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umph through the streets of the city, Arius was seized with anguish in his bowels, retired by himself, and suddenly expired, A. D. 336.

Soon after, Constantine, who had been the instrument in the hand of God, of amazing changes in the religious world, went to his eternal reward, having first received baptism, which had now superstitiously attached to it saving efficacy, from the hands of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia.

His successor, Constantius, favoured the cause of the Arians. He entered heartily into their views, and, from the year 337 to 361, violently persecuted their opposers. Athanasius, who, after a banishment of more than two years, had returned, was obliged to flee to Rome. A number of his friends were scourged and imprisoned. The greatest severities were inflicted upon many ministers who held to the Nicene creed. Some were banished; others loaded with irons, and scourged to death. The Arians multiplied creeds upon creeds, labouring so to express themselves, that no essential difference might appear between them and others; and multitudes might be able to subscribe, without disturbing their consciences. Among those who were induced to this, was Liberius, bishop of Rome. The Arians filled all the high places in the Church, and were exceedingly ambitious of wealth and power. Eusebius, of Nicomedia, the zealous friend of Arius, was made Patriarch of Constantinople.

In the year 349, Constantius was constrained, by the popular voice, to reinstate Athanasius in his see. It was a moment of triumph to his friends. But his enemies determined his utter destruction, and accused him of the foulest crimes. Athanasius retired to the deserts, and secreted himself among some monks, who refused to betray him to his persecuting adversaries. For nearly forty years, Arianism reigned, especially in the East, al most without a check, and it became a proverb, "All the world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against all the world."

No sooner had the Arians attained to the high places than they split into various parties. They could not agree among themselves in their views of the character of Christ. A multitude of new sects sprang up among them, under the names of semi-arians, eusebians, aetians, eunomians, acasians, psathyrians, &c. &c. who were as hostile to each other, as they were to the Nicene party.

The Arian controversy also produced a multitude of other sects, which, for a time, distracted the Christian world; but which have long since passed away, and been lost like the tumultuous waves in the ocean.

CHAP. 6.

JULIAN REVIVES PAGANISM.

187

Constantius died in the year 361. His successor, Julian, was no friend to Christianity in any shape, and all parties were obliged, for a season, to hide themselves in the dust. Jovian, the next emperor, was a Trinitarian, and, in his reign, almost the whole world renounced the Arian system. Valentinian, and Valens, two brothers, succeeded Jovian. The former was the patron of the Trinitarians; the latter, of the Arians. Valens renewed in the East the spirit of persecution, and many were banished. Gratian and Honorius, the next emperors, were active in suppressing Paganism, and extending Christianity. But their successor, Theodosius, who came to the empire in 379, entered on the boldest measures both for destroying idolatry and establishing an uniform religious faith. He drove the Arians with terrible violence from their churches, and exposed them to the greatest calamities throughout his dominions. Unquestionably it was a most criminal abuse of authority; but he seemed to have no idea that religion is to be established in the minds of men by reason and not by force, and but little experimental acquaintance with that system he was so zealous to establish.

As the secular arm had now, for many years been turned against different portions of the professed followers of Christ, the Pagans came out of their dens and took courage. They rejoiced in the contentions among Christians; and when they saw the Arians depose those who had deposed them, they said, "The Arians have come over to our party." One bold and daring effort more, therefore, Satan determined to make to drive Christianity from the earth, and regain the seat of empire. Julian had been educated a Christian, was a public reader in the church of Nicomedia, and zealous for Christianity, though he probably was never acquainted with the true spirit of the Gospel. But, through his enmity to the Constantine family, and the artifices of the philosophers, he apostatized from his professed faith and bent the whole force of his empire to the reinstitution of pagan idolatry. He was a man of great talents, dissimulation and cunning, and he pursued those measures which must have ended in the extermination of Christianity had it not been the cause of God. For he not only repealed the laws. made against idolatry, opened the heathen temples, raised up an immense priesthood, and set the whole machinery of Paganism in motion throughout his vast empire; but he laboured, in a thousand ways, to undermine Christianity, by destroying its moral influence. He made the Christians continually the object of ridicule, calling them Galileans; shut up their schools; took from them their civil and religious privileges; broke up

the clergy by depriving them of their incomes, and burdening them with taxes and civil duties; befriended the Jews; reform ed the morality of Paganism to make it acceptable to the pious and used every ensnaring artifice to draw over the unwary He abstained from open persecution, because he saw that the blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the Church. But i he did not take away life, he deprived it of all its enjoyment But Julian found that there was a power above him. In de fiance of heaven, he undertook to build the Temple of Jerusa lem. "He committed the conduct of the affair" says Amianu Marcellinus, a writer of that period, and an enemy to Christianity, "to Alypius of Antioch, who set himself to the vigorous execution of his charge, and was assisted by the governor of the province; but horrible balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place inaccessible to the scorched workmen from time to time, and the element resolutely driving them to a distance, the enterprise was dropped." Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and Chrysostom, who lived at the same time, and the ecclesiastical historians of the next age, all attest the same facts.

To what depression the Church would have been reduced by so formidable an enemy had he lived to old age, none can tell. A kind providence removed him from the stage after a reign of one year and eight months, in the 32d year of his age.. He had attempted the conquest of the Persians, and was killed by a Persian lance. Conscious of his fate, he filled his hand with his blood, and casting it into the air, said, “O, Galilean, thou hast conquered."

This was the last persecution of Christianity by Pagan Rome. Pagans, however, beyond the bounds of the empire, continued to defend their ancient superstitions by arms, and massacred multitudes who bore the Christian name. This was particularly the case in Persia, where, from the year 330 to 370, a most destructive persecution raged, and an incredible number of Christians were put to death-the Magi and the Jews persua ding Sapor the monarch, that the Christians were friendly to the Roman emperor.

The fourth century produced some men of eminent learning and piety. Among these were, in the east, Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, to whom we are indebted for the best history of the Church; Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, the firm and powerful opponent of Arianism; Basil, surnamed the great, bishop of Cæsarea, an eminent controversialist; Ephraim, the Syrian, a man of much sanctity of life and conversation, whose

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HAP. 6. CHRYSOSTOM.

JEROME.

AUGUSTINE.

189

oral writings were an honour to the age; and John Chrysosm, bishop of Constantinople, one of the most able preachers hat has adorned the Christian Church. To strong powers of ind and a lively imagination, Chrysostom added fine powers foratory, and commanded immense audiences. He was an ble commentator on Paul's epistles. In opposition to Origen, e adhered to the literal sense of scripture, maintaining it to be e true. He was a firm supporter of the doctrines of grace, ad a bold reprover of vice, and fell a victim to the persecution his foes. He was banished from the See of Constantinople id died at Pityus on the Euxine sea, A. D. 407, aged 53. In the west, was Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a man of eminent ety and learning; and Jerome, a monk of Palestine, whose writings are very voluminous. He translated the Bible into Latin. His translation was called the Latin Vulgate, and was afterwards exclusively adopted by the Roman Church. But it contained many errors. By his own writings he contributed much to the growth of superstition. Still, he was the most able commentator of all the Latin Fathers. Hilary of Poictiers, a man of singular attachment to the Gospel in its simplicity, and a firm defender of the doctrine of the Trinity; and Lactantius, who, in his divine institutions, exposed the absurdity of the pagan rites, lived about the same period. Ulpilas also deserves notice. He was zealous in civilizing and converting the Goths. He translated the four Gospels into their language.

But by far the most distinguished and valuable man of this second age of the Church, was Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in Africa, who flourished in the latter part of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. He was born in Numidia and converted about the year 354, when near thirty years of age, in an evident outpouring of the Spirit upon the churches, by which, vital godliness was much revived from its low state, especially in the east, His confessions, in which he gives an account of his conversion, may be read with profit by Christians in every age. He was early raised to the bishopric of Hippo, and by his humble piety and powerful defence of the fundamental truths of the Gospel, soon became the admiration of the Christian world. His best commentary was on the Psalms. He died in the year 430, at the age of seventy-six. He was a star of the first magnitude, and was a guide for centuries after to Christians, who, amid the darkness of Popery, would walk in the truth. But the theological writers of that age are not to be compared with modern divines Their folios will not repay the trouble of a perusal.

Augustine was raised up to defend the doctrines of grace.

These doctrines had remained fundamental from the apostolic age, though they had been much corrupted by Justin, Origen, and others, who were led astray by a deceitful philosophy. But when in the days of Constantine, the world came into the Church, they were a dead letter. All were viewed as Christians, who professed Christianity, though they knew not in their own experience, that there was a Holy Ghost. A great part of the Christian world, therefore, were ready to subscribe to a system which rejected the necessity of the grace of God; should a man arise with the talent and boldness to promulge one.

Such a man was Pelagius. He was born in Britain; but made Rome his residence. There in company with Cælestius an Irish monk, he avowed, about the year 410, a denial of the total corruption of human nature, and of the necessity of the enlightening, renewing and sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit. Cælestius was at first the most open. At Carthage he laboured much to propagate his sentiments. He was pressed with the custom of the Church in baptizing infants, as a proof of her belief in all ages, that infants were depraved; but he persisted in his sentiments, and was condemned as a heretic, in the year 412.

Pelagius went to Jerusalem, where he found patronage and formed disciples. His opinions were warmly opposed by Augustine; who firmly maintained entire depravity; the necessity of divine grace; that there is an eternal purpose of God or predestination with regard to those who shall be saved, and that they, and only they, will finally obtain it. The Christian world was distracted. Council after council was held, and decree after decree was passed, condemning or approving the opposite parties; but in 420, the secular arm was raised, and Pelagianism was suppressed throughout the empire. A new sect, however, soon arose, favoured by Cassian, a monk at Marseilles, called the Semi-Pelagians, who allowed the necessity of divine grace to persevere in holiness, though not to commence it, and who were long engaged, especially in France, in controversy with the followers of Augustine.

In the remainder of the fifth, and whole of the sixth century, the reader of ecclesiastical history finds but little that engages his attention. The Church washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God is scarcely visible. Immense changes took place in the civil world which could not fail to affect the visible kingdom of the Redeemer. In the year 476, an end was put to the western part of the Roman empire by the incursions of a fierce and warlike people from the northern part of Europe, who had for more than

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