Had the council been drawing up a creed for popular use, a short and simple document of this kind would have been suitable enough.  The undecided bishops received it with delight.  It contained none of the vexatious technical terms which had done all the mischief—­nothing but familiar Scripture, which the least learned of them could understand.  So far as Arianism might mean to deny the Lord’s divinity, it was clearly condemned already, and the whole question might now be safely left at rest behind the ambiguities of the Caesarean creed.  So it was accepted at once.  Marcellus himself could find no fault with its doctrine, and the Arians were glad now to escape a direct condemnation.  But unanimity of this sort, which really decided nothing, was not what Athanasius and Marcellus wanted.  They had not come to the council to haggle over compromises, but to cast out the blasphemer, and they were resolved to do it effectually.

[Sidenote:  Persistence of Athanasius.]

Hardly a more momentous resolution can be found in history.  The whole future of Christianity was determined by it; and we must fairly face the question whether Athanasius was right or not.  Would it not have been every way better to rest satisfied with the great moral victory already gained?  When heathens were pressing into the church in crowds, was that a suitable time to offend them with a solemn proclamation of the very doctrine which chiefly kept them back?  It was, moreover, a dangerous policy to insist on measures for which even Christian opinion was not ripe, and it led directly to the gravest troubles in the churches—­troubles of which no man then living was to see the end.  The first half century of prelude was a war of giants; but the main contest opened at Nicaea is not ended yet, or like to end before the Lord himself shall come to end it.  It was the decision of Athanasius which made half the bitterness between the Roman and the Teuton, between Christianity and Islam to this day.  Even now it is the worst stumbling-block of Western unbelief.  Many of our most earnest enemies would gladly forget their enmity if we would only drop our mysticism and admire with them a human Christ who never rose with power from the dead.  But we may not do this thing.  Christianity cannot make its peace with this world by dropping that message from the other which is its only reason for existence.  Athanasius was clearly right.  When Constantine had fairly put the question, they could not refuse to answer.  Let the danger be what it might, they could not deliberately leave it open for Christian bishops (the creed was not for others) to dispute whether our Lord is truly God or not.  Those may smile to whom all revelation is a vain thing; but it is our life, and we believe it is their own life too.  If there is truth or even meaning in the gospel, this question of all others is most surely vital.  Nor has history failed to justify Athanasius.  That heathen age was no time to trifle with heathenism in the very citadel