Next in importance must be reckoned the bishop of Syria and of the interior of Asia; or, as they are sometimes called in the later councils, the _Eastern_ bishops, as distinguished from the Church of Egypt. Then, as afterward, there was a rivalry between those branches of oriental Christendom; each, from long neighborhood, knowing each, yet each tending in an opposite direction till, after the Council of Chalcedon, a community of heresy drew them together again. Here, as in Egypt, we find two classes of representatives--scholars from the more civilized cities of Syria; wild ascetics from the remoter East. The first in dignity was the orthodox Eustathius, who either was, or was on the point of being made, bishop of the capital of Syria, the metropolis of the Eastern Church, Antioch, then called "the city of God." He had suffered in heathen persecutions, and was destined to suffer in Christian persecutions also. But he was chiefly known for his learning and eloquence, which was distinguished by an antique simplicity of style. One work alone has come down to us on the "Witch of Endor." Next in rank and far more illustrious was his chief suffragan, the metropolitan of Palestine, the bishop of Cæsarea, Eusebius. We honor him as the father of ecclesiastical history, as the chief depositary of the traditions which connect the fourth with the first century. But in the bishops of Nicæa his presence awakened feelings of a very different kind. He alone of the eastern prelates could tell what was in the mind of the Emperor; he was the clerk of the imperial closet; he was the interpreter, the chaplain, the confessor of Constantine. And yet he was on the wrong side. Two especially, we may be sure, of the Egyptian Church, were on the watch for any slip that he might make. Athanasius--whatever may have been the opinions of later times respecting the doctrines of Eusebius--was convinced that he was at heart an Arian. Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly in the days of persecution, and was ready with that most fatal taunt, which, on a later occasion, he threw out against him, that, while he had thus suffered for the cause of Christ, Eusebius had escaped by sacrificing to an idol. If Eusebius was suspected of Arianism, he was supported by most of his suffragan bishops in Palestine, of whom Paulinus of Tyre, and Patrophilus of Bethshan (Scythopolis) were the most remarkable. One, however, a champion of orthodoxy, was distinguished, not in himself, but for the see which he occupied--once the highest in Christendom, in a few years about to claim something of its former grandeur, but at the time of the council known only as a second-rate Syro-Roman city--Macarius, bishop of Ælia Capitolina, that is, "Jerusalem."