The Arian Controversy Part 7

[Sidenote: Julian's policy against Christianity.]

Pa.s.sing over scattered cases of persecution encouraged or allowed by Julian, we may state generally that he aimed at degrading Christianity into a vulgar superst.i.tion, by breaking its connections with civilized government on one side, with liberal education on the other. One part of it was to deprive the 'Galileans' of state support and weed them out as far as might be from the public service, while still leaving them full freedom to quarrel amongst themselves; the other was to cut them off from literature by forbidding them to teach the cla.s.sics. Homer and Hesiod were prophets of the G.o.ds, and must not be expounded by unbelievers. Matthew and Luke were good enough for barbarian ears like theirs. We need not pause to note the impolicy of an edict which Julian's own admirer Ammia.n.u.s wishes 'buried in eternal silence.' Its effect on the Christians was very marked. Marius Victorinus, the favoured teacher of the Roman n.o.bles, at once resigned his chair of rhetoric. The studies of his old age had brought him to confess his faith in Christ, and he would not now deny his Lord. Julian's own teacher Proaeresius gave up his chair at Athens, refusing the special exemption which was offered him. It was not all loss for the Christians to be reminded that the gospel is revelation, not philosophy--life and not discussion. But Greek literature was far too weak to bear the burden of a sinking world, and its guardians could not have devised a more fatal plan than this of setting it in direct antagonism to the living power of Christianity. In our regret for the feud between h.e.l.lenic culture and the mediaeval churches, we must not forget that it was Julian who drove in the wedge of separation.

[Sidenote: Julian's toleration.]

We can now sum up in a sentence. Every blow struck at Christianity by Julian fell first on the Arianizers whom Constantius had left in power, and the reaction he provoked against heathen learning directly threatened the philosophical postulates of Arianism within the church.

In both ways he powerfully helped the Nicene cause. The h.o.m.oeans could not stand without court support, and the Anomoeans threw away their rhetoric on men who were beginning to see how little ground is really common to the gospel and philosophy. Yet he cared little for the party quarrels of the Christians. Instead of condescending to take a side, he told them contemptuously to keep the peace. His first step was to proclaim full toleration for all sorts and sects of men. It was only too easy to strike at the church by doing common justice to the sects. A few days later came an edict recalling the exiled bishops. Their property was restored, but they were not replaced in their churches. Others were commonly in possession, and it was no business of Julian's to turn them out. The Galileans might look after their own squabbles. This sounds fairly well, and suits his professions of toleration; but Julian had a malicious hope of still further embroiling the ecclesiastical confusion.

If the Christians were only left to themselves, they might be trusted 'to quarrel like beasts.'

[Sidenote: Its results.]

Julian was gratified with a few unseemly wrangles, but the general result of his policy was unexpected. It took the Christians by surprise, and fairly shamed them into a sort of truce. The very divisions of churches are in some sense a sign of life, for men who do not care about religion will usually find something else to quarrel over. If nations redeem each other, so do parties; and the dignified slumber of a catholic uniformity may be more fatal to spiritual life than the vulgar wranglings of a thousand sects. The Christians closed their ranks before the common enemy. Nicenes and Arians forgot their enmity in the pleasant task of reviling the G.o.ds and cursing Julian. A yell of execration ran all along the Christian line, from the extreme Apollinarian right to the furthest Anomoean left. Basil of Caesarea renounced the apostate's friendship; the rabble of Antioch a.s.sailed him with scurrilous lampoons and anti-pagan riots. Nor were the Arians behind in hate. Blind old Maris of Chalcedon came and cursed him to his face. The heathens laughed, the Christians cursed, and Israel alone remembered Julian for good. 'Treasured in the house of Julia.n.u.s Caesar,' the vessels of the temple still await the day when Messiah-ben-Ephraim shall take them thence.

[Sidenote: Return of Athanasius, Feb. 362.]

Back to their dioceses came the survivors of the exiled bishops, no longer travelling in pomp and circ.u.mstance to their noisy councils, but bound on the n.o.bler errand of seeking out their lost or scattered flocks. Eusebius of Vercellae and Lucifer left Upper Egypt, Marcellus and Basil returned to Ancyra, while Athanasius reappeared at Alexandria. The unfortunate George had led a wandering life since his expulsion in 358, and did not venture to leave the shelter of the court till late in 361.

It was a rash move, for his flock had not forgotten him. Three days he spent in safety, but on the fourth came news that Constantius was dead and Julian master of the Empire. The heathen populace was wild with delight, and threw George straight into prison. Three weeks later they dragged him out and lynched him. Thus when Julian's edict came for the return of the exiles, Athanasius was doubly prepared to take advantage of it.

[Sidenote: Council of Alexandria discusses:]

It was time to resume the interrupted work of the council of Seleucia.

Semiarian violence frustrated Hilary's efforts, but Athanasius had things more in his favour, now that Julian had sobered Christian partizanship. If he wished the Galileans to quarrel, he also left them free to combine. So twenty-one bishops, mostly exiles, met at Alexandria in the summer of 362. Eusebius of Vercellae was with Athanasius, but Lucifer had gone to Antioch, and only sent a couple of deacons to the meeting.

[Sidenote: (1.) Returning Arians.]

Four subjects claimed the council's attention. The first was the reception of Arians who came over to the Nicene side. The stricter party was for treating all opponents without distinction as apostates.

Athanasius, however, urged a milder course. It was agreed that all comers were to be gladly received on the single condition of accepting the Nicene faith. None but the chiefs and active defenders of Arianism were even to be deprived of any ecclesiastical rank which they might be holding.

[Sidenote: (2.) The Lord's human nature.]

A second subject of debate was the Arian doctrine of the Lord's humanity, which limited it to a human body. In opposition to this, the council declared that the Lord a.s.sumed also a human soul. In this they may have had in view, besides Arianism, the new theory of Apollinarius of Laodicea, which we shall have to explain presently.

[Sidenote: (3.) The words _person_ and _essence_.]

The third subject before the council was an old misunderstanding about the term _hypostasis_. It had been used in the Nicene anathemas as equivalent to _ousia_ or _essence_; and so Athanasius used it still, to denote the common deity of all the persons of the Trinity. So also the Latins understood it, as the etymological representative of _substantia_, which was their translation (a very bad one by the way) of _ousia_ (_essence_). Thus Athanasius and the Latins spoke of one _hypostasis_ (_essence_) only. Meantime the Easterns in general had adopted Origen's limitation of it to the deity of the several _persons_ of the Trinity in contrast with each other. Thus they meant by it what the Latins called _persona_,[14] and rightly spoke of three _hypostases_ (_persons_). In this way East and West were at cross-purposes. The Latins, who spoke of one _hypostasis_ (_essence_), regarded the Eastern three _hypostases_ as tritheist; while the Greeks, who confessed three _hypostases_ (_persons_), looked on the Western one _hypostasis_ as Sabellian. As Athanasius had connections with both parties, he was a natural mediator. As soon as both views were stated before the council, both were seen to be orthodox. 'One _hypostasis_' (_essence_) was not Sabellian, neither was 'three _hypostases_' (_persons_) Arian. The decision was that each party might keep its own usage.

[Footnote 14: _Persona_, again, was a legal term, not exactly corresponding to its Greek representative.]

[Sidenote: (4.) The schism at Antioch.]

Affairs at Antioch remained for discussion. Now that Meletius was free to return, some decision had to be made. The Eustathians had been faithful through thirty years of trouble, and Athanasius was specially bound to his old friends; yet, on the other hand, some recognition was due to the honourable confession of Meletius. As the Eustathians had no bishop, the simplest course was for them to accept Meletius. This was the desire of the council, and it might have been carried out if Lucifer had not taken advantage of his stay at Antioch to denounce Meletius as an a.s.sociate of Arians. By way of making the division permanent, he consecrated the presbyter Paulinus as bishop for the Eustathians. When the mischief was done it could not be undone. Paulinus added his signature to the decisions of Alexandria, but Meletius was thrown back on his old connection with Acacius. Henceforth the rising Nicene party of Pontus and Asia was divided from the older Nicenes of Egypt and Rome by this unfortunate personal question.

[Sidenote: Fourth exile of Athanasius.]

Julian could not but see that Athanasius was master in Egypt. He may not have cared about the council, but the baptism of some heathen ladies at Alexandria roused his fiercest anger. He broke his rule of contemptuous toleration, and 'the detestable Athanasius' was an exile again before the summer was over. But his work remained. The leniency of the council was a great success, notwithstanding the calamity at Antioch. It gave offence, indeed, to zealots like Lucifer, and may have admitted more than one unworthy Arianizer. Yet its wisdom is evident. First one bishop, then another accepted the Nicene faith. Friendly Semiarians came in like Cyril of Jerusalem, old conservatives followed like Dianius of the Cappadocian Caesarea, and at last the arch-heretic Acacius himself gave in his signature. Even the creeds of the churches were remodelled in a Nicene interest, as at Jerusalem and Antioch, in Cappadocia and Mesopotamia.

[Sidenote: The Arians under Julian.]

Nor were the other parties idle. The h.o.m.oean coalition was even more unstable than the Eusebian. Already before the death of Constantius there had been quarrels over the appointment of Meletius by one section of the party, of Eunomius by another. The deposition of Aetius was another bone of contention. Hence the coalition broke up of itself as soon as men were free to act. Acacius and his friends drew nearer to Meletius, while Eudoxius and Euzoius talked of annulling the condemnation of the Anomoean bishops at Constantinople. The Semiarians were busy too. Guided by Macedonius and Eleusius, the ejected bishops of Constantinople and Cyzicus, they gradually took up a middle position between Nicenes and Anomoeans, confessing the Lord's deity with the one, and denying that of the Holy Spirit with the other. Like true Legitimists, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, they were satisfied to confirm the Seleucian decisions and re-issue their old Lucianic creed. Had they ceased to care for the Nicene alliance, or did they fancy the world had stood still since the Council of the Dedication?

[Sidenote: Julian's campaign in Persia (Mar. 5 to June 26, 363).]

Meanwhile the Persian war demanded Julian's attention. An emperor so full of heathen enthusiasm was not likely to forego the dreams of conquest which had brought so many of his predecessors on the path of glory in the East. His own part of the campaign was a splendid success.

But when he had fought his way through the desert to the Tigris, he looked in vain for succours from the north. The Christians of Armenia would not fight for the apostate Emperor. Julian was obliged to retreat on Nisibis through a wasted country, and with the Persian cavalry hovering round. The campaign would have been at best a brilliant failure, but it was only converted into absolute disaster by the chance arrow (June 26, 363) which cut short his busy life. After all, he was only in his thirty-second year.

[Sidenote: Julian's character.]

Christian charity will not delight in counting up the outbreaks of petty spite and childish vanity which disfigure a n.o.ble character of purity and self-devotion. Still less need we presume to speculate what Julian would have done if he had returned in triumph from the Persian war. His bitterness might have hardened into a renegade's malice, or it might have melted at our Master's touch. But apart from what he might have done, there is matter for the gravest blame in what he did. The scorner must not pa.s.s unchallenged to the banquet of the just. Yet when all is said against him, the clear fact remains that Julian lived a hero's life. Often as he was blinded by his impatience or hurried into injustice by his heathen prejudice, we cannot mistake a spirit of self-sacrifice and earnest piety as strange to worldling bishops as to the pleasure-loving heathen populace. Mysterious and full of tragic pathos is the irony of G.o.d in history, which allowed one of the very n.o.blest of the emperors to act the part of Jeroboam, and brought the old intriguer Maris of Chalcedon to cry against the altar like the man of G.o.d from Judah. But Maris was right, for Julian was the blinder of the two.

CHAPTER VII.

_THE RESTORED h.o.m.oEAN SUPREMACY._

[Sidenote: Effects of Julian's reign.]

Julian's reign seems at first sight no more than a sudden storm which clears up and leaves everything much as it was before. Far from restoring heathenism, he could not even seriously shake the power of Christianity. No sooner was he dead than the philosophers disappeared, the renegades did penance, and even the reptiles of the palace came back to their accustomed haunts. Yet Julian's work was not in vain, for it tested both heathenism and Christianity. All that Constantine had given to the churches Julian could take away, but the living power of faith was not at Caesar's beck and call. Heathenism was strong in its a.s.sociations with Greek philosophy and culture, with Roman law and social life, but as a moral force among the common people, its weakness was contemptible. It could sway the wavering mult.i.tude with superst.i.tious fancies, and cast a subtler spell upon the n.o.blest Christian teachers, but its own adherents it could hardly lift above their petty quest of pleasure. Julian called aloud, and called in vain.

A mocking echo was the only answer from that valley of dry bones.

Christianity, on the other side, had won the victory almost without a blow. Instead of ever coming to grapple with its mighty rival, the great catholic church of heathenism hardly reached the stage of apish mimicry.

When its great army turned out to be a crowd of camp-followers, the alarm of battle died away in peals of defiant laughter. Yet the alarm was real, and its teachings were not forgotten. It broke up the revels of party strife, and partly roused the churches to the dangers of a purely heathen education. Above all, the approach of danger was a sharp reminder that our life is not of this world. They stood the test fairly well. Renegades or fanatics were old scandals, and signs were not wanting that the touch of persecution would wake the old heroic spirit which had fought the Empire from the catacombs and overcome it.

[Sidenote: Jovian Emperor (June 27, 363).]

As Julian was the last survivor of the house of Constantine, his lieutenants were free to choose the worthiest of their comrades. But while his four barbarian generals were debating, one or two voices suddenly hailed Jovian as Emperor. The cry was taken up, and in a few moments the young officer found himself the successor of Augustus.

[Sidenote: Jovian's toleration.]

Jovian was a brilliant colonel of the guards. In all the army there was not a goodlier person than he. Julian's purple was too small for his gigantic limbs. But that stately form was animated by a spirit of cowardly selfishness. Instead of pushing on with Julian's brave retreat, he saved the relics of his army by a disgraceful peace. Jovian was also a decided Christian, though his morals suited neither the purity of the gospel nor the dignity of his imperial position. Even the heathen soldiers condemned his low amours and vulgar tippling. The faith he professed was the Nicene, but Constantine himself was less tolerant than Jovian. In this respect he is blameless. If Athanasius was graciously received at Antioch, even the Arians were told with scant ceremony that they might hold their a.s.semblies as they pleased at Alexandria.

[Sidenote: The Anomoeans form a sect.]

About this time the Anomoeans organised their schism. Nearly four years had been spent in uncertain negotiations for the restoration of Aetius. The Anomoeans counted on Eudoxius, but did not find him very zealous in the matter. At last, in Jovian's time, they made up their minds to set him at defiance by consecrating Poemenius to the see of Constantinople. Other appointments were made at the same time, and Theophilus the Indian, who had a name for missionary work in the far East, was sent to Antioch to win over Euzoius. From this time the Anomoeans were an organized sect.

[Sidenote: Nicene successes.]

But the most important doc.u.ment of Jovian's reign is the acceptance of the Nicene creed by Acacius of Caesarea, with Meletius of Antioch and more than twenty others of his friends. Acacius was only returning to his master's steps when he explained _one in essence_ by _like in essence_, and laid stress on the care with which 'the Fathers' had guarded its meaning. We may hope that Acacius had found out his belief at last. Still the connexion helped to widen the breach between Meletius and the older Nicenes.

[Sidenote: Valentinian Emperor.]

All these movements came to an end at the sudden death of Jovian (Feb.

16, 364.) The Pannonian Valentinian was chosen to succeed him, and a month later a.s.signed the East to his brother Valens, reserving to himself the more important Western provinces. This was a lasting division of the Empire, for East and West were never again united for any length of time. Valentinian belongs to the better cla.s.s of emperors.

He was a soldier like Jovian, and held much the same rank at his election. He was a decided Christian like Jovian, and, like him, free from the stain of persecution. Jovian's rough good-humour was replaced in Valentinian by a violent and sometimes cruel temper, but he had a sense of duty and was free from Jovian's vices. His reign was a laborious and honourable struggle with the enemies of the republic on the Rhine and the Danube. An uncultivated man himself, he still could honour learning, and in religion his policy was one of comprehensive toleration. If he refused to displace the few Arians whom he found in possession of Western sees like Auxentius at Milan, he left the churches free to choose Nicene successors. Under his wise rule the West soon recovered from the strife Constantius had introduced.

[Sidenote: Character of Valens.]

Valens was a weaker character, timid, suspicious, and slow, yet not ungentle in private life. He was as uncultivated as his brother, but not inferior to him in scrupulous care for his subjects. Only as Valens was no soldier, he preferred remitting taxation to fighting at the head of the legions. In both ways he is ent.i.tled to head the series of financial rather than unwarlike sovereigns whose cautious policy brought the Eastern Empire safely through the great barbarian invasions of the fifth century.