Page:The Bible and the Churches.pdf/11

 The duty of Christians, and the changes the Christian Church would undergo until it attained to its millennial glory, are spiritually delineated in the Book of Revelation, as shown to John in the isle of Patmos by the Lord Himself.

It is not my purpose to go into the particular trials and persecutions the Christian Church had to undergo during the first 300 years; suffice it to say, that amidst all its persecutions from paganism, the gospel of Jesus Christ had spread over a great part of the world, when in the year 325, Arius arose and denied the divinity of Christ. Constantine called all the Bishops together at Nicæa and introduced the Nicene Creed, which says what the Bible does not teach, viz.: that Jesus Christ was begotten before the worlds. Doubtless the divine purposes respecting the human race were all concentrated in the ultimate restoration of all repenting sinners by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was begotten in time—according to the announcement to the Virgin Mary, and according to the prophetical declaration respecting it by Isaiah, viz., "a virgin shall be with child, and a child shall be born, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end."

It is quite clear that the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds were powerless against the Arian doctrine. It went on for 300 years, and at the expiration of that time nearly all the European States had embraced the abominable doctrine of Arius. But the Lord raised up one in the Church's extremity, as He has at all times done—and the good Clotilda, the French princess who married Clovis, under the Divine Providence won back the European States from Unitarianism to a