The tradition grew in later times into the form which it bears in all the pictures of the council, and which is commemorated in the services of the Greek Church. Aware of his incapacity of argument he took a brick and said: "You deny that three can be one. Look at this: it is one, and yet it is composed of the three elements of fire, earth, and water." As he spoke the brick resolved itself into its component parts; the fire flew upward, the clay remained in his hand, and the water fell to the ground. The philosopher, or, according to some accounts, Arius himself was so confounded as to declare himself converted on the spot. These tales represent probably the feeling of a large portion of the council--the sound, unprofessional, untheological, lay element which lay at the basis of all their weakness and their strength. The historian Socrates is very anxious to prove that the assembly was not entirely composed of men of this kind, and he points triumphantly to the presence of such men as Eusebius of Cæsarea. No proof was necessary. The subsequent history of the council itself is a sufficient indication that, however small a minority might be the dialecticians and theologians, yet they constitute the life and movement of the whole. Socrates dwells with evident pleasure on the circumstance that the ultimate decisions were only made after long inquiry, and that everything was stirred to the bottom. We may wish with Bishop Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Kaye that it had been otherwise. But there is a point of view in which we may fully sympathize with the course that was taken. All the elements which go to make up the interest of theology were involved: love of free inquiry, desire of precision in philosophical statements, research into Christian antiquity, comparison of the texts of Scripture one with another. Traditional and episcopal authority was regarded as insufficient for the establishment of the faith. The well-known clause of the Twenty-first Article does but express the principle of the Nicene Fathers themselves: "Things ordained by them as necessary for salvation have neither strength nor authority unless it may be declared that they are taken out of Holy Scripture." The battle was fought and won by quotations, not from tradition, but from the Old and New Testaments. The overruling sentiment was that even ancient opinions were not to be received without sifting and inquiry. The chief combatant and champion of the faith was not the bishop of Antioch or of Rome, nor the pope of Alexandria, but the deacon Athanasius. The eager discussions of Nicæa present the first grand precedent for the duty of private judgment, and the free, unrestrained exercise of biblical and historical criticism. FOOTNOTES: