XLII. We have from the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ received that brief confession of faith which hath been always a badge of the Church, a mark whereby to discern Christian men from Infidels and Jews. “This faith received from the Apostles and their disciples,” saith Irenæus1, “the Church though dispersed throughout the world, doth notwithstanding keep as safe as if it dwelt within the walls of some one house, and as uniformly hold, as if it had but one only heart and soul; this as consonantly it preacheth, teacheth, and delivereth, as if but one tongue did speak for all. As one sun shineth to the whole world, so there is no faith but this one published, the brightness whereof must enlighten all that come to the knowledge of the truth.” “This rule,” saith Tertullian2, “Christ did institute; the stream and current of this rule hath gone as far, it hath continued as long, as the very promulgation of the Gospel.”
Under Constantine the emperor about three hundred years and upward after Christ, Arius a priest in the church of Alexandria, a subtle-witted and a marvellous fair-spoken man, but discontented that one should be placed before him in honour, whose superior he thought himself in desert, became through envy and stomach prone unto contradiction, and bold to broach at the length that heresy, wherein the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ contained but not opened in the former creed, the co-equality and co-eternity of the Son with the Father was denied. Being for this impiety deprived of his place by the bishop of the same church, the punishment which should have reformed him did but increase his obstinacy, and give him occasion of labouring with greater earnestness elsewhere to entangle unwary minds with the snares of his damnable opinion. Arius in short time had won to himself a number both of followers and of great defenders, whereupon much disquietness on all sides ensued. The emperor to reduce the Church of Christ unto the unity of sound belief, when other means whereof trial was first made took no effect, gathered that famous assembly of three hundred and eighteen bishops in the council of Nice, where besides order taken for many things which seemed to need redress, there was with common consent for the settling of all men’s minds, that other confession of faith set down which we call the Nicene Creed, whereunto the Arians themselves which were present subscribed also; not that they meant sincerely and in deed to forsake their error, but only to escape deprivation and exile, which they saw they could not avoid openly persisting in their former opinions when the greater part had concluded against them, and that with the emperor’s royal assent. Reserving therefore themselves unto future opportunities, and knowing that it would not boot them to stir again in a matter so composed, unless they could draw the emperor first and by his means the chiefest bishops unto their part, till Constantine’s death and somewhat after they always professed love and zeal to the Nicene faith; yet ceased not in the meanwhile to strengthen that part which in heart they favoured, and to infest by all means under colour of other quarrels their greatest adversaries in this cause: amongst them Athanasius especially, whom by the space of forty-six years, from the time of his consecration to succeed Alexander archbishop in the church of Alexandria till the last hour of his life in this world, they never suffered to enjoy the comfort of a peaceable day. The heart of Constantine stolen from him. Constantius Constantine’s successor his scourge and torment by all the ways that malice armed with sovereign authority could devise and use. Under Julian no rest given him. And in the days of Valentinian as little. Crimes there were laid to his charge many, the least whereof being just had bereaved him of estimation and credit with men while the world standeth. His judges evermore the selfsame men by whom his accusers were suborned. Yet the issue always on their part, shame; on his, triumph. Those bishops and prelates, who should have accounted his cause theirs, and could not many of them but with bleeding hearts and with watered cheeks behold a person of so great place and worth constrained to endure so foul indignities, were sure by bewraying their affection towards him to bring upon themselves those molestations, whereby if they would not be drawn to seem his adversaries, yet others should be taught how unsafe it was to continue his friends.
Whereupon it came to pass in the end, that (very few excepted) all became subject to the sway of time; other odds there was none amongst them, saving only that some fell sooner away, some later, from the soundness of belief; some were leaders in the host of impiety, and the rest as common soldiers, either yielding through fear, or brought under with penury, or by flattery ensnared, or else beguiled through simplicity, which is the fairest excuse that well may be made for them. Yea (that which all men did wonder at) Osius the ancientest bishop that Christendom then had, the most forward in defence of the Catholic cause and of the contrary part most feared, that very Osius with whose hand the Nicene Creed itself was set down and framed for the whole Christian world to subscribe unto, so far yielded in the end as even with the same hand to ratify the Arians’ confession, a thing which they neither hoped to see, nor the other part ever feared, till with amazement they saw it done. Both were persuaded that although there had been for Osius no way but either presently subscribe or die, his answer and choice would have been the same that Eleazar’s was3, “It doth not become our age to dissemble, whereby many young persons might think, that 4Osius an hundred years old and upward were now gone to another religion, and so through mine hypocrisy (for a little time of transitory life) they might be deceived by me, and I procure malediction and reproach to my old age. For though I were now delivered from the torments of men, yet could I not escape the hand of the Almighty, neither alive nor dead.” But such was the stream of those times, that all men gave place unto it, which we cannot but impute partly to their own oversight. For at the first the emperor was theirs, the determination of the council of Nice was for them, they had the Arians’ hands to that council. So great advantages are never changed so far to the contrary, but by great error.