r, the chaplain, the confessor of Constantine. And yet he was
on the wrong side. Two especially, we may be sure, of the Egyptian
Church, were on the watch for any slip that he might make.
Athanasius--whatever may have been the opinions of later times
respecting the doctrines of Eusebius--was convinced that he was at heart
an Arian. Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly in the days of
persecution, and was ready with that most fatal taunt, which, on a later
occasion, he threw out against him, that, while he had thus suffered for
the cause of Christ, Eusebius had escaped by sacrificing to an idol.

If Eusebius was suspected of Arianism, he was supported by most of his
suffragan bishops in Palestine, of whom Paulinus of Tyre, and
Patrophilus of Bethshan (Scythopolis) were the most remarkable. One,
however, a champion of orthodoxy, was distinguished, not in himself, but
for the see which he occupied--once the highest in Christendom, in a few
years about to claim something of its former grandeur, but at the time
of the council known only as a second-rate Syro-Roman city--Macarius,
bishop of AElia Capitolina, that is, "Jerusalem."

From Neocaesarea, a border fortress on the Euphrates, came its confessor
bishop, Paul, who, like Paphnutius and Potammon, had suffered in the
persecutions, but more recently under Licinius. His hands were paralyzed
by the scorching of the muscles of all the fingers with red-hot iron.
Along with him were the orthodox representatives of four famous
churches, who, according to the Armenian tradition, travelled in
company. Their leader was the marvel, "the Moses" as he was termed, of
Mesopotamia, James, or Jacob, bishop of Nisibis. He had lived for years
as a hermit on the mountains--in the forests during the summer, in
caverns during the winter--browsing on roots and leaves like a wild
beast, and like a wild beast clothed in a rough goat-hair cloak. This
dress and manner of life, even after he became bishop, he never laid
aside; and the mysterious awe which his presence inspired was increased
by the stories of miraculous powers which, we are told, he exercised in
a manner as humane and playful as it was grotesque; as when he turned
the washerwoman's hair white, detected the impostor who pretended to be
dead, and raised an army of gnats against the Persians. His fame as a
theologian rests on disputed writings.

The second was Ait-allaha--"the brought of God," like the Greek
"Theophorus"--who