Asiatic christians...... and excluded them from the communion of the church of Rome. These haughty proceedings made no impression upon Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, who.... assembled a council....and adopted, with the rest of the African bishops, the opinion of the Asiatics.... Cyprian... in a second council held at Carthage, declared the baptism administered by heretics void of all efficacy and validity. Upon this... Stephen...by a decree full of invectives....excommunicated the African bishops."*

P. 250. "Libère."-During the persecution that Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, endured from the Arians, who were countenanced by the emperor Constantius, Liberius at first refused to approve the condemnation of Athanasius by the councils of Arles and Milan. He was, accordingly, banished to Thrace, where the hardships of exile,-so different from the enjoyments of a Roman bishopric,-appear to have overcome his firmness, and induced him to adopt the Arian tenets, when Constantius, influenced by the intreaties of the christians of Rome, agreed to reinstate Liberius in his see, and permit the deposition of Felix, who had usurped the government of the church of Rome.

* Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. vol. i, 285, 6.

The timid and wavering policy of Liberius appears the more striking, when contrasted with the intrepidity of so illustrious a coufessor as Athanasius. However disposed to ridicule his tenets, even the sceptical historian, Gibbon, feels compelled to acknowledge the pre-eminent virtues of the Alexandrian primate.

In the present age, his character is not perhaps sufficiently appreciated, and is seldom adverted to but in connexion with the creed formed, not by himself, but out of his numerous writings, and which has been received so generally as a standard of faith by christian churches,amongst others, by the Waldensian church. The historian, conscious that he had a subject worthy of panegyric, draws the character of that prelate with no common skill.

"We have seldom an opportunity of observing, either in active or speculative life, what effect may be produced, or what obstacles may be surmounted, by the force of a single mind, when it is inflexibly applied to the pursuit of a single object. The immortal name of Athanasius will never be separated from the catholic doctrine of the Trinity, to whose defence he consecrated....every faculty of his being,....The fathers of the Nicene council beheld with surprise and respect, the rising virtues of the young

deacon*. ...... and within five months after his return from Nice, the deacon Athanasius was seated on the archiepiscopal throne of Egypt. He filled that eminent station fortysix years, and his long administration was spent in a perpetual combat against the powers of Arianism. Five times was Athanasius expelled from his throne; twenty years he passed as an exile or a fugitive; and almost every province of the Roman empire was successively witness to his merit and his sufferings

Amidst the storms of prosecution, the archbishop of Alexandria was patient of labour, jealous of fame, careless of safety ...... His learning was much less profound and extensive than that of Eusebius of Cæsarea, and his rude eloquence could not be compared with the polished oratory of Gregory or Basil; but whenever the primate of Egypt was called upon to justify his sentiments, or his conduct, his unpremeditated style, either of speaking or writing, was clear, forcible, and persuasive. He has always been revered in the orthodox school as one of the most accurate masters of the christian theology.... But as Athanasius was conti

He then acted as secretary to the aged prelate, Alexander.-Ed.

nually engaged with the prejudices and passions of every order of men, from the monk to the emperor, the knowledge of human nature was his first and most important science. He preserved a distinct and unbroken view of a scene which was incessantly shifting; and never failed to improve those decisive moments, which are irrecoverably past before they are perceived by a common eye...... The propriety of his behaviour conciliated the affections both of the clergy and of the people. The Alexandrians were impatient to rise in arms for the defence of an eloquent and liberal pastor. In his distress he always derived support, or at least consolation, from the faithful attachment of his parochial clergy; and the hundred bishops of Egypt adhered, with unshaken zeal, to the cause of Athanasius...... He frequently performed the episcopal visitation of his provinces, from the mouth of the Nile to the confines of Ethiopia; familiarly conversing with the meanest of the populace, and humbly saluting the saints and hermits of the desert. Nor was it only in ecclesiastical assemblies, among men whose education and manners were similar to his own, that Athanasius displayed the ascendancy of his genius. He appeared with easy and respectful firmness in the courts of princes; and in the various turns of his prosperous and ad

verse fortune, he never lost the confidence of his friends, or the esteem of his enemies."

P. 250." Melèce d'Antioche."-During the second general synod or council, held at Constantinople, Meletius, its president, died. He was supported in the see of Antioch by the eastern churches, whilst his rival Paulinus was acknowledged bishop of Antioch by the western. Gregory Nazianzen succeeded Meletius in the office of president of the synod.

P. 251. "Quand les évêques de Rome furent parvenus à un haut dégré d'élevation.”—In the page from which this extract is taken, M. Peyran describes clearly, though concisely, some of those steps by which the bishops of Rome rose to their splendid but ill-acquired dominion over the christian world. Very different is the appearance of the church of Rome in the three first centuries, when her bishops and principal members died as martyrs, from that of the same church in subsequent ages, when her bishops, after first struggling for arbitrary power, at length exercised that power against their fellow-christians, with more relentless violence than the pagans had used towards their predecessors. "La grandeur de la ville,The pre-eminence of Rome, as the former capita

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. iii. 356, &c.