§ 161. EUSEBIDS OF C ESAEEA. 873
ical scliool which he had founded at Csesarea, till hi 309 he died a martyr in the persecution under Diocletian.' Eiisebins taught for a long time in this school ; and after the death of his preceptor and friend, he travelled to Tyre and to Egypt, and was an eye-witness of the cruel scenes of the last greal persecution of the Cliristians. He was imprisoned as a confessor, but soon released.
Twenty years later, when Eusebius, presiding at the council at Tyre (335 or 336), took sides against Athanasius, the bishop Potamon of Heraclea, according to the account ot Epiphanius, exclaimed in his face : " How dost thou, Eusebius, sit as judge of the innocent Athanasius ? Who can bear it ? "Why ! didst thou not sit with me in prison in the time of the tyrants? They plucked out my eye for my confession of the truth ; thou earnest forth unhurt ; thou hast suifered nothing for thy confession ; unscathed thou art here present. How didst thou escape from prison ? On some other ground than because thou didst promise to do an unlawful thing [to sacrifice to idols] ? or, perchance, didst thou actually do this ? " But this insinuation of cowardice and infidelity to Christ arose probably from envy and party passion in a moment of excitement. With such a stain upon him, Eusebius would hardly have been intrusted by the ancient chm*ch with the episcopal staff.*
About the year 315, or earlier, Eusebius was chosen bishop of Csesarea,' where he labored till his death in 3i0. The patriarchate of Antioch, which was conferred upon him after the deposition of Eustathius in 331, he in honorable self-denial, and from preference for a more quiet literary life, declined.
He was drawn into the Arian controversies ag-ainst his will, and played an eminent part at the council of Nicsea, where he held the post of honor at the right hand of the presiding emperor. In the perplexities of this movement he took
' Jerome "emarks of Pamphilus (De viris illustribus, c. 75) : " Tanto bibliothecsB diTinse amore flagravit, ut maximam partem Origenis voluminum sua manu descrip' jerit, qufe usque hodie [a. 392] in Caesariensi bibliotheca habentur."
' So Valesius also views the matter, while Baronius puts faith in the rebuke.
' Hence he ia also called Eusebius CaBsarieusis or Palestinua.
874 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590,
middle ground, and endeavored to unite the opposite pa:tiea, This brought liim, on the one liand, the peculiar favor of the emperor Constantine, but, on the other, from the leaders of the Nicene orthodoxy, the suspicion of a secret leaning to the Arian heresy.' It is certain that, before the council of J^icaea, he sympathized with Arius ; that in tlie council he proposed an orthodox but indefinite compromise-creed; that after the council he was not friendly with Athanasius and other defenders of orthodoxy ; and that, in the synod of Tyre, which deposed Athanasius in 335, he took a leading part, and, according to Epiphanius, presided. In keeping with these facts is Ids silence respecting the Arian controversy (which broke out in 318) in an Ecclesiastical History which comes down to 324, and was probably not completed till 326, when the council of Nicsea would have formed its most fitting close. lie would rather close his history with the victory of Constantine over Licinius than with the Creed over which theological parties contended, and with which he himself was implicated. But, on the other hand, it is also a fact that he subscribed the Tsicene Creed, though reluctantly, and reserving his own inter-
' So thought, among the ancients, Hilary, Jerome (who otherwise speaks favorably of Eusebius), Thcodoret, and the second council of Nicaea (a. d. 787), which unjustly condemned him even expressly, as an Arian heretic; and so have thought, among modems, Baronius, Petavius, Clericus, Tillemont, Gieseler ; while the church historian Socrates, the Roman bishops Gelasius and Pelagius II., Valesius, (t. Bull, Cave (who enters into a full vindication, 1. c. p. 135 sqq.), and Sam. Lee (and most Anglicans), have defended the orthodoxy of Eusebius, or at least mention him with very high respect. The Gallican church has even placed him in the catalogue of saints. Athanasius never expressly charges him with apostasy from the Nicene faith to Arianism or to Semi-Arianism, but frequently says that before 825 he held with Arius, and changed his opinion at Nica3a. This is the view of Miihler also (Athanasius der Grosse, p. 333 ff.), whom Domer (History of Christology, i. 792) inaccurately reckons among the opponents of the orthodoxy of Eusebius. The testiraoniea of the ancients for and against Eusebius are collected in Migne's edition of his works, torn. i. pp. 68-'J8. Among recent wj'ters Dr. Samuel Lee has most fully investigated the orthodoxy of Eusebius in the Preliminary Dissertation to his translation of the Theophania from the Syriac, pp. xxiv.-xcix. He arrives at the conclusion (p. xcviii.), " that Eusebius was no Arian ; and that the same reasoning must prove that he was no Semi-Arian ; that he did in no degree partake of the error of Origen, ascribed to him so positively and so groundiessly by Photius." But this is mere y a negativ lesult.