§ 161. EUSEBIUS OF C-ESAREA. 875
pretatiou of the homoousion ; that he publicly recommen led it to the people of his diocese ; and that he never formally -ejected it.
The only satisfactory solution of this apparent inconsistency is to be found in his own indecision and leaning to a doctrinal latitudinarianism, not unfrequent in historians who become familiar with a vast variety of opinions in different ages and countries. On the important point of the hotnoouslon he never came to a fii-m and final conviction. He wavered between the older Origenistic subordinationism and the Nicene orthodoxy. He asserted clearly and strongly with Origen the eternity of the Son, and so far was decidedly opposed to Arianisra, which made Christ a creature in time ; but he recoiled from the hoTnoousion^ because it seemed to him to go beyond the Scriptures, and hence he made no use of the term, either in his book against Marcellus, or in his discourses against Sabellius. Religious sentiment compelled him to acknowledge the full deity of Christ; fear of Sabellianism restrained him. He avoided the strictly orthodox formulas, and moved rather in the less definite terms of former times. Theological acumen he constitutionally lacked. He was, in fact, not a man of controversy, but of moderation and peace. He stood upon the l)order between the ante-Nicene theology and the Nicene. His doctrine shows the color of each by turns, and reflects the unsettled problem of the church in the first stage of the Arian controversy.^
"With his theological indecision is connected his weakness of character. He was an amiable and pliant court-theologian, and suftered himself to be blinded and carried away by the splendor of the first Christian emperor, his patron and friend. Constantino took him often into his counsels, invited him to his table, related to him his vision of the cross, showed him the famous labarum, listened standing to his occasional sermons, wrote liim several letters, and intrusted to him the
* The same view is taken substantially by Baur (Geschichte der Lehre von lef Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung, i. 475 if.), Dorner (Entwicklungsgeschicb .e del Lehre voo der Person Christi, i. 792 ff.), Semisch (Art. Eusebius in Herzog's Ebcj klopadie, vol iv. 233), and other modem German theologians.
%
876 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. .^11-590-
Bupervision of the copies of the Bible for the use of the churchei in Constantinople.
At the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of this emperor's reign (336), Eusebius delivered a panegyric decked with the most pompons hyperbole, and after his death, ir literal ohedience to the maxim: "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum," he glorified his virtues at the expense of veracity and with intentional omission of his faults. With all tiiis, however, he had noble qualities of mind and heart, which in morr quiet times would have been an ornament to any episcopal see And it must be said, to his honor, that he never claimed the favor of the emperor for private ends.
The theological and literary value of Eusebius lies in the province of learning. He was an unwearied reader and collector, and probably surpassed all the other church fathers, hardly excepting even Origen and Jerome, in compass of knowledge and of acquaintance with Grecian literature both heathen and Christian; while in originality, vigor, sharpness, and copiousness of thought, he stands far below Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories. His scholarship goes much further in breadth than in depth, and is not controlled and systematized by a philosophical mind or a critical judgment.
Of his works, the historical are by far the most celebrated and the most valuable; to wit, his Ecclesiastical History, his Chronicle, his Life of Constantine, and a tract on the Martyrs of Palestine in the Diocletian persecution. The position (.>f Eusebius, at the close of the period of persecution, and in the opening of the pm-iod of the imperial establishment of Christianity, and his employment of many ancient documents, some of which have since been lost, give these M'orks a peculiar value. He is temperate, upon the whole, impartial, and truthloving— rare virtues in an age of intense excitement and polemical zeal like that in which he lived. The fact that he was the first to work this important field of theological study, and for many centuries remained a model in it, justly entitles him to his honorable distinction of Father of Church History. Y'et he is neither a critical student nor an ele^rant tvriter of