t7] 



Phoenician name of Bacchus, les, in its Greek form 

 lesous Greek being, at that time, the prevailing language 

 around Alexandria. The new religion gradually spread 

 from Egypt over the European provinces of the Roman 

 empire, and soon became such a great political power in 

 the State that the incarnate fiend and Emperor Con- 

 stantine, in A.D. 312, was induced to place himself at its 

 head, and use its increasing influence to further his own 

 wicked projects. The new Church, by this act, gained 

 an enormous power ; its priests became arrogant, the 

 philosophers were even more persecuted than before, and 

 learning was fast approaching its end. The only scien- 

 tific work which the Church retained was the " Syntaxis " 

 of Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer, which taught 

 that the earth was the fixed centre of the universe, around 

 which all other heavenly bodies rotated. It also treated 

 of the precession of the equinoxes, the milky way, and 

 the distances of the various bodies in the heavens from 

 the earth ; but, as the geocentric theory was clearly taught 

 in conformity with the Bible records and the religious 

 convictions of the people, this system was gradually 

 adopted by all classes of society, and became the recog- 

 nised authority on astronomy. 



A furious and important controversy about this time 

 broke out between Arius, the leader of those who retained 

 the original belief in the manhood of Jesus, and Athana- 

 sius, the leader of the Christians, who declared him to 

 be divine, which culminated in the celebrated Council of 

 Nicea, A.D. 325, at which it was decided that he was 

 actually god. From this moment not only Arians, but 

 all others who refused to believe in the god Jesus, were 

 savagely persecuted, until, at last, science and learning 

 received their death-blow by the destruction of the 

 Serapion, under the order of the Emperor Theodosius, 

 and the murder of Hypatia at Alexandria. This philo- 

 sopher was in the habit of lecturing on mathematics at 

 the university, and was so popular that the jealousy of 

 Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, was aroused ; she was seized 

 by his fanatical followers as she was going to her lecture- 

 room, stripped naked, dragged into a Christian church, 

 and there brained by the club of Peter the Reader, in 

 A.D. 414. 



