Appendix

 Note 1. The Syrian school of Theology  ( Vide Supra, p. 8.)

 MUCH has been written at home, and more has come to us from abroad, on the subject of the early Syrian theology, since this Volume was published. At that time, it was at Oxford considered a paradox to look to Antioch for the origin of a heresy which takes its name from an Alexandrian ecclesiastic, and which Mosheim had ruled to be one out of many instances of the introduction of Neo-Platonic ideas into the Christian Church. The Divinity Professor of the day, a learned and kind man, Dr. Burton, in talking with me on the subject, did but qualify his surprise at the view which I had taken, by saying to me, "Of course you have a right to your own opinion." Since that time, it has become clear, from the works of Neander and others, that Arianism was but one out of various errors, traceable to one and the same mode of theologizing, and that mode, as well as the errors it originated, the characteristics of the Syrian school.

 I have thought it would throw light on the somewhat meagre account of it at the beginning of this Volume, if I here added a passage on the same subject, as contained in one of my subsequent works [n. 1].

 The Churches of Syria and Asia Minor were the most intellectual portion of early Christendom. Alexandria was but one metropolis in a large region, and contained the philosophy of the whole Patriarchate; but Syria abounded in wealthy and luxurious cities, the creation of the Seleucidæ, where the arts and the schools of Greece had full opportunities of cultivation. For a time too, for the first two hundred years, as some think, Alexandria was the only See as well as the only School of Egypt; while Syria was divided into small dioceses, each of which had at first an authority of its own, and which, even after the growth of the Patriarchal power, received their respective bishops, not from the See of Antioch, but from their own metropolitan. In Syria too the schools were private, a circumstance which would tend both to diversity in religious opinion, and incaution in the expression of it; but the sole catechetical school of Egypt was the organ of the Church, and its Bishop could banish Origen for speculations which developed and ripened with impunity in Syria.

 But the immediate source of that fertility in heresy, which is the unhappy distinction of the Syrian Church, was its celebrated Exegetical School. The history of that school is summed up in the broad characteristic fact, on the one hand that it devoted itself to the literal and critical interpretation of Scripture, and on the other that it gave rise first to the Arian and then to the Nestorian heresy. In all ages of the Church, her teachers have shown a disinclination to confine themselves to the mere literal interpretation of Scripture. Her most subtle and powerful method of proof, whether in ancient or modern times, is the mystical sense, which is so frequently used in doctrinal controversy as on many occasions to supersede any other. In the early centuries we find this method of interpretation to be the very ground for receiving as revealed the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Whether we betake ourselves to the Ante-Nicene writers or the Nicene, certain texts will meet us, which do not obviously refer to that doctrine, yet are put forward as palmary proofs of it. On the other hand, if evidence be wanted of the connexion of heterodoxy and biblical criticism in that age, it is found in the fact that, not long after their contemporaneous appearance in Syria, they are found combined in the person of Theodore of Heraclea, so called from the place both of his birth and his bishoprick, an able commentator and an active enemy of St. Athanasius, though a Thracian unconnected except by sympathy with the Patriarchate of Antioch. The case had been the same in a still earlier age; the Jews clung to the literal sense of the Old Testament and rejected the Gospel; the Christian Apologists proved its divinity by means of the allegorical. The formal connexion of this mode of interpretation with Christian theology is noticed by Porphyry, who speaks of Origen and others as borrowing it from heathen philosophy, both in explanation of the Old Testament and in defence of their own doctrine. It may almost be laid down as an historical fact that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together.

 This is clearly seen, as regards the primitive theology, by a recent writer, in the course of a Dissertation upon St. Ephrem. After observing that Theodore of Heraclea, Eusebius, and Diodorus gave a systematic opposition to the mystical interpretation, which had a sort of sanction from Antiquity and the orthodox Church, he proceeds; "Ephrem is not as sober in his interpretations, nor could he be, since he was a zealous disciple of the orthodox faith. For all those who are most eminent in such sobriety were as far as possible removed from the faith of the Councils and On the other hand, all who retained the faith of the Church never entirely dispensed with the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. For the Councils watched over the orthodox faith; nor was it safe in those ages, as we learn especially from the instance of Theodore of Mopsuestia, to desert the spiritual for an exclusive cultivation of the literal method. Moreover, the allegorical interpretation, even when the literal sense was not injured, was also preserved; because in those times, when both heretics and Jews in controversy were stubborn in their objections to Christian doctrine, maintaining that the Messiah was yet to come, or denying the abrogation of the Sabbath and ceremonial law, or ridiculing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and especially that of Christ's Divine Nature, under such circumstances ecclesiastical writers found it to their purpose, in answer to such exceptions, violently to refer every part of Scripture by allegory to Christ and His Church." [n. 2]

 The School of Antioch appears to have risen in the middle of the third century; but there is no evidence to determine whether it was a local institution, or, as is more probable, a discipline or method characteristic of the Syrian Church. Dorotheus is one of its earliest teachers; he is known as a Hebrew scholar, as well as a commentator on the sacred text, and he was the master of Eusebius of Cæsarea. Lucian, the friend of the notorious Paul of Samosata, and for three successive Episcopates after him a seceder from the Church, though afterwards a martyr in it, was the editor of a new edition of the Septuagint, and master of the chief original teachers of Arianism. Eusebius of Cæsarea, Asterius called the Sophist, and Eusebius of Emesa, Arians of the Nicene period, and Diodorus, a zealous opponent of Arianism, but the Master of Theodore of Mopsuestia, have all a place in the Exegetical School. St. Chrysostom and Theodoret, both Syrians, and the former the pupil of Diodorus, adopted the literal interpretation, though preserved from its abuse. But the principal doctor of the School was the master of Nestorius, that Theodore, who has just been mentioned, and who with his writings, and with the writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril, and the letter written by Ibas of Edessa to Maris, was condemned by the fifth Rcumenical Council. Ibas translated into Syriac, and Maris into Persian, the books of Theodore and Diodorus [n. 3]; and in so doing they became the immediate instruments of the formation of the great Nestorian school and Church in farther Asia.

 As many as ten thousand tracts of Theodore are said in this way to have been introduced to the knowledge of the Christians of Mesopotamia, Adiabene, Babylonia, and the neighbouring countries. He was called by those Churches absolutely "the Interpreter," and it eventually became the very profession of the Nestorian communion to follow him as such. "The doctrine of all our Eastern Churches," says the Council under the patriarch Marabas, "is founded on the Creed of Nicæa; but in the exposition of the Scriptures we follow St. Theodore." "We must by all means remain firm to the commentaries of the great Commentator," says the Council under Sabarjesus; "whoso shall in any manner oppose them, or think otherwise, be he anathema." [n. 4] No one since the beginning of Christianity, except Origen and St. Augustine, has had such great influence on his brethren as Theodore [n. 5].

 The original Syrian school had possessed very marked characteristics, which it did not lose when it passed into a new country and into strange tongues. Its comments on Scripture seem to have been clear, natural, methodical, apposite, and logically exact. "In all Western Aramæa," says Lengerke, that is, in Syria, "there was but one mode of treating whether exegetics or doctrine, the practical." [n. 6] Thus Eusebius of Cæsarea, whether as a disputant or a commentator, is confessedly a writer of sense and judgment, and he belongs historically to the Syrian school, though he does not go so far as to exclude the mystical interpretation or to deny the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Again, we see in St. Chrysostom a direct, straightforward treatment of the sacred text, and a pointed application of it to things and persons; and Theodoret abounds in modes of thinking and reasoning which without any great impropriety may be called English. Again, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, though he does not abstain from allegory, shows the character of his school by the great stress he lays upon the study of Scripture, and, I may add, by the peculiar clearness and neatness of his style, which will be appreciated by a modern reader.

 It would have been well, had the genius of the Syrian theology been ever in the safe keeping of men such as St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret; but in Theodore of Mopsuestia, nay in Diodorus before him, it developed into those errors, of which Paul of Samosata had been the omen on its rise. As its attention was chiefly directed to the examination of the Scriptures, in its interpretation of the Scriptures was its heretical temper discovered; and though allegory can be made an instrument of evading Scripture doctrine, criticism may more readily be turned to the destruction of doctrine and Scripture together. Bent on ascertaining the literal sense, Theodore was naturally led to the Hebrew text instead of the Septuagint, and thence to Jewish commentators. Jewish commentators naturally suggested events and objects short of evangelical as the fulfilment of the prophetical announcements, and when it was possible, an ethical sense instead of a prophetical. The eighth chapter of Proverbs ceased to bear a Christian meaning, because, as Theodore maintained, the writer of the book had received the gift, not of prophecy, but of wisdom. The Canticles must be interpreted literally; and then it was but an easy, or rather a necessary step, to exclude the book from the Canon. The book of Job too professed to be historical; yet what was it really but a Gentile drama? He also gave up the books of Chronicles and Ezra, and, strange to say, the Epistle of St. James, though it was contained in the Peschito Version of his Church. He denied that Psalms xxii. and lxix. applied to our Lord; rather he limited the Messianic passages of the whole book to four; of which the eighth Psalm was one, and the forty-fifth another. The rest he explained of Hezekiah and Zerubbabel, without denying that they might be accommodated to an evangelical sense [n. 7]. He explained St. Thomas's words, "My Lord and my God," as a joyful exclamation; and our Lord's, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," as an anticipation of the day of Pentecost. As might be expected, he denied the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Also, he held that the deluge did not cover the earth; and, as others before him, he was heterodox on the doctrine of original sin, and denied the eternity of punishment.

 Maintaining that the real sense of Scripture was, not the scope of a Divine Intelligence, but the intention of the mere human organ of inspiration, Theodore was led to hold, not only that that sense was but one in each text, but that it was continuous and single in a context; that what was the subject of the composition in one verse, must be the subject in the next, and that if a Psalm was historical or prophetical in its commencement, it was the one or the other to its termination. Even that fulness of meaning, refinement of thought, subtle versatility of feeling, and delicate reserve or reverent suggestiveness, which poets exemplify, seem to have been excluded from his idea of a sacred composition. Accordingly, if a Psalm contained passages which could not be applied to our Lord, it followed that that Psalm did not properly apply to Him at all, except by accommodation. Such at least is the doctrine of Cosmas, a writer of Theodore's school, who on this ground passes over the twenty-second, sixty-ninth, and other Psalms, and limits the Messianic to the second, the eighth, the forty-fifth, and the hundred and tenth. "David," he says, "did not make common to the servants what belongs to the Lord [n. 8] Christ, but what was proper to the Lord he spoke of the Lord, and what was proper to the servants, of servants." [n. 9] Accordingly the twenty-second could not properly belong to Christ, because in the beginning it spoke of the " verba delictorum meorum ." A remarkable consequence would follow from this doctrine, that as Christ was divided from His Saints, so the Saints were divided from Christ; and an opening was made for a denial of the doctrine of their cultus, though this denial in the event has not been developed among the Nestorians. But a more serious consequence is latently contained in it, and nothing else than the Nestorian heresy, viz. that our Lord's manhood is not so intimately included in His Divine Personality that His brethren according to the flesh may be associated with the Image of the One Christ. Here St. Chrysostom pointedly contradicts the doctrine of Theodore, though his fellow-pupil and friend [n. 10]; as does St. Ephræm, though a Syrian also [n. 11]; and St. Basil [n. 12].

 One other characteristic of the Syrian school, viewed as independent of Nestorius, should be added: As it tended to the separation of the Divine Person of Christ from His manhood, so did it tend to explain away His Divine Presence in the Sacramental elements. Ernesti seems to consider that school, in modem language, Sacramentarian: and certainly some of the most cogent passages brought by moderns against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist are taken from writers who are connected with that school; as the author, said to be St. Chrysostom, of the Epistle to Cæsarius, Theodoret in his Eranistes, and Facundus. Some countenance too is given to the same view of the Eucharist, at least in some parts of his works, by Origen, whose language concerning the Incarnation also leans to what was afterwards Nestorianism. To these maybe added Eusebius [n. 13], who, far removed, as he was, from that heresy, was a disciple of the Syrian school. The language of the later Nestorian writers seems to have been of the same character [n. 14]. Such then on the whole is the character of that theology of Theodore, which passed from Cilicia and Antioch to Edessa first, and then to Nisibis.

 Edessa, the metropolis of Mesopotamia, had remained an Oriental city till the third century, when it was made a Roman colony by Caracalla [n. 15]. Its position on the confines of two empires gave it great ecclesiastical importance, as the channel by which the theology of Rome and Greece was conveyed to a family of Christians, dwelling in contempt and persecution amid a still heathen world. It was the seat of various schools; apparently of a Greek school, where the classics were studied as well as theology, where Eusebius of Emesa [n. 16] had originally been trained, and where perhaps Protogenes taught [n. 17]. There were Syrian schools attended by heathen and Christian youths in common. The cultivation of the native language had been an especial object of its masters since the time of Vespasian, so that the pure and refined dialect went by the name of the Edessene [n. 18]. At Edessa too St. Ephræm formed his own Syrian school, which lasted long after him; and there too was the celebrated Persian Christian school, over which Maris presided, who has been already mentioned as the translator of Theodore into Persian [n. 19]. Even in the time of the predecessor of Ibas in the See (before A.D. 435) the Nestorianism of this Persian School was so notorious that Rabbula the Bishop had expelled its masters and scholars [n. 20]; and they, taking refuge in the country with which they were connected, had introduced the heresy to the Churches subject to the Persian King.

 Something ought to be said of these Churches; though little is known except what is revealed by the fact, in itself of no slight value, that they had sustained two persecutions at the hands of the heathen government in the fourth and fifth centuries. One testimony is extant as early as the end of the second century, to the effect that in Parthia, Media, Persia, and Bactria there were Christians who "were not overcome by evil laws and customs." [n. 21] In the early part of the fourth century, a Bishop of Persia attended the Nicene Council, and about the same time Christianity is said to have pervaded nearly the whole of Assyria [n. 22]. Monachism had been introduced there before the middle of the fourth century, and shortly after commenced that fearful persecution in which sixteen thousand Christians are said to have suffered. It lasted thirty years, and is said to have recommenced at the end of the century. The second persecution lasted for at least another thirty years of the next, at the very time when the Nestorian troubles were in progress in the Empire. Trials such as these show the populousness as well as the faith of the Churches in those parts; and the number of the Sees, for the names of twenty-seven Bishops are preserved who suffered in the former persecution. One of them was apprehended together with sixteen priests, nine deacons, besides monks and nuns of his diocese; another with twenty-eight companions, ecclesiastics or regulars; another with one hundred ecclesiastics of different orders; another with one hundred and twenty-eight; another with his chorepiscopus and two hundred and fifty of his clergy. Such was the Church, consecrated by the blood of so many martyrs, which immediately after its glorious confession fell a prey to the theology of Theodore; and which through a succession of ages discovered the energy, when it had lost the purity of saints.

 The members of the Persian school, who had been driven out of Edessa by Rabbula, found a wide field open for their exertions under the pagan government with which they had taken refuge. The Persian monarchs, who had often prohibited by edict [n. 23] the intercommunion of the Church under their sway with the countries towards the west, readily extended their protection to exiles, who professed the means of destroying its Catholicity. Barsumas, the most energetic of them, was placed in the metropolitan See of Nisibis, where also the fugitive school was settled under the presidency of another of their party; while Maris was promoted to the See of Ardaschir. The primacy of the Church had from an early period belonged to the See of Seleucia in Babylonia. Catholicus was the title appropriated to its occupant, as well as to the Persian Primate, as being deputies of the Patriarch of Antioch, and was derived apparently from the Imperial dignity so called, denoting their function as Procurators-general, or officers-in-chief for the regions in which they were placed. Acacius, another of the Edessene party, was put into this principal See, and suffered, if he did not further, the innovations of Barsumas. The mode by which the latter effected his purposes has been left on record by an enemy. "Barsumas accused Barbuæus, the Catholicus, before King Pherozes, whispering, 'These men hold the faith of the Romans, and are their spies. Give me power against them to arrest them.'" [n. 24] It is said that in this way he obtained the death of Barbuæus, whom Acacius succeeded. When a minority resisted [n. 25] the process of schism, a persecution followed. The death of seven thousand seven hundred Catholics is said by Monophysite authorities to have been the price of the severance of the Chaldaic Churches from Christendom [n. 26]. Their loss was compensated in the eyes of the government by the multitude of Nestorian fugitives, who flocked into Persia from the Empire, numbers of them industrious artisans, who sought a country where their own religion was in the ascendant.

 The foundation of that religion lay, as we have already seen, in the literal interpretation of Scripture, of which Theodore was the principal teacher. The doctrine, in which it formerly consisted, is known by the name of Nestorius: it lay in the ascription of a human as well as a Divine Personality to our Lord; and it showed itself in denying the title of "Mother of God" or [ theotokos ], to St. Mary. As to our Lord's Personality, it is to be observed that the question of language came in, which always serves to perplex a subject and make a controversy seem a matter of words. The native Syrians made a distinction between the word "Person," and "Prosopon," which stands for it in Greek; they allowed that there was one Prosopon or Parsopa, as they called it, and they held that there were two Persons. It is asked what they meant by parsopa : the answer seems to be, that they took the word merely in the sense of character or aspect, a sense familiar to the Greek prosopon, and quite irrelevant as a guarantee of their orthodoxy. It follows moreover that, since the aspect of a thing is its impression upon the beholder, the personality to which they ascribed unity must have lain in our Lord's manhood, and not in His Divine Nature. But it is hardly worth while pursuing the heresy to its limits. Next, as to the phrase "Mother of God," they rejected it as unscriptural; they maintained that St. Mary was Mother of the humanity of Christ, not of the Word, and they fortified themselves by the Nicene Creed, in which no such title is ascribed to her.

 Whatever might be the obscurity or the plausibility of their original dogma, there is nothing obscure or attractive in the developments, whether of doctrine or of practice, in which it issued. The first act of the exiles of Edessa, on their obtaining power in the Chaldean communion, was to abolish the celibacy of the clergy, or, in Gibbon's forcible words, to allow "the public and reiterated nuptials of the priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself." Barsumas, the great instrument of the change of religion, was the first to set an example of the new usage, and is even said by a Nestorian writer to have married a nun [n. 27]. He passed a Canon at Councils, held at Seleucia and elsewhere, that Bishops and priests might marry, and might renew their wives as often as they lost them. The Catholic who followed Acacius went so far as to extend the benefit of the Canon to Monks, that is, to destroy the Monastic order; and his two successors availed themselves of this liberty, and are recorded to have been fathers. A restriction, however, was afterwards placed upon the Catholic, and upon the Episcopal order.

 Such were the circumstances, and such the principles, under which the See of Seleucia became the Rome of the East. In the course of time the Catholic took on himself the loftier and independent title of Patriarch of Babylon; and though Seleucia was changed for Ctesiphon and for Bagdad [n. 28], still the name of Babylon was preserved from first to last as a formal or ideal Metropolis. In the time of the Caliphs, it was at the head of as many as twenty-five Archbishops; its Communion extended from China to Jerusalem; and its numbers, with those of the Monophysites, are said to have surpassed those of the Greek and Latin Churches together.

 Notes

 1. "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," pp. 281, 323.  

 2. Lengerke, de Ephr. S. pp. 78-80.  

 3. Asseman. t. 3, p. 30, p. lxviii., etc.  

 4. Assem. t. 3, p. 84, Note 3.  

 5. Wegnern, Proleg. in Theod. Opp. p. ix.  

 6. De Ephræm Syr. p. 61.  

 7. Lengerke, de Ephræm Syr. pp. 73-75.  

 8. [ despotou ], vide La Croze, Thesaur. Ep. t. 3, § 145.  

 9. Montf. Coll. Nov. t. 2, p. 227.  

 10. Rosenmuller, Hist. Interpr. t. 3, p. 278.  

 11. Lengerke, de Ephr. Syr. pp. 165-167.  

 12. Ernest. de Proph. Mess. p. 462.  

 13. Eccl. Theol. iii. 12.  

 14. Professor Lee's Serm. Oct. 1838, pp. 144-152.  

 15. Noris. Opp. t. 2, p. 112.  

 16. Augusti. Euseb. Em. Opp.  

 17. Asseman. p. cmxxv.  

 18. Hoffman, Gram. Syr. Proleg. § 4.  

 19. The educated Persians were also acquainted with Syriac. Assem. t. i. p. 351, Note.  

 20. Asseman, p. lxx.  

 21. Euseb. Præp. vi. 10.  

 22. Tillemont, Mem. t. 7, p. 77.  

 23. Gibbon, ch. 47.  

 24. Asseman, p. lxxviii.  

 25. Gibbon, ibid.  

 26. Asseman, t. 2, p. 403, t. 3, p. 393.  

 27. Asseman, t. 3, p. 67.  

 28. Gibbon, ibid.  

 Note 2. The Doctrine of the Divine Gennesis according to the early Fathers  ( Vide supra, p. 240.)

 ALREADY in the Notes (Oxf.) on Athanasius (Ath. Tr. pp. 272-280), and in Dissert. Theolog. iii. I have explained my difficulty in following Bull and others in the interpretation they assign to certain statements made in the first age of the Church concerning the Divine Sonship. Those statements, taken in their letter, are to the effect that our Lord was the word of God before He was the Son; that, though, as the Word, He was from eternity, His gennesis is in essential connexion both with the design and the fact of creation; that He was born indeed of the Father apart from all time, but still with a definite relation to that beginning of time when the creation took place, and though born, and not created, nevertheless born definitely in order to create.

 Before the Nicene Council, of the various Schools of the Church, the Alexandrian alone, is distinctly clear of this doctrine; and even after the Council it is found in the West, in Upper Italy, Rome, and Africa; France, as represented by Hilary [n. 1] and PhSbadius, having no part in it. Nay, at Nicæa when that doctrine lay in the way of the Council to condemn it, it was not distinctly condemned, though to pass it over was in fact to give it some countenance. Bull indeed considers it was even recognized indirectly by the assembled Fathers, in their anathematizing those who contradicted its distinctive formula, "He was before He was born;" in this (as I have said in the Notes on Athanasius), I cannot agree with him, but at least it is unaccountable that the Fathers should not have guarded their anathema from Bull's easy misinterpretation of it, if the opinion which it seems to countenance was as much reprobated then, as it rightly is now.

 The opinion which I have been describing is, as far as words go, definitely held by Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Methodius, in the East; by Hippolytus, Tertullian, Novatian, Lactantius, Zeno, and Victorinus, in the West; and that with so plain an identity of view in these various writers, and with such exact characteristics, that we cannot explain it away into carelessness of writing, personal idiosyncracy, or the influence of some particular school; but are forced to consider it as the common property of them all, so that we may interpret one writer by the other, and illustrate or supply from the rest what is obscure or deficient in each.

 For instance: Justin says, "He was begotten, when God at the beginning through Him created and adorned all things" (Ap. ii. 6). "Not a perfect Son, without the flesh, though a perfect Word," says Hippolytus, "being the Only-begotten, and whom God called 'Son,' because He was to become such" (contr. Noet. 15) ... "There was a time when the Son was not," says Tertullian (adv. Herm. 3); "He proceeds unto a birth," says Zeno, " He who was, before He was born" (Tract. ii. 3).

 There can be no doubt what the literal sense is of words such as these, and that in consequence they require some accommodation in order to reconcile them with the received Catholic teaching de Deo and de SS. Trinitate . It is the object of Bull, as of others after him, to effect this reconciliation. He thinks it a plain duty both to the authors in question and to the Church, at whatever cost, to reconcile their statements in all respects with the orthodox belief; but unless he had felt it a duty, I do not think he would have ventured upon it. He would have taken them in their literal sense, had he found them in the writing of some Puritan or Quaker. If so, his defence of them is but a confirmation of a foregone conclusion; he starts with the assumption that the words of the early writers cannot mean what they naturally do mean; and, though this bias is worthy of all respect, still the fact that it exists is a call on us to examine closely arguments which without it would not have been used. And what I have said of Bull applies of course to others, such as Maran and the Ballerini, who have followed in his track.

 Bull then maintains that the terms "generation," "birth," and the like, which occur in the passages of the authors in question, must be accommodated to a literary sense, that is, taken figuratively, or impropriè, to mean merely our Lord's going forth to create, and the great manifestation of the Sonship made in and to the universe at its creation; and on these grounds: 1. The terms used cannot be taken literally, from the fact that in those very passages, or at least in other passages of the same authors, His co-eternity with the Father is expressly affirmed. 2. And they must be taken figuratively, first, because in those passages they actually stand in connexion with mention of His forthcoming or mission to create; and next, because unsuspected authors, such as Athanasius, distinctly connect His creative office with His title of "First-born," which belongs to His nature .

 Now I do not think these arguments will stand; as to the negative argument, it is true that the Fathers, who speak of the gennesis as having a relation to time and to creation, do in the same passages or elsewhere speak of the eternity of the Word. Doubtless; but no one says that these Fathers deny His eternity, as the Word, but His eternity as the Son . Bull ought to bring passages in which they declare the Son and His gennesis to be eternal.

 As to the positive argument, if they recognized, as he thinks, any gennesis besides that which had a relation to creation, and which he maintains to be only figuratively a gennesis, viz. an eternal gennesis from the substance of the Father, why do they not say so? do they ever compare and contrast the two births with each other? do they ever recognize them as two, one real and eternal, the other just before time; the one proper, the other metaphorical? We know they held a gennesis in order to creation, or with a relation to time; what reason have we for holding that they held any other? and what reason for saying that the gennesis which they connect with creation was not in their minds a real gennesis, that is, such a gennesis as we all now hold, all but, as they expressly state, its not being from eternity?

 In other words, what reason have we for saying that the term gennesis is figurative in their use of it? It is true indeed that both the Son's gennesis and also His forthcoming, mission, or manifestation are sometimes mentioned together by these writers in the same sentence; but that does not prove they are not in their minds separate Divine acts; for His creation of the world is mentioned in such passages too, and as His creation of the world is not His mission, therefore His mission need not be His gennesis ; and again, as His creating is (in their teaching) concurrent with His mission, so His mission may (in their teaching) be concurrent with His gennesis .

 Nor are such expositions of the title "First-born of creation," as Athanasius has so beautifully given us, to the purpose of Bull. Bull takes it to show that gennesis may be considered to be a mission or forthcoming; whereas Athanasius does not mean by the "First-born" any gennesis of our Lord from the Father at all, but he simply means His coming to the creature, that is, His exalting the creature into a Divine sonship by a union with His own Sonship. The Word applies His own Sonship to the creation, and makes Himself, who is the real Son, the first and the representative of a family of adopted sons [n. 2]; the term expresses a relation, not towards God, but towards the creature. This Athanasius says expressly: "It is nowhere written [of the Son] in the Scriptures, 'the First-born of God,' nor 'the creature of God,' but it is 'Only-begotten,' and 'Son,' and 'Word,' and 'Wisdom,' that have relation to the Father. The same cannot be both Only-begotten and First-born, except in different relations, Only-begotten because of His gennesis, First-born because of His condescension." Thus Athanasius expressly denies that, because our Lord is First-born at and to the creation, therefore He can be said to be begotten at the creation; "Only-begotten" is internal to the Divine Essence; "First-born" external to It: the one is a word of nature, the other, of office. If then the authors, whom Bull is defending, had wished to express a figurative gennesis, they would always have used the word "First-born," never "Only-begotten:" and never have associated the generation from the Father with the coming forth to create. It is true they sometimes associate the Word's creative office with the term "First-born;" but they also associate it with "Only-begotten."

 There seems no reason then why the words of Theophilus, Hippolytus, and the rest should not be taken in their obvious sense; and so far I agree with Petavius against Bull, Fabricius, Maran, the Ballerini, and Routh. But, this being granted, still I am not disposed to follow Petavius in his severe criticism upon those Fathers, and for the following reasons:

 1. They considered the "Theos Logos" to be really distinct from God, (that is, the Father,) not a mere attribute, quality, or power, as the Sabellians did, and do.

 2. They considered Him to be distinct from God from everlasting .

 3. Since, as Dionysius says, "He who speaks is father of his words," they considered the Logos always to be of the nature of a Son. Hence Zeno says He was from everlasting "Filii non sine affectu," and Hippolytus, [ teleios logos, on monogenes ].

 4. They considered, to use the Scripture term, that He was " in utero Patris " before His actual gennesis . Victorinus applies the word "fStus" to Him; "Non enim fStus non est ante partum; sed in occulto est; generatio est manifestatio" (apud Galland, v. 8, p. 146, col. 2). Zeno says that He "prodivit ex ore Dei ut rerum naturam fingeret," " cordis ejus nobilis inquilinus," and was embraced by the Father "profundo suæ sacræ mentis arcano sine revelamine."

 5. Hippolytus even considered that the perfection of His Sonship was not attained till His incarnation, [ teleios logos huios ateles ]; but even he recognized the identity of the Son with the Logos.

 6. Further, this change of the Logos into the Son was internal to the Divine Mind, Tertull. adv. Prax. 8. contr. Hermog. 18, and therefore was unlike the probole of the Gnostics.

 7. Such an opinion was not only not inconsistent with the Homoüsion, but implied it. It took for granted that the Son was from the substance of the Father, and consubstantial with Him; though it implied a very defective view of the immutability and simplicity of the Divine Essence.

 8. Accordingly, though I cannot allow that it was actually protected at the Council by the anathema on those who said that our Lord "was not before He was born," at least it was passed over on an occasion when the Arian error had to be definitively reprobated.

 This may be said in its favour: but then, on the other hand,

 1. It seriously compromised, as I have said, the simplicity and immutability of the Divine Essence.

 2. It could be resolved, with very little alteration, into Semi-Arianism on the one hand, or into Sabellianism on the other.

 3. On this account it had all along been resisted with definiteness and earnestness by the Fathers of the Alexandrian School, by whom finally it was eradicated. Origen urges the doctrine of the [ aeigennes ]; "Perfect Son from Perfect Father," says Gregory Thaumaturgus in his creed; "The Father being everlasting the Son is everlasting," says Dionysius; "The Father," says Alexander, "is ever Father of the ever-present Son," and Athanasius reprobates the [ logos en toi theoi ateles, gennetheis teleios ] (Orat. iv. ii). Hence Gregory Nazianzen in like manner condemns the [ atele proteron, eita teleion hosper nomos hemeteros geneseos ] (Orat. xx. 9, fin.). And at length it was classed, and duly, among the heresies. "Alia (hæresis)," says Augustine, "sempiternè natum non intelligens Filium, putat illam nativitatem sumpsisse à tempore initium; et tamen volens coæternum Patri Filium confiteri, apud illum fuisse, antequàm de illo nasceretur, existimat; hoc est, semper eum fuisse, veruntamen semper eum Filium non fuisse, sed ex quo de illo natus est, Filium esse cSpisse" (Hær. 50).

 However, this subject should be treated at greater length that I can allow it here. (Vide Tracts Theol. and Eccles.)

 N.B. The above addition (page 420) is in consequence of a misunderstanding, which leads me to repeat, now, 1890, as ever, that what I have here written is subject to the judgment of Holy Church.

 Notes

 1. Vide however Hilar. in Matt. xxxi. 3; but he corrects himself, de Trin. xii.  

 2. [(1890, Add ): adopted, that is, through the grace of Him, who is in His nature, from eternity, the One and Only Son of God.]  

 Note 3. The Confessions at Sirmium  ( Vide supra, p. 314.)

 1. A.D. 351. Confession against Photinus  (First Sirmian Council)

 [n.] THIS Confession was published at a Council of Eastern Bishops (Coustant. in Hil. p. 1174, n. 1), and was drawn up by the whole body, Hil. de Syn. 37 (according to Sirmond. Diatr. 1. Sirm. p. 366, Petavius de Trin. 1. 9. § 8. Animadv. in Epiph. p. 318 init., and Coustant. in Hil. l. c.); or by Basil of Ancyra (as Valesius conjectures in Soz. iv. 22, and Larroquanus, de Liberio, p. 147); or by Mark of Arethusa, Socr. ii. 30, but Socrates, it is considered, confuses together the dates of the different Confessions, and this ascription is part of his mistake (vide Vales. in loc., Coustant. in Hil. de Syn. l. c., Petav. Animad. in Epiph. l. c.). It was written in Greek.

 Till Petavius, Socrates was generally followed in ascribing all three Sirmian Confessions to this one Council, though at the same time he was generally considered mistaken as to the year. E.g. Baronius places them all in 357. Sirmond defended Baronius against Petavius (though in Facund. x. 6, Note c, he agrees with Petavius); and, assigning the third Confession to 359, adopted the improbable conjecture of two Councils, the one Catholic and the other Arian, held at Sirmium at the same time, putting forth respectively the first and second Creeds, somewhat after the manner of the contemporary rival Councils of Sardica. Pagi, Natalis Alexander, Valesius, de Marca, Tillemont, S. Basnage, Montfaucon, Coustant, Larroquanus agree with Petavius in placing the Council, at which Photinus was deposed and the Confession published, in A.D. 351. Mansi dates it at 358.

 Gothofred considers that there were two or three successive Councils at Sirmium, between A.D. 357 and 359 (in Philostorg. Index, pp. 74, 75; Dissert. pp. 200, 211-214). Petavius, and Tillemont, speak of three Councils or Conferences held in A.D. 351, 357, and 359. Mansi, of three in 358, 359; Zaccaria (Dissert. 8) makes in all five, 349 (in which Photinus was condemned), 351; 357 (in which Hosius lapsed); 357 (following Valesius and Pagi); and 359. Mamachi makes three, 351, 357, 359; Basnage four, 351, 357, 358, 359.

 This was the Confession which Pope Liberius signed, according to Baronius, Natalis Alexander, and Coustant in Hil. Note n. pp. 1335-1337, and as Tillemont thinks probable. Zaccaria says it is the general opinion, in which he is willing to concur (p. 18).

 It would appear (Ath. Tr. p. 114, b.) that Photinus was condemned at Antioch in the Macrostich, A.D. 345; at Sardica, 347; at Milan, 348; and at his own See, Sirmium, 351, if not there, in 349 also; however, as this is an intricate point on which there is considerable difference of opinion among critics, it may be advisable to state here the dates of his condemnation as they are determined by various writers.

 Petavius (de Photino Hæretico, 1) enumerates in all five condemnations: 1. at Constantinople, A.D. 336, when Marcellus was deposed. 2. At Sardica, A.D. 347. 3. At Milan, A.D. 347. 4. At Sirmium, A.D. 349. 5. At Sirmium, when he was deposed, A.D. 351. Of these the 4th and 5th were first brought to light by Petavius, who omits mention of the Macrostich in 345.

 Petavius is followed by Natalis Alexander, Montfaucon (vit. Athan.), and Tillemont; and by De Marca (Diss. de temp. Syn. Sirm.) and S. Basnage (Annales), and Valesius (in Theod. Hist. ii. 16. p. 23; Socr. ii. 20), as regards the Council of Milan, except that Valesius places it with Sirmond in 346; but for the Council of Sirmium in 349, they substitute a Council of Rome of the same date, while De Marca considers Photinus condemned again in the Eusebian Council of Milan in 355. De la Roque, on the other hand (Larroquan. Dissert. de Photino Hær.), considers that Photinus was condemned, 1. in the Macrostich, 344 [345]. 2. At Sardica, 347. 3. At Milan, 348. 4. At Sirmium, 350. 5. At Sirmium, 351. Zaccaria, besides 345 and 347; at Milan, 347; at Sirmium, 349; at Sirmium again, 351, when he was deposed.

 Petavius seems to stand alone in assigning to the Council of Constantinople, 336, his first condemnation.

 2. A.D. 357. The Blasphemy of Potamius and Hosius  (Second Sirmian)

 Hilary calls it by the above title, de Syn. 11; vide also Soz. iv. 12, p. 554. He seems also to mean it by the blasphemia Ursacii et Valentis, contr. Const. 26.

 This Confession was the first overt act of disunion between Arians and Semi-Arians.

 Sirmond, De Marca, and Valesius (in Socr. ii. 30), after PhSbadius, think it put forth by a Council; rather, at a Conference of a few leading Arians about Constantius, who seems to have been present; e.g. Ursacius, Valens, and Germinius. Soz. iv. 12. Vide also Hil. Fragm. vi. 7.

 It was written in Latin, Socr. ii. 30. Potamius wrote very barbarous Latin, judging from the Tract ascribed to him in Dacher. Spicileg. t. 3. p. 299, unless it be a translation from the Greek, vide also Galland. Bibl. t. v. p. 96. Petavius thinks the Creed not written, but merely subscribed by Potamius (de Trin. i. 9. § 8); and Coustant (in Hil. p. 1155, Note f) that it was written by Ursacius, Valens, and Potamius. It is remarkable that the Greek in Athanasius is clearer than the original.

 This at first sight is the Creed which Liberius signed, because S. Hilary speaks of the latter as "perfidia Ariana," Fragm. 6. Blondel (Prim. dans l'Eglise, p. 484), Larroquanus, etc., are of this opinion. And the Roman Breviary, Ed. Ven. 1482, and Ed. Par. 1543, in the Service for S. Eusebius of Rome, August. 14, says that "Pope Liberius consented to the Arian misbelief," Launnoi, Ep. v. 9. c. 13. Auxilius says the same, Ibid. vi. 14. Animadv. 5. n. 18. Petavius grants that it must be this, if any of the three Sirmian (Animadv. in Epiph. p. 316), but we shall see his own opinion presently. Zaccaria says that Hosius signed it, but not Liberius (Diss. 8. p. 20, Diss. 7). Zaccaria seems also to consider that there was another Council or Conference at Sirmium this same year, and it was at this Conference that Liberius subscribed "formulæ, quæ contra Photinum Sirmii edita fuerat, primæ scilicet Sirmiensi, in unum cum Antiochensi (against Paul of Samosata, also the creed of the Dedication) libellum conjectæ." Vide infra . He says he subscribed it "iterum," the first time being in BerrhSa. 3. A.D. 357. The foregoing interpolated

 A creed was sent into the East in Hosius's name, Epiph. Hær. 73. 14. Soz. iv. 15, p. 558, of an AnomSan character, which the "blasphemia" was not. And St. Hilary may allude to this when he speaks of the "deliramenta Osii, et incrementa Ursacii et Valentis," contr. Const. 23. An AnomSan Council of Antioch under Eudoxius of this date, makes acknowledgments to Ursacius, Valens, and Germinius, Soz. iv. 12 fin, as being agents in the Arianizing of the West.

 Petavius and Tillemont consider this Confession to be the "blasphemia" interpolated. Petavius throws out a further conjecture, which seems gratuitous, that the whole of the latter part of the Creed is a later addition, and that Liberius only signed the former part. Animadv. in Epiph. p. 316. 4. A.D. 358. The Ancyrene Anathemas

 The Semi-Arian party had met in Council at Ancyra in the early spring of 358 to protest against the "blasphemia," and that with some kind of correspondence with the Gallic Bishops who had just condemned it, PhSbadius of Agen writing a Tract against it, which is still extant. They had drawn up and signed, besides a Synodal Letter, eighteen anathemas, the last against the "Consubstantial." These, except the last, or the last six, they submitted at the end of May to the Emperor who was again at Sirmium. Basil, Eustathius, Eleusius, and another formed the deputation; and their influence persuaded Constantius to accept the Anathemas, and even to oblige the party of Valens, at whose "blasphemia" they were levelled, to recant and subscribe them. 5. A.D. 358. Semi-Arian Digest of Three Confessions

 The Semi-Arian Bishops, pursuing their advantage, composed a Creed out of three, that of the Dedication, the first Sirmian, and the Creed of Antioch against Paul, 264-270, in which the "Consubstantial" is said to have been omitted or forbidden, Soz. iv. 15. This Confession was imposed by Imperial authority on the Arian party, who signed it. So did Liberius, Soz. ibid. Hil. Fragm. vi. 6, 7; and Petavius considers that this is the subscription by which he lapsed, de Trin. i. 9. § 5, Animadv. in Epiph. p. 316, and so Zaccaria, as above, and S. Basnage, in Ann. 358, 13.

 It is a point of controversy whether or not the Arians at this time suppressed the "blasphemia." Socrates and Sozomen say that they made an attempt to recall the copies they had issued, and even obtained an edict from the Emperor for this purpose, but without avail. Socr. ii. 30 fin. Soz. iv. 6, p. 543.

 Athanasius, on the other hand, de Syn. 29, relates this in substance of the third Confession of Sirmium, not of the "blasphemia" or second.

 Tillemont follows Socrates and Sozomen, considering that Basil's influence with the Emperor enabled him now to insist on a retraction of the "blasphemia." And he argues that Germinius in 366, being suspected of orthodoxy, and obliged to make profession of heresy, was referred by his party to the formulary of Ariminum, no notice being taken of the "blasphemia," which looks as if it were suppressed; whereas Germinius himself appeals to the third Sirmian, which is a proof that it was not suppressed. Hil. Fragm. 15. Coustant, in Hil. contr. Const. 26, though he does not adopt the opinion himself, observes, that the charge brought against Basil, Soz. iv. 132, Hil. l. c., by the Acacians, of persuading the Africans against the second Sirmian is an evidence of a great effort on his part, at a time when he had the Court with him, to suppress it. We have just seen Basil uniting with the Gallic Bishops against it.

 6. A.D. 359. The Confession with a date  (Third Sirmian)

 The Semi-Arians, with the hope of striking a further blow at their opponents by a judgment against the AnomSans, Soz. iv. 16 init., seem to have suggested a general Council, which ultimately became the Councils of Seleucia and Ariminum. If this was their measure, they were singularly out-manSuvred by the party of Acacius and Valens, as may be seen in Athanasius's de Synodis . A preparatory Conference was held at Sirmium at the end of May in this year, in which the Creed was determined which should be laid before the great Councils then assembling. Basil and Mark were the chief Semi-Arians present, and in the event became committed to an almost Arian Confession. Soz. iv. 16, p. 562. It was finally settled on the Eve of Pentecost, and the dispute lasted till morning. Epiph. Hær. 73, 22. Mark at length was chosen to draw it up, Soz. iv. 22, p. 573, yet Valens so managed that Basil could not sign it without an explanation. It was written in Latin, Socr. ii. 30, Soz. iv. 17, p. 563. Coustant, however, in Hil. p. 1152, note i., seems to consider this dispute and Mark's confession to belong to the same date (May 22,) in the foregoing year; but p. 1363, note b, he seems to change his opinion.

 Petavius, who, Animadv. in Epiph. p. 318, follows Socrates in considering that the second Sirmian is the Confession which the Arians tried to suppress, nevertheless, de Trin. i. 9, § 8, yields to the testimony of Athanasius in behalf of the third, attributing the measure to their dissatisfaction with the phrase "Like in all things," which Constantius had inserted, and with Basil's explanation on subscribing it, and to the hopes of publishing a bolder creed which their increasing influence with Constantius inspired. He does not think it impossible, however, that an attempt was made to suppress both. Coustant, again, in Hil. p. 1363, note b, asks when it could be that the Eusebians attempted to suppress the second Confession; and conjectures that the ridicule which followed their dating of the third and their wish to get rid of the "Like in all things," were the causes of their anxiety about it. He observes too with considerable speciousness that Acacius's Second formulary at Seleucia (Athan. de Syn. 29), and the Confession of Nice (Ibid. 30), resemble second editions of the third Sirmian. Valesius, in Socr. ii. 30, and Montfaucon, in Athan. Syn. § 29, take the same side.

 Pagi in Ann. 357. n. 13, supposes that the third Sirmian was the Creed signed by Liberius. Yet Coustant in Hil. p. 1335, note n, speaking of Liberius's "perfidia Ariana," as St. Hilary calls it, says, "Solus Valesius existimat tertiam [confessionem] hic memorari:" whereas Valesius, making four, not to say five, Sirmian Creeds, understands Liberius to have signed, not the third, but an intermediate one, between the second and third, as Petavius does, in Soz. iv. 15 and 16. Moreover, Pagi fixes the date as A.D. 358 ibid.

 This Creed, thus drawn up by a Semi-Arian, with an Acacian or Arian Appendix, then a Semi-Arian insertion, and after all a Semi-Arian protest on subscription, was proposed at Seleucia by Acacius, Soz. iv. 22, and at Ariminum by Valens, Socr. ii. 37, p. 132.

 7. A.D. 359. Nicene Editon of the Third Sirmian

 The third Sirmian was rejected both at Seleucia and Ariminum; but the Eusebians, dissolving the Council of Seleucia, kept the Fathers at Ariminum together through the summer and autumn. Meanwhile at Nice in Thrace they confirmed the third Sirmian, Socr. ii. 37, p. 141, Theod. Hist. ii. 16, with the additional proscription of the word hypostasis ; apparently lest the Latins should by means of it evade the condemnation of the "consubstantial." This Creed, thus altered, was ultimately accepted at Ariminum and was confirmed in January 360 at Constantinople; Socr. ii. 41, p. 163. Soz. iv. 24 init.

 Liberius retrieved his fault on this occasion; for, whatever was the confession he had signed, he now refused his assent to the Ariminian, and, if Socrates is to be trusted, was banished in consequence, Socr. ii. 37, p. 140.

 Note

 From the Oxford Translation of Athanasius, p. 160.  

 Note 4. The Terms usia and hypostasis, as used in the early Church  (Vi de supra, p. 186.)

 1. [n.] EVEN before we take into account the effect which would naturally be produced on the first Christians by the novelty and mysteriousness of doctrines which depend for their reception simply upon Revelation, we have reason to anticipate that there would be difficulties and mistakes in expressing them, when they first came to be set forth by unauthoritative writers. Even in secular sciences, inaccuracy of thought and language is but gradually corrected; that is, in proportion as their subject-matter is thoroughly scrutinized and mastered by the co-operation of many independent intellects, successively engaged upon it. Thus, for instance, the word Person requires the rejection of various popular senses, and a careful definition, before it can serve for philosophical uses. We sometimes use it for an individual as contrasted with a class or multitude, as when we speak of having "personal objections" to another; sometimes for the body, in contrast to the soul, as when we speak of "beauty of person." We sometimes use it in the abstract, as when we speak of another as "insignificant in person;" sometimes in the concrete, as when we call him "an insignificant person." How divergent in meaning are the derivatives, personable, personalities, personify, personation, personage, parsonage ! This variety arises partly from our own carelessness, partly from the necessary developments of language, partly from the exuberance of human thought, partly from the defects of our vernacular tongue.

 Language then requires to be refashioned even for sciences which are based on the senses and the reason; but much more will this be the case, when we are concerned with subject-matters, of which, in our present state, we cannot possibly form any complete or consistent conception, such as the Catholic doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. Since they are from the nature of the case above our intellectual reach, and were unknown till the preaching of Christianity, they required on their first promulgation new words, or words used in new senses, for their due enunciation; and, since these were not definitely supplied by Scripture or by tradition, nor, for centuries, by ecclesiastical authority, variety in the use, and confusion in the apprehension of them, were unavoidable in the interval. This conclusion is necessary, admitting the premisses, antecedently to particular instances in proof.

 Moreover, there is a presumption equally strong, that the variety and confusion that I have anticipated, would in matter of fact issue here or there in actual heterodoxy, as often as the language of theologians was misunderstood by hearers or readers, and deductions were made from it which the teacher did not intend. Thus, for instance, the word Person, used in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, would on first hearing suggest Tritheism to one who made the word synonymous with individual ; and Unitarianism to another, who accepted it in the classical sense of a mask or character .

 Even to this day our theological language is wanting in accuracy: thus, we sometimes speak of the controversies concerning the Person of Christ, when we mean to include in them those also which belong to the two natures which are predicated of Him.

 Indeed, the difficulties of forming a theological phraseology for the whole of Christendom were obviously so great, that we need not wonder at the reluctance which the first age of Catholic divines showed in attempting it, even apart from the obstacles caused by the distraction and isolation of the churches in times of persecution. Not only had the words to be adjusted and explained which were peculiar to different schools or traditional in different places, but there was the formidable necessity of creating a common measure between two, or rather three languages, Latin, Greek, and Syriac. The intellect had to be satisfied, error had to be successfully excluded, parties the most contrary to each other, and the most obstinate, had to be convinced. The very confidence which would be felt by Christians in general that Apostolic truth would never fail, and that they held it in each locality themselves and the orbis terrarum with them, in spite of all verbal contrarieties, would indispose them to define it, till definition became an imperative duty.

 2. I think this plain from the nature of the case; and history confirms me in the instance of the celebrated word homoüsion, which, as one of the first and most necessary steps, so again was apparently one of the most discouraging, in the attempt to give a scientific expression to doctrine. This formula, as Athanasius, Hilary, and Basil affirm, had been disowned, as savouring of heterodoxy, by the great Council of Antioch in A.D. 264-269; yet, in spite of this disavowal on the part of Bishops of the highest authority, it was imposed on all the faithful to the end of time in the Ecumenical Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325, as the one and only safeguard, as it really is, of orthodox teaching. The misapprehensions and protests which, after such antecedents, its adoption occasioned for many years, may be easily imagined. Though above three hundred Bishops had accepted it at Nicæa, the great body of the Episcopate in the next generation considered it inexpedient; and Athanasius himself, whose imperishable name is bound up with it, showed himself most cautious in putting it forward, though he knew it had the sanction of a General Council. Moreover, the word does not occur in the Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, A.D. 347, nor in the recantation made before Pope Julius by Ursacius and Valens, A.D. 349, nor in the cross-questionings to which St. Ambrose subjected Palladius and Secundianus, A.D. 381. At Seleucia, A.D. 359, as many as 100 Eastern Bishops, besides the Arian party, were found to abandon it, while at Ariminum in the same year the celebrated scene took place of 400 Bishops of the West being worried and tricked into a momentary act of the same character. They had not yet got it deeply fixed into their minds, as a sort of first principle, that to abandon the formula was to betray the faith.

 3. This disinclination on the part of Catholics to dogmatic definitions was not confined to the instance of the homoüsion . In the use of the word hypostasis, a variation was even allowed by the authority of a Council [A.D. 362]; and the circumstances under which it was allowed, and the possibility of allowing it, without compromising Catholic truth, shall here be considered.

 As to the use of the word. At least in the West, and in St. Athanasius's day, it was usual to speak of one hypostasis, as of one usia, of the Divine Nature. Thus the so-called Sardican Creed, A.D. 347, speaks of "one hypostasis, which the heretics call usia ." Theod. Hist. ii. 8; the Roman Council under Damasus, A.D. 371, says that the Three Persons are of the same hypostasis and usia ; and the Nicene Anathema condemns those who say that the Son "came from other hypostasis or usia ." Epiphanius too speaks of "one hypostasis," Hær . 74, 4, Ancor . 6 (and though he has the hypostases,Hær . 62, 3, 72, 1, yet he is shy of the plural, and prefers "the hypostatic Father; the hypostatic Son," etc., ibid . 3 and 4, Ancor . 6; and [ tria ], as Hær . 74, 4, where he says "three hypostatic of the same hypostasis ;" vide also " in hypostasis of perfection," Hær . 74, 12, Ancor . 7 et alibi ); and Cyril of Jerusalem of the "uniform hypostasis " of God, Cateth . vi. 7, vide also xvi. 12 and xvii. 9 (though the word may be construed one out of three in Cat . xi. 3); and Gregory Nazianzen, Orat . xxviii, 9, where he is speaking as a Natural, not as a Christian theologian.

 In the preceding century Gregory Thaumaturgus had laid it down that the Father and the Son were in hypostasis one, and the Council of Antioch, A.D. 264-269, calls the Son in usia and hypostasis God, the Son of God. Routh, Reliq . t. 2, p. 466. Accordingly Athanasius expressly tells us, " Hypostasis is usia, and means nothing else but [ auto to on ]," ad Afros, 4. Jerome says that "Tota sæcularium litterarum schola nihil aliud hypostasin nisi usiam novit," Epist . xv. 4; Basil, the Semi-Arian, that "the Fathers have called hypostasis usia," Epiph. Hær, 73, 12, fin. And Socrates says that at least it was frequently used for usia, when it had entered into the philosophical schools. Hist . iii. 7.

 On the other hand the Alexandrians, Origen ( in Joan . ii. 6 et alibi ), Ammonius ( ap. Caten. in Joan . x. 30, if genuine), Dionysius ( ap . Basil de Sp. S . n. 72), and Alexander ( ap . Theod. Hist . i. 4), speak of more hypostases than one in the Divine Nature, that is, of Three; and apparently without the support of the divines of any other school, unless Eusebius, who is half an Alexandrian, be an exception. Going down beyond the middle of the fourth century, we find the Alexandrian Didymus committing himself to a bold and strong enunciation of the Three hypostases, (e.g. de Trin. 1. 18, etc.), which is almost without a parallel in patristical literature.

 It was under these circumstances that the Council of Alexandria in A.D. 362, to which I have already referred, a Council in which Athanasius and Eusebius of Vercellæ were the chief actors, determined to leave the sense and use of the word open, so that, according to the custom of their own church or school, Catholics might freely speak of three hypostases or of one.

 Thus we are brought to the practice of Athanasius himself. It is remarkable that he should so far innovate on the custom of his own Church, as to use the word in each of these two applications of it. In his In illud Omnia he speaks of "the three perfect Hypostases ." On the other hand, he makes usia and hypostasis synonymous in Orat . iii. 65, 66, Orat . iv. 1 and 33 fin.

 There is something more remarkable still in this innovation. Alexander, his immediate predecessor and master, published, A.D. 320-324, two formal letters against Arius, one addressed to his namesake of Constantinople, the other encyclical. It is scarcely possible to doubt that the latter was written by Athanasius; it is so unlike the former in style and diction, so like the writings of Athanasius. Now it is observable that in the former the word hypostasis occurs in its Alexandrian sense at least five times; in the latter, which I attribute to Athanasius, it is dropped, and usia is introduced, which is absent from the former. That is, Athanasius has, on this supposition, when writing in his Bishop's name a formal document, pointedly innovated on his Bishop's theological language, and that the received language of his own Church. I am not supposing he did this without Alexander's sanction. Indeed the character of the Arian polemic would naturally lead Alexander, as well as Athanasius, to be suspicious of their own formula of the "Three Hypostases," which Arianism was using against them; and the latter would be confirmed in this feeling by his subsequent familiarity with Latin theology, and the usage of the Holy See, which, under Pope Damasus, as we have seen, A.D. 371, spoke of one hypostasis, and in the previous century, A.D. 260, protested by anticipation in the person of Pope Dionysius against the use, which might be made in the hands of enemies, of the formula of the Three Hypostases . Still it is undeniable that Athanasius does at least once speak of Three, though his practice is to dispense with the word and to use others instead of it.

 4. Now then we come to the explanation of this difference of usage in the application of the word. It is difficult to believe that so accurate a thinker as Athanasius really used an important term in two distinct, nay contrasted senses; and I cannot but question the fact, so commonly taken for granted, that the divines of the beginning of the fourth century had appropriated any word whatever definitely to express either the idea of Person as contrasted with that of Essence, or of Essence as contrasted with Person . I altogether doubt whether we are correct in saying that they meant by hypostasis, in one country Person, in another Essence . I think such propositions should be carefully proved, instead of being taken for granted, as at present is the case. Meanwhile, I have an hypothesis of my own. I think they used the word both in East and West in one and the same substantial sense; with some accidental variation or latitude indeed, but that of so slight a character, as would admit of Athanasius, or any one else, speaking of one hypostasis or three, without any violence to that sense which remained on the whole one and the same. What this sense is I proceed to explain:

 The school-men are known to have insisted with great earnestness on the numerical unity of the Divine Being; each of the three Divine Persons being one and the same God, unicus, singularis, et totus Deus. In this, however, they did but follow the recorded doctrine of the Western theologians of the fifth century, as I suppose will be allowed by critics generally. So forcible is St. Austin upon the strict unity of God, that he even thinks it necessary to caution his readers lest they should suppose that he could allow them to speak of One Person as well as of Three in the Divine nature de Trin ., vii. 11. Again, in the (so-called) Athanasian Creed, the same elementary truth is emphatically insisted on. The neuter unum of former divines is changed into the masculine, in enunciating the mystery. "Non tres æterni, sed unus æternus." I suppose this means, that each Divine Person is to be received as the one God as entirely and absolutely as He would be held to be, if we had never heard of the other Two, and that He is not in any respect less than the one and only God, because They are each that same one God also; or in other words, that, as each human individual being has one personality, the Divine Being has three.

 Returning then to Athanasius, I consider that this same mystery is implied in his twofold application of the word hypostasis . The polytheism and pantheism of the heathen world imagined, not the God whom natural reason can discover, conceive, and worship, one individual, living, and personal, but a divinitas, which was either a quality, whether energy or life, or an extended substance, or something else equally inadequate to the real idea which the word conveys. Such a divinity could not properly be called an hypostasis or said to be in hypostasi (except indeed as brute matter may be called, as in one sense it can be called, an hypostasis ), and therefore it was, that that word had some fitness, especially after the Apostle's adoption of it, Hebr . i. 3, to denote the Christian's God. And this may account for the remark of Socrates, that it was a new word, strange to the schools of ancient philosophy, which had seldom professed pure theism or natural theology. "The teachers of philosophy among the Greeks," he says, "have defined usia in many ways: but of hypostasis, they have made no mention at all. Irenæus, the grammarian, affirms that the word is barbarous."  Hist . iii. 7. The better then was it fitted to express that highest object of thought, of which the "barbarians" of Palestine had been the special witnesses. When the divine  hypostasis was confessed, the word expressed or suggested the attributes of individuality, self-subsistence, self-action, and personality, such as go to form the idea of the Divine Being to the natural theologian; and, since the difference between the theist and the Catholic divine in their idea of His nature is simply this, that, in opposition to the Pantheist, who cannot understand how the Infinite can be Personal at all, the one ascribes to him one personality, and the other three, it will be easily seen how a word, thus characterized and circumstanced, would admit of being used with but a slight modification of its sense, of the Trinity as well as of the Unity.

 Let us take, by way of illustration, the word monad, which when applied to intellectual beings, includes the idea of personality. Dionysius of Alexandria, for instance, speaks of the monad and the triad : now, would it be very harsh, if, as he has spoken of "three hypostases " in monad so he had instead spoken of "the three monads," that is, in the sense of "thrice hypostatic monad," as if the intrinsic force of the word monas would preclude the possibility of his use of the plural monads being mistaken to imply that he held more monads than one? To take an analogous case, it would be about the same improper use of plural for singular, if we said that a martyr by his one act gained three victories instead of a triple victory, over his three spiritual foes. And indeed, though Athanasius does not directly speak of three monads, yet he implies the possibility of such phraseology by teaching that, though the Father and the Son are two, the monas of the Deity ([ theotes ]) is indivisible, and that the Deity is at once Father and Son.

 This, then, is what I conceive that he means by sometimes speaking of one, sometimes of three hypostases . The word hypostasis stands neither for Person nor for Essence exclusively; but it means the one Personal God of natural theology, the notion of whom the Catholic corrects and completes as often as he views him as a Trinity; of which correction Nazianzen's language ( Orat . xxviii. 9) contrasted with his usual formula ( vid. Orat . xx. 6) of the Three Hypostases, is an illustration. The specification of three hypostases does not substantially alter the sense of the word itself, but is a sort of catachresis by which this Catholic doctrine is forcibly brought out (as it would be by the phrase "three monads"), viz. that each of the Divine Persons is simply the Unus et Singularis Deus. If it be objected, that by the same mode of reasoning, Athanasius might have said catachrestically not only three monads or three hypostases, but three Gods, I deny it, and for this reason, because hypostasis is not equivalent to the simple idea of God, but is rather a definition of Him, and that in some special elementary points, as essence, personality, etc., and because such a mere improper use or varying application of the term hypostasis would not tend to compromise a truth, which never must even in forms of speech be trifled with, the absolute numerical unity of the Supreme Being. Though a Catholic could not say that there are three Gods, he could say, that the definition of God applies to unus and tres . Perhaps it is for this reason that Epiphanius speaks of the " hypostatic Three," "co hypostatic," "of the same hypostasis," Hær . 74, 4 ( vid . Jerome, Ep . 15, 3), in the spirit in which St. Thomas, I think, interprets the "non tres æterni, sed unus æternus," to turn on the contrast of adjective and substantive.

 Petavius makes a remark which is apposite to my present purpose. "Nomen Dei," he says, de Trin . iii. 9. § 10, "cùm sit ex eorum genere quæ concreta dicuntur, forinam significat, non abstractam ab individuis proprietatibus, sed in iis subsistentem. Est enim Deus substantia aliqua divinitatem habens. Sicut homo non humanam naturam separatam, sed in aliquo individuo subsistentem exponit, ita tamen ut individuum ac personam, non certam ac determinatam, sed confuse infiniteque representet, hoc est, naturam in aliquo, ut diximus, consistentem ... sic nomen Dei propriè ac directe divinitatem naturamque divinam indicat, assignificat autem eundem, ut in quâpiam personâ subsistentem, nullam de tribus expresse designans, sed confuse et universe ." Here this great author seems to say, that even the word "Deus" may stand, not barely for the Divine Being, but besides "in quâpiam personâ subsistentem," without denoting which Person; and in like manner I would understand hypostasis to mean the monas with a like indeterminate notion of personality, (without which attribute the idea of God cannot be,) and thus, according as one hypostasis is spoken of, or three, the word may be roughly translated, in the one case "personal substance," or "being with personality," in the other "substantial person," or "person which is in being." In all cases it will be equivalent to the Deity, to the monad, to the divine usia, etc., though with that peculiarity of meaning which I have insisted on.

 5. Since, as has been said above, hypostasis is a word more peculiarly Christian than usia, I have judged it best to speak of it first, that the meaning of it, as it has now been ascertained on inquiry, may serve as a key for explaining other parallel terms. Usia is one of these the most in use, certainly in the works of Athanasius; and we have his authority as well as St. Jerome's for stating that it was once simply synonymous with hypostasis . Moreover, in Orat . iii. 65, he uses the two words as equivalent to each other. If this be so, what has been said above in explanation of the sense he put on the word hypostasis, will apply to usia also. This conclusion is corroborated by the proper meaning of the word usia itself which answers to the English word "being." Now, when we speak of the Divine Being, we mean to speak of Him, as what he is, [ ho on ], including generally His attributes and characteristics, and among them, at least obscurely, His personality. By the " Divine Being " we do not commonly mean a mere anima mundi, or first principle of life or system of laws. Usia then, thus considered, agrees very nearly in sense, from its very etymology, with hypostasis . Further, this was the sense in which Aristotle used it, viz. for what is "individuum," and "numero unum;" and it must not be forgotten that the Neo-platonists, who exerted so great an influence on the Alexandrian Church, professed the Aristotelic logic. And so St. Cyril himself, the successor of Athanasius (Suicer, Thes. in voce, [ ousia ].)

 This is the word, and not hypostasis, which Athanasius commonly uses in controversy with the Arians, to express the divinity of the Word. He speaks of the usia of the Son as being united to the Father, and His usia being the offspring of the Father's usia . In these and other passages usia, I conceive, is substantially equivalent to hypostasis, as I have explained it, viz. expressing the divine [ monas ] with an obscure intimation of personality inclusively; and here I think I am able to quote the words of Father Passaglia, as agreeing (so far) in what I have said. "Quum hypostasis," he says, de Trinitate, p. 1302, "esse nequeat sine substantiâ, nihil vetabat quominus trium hypostasum defensores hypostasim interdum pro substantiâ sumerent, præsertim ubi hypostasis opponitur rei non subsistenti ac efficientiæ." I should wish to complete the admission by adding, "Since an intellectual usia naturally implies an hypostasis, there was nothing to hinder usia being used, when hypostasis had to be expressed."

 6. After what I have said of usia and hypostasis, it will not surprise the reader if I consider that [ physis ] (nature) also, in the Alexandrian theology, was equally capable of being applied to the Divine Being viewed as One, or viewed as Three or each of the Three separately. Thus Athanasius says, One is the Divine Nature, ( contr. Apoll . ii. 13, fin. de Incarn. V . fin.) Alexander, on the other hand, calls the Father and Son the "two hypostatic natures," and speaks of the "only begotten nature," (Theod. Hist. i. 4,) and Clement of "the Son's nature" as "most intimately near the sole Almighty," (Strom. vii. 2,) and Cyril of a "generating nature" and a "generated" (Thes. xi. p. 85) and, in words celebrated in theological history, of "the Word's One Nature incarnate."

 7. [ Eidos ] is a word of a similar character. As it is found in John v. 37, it may be indifferently interpreted of essence or of person; the Vulgate translates it "neque speciem ejus vidistis." In Athan. Orat . iii. 3, it is synonymous with deity or usia ; as ibid . 6 also; and apparently in ibid . 16, where the Son is said to have the species of the Father. And so in de Syn . 52. Athanasius says that there is only one "species deitatis." Yet, as taken from Gen . xxxii. 31, it is considered to denote the Son; e.g . Athan. Orat . i. 20, where it is used as synonymous with Image, [ eikon ]. In like manner the Son is called "the very species deitatis." Ep. Æg . 17. But again in Athan. Orat . iii. 6, it is first said that the species of the Father and Son are one and the same, then that the Son is the species of the Father's (deity), and then that the Son is the species of the Father.

 The outcome of this investigation is this: that we need not by an officious piety arbitrarily force the language of separate Fathers into a sense which it cannot bear; nor by an unjust and narrow criticism accuse them of error; nor impose upon an early age a distinction of terms belonging to a later. The words usia and hypostasis were, naturally and intelligibly, for three or four centuries, practically synonymous, and were used indiscriminately for two ideas, which were afterwards respectively denoted by the one and the other.

 Note

 1. From the Atlantis, July, 1858.  

 Note 5. The Orthodoxy of the Body of the Faithful during the Supremacy of Arianism

 ( Vide supra, p. 358.) [n. 1]

 THE episcopate, whose action was so prompt and concordant at Nicæa on the rise of Arianism, did not, as a class or order of men, play a good part in the troubles consequent upon the Council; and the laity did. The Catholic people, in the length and breadth of Christendom, were the obstinate champions of Catholic truth, and the bishops were not. Of course there were great and illustrious exceptions; first, Athanasius, Hilary, the Latin Eusebius, and PhSbadius; and after them, Basil, the two Gregories, and Ambrose; there are others, too, who suffered, if they did nothing else, as Eustathius, Paulus, Paulinus, and Dionysius; and the Egyptian bishops, whose weight was small in the Church in proportion to the great power of their Patriarch. And, on the other hand, as I shall say presently, there were exceptions to the Christian heroism of the laity, especially in some of the great towns. And again, in speaking of the laity, I speak inclusively of their parish-priests (so to call them), at least in many places; but on the whole, taking a wide view of the history, we are obliged to say that the governing body of the Church came short, and the governed were pre-eminent in faith, zeal, courage, and constancy.

 This is a very remarkable fact: but there is a moral in it. Perhaps it was permitted, in order to impress upon the Church at that very time passing out of her state of persecution to her long temporal ascendancy, the great evangelical lesson, that, not the wise and powerful, but the obscure, the unlearned, and the weak constitute her real strength. It was mainly by the faithful people that Paganism was overthrown; it was by the faithful people, under the lead of Athanasius and the Egyptian bishops, and in some places supported by their Bishops or priests, that the worst of heresies was withstood and stamped out of the sacred territory.

 The contrast stands as follows:

 1.

 1. A.D. 325. The great Council of Nicæa of 318 Bishops, chiefly from the eastern provinces of Christendom, under the presidency of Hosius of Cordova. It was convoked against Arianism, which it once for all anathematized; and it inserted the formula of the "Consubstantial" into the Creed, with the view of establishing the fundamental dogma which Arianism impugned. It is the first Rcumenical Council, and recognized at the time its own authority as the voice of the infallible Church. It is so received by the orbis terrarum at this day.

 2. A.D. 326. St. Athanasius, the great champion of the Homoüsion, was elected Bishop of Alexandria.

 3. A.D. 334, 335. The Synods of Cæsarea and Tyre (sixty Bishops) against Athanasius, who was therein accused and formally condemned of rebellion, sedition, and ecclesiastical tyranny; of murder, sacrilege, and magic; deposed from his See, forbidden to set foot in Alexandria for life, and banished to Gaul. Also, they received Arius into communion.

 4. A.D. 341. Council of Rome of fifty Bishops, attended by the exiles from Thrace, Syria, etc., by Athanasius, etc., in which Athanasius was pronounced innocent.

 5. A.D. 341. Great Council of the Dedication at Antioch, attended by ninety or a hundred Bishops. The council ratified the proceedings of the Councils of Cæsarea and Tyre, and placed an Arian in the See of Athanasius. Then it proceeded to pass a dogmatic decree in reversal of the formula of the "Consubstantial." Four or five creeds, instead of the Nicene, were successively adopted by the assembled Fathers.

 Three of these were circulated in the neighbourhood; but as they wished to send one to Rome, they directed a fourth to be drawn up. This, too, apparently failed.

 6. A.D. 345. Council of the creed called Macrostich. This Creed suppressed, as did the third, the word "substance." The eastern Bishops sent this to the Bishops of France, who rejected it.

 7. A.D. 347. The great Council of Sardica, attended by more than 300 Bishops. Before it commenced, a division between its members broke out on the question whether or not Athanasius should have a seat in it. In consequence, seventy-six retired to Philippopolis, on the Thracian side of Mount Hæmus, and there excommunicated the Pope and the Sardican Fathers. These seceders published a sixth confession of faith. The Synod of Sardica, including Bishops from Italy, Gaul, Africa, Egypt, Cyprus, and Palestine, confirmed the act of the Roman Council, and restored Athanasius and the other exiles to their Sees. The Synod of Philippopolis, on the contrary, sent letters to the civil magistrates of those cities, forbidding them to admit the exiles into them. The Imperial power took part with the Sardican Fathers, and Athanasius went back to Alexandria.

 8. A.D. 351. The Bishops of the East met at Sirmium. The semi-Arian Bishops began to detach themselves from the Arians, and to form a separate party. Under pretence of putting down a kind of Sabellianism, they drew up a new creed, into which they introduced the language of some of the ante-Nicene writers on the subject of our Lord's divinity, and dropped the word "substance."

 9. A.D. 353. The Council of Arles. The Pope sent to it several Bishops as legates. The Fathers of the Council, including the Pope's legate, Vincent, subscribed the condemnation of Athanasius. Paulinus, Bishop of Treves, was nearly the only one who stood up for the Nicene faith and for Athanasius. He was accordingly banished into Phrygia, where he died.

 10. A.D. 355. The Council of Milan, of more than 300 Bishops of the West. Nearly all of them subscribed the condemnation of Athanasius; whether they generally subscribed the heretical creed, which was brought forward, does not appear. The Pope's four legates remained firm, and St. Dionysius of Milan, who died an exile in Asia Minor. An Arian was put into his See. Saturninus, the Bishop of Arles, proceeded to hold a Council at Beziers; and its Fathers banished St. Hilary to Phrygia.

 11. A.D. 357-9. The Arians and Semi-Arians successively drew up fresh creeds at Sirmium.

 12. A.D. 357-8. Hosius' fall. "Constantius used such violence towards the old man, and confined him so straitly, that at last, broken by suffering, he was brought, though hardly, to hold communion with Valens and Ursacius [the Arian leaders], though he would not subscribe against Athanasius." Athan. Arian. Hist . 45.

 13. A.D. 357-8. And Liberius. "The tragedy was not ended in the lapse of Hosius, but in the evil which befell Liberius, the Roman Pontiff, it became far more dreadful and mournful, considering that he was Bishop of so great a city, and of the whole Catholic Church, and that he had so bravely resisted Constantius two years previously. There is nothing, whether in the historians and holy fathers, or in his own letters, to prevent our coming to the conclusion, that Liberius communicated with the Arians, and confirmed the sentence passed by them against Athanasius; but he is not at all on that account to be called a heretic." Baron. Ann. 357, 38-45. Athanasius says: "Liberius, after he had been in banishment for two years, gave way, and from fear of threatened death was induced to subscribe. Arian. Hist . § 41. St. Jerome says: "Liberius, tædio victus exilii, et in hæreticam pravitatem subscribens, Romam quasi victor intraverat." Chron . ed. Val. p. 797.

 14. A.D. 359. The great Councils of Seleucia and Ariminum, being one bi-partite Council, representing the East and West respectively. At Seleucia there were 150 Bishops, of which only the twelve or thirteen from Egypt were champions of the Nicene "Consubstantial." At Ariminum there were as many as 400 Bishops, who, worn out by the artifice of long delay on the part of the Arians, abandoned the "Consubstantial," and subscribed the ambiguous formula which the heretics had substituted for it.

 15. About A.D. 360, St. Hilary says: "I am not speaking of things foreign to my knowledge; I am not writing about what I am ignorant of; I have heard and I have seen the shortcomings of persons who are round about me, not of laymen, but of Bishops. For, excepting the Bishop Eleusius and a few with him, for the most part the ten Asian provinces, within whose boundaries I am situate, are truly ignorant of God." De Syn . 63. It is observable, that even Eleusius, who is here spoken of as somewhat better than the rest, was a Semi-Arian, according to Socrates, and even a persecutor of Catholics at Constantinople; and, according to Sozomen, one of those who were active in causing Pope Liberius to give up the Nicene formula of the "Consubstantial." By the ten Asian provinces is meant the east and south provinces of Asia Minor, pretty nearly as cut off by a line passing from Cyzicus to Seleucia through Synnada.

 16. A.D. 360. St. Gregory Nazianzen says, about this date: "Surely the pastors have done foolishly; for, excepting a very few, who either on account of their insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival of Israel by the influences of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interest, or by flattery, or, what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance." Orat . xxi. 24.

 17. A.D. 361. About this time, St. Jerome says: "Nearly all the churches in the whole world, under the pretence of peace and of the emperor, are polluted with the communion of the Arians." Chron . Of the same date, that is, upon the Council of Ariminum, are his famous words, "Ingemuit totus orbis et se esse Arianum miratus est." In Lucif . 19. "The Catholics of Christendom were strangely surprised to find that the Council had made Arians of them."

 18. A.D. 362. State of the Church of Antioch at this time. There were four Bishops or communions of Antioch; first, the old succession and communion, which had possession before the Arian troubles; secondly, the Arian succession, which had lately conformed to orthodoxy in the person of Meletius; thirdly, the new Latin succession, lately created by Lucifer, whom some have thought the Pope's legate there; and, fourthly, the new Arian succession, which was started upon the recantation of Meletius. At length, as Arianism was brought under, the evil reduced itself to two Episcopal Successions, that of Meletius and the Latin, which went on for many years, the West and Egypt holding communion with the latter, and the East with the former.

 19. St. Hilary speaks of the series of ecclesiastical Councils of that time in the following well-known passage: "Since the Nicene Council, we have done nothing but write the Creed. While we fight about words, inquire about novelties, take advantage of ambiguities, criticize authors, fight on party questions, have difficulties in agreeing, and prepare to anathematize each other, there is scarce a man who belongs to Christ. Take, for instance, last year's Creed, what alteration is there not in it already? First, we have the Creed, which bids us not to use the Nicene 'consubstantial;' then comes another, which decrees and preaches it; next, the third, excuses the word 'substance,' as adopted by the Fathers in their simplicity; lastly, the fourth, which instead of excusing, condemns. We determine creeds by the year or by the month, we change our own determinations, we prohibit our changes, we anathematize our prohibitions. Thus, we either condemn others in our own persons, or ourselves in the instance of others, and while we bite and devour one another, are like to be consumed one of another." Ad Const . ii. 4, 5.

 20. A.D. 382. St. Gregory writes: "If I must speak the truth, I feel disposed to shun every conference of Bishops: for never saw I Synod brought to a happy issue, and remedying, and not rather aggravating, existing evils. For rivalry and ambition are stronger than reason, do not think me extravagant for saying so, and a mediator is more likely to incur some imputation himself than to clear up the imputations which others lie under."  Ep . 129.

 2.

 Coming to the opposite side of the contrast, I observe that there were great efforts made on the part of the Arians to render their heresy popular. Arius himself, according to the Arian Philostorgius, "wrote songs for the sea, and for the mill, and for the road, and then set them to suitable music." [n. 2] Hist. ii. 2. Alexander speaks of the "running about" of the Arian women, Theod. Hist. i. 4, and of the buffoonery of their men. Socrates says that "in the Imperial court, the officers of the bed-chamber held disputes with the women, and in the city, in every house, there was a war of dialectics," ii. 2. Especially at Constantinople there were, as Gregory says, "of Jezebels as thick a crop as of hemlock in a field," Orat. 35, 3; and he himself suffered from the popular violence there. At Alexandria the Arian women are described by Athanasius as "running up and down like Bacchanals and furies," and as "passing that day in grief on which they could do no harm." Hist. Arian . 59.

 The controversy was introduced in ridicule into the heathen theatres, Euseb. v. Const. ii. 6. Socr. i. 6. "Men of yesterday," says Gregory Nyssen, "mere mechanics, offhand dogmatists in theology, servants too and slaves that have been scourged, run-aways from servile work, and philosophical about things incomprehensible. Of such the city is full; its entrances, forums, squares, thoroughfares; the clothes-vendors, the money-lenders, the victuallers. Ask about pence, and they will discuss the generate and ingenerate," etc., etc., tom. ii. p. 898. Socrates, too, says that the heresy "ravaged provinces and cities;" and Theodoret that, "quarrels took place in every city and village concerning the divine dogma, the people looking on, and taking sides." Hist . i. 6.

 In spite of these attempts, however, on the part of the Arians, still, viewing Christendom as a whole, we shall find that the Catholic populations sided with Athanasius; and the fierce disputes above described evidenced the zeal of the orthodox rather than the strength of the heretical party. This will appear in the following extracts:

 1. ALEXANDRIA. "We suppose," says Athanasius, "you are not ignorant what outrages they [the Arian Bishops] committed at Alexandria, for they are reported every where. They attacked the holy virgins and brethren with naked swords; they beat with scourges their persons, esteemed honourable in God's sight, so that their feet were lamed by the stripes, whose souls were whole and sound in purity and all good works." Athan. Ap. c. Arian . 15.

 "Accordingly Constantius writes letters, and commences a persecution against all. Gathering together a multitude of herdsmen and shepherds, and dissolute youths belonging to the town, armed with swords and clubs, they attacked in a body the Church of Quirinus: and some they slew, some they trampled under foot, others they beat with stripes and cast into prison or banished. They haled away many women also, and dragged them openly into the court, and insulted them, dragging them by the hair. Some they proscribed; from some they took away their bread, for no other reason but that they might be induced to join the Arians, and receive Gregory [the Arian Bishop], who had been sent by the Emperor." Athan. Hist. Arian . § 10.

 "On the week that succeeded the holy Pentecost, when the people after their fast, had gone out to the cemetery to pray, because that all refused communion with George [the Arian Bishop], the commander, Sebastian, straightway with a multitude of soldiers proceeded to attack the people, though it was the Lord's day; and finding a few praying (for the greater part had already retired on account of the lateness of the hour), having lighted a pile, he placed certain virgins near the fire, and endeavoured to force them to say that they were of the Arian faith. And having seized on forty men, he cut some fresh twigs of the palm-tree, with the thorns upon them, and scourged them on the back so severely that some of them were for a long time under medical treatment, on account of the thorns which had entered their flesh, and others, unable to bear up under their sufferings, died. All those whom they had taken, both the men and the virgins, they sent away into banishment to the great Oasis. Moreover, they immediately banished out of Egypt and Libya the following Bishops [sixteen], and the presbyters, Hierax and Dioscorus; some of them died on the way, others in the place of their banishment. They caused also more than thirty Bishops to take to flight." Apol. de Fug . 7.

 2. EGYPT. "The Emperor Valens having issued an edict commanding that the orthodox should be expelled both from Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, depopulation and ruin to an immense extent immediately followed; some were dragged before the tribunals, others cast into prison, and many tortured in various ways; all sorts of punishment being inflicted upon persons who aimed only at peace and quiet." Socr. Hist . iv. 24.

 3. THE MONKS (1.) of Egypt . "Antony left the solitude of the desert to go about every part of the city [Alexandria], warning the inhabitants that the Arians were opposing the truth, and that the doctrines of the Apostles were preached only by Athanasius." Theod. Hist . iv. 27.

 "Lucius, the Arian, with a considerable body of troops, proceeded to the monasteries of Egypt, where he in person assailed the assemblage of holy men with greater fury than the ruthless soldiery. When these excellent persons remained unmoved by all the violence, in despair he advised the military chief to send the fathers of the monks, the Egyptian Macarius and his namesake of Alexandria, into exile." Socr. iv. 24.

 (2.) Of Constantinople . "Isaac, on seeing the emperor depart at the head of his army, exclaimed, 'You who have declared war against God cannot gain His aid. Cease from fighting against Him, and He will terminate the war. Restore the pastors to their flocks, and then you will obtain a bloodless victory.'" Theod. iv.

 (3.) Of Syria, etc. "That these heretical doctrines [Apollinarian and Eunomian] did not finally become predominant is mainly to be attributed to the zeal of the monks of this period; for all the monks of Syria, Cappadocia, and the neighbouring provinces were sincerely attached to the Nicene faith. The same fate awaited them which had been experienced by the Arians; for they incurred the full weight of the popular odium and aversion, when it was observed that their sentiments were regarded with suspicion by the monks." Sozom. vi. 27.

 (4.) Of Capadocia . "Gregory, the father of Gregory Theologus, otherwise a most excellent man, and a zealous defender of the true and Catholic religion, not being on his guard against the artifices of the Arians, such was his simplicity, received with kindness certain men who were contaminated with the poison, and subscribed an impious proposition of theirs. This moved the monks to such indignation, that they withdrew forthwith from his communion, and took with them, after their example, a considerable part of his flock." Ed. Bened. Monit. in Greg. Naz. Orat . 6.

 4. ANTIOCH. "Whereas he (the Bishop Leontius) took part in the blasphemy of Arius, he made a point of concealing this disease, partly for fear of the multitude, partly for the menaces of Constantius; so those who followed the Apostolical dogmas gained from him neither patronage nor ordination, but those who held Arianism were allowed the fullest liberty of speech, and were placed in the ranks of the sacred ministry. But Flavian and Diodorus, who had embraced the ascetical life, and maintained the Apostolical dogmas, openly withstood Leontius's machinations against religious doctrine. They threatened that they would retire from the communion of his Church, and would go to the West, and reveal his intrigues. Though they were not as yet in the sacred ministry, but were in the ranks of the laity, night and day they used to excite all the people to zeal for religion. They were the first to divide the singers into two choirs, and to teach them to sing in alternate parts the strains of David. They too, assembling the devout at the shrines of the martyrs, passed the whole night there in hymns to God. These things Leontius seeing, did not think it safe to hinder them, for he saw that the multitude was especially well affected towards those excellent persons. Nothing, however, could persuade Leontius to correct his wickedness. It follows, that among the clergy were many who were infected with the heresy: but the mass of the people were champions of orthodoxy." Theodor. Hist . ii. 24.

 5. EDESSA. "There is in that city a magnificent church, dedicated to St. Thomas the Apostle, wherein, on account of the sanctity of the place, religious assemblies are continually held. The Emperor Valens wished to inspect this edifice; when, having learned that all who usually congregated there were enemies to the heresy which he favoured, he is said to have struck the prefect with his own hand, because he had neglected to expel them thence. The prefect, to prevent the slaughter of so great a number of persons, privately warned them against resorting thither. But his admonitions and menaces were alike unheeded; for on the following day they all crowded to the church. When the prefect was going towards it with a large military force, a poor woman leading her own little child by the hand, hurried hastily by on her way to the church, breaking through the ranks of the soldiery. The prefect, irritated at this, ordered her to be brought to him, and thus addressed her: 'Wretched woman, whither are you running in so disorderly a manner?' She replied, 'To the same place that others are hastening.' 'Have you not heard,' said he, 'that the prefect is about to put to death all that shall be found there?' 'Yes,' said the woman, 'and therefore I hasten, that I may be found there.' 'And whither are you dragging that little child?' said the prefect. The woman answered, 'That he also may be vouchsafed the honour of martyrdom.' The prefect went back and informed the Emperor that all were ready to die in behalf of their own faith; and added that it would be preposterous to destroy so many persons at one time, and thus succeeded in restraining the Emperor's wrath." Socr. iv. 18. "Thus was the Christian faith confessed by the whole city of Edessa." Sozom. vi. 18.

 6. SAMOSATA. "The Arians, having deprived this exemplary flock of their shepherd, elected in his place an individual with whom none of the inhabitants of the city, whether poor or rich, servants or mechanics, husbandmen or gardeners, men or women, young or old, would hold communion. He was left quite alone; no one even calling to see him, or exchanging a word with him. It is, however, said that his disposition was extremely gentle; and this is proved by what I am about to relate. One day, when he went to bathe in the public baths, the attendants closed the doors; but he ordered the doors to be thrown open, that the people might be admitted to bathe with himself. Perceiving that they remained in a standing posture before him, imagining that great deference towards himself was the cause of this conduct, he arose and left the bath. These people believed that the water had been contaminated by his heresy, and ordered it to be let out, and fresh water to be supplied. When he heard of this circumstance, he left the city, thinking that he ought no longer to remain in a place where he was the object of public aversion and hatred. Upon this retirement of Eunomius, Lucius was elected as his successor by the Arians. Some young persons were amusing themselves with playing at ball in the market-place; Lucius was passing by at the time, and the ball happened to fall beneath the feet of the ass on which he was mounted. The youths uttered loud exclamations, believing that the ball was contaminated. They lighted a fire, and hurled the ball through it, believing that by this process the ball would be purified. Although this was only a childish deed, and although it exhibits the remains of ancient superstition, yet it is sufficient to show the odium which the Arian faction had incurred in this city. Lucius was far from imitating the mildness of Eunomius, and he persuaded the heads of the government to exile most of the clergy." Theodor. iv. i5.

 7. OSRHOENE. "Arianism met with similar opposition at the same period in Osrhoëne and Cappadocia. Basil, Bishop of Cæsarea, and Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus, were held in high admiration and esteem throughout these regions." Sozom. vi. 21.

 8. CAPPADOCIA. "Valens, in passing through Cappadocia, did all in his power to injure the orthodox, and to deliver up the churches to the Arians. He thought to accomplish his designs more easily on account of a dispute which was then pending between Basil and Eusebius, who governed the Church of Cæsarea. This dissension had been the cause of Basil's departing to Pontus. The people, and some of the most powerful and wisest men of the city, began to regard Eusebius with suspicion, and to meditate a secession from his communion. The emperor and the Arian Bishops regarded the absence of Basil and the hatred of the people towards Eusebius, as circumstances that would tend greatly to the success of their designs. But their expectations were utterly frustrated. On the first intelligence of the intention of the emperor to pass through Cappadocia, Basil returned to Cæsarea, where he effected a reconciliation with Eusebius. The projects of Valens were thus defeated, and he returned with his Bishops." Sozom. vi. 15.

 9. PONTUS. "It is said that when Eulalius, Bishop of Amasia in Pontus, returned from exile, he found that his Church had passed into the hands of an Arian, and that scarcely fifty inhabitants of the city had submitted to the control of their new bishop." Sozom. vii. 2.

 10. ARMENIA. "That company of Arians, who came with Eustathius to Nicopolis, had promised that they would bring over this city to compliance with the commands of the Imperial vicar. This city had great ecclesiastical importance, both because it was the metropolis of Armenia, and because it had been ennobled by the blood of martyrs, and governed hitherto by Bishops of great reputation, and thus, as Basil calls it, was the nurse of religion and the metropolis of sound doctrine. Fronto, one of the city presbyters, who had hitherto shown himself as a champion of the truth, through ambition gave himself up to the enemies of Christ, and purchased the bishoprick of the Arians at the price of renouncing the Catholic faith. This wicked proceeding of Eustathius and the Arians brought a new glory instead of evil to the Nicopolitans, since it gave them an opportunity of defending the faith. Fronto, indeed, the Arians consecrated, but there was a remarkable unanimity of clergy and people in rejecting him. Scarcely one or two clerks sided with him; on the contrary, he became the execration of all Armenia." Vita S. Basil ., Bened. pp. clvii, clviii.

 11. NICOMEDIA. "Eighty pious clergy proceeded to Nicomedia, and there presented to the emperor a supplicatory petition complaining of the ill-usage to which they had been subjected. Valens, dissembling his displeasure in their presence, gave Modestus, the prefect, a secret order to apprehend these persons and to put them to death. The prefect, fearing he should excite the populace to a seditious movement against himself, if he attempted the public execution of so many, pretended to send them away into exile," etc. Socr. iv. 16.

 12. CAPPADOCIA. St. Basil says, about the year 372: "Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in faith avoid the places of worship as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitudes, with groans and tears to the Lord in heaven." Ep . 92. Four years after he writes: "Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and assemble in deserts, a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid the most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit, because they will have no part in the wicked Arian leaven." Ep . 242. Again: "Only one offence is now vigorously punished, an accurate observance of our fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven from their countries, and transported into deserts. The people are in lamentation, in continual tears at home and abroad. There is a cry in the city, a cry in the country, in the roads, in the deserts. Joy and spiritual cheerfulness are no more; our feasts are turned into mourning; our houses of prayer are shut up, our altars deprived of the spiritual worship." Ep . 243.

 13. PAPHLAGONIA, etc. "I thought," says Julian in one of his Epistles, "that the leaders of the Galilæans would feel more grateful to me than to my predecessor. For in his time they were in great numbers turned out of their homes, and persecuted, and imprisoned; moreover, multitudes of so-called heretics" [the Novatians who were with the Catholics against the Arians] "were slaughtered, so that in Samosata, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, and Galatia, and many other nations, villages were utterly sacked and destroyed." Ep . 52.

 14. SCYTHIA. "There are in this country a great number of cities, of towns, and of fortresses. According to an ancient custom which still prevails, all the churches of the whole country are under the sway of one Bishop. Valens [the emperor] repaired to the Church, and strove to gain over the Bishop to the heresy of Arius; but this latter manfully opposed his arguments, and after a courageous defence of the Nicene doctrines, quitted the emperor, and proceeded to another church, whither he was followed by the people. Valens was extremely offended at being left alone in a church with his attendants, and in resentment condemned Vetranio [the Bishop] to banishment. Not long after, however, he recalled him, because, I believe, he apprehended insurrection." Sozom. vi. 21.

 15. CONSTANTINOPLE, "Those who acknowledged the doctrine of consubstantiality were not only expelled from the churches, but also from the cities. But although expulsion at first satisfied them [the Arians], they soon proceeded to the worse extremity of inducing compulsory communion with them, caring little for such a desecration of the churches. They resorted to all kinds of scourgings, a variety of tortures, and confiscation of property. Many were punished with exile, some died under the torture, and others were put to death while being driven from their country. These atrocities were exercised throughout all the eastern cities, but especially at Constantinople." Socr. ii. 27.

 16. ILLYRIA. "The parents of Theodosius were Christians and were attached to the Nicene doctrine, hence he took pleasure in the ministration of Ascholius [Bishop of Thessalonica]. He also rejoiced at finding that the Arian heresy had not been received in Illyria." Sozom, vii. 4.

 17. NEIGHBOURHOOD OF MACEDONIA. "Theodosius inquired concerning the religious sentiments which were prevalent in the other provinces, and ascertained that, as far as Macedonia, one form of belief was universally predominant," etc. Ibid.

 18. ROME. "With respect to the doctrine no dissension arose either at Rome or in any other of the Western Churches; the people unanimously adhered to the form of belief established at Nicæa." Sozom. vi. 23.

 "Liberius, returning to Rome, found the mind of the mass of men alienated from him, because he had so shamefully yielded to Constantius. And thus it came to pass, that those persons who had hitherto kept aloof from Felix [the rival Pope], and had avoided his communion in favour of Liberius, on hearing what had happened, left him for Felix, who raised the Catholic standard." Baron. Ann . 357. 56. He tells us besides (57), that the people would not even go to the public baths, lest they should bathe with the party of Liberius.

 19. MILAN. At the Council of Milan, Eusebius of Vercellæ, when it was proposed to draw up a declaration against Athanasius, "said that the Council ought first to be sure of the faith of the Bishops attending it, for he had found out that some of them were polluted with heresy. Accordingly he brought before the Fathers the Nicene Creed, and said he was willing to comply with all their demands, after they had subscribed that confession. Dionysius, Bishop of Milan, at once took up the paper and began to write his assent; but Valens [the Arian] violently pulled pen and paper out of his hands, crying out that such a course of proceeding was impossible. Whereupon, after much tumult, the question came before the people, and great was the distress of all of them; the faith of the Church was attacked by the Bishops. They then, dreading the judgment of the people, transfer their meeting from the church to the Imperial palace." Hilar. ad Const . i. 8.

 Again: "As the feast of Easter approached, the empress sent to St. Ambrose to ask a church of him, where the Arians who attended her might meet together. He replied, that a Bishop could not give up the temple of God. The pretorian prefect came into the church, where St. Ambrose was attended by the people, and endeavoured to persuade him to yield up at least the Portian Basilica. The people were clamorous against the proposal; and the prefect retired to report how matters stood to the emperor. The Sunday following St. Ambrose was explaining the creed, when he was informed that the officers were hanging up the Imperial hangings in the Portian Basilica, and that upon this news the people were repairing thither. While he was offering up the holy sacrifice, a second message came that the people had seized an Arian priest as he was passing through the street. He despatched a number of his clergy to the spot to rescue the Arian from his danger. The court looked on this resistance of the people as seditious, and immediately laid considerable fines upon the whole body of the tradesmen of the city. Several were thrown into prison. In three days' time these tradesmen were fined two hundred pounds weight of gold, and they said that they were ready to give as much again on condition that they might retain their faith. The prisons were filled with tradesmen; all the officers of the household, secretaries, agents of the emperor, and dependent officers who served under various counts, were kept within doors, and were forbidden to appear in public, under pretence that they should bear no part in sedition. Men of higher rank were menaced with severe consequences, unless the Basilica were surrendered ...

 "Next morning the Basilica was surrounded by soldiers; but it was reported, that these soldiers had sent to the Emperor to tell him, that if he wished to come abroad he might, and that they would attend him, if he was going to the assembly of the Catholics: otherwise, that they would go to that which would be held by St. Ambrose. Indeed, the soldiers were all Catholics, as well as the citizens of Milan: there were so few heretics there, except a few officers of the emperor and some Goths.

 "St. Ambrose was continuing his discourse, when he was told that the Emperor had withdrawn the soldiers from the Basilica, and that he had restored to the tradesmen the fines which he had exacted from them. This news gave joy to the people, who expressed their delight with applauses and thanksgivings; the soldiers themselves were eager to bring the news, throwing themselves on the altars, and kissing them in token of peace. "Fleury's Hist . xviii. 41, 42, Oxf. trans.

 20. CHRISTENDOM GENERALLY. St. Hilary to Constantius: "Not only in words, but in tears, we beseech you to save the Catholic Churches from any longer continuance of these most grievous injuries, and of their present intolerable persecutions and insults, which moreover they are enduring, monstrous as it is, from our brethren. Surely your clemency should listen to the voice of those who cry out so loudly, 'I am a Catholic, I have no wish to be a heretic.' It should seem equitable to your sanctity, most glorious Augustus, that they who fear the Lord God and His judgment should not be polluted and contaminated with execrable blasphemies, but should have liberty to follow those Bishops and prelates who both observe inviolate the laws of charity, and who desire a perpetual and sincere peace. It is impossible, it is unreasonable, to mix true and false, to confuse light and darkness, and bring into union, of whatever kind, night and day. Give permission to the populations to hear the teaching of the pastors whom they have wished, whom they fixed on, whom they have chosen, to attend their celebration of the divine mysteries, to offer prayers through them for your safety and prosperity." ad Const . i. 1, 2.

 In drawing out this comparison between the conduct of the Catholic Bishops and that of their flocks during the Arian troubles, I must not be understood as intending any conclusion inconsistent with the infallibility of the Ecclesia docens, (that is, the Church when teaching) and with the claim of the Pope and the Bishops to constitute the Church in that aspect. I am led to give this caution, because, for the want of it, I was seriously misunderstood in some quarters on my first writing on the above subject in the Rambler Magazine of May, 1859. But on that occasion I was writing simply historically, not doctrinally, and, while it is historically true, it is in no sense doctrinally false, that a Pope, as a private doctor, and much more Bishops, when not teaching formally, may err, as we find they did err in the fourth century. Pope Liberius might sign a Eusebian formula at Sirmium, and the mass of Bishops at Ariminum or elsewhere, and yet they might, in spite of this error, be infallible in their ex cathedrâ decisions.

 The reason of my being misunderstood arose from two or three clauses or expressions which occurred in the course of my remarks, which I should not have used had I anticipated how they would be taken, and which I avail myself of this opportunity to explain and withdraw. First, I will quote the passage which bore a meaning which I certainly did not intend, and then I will note the phrases which seem to have given this meaning to it. It will be seen how little, when those phrases are withdrawn, the sense of the passage, as I intended it, is affected by the withdrawal. I said then: "It is not a little remarkable, that, though, historically speaking, the fourth century is the age of doctors, illustrated, as it is, by the Saints Athanasius, Hilary, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, (and all those saints bishops also), except one, nevertheless in that very day the Divine tradition committed to the infallible Church was proclaimed and maintained far more by the faithful than by the Episcopate.

 "Here of course I must explain: in saying this then, undoubtedly I am not denying that the great body of the Bishops were in their internal belief orthodox; nor that there were numbers of clergy who stood by the laity and acted as their centres and guides; nor that the laity actually received their faith, in the first instance, from the Bishops and clergy; nor that some portions of the laity were ignorant, and other portions were at length corrupted by the Arian teachers, who got possession of the sees, and ordained an heretical clergy: but I mean still, that in that time of immense confusion the divine dogma of our Lord's divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the "Ecclesia docta" than by the "Ecclesia docens;" that the body of the Episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at one time the pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great see, at other times general councils, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people, who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercellæ, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them ...

 "On the one hand, then, I say, that there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the 'Ecclesia docens.' The body of Bishops failed in their confession of the faith. They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, after Nicæa, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years ...

 "We come secondly to the proofs of the fidelity of the laity, and the effectiveness of that fidelity, during that domination of Imperial heresy, to which the foregoing passages have related."

 The three clauses which furnished matter of objection were these: I said, (1), that "there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the 'Ecclesia docens;'" (2), that "the body of Bishops failed in their confession of the faith." (3), that "general councils, etc., said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth."

 (1). That "there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens" is not true, if by saying so is meant that the Council of Nicæa held in 325 did not sufficiently define and promulgate for all times and all places the dogma of our Lord's divinity, and that the notoriety of that Council and the voices of its great supporters and maintainers, as Athanasius, Hilary, etc., did not bring home the dogma to the intelligence of the faithful in all parts of Christendom. But what I meant by "suspense" (I did not say "suspension," purposely,) was only this, that there was no authoritative utterance of the Church's infallible voice in matter of fact between the Nicene Council, A.D. 325, and the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, or, in the words which I actually used, "there was nothing after Nicæa of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony for nearly sixty years." As writing before the Vatican Definition of 1870, I did not lay stress upon the Roman Councils under Popes Julius and Damasus [n. 3].

 (2). That "the body of Bishops failed in their confession of the faith," p. 17. Here, if the word "body" is used in the sense of the Latin "corpus," as "corpus" is used in theological treatises, and as it doubtless would be translated for the benefit of readers ignorant of the English language, certainly this would be a heretical statement. But I meant nothing of the kind. I used it in the vague, familiar, genuine sense of which Johnson gives instances in his dictionary, as meaning "the great preponderance," or, "the mass" of Bishops, viewing them in the main or the gross, as a cumulus of individuals. Thus Hooker says, "Life and death have divided between them the whole body of mankind;" Clarendon, after speaking of the van of the king's army, says, "in the body was the king and the prince:" and Addison speaks of "navigable rivers, which ran up into the body of Italy." In this sense it is true historically that the body of Bishops failed in their confession. Tillemont, quoting from St. Gregory Nazianzen, says, "La souscription (Arienne) etait une des dispositions necessaires pour entrer et pour se conserver dans l'episcopat. L'encre était toujours toute prête, et l'accusateur aussi. Ceux qui avaient paru invincibles jusques alors, céderent à cette tempête. Si leur esprit ne tomba pas dans l'heresie, leur main néanmoins y consentit ... Peu d'Evêques s'exemterent de ce malheur, n' y ayant eu que ceux que leur propre bassesse faisait negliger, ou que leur vertu fit resister genereusement, et que Dieu conserva afin qu'il restât encore quelque semence et quelque racine pour faire refleurir Israel." T. vi. p. 499. In St. Gregory's own words, [ plen oligon agan, pantes tou kairou gegonasi; tosouton allelon dienenkontes, hoson tous men proteron, tous de husteron touto pathein ]. Orat. xxi. 24. p. 401. Ed. Bened .

 (3). That " general councils said what they should not have said, and did what obscured and compromised revealed truth." Here again the question to be determined is what is meant by the word "general." If I meant by "general" ecumenical, I should have spoken as no Catholic can speak; but ecumenical Councils there were none between 325 and 381, and so I could not be referring to any; and in matter of fact I used the word "general" in contrast to "ecumenical," as I had used it in Tract No. 90, and as Bellarmine uses the word. He makes a fourfold division of "general Councils," viz., those which are approbata; reprobata; partim confirmata, partim reprobata; and nec manifeste probata nec manifeste reprobata. Among the "reprobata" he placed the Arian Councils. They were quite large enough to be called "generalia;" the twin Councils of Seleucia and Ariminum numbering as many as 540 Bishops. When I spoke then of "general councils compromising revealed truth," I spoke of the Arian or Eusebian Councils, not of the Catholic.

 I hope this is enough to observe on this subject.

 Notes

 1. From the Rambler, July, 1859.  

 2. The translations which follow are for the most part from Bohn's and the Oxford editions, the passages being abridged.  

 3. A distinguished theologian infers from my words that I deny that "the Church is in every time the activum instrumentum docendi." But I do not admit the fairness of this inference. Distinguo: activum instrumentum docendi virtuale, C. Actuale, N. The Ecumenical Council of 325 was an effective authority in 341, 351, and 359, though at those dates the Arians were in the seats of teaching. Fr. Perrone agrees with me. 1. He reckons the "fidelium sensus" among the "instrumenta traditionis." ( Immac. Concept . p. 139.) 2. He contemplates, nay he instances, the case in which the "sensus fidelium" supplies, as the "instrumentum," the absence of the other instruments, the magisterium of the Church, as exercised at Nicæa, being always supposed. One of his instances is that of the dogma de visione Dei beatificâ. He says: "Certe quidem in Ecclesiâ non deerat quoad hunc fidei articulum divina traditio; alioquin, nunquam is definiri potuisset: verum non omnibus illa erat comperta: divina eloquia haud satis in re sunt conspicua; Patres, ut vidimus, in varias abierunt sententias; liturgiæ ipsæ non modicam præ se ferunt difficultatem. His omnibus succurrit juge Ecclesiæ magisterium; communis præterea fidelium sensus." p. 148.  

 Note 6. Chronology of the Councils  ( Vide supra, p. 271.)

 AS the direct object of the foregoing Volume was to exhibit the doctrine, temper, and conduct of the Arians in the fourth century rather than to write their history, there is much incidental confusion in the order in which the events which it includes are brought before the reader. However, in truth, the chronology of the period is by no means clear, and the author may congratulate himself that, by the scope of his work, he is exempt from the necessity of deciding questions relative to it, on which ancient testimonies and modern critics are in hopeless variance both with themselves and with each other.

 Accordingly, he has chosen one authority, the accurate Tillemont, and followed him almost throughout. Here, however, he thinks it well to subjoin some tables on the subject, taken from the Oxford Library of the Fathers, which delineate the main outline of the history, while they vividly illustrate the difficulty of determining in detail the succession of dates.

 PRINCIPAL EVENTS BETWEEN A.D. 325 AND A.D. 381,  IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

 1. From 325 to 337  (Mainly from Tillemont.) A.D. 325. (From June 19 to August 25.) COUNCIL OF NICÆA.   Arius and his partisans anathematized and banished,   Arius to Illyricum. The Eusebians subscribe to the   Homoüsion . 326. Athanasius raised to the See of Alexandria at the age   of about 30. 328-9. Eusebius of Nicomedia in favour with Constantine. 330. An Arian priest gains the ear of Constantine, who   recalls Arius from exile to Alexandria. 331. Athanasius refuses to restore him to communion.   Eustathius deposed by the Eusebians on a charge   of Sabellianism; other Bishops deposed. 334. Council of Cæsarea against Athanasius, who refuses   to attend it. 335. Council of Tyre and Jerusalem, in which Arius and   the Arians are formerly readmitted. Athanasius,   forced by the emperor to attend, abruptly leaves it   in order to appeal to Constantine. THE EUSEBIANS   DEPOSE ATHANASIUS, AND CONSTANTINE BANISHES   HIM TO TREVES. 336. Eusebians hold a Council at Constantinople to condemn   Marcellus on the ground of his Sabellianism; and to   recognize Arius. DEATH OF ARIUS. 337. DEATH OF CONSTANTINE. The Eusebian Constantius   succeeds him in the East, the orthodox Constans and   Constantine in the West.

 2. From 337 to 342 338 Exiles recalled by the three new Emperors.  (End of June.) Athanasius leaves Treves for Alexandria. ( From Valesius, Schel   strate, Pagi, Montfau   con and S. Basnage .) (From Baronius and   Petavius .) ( From Tillemont and   Papebroke .) 339 Eusebius sends to Pope   Julius for a Council. Eusebius, etc.   COUNCIL OF ALEX   ANDRIA DEFENDS   ATHANASIUS TO   THE POPE. Eusebius, etc.  COUNCIL OF ALEX   ANDRIA, etc.  (Sept.) Athanasius   goes to Rome .   [n. 1] 340 COUNCIL OF ALEX   ANDRIA DEFENDS   ATHANASIUS TO   THE POPE. Papal Legates sent to   Antioch from Rome.  (Early in year) Athana   sius goes to Rome . Papal Legates, etc.  (End of year) Athana   sius returns to Alex   andria.  341 (Christmas or before   Sept.)  COUNCIL OF THE   DEDICATION AT   ANTIOCH (Eusebian),   not in order to   anticipate the Council   at Rome.  (Lent) THE ARIAN   GREGORY IN   ALEXANDRIA.  (March-May.) ATHA   NASIUS ESCAPES TO   ROME, after the   Council of the   Dedication,   immediately before   or after the Papal   Legates set out   from Rome. COUNCIL OF   DEDICATION, etc.,   In order to anticipate   the Council at Rome.      The Papal Legates leave   Antioch.      A Roman Council . (Christmas or before   Sept.) COUNCIL.,   etc.    (Lent.) THE ARIAN   GREGORY, etc.    ATHANASIUS   ESCAPES, etc.    The Papal Legates, etc.  The Papal Legates   arrive at Rome during   the Council there.    (June till Aug. or Sept.)  COUNCIL OF ROME.  THE POPE'S LETTER   TO THE EUSEBIANS   immediately after the   Council. 342 (April or June.)  The Papal Legates arrive   at Antioch.  (Jan.) The Papal Legates   leave Antioch.      (March or April.) The   Papal Legates arrive at   Rome.    COUNCIL OF ROME.   THE POPE S LETTER   TO THE EUSEBIANS. (End of year) Athanasius   returns to Alexandria.    (Or beginning Lent.)  THE ARIAN GREGORY   IN ALEXANDRIA.    The Papal Legates arrive   at Rome.  ATHANASIUS ESCAPES   TO ROME shortly after   the Roman Council   there.    COUNCIL OF ROME.   THE POPE S LETTER   TO THE EUSEBIANS,   etc.

 3. From 342 to 351  (Mainly from Tillemont.) 345. COUNCIL OF ANTIOCH (Eusebian), at which the  Macrostich is drawn up. 347. GREAT COUNCIL OF SARDICA, at the instance  of the orthodox Constans. Council of Milan against  Photinus. Ursacius and Valens sue for reconciliation  to the Church. 349. Council of Jerusalem, at which Athanasius is present.  Athanasius returns to Alexandria. Ursacius and  Valens recant, and are reconciled at Rome. Council  at Sirmium or at Rome against Photinus. 350. DEATH OF CONSTANS. The Eusebian Constantius  sole Emperor. 351. GREAT COUNCIL OF SIRMIUM, at which Photinus  is deposed. First Sirmian creed, etc.

 4. From 351 to 361  B  a  r  o  n  i  u  s P  e  t  a  v  i  u  s V  a  l  e  s  i  u  s P  a  g  i B  a  s  n  a  g  e T  i  l  l  e  m  o  n  t N.  A  l  e  x  a  n  d  e  r C  o  u  s  t  a  n  t M  o  n  t  f  o  u  c  o  n M  a  n  s  i M  a  m  a  c  h  i Z  a  c  c  a  r  i  a  1. Great Council of Sirmium 357 351 351 351 351 351 351 351 351 357/8 351 351  2. Photinus deposed 357 351  351 351 351 351 351 351 358 351 351  3. First Sirmian Creed   (Semi-Arian) 357 351  351 351 351 351  351 358 351   4. Signed by Pope Liberius   with a condemnation of   Athanasius 357 o o o o 357/8 358 357 o 358 o 357  5. Council of Arles (Eusebian)   Athanasius condemned 353 353 353 353 353 353/4 353 353  354 353   6. Great Council of Milan   (Eusebian) Athanasius   condemned 355 (communiter) 355       7. Rise of the Eunomians 356 356    356       8. Syrianus in Alexandria, and   George in Cappadocia 356 356 356 356 356 356 355 356 356 356/7 356   9. Council of Beziers. Hilary   deposed and banished 356 355  356 356 356 356 356?  355 356  10. Fresh Council or   Conference at Sirmium o 357 357 357 357 357 357 357 357 359 357 357 11. Second Sirmian Creed, the   blasphemy of Potamius   and Hosius (HomSan, if   not AnomSan) 357 357  357 357 357 357 357 357 359 357  12. Signed by Hosius, but   without condemning   Athanasius 357 357 357 357 357 357 357 357 357 355 357 357 13. Signed by Liberius, with a   condemnation of   Athanasius o 357       357 o o o 14. Another or an altered   Creed signed by Liberius   with condemnation of   Athanasius o 357 357 o o o o o o o o o 15. Council of Antioch in   favour of Eunomius      358 358  358    16. Its Creed (AnomSan)      358 358  358    17. Council of Ancyra of 12   Bishops             18. Its Creed (Semi-Arian)   against both the   Homoüsian and the   AnomSan, signed by   Liberius 357    357 358    358  358    358 358    358 358    358 358 358    358  359    359  358    358 19. Fresh Council or   Conference at Sirmium o  359 358 358/9 358 359 359 359 359 359  20. Third Sirmian. Creed   (HomSan) drawn up by   Semi-Arians 357 358 359 358 358/9 359 359 359 359 359 359 359 21. Signed by Liberius o o 358? 358 358 o  o o  o o 22. BI-PARTITE COUNCIL OF   ARIMINUM (HomSan) and   of Seleucia (Semi-Arian) 359 (communiter)        23. Council of Constantinople   (HomSan)   360 359/  60  360 359  360 359 359  24. Council of Antioch   (AnomSan)      361 360  361 361 361  25. DEATH OF CONSTANTIUS 361  (communiter)        

 5. From 361 to 381  (From Tillemont.) 362. COUNCIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 365. Council of Lampsacus (Semi-Arian or Macedonian). 366. Macedonian Bishops reconciled to the Church at Rome. 367. Council of Tyre for the same purpose. 373. DEATH OF ATHANASIUS. 381. SECOND RCUMENICAL COUNCIL AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

 Note

 The events in italics are grounded on an hypothesis of the authors who introduce them, that Athanasius made two journeys to Rome, which they adopt in order to lighten the difficulties of the chronology.  

 Note 7. Omissions in the Text of the Third Edition  ( Vide Advertisement .)

 Here follow the two sentences, which, as was stated in the Advertisement to this Edition, have forfeited their place in the text:

 1. Supra. p. 11 (p. 12, 1st Ed.), after "external observers," the text proceeded. "Presenting then the characters of a religion, sufficiently correct in the main articles of faith to satisfy the reason, and yet indulgent to the carnal nature of man, Judaism occupied that place in the Christian world, which has since been filled by a corruption of Christianity itself. While its adherents manifested a rancorous malevolence," etc.

 2. Supra, p. 393 (p. 421, 1st Ed.), after "his place could nowhere be found," the text proceeded. "Even the Papal Apostasy, which seems at first sight an exception to this rule, has lasted but the same proportion of the whole duration of Christianity, which Arianism occupied in its day; that is, if we date it, as in fairness we ought, from the fatal Council of Trent. And, as to the present perils," etc.