But subtle and abstract as the question was, there was thought to be involved in it the root of a perilous departure from sound Christian faith. It touched the most central and fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion. Hence it engaged the profoundest thought and solicitude of the most powerful minds of that age; and the first general council was called, in order to bring the united wisdom of the church to bear upon the settlement of the question. The council met at Nice in the year 325. The place selected was not far from Nicomedia, then the capital of the East. The number of bishops from all parts of the empire is supposed to have been about 318, with a retinue of presbyters and attendants amounting to 2,000. “There were present the learned and the illiterate, courtiers and peasants, old and young, aged bishops on the verge of the grave, and beardless deacons just entering on their office. It was an assembly in which the difference between age and youth was of more than ordinary significance, coinciding with a marked transition in the history of the world. The new generation had been brought up in peace and quiet. They could just remember the joy diffused through the Christian communities by the edict of toleration published in their boyhood. They had themselves suffered nothing. Not so the older and by far the larger part of the assembly. They had lived through the last and worst of the persecutions, and they now came, like a regiment out of some frightful siege or battle, decimated and mutilated by the tortures or the hardships they had undergone. Most of the older members had lost a friend or a brother. Some bore on their backs and sides the wounds inflicted by the instruments of torture. Some had suffered the searing of the sinews of the leg, to prevent their escape from working in the mines, and several had lost the right eye.” It is said that their authority reposed on their character as an army of confessors and martyrs, no less than on that of an ecumenical council. “In this respect no other council could approach them, and in the proceedings of the assembly the voice of an old confessor was received almost as an oracle.” Even the emperor himself regarded them with homage. They came in groups over the Mediterranean, and along the Roman roads from the different parts of the vast empire, from Alexandria and far up the Nile in Egypt; from Syria, Euphrates, and the distant East; from Greece, and Cyprus and Rome; and from the west as far as Spain. Of the characters present I will copy sketches of a very few: “The aged Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, was the only one present known by the title of pope. Papa was the special address given to the head of the Alexandrian church long before the name of Patriarch or Archbishop.”