Meanwhile Hosius of Cordova was ordered to Sirmium and there detained.  Constantius was not ashamed to send to the rack the old man who had been a confessor in his grandfather’s days, more than fifty years before.  He was brought at last to communicate with the Arianizers, but even in his last illness refused to condemn Athanasius.  After this there was but one power in the West which could not be summarily dealt with.  The grandeur of Hosius was merely personal, but Liberius claimed the universal reverence due to the apostolic and imperial See of Rome.  It was a great and wealthy church, and during the last two hundred years had won a noble fame for world-wide charity.  Its orthodoxy was without a stain; for whatever heresies might flow to the great city, no heresy had ever issued thence.  The strangers of every land who found their way to Rome were welcomed from St. Peter’s throne with the majestic blessing of a universal father.  ‘The church of God which sojourneth in Rome’ was the immemorial counsellor of all the churches; and now that the voice of counsel was passing into that of command, Bishop Julius had made a worthy use of his authority as a judge of Christendom.  Such a bishop was a power of the first importance now that Arianism was dividing the Empire round the hostile camps of Gaul and Asia.  If the Roman church had partly ceased to be a Greek colony in the Latin capital, it was still the connecting link of East and West, the representative of Western Christianity to the Easterns, and the interpreter of Eastern to the Latin West.  Liberius could therefore treat almost on the footing of an independent sovereign.  He would not condemn Athanasius unheard, and after so many acquittals.  If Constantius wanted to reopen the case, he must summon a free council, and begin by expelling the Arians.  To this demand he firmly adhered.  The Emperor’s threats he disregarded, the Emperor’s gifts he flung out of the church.  It was not long before Constantius was obliged to risk the scandal of seizing and carrying off the bishop of Rome.

[Sidenote:  Third exile of Athanasius (356).]

Athanasius was still at Alexandria.  When the notaries tried to frighten him away, he refused to take their word against the repeated written promises of protection he had received from Constantius himself.  Duty as well as policy forbade him to believe that the most pious Emperor could be guilty of any such treachery.  So when Syrianus, the general in Egypt, brought up his troops, it was agreed to refer the whole question to Constantius.  Syrianus broke the agreement.  On a night of vigil (Feb. 8, 356) he surrounded the church of Theonas with a force of more than five thousand men.  The whole congregation was caught as in a net.  The doors were broken open, and the troops pressed up the church.  Athanasius fainted in the tumult; yet before they reached the bishop’s throne its occupant had somehow been safely conveyed away.

[Sidenote:  George of Cappadocia.]