that God was one and indivisible, and suffered to redeem mankind; Sabellius also taught that God was one, but that Jesus was a man, to whom was united a “certain energy only, proceeding from the Supreme Parent” (p. 83).  He also denied the separate personality of the Holy Ghost.  Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, taught a cognate doctrine, and founded the sect of the Paulians or Paulianists, and was consequently degraded from his office.  Thus we see that the history of the Church, before it came to power, is a mass of quarrels and divisions, varied by ignorance and licentiousness.  If we exclude Origen, whose writings contain much that is valuable, the works produced by Christian writers in these centuries might be thrown into the sea, and the world would be none the poorer for the loss.

CENTURY IV.

Constantine attained undisputed and sole authority A.D. 324, and in the year 325 he summoned the first general council, that of Nicea, or Nice, which condemned the errors of Arius, and declared Christ to be of the same substance as the Father.  This council has given its name to the “Nicene Creed,” although that creed, as now recited, differs somewhat from the creed issued at Nice, and received its present form at the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381.  During the reign of Constantine, the Church grew swiftly in power and influence, a growth much aided by the penal laws passed against Paganism.  The moment Christianity was able to seize the sword, it wielded it remorselessly, and cut its way to supremacy in the Roman world.  Bribes and penalties shared together in the work of conversion.  “The hopes of wealth and honours, the example of an emperor, his exhortations, his irresistible smiles, diffused conviction among the venal and obsequious crowds which usually fill the apartments of a palace.  The cities, which signalised a forward zeal by the voluntary destruction of their temples, were distinguished by municipal privileges and rewarded with popular donatives; and the new capital of the East gloried in the singular advantage that Constantinople was never profaned by the worship of idols.  As the lower ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of riches, was soon followed by dependent multitudes.  The salvation of the common people was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true, that, in one year, twelve thousand men were baptised at Rome, besides a proportionable number of women and children; and that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gold, had been promised by the emperor to every convert” (Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall,” vol. ii. pp. 472, 473).  With Constantine began the ruinous system of dowering the Church with State funds.  The emperor directed the treasurers of the province of Carthage to pay over to the bishop of that district L18,000 sterling, and to honour his further drafts.  Constantine also