Page:History of the First Council of Nice.djvu/41

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This Council was convened at the city of Nicæa, in the Roman province Bithynia, a country of Asia, lying between the Propontis and Black Sea, in the six hundred and thirty-sixth year from the commencement of Alexander the Great's reign and A. D. 325, the twentieth year of the reign of Constantine the Great, and in the consulate of Paulinus and Julian of Rome. The transactions of the Council are related by the ancients in a partial, imperfect, and disjointed manner, as I will briefly show by quoting several of the varying statements of its precise date, although there is no discrepancy respecting the year. Socrates Scholasticus says, "It was convened on the twentieth day of May." But the Emperor had assigned the tenth day before the nones of June, that is, "the 25th May, as I glean from Baronius' Annals of the Church, tome, and Baronius says it terminated on the 25th August, A. D. 325. The date of the Formulary, or Confession of Faith, established by the Council, and