nearly word by word from the Greek; and, being meant for a people among whom that language had been spoken for centuries, about one word in five is Greek. The Thebaic and Bashmuric may have been translated from the edition by Hesychius; but the Coptic version seems older, and its value to the biblical critic is very great, as it helps us, with the quotations in Origen and Clemens, to distinguish the edition of the sacred text which was then used in Alexandria, and is shown in the celebrated Vatican manuscript, from the later editions used afterwards in Constantinople and Italy, when Christian literature flourished in those countries.

Zosimus,

lib. fi.

A.D. 313.

(57) The Emperor Maximin died at Tarsus after being defeated by LICINIUS, who like himself had been raised to the rank of Augustus by Galerius, and to whom the empire of Egypt and the East then fell, while Constantine, the son of Constantius, governed Italy and the West. Licinius held his empire for ten years against the growing strength of his colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a single emperor.

Horus-Ra as the vault of heaven.

251

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE REIGNS OF CONSTANTINE, CONSTANTIUS, JULIAN, JOVIAN, AND VALENS. A.D. 323-378.

A.D. 323.

lib. x.

(1) THE reign of CONSTANTINE is remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and philosophy of the empire by the emperor's em- Eusebius, bracing the Christian faith. The Christians were Eccl. Hist. at once released from every punishment and disability on account of their religion, which was then more than tolerated; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans, and every minister of the church was released from the burden of civil and military duties. Whether the emperor's conversion arose from education, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means of knowing; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was the religion of a most important class of his subjects. It had flourished under the frowns of power, and it was now to be corrupted by its smiles. The ignorant, the thoughtless, and the selfish of all classes, who take their religion from their rulers, began to declare themselves Christians; the rites of the pagans then passed into the church, and their subtleties into her creed; and the Egyptian Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already called the Jewish.

(2) The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy than a religious sect. Before Alexander's conquest the Greek settlers at Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples and sacrifices; but since the building of Alexandria they had been smitten with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the temples of Serapis and Mithra, and to receive instruction from the Egyptian priests. They had supported the religion of the conquered Egyptians without wholly believing it; and had shaken by their ridicule the respect for

the very ceremonies which they upheld by law. Polytheism among the Greeks had been further shaken by the Platonists; and Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the Egyptians. Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian church had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular government not much differing from the episcopal government of Hieronym. Epist. cf. ad the present day. Till the time of Heraclas and Evangelum. Dionysius, the bishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as the archdeacons were by the deacons. Dionysius in his public epistles joins with himself his fellow-presbyters, as if he were only the first among equals; but after that time some irregularities had crept into the elections, and latterly the church had become more monarchical. There was a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city, each assisted by a body of priests and deacons. They had been clad in faith, holiness, humility, and charity; but Constantine robed them in honour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride, avarice, and ambition.

(3) This reign is no less remarkable for the religious quarrel which then divided the Christians, which set church against church, and bishop against bishop, as soon as they lost that great bond of union, the fear of the pagans. Jesus of Nazareth was acknowledged by Constantine as a god or divine person; and, in the attempt then made by the Alexandrians to arrive at a more exact definition of his nature, while the emperor was willing to be guided by the bishops in his theological opinions, he was able to instruct them all in the more valuable lessons of mutual toleration and forbearance. The followers of all the early religions of the world of course held different opinions, but they distinguished themselves apart only by outward ceremonies and modes of worship, such as by sacrifices among the Greeks and Romans, and among the Jews and Egyptians by circumcision, and abstinence from certain meats. When Jesus of Nazareth introduced his spiritual religion of repentance and amendment of life, he taught that the test by which his disciples were to be known was their love to one another. After his death, however, the Christians gave more importance to opinions in religion, and towards the

end of the third century they proposed to distinguish their fellow-worshippers in a mode hitherto unknown to the world, namely, by the profession of belief in certain opinions; for as yet there was no difference in their belief of historic facts. This gave rise to numerous metaphysical discussions, particularly among the more speculative and mystical.

(4) Though Egypt had long been the slave of Greece and Rome, those two great states had always owned her as their mistress in pagan superstitions and religious novelties; and the schools of Alexandria, in which mathematics and chemistry were now only valued as helps to astrology and alchemy, and in which the study of philosophy had almost given place to verbal subtleties, gave birth to the quarrel about the nature of Jesus which has divided the Christian world for fifteen centuries. Theologians have found it difficult to determine what the immediate successors of the apostles and the early writers thought about the exact nature of the great founder of our religion. As it had never been brought to a logical dispute to be settled by argument or authority, the writers had not expressed their opinions in those exact terms which are so carefully used after a controversy has arisen. The Christians who had been born Jews believed that Jesus was a man, the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament; with the philosophical Greeks he was the divine wisdom, the Platonic Logos; and with the Egyptians he was one out of several cons, or powers proceeding from the Deity. Clemens Romanus, the friend of the Apostle Paul, only calls him our high-priest and master, phrases which Photius in the ninth century thought little short of blasphemy; while the philosopher Justin Martyr, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus, speak of Jesus as a god in a human form. But the pagan converts used the word "god" in a sense that the Jewish converts shrunk from. Dionysius bishop of Alexandria, when arguing Apud Synagainst Sabellius, says that our Lord was the firstborn of every created being; but, as Origen writes against the practice of addressing prayers to him, many Christians, finding it easier to worship Jesus than to imitate him, must have already considered him as the disposer or one of the disposers of all human events. But

66

cellum.

De Ora

tione.

Eusebius,

these inexact opinions did not satisfy that school which united the superstition of the Egyptians with the more refined speculations of the New Platonists. The teachers of Christianity, when explaining the great mission of Jesus, had made use of the figurative language of the Alexandrian Platonists, and the Egyptian party now declared Vit. Con that this language was to be understood literally; stantini, and, as soon as the quarrels with the pagans ceased, lib. i. we find the Christians of Egypt and Alexandria divided into two parties, on the question whether the Son is of the same substance or only of a similar substance with the Father.

(5) These disputes were brought to the ears of the emperor by Alexander bishop of Alexandria, and Lib. 11. Arius the presbyter before mentioned. The bishop had been inquiring into the belief of the presbyter, and the latter had argued against his superior and against the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. The emperor's letter to the angry theologians, in this first ecclesiastical quarrel that was ever brought before a Christian monarch, calls for our warmest praise. It is addressed to Alexander and Arius, and he therein tells them that they are raising useless questions, which it is not necessary to settle, and which, though a good exercise for the understanding, only breed ill will, and should be kept by each man in his own breast. He regrets the religious madness which has seized all Egypt; and lastly he orders the bishop not to question the priest as to his belief, and orders the priest, if questioned, not to return an answer. But this wise letter, so worthy of a Christian and a statesman, Lib. iii. had no weight with the Alexandrian divines. The quarrel gained in importance from being noticed by the emperor; the civil government of the country was clogged; and Constantine, after having once interfered, was persuaded to call a council of bishops to settle the Christian faith for the future. Nicea in Bithynia was chosen as the spot most convenient for eastern Christendom to meet in; and two hundred and fifty bishops, followed by crowds of priests, there met in council from Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Libya, with one or two from Western Europe.

A.D. 325.