Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, in his letter to the bishop of Constantinople,[111] complains that Arius and others, desirous of power and riches, did day and night invent calumnies, and were continually exciting seditions and persecutions against him; and Arius in his turn, in his letter to Eusebius, of Nicomedia, with too much justice charges pope Alexander with violently persecuting and oppressing him upon account of what he called the truth, and using every method to ruin him, driving him out of the city as an atheistical person, for not agreeing with him in his sentiments about the Trinity. Athanasius also bitterly exclaims against the cruelty of the Arians, in his Apology for his flight.[112] “Whom have they not,” says he, “used with the greatest indignity that they have been able to lay hold of? Who hath ever fallen into their hands, that they have had any spite against, whom they have not so cruelly treated, as either to murder or to maim him? What place is there where they have not left the monuments of their barbarity? What church is there which doth not lament their treachery against their bishops?” After this passionate exclamation he mentions several bishops they had banished or put to death, and the cruelties they made use of to force the orthodox to renounce the faith, and to subscribe to the truth of the Arian doctrines. But might it not have been asked, who was it that first brought in excommunications, depositions, banishments, and death, as the punishments of heresy? Could not the Arians recriminate with justice? Were they not reproached as atheists, anathematized, expelled their churches, exiled, and made liable to the punishment of death by the orthodox? Did not even they who complained of the cruelty of the Arians in the most moving terms, create numberless confusions and slaughters by their violent intrusions into the sees of their adversaries? Was not Athanasius himself also accused to the emperor, by many bishops and clergymen, who declared themselves orthodox, of being the author of all the seditions and disturbances in the church,[113] by excluding great multitudes from the public services of it; of murdering some, putting others in chains, punishing others with stripes and whippings, and of burning churches? And if the enemies of Athanasius[114] endeavoured to ruin him by suborned witnesses and false accusations, Athanasius himself used the same practices to destroy his adversaries; and particularly Eusebius of Nicomedia, by spiriting up a woman to charge Eusebius with illicit connections, the falsehood of which was detected at the council of Tyre. His very ordination also to the bishopric of Alexandria, was censured as clandestine and illegal. These things being reported to Constantine,[115] he ordered a synod to meet at Cæsarea in Palestine, of which place Eusebius Pamphilus was bishop, before whom Athanasius refused to appear. But after the council