ings of this council will be given under its own heading. It requires only to be mentioned here, that after various turns in the controversy, it was finally decided against Arius, that the Son was “of the same substance” (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father, “very God of very God.” Constantine embraced the decision of the council, and resolved to uphold it. Arius and the two bishops of Marmarica and Ptolemais, who refused to subscribe the creed of Nicæa, were excommunicated and banished to Illyria; and even Eusebius of Nicomedia, who accepted the creed, but not its anathemas, was exiled to Gaul. Alexander returned to his see triumphant, but died soon after, and was succeeded by Athanasius, his deacon, who had been the soul of the orthodox party of Nicæa, and with whose indomitable fortitude and strange vicissitudes the further course of the controversy is bound up. This will be explained in detail under the heading Athanasius, and it only remains for us to sketch at present what is known of the future career of Arius.
Although defeated at the Council of Nicæa, Arius was by no means subdued. He obtained means of access to Constantia, the sister of the emperor, who, on her death bed, strongly urged her brother to reconsider the question, and to recall the heresiarch from banishment. Restored to court, he, along with the Eusebian party, who, although professing to accept the Nicene doctrine, were in reality indifferent, if not hostile, to it, renewed the theological strife, in which Athanasius was nothing loth to join. Interchanges, now of friendly recognition and now of menace, passed betwixt the emperor and the intrepid bishop of Alexandria, who obstinately refused to reinstate Arius as presbyter. At length, on the banishment of Athanasius to Treves in 336, Arius returned to Alexandria to claim his old position; but even in the absence of the bishop the people rose in uproar against the heretic, and the emperor was forced to recall him to Constantinople. There the bishop was reluctantly compelled to profess his willingness to receive him once more into the bosom of the church, but before the act of admission was completed Arius was taken suddenly ill, while walking with a friend in the evening, and died in a few moments. This was interpreted by the adherents of the Nicene theology as a special interposition of Providence on their behalf, and they openly gave thanks to God in the church. The modern reader will look with less credulity upon an event which was probably quite natural in its occurrence, but he will hardly see any cause in it for lamentation. The character of Arius, if not originally tainted by self-seeking and restless ambition, appears to have gathered something of this taint in the course of his career, and the most impartial student of church history fails to see anything in it to admire beyond the pertinacity of his courage and his faithful devotion to his own opinions.
The Followers of Arius.—The death of Arius, as described above, did not extinguish the Arian party. On the contrary, they continued active and zealous within the church for upwards of fifty years, or till the second general council at Constantinople, in 381. Afterwards they may be said to have existed, as a distinct Christian sect, outside the Catholic Church, till about the middle of the 7th century. Constantine, while strongly disposed at first to enforce the Nicene decrees, was gradually won to a more conciliatory policy by the influence especially of Eusebius of Cæsarea, and his namesake, Eusebius of Nicomedia. On the other hand, the Nicene doctrine found the most able and ardent defender in Athanasius, the young deacon who had attended Bishop Alexander at the council, and who shortly afterwards succeeded him in the see of Alexandria. An unceasing contention ensued betwixt the Eusebian and Athanasian factions of the church. Constantius, who succeeded his father in 337, strongly favoured the former, or semi-Arian party, and successive synods were called with the view of adjusting differences and compelling uniformity of faith. “The highways were covered,” says an ancient historian (Ammianus, xxi. 15, quoted by Gibbon, vol. iii. 67, Milman's ed.) “with troops of bishops galloping from every side to these assemblies.” At length the tenet of the Homoiousion was substituted for that of the Homoousion at the Council of Rimini (Ariminum) in 360. But the war of words raged as fiercely as ever during the reigns of Julian (the Apostate) and his successors till after the accession of Theodosius the Great, under whose auspices the Council of Constantinople was convened and the Nicene doctrine was confirmed and finally accepted as the catholic doctrine of the church. Even then, however, Arianism was warmly espoused by several of the German nationalities then assailing the empire. The entire nation of the Ostrogoths became Arian; the Visigoths followed their example, till, at the request of their king, Reccared, they embraced the catholic faith at the Council of Toledo in 589. The Vandals in Africa, the Suevi in Spain, and the Burgundians in Gaul, were all for a time zealous Arians, and the heresy maintained its influence amongst the Lombards in the north of Italy to a later period than elsewhere. Gradually, however, it perished as a distinctive national type of Christianity before the growth of mediaeval Catholicism, and the name of Arian ceased to represent a definite form of Christian doctrine within the church, or a definite party outside of it. Individual Christian teachers of great eminence, such as John Milton and Samuel Clark, and even Ralph Cudworth, have been accused of Arianism, but even where, as in Milton's case, the accusation seems well founded, the peculiar heresy known by that name has never assumed any influence, or regained, for any length of time, its influence in the church.
(j. t.)
