Then at last this historic Council was ready to break up. But before the bishops separated, the Emperor celebrated the completion of his twentieth year of reign by inviting them all to a great banquet.
“Not one of them,” says Eusebius,[[101]] “was missing and the scene was of great splendour. Detachments of the bodyguard and other troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn swords and through their midst the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost apartments, in which were some of the Emperor’s own companions at table, while others reclined on couches laid on either side.”
He gave gifts to each according to his rank, singling out a few for special favour. Among these was Paphnutius. Socrates says that the Emperor had often sent for him to the palace and kissed the vacant eye socket of the maimed and crippled confessor. Acesius the Novatian was another, though he steadily refused to abate one jot or tittle of his old convictions. Constantine listened without offence, as the old man declared his passionate belief that those who after baptism had committed a sin were unworthy to participate in the divine mysteries, and merely remarked, with sportive irony, “Plant a ladder, then, Acesius, and climb up to Heaven alone!”[[102]]
At the closing session the Emperor delivered a short farewell speech, in which his theme was again the urgent need of unity and uniformity within the Christian Church. He implored the bishops to forget and forgive past offences and live in peace, not envying one another’s excellencies, but regarding the special merit of each as contributing to the total merit of all. They should leave judgment to God; when they quarrelled among themselves they simply gave their enemies an opportunity to blaspheme. How were they to convert the world, he asked, if not by the force of their example? And then he went on to speak plain common sense. Men do not become converts, he said, from their zeal for the truth. Some join for what they can get, some for preferment, some to secure charitable help, some for friendship’s sake. “But the true lovers of true argument are very few: scarce, indeed, is the friend of truth.”[[103]] Therefore, he concluded, Christians should be like physicians, and prescribe for each according to his ailments. They must not be fanatics: they must be accommodating. Constantine could not possibly have given sounder advice to a body of men whose besetting sin was likely to be fanaticism and not laxity of doctrine. The passage, therefore, is not without significance. The Church had already begun to act upon the State; here was the State palpably beginning to react upon the Church—in the direction of reasonableness, compromise, and an accommodating temper. Then, after begging the bishops to remember him in their prayers, he dismissed them to their homes, and they left Nicæa, says Eusebius, glad at heart and rejoicing in the conviction that, in the presence of their Emperor, the Church, after long division, had been united once more.
Constantine evidently shared the same conviction. He had no doubt whatever that the Arian heresy was finally silenced. So we find him writing to the church at Alexandria, declaring that all points which seemed to be open to different interpretations have been thoroughly discussed and settled. All must abide by the chose jugée. Arius had been proved to be a servant of the Devil. Three hundred bishops had said it, and “that which has commended itself to the judgment of three hundred bishops cannot be other than the doctrine of God, seeing that the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the minds of so many honourable men, must have thoroughly enlightened them as to the will of God.”[[104]] He took for granted, therefore, that, those who had been led away by Arius would return at once to the Catholic fold. The Emperor also wrote another letter, which he addressed “To the Churches,” in which he declared that each question at issue had been discussed until a decision was arrived at “acceptable to Him who is the inspector of all things,” and added that nothing was henceforth left for dissension or controversy in matters of faith.[[105]] Most of the letter, indeed, consists of argument shewing the desirability of a uniform celebration of Easter, but one can see that the leading thought in the writer’s mind is that the last word had at length been uttered on the cardinal doctrines of the Christian Faith. The Council had been a brilliant success. The three hundred bishops announced to the Catholic Church the decisions of their “great and holy Synod,” with the explicit declaration that “all heresy has been cut out of the Church.”[[106]] Arius was banished and Eusebius of Nicomedia with him. The triumph of orthodoxy seemed finally assured.
CHAPTER XII
THE MURDERS OF CRISPUS AND FAUSTA
We saw in the last chapter how Constantine presided over the deliberations of the bishops at Nicæa, mild, benignant, gracious, and condescending. It is a very different being whom we see at Rome in 326, suspicious, morose, and striking down in blind fury his own gallant son. The contrast is startling, the cause obscure and mysterious, but if the secret is to be discovered at all, it is probably to be found in the jealousies which raged in the Imperial House.