Now I conceive that the picture thus drawn from the writings and the practice of Athanasius gives us, in fact, a palpable embodiment of that spiritual power by which the Church defended and carried on her faith from the Day of Pentecost to the Nicene Council; for the principles and practice of Athanasius were the principles and practice of the whole Church, and nothing short of the continuous action of the Holy Spirit could have created and maintained a polity whose subjects were instinct with such a loyalty of mind, heart, and action. It was not a gift of learning; it was not philosophic power of thought; it was not the scientific labour of theology, as in after medieval times, arranging in a luminous system the results of the Church's doctrine through ages of spiritual warfare and trials of every kind. It is true that in all this period, as well as in the succeeding four hundred years, the armour of theology was wrought out bit by bit through the blows of heresy, and not before St. John of Damascus did any one work the separate pieces into a panoply. The great mind and nobler heart of Origen even failed in the attempt. But from the beginning the Church moved on, filled with a divine consciousness that it was the Body of Christ, carrying the truth in its bosom. Each bishop, each father, each writer, and in a far higher degree the Councils, were conscious of this; but most of all in the Apostolic See, the centre of the whole body, was such a conviction living and active, and exhibited in all the various functions of spiritual rule. It is not possible from existing documents to form a continuous and detailed history of the ante-nicene Church. Thus, if any will not accept the Church at the Nicene Council as an evidence of what the Church was in preceding times as to its constitution, principles of action, and faith, it is possible, through the mere absence of written proof, to make denials of those very things without which the Nicene Council could never have come together. The spirit of negation luxuriates in that absence of documents which more than anything else the state of persecution caused. On the other hand, to the eyes of faith the grain of mustard seed planted by our Lord on Calvary is become, at the end of three hundred years, a tree which covers the Roman world, and gives its fruits for the healing of the nations.