acting with high Semi-Arians? Yet Tillemont, Döllinger, and Newman, while accepting the genuineness of the letters in the Hilarian Fragments, inconsistently tack-on to it Sozomen's account of the circumstances of Liberius's lapse as not only correct, but complete ; whereas it is clear that to sign the composite Semi-Arian document would not be such an acceptance of downright heresy as Jerome's and Hilary's undoubted words imply; and further, that if he had already made the greater concession, the lesser would have been needless. Even if it could be abated to this extent, the fault of Liberius would be confessedly a fall. Hefele admits that the silence of Socrates or Theodoret cannot outweigh fourth-century evidence; and even if, as this great Roman Catholic scholar considers, he retained his own faith in the essential Godhead of the Son, he consented to surrender the word by which the Nicene Council had guarded that truth. Moreover, whatever was the precise form of Liberius's concession to heterodoxy, there can be no doubt whatever as to the capacity in which he made it. He was not approached as an individual, but as one who deemed himself still bishop of Rome de jure, and who on certain conditions might again become bishop of Rome de facto. As such, he yielded to pressure; and while, of course, he was not pretending to instruct the Christian world ex cathedrá, he did unquestionably compromise his own see, because he officially abandoned the Nicene position. "If," it has been pointedly said, "Liberius, as a private Christian, remained probably quite orthodox, as Roman pontiff he publicly, officially, failed." He returned to Rome, with the Emperor's sanction, in the beginning of August, 358, bearing with him, as we may well believe from his subsequent conduct, a heavy heart, an uneasy conscience, in the midst of what Jerome calls his "triumphant entry." Felix was compelled to leave the city, and lived in retirement on his own estate until his death in 365, consoled, we must suppose, by the sympathy of his own partisans, of whom the chief was a priest named Damasus.

Such was the memorable Semi-Arian triumph in the May of 358; it was followed up by the banishment of the leading UltraArians-as Aetius, who with Eunomius, lately ordained deacon at Antioch, was banished into Phrygia, just when they were preparing to memorialise Constantius against Basil and his party. Theophilus "the Indian," an indefatigable missionary of the Arian faith, had been exiled in 354, according to the Anomœan historian, on account of his connection with the unfortunate Cæsar Gallus:

he had afterwards been recalled, and was alleged to have effected a supernatural cure of Constantius's beloved wife Eusebia; but he was now, Philostorgius tells us, sent to Heraclea in Pontus on a revived charge of disaffection, while Eudoxius, after receiving an order to leave Antioch, sought refuge in his native Armenia. Seventy other persons were sent into exile; and, as Newman puts it, "the Semi-Arians, elated by their success with the Emperor, followed it up by obtaining his consent for an Ecumenical Council, in which the faith of the Church should definitively be declared for good," with a special view to the suppression of Anomœanism.

CHAPTER XIV.

ARIMINUM AND SELEUCIA.

A NEW General Council!-this was the prospect opening before the Eastern Church in the summer of 358; and the first place thought of for the Council was Nicæa. But the "Homoiousian" party had a natural repugnance to the scene of the great "Homoousian " council; and Nicomedia was selected in its stead. Letters of summons went forth among the bishops, and many prelates had actually begun their journey to the proposed meeting-place, when the city was laid in ruins, on August 24, by a terrific earthquake, the results of which were exaggerated by rumours, but were sufficiently serious, involving the destruction of the magnificent church, and the death of two prelates, one of them being Cecropius, the bishop of the city. Again was Nicæa suggested, this time by Basil; and Constantius at first agreed, and ordered that the bishops who were not disabled by bodily weakness should meet there in the early part of the summer, while those who could not take the journey should send priests and deacons as their representatives; also, that ten delegates should be sent for the Western churches and ten for the Eastern, to report to the Emperor the resolutions at which the Council might have arrived, "in order that he might judge whether they were in accordance with Scripture, and carry out the practical conclusions as might seem to him best." So thoroughly was the whole affair arranged, and on lines of "Byzantine" imperial supremacy, when not only was Nicæa again put out of consideration for fear of the mischief done to all Bithynia by the earthquake, but the victory secured by the SemiArians, at Ancyra, over their adversaries of the Acacian and Anomoean sections was suddenly neutralised by representations made to the facile Emperor on the part of some old Arian partisans, who induced him to recall the banished Anomoans, and to

break up the intended assembly into two councils representing the East and the West. The policy of "divide and govern" was a promising one for the enemies of Semi-Arianism; it might avert the danger of an oecumenical condemnation of the Anomoion and of its advocates. The Western Council, it was now resolved, should be at Ariminum; for the Eastern, Tarsus was thought of, and then Ancyra, but for some time nothing was settled. It was while matters were in this state that Hilary, in Phrygia, wrote his work "On the Councils," or "On the Faith of the Easterns," in acknowledgment of letters which he had received from his brother bishops in Gaul, Germany, and Britain, in reprobation of the Blasphemia," and with the triple purpose of informing them as to the doctrinal statements of the Eastern Semi-Arians, of inducing them to act in concert with the Semi-Arians, at the impending Councils, against the common enemy, and also of overcoming the difficulties which, through the force of prejudice, had prevented the Semi-Arians from accepting the Homoousion. The task which he thus undertook was a very delicate one, and involved a liberal use of benigna interpretatio; it required him to put the best interpretation on Semi-Arian proceedings, to represent the Semi-Arians as on their way to the full truth, and as separated by a real difference of principle from the Ultra-Arian impiety, and even from such a position as Hosius had consented to adopt, and also to warn against a Sabellian misuse of the Homoousion, and to explain "likeness in essence" as in effect implying co-equality. When this-which occupies far the larger part of his treatise was accomplished, he turned to the Semi-Arians, and urged them, as Christians who meant to recognise Christ's Sonship in its true and essential divinity, who in effect were "not Arians," but now "desirous of holding apostolic and evangelical doctrine "-to reconsider their objections against the Nicene term, and to think whether it were not, in its true sense, the full expression of the idea which they were wont to associate with the Homoiousion; whether, in a word, believing what they did, they could consistently ignore, still less proscribe, that term which he, indeed, strange to say, had never heard of until he was "going into exile," but which, when he heard it, commended itself to him as expressive of his own baptismal belief. With all his earnest, even passionate longing to bring Westerns and Semi-Arians together, Hilary was too truthful to keep back his conviction that Semi-Arian formulas were inadequate, were not free from suspicion of heresy, nor from

language offensive to pious ears. Taken at its best, he is constrained to say, Semi-Arianism is unsatisfactory, it wants correcting and filling up, and that can only be done by its becoming frankly Catholic: if you own the Son as "like in essence," if you feel that it is not enough to acknowledge a moral likeness of will or action, nothing ought to hinder you from owning Him as "co-essential;' and until you do so, you are not safe. "This," says Tillemont, "is the finest part of his work:" it is, we may add, truly Athanasian; but, as an appeal, it had little success.

It was not until May in 359 that Basil gave up the attempt to make his brethren agree as to the best place for the Eastern Council. He then resolved to take the Emperor's judgment by way of settling the matter; and he visited the court at Sirmium, where he found several bishops, including Mark, George of Alexandria, and Valens. It was there determined that the Easterns should meet at Seleucia in Cilicia, on the river Calycadnus, a city distinguished from its various namesakes by the epithet Tracheotis, as situated in a "rugged" district, but populous and prosperous, though exposed to the attacks of Isaurians. But at this new Sirmian conference the Homoans won a new move in their game. "Would it not be well," it was asked, "to have ready for the Councils some draft of a doctrinal formulary?" The Semi-Arian members of the conference could not deny it; and Mark of Arethusa, as a leading Semi-Arian, was appointed, by general vote, to draw up a creed. He seems, however, to have allowed other hands to take part in the work; and the result was "a patchwork of two views," in which the Acacian predominated, for the term Homoiousion was proscribed. The creed began: "The Catholic faith was published in the presence of our sovereign . . . Constantius, Augustus, eternal, in the consulate of Eusebius and Hypatius, at Sirmium, on the 11th of the Calends of June." This was May 22, the Whitsun-eve of 359, and it was not until night had set in that the wording was really settled. The Son was owned in this paper as "begotten, not only before all time or age, but before all beginning, and all conceivable essence," and as "like in all things to the Father, according to the Scriptures;" but all mention of "essence,' as regarded the Father or the Son, was to be laid aside as nonscriptural, although there was a respectful reference to those "fathers" who in their simplicity had employed a term which had proved so liable to misconstruction. One striking phrase in