Part 2

II. I pass, then, to the next point--the alleged absence of Subscription in the primitive age. Not content with the reference to the history of our own Church, Dr. STANLEY says:--"I will not confine myself to these isolated instances, but examine the history of Subscription from the first. For the first three centuries the Church was _entirely without it_." "The first Subscription to a series of dogmatical propositions as such was that enforced by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. It was the natural, but rude, expedient of a half-educated soldier to enforce unanimity in the Church as he had by the sword enforced it in the empire." (p. 35). Again, I am painfully compelled to meet the statements of Dr. STANLEY with a direct negative. The case is _not_ as he states it. A "rude soldier," in those days--(when comparatively few people _wrote_ at all)--would not, I think, have been likely to invent this "expedient:" but, in fact, he _did not_ invent it.

Council against Paulus Samosatemus.