e persecution was renewed from time to time
throughout the remainder of Sapor's long reign.

CHAPTER XI.

THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA.

A.D. 325.

We might expect to find that, when the persecutions by the heathen were
at an end within the Roman empire, Christians lived together in peace
and love, according to their Lord's commandment; but it is a sad truth
that they now began to be very much divided by quarrels among
themselves. There had, indeed, been many false teachers in earlier
times; but now, when the emperor had become a Christian, the troubles
caused by such persons reached much further than before. The emperors
took part in them, and made laws about them, and the whole empire was
stirred by them.

Constantine was, as I have said,[2] very fond of taking a part in Church
matters, without knowing much about them. Very soon after the first law
by which he gave liberty to the Christians, he was called in to settle a
quarrel which had been raised in Africa by the followers of one Donatus,
who separated from the Church and set up bishops of their own, because
they said that the bishops of Carthage and some others had not behaved
rightly when the persecutors required them to deliver up the Scriptures.
I will tell you more about these _Donatists_ (as they are called)
by-and-by,[3] and I mention them now only because it was they who first
invited the emperor to judge in a dispute about religion.

[2] Page 40.

[3] See Chapter XXI., Parts III., IV., and V.

When Constantine put down Licinius and got possession of the East (as
has been said), he found that a dispute of a different kind from the
quarrel of the Donatists was raging there. One Arius, a presbyter (or
priest) of Alexandria, had begun some years before this time to deny
that our blessed Lord was God from everlasting. Arius was a crafty man,
and did all that he could to make his opinion look as well as possible;
but, try as he might, he was obliged to own that he believed our Lord to
be a _creature_. And the difference between the highest of created
beings and God, the maker of all creatures, is infinite; so that it
mattered little how Arius might smooth over his shocking opinion, so
long as he did not allow our Lord to be truly God from all eternity.

The bishop of Alexandria, whose name was Alexander, excommunicated Arius
for his impiety; that is to say, he solemnly turned him out of the
Church, so that no faithful Christian should have anything t