Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/356

 Syria. We cannot say under what pretext he was translated to the see of Nicomedia, a city which was still the principal seat of the imperial court. In Nicomedia his ambitious spirit and personal relations with the imperial family gave him much influence. "He was," says Sozomen (H. E. i. 15), "a man of considerable learning, and held in high repute at the palace." Here were spun the webs by which the Arian conspiracy for a while prevailed over the faith and discipline of the church. One of the most authoritative documents of Arianism is a letter sent by Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia, after his first suspension from presbyteral functions at Baukalis, Alexandria, in which he reminds Eusebius of their ancient friendship and briefly states his own views. [.] Arius boasts that Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodotus of Laodicea, Paulinus of Tyre, Athanasius of Anazarbus, Gregory of Berytus, Aetius of Lydda, and all the bishops of the East, if he is condemned, must be condemned with him (Theod. H. E. i. 5). The alarm created by the conduct of Arius and his numerous friends in high quarters induced Alexander of Alexandria to indite his famous letter to Alexander of Constantinople, which is of an encyclical character and was sent in some form to Eusebius of Nicomedia and other prelates. Exasperated by its tone, Eusebius called a council in Bithynia (probably at Nicomedia itself) of the friends of Arius, who addressed numerous bishops, desiring them to grant communion to the Arians and requiring, Alexander to do the like (Soz. i.15). These proceedings drew from Eusebius a written expression of his views, in a letter to Paulinus of Tyre, preserved by Theodoret (i. 6). Eusebius believed Alexander of Alexandria to be in doctrinal error, but not yet so far gone but that Paulinus might put him right. He tacitly assumed that the party of Alexandria asserted "two unbegotten beings," a position utterly denied by themselves. He repudiated strongly the idea that the Son was made in any sense out of the substance of God; declaring the Son "to be entirely distinct in nature and power," the method of His origination being known only to God, not even to the Son Himself. The verb "created," in Prov. viii. 22-26, could not, Eusebius said, have been used if the "wisdom" of which the prophet was speaking was ἐξ ἀποῤῥοίας τῆς οὐσίας: "For that which proceeds from Him Who is unbegotten cannot be said to have been created or founded either by Him or by another." The effect of the word "begotten" is reduced to a minimum by saying that the term is used of "things" and of persons entirely different in nature from God. "Men," "Israel," and "drops of dew" are in different scriptures said to be "begotten" of God. Therefore, Eusebius argued, the term cannot and does not carry similarity, still less identity of nature. At first the emperor Constantine treated the conflict as if capable of easy adjustment by a wise exercise of Christian temper. In 324 he wrote a joint letter, which he entrusted to Hosius of Cordova (Soz. H. E. i. 16), in which he called upon Alexander and Arius, for the sake of peace, to terminate their controversy. The dispute was a "trifling and foolish verbal dispute," and difference of judgment was, he urged, compatible with union and communion. Constantine had probably been led to this step by Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the strong pressure put upon Alexander to receive Arius into communion corresponds with the subsequent persistent demand of the Eusebians. The effort at mediation failed, although conducted with skilful diplomacy and tact by the venerable Hosius. As the dispute was no mere verbal quibble, but did in reality touch the very object of divine worship, the ground of religious hope, and the unity of the Godhead, the well-meant interference of the emperor merely augmented the acrimony of the disputants. Arius was again condemned by a council at Alexandria, and the entire East was disturbed. The angry letter of Constantine to Arius, which must have been written after his condemnation by the Alexandrian council and before the council of Nicaea, shews that the influence of Eusebius must now have been in abeyance. Constantine was no theologian, but hated a recalcitrant subordinate in church or state, and hence the undoubted vacillation of his mind towards Alexander, Arius, Eusebius, and Athanasius. At the oecumenical council of Nicaea in 325, Eusebius defended the excommunicated presbyter and was the advocate and interpreter of his opinions before the council. We must give him credit for moral courage in risking his position as bishop and as court favourite for the sake of his theological views, and opposing himself almost single-handed to the nearly unanimous judgment of the first representative assembly of the Christian episcopate—a judgment fanned into enthusiasm by martyrs and monks from the African monasteries and accepted hurriedly but passionately by the emperor. The courage was of short duration, and made way for disingenuous wiles. Eusebius soon displayed an inconsistent and temporizing spirit. Whether or no they still held that the difference was merely verbal, when the Arian bishops in the council found that the Godhead of the Redeemer was declared by the vast majority to be of the very essence of Christian doctrine, they made every effort to accept the terms in which that Godhead was being expressed by the council, making signs to each other that term after term, such as "Power of God," "Wisdom of God," "Image of God," "Very God of very God," might be accepted because they could use them of such divinity as was "made" or constituted as such by the divine appointment. Thus they were becoming parties to a test, which they were intending to evade. The term Homoousion, as applied to the Son of God, rallied for a while their conscience, and Eusebius declared it to be untenable. According to Theodoret (i. 8), the "formulary propounded by Eusebius contained undisguised evidence of his blasphemy; the reading of it occasioned great grief to the audience on account of the depravity of the doctrines; the writer was covered with shame, and the impious writing was torn to pieces." The