Page:History of Heresies (Liguori).djvu/87

This page has been validated.
AND THEIR REFUTATION.
79

as to whether the name of Felix II. should be expunged or not from the Martyrology, in which he was enumerated among the saints, and he was himself, he confesses, of the opinion that it should be done, on account of his illegal intrusion into the Popedom; but soon after he says, a marble sarcophagus was casually discovered buried in the earth, with some relics of saints on one side, and the body of St. Felix on the other, with this inscription, "The body of St. Felix, Pope and Martyr, who condemned Constantius;" and this discovery was made on the 19th of July, 1582, the day preceding the festival of St. Felix, and, on that account, his name was left undisturbed in the Martyrology. Baronius is opposed by N. Alexander, who denies that Felix II. ever was a true Pope; but Roncaglia, in his notes, and both the Pagi, contend for the contrary, and the Pagi prove, in opposition to Noel Alexander, that the Pope Felix commemorated in the Martyrology must necessarily be Felix II., not Felix I.[1].

44. We now come back once more to the Arians. When Osius and Liberius fell, they were already split up into a great many sects: some who followed the party of Acasius, Eudoxius, Eunomius, and Aesius, were called Anomeans—those were pure Arians, and they not alone rejected consubstantiality, but even the likeness of the Son to the Father; but the followers of Ursacius and Valens, though called Arians, did not follow the opinions of Arius in everything. Finally, those who followed the opinions of Basil of Ancyra, and Eustatius of Sebaste, were called Semi-Arians; these condemned the blasphemies of Arius, but did not admit the consubstantiality of the divine persons[2].

45. We have now to relate the events of the Council of Rimini, of sorrowful celebrity, in which, as St. Jerome says, the Nicene faith was condemned, and the whole world groaned, finding itself Arian. When the whole Church was in confusion about the articles of the faith, it was considered that the best way of arranging everything quietly, would be to hold two councils, one in Rimini in Italy, the other at Seleucia in the East. The Council of Rimini was held in 359, and was attended by more than four hundred bishops from Illyria, Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, and among those there were eighty Arians, but the rest were Catholic. When they came to treat of matters of faith, Ursacius, Valens, and other heads of the Arian party produced a writing, and proposed that all should be satisfiea with signing that, in wnich was laid down the last formula of Sirmium of the same year, in which, it is true, the word substance was rejected, but it was allowed that the Son was like unto the Father in all things. But the Catholic bishops unanimously

  1. Nat. Alex., Diss. 32; Sozymen, loc. cit.; Theolog. l. 2, c. 2; Baron An. 359; Orsi, t. 6, l. 14; Baron. An. 357, & seq.; Sozymen, Bened. XIV., de Canon. S.S. t. 4.
  2. N. Alex. t. 9; Hermant. t. 1, c. 102.