§ 123. IMPORT OF THE AKIAN CONTROVEKST G43
having persecuted the church three hundred years fr:ini without, sought under the Christian name to reduce her by degrad ing Christ to the category of tlie temporal and the created, and Christianity to the level of natural religion. It substituted for a truly divine Redeemer, a created demigod, an elevated Hercules. Arianisni proceeded from human reason, Athanasianism from divine revelation ; and each used the other source of knowledge as a subordinate and tributary factor. The former was deistic and rationalistic, the latter theistic and supernaturalistic, in spirit and effect. The one made reasonableness, the other agreement with Scripture, the criterion of truth. In the one the intellectual interest, in the other the moral and religious, was the motive prin(;iple. Yet Athanasius was at the same time a much deepei' and abler thinker than Arius, who dealt in barren deductions of reason and dialectic formulas.'
In close connection with this stood another distinction. Arianism associated itself with the secular political power and the court party ; it represented the imperio-papal principle, and the tinrie of its prevalence under Constantius was an uninterrupted season of the most arbitrary and violent encroachments of the state upon the rights of the church. Athanasius, on the contrary, who was so often deposed by the emperor, and who uttered himself so boldly respecting Constantius, is the personal representative not only of orthodoxy, but also of the independence of the church with reference to
' Baiir, Newman (The Arians, p. l*?), and others put Arianism into connection with the Aristotelian philosophy, Athanasianism with the Platonic ; while Petavius, Ritter, to some extent also Voigt (1. c. p. 194), and others exactly reverse the relation, and derive the Arian idea of God fiom Platonism and Neo-Platonism. This contrariety of opinion itself proves that such a comparison is rather confusing than helpful. The empirical, rational, logical tendency of Arianism is, to be sure, more Aristotelian than Platonic ; and so far Baur is right. But the Aristotelian logic and dialectics may be used equally well in the service of Catholic orthodoxy, as they were in fact in the mediaeval scholasticism ; while, on the other hand, the Platonic idealism, which was to Justin, Origen, and Augustine, a bridge to faith, may lead intc all kinds of Gnostic and mystic eiror. All depends on making revelation and faith, oi philosophy and reason, the starting-point and the ruling power of tl e theologica Bystem. Gomp. also the observations of Dr. Dorner against Di Baur in his Ent wicklung?gesch. der Christologie, vol. i. p. 859, note.
»j44 THIBD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
the secular power and in tliis respect a precursor of Gregory VII. in his contest with the German imperialism.
While Arianism bent to the clianging politics of the court party, and fell into diverse schools and sects the moment it lost the imperial support, the Nicene faith, like its great champion Athanasius, remained under all outward changes of fortune true to itself, and made its mighty advance only by lesritimate growth outward from within. Athanasius make? no distinction at all between the various shades of Arians and Semi- Arians, but throws them all into the same category of enemies of the catholic faith.'
§ 124. Arianism. The doctrine of the Arians, or Eusobians, Aiitians, Euno-
* I cannot refrain from quoting the striking judgment of Georgk Bancroft, once a Unitarian preacher, on the import of the Arian controversy and the vast influence of the Athanasian doctrine on the onward march of true Christian civilization. "In vain," says he in his address on the Frocjress of the Human Race, delivered before the New York Historical Society in 1854, p. 25 f., "did restlesa pride, as that of Arius, seek to paganize Christianity and make it the ally of imperial despotism ; to prefer a belief resting on autliority and unsupported by an inward witness, over the clear revelation of which the miUions might see and feel and know the divine glory ; to substitute the conception, framed after the pattern of heathenism, of an agent, superhuman yet finite, for faith in the ever continuing presence of God with man; to wrong the greatness and sanctity of the Spirit of God by repre- Henting it as a birth of time. Against these attempts to subordinate the enfranchising virtue of truth to false worship and to arbitrary power reason asserted its supremacy, and the party of sui)er8tition was driven from the field. Then mooned Ashtaroth was eclipsed and Osiris was seen no more in Memphian grove; then might have been heard the crash of the falling temples of Polytheism ; and insteatl of them, came that harmony which holds Heaven and Earth in happiest union Amid the deep sorrows of humanity during the sad conflict which was protracted through centuries for the overthrow of the past and the reconstruction of society, the consciousness of an incarnate God carried peace into the bosom of mankind. That faith emancipated the slave, broke the bondage of woman, redeemed the captive, elevated the low, lifted up the oppressed, consoltd the wretched, inspired alike the heroes of thought and the countless masses. The down-trodden nations clung til it as to the certainty of their future emancipation; and it so filled the hr art of the greatest poet of the Middle Ages — i)erhaps the greatest poet of all tim< — that he had no prayer so earnest as to behold in the profound ami clear substance of th« tftcmal light, that circling of r< fleeted glory which showed the image of man."