heart and soul, and determining on one peaceful harmony for all, which it should well become you, who are consecrated to God, to preach to others. Do not, then, delay, my friends; do not delay, ministers of God, and good servants of our common Lord and Saviour, to remove all grounds of difference, and to wind up, by laws of peace, every link of controversy. Thus will you have done what is most pleasing to the God who is over all, and you will render the greatest boon to me your fellow-servant." "The council was now formally opened, and the emperor gave permission to the presidents of the assembly to commence their proceedings"; and the Bishops of Alexandria, Cordova, Antioch, and Cæsarea, were chosen to preside over their deliberations: of whom Hosius, Alexander, and Eusebius, were politicians thoroughly imbued with the ecclesiastical spirit and purposes of the emperor, although the last-named bishop was the warm personal friend of Arius, and a follower of his theological tenets. Constantine himself assumed the functions of a bishop, and participated in all their debates, "directing all his energies to that one point which he himself described as his aim--a unanimity of decision" as to all merely theological disputes. For, even before the council had met, innumerable complaints of one bishop against another had been placed in his hands; so that he was satisfied that one great design he had in view was already accomplished: for this fact showed that already they regarded him as the ultimate judge--the real source of all authority in the Church (instead of Christ), as truly as he was in the state. All of these complaints, therefore, he publicly burned in their presence, with a solemn oath that he had not read any of them, and he said, "It is the command of Christ that he who desires to be himself forgiven, must first forgive his brother." But the very strongest proof that the emperor was lying, was the fact that he made oath to his statement; and perhaps there was not a thing named in any of the complaints, that could give him a hold upon any bishop, that was not carefully preserved. The first matter which came before this august assembly was the question whether the Christian passover ("Easter") should be celebrated on the same day with the Jewish (the fourteenth day of the month Nisan), or on the following Sunday. And the bitter feeling of many of the Christians that "the celebration of it on the same day that was kept by the wicked race that put the Saviour to death was an impious absurdity," on one side, and the reverence on the other side for a custom which had come down from the apostles, gave rise to a long controversy on the subject; but it was finally "determined by common consent" that the ancient custom should be set aside, and the more recent Christian practice established.