dria.
But from the interior of Egypt came characters of quite another stamp;
not Greeks, nor Grecized Egyptians, but genuine Copts, speaking the
Greek language not at all, or with great difficulty; living half or the
whole of their lives in the desert; their very names taken from the
heathen gods of the times of the ancient Pharaohs. One was Potammon,
bishop of Heracleopolis, far up the Nile; the other, Paphnutius, bishop
of the Upper Thebaid. Both are famous for the austerity of their lives.
Potammon--that is, "dedicated to Ammon"--had himself visited the hermit
Antony; Paphnutius--that is, "dedicated to his God"--had been brought up
in a hermitage. Both, too, had suffered in the persecutions. Each
presented the frightful spectacle of the right eye dug out with iron.
Paphnutius, besides, came limping on one leg, his left having been
hamstrung.

Next in importance must be reckoned the bishop of Syria and of the
interior of Asia; or, as they are sometimes called in the later
councils, the _Eastern_ bishops, as distinguished from the Church of
Egypt. Then, as afterward, there was a rivalry between those branches of
oriental Christendom; each, from long neighborhood, knowing each, yet
each tending in an opposite direction till, after the Council of
Chalcedon, a community of heresy drew them together again. Here, as in
Egypt, we find two classes of representatives--scholars from the more
civilized cities of Syria; wild ascetics from the remoter East. The
first in dignity was the orthodox Eustathius, who either was, or was on
the point of being made, bishop of the capital of Syria, the metropolis
of the Eastern Church, Antioch, then called "the city of God." He had
suffered in heathen persecutions, and was destined to suffer in
Christian persecutions also. But he was chiefly known for his learning
and eloquence, which was distinguished by an antique simplicity of
style. One work alone has come down to us on the "Witch of Endor."

Next in rank and far more illustrious was his chief suffragan, the
metropolitan of Palestine, the bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius. We honor him
as the father of ecclesiastical history, as the chief depositary of the
traditions which connect the fourth with the first century. But in the
bishops of Nicaea his presence awakened feelings of a very different
kind. He alone of the eastern prelates could tell what was in the mind
of the Emperor; he was the clerk of the imperial closet; he was the
interprete