Page:Syrian Churches (Etheridge).djvu/40

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
28
THE SYRIAN CHURCHES.

inculcated with the purpose of flattering his great patroness, queen Zenobia, the wife of Odenat, prince of Palmyra, who was a Jewess. This faithless bishop forbad the Christians of Antioch to offer worship to the Saviour, and abolished the hymns which had been employed in that exercise. After having been convicted by a council, he promised reformation; relapsed, and, by a second council, was deposed, a. d. 270. He found powerful antagonists in Dionysius of Alexandria, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, whose refutations failed to prevent the organization of a sect holding the exploded opinions,—the Paulianists, who subsisted about a hundred and fifty years. In the ambitious administration of this episcopate, Paul was the first who extended the jurisdiction of the Antiochian chief pastor beyond the city; for hitherto there had been bishops in the villages.

Eustathius lived at the time when Arianism was gaining the ascendant, and became a zealous and distinguished defender of the apostolical doctrine. He assisted at the council of Nice, and had, subsequently, to pass through a great fight of afflictions in contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. St. Jerome admired in him the union of a correct knowledge of holy Scripture with extensive human learning: he calls him "the resounding trumpet which gave the first alarm against Arius." He takes rank with Athanasius, Hilary, and the other great defenders of the faith. At his death, which took place in 338, in the exile to which he had been delivered by the machinations of the Arians, the church of Antioch was divided into the party which had adopted the views of the latter, and another, which, under the name of Eustathians, held fast the pure doctrine. Leontius, the Arian bishop, having possession of the public edifices, the orthodox held their religious assemblies in private houses, where the great Athanasius, when passing