[3491] The Meletian schismatics of Egypt had formed an alliance with the Arians from the first. Cf. Ep. Æg. 22. vid. also Hist. Arian. 31, 78. After Sardica the Arians attempted a coalition with the Donatists of Africa. Aug. contr. Cresc. iii. 38.
[3492] Acacius had written to the Semi-Arian Macedonius of Constantinople in favour of the kata panta homoion, and of the Son's being tes autes ousias, and this the Council was aware of. Soz. iv. 22. Acacius made answer that no one ancient or modern was ever judged by his writings. Socr. ii. 40.
[3493] They also confirmed the Semi-Arian Confession of the Dedication, 341. of which infr. §22. After this the Acacians drew up another Confession, which Athan. has preserved, infr. §29. in which they persist in their rejection of all but Scripture terms. This the Semi-Arian majority rejected, and proceeded to depose its authors.
[3494] Pork contractor to the troops, hupodekten, Hist. Arian. 75. vid. Naz. Orat. 21. 16.
[3495] [Cf. supr. pp. 237, 267.]
[3496] Supr. §5, note 1.
[3497] On the word 'Areiomanitai, Gibbon observes, The ordinary appellation with which Athanasius and his followers chose to compliment the Arians, was that of Ariomanites,' ch. xxi. note 61. Rather, the name originally was a state title, injoined by Constantine, vid. Petav. de Trin. i. 8 fin. Naz. Orat. p. 794. note e. [Petavius states this, but without proof.] Several meanings are implied in this title; the real reason for it was the fanatical fury with which it spread and maintained itself; and hence the strange paronomasia of Constantine, 'Ares areie, with an allusion to Hom. Il. v. 31. A second reason, or rather sense, of the appellation was that, denying the Word, they have forfeited the gift of reason, e.g. ton 'Areiomaniton ten alogian. de Sent. Dion. init. 24 fin. Orat. ii. §32, iii. §63. [The note, which is here much condensed, gives profuse illustrations of this figure of speech.]
[3498] Vid. supr. pp. 152, 74.
[3499] hos ethelesen. vid. also de Decr. §3. hos ethelesan. ad Ep. Æg. 5.
[3500] §5, note 1.
[3501] Ad Ep. Æg. 6.
Part II. History of Arian Opinions.
Arius's own sentiments; his Thalia and Letter to S. Alexander; corrections by Eusebius and others; extracts from the works of Asterius; letter of the Council of Jerusalem; first Creed of Arians at the Dedication of Antioch; second, Lucian's on the same occasion; third, by Theophronius; fourth, sent to Constans in Gaul; fifth, the Macrostich sent into Italy; sixth, at Sirmium; seventh, at the same place; and eighth also, as given above in §8; ninth, at Seleucia; tenth, at Constantinople; eleventh, at Antioch.
15. Arius and those with him thought and professed thus: God made the Son out of nothing, and called Him His Son;' The Word of God is one of the creatures;' and Once He was not;' and He is alterable; capable, when it is His Will, of altering.' Accordingly they were expelled from the Church by the blessed Alexander. However, after his expulsion, when he was with Eusebius and his fellows, he drew up his heresy upon paper, and imitating in the Thalia no grave writer, but the Egyptian Sotades, in the dissolute tone of his metre [3502] , he writes at great length, for instance as follows:--
Blasphemies of Arius.
God Himself then, in His own nature, is ineffable by all men. Equal or like Himself He alone has none, or one in glory. And Ingenerate we call Him, because of Him who is generate by nature. We praise Him as without beginning because of Him who has a beginning. And adore Him as everlasting, because of Him who in time has come to be. The Unbegun made the Son a beginning of things originated; and advanced Him as a Son to Himself by adoption. He has nothing proper to God in proper subsistence. For He is not equal, no, nor one in essence [3503] with Him. Wise is God, for He is the teacher of Wisdom [3504] . There is full proof that God is invisible to all beings; both to things which are through the Son, and to the Son He is invisible. I will say it expressly, how by the Son is seen the Invisible; by that power by which God sees, and in His own measure, the Son endures to see the Father, as is lawful. Thus there is a Triad, not in equal glories. Not intermingling with each other [3505] are their subsistences. One more glorious than the other in their glories unto immensity. Foreign from the Son in essence is the Father, for He is without beginning. Understand that the Monad was; but the Dyad was not, before it was in existence. It follows at once that, though the Son was not, the Father was God. Hence the Son, not being (for He existed at the will of the Father), is God Only-begotten [3506] , and He is alien from either. Wisdom existed as Wisdom by the will of the Wise God. Hence He is conceived in numberless conceptions [3507] : Spirit, Power, Wisdom, God's glory, Truth, Image, and Word. Understand that He is conceived to be Radiance and Light. One equal to the Son, the Superior is able to beget; but one more excellent, or superior, or greater, He is not able. At God's will the Son is what and whatsoever He is. And when and since He was, from that time He has subsisted from God. He, being a strong God, praises in His degree the Superior. To speak in brief, God is ineffable to His Son. For He is to Himself what He is, that is, unspeakable. So that nothing which is called comprehensible [3508] does the Son know to speak about; for it is impossible for Him to investigate the Father, who is by Himself. For the Son does not know His own essence, For, being Son, He really existed, at the will of the Father. What argument then allows, that He who is from the Father should know His own parent by comprehension? For it is plain that for that which hath a beginning to conceive how the Unbegun is, or to grasp the idea, is not possible.
16. And what they wrote by letter to the blessed Alexander, the Bishop, runs as follows:--
To Our Blessed Pope [3509] and Bishop, Alexander, the Presbyters and Deacons send health in the Lord.
Our faith from our forefathers, which also we have learned from thee, Blessed Pope, is this:--We acknowledge One God, alone Ingenerate, alone Everlasting, alone Unbegun, alone True, alone having Immortality, alone Wise, alone Good, alone Sovereign; Judge, Governor, and Providence of all, unalterable and unchangeable, just and good, God of Law and Prophets and New Testament; who begat an Only-begotten Son before eternal times, through whom He has made both the ages and the universe; and begat Him, not in semblance, but in truth; and that He made Him subsist at His own will, unalterable and unchangeable; perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; offspring, but not as one of things begotten; nor as Valentinus pronounced that the offspring of the Father was an issue [3510] ; nor as Manichæus taught that the offspring was a portion of the Father, one in essence [3511] ; or as Sabellius, dividing the Monad, speaks of a Son-and-Father [3512] ; nor as Hieracas, of one torch from another, or as a lamp divided into two [3513] ; nor that He who was before, was afterwards generated or new-created into a Son [3514] , as thou too thyself, Blessed Pope, in the midst of the Church and in session hast often condemned; but, as we say, at the will of God, created before times and before ages, and gaining life and being from the Father, who gave subsistence to His glories together with Him. For the Father did not, in giving to Him the inheritance of all things, deprive Himself of what He has ingenerately in Himself; for He is the Fountain of all things. Thus there are Three Subsistences. And God, being the cause of all things, is Unbegun and altogether Sole, but the Son being begotten apart from time by the Father, and being created and founded before ages, was not before His generation, but being begotten apart from time before all things, alone was made to subsist by the Father. For He is not eternal or co-eternal or co-unoriginate with the Father, nor has He His being together with the Father, as some speak of relations [3515] , introducing two ingenerate beginnings, but God is before all things as being Monad and Beginning of all. Wherefore also He is before the Son; as we have learned also from thy preaching in the midst of the Church. So far then as from God He has being, and glories, and life, and all things are delivered unto Him, in such sense is God His origin. For He is above Him, as being His God and before Him. But if the terms from Him,' and from the womb,' and I came forth from the Father, and I am come [3516] ' (Rom. xi. 36; Ps. cx. 3; John xvi. 28), be understood by some to mean as if a part of Him, one in essence or as an issue, then the Father is according to them compounded and divisible and alterable and material, and, as far as their belief goes, has the circumstances of a body, Who is the Incorporeal God.
This is a part of what Arius and his fellows vomited from their heretical hearts.
17. And before the Nicene Council took place, similar statements were made by Eusebius and his fellows, Narcissus, Patrophilus, Maris, Paulinus, Theodotus, and Athanasius of [A]nazarba [3517] . And Eusebius of Nicomedia wrote over and above to Arius, to this effect, Since your sentiments are good, pray that all may adopt them; for it is plain to any one, that what has been made was not before its origination; but what came to be has a beginning of being.' And Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palestine, in a letter to Euphration the Bishop [3518] , did not scruple to say plainly that Christ was not true God [3519] . And Athanasius of [A]nazarba uncloked the heresy still further, saying that the Son of God was one of the hundred sheep. For writing to Alexander the Bishop, he had the extreme audacity to say: Why complain of Arius and his fellows, for saying, The Son of God is made as a creature out of nothing, and one among others? For all that are made being represented in parable by the hundred sheep, the Son is one of them. If then the hundred are not created and originate, or if there be beings beside that hundred, then may the Son be not a creature nor one among others; but if those hundred are all originate, and there is nothing besides the hundred save God alone, what absurdity do Arius and his fellows utter, when, as comprehending and reckoning Christ in the hundred, they say that He is one among others?' And George who now is in Laodicea, and then was presbyter of Alexandria, and was staying at Antioch, wrote to Alexander the Bishop; Do not complain of Arius and his fellows, for saying, "Once the Son of God was not," for Isaiah came to be son of Amos, and, whereas Amos was before Isaiah came to be, Isaiah was not before, but came to be afterwards.' And he wrote to the Arians, Why complain of Alexander the Pope, saying, that the Son is from the Father? for you too need not fear to say that the Son was from God.' For if the Apostle wrote (1 Cor. xi. 12), All things are from God,' and it is plain that all things are made of nothing, though the Son too is a creature and one of things made, still He may be said to be from God in that sense in which all things are said to be from God.' From him then those who hold with Arius learned to simulate the phrase from God,' and to use it indeed, but not in a good meaning. And George himself was deposed by Alexander for certain reasons, and among them for manifest irreligion; for he was himself a presbyter, as has been said before.
18. On the whole then such were their statements, as if they all were in dispute and rivalry with each other, which should make the heresy more irreligious, and display it in a more naked form. And as for their letters I had them not at hand, to dispatch them to you; else I would have sent you copies; but, if the Lord will, this too I will do, when I get possession of them. And one Asterius [3520] from Cappadocia, a many-headed Sophist, one of the fellows of Eusebius, whom they could not advance into the Clergy, as having done sacrifice in the former persecution in the time of Constantius's grandfather, writes, with the countenance of Eusebius and his fellows, a small treatise, which was on a par with the crime of his sacrifice, yet answered their wishes; for in it, after comparing, or rather preferring, the locust and the caterpillar to Christ, and saying that Wisdom in God was other than Christ, and was the Framer as well of Christ as of the world, he went round the Churches in Syria and elsewhere, with introductions from Eusebius and his fellows, that as he once made trial of denying, so now he might boldly oppose the truth. The bold man intruded himself into forbidden places, and seating himself in the place of Clergy [3521] , he used to read publicly this treatise of his, in spite of the general indignation. The treatise is written at great length, but portions of it are as follows:--