reed as to the time and year, nor the place,
nor the number of the judges, nor the president of this council, nor as
to many other particulars. No written journal of the proceedings of this
venerable tribunal was kept--at least none has reached us. How many and
what canons or ecclesiastical laws were enacted is not agreed on by the
Eastern and Western Christians. The latter tell us they were only twenty
in number, but the orientals make them far more numerous. From the
canons universally received, and from the other monuments of the
council, it appears not only that Arius was condemned, but that other
things were decreed, with a view to settle the affairs of the Church. In
particular, the controversy respecting the time of celebrating Easter,
which had long perplexed Christians, was terminated; the jurisdiction of
the greater bishops was defined, and several other matters of a like
nature were determined.

But the passions of men were more efficient than either the decrees of
the Nicene Council or the authority of the Emperor; for there were those
who, though they did not fall in with the doctrine of Arius, yet were
dissatisfied with some things in the decrees and the creed of the
council, and the Arians left no means untried to free themselves from
the evils inflicted on them by those decrees. And the issue was
favorable to their wishes; for in a few years after the Nicene Council
an Arian presbyter whom Constantia, the Emperor's sister, at her death
had recommended to the care of her brother, succeeded in persuading
Constantine the Great that Arius had been wrongfully condemned from
personal enmity. Accordingly, in the year 330, the Emperor recalled
Arius from exile, rescinded the decrees passed against his associates
and friends, and permitted Eusebius of Nicomedia, the principal
supporter of Arius, and his powerful faction, now thirsting for revenge,
to persecute the defenders of the Nicene Council. They assailed no one
more fiercely than Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. When he could
in no way be brought to restore Arius to his former honors and
ecclesiastical standing, Athanasius was first deprived of his office, in
a council held at Tyre, A.D. 335, and then banished to Gaul, while in
the same year, by a numerous council held at Jerusalem, Arius and his
friends were solemnly admitted to the communion of the Church. But by
none of these proceedings could the Alexandrians be induced to receive
Arius among their