ng the cause in his hands. He was one of those
awkward theologians who never could attack Arianism without falling into
Sabellianism; and in later life he was twice deposed from his see for
heresy, once excommunicated by Athanasius himself; and in the present
form of the Nicene Creed one clause--that which asserts that "the
kingdom of Christ shall have no end"--is said to have been expressly
aimed at his exaggerated language.

And now come two, who in the common pictures of the council always
appear together, of whom the one probably left the deepest impression on
his contemporaries; and the other, if he were present at all, on the
subsequent traditions of the council. From the island of Cyprus there
arrived the simple shepherd Spyridion, a shepherd both before and after
his elevation to the episcopate. Strange stories were told by his
fellow-islanders to the historian Socrates of the thieves who were
miraculously caught in attempting to steal his sheep, and of Spyridion's
good-humored reply when he found them in the morning, and gave them a
ram, that they might not have sat up all night for nothing.

Another tale, exactly similar to the fantastic Mussulman legends which
hand about stories of Jerusalem, told how he had gained an answer from
his dead daughter Irene to tell where a certain deposit was hidden. Two
less marvellous, but more instructive, stories bring out the simplicity
of his character. He rebuked a celebrated preacher at Cyprus for
altering, in a quotation from the gospels, the homely word for "bed"
into "couch." "What! are you better than He who said 'bed,' that you are
ashamed to use his words?" On occasion of a way-worn traveller coming to
him in Lent, finding no other food in the house, he presented him with
salted pork; and when the stranger declined, saying that he could not as
a Christian break his fast: "So much the less reason," he said, "have
you for scruple; to the pure all things are pure."

A characteristic legend attaches to the account of his journey to the
council. It was his usual practice to travel on foot. But on this
occasion the length of the journey, as well as the dignity of his
office, induced him to ride, in company with his deacon, on two mules, a
white and a chestnut. One night at his arrival at a caravansary where a
cavalcade of orthodox bishops were already assembled, the mules were
turned out to pasture, while he retired to his devotions. The bishops
had conceived an alarm l