Arius was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to banishment with some other leaders of his party, including Eusebius of Nicomedia. But afterward at the entreaty of the Princess Constantia, sister of the emperor, they were recalled. For 300 years after the date of its origin Arianism was a considerable power, both political and religious, not only in the East where it had its birth, but in western and Teutonic nations. “The Gothic population that descended on the Roman empire, so far as it was Christian at all, held to the faith of Arius. Our first Teutonic version of the Scriptures was by an Arian missionary, Ulfilas. The first conqueror of Rome, Alaric, the first conqueror of Africa, Genseric, were Arians. Theodoric the Great, King of Italy, was an Arian. The Gothic kingdoms of Spain and France were the stronghold of Arianism.”
But the orthodox doctrine established at Nice won its way and secured its place in the heart of Christendom, which, as Dean Stanley says, “with but few exceptions receives the confession of the first council, as the earliest, the most solemn, and the most universal expression of Christian theology.”
SONNET ON CHILLON.
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d—