Nevertheless the great majority of the Antiochene Catholics continued to follow the counsel of S. Eustathius, and refused to secede from the communion of the bishop.1 And this was the policy which was followed all over the East outside of Egypt. Dr. Gwatkin thus describes the situation in those regions: "The case of Antioch was not exceptional. Arians and Nicenes were still parties inside the Church rather than distinct sects. They still used the same prayers and the same hymns, still worshipped in the same buildings, still commemorated the same saints and martyrs, and still considered themselves members of the same church." If this was true of the two parties which were most opposed to each other, the Nicene and the Arian, it was a fortiori true of the great middle party, to which the majority of the Eastern bishops belonged.

2

It seems desirable, if we are to comprehend the state of things in the midst of which S. Meletius was living before he became Bishop of Antioch, that we should get hold of some true notion of this middle party in the Eastern Church. The bishops, who composed it, were in fact the very bishops who had constituted the majority in the Council of Nicaea, or, if not those bishops themselves, then their successors and representatives. It seems that God, in His good Providence over His Church, so ordered matters that bishops, who in their fear of innovation would normally have objected to the insertion of the ouoovolov and other new clauses into the creed, nevertheless voted for the insertion when they were at the council. But as soon as they came out of the council, they were alarmed at the work which they had done. They were substantially orthodox, they believed in the true Divinity of our Blessed Lord, but they had not the clear vision of S. Athanasius, and they feared that evil results would follow from the introduction of non-scriptural language into the creed. Moreover, they had been brought up in a school of doctrine which was specially sensitive on the subject of any consecration by Lucifer; and the Benedictine editors of S. Basil in a note to that Saint's 214th epistle point out (Opp., iii. 321) that S. Basil implies that S. Athanasius, when he was preparing to come to Antioch in the reign of Jovian, that is in September or October, 363, evidently did not favour the cause of Paulinus, but was "propensior . . . in Meletium."

This state of promiscuous communion lasted at Antioch for thirty years, viz. from 331 to 361, as we may gather from two passages in the writings of Theodoret. In an epistle addressed to Bishop Domnus of Antioch (Ep. cxii., P. G., lxxxiii. 1309), he says, "For thirty years those who adhered to the apostolic doctrines and they who were infected with the Arian blasphemy continued in communion with one another." And again in his Church History (ii. 27) he says, "For thirty years after the attack made upon the illustrious Eustathius they [the Catholics of Antioch] had gone on enduring the abomination of Arianism, in the expectation of some favourable change."

2 Studies of Arianism, pp. 134, 135.

teaching which might be represented as Sabellianizing1; and they thought that the ouoovotov was capable of a Sabellianizing sense; and no doubt there was some ground for their fear. S. Hilary points out that the word is capable of several wrong senses, and among these he mentions first the Sabellian sense.2 Moreover, the Orientals were persuaded that at least one of the leaders of the Nicene party, Marcellus of Ancyra, actually understood the term in a Sabellianizing way; and here again there is no doubt that they had good ground for their persuasion. S. Athanasius himself had in the end to write a treatise, which is mainly directed against the errors of Marcellus. But for a long while the Nicene party refused to admit that Marcellus' teaching was in any way censurable, and by the line which they took in regard to this matter, they not unnaturally excited the suspicions of the Easterns about their whole theological attitude.

As the middle party in the East was substantially Catholic in its belief, it was certain in time to discover that its true allies were S. Athanasius and the West, rather than the small body of crypto-Arian court-bishops, with whom it had continued to hold communion. It was the undisguisedly Arian character of the formula put forth by the small Council of Sirmium of the year 357 which first led the middle party to realize the unmistakably heretical bias of these court-bishops. The impulse was then given, which "continued unchecked until the Nicene cause triumphed in Asia in the hands of the 'conservatives' of the next generation." Already in 359 S. Athanasius proclaimed the essential agreement which united the middle party with himself. "Those," he says, "who accept everything else that was defined at Nicaea, and doubt only about the oμoovolov, must not be treated as enemies; nor do we here attack them as Ariomaniacs, nor as opponents of the Fathers, but we discuss the matter with them as brothers,

See Dr. Robertson's Prolegomena (p. xxxv.) to his English translation of Select Writings and Letters of Athanasius.

2 Cf. S. Hilar. Lib. de Synodis, §§ 67, 68, P. L., x. 525, 526. On the dμoovσiov as a theological formula, see Robertson's Prolegomena, pp. xxx. to xxxiii.

3 I refer, of course, to the so-called Fourth Oration against the Arians (see Newman's Dissertatio de Quarta Oratione S. Athanasii contra Arianos among the Dissertatiunculae critico-theologicae in Newman's Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical, edit. 1874, pp. 7 to 35. The Monitum to these Dissertatiunculae is dated at Rome in 1847).

This was the formula which S. Hilary called "The blasphemy." See S. Hilar. Lib. de Synodis, § II, P. L., x. 487.

Robertson's Prolegomena, p. lv. In regard to the term "Conservative," as applied to the Eastern middle party, it may be well to mention that it was first brought into use by Dr. Gwatkin in his Studies of Arianism. Since the publication of his book it has been similarly applied by Harnack, Robertson, and others. Dr. Bright (Waymarks in Church History, pp. 368-371) criticizes this use of the word.

who mean what we word." 1

mean, and dispute only about the

Included in the ranks of this middle party we find the names of holy persons, whom the Church has been accustomed to rank among the most venerated of her saints. Thus, for example, S. Cyril of Jerusalem, the author of the celebrated Catechetical Lectures, belonged to this party. He delivered those lectures while he was still a priest, and although he undoubtedly teaches in them the true Godhead of our Blessed Lord, yet he avoids the word ouoovolos, fearing that Sabellianism and the cognate heresy of Marcellus of Ancyra lay hid within it. In 350 or 351 he succeeded S. Maximus in the see of Jerusalem, his election having been apparently brought about through the influence of Acacius of Caesarea, the Metropolitan of Palestine, who no doubt acted as his principal consecrator. However, not long afterwards disputes about precedence and about jurisdiction arose between S. Cyril and Acacius; and in 357 the saint was deposed from his see by a council of Palestinian bishops, over which Acacius presided. S. Cyril was driven out of Jerusalem, and, having sent notice to his judges that he appealed to a higher tribunal, he took refuge with Silvanus of Tarsus. Silvanus was one of the leaders of the so-called Semi-Arian section of the middle party, and was a man of whom S. Basil always speaks "with unqualified reverence." 4 Soon after S. Cyril's arrival at Tarsus, he took part in a council held at Melitene, in Armenia Secunda. There were two parties in the council, and S. Cyril appears to have sided with the minority, as he refused to recognize the validity of the council's action in deposing Eustathius of Sebaste, who was at that time acting with the Semi-Arians.5 In 359 S. Cyril found in the Council of Seleucia that higher tribunal,

1 S. Athan., De Synodis, § 41. He goes on to mention specially, among these "brothers," Basil of Ancyra, the leader of those whom S. Epiphanius "with some injustice" names "Semi-Arians," and who were accustomed to put forth the word dμolovσios as their test-formula.

2 See Dom Touttée's Dissertatio de Vita S. Cyrilli, cap. iv. §§ 17-19, Opp. S. Cyrill. Hierosol., ed. Ben., coll. xi.-xv.

3 Dr. Hort (Two Dissertations, p. 92), after speaking of S. Maximus, says, "Cyril succeeded him as Acacius's nominee." Newman (Preface to the Oxford translation of the Catechetical Lectures, p. iii.) says, "It can scarcely be doubted that one of his consecrators was Acacius of Caesarea." See also Tillemont (viii. 429) and Gwatkin (Studies, p. 145). I have already pointed out (pp. 231, 232) that, although the Council of Sardica deposed Acacius and other Arian leaders, the action of the council failed to take effect; and it follows that Acacius remained, notwithstanding his unworthiness, the canonical Metropolitan of Palestine. Consequently the Fathers of the Council of Constantinople of 382 were able to say with truth that Cyril “was canonically ordained by the bishops of the province" (cf. Theodoret. H. E., v. 9).

4 Hort, Two Dissertations, p. 125.

See Sozomen (iv. 25) and S. Basil (Ep. cclxiii., Opp., ed. Ben., iii. 406).

to which he had appealed. The Semi-Arian majority in the council restored the saint to his see; but he was again deposed by the Homoean Council of Constantinople of the following year. This brings us to within a few months of the election of S. Meletius to the see of Antioch, and I shall therefore refrain from tracing S. Cyril's history any further. What has been said will be sufficient to show that during his priesthood and the first ten years of his episcopate he belonged to that middle party which constituted the great bulk of the Eastern Church.2 Dr. Robertson, describing the Church of Jerusalem during this first period of S. Cyril's episcopate, says that it "was orthodox substantially, but rejected the Nicene formula; " and he adds, "This was the case in the East generally, except where the bishops were positively Arian." 4

S. Basil, whose name is even more illustrious than that of S. Cyril, and who ranks among the most accredited of the Church's doctors, was united by the closest ties with the bishops of the middle party. He was born in 329, and came of a family of saints. His paternal grandmother was S. Macrina the elder, who handed on to him in his childhood the holy teachings of S. Gregory the Wonder-worker, the great apostle of Pontus. His father was S. Basil the elder, and his mother was S. Emmelia; his sister was S. Macrina the younger, and his brothers were S. Gregory Nyssen and S. Peter of Sebaste. Brought up amid such surroundings, he imbibed from his youth the purest teachings of Catholic orthodoxy; and, as he says himself, he never held, and therefore never had to unlearn, any false opinions about God. Yet he was baptized and ordained reader by Dianius, the Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who had taken part in the Council of Philippopolis of 343, and had signed the encyclical of that council, in which Pope S. Julius of Rome was anathematized. From the date of the Council of Philippopolis until his death in 362 Dianius was out of communion with the Roman see, and S. Basil, who communicated with the Eastern bishops generally and with his own bishop, Dianius, in particular, was also separate from the Roman communion.7

1 The Council of Constantinople did not profess to depose S. Cyril on doctrinal grounds; but because he had persisted in communicating with Eustathius of Sebaste, notwithstanding the action of the Council of Melitene. Compare Sozomen (iv. 25).

2 He lived on till 386.

Compare with these words of Dr. Robertson Sozomen's statement (H. E., iii. 13).

4 Prolegomena, p. xlix. Even where the bishops were positively Arian, they remained at this stage within the communion of the Church.

Cf. S. Basil. Ep. cciv., Opp., ed. Ben., iii. 306.

Cf. Ep. ccxxiii., Opp., ed. Ben., iii. 338.

7 S. Basil seems to have come into communion with S. Athanasius and the

Unfortunately, in the general confusion which followed the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia in 359, Dianius yielded to the pressure of the Emperor, and signed the creed of Ariminum. It was at that awful time, when, to use S. Jerome's words, "the whole world groaned and marvelled at finding itself Arian." Cardinal Newman inserted in the last edition of his Arians of the Fourth Century a graphic description of the state of things that existed in Christendom in 360 and 361. He says, "The cause of truth was only not in the lowest state of degradation, because a party was in authority and vigour who could reduce it to a lower still; the Latins committed to an anti-Catholic creed, the pope a renegade, Hosius fallen and dead, Athanasius wandering in the deserts, Arians in the sees of Christendom, and their doctrine growing in blasphemy, and their profession of it in boldness, every day."2 It was in the midst of this general defection of East and West that Dianius for the time succumbed. S. Basil tells us how grieved he was at this act of weakness committed by his beloved bishop; and for two years he seems to have kept away from that prelate, so that the report was even spread about that he had anathematized him. But S. Basil denied with vehemence that he had ever done such a thing, and characterized the report as a shameless and calumnious fiction.3

In 362, when Dianius was lying on his death-bed, he sent for Basil, who had been spending the two previous years in his monastery in Pontus, and assured him that he had assented to the formula of Ariminum in the simplicity of his heart, but that he had in no way purposed to do anything which should set aside the faith as it was expounded by the holy Fathers at Nicaea, and that he retained in his heart that which he had received from the beginning. He went on to say that he prayed that he might not be separated from the lot of those blessed 318 bishops who had proclaimed the orthodox teaching to the world. In consequence of this declaration, S. Basil and the monks who accompanied him suppressed

Church of Alexandria early in 363; but he did not receive any communications from Rome until 372.

1 S. Hieron. Dial. advers. Luciferianos, § 19, P. L., xxiii. 172. 2 Newman's Arians, edit. 1871, pp. 362, 363.

S. Bas. Ep. li., Opp., ed. Ben., iii. 143, 144. Similarly S. Gregory Nazianzen did not feel himself bound in conscience to withdraw from the communion of his father, S. Gregory the elder, who was Bishop of Nazianzus, and who after a life of great sanctity was, at the age of eighty-two, cajoled into signing the creed of Ariminum, though in his heart he never swerved from the Catholic belief. Afterwards the old man made such reparation for his lapse as was possible; and he is commemorated as a saint in the Eastern Church on January 1 (cf. Acta SS., tom. i. Jan., p. 21; and see S. Greg. Nazianz. Orat. xviii. § 18, Opp., ed. Ben., i. 342).