PROCEEDINGS AT NICÆA.

At last, Constantine appointed a day for the formal and final reception of all personal complaints and burned the libelli petitions in the presence of the assembled fathers. He then named a day by which the bishops were to be ready for a formal decision of the matters in dispute. The way was now open for the leaders to set to work. Quasi-formal meetings were held, Arius and his supporters met the bishops, and the situation began to clear (Soz. i. 17). To their dismay (de Decr. 3) the Arian leaders realized that they could only count on some seventeen supporters out of the entire body of bishops. They would seem to have seriously and honestly underrated the novelty of their own teaching (cf. the letter of Arius in Thdt. i. 5), and to have come to the council with the expectation of victory over the party of Alexander. But they discovered their mistake:

‘We pursue of our own accord those whom it is a triumph to deceive and escape.’

‘To deceive and escape’ was in fact the problem which now confronted them. It seems to have been agreed at an early stage—perhaps it was understood from the first—that some formula of the unanimous belief of the Church must be fixed upon to make an end of controversy. The Alexandrians and ‘Conservatives’ confronted the Arians with the traditional Scriptural phrases (pp. 163, 491) which appeared to leave no doubt as to the eternal Godhead of the Son. But to their surprise, they were met with perfect acquiescence. Only as each test was propounded, it was observed that the suspected party whispered and gesticulated to one another, evidently hinting that each could be safely accepted since it admitted of evasion. If their assent was asked to the formula ‘like to the Father in all things,’ it was given with the reservation that man as such is ‘the image and glory of God.’ The ‘power of God’ elicited the whispered explanation that the host of Israel was spoken of as δύναμις κυρίου original: "dynamis kyriou" (power of the Lord), and that even the locust and caterpillar are called the ‘power of God.’ The ‘eternity’ of the Son was countered by the text, ‘We that live are alway’ (2 Cor. iv. 11)! The fathers were baffled, and the test of ὁμοούσιον homoousion (of the same substance), with which the minority had been ready from the first, was being forced (p. 172) upon the majority by the evasions of the Arians.

When the day for the decisive meeting arrived, it was felt that the choice lay between the adoption of the word, cost what it might, and the admission of Arianism to a position of toleration and influence in the Church. But then, was Arianism all that Alexander and Eustathius made it out to be? Was Arianism so very intolerable that this novel test must be imposed on the Church? The answer came (Newman Ar. p. 252) from Eusebius of Nicomedia. Upon the assembling of the bishops for their momentous debate (original: "ὡς δὲ ἐζητεῖτο τῆς πίστεως ὁ τρόπος" as the manner of the faith was being sought, Eustath.), he presented them with a statement of his belief. The previous course of events may have convinced him that half-measures would defeat their own purpose, and that a challenge to the enemy—a forlorn hope—was the only resort left to him. 4a Or possibly Theodoret, etc., drew a wrong inference from the words of Eustathius (in Thdt. i. 8), and the document was not submitted by Eusebius, but produced as evidence against him; in this case it must have been, as Fleury observes, his letter to Paulinus of Tyre. At any rate, the statement was an unambiguous assertion of the Arian formulas, and it cleared the situation at once. An angry clamor silenced the innovator, and his document was publicly torn to shreds (original: "ὑπ’ ὄψει πάντων" in the sight of all, says an eye-witness in Thdt. i. 8). Even the majority of the Arians were cowed, and the party was reduced to the inner circle of five (supra).

It was now agreed on all hands that a stringent formula was needed. But Eusebius of Cæsarea came forward with a last effort to stave off the inevitable. He produced a formula, not of his own devising (Kölling, pp. 208 sqq.), but consisting of the creed of his own Church with an addition intended to guard against Sabellianism The doctrine that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of one God, rather than three distinct persons. (Hort, Two Diss. pp. 56, sq. 138). The formula was unassailable on the basis of Scripture and of tradition. No one had a word to say against it, and the Emperor expressed his personal anxiety that it should be adopted, with the single improvement of the ὁμοούσιον. The suggestion thus quietly made was momentous in its result. We cannot but recognize the ‘prompter’ Hosius behind the Imperial recommendation: the friends of Alexander had patiently waited their time, and now their time had come; the two Eusebii had placed the result in their hands. But how and where was the necessary word to be inserted? And if some change must be made in the Cæsarean formula, would it not be as well to set one or two other details right? At any rate, the creed of Eusebius was carefully overhauled clause by clause and eventually took a form materially different from that in which it was first presented, 4b Hort, pp. 138, 139, and 59: the changes well classified by Gwatkin, p. 41, cf. Harnack, vol. 2, p. 227. The main alterations were: (1) The elimination of the word "Logos" and substitution of "Son" in the principal place. This struck at the theology of Eusebius even more directly than at that of Arius. (2) The addition not only of "homoousion with the Father," but also of "that is, from the substance of the Father" between "only-begotten" and "God" as a further qualification of "begotten" (specially against Euseb. Nicom.: see his letter in Thdt. i. 6). (3) Further explanation of "begotten" by "begotten, not made," a glance at a favorite argument of Arius, as well as at Asterius. (4) "Incarnate" added to explain "made flesh," and so to exclude the Christology which characterized Arianism from the first. (5) Addition of anathemas directed against all the leading Arian doctrines. and with affinities to the creeds of Antioch and Jerusalem as well as Cæsarea.