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CHAPTER I.

SCHOOLS AND PARTIES IN AND ABOUT THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH, CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATION TO THE ARIAN HERESY.

SECTION I.

THE CHURCH OF ANTIOCH.

Ir is proposed in the following pages to trace the outlines of the history of Arianism, between the first and the second General Councils. These are its natural chronological limits, whether by Arianism we mean a heresy or a party in the Church. In the Council held at Nicæa, in Bithynia, A.D. 325, it was formally detected and condemned. In the subsequent years it ran its course, through various modifications of opinion, and with various success, till the date of the second General Council, held A.D. 381, at Constantinople,. when the resources of heretical subtilty being at length exhausted, the Arian party was ejected from the Catholic body, and formed into a distinct sect, exterior to it. It is during this period, while it still maintained its hold upon the creeds and the government of the Church, that

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