(c) Materials for Reaction.
The victory of Nicæa was rather a surprise than a solid conquest. As it was not the spontaneous and deliberate purpose of the bishops present, but a revolution which a minority had forced through by sheer strength of clearer Christian thought, a reaction was inevitable as soon as the half-convinced conservatives returned home' (Gwatkin). The reaction, however, was not for a long time overtly doctrinal. The defeat, the moral humiliation of Arianism at the council was too signal, the prestige of the council itself too overpowering, the Emperor too resolute in supporting its definition, to permit of this. Not till after the death of Constantine in 337 does the policy become manifest of raising alternative symbols to a coordinate rank with that of Nicæa; not till six years after the establishment of Constantius as sole Emperor,--i.e. not till 357,--did Arianism once again set its mouth to the trumpet. During the reign of Constantine the reaction, though doctrinal in its motive, was personal in its ostensible grounds. The leaders of the victorious minority at Nicæa are one by one attacked on this or that pretence and removed from their Sees, till at the time of Constantine's death the East is in the hands of their opponents. What were the forces at work which made this possible?
(1) Persecuted Arians. Foremost of all, the harsh measures adopted by Constantine with at least the tacit approval of the Nicene leaders furnished material for reaction. Arius and his principal friends were sent into exile, and as we have seen they went in bitterness of spirit. Arius himself was banished to Illyricum, and would seem to have remained there five or six years. (The chronology of his recall is obscure, but see D.C.B. ii. 364, and Gwatkin, p. 86, note 2). It would be antecedently very unlikely that a religious exile would spare exertions to gain sympathy for himself and converts to his opinions. As a matter of fact, Arianism had no more active supporters during the next half-century than two bishops of the neighbouring province of Pannonia, Valens of Mursa (Mitrowitz), and Ursacius [35] of Singidunum (Belgrade). Valens and Ursacius are described as pupils of Arius, and there is every reason to trace their personal relations with the heresiarch to his Illyrian exile. The seeds sown in Illyria at this time were still bearing fruit nearly 50 years later (pp. 489, 494, note). Secundus nursed his bitterness fully thirty years (p. 294; cf. 456). Theognis grasped at revenge at Tyre in 335 (pp. 104, 114). Eusebius of Nicomedia, recalled from exile with his friend and neighbour Theognis, not long after the election of Athanasius in 328, was ready to move heaven and earth to efface the results of the council. The harsh measures against the Arians then, if insufficient to account for the reaction, at any rate furnished it with the energy of personal bitterness and sense of wrong.
(2) The Eusebians and the Court. Until the council of Sardica (i.e. a short time after the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia), the motive power of the reaction proceeded from the environment of Eusebius, hoi peri Eusebion. It should be observed once for all that the term Eusebians' is the later and inexact equivalent of the last named Greek phrase, which (excepting perhaps p. 436) has reference to Eusebius of Nicomedia only, and not to his namesake of Cæsarea. The latter, no doubt, lent his support to the action of the party, but ought not to suffer in our estimation from the misfortune of his name. Again, the Eusebians' are not a heresy, nor a theological party or school; they are the ring,' or personal entourage, of one man, a master of intrigue, who succeeded in combining a very large number of men of very different opinions in more or less close association for common ecclesiastical action. The Eusebians' sensu latiori are the majority of Asiatic bishops who were in reaction against the council and its leaders; in the stricter sense the term denotes the pure Arians like Eusebius, Theognis, and the rest, and those political Arians' who without settled adherence to Arian principles, were, for all practical purposes, hand in glove with Eusebius and his fellows. To the former class emphatically belong Valens and Ursacius, whose recantation in 347 is the solitary and insufficient foundation for the sweeping generalisation of Socrates (ii. 37), that they always inclined to the party in power,' and George, the presbyter of Alexandria, afterwards bishop of the Syrian Laodicea, who, although he went through a phase of conservatism,' 357-359, began and ended (Gwatkin, pp. 181-183) as an Arian, pure and simple. Among political Arians' of this period Eusebius of Cæsarea is the chief. He was not, as we have said above, an Arian theologically, yet whatever allowances may be made for his conduct during this period (D.C.B., ii. 315, 316) it tended all in one direction. But on the whole, political Arianism is more abundantly exemplified in the Homoeans of the next generation, whose activity begins about the time of the death of Constans. The Eusebians proper were political indeed ei tines kai alloi, but their essential Arianism is the one element of principle about them [36] . Above all, the employment of the term Semi-Arians' as a synonym for Eusebians, or indeed as a designation of any party at this period, is to be strongly deprecated. It is the (possibly somewhat misleading, but reasonable and accepted) term for the younger generation of convinced conservatives,' whom we find in the sixth decade of the century becoming conscious of their essential difference in principle from the Arians, whether political or pure, and feeling their way toward fusion with the Nicenes. These are a definite party, with a definite theological position, to which nothing in the earlier period exactly corresponds. The Eusebians proper were not semi-, but real Arians. Eusebius of Cæsarea and the Asiatic conservatives are the predecessors of the semi-Arians, but their position is not quite the same. Reserving them for a moment, we must complete our account of the Eusebians proper. Their nucleus consisted of the able and influential circle of Lucianists;' it has been remarked by an unprejudiced observer that, so far as we know, not one of them was eminent as a religious character (Harnack, ii. 185); their strength was in fixity of policy and in ecclesiastical intrigue; and their battery was the imperial court. Within three years of the Council, Constantine had begun to waver, not in his resolution to maintain the Nicene Creed, that he never relaxed, but in his sternness toward its known opponents. His policy was dictated by the desire for unity: he was made to feel the lurking dissatisfaction of the bishops of Asia, perhaps as his anger was softened by time he missed the ability and ready counsel of the extruded bishop of his residential city. An Arian presbyter (Eustathius' or Eutokius'?), who was a kind of chaplain to Constantia, sister of Constantine and widow of Licinius, is said to have kept the subject before the Emperor's mind after her death (in 328, see Socr. i. 25). At last, as we have seen, first Eusebius and Theognis were recalled, then Arius himself was pardoned upon his general assurance of agreement with the faith of the Synod.
The atmosphere of a court is seldom favourable to a high standard of moral or religious principle; and the place-hunters and hangers-on of the imperial courts of these days were an exceptionally worthless crew (see Gwatkin, p. 60, 100, 234). It is a tribute to the Nicene cause that their influence was steadily on the other side, and to the character of Constantine that he was able throughout the greater part of the period to resist it, at any rate as far as Athanasius was concerned. But on the whole the court was the centre whence the webs of Eusebian intrigue extended to Egypt, Antioch, and many other obscurer centres of attack.
The influences outside the Church were less directly operative in the campaign, but such as they were they served the Eusebian plans. The expulsion of a powerful bishop from the midst of a loyal flock was greatly assisted by the co-operation of a friendly mob; and Jews (pp. 94, 296), and heathen alike were willing to aid the Arian cause. The army, the civil service, education, the life of society were still largely heathen; the inevitable influx of heathen into the Church, now that the empire had become Christian, brought with it multitudes to whom Arianism was a more intelligible creed than that of Nicæa; the influence of the philosophers was a serious factor, they might well welcome Arianism as a Selbstersetzung des Christentums.' This is not inconsistent with the instances of persecution of heathenism by Arian bishops, and of savage heathen reprisals, associated with the names of George of Alexandria, Patrophilus, Mark of Arethusa, and others. (For a fuller discussion, with references, see Gwatkin, pp. 53-59.)
(3.) The Ecclesiastical Conservatives. Something has already been said in more than one connection to explain how it came to pass that the very provinces whose bishops made up the large numerical majority at Nicæa, also furnished the numbers which swelled the ranks of the Eusebians at Tyre, Antioch, and Philippopolis. The actual men were, of course, in many cases [37] changed in the course of years, but the sees were the same, and there is ample evidence that the staunch Nicene party were in a hopeless minority in Asia Minor [38] and but little stronger in Syria. The indefiniteness of this mass of episcopal opinion justifies the title Conservative.' In adopting it freely, we must not forget, what the whole foregoing account has gone to shew, that their conservatism was of the empirical or short-sighted kind, prone to acquiesce in things as they are, hard to arouse to a sense of a great crisis, reluctant to step out of its groove. If by conservatism we mean action which really tends to preserve the vital strength of an institution, then Athanasius and the leaders of Nicæa were the only conservatives. But it is not an unknown thing for vulgar conservatism to take alarm at the clear grasp of principles and facts which alone can carry the State over a great crisis, and by wrapping itself up in its prejudices to play into the hands of anarchy. Common men do not easily rise to the level of mighty issues. Where Demosthenes saw the crisis of his nation's destiny, Æschines saw materials for a personal impeachment of his rival. In the anti-Nicene reaction the want of clearness of thought coincided with the fatal readiness to magnify personal issues. Here was the opportunity of the Arian leaders: a confused succession of personal skirmishes, in which the mass of men saw no religious principle, nor any combined purpose (Soc. i. 13, nuktomachias te ouden apeiche ta ginomena) was conducted from headquarters with a fixed steady aim. But their machinations would have been fruitless had the mass of the bishops been really in sympathy with the council to which they were still by their own action committed. Arian hatred of the council would have been powerless if it had not rested on a formidable mass of conservative discontent: while the conservative discontent might have died away if the court had not supplied it with the means of action' (Gwatkin, p. 61. He explains the policy of the court by the religious sympathies of Asia Minor [39] and its political importance, pp. 90-91.) But the authority of the council remained unchallenged during the lifetime of Constantine, and no Arian raised his voice against it. One doctrinal controversy there was, of subordinate importance, but of a kind to rivet the conservatives to their attitude of sullen reaction.
It follows from what has been said of the influence of Origen in moulding the current theology of the Eastern Church, that the one theological principle which was most vividly and generally grasped was the horror of Monarchian and especially of Sabellian' teaching. Now in replying to Asterius the spokesman of early Arianism, no less a person than Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra (Angora) in Galatia, and one of the principal leaders of Nicæa, had laid himself open to this charge. It was brought with zeal and learning (in 336) in two successive works by Eusebius of Cæsarea, which, with Ath., Orat. iv. are our principal source of information as to the tenets of Marcellus (see D.C.B. ii. 341, sq., Zahn Marcellus 99 sqq., fragments collected by Rettberg Marcelliana). On the other hand he was uniformly supported by the Nicene party, and especially by Athanasius and the Roman Church. His book was examined at Sardica, and on somewhat ex parte grounds (p. 125) pronounced innocent: a personal estrangement from Athanasius shortly after (Hilar. Fragm. ii. 21, 23) on account of certain ambiguæ prædicationes eius, in quam Photinus erupit, doctrinæ,' did not amount to a formal breach of communion (he is mentioned 14 years later as an exiled Nicene bishop, pp. 256, 271), nor did the anxious questioning of Epiphanius (see Hær. 72. 4.) succeed in extracting from the then aged Athanasius more than a significant smile. He refuses to condemn him, and in arguing against opinions which appear to be his, he refrains from mentioning the name even of Photinus [40] . It may be well therefore to sketch in a few touches what we know of the system of Marcellus, in order that we may appreciate the relative right of Eusebius in attacking, and of Athanasius and the Romans in supporting him. Marcellus is a representative of the traditional theology of Asia Minor, as we find it in Ignatius and Irenæus (see above, pp. xxii.-xxiv., xxvi. fin.), and is independent of any influence of, or rather in conscious reaction against, Origenism. We cannot prove that he had studied either Ignatius or Irenæus, but we find the doctrine of anakephalaiosis with reference to Creation and the Incarnation, and the Ignatian thought of the Divine Silence, and a general unmistakeable affinity (cf. Zahn 236-244). Marcellus appeals from Origen to S. John.' He begins with the idea of Sonship, as Arius and the Nicene Council had done. Perceiving that on the one hand Arians and Origenists alike were led by the idea of Sonship as dependent on paternal will to infer the inferiority of the Son to the Father, and in the more extreme case to deny His coeternity, feeling on the other hand (with Irenæus II. xxviii. 6) our inability to find an idea to correspond with the relation implied in the eternal Sonship, he turns to the first chapter of S. John as the classic passage for the pre-existent nature of Christ. He finds that before the Incarnation the Saviour is spoken of as Logos only: accordingly all other designations, even that of Son, must be reserved for the Incarnate. Moreover (Joh. i. 1) the Word is strictly coeternal, and no name implying an act (such as gennesis) can express the relation of the Word to God. But in view of the Divine Purpose of Creation and Redemption (for the latter is involved in the former by the doctrine of anakephalaiosis) there is a process, a stirring within the divine Monad. The Word which is potentially (dunamei) eternally latent in God proceeds forth in Actuality (energei& 139;), yet without ceasing to be potentially in God as well. In this energeia drastike, to which the word gennesis may be applied, begins the great drama of the Universe which rises to the height of the Incarnation, and which, after the Economy is completed, and fallen man restored (and more than restored) to the Sonship of God which he had lost, ends in the return of the Logos to the Father, the handing over of His Kingdom by the Son, that God may be all in all.