Arius the Libyan: A Romance of the Primitive Church

by Nathan C. Kouns

Constantine handed the parchment to him, and Eusebius said: "This word [Greek: homoousios] is one which Arius condemneth as implying the identity of Father and Son, and my conscience suffereth not me to sign it; but the word [Greek: homoiousios], which differeth therefrom only by the one small [Greek: iota] therein, expresses exactly what I believe, that Father and Son are of like divine nature."

"And wouldst thou sign it if this letter had been written therein? and thy brother? and the others who are sentenced to banishment?"

"Assuredly!"

"It shall never be said," laughed Constantine, "that I have lost my friend and bishop for such a trifle!"

Then he pointed out the fact that a small "[Greek: i]" had been dexterously inserted between "[Greek: homo]" and "[Greek: ousios]" in both the places where the word occurred in the creed, making it the Arian [Greek: homoiousios], instead of the Trinitarian [Greek: homoousios].

"Now, bishop, give me thy signature, and communicate this arrangement confidentially unto the others, and let them come and sign also, that the creed may be unanimously signed, and all of these unseemly dissensions banished out of the established Church."

The bishop laughed lightly, but signed the confession of faith, and not long afterward all the others did so, except Arius, who was already far upon the road to the heart of Illyricum.

Constantine had now completed his long-cherished design of subverting the social and political organization of the primitive Church, and establishing a state religion, of which he might be the head in place of Jesus Christ, in whose name he founded a system that was in open rebellion against the Saviour's whole life and teachings.

It remained only for him to have the action of the OEcumenical Council confirmed by some miraculous circumstances, and the imperial ingenuity was fully equal to the occasion; for two members of the council had died at Nicea during its protracted session, and were buried in the church: With a grand and ostentatious procession by torch-light, the sacred roll of parchment was taken to their tomb and left there through the night, the emperor himself having prayed publicly that, if the departed bishops approved the action of the council, they might in some way signify their assent to the decrees and creed thereof; and early the next morning the signatures of the dead bishops were found upon the parchment! Their endorsement was unequivocal: "We, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, fully concurring with the first Holy and OEcumenical Synod, although removed from earth, have signed the volume with our own hands."

Still, the emperor did not dissolve the assembly, and, in order to gain over the personal affection even of those who had most stubbornly resisted his sacrilegious domination of the council, he provided a magnificent banquet for the members thereof, and lavished upon them every mark of love and honor. He lodged the one-eyed, hamstrung old Paphnutius in his own palace, "and often sent for him to hear the story of his persecutions; and now it was remarked how he would throw his arms round the old man, and put his lips to his eyeless socket as if to suck out with his reverential kiss the blessing which, as it were, lurked in the sacred cavity, and stroked down with his imperial hand the frightful wound; how he pressed his legs and arms, and the royal purple, to the paralyzed limbs, and put his own eyeball into the socket." And, because those maimed and tortured members of the council who had been "confessors" enjoyed the reputation of especial sanctity and honor throughout the Church, Constantine used the same disgusting demagogy in his dealings with them all, and fawned upon and flattered them in the name of Jesus, until he believed he had stolen for himself their influence in aiding him to eradicate primitive Christianity out of the East, as he had already done in the West, and so banishing the kingdom of heaven from the face of the earth; and so nourishing in the very bosom of the Church, maintained and governed by imperial authority, the ancient crimes of war, slavery, and mammon-worship, perpetuating the bondage of the people unto the ruling classes, and giving the sanction of religion to class distinctions between men and families, based upon this idolatry, which had been always the curse of human life.