but other places also, _belonging not to individuals among them_, but to the _right of the whole body_ of Christians, you will also command all these, by virtue of the law before mentioned, without any hesitation, to be restored to the same Christians, _that is to their body_, and to _each conventicle separately_." But already the bishops of the Western Empire, with Hosius and Eusebius at their head, had come to understand that while Constantine cared little about any matter of faith, he had determined to utterly destroy the Christian polity, especially in regard to communism and the refusal of Christians to bear arms. The regulations by which their journeys were governed prescribed that they should come at the emperor’s expense, and that "each bishop should be accompanied by a retinue of two presbyters and three slaves." At and near the appointed time there were bishops and presbyters assembled from the four quarters of the world--from Persia and from Gaul, from Scythia and from Africa. There were many who were the victims of pagan persecutions, and still bore in their own persons the marks of the tortures to which they had been subjected. This one had lost an eye, gouged out by the torturer’s sword or pincers; that one had the sinews of his leg seared with hot iron to keep him from escaping from the mines, to which he had been condemned for the crime of being a Christian; and the other had had the flesh scraped off his ribs by the instruments of torture. Of the whole number present, it was believed that only the eleven who came from the remotest East had escaped mutilation in some ghastly form. Arius, although not a bishop, was there by the express order of Constantine, who could always sleep upon his vengeance, but never could forget nor forego it. The place of the assembly’s sessions was a great hall in the imperial palace of Nicea. The bishops and presbyters, assembled upon the emperor’s order, traveling at his expense, to the immediate vicinity of Nicomedia, then the imperial residence, into a royal palace, and fed by his bounty, were from the very first the creatures of Constantine, so far as complete control of the political significancy of religion could make them so. The emperor had only two great purposes to accomplish in patronizing the Church and engineering the council: one of which was to make the Eastern Church as willingly and thoroughly dependent upon the imperial authority as he had already practically made that of the West, and to render it as much a bulwark of his government; the other was to render this condition of things, in appearance at least, the spontaneous and inspired action of a free conclave of bishops.