by St. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, on account of many grievous crimes, one of which even was idolatry[1]; and he then raised a great schism in Egypt against St. Peter, and went so far as to administer the ordination belonging by right to the Saint. Arius judged that he would have no great change of advancing himself according to his wishes, by continuing a partisan of Meletius, so he made his submission to St. Peter, and was ordained deacon by him; but he, finding that he still continued to correspond with Meletius, turned him out of Alexandria. St. Peter was soon after put in prison for the faith, and about to be martyred. Arius endeavoured again to be received by him; and it was then, as Baronius[2] tells us, on the authority of the Acts of the martyrdom of St. Peter, that Christ appeared to the Saint with a torn garment, and said to him: "Arius has torn this; take heed lest you receive him into your communion." Alexander has strong doubts of the truth of this vision[3]: but his arguments are not convincing, and it has been admitted into the Roman Breviary on the 26th of November, the feast of St. Peter. Arius, for all that, was promoted to the priesthood by Achilla, who succeeded St. Peter, martyred in 311, and got the charge of a parochial church called Baucal[4], in Alexandria. On the death of Achilla, Arius, who was now, as Fleury tells us, advanced in years, expected to succeed him; but St. Alexander was chosen, a man of great knowledge and most exemplary life. Arius began immediately to censure his conduct and condemn his doctrine, saying that he falsely taught that the Word, the Son of God, was equal to the Father, begotten by him from all eternity, and of the same nature and substance as the Father, which, he said, was the heresy was Sabellius. He then began to promulgate the following blasphemies:—1. That the Word was not from all eternity, but was brought forth out of nothing by the Father, and created, the same as one of ourselves; and, 2ndly, that Christ, according to his free will, was of a mutable nature, and that he might have followed vice, but that, as he embraced goodness, God, as a reward for his good works, made him a participator in the divine nature, and honoured him with the title of the Word, the Son, and of Wisdom[5]. Noel Alexander says that these errors are taken from an impious work he wrote, called Thalia, and from an epistle of his to St. Alexander, referred to by St. Athanasius, and from the Synodical Epistle of the Council of Nice, quoted by Socrates, St. Epiphanius, and Theodoret. Noel Alexander also says, on the authority of St. Athanasius and Theodoret, that he taught that the Word in the Incarnation took a body without a soul, and that the soul was part of the divinity.
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THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
