of Bithynia, and there formulated the Nicene creed, which branded as heretics the presbyter Arius and his supporters for asserting that the Word, the Son, the man Jesus, had not eternally existed as of one substance with the Father, but had been created out of nothing at some date of an inconceivably remote past. Under the emperors who succeeded Constantine, however, the Arians returned to power in the East, and for long oppressed their opponents, the Catholics, until they were finally reduced to impotence by the orthodox Theodosius I.[1] But centuries were yet to elapse before the Church could desist from weaving those subtleties of dogma as to the inexpressible nature of the Godhead, in the study of which later theologians discover an exercise for their memory rather than for their understanding.[2] Numerous other councils were*
- ↑ See the original church historians. Theodoret's account is the most
definite and satisfactory; i, 2, et seq. Recently Arianism has been treated
by Gwatkin in a separate work. Harnack's exposition of it is, as usual,
most lucid and interesting; Hist. Dogma, iv. This is the great controversy
in which the celebrated words Homoousios and Homoiousios were
combined to distinguish the contending theories:
D'une syllabe impie un saint mot augmenté
Remplit tous les esprits d'aigreurs si meurtrières,
Et fit de sang chrétien couler tant de rivières, etc.
Boileau, Sat. xii.Homoean and Anomoean denote Arian sub-sects who differed more or less from orthodoxy. In fact, the Arian heresy has never really died out, and is now represented by Unitarianism.
- ↑ "Tradendi ratio sicca est, memoriaeque potius, quam intelligentiae accommodata"; Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., IX, ii, 3. The first great theological debates concerned the mutual relations of the persons of the Trinity in their celestial abode; and were decided against those who confounded the persons (Sabellians, Monarchians) or divided the substance (Arians). Such momentous matters being settled as finally registered in the so-called Athanasian Creed, the Fathers descended to earth and busied themselves in analyzing the mystic conjunction of the
