hout
the Roman Empire, and in 325 convened the first ecumenical or general
Council at Nicaea [Nice], when Arius, excommunicated for heresy by a
provincial synod at Alexandria in 321, defended his views, but was
condemned. Arianism long maintained a theological and political
importance in the East and among the Goths and other nations converted
by Arian missionaries. In A.D. 330, Constantine removed the capital of
the Roman Empire to Constantinople, and thence dates the definite
establishment of the Greek Church and the serious rivalry with the Roman
Church over claims of preeminence, differences of doctrine and ritual,
charges of heresy and inter-excommunications, which ended in the final
separation of the churches in 1054.

In A.D. 461, the churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia separated from
the Church of Constantinople, over the Monophysite controversy on the
single divine or single compound nature of the Son; in 634 the struggle
with Mahometanism began; in 676 the Maronites of Lebanon formed a strong
sect, which, in 1182, joined the Roman Church. In 988, Vladimir the
Great of Russia founded the Graeco-Russian Church, in which the Greek
Church found a refuge, when Mahometanism was established at
Constantinople, after its capture by the Turks in 1453.)

HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER

The separation of the Eastern and Western churches, which finally took
place in the year 1054, was due to the operation of influences which had
been at work for several centuries before. From very early times a
tendency to divergence existed, arising from the tone of thought of the
dominant races in the two, the more speculative Greeks being chiefly
occupied with purely theological questions, while the more practical
Roman mind devoted itself rather to subjects connected with the nature
and destiny of man. In differences such as these there was nothing
irreconcilable: the members of both communions professed the same forms
of belief, rested their faith on the same divine persons, were guided by
the same standard of morals, and were animated by the same hopes and
fears; and they were bound by the first principles of their religion to
maintain unity with one another. But in societies, as in individuals,
inherent diversity of character is liable to be intensified by time, and
thus counteracts the natural bonds of sympathy, and prevents the two
sides from seeing one another's point of view. In this way it cooeperates
with and aggravates the force