and Macarius of AElia (we know that city better as Jerusalem) were on Alexander’s side, the bishops of Tyre and Laodicea with the learned Eusebius of Caesarea leaned the other way or took a middle course.  Altogether there were about a dozen more or less decided Arianizers thinly scattered over the country from the slopes of Taurus to the Jordan valley.  Of the Pontic bishops we need notice only Marcellus of Ancyra and the confessor Paul of Neocaesarea.  Arianism had no friends in Pontus to our knowledge, and Marcellus was the busiest of its enemies.  Among the Asiatics, however, there was a small but influential group of Arianizers, disciples of Lucian like Arius himself.  Chief of these was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was rather a court politician than a student like his namesake of Caesarea, and might be expected to influence the Emperor as much as any one.  With him went the bishops of Ephesus and Nicaea itself, and Maris of Chalcedon.  The Greeks of Europe were few and unimportant, but on the outskirts of the Empire we find some names of great interest.  James of Nisibis represented the old Syrian churches which spoke the Lord’s own native language.  Restaces the Armenian could remind the bishops that Armenia was in Christ before Rome, and had fought the persecutors in their cause.  Theophilus the Goth might tell them the modest beginnings of Teutonic Christianity among his countrymen of the Crimean undercliff.  John the Persian, who came from one or another of the many distant regions which bore the name of India, may dimly remind ourselves of the great Nestorian missions which one day were to make the Christian name a power in Northern China.  Little as Eusebius of Caesarea liked some issues of the council, he is full of genuine enthusiasm over his majestic roll of churches far and near, from the extremity of Europe to the farthest ends of Asia.  Not without the Holy Spirit’s guidance did that august assembly meet.  Nor was its meeting a day of hope for the churches only, but also for the weary Empire.  In that great crisis the deep despair of ages was forgotten.  It might be that the power which had overcome the world could also cure its ancient sickness.  Little as men could see into the issues of the future, the meaning of the present was beyond mistake.  The new world faced the old, and all was ready for the league which joined the names of Rome and Christendom, and made the sway of Christ and Caesar one.

[Footnote 5:  318; in Greek [Greek:  tie].]

[Sidenote:  The idea of a test creed.]

It seems to have been understood that the council was to settle the question by drawing up a creed as a test for bishops.  Here was a twofold novelty.  In the first place, Christendom as a whole had as yet no written creed at all.  The so-called Apostles’ Creed may be older than 340, but then it first appears, and only as a personal confession of the heretic Marcellus.  Every church taught its catechumens the historic outlines