The Arian controversy was now greatly agitating the Church. The emperor, having in vain endeavored to quiet it by a letter, decided to call an ecumenical council; that is, a general council of bishops from all parts of the world. It was a measure then without an example.
The city of Nice, one of the principal cities of Bithynia, was selected for the assembly. Three hundred and eighteen bishops met, besides a large number of subordinate ecclesiastics. The emperor defrayed the necessary expenses of the members of the council. The session was opened on the 19thof June, in the year of our Lord 325. The meeting was held in the large saloon of the palace, with benches arranged on either side for the bishops. The members of the council first entered, and silently took their seats: they were followed by a small group of the distinguished friends of the emperor. Then, upon a given signal, all rose, and the emperor himself came in. He was robed in imperial purple, and his gorgeous attire glistened with embroidery of gems and gold. A golden throne was prepared for him at the end of the hall, where he took his seat to preside over the deliberations.
One of the most prominent of the bishops, Eustache of Antioch, then rose, and, in the name of the council, thanked the emperor for all the favors he had conferred upon Christianity. The emperor briefly replied, expressing the joy he felt in presiding over such an assembly, and his hope that they might come to a perfectly harmonious result. He spoke in Latin, his native language. An interpreter repeated his words in Greek for the benefit of those who were most familiar with that language.
The council continued in session until the 25th of August,—sixty-seven days. The principal, the almost exclusive attention of the council was directed to the new doctrine of Arius,—that Christ, the Son, was not equal to the Father, but was created by him, and was subordinate to him. The decision of the council, called the Nicene Creed, rebuked, in the most emphatic terms, the Arian doctrine as heresy. Its language upon this point was as follows:—
“We believe in one only God, Father all-powerful, Creator of all things visible and invisible; and in one only Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son, engendered of the Father (that is to say, of the substance of the Father), God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten and not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom every thing has been made in heaven and on earth; who for us men, and for our salvation, has descended from the skies, has become incarnate and made man, has suffered, rose on the third day, ascended to the skies, and will come to judge the living and the dead.”
Thus words were heaped upon words, to express, beyond all possibility of doubt, the sense of the council of the entire equality of the Son with the Father. The Arians seemed disposed to accept the same language used by the Trinitarians, while they affixed a different signification to the words.
“The bishops,” writes the Abbé Fleury, “seeing the dissimulation of the Arians, and their bad faith, were constrained, that they might express their meaning more unequivocally, to include in a single word the sense of the Scriptures, and to say that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, making use of the Greek word homoousios, which this dispute has since rendered so celebrated. They thus declared that the Son was not only like the Father, but the same,—identical with him.”
All the bishops but two signed this creed. After some conference, those two signed also.
“It is said,” writes Eusebius,—“and it is Philistorge, an Arian author, who says it,—that these two, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Theognis of Nice, used fraud in their subscriptions, which they made together. They inserted the letter i in the word homoousios, so that it read homoiousios; which signifies similar to, not identically the same.”
The doctrine of Arius was thus condemned, as contrary to the teachings of the Scriptures, by this numerous council of pastors from all parts of the then known world. Several other subjects of minor importance were discussed, and decided upon. The Holy Spirit was declared to be also, like the Son, equal with the Father, and identically the same. The emperor wrote a letter, which was published with the decrees of council, urging that they should be accepted in all the churches. “The results,” said he, “of these sacred deliberations of the bishops, must be in accordance with the will of God.” In the most severe terms he condemned the doctrine of Arius, commanding that his writings, wherever found, should be burned. It was a dark age. Toleration was but little known. The emperor even went to the unwarrantable length of saying,—