the world ten years less old than they used, because it was so
thought at Antioch. But it was not so with their religious opinions,
and as long as Antioch and its emperor undertook to govern the Egyptian
church there was little peace in the province.

The three emperors did not take the same side in the quarrel which under
the name of religion was then unsettling the obedience of the Egyptians,
and even in some degree troubling the rest of the empire. Constantius
held the Arian opinions of Syria; but Constantine II. and Constans
openly gave their countenance to the party of the rebellious Athanasius,
who under their favour ventured to return to Alexandria, where, after
an absence of two years and four months, he was received in the warmest
manner by his admiring flock. But on the death of Constantine II.,
who was shortly afterwards killed in battle by his brother Constans,
Constantius felt himself more master of his own kingdom; he deposed
Athanasius, and summoned a council of bishops at Antioch to elect a new
patriarch of Alexandria. Christian bishops, though they had latterly
owed their ordination to the authority of their equals, had always
received their bishoprics by the choice of their presbyters or of their
flocks; and though they were glad to receive the support of the emperor,
they were not willing to acknowledge him as their head. Hence, when the
council at Antioch first elected Eusebius of AEmisa into the bishopric of
Alexandria, he chose to refuse the honour which they had only a doubtful
right to bestow, rather than to venture into the city in the face of his
popular rival. The council then elected Gregory, whose greater courage
and ambition led him to accept the office.

The council of Antioch then made some changes in the creed. A few years
later, a second council met in the same place, and drew up a creed more
near to what we now call the Athanasian; but it was firmly rejected by
the Egyptian and Roman churches. Gregory was no sooner elected to the
bishopric than he issued his commands as bishop, though, if he had
the courage, he had not at the time the power to enter Alexandria.
But Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian troops, was soon afterwards
ordered by the emperor to place him on his episcopal throne; and he led
him into the city, surrounded by the spears of five thousand soldiers,
and followed by the small body of Alexandrians that after this invasion
of their acknowledged rights still called the