Arians

“ Many of the Arians no doubt honestly thought that their position was a tenable one, and held their offices with a good conscience; but we cannot wonder that men like Athanasius and Hilary, aware of the sophistical nature of many of the arguments used, and knowing that some, at least, of the leaders were unscrupulous adventurers, should have regarded all Arianism and all Arians as deliberately dishonest. ”

“ For what is there that the Arians leave undone? They watch the roads, observe those who enter and leave the city, search the vessels, go round the deserts, ransack houses, harass the brethren, cause unrest to everybody. But thanks be to God, in so doing they are more and more incurring the execration of all, and coming to be truly known for what your holiness has called them: slaves of Antichrist. And, poor wretches, hated as they are, they persist in their malice, until they shall be condemned to the death of their ancestor Pharaoh. ”

“ The Arians affect Scripture language, but their doctrine new, as well as unscriptural. Statement of the Catholic doctrine, that the Son is proper to the Father’s substance, and eternal. Restatement of Arianism in contrast, that He is a creature with a beginning: the controversy comes to this issue, whether one whom we are to believe in as God, can be so in name only, and is merely a creature. What pretence then for being indifferent in the controversy? The Arians rely on state patronage, and dare not avow their tenets. ”

“ And in the first instance we examined the very beginning of the question which had arisen, and we thought fit to hear recited the letter of Arius, who is found to be the author of the Arian heresy, from whom also the heresy received its name, the arrangement being thus far even favourable to them, that since they had been in the habit of denying that they were Arians they might either by censure condemn the blasphemies of Arius, or by argument maintain them, or at least not refuse the name of the person, whose impiety and perfidy they followed. ”

“ Through the machinations of the Arians he was later compelled to abdicate his office, whereupon he retired to his birthplace. Here he spent the last years of his life in writing sacred poetry of singular beauty and lofty spirit. ”

“ Now the Arians, besides their forces, in which they surpass the several nations just recounted, are in their persons stern and truculent; and even humour and improve their natural grimness and ferocity by art and time. They wear black shields, their bodies are painted black, they choose dark nights for engaging in battle ”

“ A third party of semi-Arians, as they were called, existed, which comprised within its ranks men of two different types. On the one hand were the prelates who desired to keep well with an Arian emperor, but who were not disposed to surrender the Catholic faith to obtain favour, and who were wanting in dogmatic precision. ”

“ The opinion of the Arians concerning Christ, differs from the Gnostics chiefly in two respects,— (1.) The Gnostics supposed the pre-existent spirit which was in Jesus to have been an emanation from the supreme Being', according to the principles of the philosophy of that age, which made creation out of nothing, to be an impossibility. But the Arians supposed the pre-existent spirit to have been properly created, and to have animated the body of Christ instead of the human soul.— (2.) The Gnostics supposed that the pre-existent spirit was not the maker of the world ”

“ In other Places the Orthodox Bishops, finding the Arians in Possession of their Sees, contented themselves with being acknowleged by those of their Communion, without attempting to drive out their Antagonists, which would have created great Confusion, and endless Disturbances in the Church. ”

“ For he thought and asserted that intercourse with these was harmful and destructive to the soul. In the same manner also he loathed the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all neither to approach them nor to hold their erroneous belief. And once when certain Arian madmen came to him, when he had questioned them and learned their impiety, he drove them from the mountain, saying that their words were worse than the poison of serpents. ”

“ The people however assembled still more constantly in the churches [1] , for they very well knew that neither they themselves, nor any Bishop or Presbyter, nor in short any one had ever complained against me; and they saw that Arians only were on his side, and were aware also that he was himself an Arian, and was sent by Eusebius and his fellows to the Arian party. ”

“ The Emperor now sought among the Roman clergy for a man to put into Liberius’s place. In Rome, as in most of the cities of the West, Arians were not to be found. But in the Deacon Felix the court party obtained a candidate who, while himself a Trinitarian, was willing to hold communion with the Arians, and presumably to condemn Athanasius. Of the details of his election and ordination little is known, but we find him installed in the Roman see with the vigorous support of the civil authority, although not with the assent of the Roman people. ”

“ It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. ”

“ About that time there sprang up a heresy of a people called Arians, from one Arius the leader of them. These denied our Saviour to be God, although they allowed all the rest of the Gospel (wherein they were more sincere than their followers among us) . ”

“ But their Proposal was rejected by the leading Men of that Party, alleging, that they could not admit them to their Communion, because they had for so many Years communicated with the Arians, received the Sacraments at their Hands, and still seemed to acknowlege Meletius as lawful Bishop, though he had been chosen by the Arian Faction: for the Eustathians, notwithstanding the heroic Firmness of Meletius in defending and promoting the common Cause, refused to own him, for no other Reason but because the Arians had had a chief Share in his Election [1037] . ”

“ After this the Arians, becoming bolder, grievously harassed the orthodox party, frequently beating them, reviling them, causing them to be imprisoned, and fined; in short they practiced distressing and intolerable annoyances against them. The sufferers were induced to appeal to the emperor for protection against their adversaries if haply they might obtain some relief from this oppression. ”

“ He favoured the extreme Arians so openly that the Semi-Arians appealed to the Emperor Constantius to summon a General Council. Their request was granted; but the Arians, fearing that the Catholics and Semi-Arians would coalesce to overwhelm them, artfully suggested that Rimini, the place proposed for the Council, was too distant for the Eastern prelates, and that the Assembly should be divided, part meeting at Rimini, and part at Nice.29 Their suggestion was accepted, and the result is well known. ”

“ They expelled at that time the Arians from the churches, and restored Athanasius to the possession of them. The Arians meanwhile assembling themselves in low and obscure buildings, ordained Lucius to supply the place of George. ”

“ Athanase, who had succeeded to Alexander in the episcopal see of Alexandria, constantly refused to commune with him, and by this firmness displeased Constantine I.
"Since that time the Arians became a redoubtable party. They held several councils where they obtained the majority.... Arius died in a tragic manner, in the year 337. After the death of Constantine I., in 337, the party of the Arians was alternatively the stronger, in ratio of the less or greater protection extended to them or to the Orthodox by the Emperors. ”

“ But in judging them and him we must bear in mind, that these Lombards became at least by his means Catholics, and that Arians would have believed in the superstitions just as much as Catholics. And it is surely better to believe a great truth, plus certain mistakes which do not affect it in the least, than a great lie, plus the very same mistakes likewise. ”

“ As it was from the Goths that the missionaries generally went forth to convert the other northern nations, these nations, too, for the most part, became Arians; while some of them, after having been converted by Catholics, afterwards fell into Arianism. It is curious to observe how opposite the course of conversion was among these nations to what it had been in earlier times. In the Roman empire, the Gospel worked its way up from the poor and simple people who were the first to believe it, until the emperor himself became at length a convert. ”

“ The perfidy of the Arians is to be found in many of their letters and is its own witness. If the godlessness of the negation then gave a godly meaning to the assertion, I ask why we should now criticise a word which was then rightly adopted because it was wrongly denied? ”

“ For though we have a succession of teachers and become their disciples, yet, because we are taught by them the things of Christ, we both are, and are called, Christians all the same. But those who follow the heretics, though they have innumerable successors in their heresy, yet anyhow bear the name of him who devised it. Thus, though Arius be dead, and many of his party have succeeded him, yet those who think with him, as being known from Arius, are called Arians. ”

“ It is to be regretted that we have no independent account. The savage abuse 224with which Athanasius attacks the Arians in his “Letter to the African Bishops” makes his version of what took place at the Council exceedingly suspect. He speaks of their “wiliness,” and delivers himself of the sarcasm that as they were cradled in ordure their arguments also partook of a similar character. [97] Most of the vilification in the opening stages of the Arian controversy—at any rate most of that which has survived—seems to have been on the Trinitarian side. ”

“ The Son of God is infinitely holy, he says, the holiest of all the creations of the Father and far above them all. Very, very close to the Father Himself, so close that He is very nearly God. As a matter of fact, he declares, the Arians believe all that the Church teaches.
A letter is produced and read by one of the prelates; it was written by Eusebius himself to a friend. Full of heresy, it shows most clearly the double-dealing of the Arian Bishop and his party. The indignation breaks out afresh, and the letter is torn to shreds in the presence of the Council. ”

“ The party then which rallied round Alexander in formal opposition to the Arians may be put down at over thirty. ‘The men who best understood Arianism were most decided on the necessity of its formal condemnation.’ (Gwatkin.) To this compact and determined group the result of the council was due, and in their struggle they owed much—how much it is hard to determine—to the energy and eloquence of the deacon Athanasius, who had accompanied his bishop to the council as an indispensable companion (infr. p. 103; Soz. i. 17 fin.) ”

“ Priestley expresses it) to be “a man like themselves.” The last advocates of the pure Arian doctrine, of any celebrity, were Mr. Henry Taylor, (under the signature of Ben Mordecai,) and Dr. Richard Price, in his “Sermons on the Christian Doctrine.” It may be proper to observe, that the Arians, though they denied the absolute eternity of the Son, strongly contended for his preëxistence, as the Logos, or the Word of God, “by whom the worlds were made;” and admitted, more or less explicitly, the sacrifice which he offered for sin upon the cross. ”

“ The madness of the Arians has often led them to the perpetration of violent atrocities against the servants of God who keep the true faith; they introduce false doctrines themselves, and persecute those who uphold orthodox principles. ”

“ The suspicion attached to some of the early Fathers of being Arians in their doctrine would appear to derive some confirmation, from this passage.
ST. JEROME ON EARTH. SECOND VISIT. "This much I dare say, that, since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the Apostles' times. For they preached and lorded not; and now they lord and preach not.... Ever since the Prelates were made Lords and Nobles, the plough standeth; there is no work done, people starve." ”

“ Valens at once gave an Arian meaning to the anathemas of Phœbadius. 'Not a creature like other creatures.' Then creature he is. 'Not from nothing.' Quite so: from the will of the Father. 'Eternal.' Of course, as regards the future. However, the Homœans repeated the process of swearing that they were not Arians; the Emperor threatened; and at last the Seleucian deputies signed the decisions of Ariminum late on the last night of the year 359.
Deposition of the Semiarians
Acacius had won his victory, and had now to pass sentence on his rivals. Next month a council was held at Constantinople. ”

“ But the Arians held that he was created by the power of God, out of nothing, although they allowed him to have been the first created being in the Universe.—See the Letters of Arius and Alexander of Alexandria, describing their own, and each other's, conflicting opinions.
↑ Socrates says that Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, deposed Arias from his office and excluded him from the communion of the church, first at an assembly of the clergy in Alexandria, and then at a more numerous synod of Egyptian and Libyan bishops A.D. 321, composed of a hundred members. ”