spel at Alexandria. St. John established a school at Ephesus, and
Polycarp at Smyrna. The very word theology, as Dean Stanley remarks,
arose from the peculiar questions agitated in the East. If there be such
a thing as apostolical succession, the Greek Church has it. To this day,
the English Church owes much to the East; the direction for holding of
Easter is of Alexandrian origin, and on every Sunday, in the "Kyrie
Eleison," the "Gloria in Excelsis," in part of the "Te Deum," and the
prayer of St. Chrysostom, English Churchmen borrow from the service of
the Church of Constantine. In Queen Elizabeth's time it was enacted that
the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were
equally judges of heresy as the High Court of Parliament with the assent
of the English clergy in their Convocation. No wonder, in these days,
when Churchmen are prone to rely on Church claims rather than on Bible
teaching--when, of little faith, and timid as to the future, they trust
rather to hazy traditions than to living truths--no wonder the Greek
Church has become to them an object of special reverence; that they long
to form a union with it. Though proud of its superiority, it regards
them as little better than Roman Catholics--Roman Catholics as a Greek
once said to the writer, without the Pope.

The oldest creed we have is Greek. The pious forgeries of our Church
historians are enough to make a candid inquirer a thorough sceptic as to
all they say; but we may still give some credit to Eusebius of Caesarea,
the father of ecclesiastical history. He tells us he read his creed
before the Council of Nicaea. It was the same, he said, that he had
learnt in his childhood from his predecessors, during the time that he
was a catechumen, and at his baptism; and which he had taught for many
years as a presbyter and bishop. It had been approved of by the Emperor
Constantine, and would have been carried had not there appeared a
probability of its being accepted by Arius and his partisans--a
consummation which, in the opinion of the majority, would have had a
disastrous effect, would have promoted union, would have saved many from
the sin of schism, would have allowed the energies of the Church to have
been directed to the conversion of the world rather than to internal
squabbles, would have relieved Constantine from the stain and guilt and
shame of having recourse to the sword to repress religious opinion. The
Council of Nica