But this
assertion evidently denied the co-eternity of the three persons of the
Trinity; it suggested a subordination or inequality among them, and
indeed implied a time when the Trinity did not exist. Hereupon the
bishop, who had been the successful competitor against Arius [for the
episcopate], displayed his rhetorical powers in public debates on the
question, and, the strife spreading, the Jews and Pagans, who formed a
very large portion of the population of Alexandria, amused themselves
with theatrical representations of the contest on the stage--the point
of their burlesques being the equality of age of the Father and his Son"
(Ibid, p. 53). Gibbon quotes an amusing passage to show how widely
spread was the interest in the subject debated between the rival
parties: "This city is full of mechanics and slaves, who are all of them
profound theologians, and preach in the shops and in the streets. If you
desire a man to change a piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son
differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told,
by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you
inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made
out of nothing" (Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. iii. p.
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