that calls itself the "New Church." The Arians were proud of Arius—at least this was the case in the early days; later, when opprobrium had been heaped on his name, some of them were not so eager to claim it.
Arius appears before us as a strange figure—a tall, gaunt man, wearing his hair in a tangled mass, with a wild look in his eyes, and restless convulsive movements in his limbs, ascetic in his habits, generally grave and silent, but capable of fierce excitement when fairly roused, and very attractive in the earnestness of his manner and the sweetness of his voice. He resorted to a dubious device for the popularising of his doctrines, composing dry, didactic hymns in the metre of vulgar banquet songs, to the scandal of sober Churchmen, but indicating that he knew how to catch the ear of the public. These hymns would be sung to lively music and dancing—a curious compound of worldly gaiety and orgiastic pagan practices, inherited from the ancient religion of the Egyptians and continued down to the present day in the weird practices of the dervishes.
Still, it is doubtful if Arius would have made much headway if he had been left to propagate his ideas on their own merits and only by the force of his unaided influence. Alexander summoned a synod of neighbouring bishops which excommunicated the heretic, who then left Egypt and visited leading ecclesiastics in Syria and Asia Minor, from some of whom he received sympathetic treatment. But there was one man whose adhesion was the making of his cause. This was Eusebius of Nicomedia, the most powerful prelate in the East, an old friend of Arius, who soon became the real leader of the party, and to whom must be attributed the political character of the movement in its subsequent development. With the obscure presbyter Arius it was only a ferment working locally; under the hands of the great bishop Eusebius it leaped into imperial importance, so that the settlement of it became a first concern of the State with Constantine himself. After this, political intrigues in the interests of
