Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/72

Their power throughout the churches of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis was, by ancient custom, which the Nicene council afterwards confirmed, almost monarchical, extending over about a hundred bishops, who revered their judgments as the decisions of the see of Rome were revered in Italy. One experience of a different kind, most fruitful in its consequences, was Athanasius's acquaintance with the great hermit Anthony. He tells us, in his Life of Anthony, that he often saw him; and although that reading of the conclusion of the preface, which makes him say that "he himself for some time attended on him, and poured water on his hands," may be considered doubtful, yet we know that he was afterwards spoken of as "the ascetic," and that when, years later, he took shelter in the cells of the monks of Egypt, he found himself perfectly at home. He contracted an admiration for monasticism, which will not surprise those who remember that the spiritual intensity of the Christian life had found a most emphatic, though a one-sided expression, in the lives of men who fled, like Anthony, from a society at once tainted and brutalized beyond all modern conception. [ Antonius.]

The two essays of Athanasius, Against the Gentiles and On the Incarnation, which form one complete work addressed to a convert from heathenism, cannot be dated later than the end of 318; for they make no reference to the Arian controversy which broke out in 319. Dorner, in his work On the Person of Christ, has given a résumé of their argument on the threefold subject of God, man, and the Incarnate Word; and Möhler calls the book on the Incarnation "the first attempt that had been made to present Christianity and the chief circumstances of the life of Jesus Christ under a scientific aspect. By the sure tact of his noble and Christian nature, everything is referred to the Person of the Redeemer: everything rests upon Him: He appears throughout." The young author seems to have been ordained deacon about this time, and placed in the position of chief among the Alexandrian deacons. Among the clergy who joined the archbishop in calling on Arius to retract, and who afterwards assented to his deposition, was the young archdeacon of Alexandria (see the Benedictine Athanasius, i. 396 seq.). In this spirit he attended Alexander to the Nicene council in 325.

In that assembly he is represented by Gregory of Nazianzum (Orat. 21) as "foremost among those who were in attendance on bishops," and as "doing his utmost to stay the plague." His writings may assure us of the argument which he would maintain: that the real Divinity of the Saviour was (i) asserted in many places of Scripture, (ii) involved in the notion of His unique Sonship, (iii) required by the Divine economy of redemption, and (iv) attested by the immemorial consciousness of the church. And although, as he himself informs us, the council would willingly have confined themselves to purely Scriptural terms (de Decr. 19) if their legitimate sense could have been bonâ fide admitted; although too he was far from imagining that any form or expression of human thought would adequately represent a Divine mystery; yet

his convictions went thoroughly with the adoption of the term "Homoousion" or "co-essential," explained, as it was, in a sense which made it simply equivalent to "truly Son of God," and proposed as a test of adherence to the Scriptural Christology. And if we are to understand his mind at the close of the council, we must say that he regarded its proceedings as something done, in fact, "for the rightful honour of Jesus." Nothing was to him more certain than that Jesus was, in the full force of the words, God Incarnate; that Arianism was essentially a denial, and the "Homoousion" the now authenticated symbol, of His claim on men's absolute devotion; and that it was infinitely worth while to go through any amount of work or suffering in defence of such a truth, and in the cause of such a Master.

More work was near at hand, and suffering was not far off. A solemn and touching incident of Alexander's last moments is connected with the history of Athanasius, who was then absent from Alexandria. The dying man, while his clergy stood around him, called for Athanasius. One of those present, also bearing that name, answered, but was not noticed by the archbishop, who again repeated the name, and added, "You think to escape—but it cannot be." Some time appears to have elapsed between his death and the assembling of the Egyptian bishops to consecrate a successor. An encyclical letter of these same Egyptian prelates proclaimed to all Christendom, some years later, that a majority of them had elected Athanasius in the presence, and amid the applause, of the whole Alexandrian laity, who for nights and days persevered in demanding him as "the good, pious, ascetic Christian," who would prove a "genuine bishop," and prayed aloud to Christ for the fulfilment of their desire (Apol. c. Ar. 6). It was granted; and then, in the words of Gregory, "by the suffrages of the whole people, and not by those vile methods, afterwards prevalent, of force and bloodshed, but in a manner apostolic and spiritual, was Athanasius elevated to the throne of Mark," some time after the beginning of May in 326, and very probably on June 8.

(2) From his Consecration (326) to his First Exile (336).—At the outset of his archiepiscopate is to be placed the organization of the church in Ethiopia or Abyssinia by his consecration of Frumentius as bp. of Axum. [ Edesius.] Another event of these comparatively quiet times was Athanasius's visitation of the Thebaid, a region where much trouble was being caused by the Arians, and by the Meletians, who resisted his earnest efforts to repress their separatist tendency.

Now began the troubles from which the Arians never suffered Athanasius to rest till the last hour of his life. It was probably in 330 that he had his first severe experience of their hatred. After the Nicene council, Constantine had become a zealot for orthodoxy, and Eusebius of Nicomedia had been exiled. But Eusebius had procured his recall by orthodox professions; it may have been by his means that Arius himself was recalled, perhaps in Nov. 330. Eusebius now entered