[365] Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-340), leader of the moderate party at the Council of Nicaea, and author of a _History of the Christian Church_ in ten books (c. 324 A. D.). [366] Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), a non-conformist minister and one of the first to advocate the scientific study of early Christian literature. [367] Henry Alford (1810-1871) Dean of Canterbury (1857-1871) and editor of the Greek Testament (1849-1861). [368] The work was _The Number and Names of the Apocalyptic Beasts: with an explanation and application. Part I._ London, 1848, as mentioned below. Thom also wrote _The Assurance of Faith, or Calvinism identified with Universalism_ (London, 1833), and various other religious works. [369] See Vol. I, page 222, note 14 {490}. [370] John Hamilton Thom (1808-1894) was converted to Unitarianism and was long a minister in that church, preaching in the Renshaw Street Chapel from 1831 to 1866. De Morgan refers to the Liverpool Unitarian controversy conducted by James Martineau and Henry Giles in response to a challenge by thirteen Anglican Clergy. In 1839 Thom contributed four lectures and a letter to this controversy. Among his religious works were a _Life of Blanco White_ (1845) and _Hymns, Chants, and Anthems_ (1854). [371] The spelling of these names is occasionally changed to meet the condition that the numerical value of the letters shall be 666, "the number of the beast" of Revelations. The names include Julius Caesar; Valerius Jovius Diocletianus (249-313), emperor from 287 to 305, persecutor of the Christians; Louis, presumably Louis XIV; Gerbert (940-1003), who reigned as Pope Sylvester II from 999 to 1003, known to mathematicians for his abacus and his interest in geometry, and accused by his opponents as being in league with the devil; Linus, the second Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter; Camillo Borghese (1552-1621), who reigned as Pope Paul V from 1605 to 1621, and who excommunicated all Venice in 1606 for its claim to try ecclesiastics before lay tribunals, thus taking a position which he was forced to abandon; Luther, Calvin; Laud (see Vol. I, page 145, note 7 {307}); Genseric (c. 406-477), king of the Vandals, who sacked Rome in 455 and persecuted the orthodox Christians in Africa; Boniface III, who was pope for nine months in 606; Beza (see Vol. I, page 66, note 6 {83}); Mohammed; [Greek: braski], who was Giovanni Angelo Braschi (1717-1799), and who reigned as Pope Pius VI from 1775 to 1799, dying in captivity because he declined to resign his temporal power to Napoleon; Bonaparte; and, under [Greek: Ion Paune], possibly Pope John XIV, who reigned in 983 and 984 during the absence of Boniface VII in Constantinople.