ful to slur over the difficulty like Pelagius, he was yet too
timid to realize the possibility of a conquest of sin by man, even
though that man were Christ himself.

[Sidenote: The Apollinarians.]

Apollinarius and his school contributed not a little to the doctrinal
confusion of the East. His ideas were current for some time in various
forms, and are attacked in some of the later works of Athanasius; but it
was not till about 375 that they led to a definite schism, marked by the
consecration of the presbyter Vitalis to the bishopric of Antioch. From
this time, Apollinarian bishops disputed many of the Syrian sees with
Nicenes and Anomoeans. Their adherents were also scattered over Asia,
and supplied one more element of discord to the noisy populace of
Constantinople.

[Sidenote: Last years of Athanasius (366-373).]

The declining years of Athanasius were spent in peace. Valens had
restored him in good faith, and never afterwards molested him. If Lucius
the Arian returned to Alexandria to try his chance as bishop, the
officials gave him no connivance--nothing but sorely needed shelter from
the fury of the mob. Arianism was nearly extinct in Egypt.

[Sidenote: Athanasius and Marcellus (before 371).]

One of his last public acts was to receive an embassy from Marcellus,
who was still living in extreme old age at Ancyra. Some short time
before 371, the deacon Eugenius presented to him a confession on behalf
of the 'innumerable multitude' who still owned Marcellus for their
father. 'We are not heretics, as we are slandered. We specially
anathematize Arianism, confessing, like our fathers at Nicaea, that the
Son is no creature, but of the essence of the Father and co-essential
with the Father; and by the Son we mean no other than the Word. Next we
anathematize Sabellius, for we confess the eternity and reality of the
Son and the Holy Spirit. We anathematize also the Anomoeans, in spite
of their pretence not to be Arians. We anathematize finally the
Arianizers who separate the Word from the Son, giving the latter a
beginning at the incarnation because they do not confess him to be very
God. Our own doctrine of the incarnation is that the Word did not come
down as on the prophets, but truly became flesh and took a servant's
form, and as regards flesh was born as a man.' There is no departure
here from the original doctrine of Marcellus, for the eternity of the
Son means nothing more than the eternity of the Word. The me