found prefixed to that document, is the nineteenth day of June, A. D. 325.[1] A letter from Hosius, and others of the Council, to Silvester, the Roman pope, bears date as I find in Baronius, thus: "viii. Kalen. Julias;" that is, the eighth day before the first of July. Finally, the very learned ecclesiastical historian, Dr. Augustus Neander, asserts that the assembling of the great Synod must have been as late as July. This last mentioned writer points out, in his following excellent observation, the plan I shall endeavor to pursue in this work, when he says,—"As no complete collection of the transactions of this Council [of Nice][2] has come down to us, the only means left, for obtaining a knowledge of the true course of its proceedings, is to take the accounts given by those reporters of the different parties, who were present at the deliberations, and form our conclusions from a comparison of them all." I shall also give some additional narratives of persons and important events connected with the history of the Nicene Council and its decrees; quoting the oldest and best authorities, and not always noting the omissions, which will be made for the sake of brevity.
I shall be cautious of judging the motives of the partisans in this Council, but let the reader form his own conclusions from facts and actual transactions and attendant circumstances. There is manifest partiality in all the original accounts, from which these facts and circumstances are to be gleaned. "The Arian history needs," says Dr. Murdock, in his translation of Mosheim, "a writer of integrity, and void alike of hatred and love."
