ibrary in the University at Oxford.

The art of printing soon spread over the greater part of Europe, and
to-day our world is a world of books, and the love of the Bible was the
origin of printing.

COUNCILS.

UNITY OF ROMAN CHURCH.

The Council of Nice assembled in Asia Minor by the direction of
Constantine in the year 325. Here we see more than two hundred and fifty
bishops, mostly from the east, with presbyters, deacons and others,
engaged in an effort to settle the Arian heresy, which consisted in
maintaining that Christ was the most exalted of all created things, but
inferior to God the Father. This opinion was first ventilated in the
year 318. It was publicly condemned by the Council of Alexandria in the
year 320, and then by the Council of Nice. This Council maintained the
perfect equality of essence of both Father and Son, and could only
express their relation by terming it eternal generation, which Dr. Adam
Clark calls eternal nonsense.

"Arius and his partisans were banished by the Council of Alexandria, but
as he had powerful adherents he found means to return at the express
command of Constantine. He was on his way to receive the oath of
ministerial allegiance when he very suddenly, as some say, died by
poison. His death was in the year 336. It is said that Constantine was
baptized into the Arian communion in the year 337. The followers of
Arius increased greatly after his death. Under Constantius, called
_Flavius Julius_, Arianism became the religion of the court, and it even
penetrated as far as Rome, which was obliged to receive into its
communion Felix, an Arian bishop. But the divisions which grew among the
Arians themselves prepared for the Catholic church an easy victory over
them and led to their final extinction." It is worthy of being
remembered at all times, and under all circumstances, that this whole
controversy is unauthorized in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, faith in him
as the Son of the living God being the great truth upon which the Church
of God is built. What eternal nonsense it is to be quarreling about
whether he and his Father are of the same essence. The truths of
Christianity and of Protestantism are found in the teachings of the
anti-Nicene fathers, but we must remember that these were uninspired
men, and therefore displayed no _standard_ of truth. The term fathers,
without qualification, includes a vast range, comprising a period of
eleven hundred years, from Clemens to