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Disc. but is on all sides recognised as godless Arius, denying the Son, and reckoning Him among the creatures.

k And so godless or atheist Aetius, supr. p. 81. vid. p. 3, note f. for an explanation of the word. In like manner Athan. says, ad Serap. iii. 2. that if a man says "that the Son is a creature, who is Word and Wisdom, and the Expression, and the Radiance, whom whoso seeth seeth the Father," he falls under the text, "Whoso denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." "Such a one," he continues, "will in no long time say, as the fool, There is no God." In like manner he speaks of those who think the Son to be the Spirit as "without (w) the Holy Trinity, and atheists." Serap. iv. 6. because they really do not believe in the God that is, and there is none other but He. And so again," As the faith delivered [in the Holy Trinity] is one, and this unites us to God, and he who takes aught from the Trinity, and is baptized in the sole Name of the Father or of the Son, or in Father and

Son without the Spirit, gains nothing, but remains empty and incomplete, both he and the professed administrator, (for in the Trinity is the completion, [initiation,]) so whoso divides the Son from the Father, or degrades the Spirit to the creatures, hath neither the Son nor the Father, but is an atheist and worse than an infidel and any thing but a Christian." Serap. i. 30. Eustathius speaks of the Arians as ȧvlgárous bious, who were attempting xgarna rov bríov. ap. Theod. Hist. i. 7. p. 760. Naz. speaks of the heathen

oλúsos alita. Orat. 25. 15. and he calls faith and regeneration "a denial of atheism, alias, and a confession of godhead, órnros, Orat. 23. 12. He calls Lucius, the Alexandrian Antipope, on account of his cruelties, “this second Arius, the more copious river of the atheistic spring, rãs àétov_anyñs.” Orat. 25. 11. Palladius, the Imperial officer, is åvàg äfeos. ibid. 12.

CHAP. II.

EXTRACTS FROM THE THALIA OF ARIUS.

Arius maintains that God became a Father, and the Son was not always; the Son out of nothing; once He was not; He was not before His generation; He was created; named Wisdom and Word after God's attributes; made that He might make us; one out of many powers of God; alterable; exalted on God's foreknowledge what He was to be; not very God; but called so as others by participation; foreign in substance from the Father; does not know or see the Father; does not know Himself.

1. Now the commencement of Arius's Thalia and flip- CHAP. pancy, effeminate in tone and nature, runs thus :—

"According to faith of God's elect, God's prudent ones,
Holy children, rightly dividing, God's Holy Spirit receiving,
Have I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,
Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.
Along their track, have I been walking, with like opinions,
I the very famous, the much suffering for God's glory;
And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and knowledge.”

66

II.

§. 5.

P. 94.

And the mockeries which he utters in it, repulsive and most irreligious, are such as these1:-" God was not always' de Syn. a Father;" but "once God was alone and not yet a Father, S. 15. but afterwards He became a Father." "The Son was not always;" for, whereas all things were made out of nothing, and all existing creatures and works were made, so the Word of God Himself was 66 made out of nothing," and once He was not," and "He was not before His generation," but He as others "had an origin of creation." "For God," he says, was alone, and the Word as yet was not, nor the Wisdom. Then, wishing to frame us, thereupon He made a certain one, and named Him Word and Wisdom and Son, that He might form us by means of Him." Accordingly, he says

I.

DISC. that there are two wisdoms, first, the attribute coexistent with God, and next, that in this Wisdom the Son was generated, and was only named Wisdom and Word as partaking of it. "For Wisdom," saith he, " by the will of the wise God, had its existence in Wisdom." In like manner, he says, that there is another Word in God besides the Son, and that the Son again as partaking of it, is named Word and Son according to grace. And this too is an idea proper to their heresy, as shewn in other works of theirs, that there are many powers; one of which is God's own by nature and eternal; but that Christ, on the other hand, is not the true power of God; but, as others, one of the so-called powers; one of which, namely, 1 de Syn. the locust and the caterpillar1, is called in Scripture, not 101. merely the power, but the great power. The others are 25. many and are like the Son, and of them David speaks in the Ps. 24, Psalms, when he says, The Lord of hosts or powers. And by

§. 18, p.

Joel 2,

10.

nature, as all others, so the Word Himself is alterable, and remains good by His own free will, while He chooseth; when, however, He wills, He can alter as we can, as being of an alterable nature. For" therefore," saith he, " as foreknowing that He would be good, did God by anticipation bestow on Him this glory, which afterwards, as man, He attained from 2 p. 11, virtue. Thus in consequence of His works fore-known', 114, did God bring it to pass that He, being such, should come note c. to be."

ref. 1. p.

§. 6.

2. Moreover he has dared to say, that "the Word is not the very God;" "though He is called God, yet He is not very God," but "by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name." And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in substance, so too is "the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father's substance and propriety," but belongs to things generated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he had succeeded to the devil's recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that “even to the Son the Father is invisible," and " the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;" but even what He knows and what He sees, He knows and sees"in proportion to His own measure," as we also know according to our own power. For the Son too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly, for He fails in compre

[blocks in formation]

II.

note b.

hension, but "He knows not even His own substance ;"— CHAP. and that "the substances of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien', and without participation of each other ";" p. 43, and, in his own words, "utterly unlike from each other in 2 P. 95, substance and glory, unto infinity." Thus as to "likeness note d. of glory and substance," he says that the Word is entirely diverse from both the Father and the Holy Ghost. With such words hath the irreligious spoken; maintaining that the Son is distinct by Himself, and in no respect partaker of the Father. These are portions of Arius's fables as they occur in that jocose composition.

6.

Hær.73.

3. Who is there that hears all this, nay, the metre of the §. 7. Thalia, but must hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage? who but must regard him,3 Ep. when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as the Encycl. serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading what fol- Epiph. lows in his work, but must discern in his irreligious doc-1. trine that error, into which by his sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman? who at such blasphemies is not transported? The heaven, as the Prophet says, was Jer. 2, astonished, and the earth shuddered at the transgression of 12. Sept. the Law. But the sun, with greater horror once, impatient of the bodily contumelies, which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us, turned away, and recalling his rays made that day sunless. And shall not all human kind

Vid. supr. p. 96, note f. xaráλnys was originally a Stoical word, and even when considered perfect, was, properly speaking, attributable only to an imperfect being. For it is used in contrast to the Platonic doctrine of dia, to express the hold of things obtained by the mind through the senses; it being a Stoical maxim, nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu. In this sense it is also used by the Fathers, to mean real and certain knowledge after inquiry, though it is also ascribed to Almighty God. As to the position of Arius, since we are told in Scripture that none "knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him," if xaráAnis be an exact and complete knowledge of the object of contemplation, to deny that the Son comprehended the

Father, was to deny that He was in the
Father, i. e. the doctrine of the rigi-
xenes. p. 95, note d. or to main-
tain that He was a distinct, and there-
fore a created, being. On the other hand
Scripture asserts that, as the Holy
Spirit which is in God," searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things" of God,
so the Son, as being" in the bosom of
the Father," alone "hath declared
Him." vid. Clement. Strom. v. 12.
And thus Athan. speaking of Mark
13, 32. "If the Son is in the Fa-
ther, and the Father in the Son,
and the Father knows the day and
the hour, it is plain that the Son too,
being in the Father, and knowing the
things in the Father, Himself also
knows the day and the hour." Orat.
iii. 44.

13.

I.

v. 15. Sept.

188 A Council's decision sufficient, even without argument.

Disc. at Arius's blasphemies be struck speechless, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to escape hearing them or seeing their author? Rather, will not the Lord Himself have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words which He hath already uttered by the Hos. 7, prophet Hosea, Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me; destruction upon them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me. And soon after, They imagine mischief against Me; they turn away to nothing. For to turn away from the Word of God, which is, and to fashion to themselves one that is not, is to fall to what is nothing. For this was I p. 49, why the Ecumenical' Council, when Arius thus spoke, cast note o. him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such irreligion. And ever since has Arius's error been reckoned for a heresy more than ordinary, being known as Christ's foe2, and harbinger of Antichrist. Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men flee from that irreligious heresy, as I said above, yet since certain persons called Christian, either in ignorance or pretence, think it as I then said, little different from the Truth, p. 179, and call its professors Christians'; proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers, thereby to expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy. Perhaps, when thus encountered, they will be silenced, and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent.

3

2 p. 6,

note n.

p. 178,

ref. 1.

4

ref. 3.

b And so Vigilius of the heresies about the Incarnation, Etiamsi in erroris eorum destructionem nulli conderentur libri, hoc ipsum solum, quod

hæretici sunt pronunciati, orthodoxorum securitati sufficeret. contr. Eutych. i. p. 494.

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