expression of the Church's mind as against the morbid and unchristian type of abstinence which had been prophetically censured by St. Paul, and had distinguished the Encratite sect (so called) in the second century. When it is ruled that clerics who are in the habit of abstaining from meat, or even from vegetables cooked with meat, must at least taste the meat set before them, by way of proving that their own practice has no relation to non-Christian ideas (such as were hinted at in 1 Tim. iv. 3) we are to understand a reference to the Agape or common meals in which Christians periodically shared by way of "love-feasts," which had been abused by the rich at Alexandria, and were now often-as at Rome-associated with the commemoration of martyrs, and held at or near their tombs.

The Council of Neocæsarea is commonly said to have been held but little later than the Ancyran. The Greek preface to its canon calls them subsequent to the Ancyran, but earlier than the Nicene. Some would assign it to the year after the Ancyran, i.e. A.D. 315; others would say a few years later. Nineteen bishops (including eleven who were present at Ancyra) subscribed this council's acts,-if the lists of names be trustworthy. The city of Neocæsarea, which "had begun to flourish from B.C. 64," was now "the large and beautiful capital" of Pontus. It had become illustrious, in the eyes of all Asiatic Christians, by the episcopate of Gregory surnamed "the Wonder-worker," who found there, says Basil, only seventeen Christians, and left there a convert population. Even if we could suppose that there was a basis of truth in those accounts of his supernatural powers which were first published about a century after his time, and at any rate have a legendary character, we should still believe that the moral beauty and nobleness of his pastoral life and labours were at least as impressive and fruitful as the presence of what, in the language of the apostolic age, would be called his "charismata" or visible" mighty works." The prelates who met at his city, probably just fifty years after his death, would find memorials of him at every point of the Church life of his people. Whether or not his dying wish had been obeyed, and no distinctive burial-place marked out for him-for he desired, we are told, to be "even after death a stranger and sojourner"-we may be sure that the whole city was practically his monument, and that his memory was "ever fresh" in his people's mind. His successors, whom Basil afterwards compared to "a chain of precious stones,'

had been careful to hand on the traditions of his teaching and his sanctity: “not a word, not an action, not a single point of ritual observance" which was traceable to his authority, had been altered since his time: the holyday rejoicings which he had transferred from heathen festivals to the anniversaries of martyrs were now, doubtless, invested by recent events (such as the hideous tortures inflicted on some Christians of Pontus) with a more vivid and intense, yet a more grave and awestruck exultation: in his formula of doxology, glory was ascribed " to the Father, with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit;" of his formula of faith, or creed, the autograph, written with "his blessed hand," as Gregory of Nyssa says, was preserved as a priceless treasure, and the words were daily used to instil the faith into the minds of the young, and to preserve the whole flock in the lines of intelligent orthodoxy. The church in which the Council now met was doubtless that of which Gregory had laid the foundations, and which "some one of his successors❞—probably the bishop now occupying his seat—is said by Gregory of Nyssa to have completed and beautified; and altogether, the influence of him who was known in the Eastern Church of this century as "Gregory the Great" would be felt to have formed the whole moral atmosphere of the Pontic capital.

The Neocæsarean canons throw further light on the development of ascetic ideas. A presbyter is not to join in the wedding feast of a "digamist," because strictly he would be bound to put his entertainer to penance. A layman whose wife has dishonoured him ought not to be ordained; a priest who does not put away a faithless wife, or a priest who voluntarily confesses that before his ordination he fell into unchastity, ought no longer to celebrate. No priest ought to marry after his ordination: the meaning is, if he is already married, and is well qualified for priesthood, let him be ordained; but if at his ordination he is single, he must not afterwards accept the obligations of married life. This, as we know, was a rule of long standing at the time of the Nicene Council; it had grown out of such a one-sided construction of the apostolic advice in 1 Cor. vii. as would be fostered by recoil from the hideous pollutions of pagan society, amid which the idea of marriage itself had not yet been cleared of the "serpent's trail,” had not vindicated its own pure dignity. Another canon excommunicates a woman who has married two brothers successively. This implies the moral obligatoriness of the Levitical prohibition; and it was quoted by Henry VIII.'s advocates in his Divorce case,

as representing the primitive Church's mind. Another recognises only two classes of Catechumens, Hearers the lower, and Kneelers the higher; and perhaps we may understand the canon as not marking off the class called "Competents," or joint applicants for speedy baptism. The Nicene canons speak of Hearer-Catechumens and Catechumens proper; and those who were afterwards distinguished as Competents would naturally, at first, be reckoned among the latter.

The twelfth is perhaps the most remarkable of all the decrees of Neocæsarea. If any one be enlightened' when ill, he cannot be advanced to the order of presbyter (for his faith is not from free choice, but from necessity), unless, perchance, on account of his subsequent earnestness and faith, and of lack of men." This is the law-older than the middle of the third century, so far as regards its substance-which puts a distinct mark of disparagement on those cases of baptism (called "enlightenment" from Heb. vi. 4) in which the recipient had wilfully deferred receiving it, or neglected to apply for it, while in health, and then sought for it when the fear of death was upon him. Persons who so acted were called Clinics, or "men of the sick-bed," and were by rule debarred from ordination. Sometimes there would be a deliberate plan of deferring until death drew near, in order to pass out of the world with the full benefit of the baptismal cleansing. Those who so acted would make some enormous assumptions; as, that they would not be struck down by sudden death, and that they would not only in their last hour have time and means for being baptized, but, after years spent in deliberate self-exclusion from Christian grace, were sure to repent and "turn to the Lord;" they would also exhibit a revolting heartlessness in withholding from Him the service of their best years, and they would suggest the suspicion of trying to "make the best of both worlds" in a very unchristian sense. The practice would connect itself with a reverence "not according to knowledge" for the sanctity of baptism, and with an exaggerated conception of the heinousness of sinning after receiving it; and thus a show of religiousness would be attached to a postponement which the Church, by councils and fathers, denounced as flagrantly wrong. It had been branded by Tertullian as an "attempt to secure a furlough for sinning ;" and in the latter part of the fourth century it was condemned on similar grounds by Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus.

Neocæsarea joins with Ancyra in giving us information about

Chorepiscopi. We find that the rural presbyters stood on a footing of inferiority to the city presbyters; and as they were unquestionably real presbyters, we see how the Chorepiscopi might be subordinate to the diocesans, and yet be really bishops, as really as our English "bishops-suffragan." A rural presbyter must not celebrate, nor even administer, where the city presbyters were present; he may only do so in their absence. But the Chorepiscopi, who are regarded as fellow-ministers with the bishops, although as prefigured by "the Seventy," may do what the rural presbyters may not do.

A curious and somewhat formalistic rule restricts the number of deacons even in a large city, to seven, and refers for a reason to Acts vi. Here we see that, as in the Ignatian Epistles, the diaconate is treated as a sacred order. The restriction, as we know from Cornelius of Rome, was observed there, and the result was unfortunate; for the seven Roman deacons in the midst of some fifty presbyters were tempted to exhibit a self-importance which aroused the indignation of Jerome.

CHAPTER IV.

LICINIUS AND CONSTANTINE.

It is probable that the Council of Neocæsarea was the last which was permitted to meet in Asia Minor until the final overthrow of Licinius. He had been unsuccessful in his first war with his colleague, and had been compelled to sue for peace, which was granted in the December of 314. This treaty left him master of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, while it added to Constantine's dominions Greece and Macedonia, Pannonia, Dacia, and that Dalmatian region from which the Constantian house had sprung-a house now reigning, as Gibbon expresses it, "from the confines of Caledonia to the extremity of Peloponnesus." Licinius was not likely to forget his own humiliation. His genius" had been "rebuked," his pride had been wounded, by the unfailing good fortune and energy of a prince much younger than himself, and that prince a patron of the Christians. And for Christians, both as enemies of the old-world ways, and as the natural well-wishers of the man whom he regarded with jealous dislike and resentment, the old comrade of Galerius entertained a stronger aversion than he could at first afford to show. He had taken part in the great Act of Toleration, and had so far seemed an "advocate of peace," and even "of true religion;" he had executed a terrific vengeance on the authors of an elaborate pagan imposture, and had been celebrated by Christian exultation as a signal instrument of Divine judgments on the root and stock of the persecutors. But in his heart, says Socrates, "he hated Christians," that is, as a disturbing element in society-for he had no pagan enthusiasm, and was too rude and illiterate to appreciate religious controversies: a new sect, a spreading "cultus," was to him a nuisance, and by its political bearings might become a peril ; and although it might be politically necessary for him to practise