nd too precise a definition might lead to dangers on the
Sabellian side. At this point the historian Eusebius came forward.
Though neither a great man nor a clear thinker, he was the most learned
student of the East. He had been a confessor in the persecution, and now
occupied an important see, and stood high in the Emperor's favour. With
regard to doctrine, he held a sort of intermediate position, regarding
the Lord not indeed as a creature, but as a secondary God derived from
the will of the Father. This, as we have seen, was the idea then current
in the East, that it is possible to find some middle term between the
creature and the highest deity. To a man of this sort it seemed natural
to fall back on the authority of some older creed, such as all could
sign. He therefore laid before the council that of his own church of
Caesarea, as follows:--

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
maker of all things, both visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Word of God,
God from God,
light from light,
life from life,
the only-begotten Son,
the first-born of all creation,
begotten of the Father before all ages,--
by whom also all things were made;
who for our salvation was made flesh,
and lived among men,
and suffered,
and rose again the third day,
and ascended to the Father,
and shall come again in glory, to judge quick
and dead;
And in the Holy Spirit.

Had the council been drawing up a creed for popular use, a short and
simple document of this kind would have been suitable enough. The
undecided bishops received it with delight. It contained none of the
vexatious technical terms which had done all the mischief--nothing but
familiar Scripture, which the least learned of them could understand. So
far as Arianism might mean to deny the Lord's divinity, it was clearly
condemned already, and the whole question might now be safely left at
rest behind the ambiguities of the Caesarean creed. So it was accepted at
once. Marcellus himself could find no fault with its doctrine, and the
Arians were glad now to escape a direct condemnation. But unanimity of
this sort, which really decided nothing, was not what Athanasius and
Marcellus wanted. They had not come to the council to haggle over
compromises, but to cast out the blasphemer, and they were resolved to
do it effectually.

[Sidenote: Persistence of Athanasius.]

Hardly a more m