Sabellianism

“ In the 4th century this and the allied doctrine of Marcellus of Ancyra were frequently confounded, so that it is exceedingly difficult 'to arrive at a clear account of it in its genuine form. Sabellianism, in fact, became a collective name for all those Unitarian doctrines in which the divine nature of Christ was acknowledged. The teaching of Sabellius himself was very closely allied to the older Modalism (“Patripassianism”) of Noetus and Praxeas, but was distinguished from it by its more careful theological elaboration and 7 by the account it took of the Holy Spirit. ”

“ And the dance and jest go rioting on, and none of his murdering knows!”
“Ah, well, I would risk it! but whether Saville, for us it could happen so,—
Perish the thought! ’tis a sacrilege,—but never, dear love, shall we know.
I am as a bee untimely crushed ere he unloadeth his sweets,
Dead to accomplishment, effort, and joy, whose heart still cruelly beats,
Ardent, ambitious, and pulsing strong with fiery tropical heats,—
God! how I worship my art divine, my heavenly art, Saville,—
That I were rotting a grain a day, yet able to serve her still!” ”

“ Dazzled so blind by her beautiful face that never a fault he sees!
If ever a woman on earth might hope to be worshipped for mind alone,
Or heart or soul, ’twas Saville, who was worthy the love of a prince to have known,—
But ah! ’tis impossible—nature revolts—men may sin against God on high,
But not ’gainst the law of selection; however they truckle and lie
And successfully feign, they cannot love a thing from which love must fly,—
Poor girl! ”

“ Since, however, some honourable brethren, worthy of all credit, have told me that you have introduced certain innovations into the faith, and have spoken against sound doctrine, I am under the circumstances the more agitated, and above measure anxious, lest, in addition to the countless wounds which have been inflicted on the Church by traitors to the truth of the Gospel, yet a further calamity should spring up in the renewal of the ancient heresy of Sabellius, the enemy of the Church ”

“ The Fairy Saville all things of good would serfs at his beckoning be,
“And first ’twas Love and then ’twas Wealth, dear heart, that thou gavest me,
And now ’tis Fame, and Vision draws nigh, lured to mine eyes by thee!”
And he said ’twas strange to reflect indeed that if he had been alone
Throughout the term of his blindness, if God had not made her known
To his cankered heart, ’twas certain the mordant malevolent tone
Of his mind would have tainted his later life, projecting through future days
When the hand’s sleight wedded to strength of purpose should fill the world with his praise ”

“ Your voice breaks down in a heartstruck wail at a failure abrupt and complete,
I could not survive the cruel shock,—I should drop down dead at your feet!”
“Nay now, Saville, thou art far too bold,—why, what shall it profit me
The fleecy flocks of the sky to mark, the crocus and primrose to see,
Ay, even my first love, ‘Rupert’s Trust,’ and not—O Saville! not thee?
Yet thou shalt never ask boon in vain,—I will thine almoner be,
A warden most lenient,—Go, dear heart! for a score of hours thou art free!” ”

“ Ce qui sembloit d'abord ne se pouvoir sans crime;"'
answered Saville with a mock heroic air. "The fact is, that we are an indolent people; the person who succeeds the most with us has but to push the most. ”

“ Against the Sabellians. [1]
1 Now truly it would be just to dispute against those who, by dividing and rending the monarchy, which is the most august announcement of the Church of God, into, as it were, three powers, and distinct substances (hypostases) , and three deities, destroy it. [2] For I have heard that some who preach and teach the word of God among you are teachers of this opinion, who indeed diametrically, so to speak, are opposed to the opinion of Sabellius. For he blasphemes in saying that the Son Himself is the Father, and vice versa ”

“ Saville had responded to Kyrle’s wild prayer, and so was permitted to save
His wounded faith and his breaking heart from the dusty dark of the grave,
And the days like white-winged birds wheeled by, and nearer and nearer they grew,
And each was a light in the other’s life, tinging its grayness through
With a cordial warmth, as in winter wolds vermilion barberries do,—
Ah me! ’tis a world of shadows we walk in, and happy is he who can cling
In the midst of the vacillant spectres secure to one real true thing. ”

“ And Saville perceived with a wild regret that ’twas not the end of the world,
And slowly she turned on her languid divan, dismissing them all from the room,
And shuddering flung her cerements off, like Lazarus in the tomb,
And dragged her rebellious feet across the velvety carpet, and flung
Herself odalisque- wise on a couch where a mirror magnificent hung.
For women, methinks that the text should read, “If haply ye have all things
And have not beauty, then have ye naught,” for beauty such benison brings
No woman would barter it for a crown or the wealth barbaric of kings! ”

“ You lacked the vision that would have shown you that God did not create men equals. Well, you are in case to-night to judge which of us was right, which wrong. You see what is happening here in Paris. You see the foul spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land fallen into confusion. Probably you have enough imagination to conceive something of what must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out of this filth and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don't you understand that society must re-order itself presently out of all this? ”

“ For an hour or twain ’twas enough to enjoy, merely that God had said
“Let there be light!” for him once more, and had summoned his eyes from the dead,
But quickly the rift crept widening in,—’twas but a mere broken toy,
A splintered gem, a goblet cracked, if Saville did not share in his joy.
He blamed himself for granting her prayer,—she should have remained beside
Her husband and bravely fronted with him what weal or woe should betide,—
Alone? ”

“ The hosts of heresy assemble themselves against her; each of them can defeat all the others, but not one can win a victory for itself. The only victory is the triumph which the Church celebrates over them all. Each heresy wields against its adversary some weapon already shattered, in another instance, by the Church’s condemnation. There is no point of union between them, and the outcome of their internecine struggles is the confirmation of the faith.
5. Sabellius sweeps away the birth of the Son, and then preaches the unity of God ”

“ The proud aspiring spirit of man craves something to raise him from the dust, and to adorn his insignificance; he seeks to strengthen his alliance with the lofty and the eternal, and shrinks from low-born cares, as being the fetters and bolts that link him to his baser origin. Saville, the slave of a violent woman's caprice, struggling with passions, at once so fiery and so feeble as to excite contempt, was a spectacle which they were glad to shun. ”

“ Was the flame still lambently blazing and clear, the gold from the dross to refine,
Of force to pierce and to purify men, and change then from panthers and swine?
Could a man step out of his daily round and that passionate picture scan,
And not go forth to the greed and the grind a cleaner and better man?
Had she heard as she gazed the Spirits of Good singing their deathless song,
Had she felt it were better to starve and rot than swerve to the smallest wrong?
But Saville was mute ”

“ Ex seipso procreatus ipse se fecit
, &c., of Synesius, Jerome, Hilary, and Lactantius and others involve the same conception.
Ib.
c.27. p.140.
The seventh is the heresy of Sabellius, which he saith was revived by Servetus. So it was indeed, that Servetus revived in our time the damnable heresy of Sabellius, long since condemned in the first ages of the Church. But what is that to us? How little approbation he found amongst us, the just and honourable proceeding against him at Geneva will witness to all posterity. ”

“ It is not the poaching that annoys me so much as the contempt for my absolute and inviolable rights. There is, monsieur, as you cannot fail to have observed, an evil spirit of insubordination in the air, and there is one only way in which to meet it. ”

“ Moreover, he had said things which professed him a revolutionist, and the revolutionists, whilst being a class which she had been taught to despise and scorn, dealt, she knew, in a violence which it might be ill to excite.
“Monsieur,” she faltered, and with her hand she clutched at her riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, “you are not yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so spoken to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us forget this scene. Shall we?” ”

“ But he opposes the tendency in Realism to treat as identical the qualities which resemble each other in different individuals, since that abolishes the personality of the individual which to him is the only reality. Like Roscelin he did not hesitate to apply his dialectic to theology. Here, while repudiating the tritheism of his master, he practically reproduced the old heresy of Sabellius which reduced the Trinity to three aspects or attributes of the Divine Being—power, wisdom, and love. ”

“ She remembered the thoughts that in the past she had entertained concerning this young revolutionist. Never yet had she been able to regard him as belonging to the same order of beings as herself-not even when she had kissed his unconscious lips that evening on the Ridge road. An immeasurable gulf had seemed to yawn between them—the gulf between her nobility and his base origin. And now, as her carriage trundled out of Paris and took the dusty high road, she shuddered, and her cheeks burned with shame at the memory of the wrong that by such thoughts she had done him. ”

“ Then Saville perceived what is common to all who are linked with disciples of art,
That she stood without the holy of holies, an alien, a stranger, apart,
But she passed the portal and coined a word to comfort the desolate heart.
“Hearken, my dearest! You murmur because you fancy you have not done
Your stent to the utmost, have painted but one great picture,—but one!
You should rather thank God from a grateful heart you were gifted to do so much,
For manifold millions of men go by, nor help the world by a touch ”

“ What does a little lightness of finger matter? Play it in a small way, you're a thief, and food for Messer Braccio, curse him! Play it on a big scale and you're a prince. I for one don't think the less of Di Savelli because perhaps his hand at cards was always too good, and he made that little error in the matter of the rubies. A gentleman is sometimes driven to hard straits. I was a gentleman once and ought to know. I give you a toast--Here's to a long sword and a light hand! ”

“ Salvian answers them like an old Hebrew prophet: ‘The Lord’s arm is not shortened. The Lord’s eyes are not closed. The Lord is still as near as ever. He is governing the world as He has always governed it: by the everlasting moral laws, by which the wages of sin are death. Your iniquities have withheld good things from you. You have earned exactly what God has paid you. ”

“ But, my dear child, bethink you of what he is, and of what I am. Were he a gentleman—my equal—my course would stand clearly defined. I should not have hesitated a moment. But this canaille! Ma foi! let me beg of you to come to your senses. The very thought is unworthy in you.”
“I understand you,” she answered him, very coldly. “You use a coward's arguments, and you have the effrontery to consider yourself a man of honour—a nobleman. I no longer marvel that there is a revolution in France.” ”

“ But I mention this loosely and only to you, not to Dunning, for to propose anything of a measure, would be vain and ridiculous in our present state.
"Is it not almost incredible that the head of the Whigs, as he styles himself, should not be moved by resentment, rivalship, the call of his country, the conduct of his friends, particularly Sir George Savile, to be a whit more decisive than when he set out, and still there he stands obstinately stopping the free course of popular spirit, which alone can ever oppose the Court." ”

“ Savagism had no rights which civilization was bound to respect. The world belonged not to Christian or Mahometan, but to whatever idea, principle, or power could take it. In none of their pretended principles, in none of their codes of honor or ethics, was there any other ultimate appeal than brute force ”

“ The Barons, who had been much embarrassed by the bold speech of the old Colonna, all turned their eyes to Savelli, who answered with more composure than was anticipated.
“The question admits a double reply. He who is born a ruler, and maintains a foreign army, governing by fear, should be penurious. He who is made ruler, who courts the people, and would reign by love, must win their affection by generosity, and dazzle their fancies by pomp. Such, I believe, is the usual maxim in Italy, which is rife in all experience of state wisdom.” ”

“ At the nunnery of Sapwell, which you also contend to be under your jurisdiction, you change the prioresses and superiors again and again at your own will and caprice. Here, as well as at Pray, you depose those who are good and religious; you promote to the highest dignities the worthless and the vicious. The duties of the order are cast aside; virtue is neglected ”