so open to flattery, gave him also a keen desire to remedy the social misery around him; and in this he looked for help to Christianity.  Amidst the horrors of Diocletian’s persecution a conviction grew upon him that the power which fought the Empire with success must somehow come from the Supreme.  Thus he slowly learned to recognise the God of the Christians in his father’s God, and in the Sun-god’s cross of light to see the cross of Christ.  But in Christianity itself he found little more than a confirmation of natural religion.  Therefore, with all his interest in the churches, he could not reach the secret of their inner life.  Their imposing monotheism he fully appreciated, but the person of the Lord was surely a minor question.  Constantine shared the heathen feelings of his time, so that the gospel to him was only a monotheistic heathenism.  Thus Arianism came up to his idea of it, and the whole controversy seemed a mere affair of words.

[Sidenote:  His view of the controversy.]

But if he had no theological interest in the question, he could not overlook its political importance.  Egypt was always a difficult province to manage; and if these Arian songs caused a bloody tumult in Alexandria, he could not let the Christians fight out their quarrels in the streets, as the Jews were used to do.  The Donatists had given him trouble enough over a disputed election in Africa, and he did not want a worse than Donatist quarrel in Egypt.  Nor was the danger confined to Egypt; it had already spread through the East.  The unity of Christendom was at peril, and with it the support which the shattered Empire looked for from an undivided church.  The state could treat with a definite organisation of churches, but not with miscellaneous gatherings of sectaries.  The question must therefore be settled one way or the other, and settled at once.  Which way it was decided mattered little, so that an end was made of the disturbance.

[Sidenote:  His first attempt to settle it.]

In this temper Constantine approached the difficulty.  His first step was to send Hosius of Cordova to Alexandria with a letter to Alexander and Arius representing the question as a battle of words about mysteries beyond our reach.  In the words of a modern writer, ’It was the excess of dogmatism founded upon the most abstract words in the most abstract region of human thought.’  It had all arisen out of an over-curious question asked by Alexander, and a rash answer given by Arius.  It was a childish quarrel and unworthy of sensible men like them, besides being very distressing to himself.  Had the dispute been really trifling, such a letter might have had a chance of quieting it.  Instead of this, the excitement grew worse.

[Sidenote:  Summons of the council.]