candidate, ^43 rather than to betray the imagined dignity of the
East, which had been illustrated by the birth and death of the
Son of God. Such unjust and disorderly proceedings forced the
gravest members of the assembly to dissent and to secede; and the
clamorous majority which remained masters of the field of battle,
could be compared only to wasps or magpies, to a flight of
cranes, or to a flock of geese. ^44

[Footnote 41: Le Clerc has given a curious extract (Bibliotheque
Universelle, tom. xviii. p. 91 - 105) of the theological sermons
which Gregory Nazianzen pronounced at Constantinople against the
Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, &c. He tells the Macedonians,
who deified the Father and the Son without the Holy Ghost, that
they might as well be styled Tritheists as Ditheists. Gregory
himself was almost a Tritheist; and his monarchy of heaven
resembles a well-regulated aristocracy.]
[Footnote 42: The first general council of Constantinople now
triumphs in the Vatican; but the popes had long hesitated, and
their hesitation perplexes, and almost staggers, the humble
Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 499, 500.)]

[Footnote 43: Before the death of Meletius, six or eight of his
most popular ecclesiastics, among whom was Flavian, had abjured,
for the sake of peace, the bishopric of Antioch, (Sozomen, l.
vii. c. 3, 11. Socrates, l. v. c. v.) Tillemont thinks it his
duty to disbelieve the story; but he owns that there are many
circumstances in the life of Flavian which seem inconsistent with
the praises of Chrysostom, and the character of a saint, (Mem.
Eccles. tom. x. p. 541.)]