were entirely possessed by the devil, like doddering Alexander and slippery Athanasius, would state the contrary. The Emperor Constantine (that lion-hearted warrior!) would certainly see the point, provided it was explained to him. But Constantine so easily got mixed, and there was indeed a danger that he would stamp the wrong type of Christianity as official, and plunge the world into heresy for thousands of years. How difficult everything was! One's immediate duty was to testify, so day after day Arius preached Arianism to the seven hundred virgins, to the corpse of the Evangelist St. Mark who lay buried beneath the church, and to the bright blue waves of the sea that in their ceaseless advance have now covered the whole scene.
The quarrel between him and his bishop grew so fierce and spread so far that Constantine was obliged to intervene and to beg his fellow-Christians to imitate the Greek philosophers, who could differ without shedding one another's blood. It was just the sort of appeal that everyone had been fearing that the Emperor would make. He was insufficiently alive to eternal truth. No one obeyed, and in desperation he summoned them to meet him at Nicæa on the Black Sea, and spent the interval in trying to find out what their quarrel turned on. Two hundred and fifty bishops attended, many priests, deacons irmumerable. Among the last named was Athanasius, who, thundering against Arius in full conclave, procured his overthrow. Amid scenes of incredible violence the Nicene Creed was passed, containing clauses (since omitted) in which Arianism was anathematized. Arius was banished. Athanasius led his tottering but
