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Rh The dangerous temper of the assembly was seen at the commencement, in the fact that a number of letters containing charges against various bishops were presented to the emperor; and Constantine's good sense and pacific intentions were as quickly revealed by his calling for a brazier at his first meeting with the council, and burning the whole sheaf of them unread. He had come to make peace, and his policy was toleration, not repression, or expulsion, or persecution. It was not his fault that the course of the discussion took another turn. Constantine spoke in a gentle voice and with a modest demeanour, calling himself a bishop, evidently with the sole object of softening the asperity of the debate and obtaining a pacific decision. But Arius was soon denounced in the most angry terms and expelled from the assembly.

Members of the lower clergy, although perhaps they had no votes, were allowed to be present and contribute to the discussion, so free and open was it. This liberty gave his opportunity to the hero of the whole controversy, the one man who was soon to tower head and shoulders over everybody else by sheer force of intellectual energy and moral earnestness, Alexander's attendant deacon, the young Athanasius. The romance of the Arian period circles round this great man in his strange adventures, his hairbreadth escapes, his magnanimous victories; but better than that, it is he who lifts the whole controversy out of the miserable arena of person and party, seizes on its really significant features, and holds to the vital issues notwithstanding calumny, spite, and brutal violence, with a tenacity that is perfectly heroic until he brings them out to a triumphant issue. Then, best of all, he reveals true greatness of soul and the generosity of a genuine Christian character, by insisting only on what is vital, by labouring to bury the old quarrel, by gladly welcoming back old opponents when they return to what he holds to be the true faith.

Guided by this young deacon, who soon proved himself to be the most masterly theologian present, the assembly that had quickly determined to stamp out Arianism was