THE PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTROVERSY OF ST. ATHANASIUS WITH ARIANISM. ONE NE of the most instructive methods of that time; and if the phrase were not amconsidering the great doctrines of biguous, it might not be amiss to describe theology is to view them in their relation to this century as sæculum Christianum, the the age in which they were first fully de- Christian century by special eminence. A veloped. It has been by means of the accu- single contrast will suffice to indicate the mulated experience of Christian life that the nature of the great victory which was won. truths of our faith have been brought to the The century opens with the spectacle of the light of day and have been impressed upon the whole civil authority of the empire engaged Christian conscience; and the greatest crises in a desperate attempt to stamp out the in the history of the Church have been those Christian faith. The most barbarous tortures. at which some grand doctrine has become the most reckless bloodshed, and wholesale prominent, has aroused all the spiritual and civil proscriptions, were brought to bear mental energies of the greatest men of the against the members of the Christian Church. day, and has received at their hands its Such was the commencement of the century; formal expression. This is eminently the let us turn to its close. In the year 390, case with the doctrine of the Trinity. the Emperor Theodosius, in the plenitude of Though that which is commonly called the his power, had ordered an indiscriminate creed of St. Athanasius cannot be considered slaughter of at least seven thousand persons as really his, nevertheless the assertion of the in the city of Thessalonica, in revenge for the cardinal truth in the doctrine of the Trinity murder of one of his officers by the mob of is indissolubly associated with his name. the city. St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, The character of that doctrine is in the at once addressed to the emperor an inpresent day much misapprehended, and dignant remonstrance against such an act of seems to offer great difficulties to some cruelty, and declared that he could not celeminds. They regard it as a metaphysical brate the eucharist in his presence until by speculation, and they do not discern its some public act of penance he had made vital relation to Christian life. It may re- amends to the Church for such an offence. move some of these difficulties, and will The emperor accordingly performed public at least contribute to a comprehension of the penance, stripping himself of his royal insigreal character and importance of the doctrine, nia, and praying for pardon with sighs and if we consider it in relation to the age of tears, and he is said not to have passed a day St. Athanasius, and inquire what was the afterwards without grieving for his crime. point of view from which he approached it. The character of a period of history is often best appreciated by taking two characteristic scenes of this kind, and considering the distance of thought which separates them, and the space in human experience which must have been traversed before the one could have succeeded the other. What is that space in this instance? It is obvious that a totally new authority has been established, and this authority is that of Christ and Christ's ministers. St. Ambrose was, of course, destitute of any legal right to call Theodosius to account. He is simply representing his Master; that Master is recognised by Theodosius as his Lord and his God, and the monarch of the world submits himself to Christ's punishment and control. It is this which must be considered the grand result of the controversy with Arianism. Christ, at the beginning of the century, was to the world at large simply the object of the worship of a persecuted sect. At the end of the century, He is recognised publicly by the highest For this purpose it will be desirable to attempt a general sketch of the main issues, both political and religious, which were at stake in the fourth century. That century has been designated by one of the principal of English ecclesiastical writers as sæculum Arianum, or the Arian century, and there can be no question of the substantial accuracy of this description of it. Arianism and the struggle which raged round it Occupy the largest space in the Church history of the time. But it will at once be evident that such a designation indicates what may be called the negative aspect of the century, and that the true movement of thought and life within it must be sought in the positive principle against which Arianism contended, and which ultimately won the victory. That principle was the true divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the grand truth which was at stake in all the struggles, theological and even political, of XIX-48 authority of the empire as the Divine Lord of all. of public affairs would receive a beneficial change conformable to the pious feelings of all men."* His vision, accordingly, has been well described, whatever its real character, as "the response of faith to an interrogation of genius." From that moment his part was taken, and, with whatever inconsistency or ignorance, he sought thenceforwards in the Church the principle of unity and of authority which was escaping from the empire. This was the idea which he initiated, and by virtue of which he justly holds the title of "Constantine the Great." It was an idea only to be real political and spiritual, ecclesiastical, intellectual, and social-a struggle amidst which not merely noble and wise deeds, but splendid errors, were inevitable; a struggle which called into play the greatest and deepest forces of the human spirit, and involved, little as it was foreseen, the subversion of one civilisation and the creation of another. It is imperative for us, if we would form any adequate conception of the nature of this period, and of the men who lived and worked in it, to disengage ourselves from the habit, so often indulged, of forming judgments on the great characters of such a time in accordance with the exigencies and the habits of wholly different periods and circumstances. The more we enter into those momentous struggles, the more-like men surveying a If this consideration be kept in view, it may impart a unity to the confused struggles of this period which would otherwise be wanting. One grand result is really being worked out amidst all the disorganized passions, intrigues, controversies, and persecutions of the time. That result is the supreme moral and spiritual authority of Christ; and as the century passes away we see in the person of Innocent, the first great pope, the Christian Church, as the representative of that Divine name, assuming the control over the world which was fast drop-ised by a fierce and prolonged struggle, ping from the hands of all civil power. It is the greatness of Constantine to have conceived, however imperfectly, the possibility of some such revolution, and to have given the first impulse to it. His conception, indeed, involved the centralization of this new moral authority in the hands of the civil power, and this error led to all the contradictions of his reign. In his vision of a cross with the legend, "By this thou shalt conquer," more seems to be included than the mere promise of victory in battle; and to disparage that vision, as has been sometimes done, on the ground that the cross was unworthy to be associated with the bloody scenes of war, is to take too narrow a view of its significance. So far as it implied that the sole method by which any civil authority could for the future assert a permanent supre-battle-field--shall we condone the passion, macy was by allying itself with the cross and the Church, it accurately symbolized not merely the crisis in Constantine's life, but the crisis which then prevailed in the history of the world. In this sense the vision remains true to the present day; and the time may come again when the civil power, craving once more for a solid support and a permanent basis for its authority, may recur to the pregnant vision of the first Christian emperor. Constantine has himself told us what was his main animating conception at the outset of his reign. "I proposed to myself," he said, "in the first place to unite under one form the opinion which all nations held of the Deity, and, secondly, to restore its former vigour to the whole body of the empire, which appeared to be affected by a grievous malady. Keeping these objects before me, I considered the one with the silent eyes of thought, and I endeavoured to attain the other by force of arms. For I conceived that if, as was my desire, I could establish a common agreement amongst all the worshippers of God, the administration the blunders, the defects we may witness, and But where was this authority to be centred? Constantine, as we have seen, conceived with justice that it could only be found in the re Euseb., "Vit. Const." ii. 65. cognition by all men of one supreme object of worship, and for this he looked to the Church. The cardinal question, therefore, of his reign, and of the century, was, what was the object of worship which the Church thus presented to the world? Of that there was no doubt. It was our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Godhead as incarnate in Him. The essence of Christian life up to that time had been the absolute devotion of the soul to its Divine Lord. The gospel had found the secret of evoking a love which absorbed all the heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength; a love which transcended the limits of this life, the very bounds of space, of time, and all the conditions of human weakness, and which enabled men in deliberate consciousness, and in the full exercise of all their powers, to surrender themselves to the service of Christ. This is the main fact on which it behoves us to concentrate our attention, if we would do the least justice to the nature of the Arian struggle. It is a point which has been seized with singular clearness and force by Dr. Newman, who is doubtless the greatest English master of the history of this time. The force of this Divine vision is admirably depicted in a tale called "Callista," in which he describes the Christian life in the middle of the previous century, during the persecution of the time of Cyprian. The person of Christ had revealed to all the noble souls who had heard of it a vision of truth, of purity, of spiritual beauty and grace by which they were enraptured. In the first ardour of this vision, as yet unobscured by the formal garb which human weakness at length threw around it, they were stimulated to efforts of spiritual fervour and ascetic self-discipline which to us seem scarcely conceivable. Doubtless that enthusiasm led them into error; but it is a trial of patience to hear them coolly criticized. "He was a great man," said one statesman of another, "and I have forgotten all his faults." They were great saints, and their faults were like spots in the sun," would, on the whole, be the just, as well as generous, judgment of the ecclesiastical historian on these characters. The most conspicuous type of them is St. Antony, born about the year 250, the son of noble, opulent, and Christian parents. He was brought up as a Christian, and seems to have been from the first fascinated by the life and truth of the gospel. He could not bring himself to submit to the ordinary studies of a liberal education, such as philosophy and foreign languages; and at length his mind became earnestly set on imitating, as he conceived to the letter, the apostles and their converts, who gave up their possessions and followed Christ. One day in the Gospel read in church he heard the text, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast;" and soon afterwards the text, "Take no thought for the morrow ;" and at length having sold all his personal property, and having entrusted his sister to the care of some pious women, he commenced a strictly ascetic life. He began by visiting other ascetics and learning from them. He is described as subjecting himself sincerely to the zealous men whom he visited, and marking, in his own thoughts, the special attainments of each in zeal and ascetic life-the refined manner of one, another's continuance in prayer, the meekness of a third, the kindness of a fourth, the long vigils of a fifth, the studiousness of a sixth. This one had a marvellous gift of endurance, that of fasting and sleeping on the ground. This was gentle, that long-suffering; and in one and all, it is added, he noted their devotion towards Christ, and love one towards another. Thus furnished, he returned to his own ascetic retreat, with the intention of combining in himself their separate exercises, and zealously minded to exemplify them all. Thus commenced a long and vehement struggle between an intensely powerful will and a noble heart devoted to Christ, on the one side, and on the other, the passions and weaknesses of the flesh, stimulated and strengthened, not weakened as was erroneously hoped, by austerities which disorganized the whole system, and disturbed the mental balance. Lashed, as is described, by the spirits whom he saw in his visions, he would cry out loudly, "Here am I, Antony. I do not shun your blows; though ye add to them, yet nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ." last he attained comparative calm; and thus he lived to the age of more than a hundred years; and his last words reveal to us the secret and the passion of his life: "I, as it is written, go the way of my fathers, for I perceive I am called by the Lord. Ye, then, be sober, and forfeit not the reward of your long asceticism; but as those who have made a beginning, be diligent to hold fast your earnestness. Ye know the assaults of the evil one, how fearful they are, yet how powerless. Fear them not; rather breathe the spirit of Christ, and believe in Him always. Live as dying daily, take heed to yourselves, and remember the admonitions you have heard from me. Have no fellow At Such was the life of St. Antony. It was one intense and prolonged effort to subdue every passion and distraction of his soul which was unworthy of his Saviour, and which was inconsistent with union with Him. It would, as has been said, be a task as ungrateful as unnecessary to dwell on the errors of judgment by which such a life was at tended. Perhaps the cardinal error was simply due to a lack of knowledge not at that day possessed by any one-to the supposition, namely, that the body could be best subdued by bringing it into a wholly unnatural condition; whereas, on the contrary, such a condition was the very one in which impulses and imaginations escape from the healthy control of the will. As to the monastic life itself, even in this extreme form, before its adoption at that time by men naturally inclined for it be adversely criticized, it would demand serious consideration whether in a state of society steeped in corruption, to an extent which, probably, we can none of us realise, some vehement revolt of this kind against the ordinary life of the world was not equally imperative and serviceable. These remarks will apply in great measure to the whole ascetic life of the period-to the lives of St. Basil and the Gregories, no less than to that of St. Antony. It was, perhaps, the most conspicuous and influential factor in Christian life at that time. It has been observed that all the greatest souls who guided the Church, and through the Church the world, through this momentous crisis, were trained like the Israelites of old in the desert. All, like Antony, were absorbed by that which our Elizabethan poet has described as the vision of heavenly love and beauty, and they wrestled with their souls and their bodies, with the men around them, and even with their parents, in order to attain to the revelation and the enjoyment of it. They were sensible only of the terrible barriers which the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life The liberty has been taken of quoting these translations from Dr. Newman's sketch of St. Antony in "The Church of the Fathers." interposed between themselves and the object of their lofty passion, and they dashed themselves, perhaps madly, against the bars of their earthly prison. The Church had to learn that it is not by breaking through the fetters which this life imposes on us, but by bearing them patiently and submitting meekly to our burdens, that the soul is, as a rule, destined to reach its home. But when all is said and all allowance made, the life of these ascetic saints of the fourth century is, of all the witnesses to the power which the love of Christ can exercise on the soul of man, among the greatest which has been described in authentic history since apostolic times. That men should have been capable of such devotion is a glory to humanity as well as a glory to the Church; and as we contemplate it, the famous exclamation of Tertullian rises thankfully to our lips, O Testimonium animæ naturaliter Christiana! It claims our attention, however, in the course of our present survey, for another reason. It was in the midst of this life of ascetic devotion to Christ that the seeds of St. Athanasius's character were sown. His mind, which was of the first order, had received the highest logical and rhetorical training of the day; and as two early treatises by him prove, he possessed a singular mastery of the philosophy of the ancient world. But when still an unknown deacon, attached to the person of Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, he was fond of retiring to the desert and refreshing himself with the society of St. Antony. He caught from Antony his spiritual ardour; and he has been justly described as inflamed from his youth with that passion which creates saints-the love of Jesus Christ. He recognised in the person of the Saviour, human and Divine, the revelation of the Divine glory, Divine wisdom, Divine goodness, Divine beauty; and on the recognition of this revelation, and the submission of the whole man to it, he discerned that the Christian life and the redemption of mankind depended. Only a Person who was both Divine and human, and who through His humanity could bring home the Godhead to the hearts of men, was capable of inspiring that absolute and that eternal devotion which possessed the souls of an Antony and an Athanasius. From this conviction, from this passion (we may be allowed to say), his whole career takes its start; and in this it finds its unity. But St. Athanasius differed from St. Antony in possessing an intellect of which the grasp and the profundity equalled the depth and |