r
agent for the rough work to be done. Athanasius was expelled by the
apostate prefect Philagrius, and Gregory installed by military violence
in his place. Scenes of outrage were enacted all over Egypt.

[Sidenote: Athanasius and Marcellus at Rome.]

Athanasius fled to Rome. Thither also came Marcellus of Ancyra, and
ejected clerics from all parts of the East. Under the rule of Constans
they might meet with justice. Bishop Julius at once took the position of
an arbiter of Christendom. He received the fugitives with a decent
reserve, and invited the Eusebians to the council they had already asked
him to hold. For a long time there came no answer from the East. The old
heretic Carpones appeared at Rome on Gregory's behalf, but the envoys of
Julius were detained at Antioch till January 340, and at last dismissed
with an unmannerly reply. After some further delay, a synod of about
fifty bishops met at Rome the following autumn. The cases were examined,
Marcellus and Athanasius acquitted, and it remained for Julius to report
their decision to the Easterns.

[Sidenote: The letter of Julius.]

His letter is one of the ablest documents of the entire controversy.
Nothing can be better than the calm and high judicial tone in which he
lays open every excuse of the Eusebians. He was surprised, he says, to
receive so discourteous an answer to his letter. But what was their
grievance? If it was his invitation to a synod, they could not have much
confidence in their cause. Even the great council of Nicaea had decided
(and not without the will of God) that the acts of one synod might be
revised by another. Their own envoys had asked him to hold a council,
and the men who set aside the decisions of Nicaea by using the services
of heretics like Secundus, Pistus and Carpones could hardly claim
finality for their own doings at Tyre. Their complaint that he had given
them too short a notice would have been reasonable if the appointed day
had found them on the road to Rome. 'But this also, beloved, is only an
excuse.' They had detained his envoys for months at Antioch, and plainly
did not mean to come. As for the reception of Athanasius, it was neither
lightly nor unjustly done. The Eusebian letters against him were
inconsistent, for no two of them ever told the same story; and they
were, moreover, contradicted by letters in his favour from Egypt and
elsewhere. The accused had come to Rome when summoned, and waited for
them eighteen mont