The general feeling of the Council was not long in declaring itself. Arius, who was regarded as a defendant on his trial, made his position absolutely clear. He did not envelop himself, as he might have done, in a cloud of metaphysics from which it would have been difficult to gather his precise meaning. On the contrary, he seems to have come prepared with a résumé of his doctrines, and to have been ready to defend his outposts as resolutely as his citadel. Immediately, therefore, the Council became split up into contending parties. There were the out-and-out Arians, few but formidable, and the out-and-out Trinitarians, led with great ability by the young Athanasius, whose reputation steadily rose as the days passed by. There was also a middle party, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia and supported by Eusebius of Cæsarea, whose intellectual and personal sympathies lay with Arius rather than with Athanasius, though they saw that the great majority of the Council were against them, and that Arius and his opinions were sure of excommunication. Theirs was what we may call the “cross-bench mind.” They doubtless felt, what many who approach this controversy at the present day feel, that if once appeal is made to Reason, there must be no further appeal beyond that to Faith, as to a higher Court. Those who invoke Reason must not turn round, when they find themselves driven into an ugly corner, and condemn “the Pride of Reason.” In our view, Eusebius of Nicomedia was not the malignant, self-seeking, and entirely worldly prelate he is so often represented as having been, but a Bishop who honestly regretted that this question had been raised at all, inasmuch as he foresaw that it must rend the Church in twain. He would have preferred, that is to say, that the exact nature of the Sonship of Christ should not be made a matter of close definition, should not be made a point of doctrine whereon salvation depended, should not be inserted in a creed, but left rather to the individual conscience or to the individual intellect. Once the question was raised, his intellectual honesty led him to side with Arius, but he considered that to tear the indivisible garment of Christ was a crime to be avoided at any cost. Eusebius was bent upon a compromise. Arius was his old friend, and his patron, the Emperor, passionately desired unity. The personal wish of the monarch would be sure to have some, though we cannot say precisely how much, weight with him in determining his policy.