²This appears to be the best explanation of the "double excommunication" of Acacius. Cf. Tillemont, Mémoires, xvi. n. 25, pp. 764 f.

³A comparatively late date for this encyclic appears necessary, on account of its allusions to Eusebius. (See Neale, Hist. Alex. i, 127.) Some identify the encyclic with the Tome.

⁴This, it may be remarked, is an argument against the criticism of the Tübingen school, which would bring the composition of the Gospel of St. John down to the middle of the 2nd cent.; for Cerinthus was a contemporary of the apostle. Had the Alogi had any idea of the recent origin of St. John, they would have made much account of it.

⁵ The empire was divided into 116 provinces, of which 3 were governed by pro-consuls, 37 by consulars, 5 by correctors, and 71 by presidents (Gibbon, u.s.).

⁶St. Augustine was wont to express his peculiar admiration of this saying, with its elimata ac librata verba (Possidius, Vit. Aug. c. xxvii.).

⁷This seems to be the same Thecla with whom Gregory elsewhere corresponds, and not the monastery of St. Thecla, whither Gregory retired.

⁸Sozomen (vii. 6) tells the story, but without the name of the bishop. He describes him as "an old man, a priest of an obscure city, simple and inexperienced in affairs." This description is as unlike Amphilochius as it could possibly be.

⁹It ends, however, as far as the council of Nicaea is concerned, with the words, "And I believe in the Holy Ghost."

¹⁰Apol. 55. Socrates (ii. 23) inserts eulogistic phrases which Athanasius's text does not give.

¹¹See Socr. ii. 23, Soz. iii. 20. They were called after bp. Eustathius (Hist. Ar. 4), deposed by Arians in 330. For Leontius, see de Fuga, 26; Theod. ii. 24; Hooker, v. 42, 9. Many of the orthodox continued to worship in his churches (e.g. Flavian and Diodore). Constantius's absolute dependence on his advisers is scornfully noted in Hist. Ar. 69, 70.

¹²See Newman's note, Hist. Tracts, p. 86 (Apol. 19): cf. Apol. 2; Hist. Ar. 26, 44. As Westerns, they naturally treated the bp. of Rome with much greater deference than the bp. of Alexandria; and even in their statement to Julius they betray their distrust of Athanasius. That they should retract, from motives of policy, was for them no unnatural course: cf. Hil. Fragm. i. 20.

¹³In this treatise he guards the Catholic sense of the title "Son," gives some account of the council's proceedings, and defends the language adopted by it, adducing ante-Nicene authorities. (He upholds Origen's orthodoxy.)

¹⁴He urged that Dionysius had been speaking simply of Christ's Manhood (see Liddon's Bamp. Lect. p. 425).

¹⁵In the Bollandist Life (Act. SS., May 2), the Apology against Arians is called the Syllogus, or collection of documents, etc., framed about 342, and afterwards appended to the Arian History "ad Monachos." The old name of Second Apology is, at all events, clearly misapplied.

¹⁶See Liberius's letter to Hosius in Hil. Fragm. 6. The spurious letter referred to above (as to which see de Broglie, L’Egl. et l’Emp. 2me part. i. 233) begins "Studens paci," and forms Fr. 4.

¹⁷"I know of bishops who do, and of monks who do not, fast."