude and energy, on a 'Letter to the Egyptian and Libyan Bishops,' in which he recapitulated the early history of Arianism, and warned them against those who were now endeavouring to veil its deformity.

But he had soon to hear of a repetition of the sacrileges and brutalities of the days of Gregory.

As before, Lent® was the time chosen for the arrival of the usurper.

Easter brought an increase of trouble in the persecution of prelates, clergy, virgins, 1 Ap. ad Const. 27,19.

7 Theod.ii. 16.

° It isin Ath. Hist. Ari. 44.

* Though coarse, corrupt, and violent, 'he collected a valuable library,'

Gibbon, iii. 171.

He had been recommended by an Arianizing synod at Antioch.

See Soz. iv. 8, with Valesius' note.

Ath. ad Ep. #g. 7.

In Hist. Ari. 75, he is said to have been fraudulent as a contractor of stores at Constantinople.

5 Compare, on this phase of Arianism, such passages as De Decret. 21.

The principle on which Athanasius went was Waterland's,—that 'the sense of Scripture is Scripture.'

Works, iii. 652.

® Comp. Hist. Ari. 55; De Fuga, 6; Theod. ii. 14.

Other cruelties are narrated in Hist. Ari. 58 sq.

There is a difficulty, in that Athanasius' language appears inconsistent with the date given in the Festal Index and Maffeian Fragment, which defer George's arrival until Feb. 24, 357)

of St. Athanasius.

Ixiii widows, the poor, and even ordinary Catholic householders.

-On the evening of the Sunday after Pentecost, when 'the brethren' had met for worship, apart from the Arians, in the precincts of a cemetery, a military commander, named

Sebastian, a fierce-tempered Manichean, whose sympathies went with George, came to the spot with more than 3000 soldiers, and found some virgins and others still in prayer after the general congregation had broken up?.

On their refusal to embrace Arianism, he caused them to be stripped, and beaten or wounded with such severity that some died from the effects, and their corpses were kept without burial.

This was followed by the exile of twenty-six bishops, doubtless for rejecting the new-made creed*; more than thirty fled, others were scared into apparent conformity, and the vacated churches were given over to men whose moral disqualifications for any religious office were compensated by their profession of Arianism.

Tragical as were these tidings, Athanasius still clung to his purpose of presenting himself before Constantius, until he learned that one imperial letter had denounced him although the Fragment says that on June 15, 356, the churches were given up to the adherents of ' Gregory '—meaning, of course, George—by Heraclius and Cataphronius, the men who are named in Hist. Ari. 55, as setting on the young Pagans to attack the Cesarean church on a Wednes- . day, before George came, and evidently soon after Athanasius had fled.

Perhaps the Fragmentist, knowing that George came in a Lent (and in 356 Easter was Apr. 7), that Heraclius had previously disturbed the Catholics' possession of the churches, and that in June, 356 (the exact day,

Sunday after Pentecost in that year, was June 2) another great outrage took place, was led to mix up these facts with his erroneous notion (in itself sufficiently improbable) of a whole year's interval before the arrival of the intruding bishop, to place Heraclius' arrival about three months too late, and to confound his proceeding, in some degree, with Sebastian's.

The exclusion of Catholics from Alexandrian churches is illustrated by a letter attributed to Athanasius, 'Which has the. most,—he who holds the place of worship, or he who holds the Faith?'

A fragment of another letter, preserved by Theodoret, ii. 14, speaks of the Arians as ' sitting like demons round the tombs, to debar the dead from burial.'

1 De Fugé, 6; Hist. Ari. 72; Ap. ad Con. 27.

2 De Fuga, 7; Hist. Ari. l.c.

Ixiv On the Life as a fugitive criminal who richly merited death, and another * had exhorted the two Ethiopian sovereigns to send Frumentius to Alexandria, that George might instruct him in the knowledge of 'the supreme God ®'

Then it was that Athanasius, accepting the position of a proscribed man who must needs live as a fugitive, 'turned back again,' as he says, 'towards the desert', and sought for welcome and shelter amid the innumerable monastic cells.

Antony had died at the beginning of the year, desiring that a worn-out sheep-skin cloak (the monk's usual upper dress), which, when new, had been the gift of Athanasius, might be returned to him*.

But many 'abbots,' who had imbibed Antony's spirit, would deem their coenobitic settlements only too much graced by receiving their archbishop as a sufferer for the truth's sake; and many a young monk would think that the 'discipline' which he had embraced, and which Athanasius had propagated in distant lands, gained a new charm while the person whom he most reverenced on earth was actually mingling in the routine of prayer and psalmody, meditation, and manual toil, wearing the same habit, eating the same food, sometimes delivering the prescribed exhortation, or taking the office of celebrant at the monastic altar.

As Athanasius appears to have made secret visits to Alexandria®, he probably spent some time among the recluses of 1 Ap. ad Const. 30, 31.

? Meaning, of the Father (see Arius, in Athan. de Syn. 15).

Frumentius continued undisturbed ; see Le Quien, Or. Chr. ii. 644.

3 Ap. ad Const. 32; Greg. Orat. xxi. 19.

* Vit. Ant.g1.

Athanasius had lately invited Pambon to Alexandria, Soc. iv. 23.

6 Festal Index, a.p. 358.

And compare the Index for 350, on the virgin Eudzemonis, tortured by the przefect when he searched for Athanasius in a small chamber, with Palladius' famous story (Vit. Patr. 1. 8. c. 136) of the young Alexandrian lady who sheltered him in her own house; a story which, although it bears exaggeration on its face, may possibly have some foundation.

See Soz. v.6.

Cave and Montfaucon think that the lady may have received him for a few days after Syrianus' irruption.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixv Lower Egypt, on the Nitrian mountain, or in 'the wilderness of cells' further inland, or in the yet remoter Scetis; but he also doubtless found cause to visit 'the pathless solitudes which surround Upper Egypt, and the monasteries and hermitages of the Thebaid.'

He might converse in one place with Pior, the austere disciple of Antony; in another with Pambon, famed for his vigilance against sins of the tongue; in another with Macarius of Egypt, whose recorded sayings exhibit such knowledge of the heart and such abundant charity 1,

As he thus changed his places of abode, a veil of mystery was drawn over his life; and the interest was heightened by the romantic incidents naturally following from the government's attempts to track and seize him®.

When the pursuit was hot, there would bea rapid and well-arranged flight from one refuge to another %, involving, probably, ' hair-breadth

'scapes' and strange concealments which might anticipate the | experience of a Jacobite or a Vendéan.

When comparatively undisturbed, he would still be full of activities, ecclesiastical and theological.

The 'royal-hearted*' exile, the 'invisible patriarch,' was always effectively governing his Church, consoling

1 Soc. iv. 23; Soz. vi. 29-31; Coteler. Mon. Gr. i. 524, 640.

2 See Ep. ad Serap. i. 1.

The 'Life of Pachomius' gives a vivid scene.

A 'duke' named Artemius is hunting for Athanasius, comes to a monastery, and asks, 'Is Athanasius here?'

Psarphi, the monk in charge, answers simply, ' He is indeed the father of us all, but I never yet saw his face.'

Artemius, after a vain search, asks Psarphi to pray for him.

But, as an Arian bishop is his companion, he is repelled by the answer, ' We may not pray with those who are in communion with Arians."

It is possible that Athanasius, by a visit or by letters, encouraged the intensely ecclesiastical population of Oxyrynchos, who, when their bishop joined the communion of George, at once disowned him, and procured for themselves an orthodox chief pastor,—supposing that in this matter we may trust the authority of Marcellinus and Faustinus (Sirmond. i. 251).

3 Gibbon, iii. 85.

¢ Dr. Newman in Lyra Apostolica, p. 118 :— 'And royal-hearted Athanase, With Paul's own mantle blest.'

See Stanley, East. Ch., p. 284. A curious anecdote, showing his knowledge of character, is told by Tillemont, viii. 232. f

Ixvi On the Life or stimulating the faithful, keeping in his hands a network of correspondence', despatching messages and orders which would be received as loyally as if brought by a deacon of the Alexandrian throne.

And with that marvellous power of self-adaptation, prominent among the Pauline qualities which Dean Stanley has so well pointed out in this majestic character,

Athanasius made those six years of seclusion available for literary work of the most substantial kind, both controversial and historical.

The books which he now began to pour forth were apparently written in cottages or caves", where he sat, like any monk, on a mat of palm-leaves, with a bundle of papyrus beside him, amid the intense light and _ stillness of the desert, which might well harmonize with his meditations and his prayers.

The fondness of Athanasius for the illustration of 'the Light and the Ray' is well known*.

He finished in this year (a. D. 356) his ' Apology to Constantius '*,' a 'work which he had for some time in hand, and which he still hoped to be able, in better days, to deliver in the emperor's presence.

He afterwards met the taunts of ' cowardice' directed against him by Leontius, George, Narcissus, and other Arians,

1 He tells Serapion that the letters he has received are a source of comfort, and make him feel as if his friends were with him (i.1).

Compare Hist. Ari. 40.

2 *T even dwelt with wild beasts,' Ap. ad Con. 34.

The story of his being concealed for six years in a dark dry cistern—which Rufinus appears to believe (i. 18)—may be founded on his having once during those years lain hid in such a place.

See Soz.iv. 10, Compare De Fuga, 17.

Every cave and glen was known to the monks.

5 See, e.g. Orat. ii. 33, iii. 13, 66; de Decr. 23. Cf. Kingsley's Hermits, p132.

* Throughout this Apology he addresses Constantius with the forms of loyal respect.

This was necessary, if it was ever to be actually presented ; and he may have forced himself, even at this time, to hope that Constantius might amend his conduct. "Still it was going rather far to talk of Constantius' 'well-known benignity' (c. 32): (his cruelties towards his relatives are referred to in Hist. Ari. 69).

But Athanasius never afterwards spoke of him in this tone.

See De Fuga, 26; Hist. Ari. 74; de Syn. 55.

He did indeed, in Hist. Ari. 69, make allowance for his imbecile credulity, which made him a tool in the hands of worse men.

of St. Athanasius.

" Ixvii with an ' Apology for his Flight", in which he dwelt'on the "precept and example of Christ, and on the conduct of eminent saints, Biblical and ecclesiastical?; enlarging at the same time on the fury of the persecution, and referring to the banishment of orthodox bishops.

This treatise is remarkable as condemning absolutely the principle of persecution', and stating a view of a bishop's duty, under such circumstances, which was identical with that of Dionysius and of Cyprian, but was discussed and accepted with certain limitations by Augustine in one of his last letters.

'To the same period belong the ' Letter to the Monks',' with the 'Arian History' (not now extant as a whole), which it introduces, and as to which it is difficult to resist the impression that part of it, at least, was written under the archbishop's supervision, by some friend or secretary®; a 'Letter to Serapion,' bishop of Thmuis, refuting the notion that Arius had died in Church communion by an account of his death, the details of which he had learned from his presbyter Macarius, while he himself was resident at Trier

°; 1 The ' Apologia de Fuga' was written between the lapse of Hosius and that of Liberius—probably about the end of a.p. 357.

The Arians who taunted him, he says, professed friendly feelings towards him.

Part of the tract is quoted in Soc. iii. 8; and its argument is summarized by Newman, Ch. of the Fath., p. 231.

2 Matt. x. 23; John xi. 54, &c.; Eus. vi. 39; Cyp. Ep. 20; Aug. Ep. 228.

3 De Fuga, 23.

Cf. Hist. Ari. 67.

4 In this letter he says he has complied with their request for an account of the persecution and a refutation of Arianism.

The refutation is identified by the Bollandist Life with the ' Orations ;' Montfaucon and Newman think it is lost.

Athanasius requests the monks not to copy or even retain these documents, lest they should be misinterpreted.

5 It is written generally in the third person; but the first person occurs in c. 7, 9, 15, Sc. (see especially 64); in c. 52 ('if the text be not corrupt,' see Newman, Hist. Tracts, p. 219), we find 'he and we.'

This inconsistency is just what might happen if an amanuensis were used.

And see c. 13.

The style is somewhat declamatory; as to speeches, a dramatic freedom is used.

One sentence, in c. 32, is suspicious; for Constantius' death could not have seemed near at hand.

6 Neander (iv. 58, E. Tr.) blames Athanasius for imputing deception to Arius in regard to the profession of belief which he had tendered to Constantine.

But if the statement in this letter be true, he really did say that f 2

'Ixvili On the Life and, above all, the great ' Orations' or 'Discourses against the Arians.'

These last have been described by Montfaucon as 'the sources whence arguments have been borrowed by all who have since written in behalf of the Divinity of the Word';' and although it cannot be denied that in some details of their argument a modern reader will detect what seems irrelevant or forced, or otherwise unsatisfactory, and that the close reasoning which Photius and other writers have so justly admired in Athanasius is occasionally embellished, as the taste of that age would consider, by forms of polemical oratory, yet all candid readers will appreciate the richness, fulness, and versatility of the Scriptural exegesis, the steady grasp of certain primary truths, and especially of the Divine Unity, and of Christ's real or 'genuine,' 'natural,' and Divine Sonship °, in which the whole Catholic doctrine was involved, for 'a son is the proper offspring of the father's essence, and not external to him ;' the keen penetration with which Arian objections are analyzed', Arian imputations disclaimed, Arian statehe had not taught what Alexander had imputed to him.

And according to Athan. ad Ep. Ag. 18, he told Constantine that he had never held or taught otherwise than the profession, couched in Scriptural words, contained.

Neander says, Athanasius had no right to assume that Arius must take those words as he himself did.

But the point is, that Constantine would naturally take them in a sense which, at least, was not that condemned at Niczea.

' «Excellentiam Verbi tui, quam beatus Athanasius asseruit.'

Parisian Breviary, Collect for May 2.

4 See Bp. Kaye on Council of Nicza, p. 279.

Cf. Orat. ii. 29, 48, 63, iii. §9, 65, iv. 28, &c.

$ E.g. Orat. i. 15, ii. 2, 3, 5, 22, 23 (where, as in iii. 12, He, as true Son, is contrasted with angels), 32, 34, 45, and 73, 'This is the main question, Whether He is Son?' and iii. 62, cited in the text.

Athanasius seems to be constantly saying, as it were, to himself, 'There is one Godhead,—God has a true Son,—that Son is God,' &c.

Parts of the Orations, it may be observed, are reproductions of what he had written before, e. g. in the de Decret.

(Cf. Or. i. 30 sq., de Decr, 28 sq., on the Arian 'sophism' about ' Ingenerate.') * E.g. Orat. i. 14, 27, 29; see also ii. 26, iii. 59.

With this acute analysis should be compared the lucid statement of such plain arguments as that from the Baptismal Form, ii. 41.

In this, as in other ways, Athanasius could be 'all things to all men.'

Cf. Photius, Bibl. 140.

of St. Athanasius. xix ments, old and new, the bolder and the more cautious, com- - pared, Arian evasions pointed out, Arian logic traced to its' conclusions, and Arianism shown to be inconsistent, irreverent, professedly zealous for Monotheism, yet in a certain sense

Ditheistic; the incidental exposure of earlier heresies, like that of Paul of Samosata'; the 'distinct? and luminous protests, by anticipation, against' later heresies, like the Nestorian and Eutychian ; and the solemn earnestness with which the orthodox conclusions are exhibited as ministering to the deepest needs of the Christian soul®.

The work is rich in passages which concentrate the writer's thought and impress themselves on the reader's memory'.

Sometimes also we find highly suggestive language on the relation of the Spirit to the Son, on the purport of the terms Son and Word respectively ®, on the 1 Orat. i. 38, ii. 13, iii. 51.

He also frequently alludes to Gnostics (ii.

21, &c.) and Manicheans (i. 23, &c.); and he carefully excludes Sabellianism, e.g. iii. 4, 36, iv. 25.

2 Newman in Athan. Treat. ii. 291; ib. ii. 295, and 436 on Orat. iii.

29 sq.

See too Orat.i. 45, iv. 31.

Ini. 50, ii. 70, iii. 58, he implies the reality of a human 'nature' in Christ, and expressly asserts His manhood.

Compare De Sent. Dion. 9.

Athanasius may indeed have occasionally used phrases which later theologians would deem inaccurate; e.g. in Orat. ii. 70, iv. 33.

Compare c. Apollin, ii. 16.

8 E.g. Orat. i. 35, 49, 59, ii. 43, 67, 69, 70 (comp. Cyril of Alexandria's argument from the Atonement against Nestorius, in his 'De Recta Fide').

4 « There is an eternal and one Godhead in Three ...the Blessed Trinity, unalterable and perfect' (Orat. i. 18), 'It was not that the Son was Man, and then became God, but that He was God, and then became Man' (ib. i.

39). 'He who is the Son of God, Himself became the Son of Man' (ib. i.

45).

'Creature does not worship creature, but servant Lord, and creature God' (ib. ii. 23.

He is arguing that Christ accepted worship, John xx. 28, whereas angels refuse it, Rev. xxii. 9).

'If He had been a creature, and so shad become Man, man had remained just what he was, not joined to God"

(ib. ii. 67). 'We confess God to be one through the Trinity' (ib. iii. 15).

'He is by nature and essence Word and true God, and we are made sons through Him by adoption' (ib. iii. 19).

'Is Jesus Christ Man like other men, or is He God bearing flesh?' (ib. iii. 51. Athanasius quotes Rom. ix.

5 and 1 John v. 20 as asserting Christ's Deity; ib. i. 10, iii. 9, &c.) For some resemblances to the ' Athanasian Creed,' see below.

5 Orat. i. 48, iii. 24.

¢ Ib. i. 28.

lx On the Life dignity of the Virgin Mother as 'Theotocos',' on the question of the 'necessity' of the Incarnation', on the Atonement, on the superiority of man's state as restored over his state as first created*, Among the characteristic points are a readiness to repeat, for clearness' sake, what has been already stated ®, and to offer a choice of explanations*; together with a frequent reference to the 'rule' of orthodox thought or 'the Church's point of view'.'

The phraseology includes logical or other philosophical terms; the word 'ousia' is repeatedly used, 'hypostasis' very sparingly ®; but the 'Homoousion,' although it occurs®, is for the most part 'avoided in these discourses,' clearly in order to conciliate the Semi-arians and attract them towards Catholicism.

And it is very evident, on the face of the Orations, that the great idea which fills their writer's mind is independent of any terms which he may borrow from current philosophy in order to indicate and symbolize what can neither be comprehended nor expressed™.

He has not 'made to himself' an object of belief out of 'the residue' of a technical terminology; if such phrases as 'essence' or 'subsistence' were proscribed, the doctrine of the Father and the Son, as he conceives of it, as his thought lives in it, would be for him just where it is; while an indefinite multiplication of such phrases could not measure

1 Orat. iii. 14, 29, iv. 32.

See, on this phrase, Bright's Hist. Ch. p. 312.

2 Tb. ii. 68.

As to whether it would have taken place without the Fall, Athanasius takes the ' Thomist' view, that it would nos, ib. i. 49, ii. 54.

8 Ib. i. 59, 60, ii. 9, 66.

<Tb: un67:

5 Ib. ii. 22, iii. 54.

See the oft-repeated ' proper Offspring.'

Tb. i. 44, ii. 13, iii, ar.

" Ib. iii. 28, 35, 58.

* Ib. iii. 65, iv. 1, 35. In ii. 51 he contrasts the Son's ' ousia,' meaning, His Godhead, with His Manhood.

9 Very prominently in Orat.i. 9.

Cf. ib. iv. 9, 12.

10 Newman, in Athan. Treat. i. 210.

Cf. ib.17.

Athanasius 'was not the slave of language,' but 'had his eye upon ideas, truths,' &c., Liddon,

Bamp. Lect. p. 436.

" Orat. ii. 36.

Cf. de Decr. a2.

'To comprehend what the essence of God is, is impossible,' ib. 12.

Cf. Ep. ad Mon, 2; ad Serap. i. 17.

Contrast this with the Anomoean view, Soc. iv. 7.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixxi its vastness nor abate its mystery.

What he contemplates, so .to speak, insatiably, yet as knowing that he can but see it ' part,' is that doctrine as presented in the simple? pecs of the Apostles and Evangelists; it is to secure and enforce the full significance of their statements that he now writes the 'Orations,' as in his youth he had argued at Nicza.

The First Oration begins? with an exposition of the greatness of the question at issue, 'Is He God or not?'

'Is He really Son or not?' and proceeds to proofs of the Son's eternity and uncreatedness, drawn from His Scriptural titles and the fact of His Sonship; then to a discussion of objections, some of which were popular, some scholastic; ending with comments on texts alleged in support of Arianism, i.e. Phil. ii. 9, 10, Ps. xlv. 7, 8,

Heb. i. 4, which are explained by Athanasius in reference to Christ's position as Man.

The Second, written after some interval, pursues this line of comment, especially on a text much urged by Arians in the LXX. Version (Prov. viii. 22%), which is explained of our Lord's Mediatorial appointment at His Incarnation.

The Third* explains texts in the Gospels, such as John xiv. ro, xvii. 7, x. 3o—where, it is urged, a moral unity is inadequate—and those texts which ascribe to the Son the limitations and affections of humanity.

If in a few passages of the Orations the real human conditions of the Incarnation seem insufficiently recognized, that defect is amended in 1 The use of inéa7acs in Heb. i. 3 is, with Athanasius, a precedent and a sanction for Nicene language.

2 Fora very full summary of the argument of the Orations, see Bp. Kaye on the Council of Nicza, p.

152 sqThe student should by all means make use of the very elaborate and important Notes (criticized, in some points, by Bp. Kaye) of Dr. Newman, appended to the translation of the * Orations in the Library of the Fathers.

('Select Treatises of St. Athanasius.') !

3 Comp. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. iii. 2: on the rendering é«rqoaro, and see also St. Basil, adv. Eunom. ii. 20.

4 It begins by dwelling on the doctrine of the Coinherence; for which see also i.61.

The general view taken, in this discourse, of Mark xiii, 32, is that the Son, gua man, in His state of humiliation, assumed a limitation of knowledge, as He assumed a capacity of suffering.

Ixxii On the Life this more systematic presentation of the Christ of the Church, as uniting in Himself true Godhead and true Manhood'; and the Oration then deals with another Arian statement, that the Sonship was a result of God's mere will',

Following Dr. Newman ® and Bishop Kaye', we may consider the ' Fourth Oration' to be an undigested collection of notes or memoranda on several heresies, principally that notion of an impersonal

'Word' energizing through a human 'Son' or Christ, which was, as we have seen, 'imputed to his friend Marcellus, and to persons connected with him;' an imputation which Athanasius, about a. D. 360, began to think not undeserved, although, as if wishing to hope the best, he refrained from naming Marcellus while opposing what might be called Marcellianism.

It may be felt by readers who have no bias against the theology of the Discourses, that this tenderness towards an old associate (which we shall see Athanasius exhibiting on another occasion) is in striking contrast with the exuberance of objurgation® bestowed

1 See also ad Serap. iv. 14.

2 See too Orat. i. 29, ii. a; Newman, Arians, p. 214; Neander, iv. 65, E.T.

Comp. Didymus, de Trin. i. 9.

3 Newman, in Athan. Treat. ii. 502. He regards Athanasius' arguments, or rather heads for argument, on the identity of the Word with the Son,

&c., as levelled against what was held by Marcellus or his school.

Cf.

Orat. i. 28, and the remark on the Word as not merely ' uttered,' ib. ii. 35.

* Kaye on Council of Nicza, p. 268.

Athanasius, Montfaucon thinks, did not begin to suspect Marcellus hefore a.p. 358.

The statement in the second Hilarian Fragment, that he broke off communion with him before a.D. 349, is derived from questionable authority, and is inconsistent with De Fugi, 3, 'Ancyra is mourning for Marcellus,' and Hist. Ari.6.

It was probably after the third exile that Epiphanius, on asking Athanasius what he thought about Marcellus, inferred from a significant smile that he considered him to be 'not far from heresy,' but to have 'made a defence for himself.'

(Heer. 72, 4). Perhaps Epiphanius is alluding to the defence made at Rome (Hist. Ari. 6), but hinting that it seemed no longer to satisfy

Athanasius.

Or it may be (if Epiphanius spoke to Athanasius as he passed through Palestine towards Alexandria in a.p. 346), that Athanasius was thinking of suspicions which had not unreasonably been entertained before that defence.

° Dr. Newman has collected (Athan. Treat. ii. 341), and Dean Stanley has gently commented on, some cases in which Athanasius makes a rather

of St, Athanasius.

Ixxiii on Arians 'as madmen' (or fanatics), and 'foes of God' and -'of Christ."

But, not to urge that the fourth century had no established rules of controversial politeness, and that the acerbity of Greek disputation and the personalities of Roman society had often too much influence on the tone of Christian argument, one must remember that Athanasius is not attacking all members of the 'Arian body, but representatives of it who had been conspicuous for their heterodoxy, or their secularity, or their duplicity, or their tyrannous violence.

And if some elements of human passion mingled with his indignation at what he deemed an apostasy from Christ, allowance must surely be made for the position of a man whom this party had been striking at for thirty years with a persistent energy of hatred; who knew that amid a general persecution his life was now being-specially sought'; who, driven at sixty years old from the throne of a prince of bishops into outlawry under the ~ ban of a malignant autocrat, might seem to have, humanly speaking, no better earthly prospect than a few more years of perilous wandering, to be saddened by a deepening consciousness of defeat, and to be closed by death in some 'wilderness of cells.'

Yet, although he might now be said, in words derived from Hooker', to be alone contra mundum, it would have been very unlike Athanasius the Great to give way to despondency, or to think that he had 'spent his strength for nought, in a cause which his faith told him had in it all the elements of large use of a precedent derived from such Scripture language as ' brood of vipers.'

See also the vehement language in Orat. ii. 4, 28, 43: ili.17.

He does not omit to taunt Asterius, the old Arian writer whom he quotes (and from whom Arius borrowed an argument), with having sacrificed under persecution; e.g. ii.24: comp. de Decret.8, de Syn.18,.

He says (Or. iii.

59) that later Arians have become ashamed of such plain-spoken formulas as 'the Son is a creature,' (comp. de Decret. 28,) and seek to convey their doctrine in less startling language.

1 De Fuga, 9; cf. Stanley, East. Ch. p. 279.

2 Hooker, v. 42. 5.

Athanasius says in Hist. Ari. 47, 'Our Saviour also was left alone. , . in order that we, when persecuted and left alone by men, might not faint, but set our hope on Him, and not betray the truth,'

Ixxiv On the Life ultimate victory.

The spirit in which he had chosen a psalm of thanksgiving as his Church's answer to the din of a fierce onslaught, enabled him to look through the present darkness,

— to foresee the future by manful hope, to keep his spirit braced for any exertion, to enjoy heartily the comfort of friendly letters, and to follow up his Discourses by four 'Letters to Serapion,' of Thmuis, his friend 'beloved and longed for,' of which the second briefly repeated the teaching of the Discourses, while the others were directed against a theory then reported to him by Serapion as springing up, and afterwards known as Macedonianism ; which, abandoning the Arian position in regard to the Son, strove with singular inconsistency to retain it in regard to the Spirit, whom it declared to be neither a Divine Person nor a Divine attribute, but a ministering creature,

' differing only in degree from the angels'

Athanasius met this error by contending for 'a Trinity real, eternal, and undivided,' in which the Spirit was included with the Father and the Son; and replied to the pointed cavils which, in the eristic style of the old Arians, were being now directed against His coequal personality".

ML.

Whenever Athanasius looked away, so to speak, from his writing, to watch the course of Church affairs, he must have needed all his hopeful patience.

The Nicene faith had not now to deal merely with the modified Arianism, rather negative than positive, which had spoken at Antioch in a.p. 341-2.

The 'Eusebians' had become bolder since 'the assassination 1 See Soc. ii. 45; Soz. iv.27; Epiphan. Her. 74.1.

This view had been already excluded by Cyril, Catech. viii.2.

See also St. Basil, de Sp.S. 16; St. Ambr. de Sp. S. i. 27, etc.: and the 'Invocation' in 'St. Mark's Liturgy.'

9 See ad Serap. i. 2, 10, 15, 21, 32.

In c. 20 he explains the Procession of the Spirit as the mission 'from the Word who is confessedly of the Father.'

See also ib. ili.1, §. On the unpardonable sin, cf. ib. iv. 8 sq.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixxv of the Catholic Constans, a. p. 350,' and under the skilful 'management of Acacius, bishop of Czsarea?, had developed a more heterodox theory, which professed to deprecate non-. scriptural terms, and spoke of the Son as 'like,' or 'at most,'

'like in all things, to the Father:' while a downright and thoroughgoing Ultra-arianism, called Anomcean from its asserting Him to be 'unlike,' was actually being disseminated in Alexandria by Aetius, whom George was employing as a deacon, and whose career, since he began life as a vinedresser's underling at Antioch, had been a signal example of acuteness and versatility, The two formulas, 'Homoion' and 'Anomoion,' were in sharp apparent opposition; but the former suggested a merely moral likeness*, such as would not be excluded by the latter.

It was doubtless Acacian Arianism which Hilary, the exiled bishop of Poictiers, found so widely prevalent in Phrygia and the neighbouring districts*; and which was able in a.pD. 357 to secure the sanction of the hitherto Semi-arian Constantius for a creed composed by Potamius, bishop of Lisbon, adopted by a few Western bishops at Sirmium, and stigmatized by Hilary as a 'blasphemia,' not only for its rejection of the term 'essence' in regard to God, but for its open denial of the Son's Divine coequality®.

Athanasius must have been deeply grieved to hear that this formula had been reluctantly accepted by the venerable bishop Hosius, then a prisoner at Sirmium.

But he speaks of this lapse in a tone of tender pity, which contrasts with what Gibbon calls 'the inhuman severity of some of the. orthodox *.'

He, in whom 'there was nothing observed other than such as very well became a wise man to do and a righteous to suffer 7,' tells us with characteristic generosity that if the old

1 Above, p. lv; Newman, Arians, pp. 312-314.

2 Ath. de Syn.6; Soc. ii. 353 Soz. iv.12; Philost. iii.15.

Cp. Tillemont, vi. 4.

8 Cf. Soc. ii. 40; Theod. ii. 29; Greg. Orat. xxi. 22.

* Hil. de Syn. 63.

5 Ath. de Syn. 28; Hil. de Syn. 11; Soc. ii. 30.

'The Father,' said this document, 'is greater in Godhead than the Son.'

® Gibbon, iii. 80.

7 Hooker, v. 42. 5.

Ixxvi '

On the Life confessor, 'the father of prelates,' did at last 'communicate with Valens and Ursacius,' it was ' through the weakness of old age, after stripes and long confinement, and conspiracies formed against his kindred:' and after all, he 'would not sign the condemnation of Athanasius,' that is, would not admit the charges affecting his conduct, and afterwards, 'on the approach of death, anathematized Arianism'.'

Athanasius heard, ere long, of another lapse, that of Liberius of Rome, who could confront a despot—as he did in a.p. 355—better than he could bear up against captivity.

Longing to return to his Church, he disowned the communion of Athanasius, and accepted a creed from the Arians: it is an old question what creed this was.

Probably it was neither the 'first Sirmian' creed of a.D. 351, (which was not positively heterodox,) nor the 'second Sirmian,' the formulary of Potamius, but a digest made up from several formulas, in the Semi-arian interest, at Sirmium? in a.p. 358.

According to letters ascribed to him in the 'Fragments' of St. Hilary*, Liberius wrote to the Easterns, to three Western

Arians, and to Vincent of Capua, announcing that he had ascertained the criminality of Athanasius, and had 'ceased to defend him.

Yet Athanasius in his own way defends Liberius, or at least palliates his weakness, ascribing it to 'the fear of threatened death'."

He was never nobler than in his charity as regards these two cases; and in a.p. 359 he showed his characteristic 'forbearance and tenderness towards the inconsistent °,' in a manner not much less remarkable.

The Semiarians, alarmed at the growth of Acacianism and of Anomeanism, had met at Ancyra in a.p. 358, insisted on their own

1 Apol. 89; de Fuga, 5; Hist. Ari. 45; Soc. ii. 31; Soz. iv.6.

See St.

Aug. c. Parm. i. 7.

® Soz. iv.15; cf. Hil. c. Const. 11; Jerome, de Vir. Ill.97.

See Newman, Ath. Treat. i.162; Hefele, Councils, b. 5. s. 79.

8 Hil. Fragm.6.

'Ego Athanasium non defendo .. Amoto Athanasio a communione omnium nostrum,' &c.

This letter has anathemas against Liberius inserted into it. Hefele sets aside these letters as spurious, equally with that in Fr. 4 ; but most writers think them genuine.

* Ath, Hist. Ari. 41.

° Newman, Arians, p. 367.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixxvii formula of the ' Homoiousion,' denounced all inadequate notions .of the Son's likeness as well as the assertion of 'unlikeness,' and even condemned the 'Homoousion,' although this condemnation was afterwards cancelled'.

They had made plans for a General Council, which was to establish Semi-arianism ; but the Acacians managed to 'divide the Council into two 2, and caused the preliminary adoption at Sirmium, in May A.D. 359, Of a formulary known as 'the Creed dated by the Consulships *,' which forbade the doctrinal use of 'ousia;' and affirmed the Son to be 'like to the Father in all things.'

This step was very effective:

Semi-arianism triumphed for awhile in the Eastern Council of Seleucia, and Catholicism in the Western Council of Ariminum: but ere the year closed, the general body of prelates at Ariminum were partly cheated, partly harassed', into accepting the 'Dated Creed' in a form still more Acacian, with the words 'in all things' struck out, and a proscription of 'hypostasis' as well as of 'ousia®.'

An account of the earlier proceedings of these two synods was drawn up in the form of a letter, 'On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia,' by Athanasius; who, at the outset, professes to describe 'what he has seen®,' i.e. the documents transmitted to him, 'and accurately ascertained.'

In this narrative he labours to detach some of the Semi-arians from the heterogeneous Arian body, and to reconcile them to the Nicene faith.

Expressly naming their leader, Basil of Ancyra, he welcomes these ' Homoiousians' as ' brothers who mean essentially what we mean, and dispute only about the name''

It 1 Hil. de Syn. 12, go.

? Ath. de Syn. 2.

8 Ib. 8.

He taunts the framers of this Creed with saying that 'The Catholic faith was set forth' in a particular year.

The Nicene Council, he says, wrote, 'Thus the Catholic Church believes,' ib.5.

The Dated Creed is also in Soc. ii. 37.

4 See Sulpicius, ii. 43; Jerome, adv. Lucif. 19.

5 Ath. de Syn. 30.

6 Tillemont, vi. 704, infers from this that he was secretly present at Seleucia; and see Gibbon, iii. 86.

But this seems improbable, Ath. Treat. i. 73.

Socrates, i. 13, refers to a work by Athanasius, called 'Synodicon,' which is now lost.

7 Ath. de Syn. 41.

Comp. Hil. de Syn. 78, 88,

Ixxvili ~ On the Life has been sometimes said that Athanasius on this occasion was

'willing to waive', in the sense of 'surrendering,' the Homoousion.

But his words are clear enough; he will not, for the present*, press the Nicene term on persons who, he is sure, will in time accept it, as involving neither more nor less* than their own belief in an uncreated Son.

'As they confess the Son to be from the Father's essence, and not a creature, but His genuine offspring, eternally coexisting with Him, as Word and Wisdom, they are not far from accepting also the term Homoousion.'

If, as he believes to be the case, they own the Sonship to be real, not adoptive, let them give up

'fighting with shadows,' and adopt the Nicene Creed as a refuge from endless variations® and a symbol of authentic

Christianity.

The troubles of the Semi-arians in a.p. 360 might well lead some of them to profit by this advice and abandon their untenable position.

Constantius was alienated from them; their chiefs were deposed and exiled; the Acacians, triumphant in the East and West, transferred Eudoxius, bishop of Antioch, who really sympathized with the Anomeceans', to the great see of Constantinople, and expected to find an ally in his successor Meletius, a man of high character, brilliant eloquence, and atractive disposition'.

But the new prelate, in a carefully prepared discourse on Prov. viii. 22, incensed the Arians, and delighted the Catholics, by statements virtually, though not verbally, Nicene.

He was promptly deposed and banished; and Euzoius, the old companion of Arius, was appointed to the see.

This was too much for those Antio1 Stanley, East. Church, pp. 297, 161.

3 St. Aug. in much the same sense consents to waive the authority of the Nicene Council in disputing with an Arian.

Con. Max. ii. 14.

® De Syn. 38, 39, 41) 42, 45) 48) 53:

* Ib. 54.

© Ib. a1, 32.

'® Ath. Hist. Ari. 4; de Syn. 1, 37, 38; Soc. ii. 37, 43; Soz. iv. 12, 26.

7 Soc, ii. 44; Soz. iv. a8; Theod. ii. 31; St. Chrys. Hom. de S. Mel.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixxix chene Churchmen who had hitherto communicated with their Arianizing bishops; but the 'Eustathians,' with whom Athanasius had worshipped, stiffly refused to unite with them, and thus began a new stage in the 'schism of Antioch,'

The death of Constantius, in the November of a.p. 361, gave over the empire to a prince who for ten years had secretly renounced his baptism and his faith', and who had recently avowed his adhesion to Paganism.

No sooner was the accession of Julian proclaimed at Alexandria than the Pagans, who detested George for his oppressiveness and for his attacks on their worship?, rose in tumultuous force, threw him into prison, and, on the afternoon of the 24th of December®, dragged him out, beat and kicked him to death, exposed and burned his corpse, and flung the ashes into the sea.

Julian rebuked them for this outrage', but, as if to show his contempt for Christian dissensions, or his hatred of the memory of Constantius, permitted the bishops exiled under the late reign to return home; and Athanasius, at the invitation of the prefect, took advantage of this permission.

It was the 21st of February, a. D. 362, when—doubtless with many recollections of that February night in a. p. 356—he seated himself once more upon his throne, amid the jubilation of his people.

At his presence the Arians shrunk away into places of hiding rather than of meeting ®; and we find him speedily engaged, not only in the work of his own special office, including the conversion of Pagans, but in the task of a general ecclesiastical reorganizer *, which fell naturally to one marked out by such pre-eminent merits, and by so rare a combination of opposite excellences, for the moral primacy

1 Milman, Hist. Chr. ii. 457.

2 Soc. iii. 2; Soz. v. 7; Ammian. xxii.11; Epiphan. Her. 76. 1.

2 See the Maffeian 'Chronicon.'

Ammianus hints that the Athanasians hated George too much to interfere.

4 Jul. Ep. 10, ap. Soc. iii. 3.

5 «Mean little houses,' Soc. iii. 4.

6 Not of an 'ecclesiastical dictator,' as Gibbon says, iii. 174.

Ixxx On the Life of Christendom.

The edict of recall had brought Eusebius, bishop of Vercellz1, and Lucifer, bishop of Caliaris* in Sardinia, from the Thebaid into Lower Egypt.

Eusebius proceeded to Alexandria, in order to consult Athanasius as to the remedy for confusions produced by the Ariminian Council; but Lucifer hastened to Antioch, leaving two deacons to represent him.

At the request of Eusebius, Athanasius summoned a Council; some twenty bishops were present, with deputies from Paulinus, the pastor of the Eustathians, and from Apollinaris, now bishop of Syrian Laodicea.

The following questions were considered and settled.

(1) What should be done in regard to prelates or others who, having been involved in Arian connections, might be desirous of joining the Catholic body?

There were not a few bishops 'who had been entangled in the snares of Ariminum $,' and who now deplored their own weakness ; to treat them severely would be not only impolitic, but inequitable.

Again, there was the open division at Antioch: through the generous respect of Euzoius for Paulinus, the Eustathians occupied a little church in the 'new city,' while the adherents of Meletius worshipped at the 'Apostles' church' in the 'old city *.'

What terms of peace should the Eustathians be advised to offer?

The Council resolved to extend its communion to all who, having Arianized, would condemn Arianism and other current heresies, and accept the Nicene Creed®.

Let these terms, it was resolved, be proposed by 'our beloved Paulinus and his flock' to the congregation in the 'old city.'

So will that unity of belief be secured, which is a condition of the 1 Hist. Ari. 33; de Fuga, 4; St. Ambrose, Ep. 63; St. Jerome, de Vir.

Ill. 96.

4 Hist. Ari. 33; de Fuga, 4.

8 Jerome, adv. Lucifer. 19.

* Soc. iii. g; Theod. ii. 31.

5 Athanasius went too far when, in his ' Letter to Rufinianus,' he excused the conduct of the ' Ariminians' as an instance of 'economy.'

See Chr.

Remembr. Jan. 1854, p. 160, But on the gentleness shown by the Council, see Rufinus, i. 38. Observe, too, how Athanasius blames Novatian hardness in ad Serap. iv.13.

He wrote against Novatianism.

of. St. Athanasius.

Ixxxi presence of Him who dwells among His people.

To this was added a warning against a so-called 'Creed of Sardica:' the orthodox Sardican Council knew no creed but the Nicene.

(2) A dispute had arisen as to the use of the word ' Hypostasis.

Many Churchmen, including those who had emerged from Semi-arianism, had accustomed themselves to speak of 'three hypostases' in the Godhead; but the majority asserted

'one hypostasis.'

The latter suspected the former of Arianizing, and were suspected in turn of Sabellianizing: could anything be done to quench this discord?

Here, as Gregory says, Athanasius showed himself a true peacemaker.

'He addressed both parties gently and kindly, examined accurately into the meaning of their respective phrases, and found them to be agreed in thought'. He himself tells us? that those who spoke of 'three hypostases' were found to be wholly clear of Tritheism, 'Why, then,' it was asked, 'do you use the phrase?'

'Because, in the unity of the Godhead, there is a real Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively subsisting.'

Similarly, those who spoke of 'one hypostasis' fully acknowledged such a Trinity, and intended simply to affirm the 'one essence*.'

Thus the two parties, by help of mutual explanations, found that they were of one mind, agreed in condemning Arianism and Sabellianism, and promised to. be content with Nicene language, which spoke neither of 'one hypostasis*' nor of 'three.'

1 Greg. Orat. xxi. 35.

'Sensitively alive to the difference between misbelief and misapprehension,' Newman, Arians, p. 336.

2 Tom. ad Antioch. 5; Newman, ib. p. 382.

3 The senses of imdéaroais are thus enumerated by Dean Liddell in the appendix to his Sermon on ' Where two or three,' &c.: 1. sediment of a liquid; 2. a foundation; 3. solid reality; 4. nature; and 5. personality.

4 Indirectly, indeed, the Nicene anathema sanctioned the phrase, 'one hypostasis,' by making 'hypostasis' synonymous with 'ousia.'

(Ath.

Treatises, i. 66 sq.) Socrates, iii. 7, makes a strange mistake in saying that the Council proscribed the use of either word (as if it had been an Acacian synod).

Sozomen, v.12, corrects this, saying that the Council restricted the use of the two contested phrases to controversy with Sabellianism.

See Hussey's Socrates, vol. iii. p. 255.

lxxxii On the Life (3) Again, there was a tendency in some persons to explain away the Incarnation as a mere visitation of the Son of Mary by the Word; while others were said to mar the human aspect of the mystery by denying that the Incarnate had a 'reasonable soul.'

Of these views, the first was a foreshadowing of Nestorianism; the latter was the incipient heresy of the learned and zealous Apollinaris.

Here, too, the Council ascertained that one party acknowledged the Word to have become Incarnate, so that the Son of Man was the selfsame as the Son of God?; while, on the other side, the envoys of Apollinaris professed to admit that, as both souls and bodies were saved by the Lord

Incarnate, the body which He assumed was not without a mind.

A synodal letter or 'Tome,' addressed 'to those at Antioch,'

Lucifer and two other bishops, and intended to be read by the Eustathians, is one of the most Christian-like documents in Church history.

It was doubtless written by Athanasius, and bears the mark, at once, of his comprehensive theological insight ®, and of his practical solicitude for unity.

'If haply the Lord will pity us, and reunite what has been divided, so that when there is again one flock, we may all again have one Guide!'

Eusebius brought the letter to Antioch, but found that he was too late.

Lucifer, who sympathized intensely and exclusively with the Eustathians, and whose hard narrow mind was all the harder and narrower for his sufferings, had resolved not to wait for his brethren's counsel, and consecrated Paulinus as bishop of Antioch.

Such a step could but 'aggravate the dissension *,' and, in fact, prolonged it for more than fifty years, and made it no small element in the discords of Christendom.

Eusebius, disappointed and grieved, left Antioch: but Lucifer, unmoved by disapproval, refused to acquiesce in the readmission of the 'Ariminians' to communion on any other footing than that of lay penitents.

The rapid deterioration of a brave confessor into an intolerant schismatic must have been a keen

1 «He who was the Son of God before Abraham was no other than He who was after Abraham.'

Ad Antioch. 7.

? See Dean Merivale's Boyle Lect. for 1865, p. 50.

5 Theod. iii. 5.

of St. Athanasius.

Ixxxiii grief to Athanasius, who had honoured him as an 'excellent bishop and preacher of the truth 1 Meantime the Pagans of Alexandria had found it easy to incense Julian against the archbishop, as one whose influence would ruin their religion.

He assured them that he had never intended Athanasius to resume 'what is called the episcopal throne ;' commanded that he should leave Alexandria; and in a letter to the prefect Ecdicius, declared that 'the foe of the gods, who during his reign had dared to baptize Greek ladies,' should meet with a heavier penalty than mere expulsion®. The 1st of December was named as the day on which he was to be out of Egypt.

But, according to Egyptian records, the Imperial edict was communicated to Athanasius by Pythiodorus, a Pagan philosopher, on Oct. 23 ( = Paophi 27°).

The faithful gathered around him weeping.

'Be of good heart,' he said, 'it is but a cloud ; it will soon pass.'

He instantly embarked, to go up the Nile.

But Julian's implied orders were not forgotten; some government agents pursued his vessel.

They met a boat coming down the river, and asked for news of Athanasius.

'He is not far off,' was the reply.

The boat was his own—he himself, perhaps, the speaker*.

His facilities of information had given him warning of the peril, and his ingenuity had

' baffled it.

He sailed on towards Alexandria, but concealed himself at Chzreu, the first station from the capital; then proceeded to Memphis, where he wrote his Festal Letter for a. p.

363; and then made his way to the Thebaid.

VIL.

_It was, probably, about this time', shortly before Easter a.p, 363, that Athanasius was met, while approaching Hermopolis,

1 Ath. de Fuga, 4.

Two Latin 'letters of Athanasius to Lucifer' are probably spurious.

2 Julian, Ep. 26 and 6; Gibbon, iii. 175.

3 Fest. Ind., Fragm. Maff.

* Theod, iii. 9; Soc. iii. 14.

5 Vit. Pach.

Montfaucon places this incident in the period following the third exile; Tillemont defers it to a. p. 365: but both the Fragment and the Index connect a journey to the Thebaid with the fourth exile, and the Fragment names Hermopolis and Antinoe.

Ixxxiv On the Life by Theodore of Tabenne.

Seeing the banks of the Nile thronged by bishops, clergy, and monks, the archbishop exclaimed, in Isaiah's words, 'Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their cotes?' Night, apparently, favoured this demonstration; Athanasius, having disembarked, mounted an ass which Theodore led, and pursued his way amid a vast body of monks bearing lanterns and torches, and chanting psalms.

'It is not we that are fathers,' he broke forth enthusiastically ; 'it is these men devoted to humility and obedience.'

He stayed some time at Hermopolis and Antinoe, for the purpose of preaching; then proceeded southwards to Tabenne, observed everything, even to the seats of the monks, and warmly commended the abbot.

'Remember us,' said Theodore, 'in your prayers.'

The answer was characteristic.

'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem!'

According to another story, which professes to have been heard from his own lips 'in the great church,' he was at Antinoe, apprehensive of being arrested and put to death, when Theodore and another abbot named Pammon came to'see him, and persuaded him to embark with them in Theodore's closely covered boat, in order to conceal himself in Tabenne.

The wind was against them; Theodore's monks began to tow the boat; Athanasius was in prayer, agitated by the prospect of martyrdom, but gaining calmness from his vivid faith.

'Believe me,' said he to Pammon, 'my heart is more confident in time of persecution than in time of peace.

For I am well assured that as suffering for Christ, and strengthened by His mercy, if I should be killed,,—here the two abbots smiled at each other; and Theodore, according to the story, assured him that Julian had at that very hour been slain in his Persian war'.

The day of Julian's death was the 26th of June, a.p. 363.

'The cloud had passed,' and Athanasius 'returned by night to Alexandria.'

After his arrival, which was kept secret?, he 1 Ath. Narr. ad Ammon.

He is represented as asking, 'Do you think me cowardly, that you smile?'

* Fest. Ind. Fragm.

Comp. what Soz. v. 6 says of the return in 362.

of St.

Athanasius.

Ixxxv received a letter from the new emperor Jovian, praising his Christian fidelity+, and bidding him resume his work.

Athamasius at once assembled a Council, and framed a Synodal 'Letter to Jovian,' which embodied the Nicene Creed as the true and necessary expression of that primitive belief which 'was known and read out of Scripture,' and in which 'the saints had been martyred.'

'In this' (Nicene) 'faith, as Divine and apostolical,' says the letter, (almost anticipating the language of the Quirungue,) 'it is necessary that all should remain.'

The great majority of Churches (including the British) was referred to as professing it, and those who still opposed it were represented as 'a few:' but some were said to confess it insincerely, taking the Homoousion in an inadequate sense.

The true sense, it was urged, was that which recognized the Sonship as 'genuine, real, natural, the Son being very God from God.'

And as the Homoousion was thus insisted on, the coequality of the Holy Spirit was affirmed in terms which, probably, were remembered when the Nicene Creed was revised at Constantinople: 'The Nicene Council glorified the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son,.... because in the Holy Trinity there is one Godhead.'

On Sept. 5, Athanasius sailed to Antioch, bearing this letter, 'a gift,' says Gregory, 'worthy of a monarch?;' and was most graciously received, while the Arian

Lucius of Alexandria was rebuffed with some humour and some impatience by the blunt soldier-prince, who, however, during his brief reign, showed himself as tolerant as he was orthodox.

The general prospects of the Church must now have seemed brighter than at any time since A.D. 330.

Liberius had repaired his fault by rejecting the Ariminian formula, and had written to the bishops of Italy in accordance with the resolutions of Alexandria and of an Achaian Council, desiring that any who had given way at Ariminum should be

1 «We honour you, most reverend bishop, admiring your pious life.... you feared no labour nor persecution, and cared nought for perils and threats of slaughter, while contending for the truth.'

2 Greg. Orat. xxi. 33.

Cf. Theod. iv, 3,

Ixxxvi On the Life received to communion on professing the Nicene faith'.

This profession was made by many bishops, in answer to the appeals of Hilary and Eusebius; and it might be said that the West was now reunited in orthodoxy.

But the local troubles of Antioch were distressing; Athanasius endeavoured to mediate, but Meletius, who had been ignored in the Tome of a.p, 362, and keenly annoyed by the consecration of Paulinus (although

Lucifer alone was responsible for that proceeding), held aloof from all proposals of accommodation, or put off Athanasius with vague promises.

On the other hand, Athanasius perhaps looked with suspicion on Meletius, as having recently joined with the Acacians® in explaining the Homoousion by the Homoiousion, whereas Athanasius had suggested the reverse process.

The consequence was that Athanasius, who, ever since he had worshipped with the Eustathians in a.p. 346, had given them his warm sympathy, now recognized their bishop * as the true head of the Antiochene Church, on his appending to his signature of the Tome a full and orthodox declaration, explicit on the completeness of Christ's Humanity, which Athanasius himself had framed and proposed for his acceptance'.

Having written his Festal Letter for a.p. 364 at Antioch, Athanasius reached home, apparently, on Feb. 19, a few days before Jovian's death.

Valentinian I. succeeded, and soon afterwards assigned the East to his brother Valens.

The Alexandrian Church was not at first a sufferer by this change of monarchs; and a.p. 364-5 may be the probable date for the publication of the ' Life of Antony °,' which Athanasius addressed

'to the monks abroad,' i.e. those in Italy and Gaul", But, ere 1 Hil. Fragm. 12.

? St. Basil, Ep. 89, 258.

$ Soc. iii. 25.

4 His letter to this effect was treasured by the Eustathians, Bas. Ep. 214.

5 Epiph. Heer. 77. 20, ® At its close he desires that it may be 'read to the brethren, that they' may learn what sort of life monks ought to lead, and trust that our Saviour will glorify those who glorify Him.'

And he adds, 'if it can be of use to heathens, read it to them also.'

™ It is very probable that he himself sent to Trier, in remembrance of his own sojourn there some thirty years previously, the copy which two

of St.

Athanasius.

Ixxxvii long, his troubles to some extent reappeared.

According to the Egyptian documents, it was the spring of a.p. 365? when Valens issued an order for the expulsion of all bishops who, having been expelled under Constantius, had been recalled under Julian, and thereby announced that he meant to follow the Arian policy of Constantius.

But it would appear that Athanasius was specially marked out for severe treatment, on the ground of 'many accusations:' it was on the sth of May that the order for his ejection reached Alexandria, and caused a popular ferment, only quieted on June 8 by the prefect's promise to refer the case of Athanasius to the emperor.

If we may combine his statement with Sozomen's (who, however, places these events in a subsequent year), we should suppose that the przefect was but biding his time; and on the night of Oct. 5, Athanasius, having doubtless been forewarned, left his abode in the precinct of St. Dionysius' church, and took refuge in a country house near the New River*.

It was not an hour too soon: the prefect, with a military commander, beset the church that same night, broke open the outer gates, and searched the building, even to the roof, in vain.

For four months the archbishop's concealment lasted; until Barasides, or Bresidas, an imperial notary, having brought an order for his return, came to the country house with a great multitude, and led Athanasius back into his church, Feb. 1 (Mechir 7),

A.D. 366.

His quiet was not again disturbed, except by such young officers of the provincial government, walking one afternoon in the gardens beside the city wall, found in a cottage occupied by monks, and the reading of which 'kindled' in them an instant resolution to exchange their secular prospects for the monastic 'service' of God.

The story contributed somewhat to the conversion of St. Augustine.

See his Confess. viii. 15.

1 The usual date is a.p. 367; and it has been said that Valens was not an Arian until baptized by Eudoxius that year.

But he was under the influence of that old Arian when he banished the deputies of the Semiarian Council of Lampsacus, most probably in the spring of a.p. 365.

See Chron. Cod. Theod. p. Ixxvi.

Cf. Bas. Ep. 242.

2 Soc. iv.

13, says he concealed himself for four months in his father's tomb.

See Soz. vi. 12.

Ixxxviii On the Life events as a Pagan riot on July 21, a.p. 366, in which the Cesarean church, completed by George just before his death, was burned; or the attempt of Lucius, on Sept. 23, a. D. 367, to establish himself within the enclosure of another church—the consequence of which was that the magistrates, in order to save him from the populace, placed him in the hands of the military power 'to be removed from Egypt.'

Although Athanasius must have deeply sympathized with his brethren's suffer- | ings under the tyranny of Valens, he was free to devote himself to his proper work, whether of writing or of administration, or of co-operation with other representatives of the cause of orthodoxy.

He must have rejoiced in the acceptance of the Nicene Creed, in the presence of Liberius, by Semi-arian deputies, and grieved over the failure of the plan for holding a Council of reunion: at Tarsus, in a.p. 367°.

His Festal Letter for that year— which had been known from Greek MSS. long before the discovery of the series—contained a list of the books of Scripture which, so far as regards the New

Testament, agrees precisely with our own.

The 'canonical' books are described as 'the fountains of salvation, through which alone' (a mode of speaking very usual with Athanasius),

'is the teaching of religion transmitted;' a second class of books is mentioned as 'read' in church for religious edification; the name 'apocryphal' is reserved for a third class, to which heretics have assigned a fictitious dignity'.

To this period has been assigned the comment on doctrinal texts which is called a treatise 'On the Incarnation and against the Arians ;' but its entire genuineness has been doubted $, for it uses* the phrase 'Three Hypostases,' which his own recent

Council had in some sense discouraged.

There is less force in the objection that it explains® John xiv. 28, not as he had

1 Soc. iv. 12.

3 Westcott, on the Canon, pp. 416, 516.

8 Dr. Newman speaks of it doubtfully, (Athan. Treat. i. 264, ii. 494.) But see the Benedictine preface.

This treatise insists that Christ's self or Ego is Divine, and that 'no one can know God unless he owns the Crucified as Lord and God,' c. 19.

' De Inc. et c. Ari. Io.

5 Th. 4.

of St.

Athanasius. lxxxix done in Orat. i. 58, of the dependence involved in the Divine

Sonship?, but, with St. Cyril and Latin Church writers, of the Humanity.

In or about a.p. 369 he held a Council at Alexandria, i in order to receive letters from a Roman Council held under Damasus, the successor of Liberius, and also from other Western prelates, excommunicating Ursacius and Valens, and enforcing the authority of the Nicene Creed.

Hereupon Athanasius, in a Synodal letter addressed 'To the Africans,' i.e. to those in the Carthaginian territory, contrasts the 'ten or more' Synodical formulas of Arianism with the Nicene Creed, gives some account of its formation, and exposes the. futile attempt of its present adversaries to claim authority for the later, as distinct from the earlier, proceedings of the Ariminian

Council.

Those, he says,"whom that* Council at. first condemned, (the leaders of Acacian Arianism,) had 'dared to write that God must not be said to have any "ousia" or "hypostasis."

Now "hypostasis" is "ousia," and means that which itself is, or, "existence®."'

After drawing out the Scriptural argument for the uncreatedness of the Son, he says, (as he had said in his letter 'On the Councils,') 'Let those who profess to dread the word Homoousion say and hold, simply and truly, that the Son is by nature Son,' and adopt the Nicene anathemas; 'and shen we are assured that they will straightway acknowledge the Son to be from the Father's essence, and "Homoousion."'

At the end of this letter, after calling the Nicene Council an 'inscription, as on a tablet, set up against all heresies,' he infers, as before, from its words, ' We believe in. the Holy Spirit,' that it condemns 'those who call Him a creature,' and proclaims 'the one God, known in the holy and perfect Trinity.'

Another letter was written to Damasus, expressing some surprise that Auxentius, the Arian bishop of Milan*, had not been put under the same ban with Ursacius

1 On this 'subordination,' cf. Liddon, Bamp. Lect. pp. 199, 428.

2 « Those who think that they know the Scriptures, and will not speak of " hypostasis " as to God, were they not justly deposed?' Ad Afr. 4.

8 See Hist. Ari. 75.

Key On the Life and Valens; and the suggestion was adopted by a subsequent Roman synod, and by others in Spain and Gaul.

It appears that on Sept. 22, 369, Athanasius, who had in May of the previous year begun to rebuild the Cesarean church, laid the foundations of another church afterwards called by his own name'.

About this time he showed in two remarkable acts, on the one hand, his superiority to mere technical formalism, dnd, on the other, his zeal (to borrow Mr. Freeman's words about St. Anselm') in 'the cause at once of ecclesiastical discipline and of moral righteousness.'

The people of two towns in Pentapolis—Palebisca and Hydrax—wished to have a bishop of their own in the person of a young layman named Siderius.

The aged prelate of the diocese to which they belonged was persuaded to consent; and Siderius was actually consecrated by a single bishop, and without any sanction from the 'Evangelical throne.'

Yet Athanasius, hoping that the young bishop's practical ability ' might be turned to good account in a district troubled by Arianism, not only overlooked the double irregularity of the consecration, but afterwards promoted Siderius to a more important see*.

Again, we find Athanasius excommunicating a cruel and licentious governor in Libya, and signifying the act by circular letters.

One of these was sent to Basil, who had just become exarch, or archbishop, of Czsarea in Cappadocia, and had received, perhaps at that time, from Athanasius ', a formal notification of the proceedings of the Council of a.D. 362°, He immediately announced to his own people the sentence pronounced in Egypt; the strong sense of Church unity made such a step both regular and natural, and he wrote to assure Athanasius that the offender would be regarded by the faithful at Czesarea as utterly alien from Christian fellow1 Fest. Ind.

® Freeman, Norm. Conquest, ii. 212.

8 Synesius, Ep. 67.

* The Benedictine biographer of Basil considers that he received it some years before he became a bishop, in answer to a question whether he ought to communicate with Eustathius of Sebaste (Vit. Bas. viii. 8),

5 Basil, Ep. 204.

of St. Athanasius. xci ship'.

This led to a correspondence, carried on actively in

A.D. 371.

Basil, who had troubles of all kinds weighing upon his spirit, sought aid in regard to one of them—the unhappy schism of Antioch—from 'the keen insight, the practical energy, the evangelical sympathy,' of the widely venerated man who must be supposed to feel with special acuteness the contrast between former peace and present confusion".

What he wanted, as he explained more distinctly in his next letter, was, that Athanasius should promote the recognition, by the Westerns, of Meletius as the rightful bishop of Antioch, and should so 'manage' the Eustathians as to induce them to enter upon some negotiation*, The bearer of his letter was Dorotheus, Meletius' deacon, whom Athanasius, probably about Easter, A.D. 371, sent back, with one of his own priests, to convey his answer to Basil.

In the autumn Basil wrote again, and the tone which he adopts towards Athanasius is very remarkable.

He calls him the foremost person (literally, the summit) of the whole Church, who, not content with caring for his own immediate flock, was incessantly and actively interesting himself, by discourses, admonitions, letters, messages, in the welfare of all the Churches'.

In another letter Basil appeals to him as able, by his prayers and counsels, to save their Eastern brethren 'from this fearful storm,' and entreats him not to omit an opportunity of writing to them.

'If I were enabled once to see thee, and to profit by the graces that are in thee, and to add to the story of my own life an interview with so grand and apostolic a soul, I should think I had received a consolafion which would compensate for all the afflictions that I have ever endured®.'

Once more, in a tone still more anxiously importunate, Basil addresses his 'spiritual father' as 'a physician provided by our Lord

1 Basil, Ep. 61.

2 Ib. Ep.66.

He adds, 'Become a Samuel to the churches.'

* Ib. Ep. 67.

Basil fully recognizes both congregations as forming 'the orthodox portion' of the Antiochene Church (Ep. 69); and he gives Meletius an admonition to be conciliatory (Ep. 89).

See too Ep. 156.

* Basil, Ep. 69.

5 Ib. Ep. 80.

See Newman's Arians, p. 388.

xcii On the Life for the ailments of the Churches,' as the one 'competent pilot' who, 'having himself, from youth upward, taken part in all struggles in the cause of religion,' could aid the storm-tossed vessel, and ' wake up the Lord to rebuke the winds and sea'.

But, although Athanasius consented to act as a medium between Basil and the Westerns?, he could not, with consistency or with dignity, take any direct part in favour of Meletius, whose bearing, in A. D. 363, had disappointed his pacific efforts, and whose rival's position he had unequivocally recognized °.

When the friends of Meletius, Eastern bishops of like antecedents, desired that Athanasius would write to them as a body, even Basil felt that this might be asking too much'; and Athanasius, in fact, declined to send to Basil a letter addressed to the Easterns, and stipulated that the first overtures should come from Meletius.

On the whole, as Dr.

Newman expresses it®, 'nothing came of the application ;' but when some Cappadocian monks complained of Basil's reserved language as to the Divinity of the Holy Spirit *®, Athanasius reproved them in a letter, the gist of which is evident from his extant letters 'To John and Antiochus,' and 'To Palladius.'

In the latter he said that the objectors 'would have done well to contend, if Basil had been suspected concerning the truth; but since he was an ornament of the Church, and was fighting on the side of the truth, they ought to appreciate the "economy" or caution which he exhibited in its interests, and praise God for bestowing such a a on Cappadocia.'

But one of these letters of Basil ® had apparently a remarkable result.

He complained of the countenance still given to 1 Basil, Ep. 82.

2 Tb. Ep. go.

8 Montfaucon, indeed, thinks that Athanasius was 'reconciled to Meletius.'

Benedict. Life of Ath., a.v, 370.

* Basil, Ep. 82.

5 Church of the Fathers, p. 73.

® Greg. Naz, Ep. 26 (or 58).

Cf. Basil, de Sp. S. 45, 70.

™ Probably Athanasius had heard about this time of Basil's majestic courage when assailed by the Praetorian preefect Modestus, and by Valens.

* Basil, Ep, 69. Marcellus, he thinks, had deceived the Westerns.

of St. Athanasius. exci Marcellus by the Westerns, who were therefore looked upon 'in the East as indifferent about any heresy that happened not to be Arianism.

Athanasius, as we have seen, had written against the views ascribed to Marcellus, and had begun to regard him, at least, with more or less suspicion; but now, in consequence of Basil's letter ?, Marcellus, fortifying himself with commendatory letters from Athanasius' friends, the bishops of Greece and Macedonia, sent his deacon Eugenius, with others, as a deputation to Athanasius.

On their arrival, Athanasius of course put questions to them as to doctrine.

In reply, they presented to him, in the name of Marcellus 'and a great multitude' who adhered to him, a statement which condemned the theory of his disciple Photinus, together with Sabellianism ; acknowledged an eternal Son, identical with a personal Word; in short, was explicit on all points save one, the permanence of Christ's Humanity and Kingdom.

This point, however, might be supposed to be included in the rest: Athanasius would be only too glad to accept as satisfactory this representation of the belief of his former friend, who was now drawing to the close of a prolonged and troubled life.

It is doubtless by mere accident that his own 'name does not appear among the extant signatures?' by which four Egyptian prelates accepted the statement with ' Amen,'

But if his final opinion of Marcellus was thus lenient, he was far from tolerating, in these latter years of his life, any theories which seemed definitely heterodox respecting either. the Divine or the human side of the Incarnation.

In a.p. 371 a Christian ' philosopher' named Maximus, after several importunities, prevailed on him to write a short letter against the notion that Christ was a holy man whom the Word visited ®,

1 See Montfaucon, Coll. Nov. ii. p. 71 sq.; Newman, Ath. Treat. ii. 503.

2 Tb. 504.

; 3 See above, as to the Council of a.p. 362.

Nestorianism seems again foreshadowed in the opinions implicitly combated in c. Apollin. i. 9. 10,

203 ake 7;

civ On the Life instead of being 'the Word made flesh;' and that He was even 'born in the ordinary course of nature.'

'If,' says Athanasius, 'they profess to be Christians, let them learn that the crucified Christ was the Lord of glory,' the Lord and God whom Thomas owned after 'handling' Him; whose human body was real, but who, being Himself God, 'gave dignity to what in His body He endured'

A bishop named Adelphius informed him of the line taken by some Arians, who accused the Catholics of idolatry for adoring the human body of Christ, in other words, 'a thing created.'

Athanasius, in a letter, replied, 'We do not adore the body as if separate from the Word; but neither do we, in adoring the Word, regard

Him as apart from His body; we adore our Maker, the Lord Incarnate, in the body which He made His own®'

Another very important tract was called forth by a communication from Epictetus *, bishop of Corinth, who had told Athanasius of a discussion which had arisen (although but temporarily) between some Churchmen who regarded the Virgin-born and crucified

Jesus as a human individual different from the Son or Word, and others who represented Christ's body as not truly human, but formed out of the essence of Godhead,—which was, in fact, the second proposition * of the heresy called Apollinarian, the first being that which had attracted the attention of the Council of a.p. 362, and had been disclaimed by those whom the Council could examine,—as to the non-existence, in Christ, of a rational soul, the Word being supposed to supply its place.

Such views had been taken up from an unbalanced eagerness to exalt the Saviour's dignity: but the great upholder of Nicene faith saw that they were incompatible with His Manhood and His Headship, that they virtually brought back 1 Ep. ad Max. 1-3.

'The Word Himself,' he says, 'offered up His own body for us, that our faith and hope might not be in a man, but in God the Word.'

2 Ad Adelph. 3.

* See Neale, Hist. Alex. i. 272.

The original of this letter was kept in the archives of the Alexandrian Church, and by it Cyril proved to Paul of Emesa that some copies had been corrupted.

St. Cyril, Epist. pp. 120, 140.

* It was chargeable on the school of Apollinaris.

of St. Athanasius:

"Xcv Docetism, and that one of them, at any rate, involved a debased conception of Deity?.

It would be enough, he says, to answer as to both the kinds of error described by Epictetus, 'This is not the mind of the Catholic Church;' but he will treat the case with reference to Scripture: and then he adduces texts in proof of the real assumption of humanity by the Word.

As Tertullian had argued against Docetism, so Athanasius urges that such real assumption was necessary for a real salvation of man®.

Christ's body, therefore, could not be 'coessential' with His Godhead, nor could the Word have been 'converted into flesh."

The term 'Homoousion' was -applied to the Son Himself %, not to that body which was ' born of Mary our sister, and was human by nature, although appropriated by the Word.'

On the other hand, the Son of Mary alone was 'Emmanuel ;' not a Saint signally favoured', but the Word Himself made Man.

In the next year, a.p. 372, he combated both the Apollinarian propositions with 'the keenness and richness of thought which distinguish his writings generally *,' in two books which bear the title, 'Against Apollinaris.'

But he never mentioned the name of his old friend, the bishop of Syrian Laodicea®, as responsible for either of these errors; his wish to believe the best of all whom he had loved or with whom he had acted may have made him reject suspicions which proved to be only too just.

These books are remarkable for the masterly distinctness with which the one Christ is set forth as 'perfect God and'perfect Man';' without confusion and without severance, and as having as-' sumed a soul at once human and impeccable.

If words occur in ii. 10 which seem at first sight to favour Monothelitism, the context® shows their meaning to be that the 1 Cf, Ath. Orat. iv. 31, on John i.14.

Apollinarianism was a current error when the ' Athanasian Creed' was written.

2 Ad Epict. 7.

5 Ib. 4.

4Ib.11.

'Else, why is His death alone said to have taken place for us?'

5 See Newman, Church of the Fathers, p. 162; Pref. Ed. Ben. ii. 7.

6 See Epiph. Her. 77. 2.

7 C. Apoll. i. 16.

8 Not to cite De Incarn. et c. Ari. 21, which distinctly asserts two wills

xcvi On the Life Divine will in Christ was dominant over the human: if in the next chapter the phrase, 'God suffered through the flesh,' is called unscriptural, the argument is directed against the ascription of passibility to the Saviour's Godhead.

In truth, these later treatises, like the Orations, exclude by anticipation both the forms of error, respecting the 'Person' and 'Natures' of Christ, which troubled the Church in the next three centuries *.

Athanasius, in regard to the results of his work, was 'in truth the Immortal ?;' he was continually 'planting trees under which a later age might sit.'

It might well be said of him that he 'waxed old in his work*;' but the time for him to rest from labours arrived in the spring of a.p. 373.

For the discussions as to the year of his death may be considered as practically closed: the 'Festal Index,' although sometimes faulty in its chronology, coincides with the Maffeian Fragment in favour of the date of a. p. 373, which is supported by other authorities, and accepted by the best modern scholars*.

The exact day, we may believe, was Thursday, May 2 (the 7th of Pachon), on which day his festival is kept by the Greek and Latin

Churches.

As we have already seen, the most eminent of his successors, Cyril of Alexandria, speaks of him as having held the Alexandrian bishopric for forty-six complete years: had he lived somewhat longer, the years of his episcopate would have been forty-seven.

Having consecrated® Peter, his old companion, and one of his presbyters, as his successor, he died quietly in his own house,—after his 'many struggles,' as Ruin Christ, the Sixth General Council, in condemning Monothelitism, appealed to some words of 'the most wise Athanasius' which appear among his ' Fragmenta Varia,'

'It was necessary that the will of the flesh should be moved, but that it should be subjected to the Will which was Divine.'

Mansi, Cone. xi. 637.

* See c. Apoll. i. 10, 11; ii. 10,18. Comp. the ' Definitio' of Chalcedon.

2 Chr. Remembr, xxxvii. 206.

3 Ecclus, xi. 20.

* See the Benedictine Life; Tillemont, viii. 251, 719; Newman, Hist.

Tracts, p. xx; Neale, Hist. Alex. i. 199.

8 Fragm. Maff.

of St. Athanasius. xcvii finus and Theodoret express it, had won him 'many a crown!.'

'He closed his eyes,' says Gregory, 'in a good old age, and was gathered to his fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, who had contended for the truth 2.'

Such was the career of Athanasius the Great, as he began to be called in the next generation.

Mohler has reason to say that 'the narrative of his life is a panegyric which words can only enfeeble.'

And yet one would not 'willingly let die' the words in which so many writers have felt constrained to do homage to such a life and such a soul.

If Gregory Nazianzen's eulogy is too rhetorically gorgeous for modern taste *, Hooker's will live while English is spoken*: and Gibbon's'admiration for Athanasius as a born ruler of men® is the more significant as coming from one who could"have no tenderness for Church heroes*®.

Four points in thé character may be thought specially worthy of recollection: (1) the deep religiousness which illuminated all his studies and controversies with a sense of personal Christian duty, and made him not simply tenacious of a dogma, but loyal to a living and present Lord'; (2) the unwearied persistency, so remarkable in one whose temperament was strongly sensitive; (3) the many-sidedness, and harmonious

'combination of excellences,' which enabled him to be 'all things to all men,' discerning, self-adapting, and considerate °;

1 Ruf. ii. 3; Theod. iv. 20, .

2 Greg. Orat. xxi. 37.

3 Cave, in his 'Lives of the Fathers,' has condensed this panegyric into quaint but vigorous English.

In his ' Historia Literaria' he gives one which reads like a good Latin epitaph.

* Hooker, v. 42.

5 Gibbon, iii. yo.

Cf. Stanley, East. Ch. p. 276, ® See also the summary at the close of Montfaucon's Life; the rr7th

'article' in Tillemont's biography (viii. 251); Bp. Pearson's account of his troubles in Vindic. Ignat. i. c. 8 (vol. i. p. 235); the brief but weighty rationale of his labours as a theologian in Dorner's ' Person of Christ,' ii,

248, E. T.; and the forcible words of Canon Robertson, Hist. Ch. i. 193, CS & % See Liddon, Bamp. Lect. p. 436; Prince de Broglie, 'L'Eglise et

V'Empire,' i. 1. 372.

® See Greg. Orat. xxi. 10, 36; Newman, Arians, p. 367. h

Xcviit On the Life of St. Athanasius. and, in close connection with this ready and effective sympathy,

(4) the affectionateness which made him so tender and generous as a friend, so patient and equitable as 2 peacemaker,—which won for him such enthusiastic loyalty, and endowed the great theologian and Church-ruler with the capacities and opportunities peculiar to a truly loveable man.

That he was not faultless, that his words could be somewhat too sharp in controversy, or somewhat unreal in addressing a despot, or somewhat lax, on one occasion, under a generous impulse, in his judgment of other men's conduct,—this is to be admitted: but after all, and looking at the whole man, we shall not exaggerate if we pronounce his name to be the greatest in post-apostolic

Church history, and especially if we regard him as 'a principal instrument, after the Apostles, by which the sacred truths of Christianity have been conveyed and secured to the world*'

Christ Church, Christmas Eve, 1872.

1 Newman, Arians, p. 387.

Comp. his Univ. Sermons, p. 97: 'One man (Athanasius) has impressed an image on the Church, which, through God's mercy, shall not be effaced while time lasts.'

Even the short notice of his life which Jerome gives in his ' Catalogue' of 'illustrious men' shows us that some of his writings—(the whole list, says Jerome, would be too long for enumeration—) are now lost (De Vir.

Illustr. 87).

For an account of his works, and of ' those which have been ascribed to him,' see Tillemont's r1oth note to his ' Life' (viii. 725); Cave,

Hist. Lit. i. 191; Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., ed. Hailes, viii. 179 ; and Dr. Smith's

Dictionary of Gr. and Rom. Biography, i. 397.

It may be confidently said that the 'Athanasian Creed' is both of later and of Western origin: but several of its sentences are in close verbal accord with passages in his works.

See Orat. i. 18, 19; iii. 4, 6, 15, 28, 36; iv. 3, 33, 36; de Syn. §2; c. Apoll.i.

II, 16, ii. 10, 18. The Divine coequality and human inferiority of the Son to the Father is as much the doctrine of Athanasius as of the Athanasian Creed.

The Eutychians relied on some words in a tract 'On the Incarnation,' which Cyril had cited, in his ' De recta Fide,' as by Athanasius : 'One pias of God the Word,' (and that) 'incarnate.' But pvats, in the context, is equivalent to ' Person ;' as in Ath. de Syn. 52 (Ath. Treat. i. 155), c. Apoll. i. 12.

The saying of Cosmas, an abbot of the sixth century, is worthy of mention: 'When you have found any work by St. Athanasius, and have not paper (to copy it), write it on your clothes.'

From Moschus' Pratum Spirituale, in Coteler, Eccl. Gr. Mon. ii. 369.

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