with his fathers in God, passing from the end of the hall to his throne, while they stood to meet him in rows on either side. What must have been their reflections? What were his? Surely there was a shaking among the shades in Hades. If the dead were stirred up at that moment; if Pilate, if Nero, if Aurelius, if Decius, if Diocletian, saw their heroic successor there among Christ's servants, standing modestly till they begged him to be seated, surely they must have anticipated Julian in the outcry, "O Galilean! thou hast conquered." For the moral sublime, I can hardly recall any like moment in mere human history to be compared with it; its impressions upon the imagination and the thoughtful intellect are beyond comparison overwhelming and elevating, at once tender and majestic. Blessed martyrs! from your repose in paradise were ye permitted to behold, and to exclaim, "What hath God wrought?"

13. SIGNIFICANT FACTS.

Here two facts are to be noted. (1.) The holy Gospels were set on a throne in the old councils1 as the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Above the bishops and their presidents — above Cæsar -O how far! God's holy word was supreme. The rule

of faith was the word of God. Councils were only to bear testimony to the universal interpretation handed down in the churches. (2.) The regimen and polity of all the churches were the same, those of Ignatius and of Cyprian. Not a hint was

1 See Note K'.

2 See Note L'.

there of any difference; from the Persian Gulf to the Ultima Thule of the Northwest, "the ancient customs and traditions of Christians in this respect were a unit. Now, if these were a departure from what apostles had ordained in all the churches, when and how was the universal innovation established? We have the history of conflicts and schisms, starting from very trifling novelties. How comes it to pass, if the Episcopate was an afterthought, an innovation, a usurpation, that no convulsion followed, -no primitive witnesses recorded their protest? How, since human nature is always the same, were there none among the presbyters to maintain their order against a universal invasion? How is it when in all the presbyteries of the universe, respectively, some one man rose up claiming to preside over them by a divine call, and to be something which they were not that not a voice was heard to remonstrate, and to testify that it was not so in the days of Polycarp, and of the holy men who had seen the apostles and others who had seen the Lord?

14. RESULTS OF THE COUNCIL.

The results of the Nicene Council are not left to the fossilized past; they are universally felt to this day. Arius, whose heresy it condemned, finally stickled only for an iota: insert this least of all letters between two omicrons, and he would subscribe. But on the field of Waterloo the surrender of a single bar in a farm-yard gate would have been more fatal to Europe than the betrayal of

Gibraltar. So the compromise of truth by one jot or tittle added or taken away, would have proved the triumph of Antichrist. Not the homoiousion, but the homoousion was the truth of God. Christ is not of like substance with the Father; He is the Father, "of one substance" with Him of whom he could say, "I and my Father are one"; "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Such is and ever was the catholic faith. Further, the first pages of the Common Prayer, after the tables of lessons, embody the Easter Canons of Nicæa; its sublime symbol is recited liturgically in all the churches; in the Ordinal is to be found a strict conformity to its laws for preserving the succession of apostolic bishops. Its great canon, recognizing the patriarchates under the law of already existing usage, but admitting no inequality among them, except for convenience of order, has never been repealed. It makes the two capitals, "Old Rome" and "New Rome," as equals, first and second on the roll, but simply because they were the chief seats of empire; and this great canon is the law of the Church to this day, and as such defines those Westerns who refuse to obey it to be, not catholic, but schismatical.

15. THE PASCHAL LETTERS.

To Alexandria the council assigned a practical hegemony of the churches. Its bishop was to send forth annually the computation for Easter, which was thenceforth to be observed everywhere, by

1 See Note M'.

the Nicene canon, on the Lord's day after the full moon following the vernal equinox, and from his decision there was to be no appeal. Bishops on the Tiber took their law from the Nile. The Pope of Alexandria, for so its bishop is called to this day, exercised no pontifical powers, but only the canonical powers granted by the synod; yet if there was any shadow of a "papacy" at this period, it was not at Rome. Gregory Nazianzen, himself one of the primates of Christendom as Bishop of Constantinople, said justly of his brother patriarch, "The head of the Alexandrian church is the head of the world." At a later period, Justinian's rescript also recognizes Constantinople as the head of all the churches.

The traditional cultivation of astronomical studies in Egypt was thus invested with fresh interest and utility. To the Church belongs the glory of giving to science a revived and vigorous life in this sublime department. Men of science had kept her fettered to the Ptolemaic system, their marvellous invention. For two thousand years they had sworn by it, against Pythagoras. The Court of Rome only acted for them when it blindly imprisoned Galileo. But the Court of Rome is not the Church, nor has Christianity any responsibility for its follies. And let us never forget that it was a Christian presbyter who taught to scientists the true system of the universe. Copernicus was the forerunner of Newton, and a herald of the Reformation.

16. THE PATRIARCHATES.

Before passing to the other Ecumenical Councils, let us pause a moment to consider these patriarchal dignities, and what their name imports. Tertullian tells us of the natural influence exerted by the great centres upon surrounding churches; and, apart from civil centres, he notes the importance of those churches which had been founded by the apostles themselves, and which were known as "Apostolic Sees." In days when books were few and intelligence was transmitted with difficulty, the bishops and clergy were constantly forced to resort to these strongholds of testimony, for the solution of practical difficulties and for studying the Holy Scriptures. Those who were near to Corinth repaired to that city; and so others went to Ephesus, Jerusalem, or Cæsarea. In the West, Rome, being the only Apostolic See, had a larger clientèle. But for the preservation of order, the consecration of bishops, the enforcement of canons, and such matters, the great centres of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome had gained, by force of custom and convenience, a pre-eminence which the Nicene Council now made canonical. The parvenu capital called New Rome, lifted, ipso facto, as the seat of empire into equality with Old Rome, was made superior, in order of mention, to the older sees of the East. To Old Rome was conceded a primacy of honour, both as the ancient capital and as an Apostolic See, which Byzantium was not; but in other respects the new capital was made its equal, and owed it no obedience whatever. A vast juris