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Epochs of Church History
EDITED BY THE
RIGHT HON. AND RIGHT REV. MANDELL CREIGHTON, D.D.
LATE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON
THE
ARIAN CONTROVERSY.
BY
H.M. GWATKIN, M.A.
DIXIE PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
_SIXTH IMPRESSION_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1908
All rights reserved
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LIST OF WORKS ix
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF ARIANISM 1
CHAPTER II.
THE COUNCIL OF NICÆA 16
CHAPTER III.
THE EUSEBIAN REACTION 41
CHAPTER IV.
THE COUNCIL OF SARDICA 61
CHAPTER V.
THE VICTORY OF ARIANISM 80
CHAPTER VI.
THE REIGN OF JULIAN 105
CHAPTER VII.
THE RESTORED HOMOEAN SUPREMACY 118
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FALL OF ARIANISM 147
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 169
INDEX 173
LIST OF WORKS.
The following works will be found useful by students who are willing to
pursue the subject further. Some of special interest or importance are
marked with an asterisk.
(A.) ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES AND TRANSLATIONS.
The Church Histories of *Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and (for the
Arian side) the fragments of Philostorgius [translations in Bohn's
_Ecclesiastical Library_].
*Eusebius, _Vita Constantini_ and _Contra Marcellum Ancyranum_.
*Athanasius, especially _De Incarnatione Verbi Dei_, _De Decretis Synodi
Nicænæ_, _Orationes contra Arianos_, _De Synodis_, _Ad Antiochenos_, _Ad
Afros_. Convenient editions of most of these by Professor Bright of
Oxford. [Translations of *_De Incarnatione_ (Bindley in _Christian
Classics_ Series) and of the _Orationes_ and most of the historical
works, Newman in Oxford _Library of the Fathers_.]
Hilary, especially _De Synodis_. Cyril's _Catecheses_ [translation in
_Oxford Library of the Fathers_]. Basil, especially _Letters_. Gregory
of Nazianzus, especially _Orationes_ iv. and v. (against Julian). Of
minor writers, Phoebadius and Sulpicius Severus (for Council of
Ariminum). Fragments of Marcellus, collected by Rettberg (Göttingen,
1794). [German translations of most of these in Thalhofer's _Bibliothek
der Kirchenväter_. English may be hoped for in Schaff's _Select Library
of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_ (vol. i. Buffalo, 1886) in 25
vols.]
Heathen writers:--Zosimus (bitterly prejudiced); Ammianus Marcellinus
for 353-378 (cool and impartial); Julian, especially _Cæsares_,
_Fragmentum Epistolæ_, and _Epp._ 7, 25, 26, 42, 43, 49, 52.
(B.) MODERN WRITERS.
1. For general reference:--
Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ (prejudiced against the Christian Empire,
but narrative still unrivalled); Schiller _Geschichte der römischen
Kaiserzeit_, Bd. ii. (church matters a weak point); Ranke,
_Weltgeschichte_, Bd. iii. iv.
General Church Histories of Neander [translation in Bohn's _Standard
Library_]; Kurtz (zehnte Aufl., 1887); Fisher (New York, 1887); also
Hefele, _History of the Church Councils_ [translation published by T. &
T. Clark].
Articles in _Dictionary of Christian Biography_ (especially those by
Lightfoot, Reynolds, and Wordsworth), and in Herzog's _Realencyclopädie_
(especially _Mönchtum_ by Weingarten).
Weingarten's _Zeittafeln z. Kirchengeschichte_ (3 Aufl. 1888).
(2.) For special use:--
The whole period is more or less covered by Kaye, _Some Account of the
Nicene Council_, 1853; *Stanley, _Eastern Church_ (best account of the
outside of the council); Broglie, _L'Église et l'Empire romain_;
Gwatkin, _Studies of Arianism_, 1882.
On Constantine, Burckhardt, _Die Zeit Constantins_, 1853; Keim, _Der
Uebertritt Constantins_, 1862; Brieger, _Constantin der Grosse als
Religionspolitiker_, 1880.
On Julian, English account by *Rendall, 1879; German lives by Neander,
1813 [translated 1850]; Mücke, 1867-69, and Rode, 1877. The French books
are mostly bad. For the decline of heathenism generally, Merivale,
_Boyle Lectures_ for 1864-65; Chastel, _Destruction du Paganisme_, 1850;
Lasaulx, _Untergang des Hellenismus_, 1854; Schultze, _Geschichte des
Untergangs des griechisch-römischen Heidentums_, 1887; also Capes,
_University Life in Ancient Athens_, 1877; Sievers, _Leben des
Libanius_, 1868.
Biographies:--Fialon, _Saint Athanase_, 1877 (slight, but suggestive);
Zahn, _Marcellus von Ancyra_, 1867; Reinkens, _Hilarius von Poitiers_,
1864; Fialon, _Saint Basile_, 1868; Ullmann, _Gregorius von Nazianz_, 2
Aufl. 1867 [translated 1851]; Krüger, _Lucifer von Calaris_, 1886;
Eichhorn, _Athanasii de vita ascetica Testimonia_, 1886 (in opposition
to Weingarten and others); Guldenpenning u. Island, _Theodosius der
Grosse_, 1878; various of unequal merit in _The Fathers for English
Readers_.
On Teutonic Arianism:--Scott, _Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths_, 1885;
Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, 1880-85; Revillout, _De l'Arianisme
des Peuples germaniques_, 1850.
For doctrine, the general histories in German of Baur, Nitzsch, 1870;
Hagenbach [translated in Clark's _Foreign Theological Library_], and
*Harnack, Bd. ii., 1887; Dorner's _Doctrine of the Person of Christ_
[translated in Clark's _Foreign Theological Library_]; *Hort, _Two
Dissertations_, 1876 (on Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds); Caspari,
_Quellen_, Bd. iii. (on Apostles' Creed).
On Athanasius, also Voigt, _Die Lehre von Athanasius_, 1861; Atzberger,
_Die Logoslehre des hl. Athanasius_, 1880; Wilde, _Athanasius als
Bestrijder der Arianen_, 1868 (Dutch).
For the Roman Catholic version of the history, Möhler, _Athanasius der
Grosse_, 1844; Newman, _Arians of the Fourth Century_.
For short sketches giving the relation of Arianism to Church history in
general, *Allen, _Continuity of Christian Thought_, 1884 (contrast of
Greek and Latin Churches); *Sohm, _Kirchengeschichte im Abriss_, 1888.
NOTE.
The present work is largely, though not entirely, an abridgement of my
_Studies of Arianism_.
The Conversion of the Goths, which gives the best side of Arianism, has
been omitted as belonging more properly to another volume of the series.
THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
_THE BEGINNINGS OF ARIANISM_.
Arianism is extinct only in the sense that it has long ceased to furnish
party names. It sprang from permanent tendencies of human nature, and
raised questions whose interest can never perish. As long as the
Agnostic and the Evolutionist are with us, the old battlefields of
Athanasius will not be left to silence. Moreover, no writer more
directly joins the new world of Teutonic Christianity with the old of
Greek and Roman heathenism. Arianism began its career partly as a theory
of Christianity, partly as an Eastern reaction of philosophy against a
gospel of the Son of God. Through sixty years of ups and downs and
stormy controversy it fought, and not without success, for the dominion
of the world. When it was at last rejected by the Empire, it fell back
upon its converts among the Northern nations, and renewed the contest as
a Western reaction of Teutonic pride against a Roman gospel. The
struggle went on for full three hundred years in all, and on a scale of
vastness never seen again in history. Even the Reformation was limited
to the West, whereas Arianism ranged at one time or another through the
whole of Christendom. Nor was the battle merely for the wording of
antiquated creeds or for the outworks of the faith, but for the very
life of revelation. If the Reformation decided the supremacy of
revelation over church authority, it was the contest with Arianism which
cleared the way, by settling for ages the deeper and still more
momentous question, which is once more coming to the surface as the
gravest doubt of our time, whether a revelation is possible at all.
[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Lord's person.]
Unlike the founders of religions, Jesus of Nazareth made his own person
the centre of his message. Through every act and utterance recorded of
him there runs a clear undoubting self-assertion, utterly unknown to
Moses or Mahomet. He never spoke but with authority. His first disciples
told how he began his ministry by altering the word which was said to
them of old time, and ended it by calmly claiming to be the future Judge
of all men. And they told the story of their own life also; how they had
seen his glory while he dwelt among them, and how their risen Lord had
sent them forth to be his witnesses to all the nations. Whatever might
be doubtful, their personal knowledge of the Lord was sure and certain,
and of necessity became the base and starting-point of their teaching.
In Christ all things were new. From him they learned the meaning of
their ancient scriptures; through him they knew their heavenly Father;
in him they saw their Saviour from this present world, and to him they
looked for the crown of life in that to come. His word was law, his love
was life, and in his name the world was overcome already. What mattered
it to analyse the power of life they felt within them? It was enough to
live and to rejoice; and their works are one long hymn of triumphant
hope and overflowing thankfulness.
[Sidenote: In contact (1) with the vulgar.]
It was easier for the first disciples to declare what their own eyes had
seen and their own hands had handled of the Word of Life, than for
another generation to take up a record which to themselves was only
history, and to pass from the traditional assertion of the Lord's
divinity to its deliberate enunciation in clear consciousness of the
difficulties which gathered round it when the gospel came under the keen
scrutiny of thoughtful heathens. Whatever vice might be in heathenism,
there was no want of interest in religion. If the doubts of some were
real, the scoffs of many were only surface-deep. If the old legends of
Olympus were outworn, philosophy was still a living faith, and every
sort of superstition flourished luxuriantly. Old worships were revived,
the ends of the earth were searched for new ones. Isis or Mithras might
help where Jupiter was powerless, and uncouth lustrations of the blood
of bulls and goats might peradventure cast a spell upon eternity. The
age was too sad to be an irreligious one. Thus from whatever quarter a
convert might approach the gospel, he brought earlier ideas to bear upon
its central question of the person of the Lord. Who then was this man
who was dead, whom all the churches affirmed to be alive and worshipped
as the Son of God? If he was divine, there must be two Gods; if not, his
worship was no better than the vulgar worships of the dead. In either
case, there seemed to be no escape from the charge of polytheism.
[Sidenote: (2) with the philosophers.]
The key of the difficulty is on its other side, in the doctrine of the
unity of God, which was not only taught by Jews and Christians, but
generally admitted by serious heathens. The philosophers spoke of a dim
Supreme far off from men, and even the polytheists were not unwilling to
subordinate their motley crew of gods to some mysterious divinity beyond
them all. So far there was a general agreement. But underneath this
seeming harmony there was a deep divergence. Resting on a firm basis of
historic revelation, Christianity could bear record of a God who loved
the world and of a Redeemer who had come in human flesh. As this coming
is enough to show that God is something more than abstract perfection
and infinity, there is nothing incredible in a real incarnation, or in a
real trinity inside the unity of God. But the heathen had no historic
revelation of a living hope to sustain him in that age of failure and
exhaustion. Nature was just as mighty, just as ruthless then as now, and
the gospel was not yet the spring of hope it is in modern life. In our
time the very enemies of the cross are living in its light, and drawing
at their pleasure from the well of Christian hope. It was not yet so in
that age. Brave men like Marcus Aurelius could only do their duty with
hopeless courage, and worship as they might a God who seemed to refuse
all answer to the great and bitter cry of mankind. If he cares for men,
why does he let them perish? The less he has to do with us, the better
we can understand our evil plight. Thus their Supreme was far beyond the
weakness of human sympathy. They made him less a person than a thing or
an idea, enveloped in clouds of mysticism and abolished from the world
by his very exaltation over it. He must not touch it lest it perish. The
Redeemer whom the Christians worship may be a hero or a prophet, an
angel or a demi-god--anything except a Son of God in human form. We
shall have to find some explanation for the scandal of the incarnation.
[Sidenote: Arius himself.]
Arianism is Christianity shaped by thoughts like these. Its author was
no mere bustling schemer, but a grave and blameless presbyter of
Alexandria. Arius was a disciple of the greatest critic of his time, the
venerated martyr Lucian of Antioch. He had a name for learning, and his
letters bear witness to his dialectical skill and mastery of subtle
irony. At the outbreak of the controversy, about the year 318, we find
him in charge of the church of Baucalis at Alexandria, and in high
favour with his bishop, Alexander. It was no love of heathenism, but a
real difficulty of the gospel which led him to form a new theory. His
aim was not to lower the person of the Lord or to refuse him worship,
but to defend that worship from the charge of polytheism. Starting from
the Lord's humanity, he was ready to add to it everything short of the
fullest deity. He could not get over the philosophical difficulty that
one who is man cannot be also God, and therefore a second God. Let us
see how high a creature can be raised without making hint essentially
divine.
[Sidenote: His doctrine; Its merits.]
The Arian Christ is indeed a lofty creature. He claims our worship as
the image of the Father, begotten before all worlds, as the Son of God,
by whom all things were made, who for us men took flesh and suffered and
rose again, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and remains
both King and God for ever. Is not this a good confession? What more can
we want? Why should all this glorious language go for nothing? God
forbid that it should go for nothing. Arianism was at least so far
Christian that it held aloft the Lord's example as the Son of Man, and
never wavered in its worship of him as the Son of God. Whatever be the
errors of its creed, whatever the scandals of its history, it was a
power of life among the Northern nations. Let us give Arianism full
honour for its noble work of missions in that age of deep despair which
saw the dissolution of the ancient world.
[Sidenote: Its real meaning.]
Nevertheless, this plausible Arian confession will not bear examination.
It is only the philosophy of the day put into a Christian dress. It
starts from the accepted belief that the unity of God excludes not only
distinctions inside the divine nature, but also contact with the world.
Thus the God of Arius is an unknown God, whose being is hidden in
eternal mystery. No creature can reveal him, and he cannot reveal
himself. But if he is not to touch the world, he needs a minister of
creation. The Lord is rather such a minister than the conqueror of death
and sin. No doubt he is the Son of God, and begotten before all worlds.
Scripture is quite clear so far; but if he is distinct from the Father,
he is not God; and if he is a Son, he is not co-eternal with the Father.
And what is not God is creature, and what is not eternal is also
creature. On both grounds, then, the Lord is only a creature; so that if
he is called God, it is in a lower and improper sense; and if we speak
of him as eternal, we mean no more than the eternity of all things in
God's counsel. Far from sharing the essence of the Father, he does not
even understand his own. Nay, more; he is not even a creature of the
highest type. If he is not a sinner, (Scripture forbids at least _that_
theory, though some Arians came very near it), his virtue is, like our
own, a constant struggle of free-will, not the fixed habit which is the
perfection and annulment of free-will. And now that his human soul is
useless, we may as well simplify the incarnation into an assumption of
human flesh and nothing more. The Holy Spirit bears to the Son a
relation not unlike that of the Son to the Father. Thus the Arian
trinity of divine persons forms a descending series, separated by
infinite degrees of honour and glory, resembling the philosophical triad
of orders of spiritual existence, extending outwards in concentric
circles.
[Sidenote: Criticism of it.]
Indeed the system is heathen to the core. The Arian Christ is nothing
but a heathen idol invented to maintain a heathenish Supreme in heathen
isolation from the world. Never was a more illogical theory devised by
the wit of man. Arius proclaims a God of mystery, unfathomable to the
Son of God himself, and goes on to argue as if the divine generation
were no more mysterious than its human type. He forgets first that
metaphor would cease to be metaphor if there were nothing beyond it;
then that it would cease to be true if its main idea were misleading. He
presses the metaphor of sonship as if mere human relations could exhaust
the meaning of the divine; and soon works round to the conclusion that
it is no proper sonship at all. In his irreverent hands the Lord's deity
is but the common right of mankind, his eternity no more than the beasts
themselves may claim. His clumsy logic overturns every doctrine he is
endeavouring to establish. He upholds the Lord's divinity by making the
Son of God a creature, and then worships him to escape the reproach of
heathenism, although such worship, on his own showing, is mere idolatry.
He makes the Lord's manhood his primary fact, and overthrows that too by
refusing the Son of Man a human soul. The Lord is neither truly God nor
truly man, and therefore is no true mediator. Heathenism may dream of a
true communion with the Supreme, but for us there neither is nor ever
can be any. Between our Father and ourselves there is a great gulf
fixed, which neither he nor we can pass. Now that we have heard the
message of the Lord, we know the final certainty that God is darkness,
and in him is no light at all. If this be the sum of the whole matter,
then revelation is a mockery, and Christ is dead in vain.
[Sidenote: Athanasius _de Incarnatione_.]
Arius was but one of many who were measuring the heights of heaven with
their puny logic, and sounding the deeps of Wisdom with the plummet of
the schools. Men who agreed in nothing else agreed in this practical
subordination of revelation to philosophy. Sabellius, for example, had
reduced the Trinity to three successive manifestations of the one God in
the Law, the Gospel, and the Church; yet even he agreed with Arius in a
philosophical doctrine of the unity of God which was inconsistent with a
real incarnation. Even the noble work of Origen had helped to strengthen
the philosophical influences which were threatening to overwhelm the
definite historic revelation. Tertullian had long since warned the
churches of the danger; but a greater than Tertullian was needed now to
free them from their bondage to philosophy. Are we to worship the Father
of our spirits or the Supreme of the philosophers? Arius put the
question: the answer came from Athanasius. Though his _De Incarnatione
Verbi Dei_ was written in early manhood, before the rise of Arianism, we
can already see in it the firm grasp of fundamental principles which
enabled him so thoroughly to master the controversy when it came before
him. He starts from the beginning, with the doctrine that God is good
and not envious, and that His goodness is shown in the creation, and
more especially by the creation of man in the image of God, whereby he
was to remain in bliss and live the true life, the life of the saints in
Paradise. But when man sinned, he not only died, but fell into the
entire corruption summed up in death; for this is the full meaning of
the threat 'ye shall die with death.'[1] So things went on from bad to
worse on earth. The image of God was disappearing, and the whole
creation going to destruction. What then was God to do? He could not
take back his sentence that death should follow sin, and yet he could
not allow the creatures of his love to perish. Mere repentance on man's
side could not touch the law of sin; a word from God forbidding the
approach of death would not reach the inner corruption. Angels could not
help, for it was not in the image of angels that man was made. Only he
who is himself the Life could conquer death. Therefore the immortal Word
took human flesh and gave his mortal body for us all. It was no
necessity of his nature so to do, but a pure outcome of his love to men
and of the Father's loving purpose of salvation. By receiving in himself
the principle of death he overcame it, not in his own person only, but
in all of us who are united with him. If we do not yet see death
abolished, it is now no more than the passage to our joyful
resurrection. Our mortal human nature is joined with life in him, and
clothed in the asbestos robe of immortality. Thus, and only thus, in
virtue of union with him, can man become a sharer of his victory. There
is no limit to the sovereignty of Christ in heaven and earth and hell.
Wherever the creation has gone before, the issues of the incarnation
must follow after. See, too, what he has done among us, and judge if his
works are not the works of sovereign power and goodness. The old fear of
death is gone. Our children tread it underfoot, our women mock at it.
Even the barbarians have laid aside their warfare and their murders, and
live at his bidding a new life of peace and purity. Heathenism is
fallen, the wisdom of the world is turned to folly, the oracles are
dumb, the demons are confounded. The gods of all the nations are giving
place to the one true God of mankind. The works of Christ are more in
number than the sea, his victories are countless as the waves, his
presence is brighter than the sunlight. 'He was made man that we might
be made God.'[2]
[Footnote 1: Gen. ii. 17, LXX.]
[Footnote 2: Ath. _De Inc._ 44: [Greek: autos gar enênthrôpêsen hina
hêmeis theopoiêthômen]. Bold as this phrase is, it is not too bold a
paraphrase of Heb. ii. 5-18.]
[Sidenote: Its significance.]
The great persecution had been raging but a few years back, and the
changes which had passed since then were enough to stir the enthusiasm
of the dullest Christian. These splendid paragraphs are the song of
victory over the defeat of the Pharaohs of heathenism and the
deliverance of the churches from the house of bondage. 'Sing ye to the
Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.' There is something in them
higher than the fierce exultation of Lactantius over the sufferings of
the dying persecutors, though that too is impressive. 'The Lord hath
heard our prayers. The men who strove with God lie low; the men who
overthrew his churches have themselves fallen with a mightier overthrow;
the men who tortured the righteous have surrendered their guilty spirits
under the blows of Heaven and in tortures well deserved though long
delayed--yet delayed only that posterity might learn the full terrors of
God's vengeance on his enemies.' There is none of this fierce joy in
Athanasius, though he too had seen the horrors of the persecution, and
some of his early teachers had perished in it. His eyes are fixed on the
world-wide victory of the Eternal Word, and he never lowers them to
resent the evil wrought by men of yesterday. Therefore neither lapse of
time nor multiplicity of trials could ever quench in Athanasius the pure
spirit of hope which glows in his youthful work. Slight as our sketch of
it has been, it will be enough to show his combination of religious
intensity with a speculative insight and a breadth of view reminding us
of Origen. If he fails to reach the mystery of sinlessness in man, and
is therefore not quite free from a Sabellianising view of the Lord's
humanity as a mere vesture of his divinity, he at least rises far above
the barren logic of the Arians. We shall presently have to compare him
with the next great Eastern thinker, Apollinarius of Laodicea.
[Sidenote: Attraction of Arianism: (1.) For superficial thinkers.]
Yet there were many men whom Arianism suited by its shallowness. As soon
as Christianity was established as a lawful worship by the edict of
Milan in 312, the churches were crowded with converts and inquirers of
all sorts. A church which claims to be universal cannot pick and choose
like a petty sect, but must receive all comers. Now these were mostly
heathens with the thinnest possible varnish of Christianity, and
Arianism enabled them to use the language of Christians without giving
up their heathen ways of thinking. In other words, the world was ready
to accept the gospel as a sublime monotheism, and the Lord's divinity
was the one great stumbling-block which seemed to hinder its conversion.
Arianism was therefore a welcome explanation of the difficulty. Nor was
the attraction only for nominal Christians like these. Careless
thinkers--sometimes thinkers who were not careless--might easily suppose
that Arianism had the best of such passages as 'The Lord created me,'[3]
or 'The Father is greater than I.'[4] Athanasius constantly complains of
the Arian habit of relying on isolated passages like these without
regard to their context or to the general scope and drift of Scripture.
[Footnote 3: Prov. viii. 22, LXX mistranslation.]
[Footnote 4: John xiv. 28.]
[Sidenote: (2.) To thoughtful men.]
Nor was even this all. The Lord's divinity was a real difficulty to
thoughtful men. They were still endeavouring to reconcile the
philosophical idea of God with the fact of the incarnation. In point of
fact, the two things are incompatible, and one or the other would have
to be abandoned. The absolute simplicity of the divine nature is
consistent with a merely external Trinity, or with a merely economic
Trinity, with an Arian Trinity of one increate and two created beings,
or with a Sabellian Trinity of three temporal aspects of the one God
revealed in history; but not with a Christian Trinity of three eternal
aspects of the divine nature, facing inward on each other as well as
outward on the world. But this was not yet fully understood. The problem
was to explain the Lord's distinction from the Father without destroying
the unity of God. Sabellianism did it at the cost of his premundane and
real personality, and therefore by common consent was out of the
question. The Easterns were more inclined to theories of subordination,
to distinctions of the derivatively from the absolutely divine, and to
views of Christ as a sort of secondary God. Such theories do not really
meet the difficulty. A secondary God is necessarily a second God. Thus
heathenism still held the key of the position, and constantly threatened
to convict them of polytheism. They could not sit still, yet they could
not advance without remodelling their central doctrine of the divine
nature to agree with revelation. Nothing could be done till the Trinity
was placed inside the divine _nature_. But this is just what they could
not for a long time see. These men were not Arians, for they recoiled in
genuine horror from the polytheistic tendencies of Arianism; but they
had no logical defence against Arianism, and were willing to see if some
modification of it would not give them a foothold of some kind. To men
who dreaded the return of Sabellian confusion, Arianism was at least an
error in the right direction. It upheld the same truth as they--the
separate personality of the Son of God--and if it went further than they
could follow, it might still do service against the common enemy.
[Sidenote: Arianism at Alexandria.]
Thus the new theory made a great sensation at Alexandria, and it was not
without much hesitation and delay that Alexander ventured to
excommunicate his heterodox presbyter with his chief followers, like
Pistus, Carpones, and the deacon Euzoius--all of whom we shall meet
again. Arius was a dangerous enemy. His austere life and novel
doctrines, his dignified character and championship of 'common sense in
religion,' made him the idol of the ladies and the common people. He had
plenty of telling arguments for them. 'Did the Son of God exist before
his generation?' Or to the women, 'Were you a mother before you had a
child?' He knew also how to cultivate his popularity by pastoral
visiting--his enemies called it canvassing--and by issuing a multitude
of theological songs 'for sailors and millers and wayfarers,' as one of
his admirers says. So he set the bishop at defiance, and more than held
his ground against him. The excitement spread to every village in Egypt,
and Christian divisions became a pleasant subject for the laughter of
the heathen theatres.
[Sidenote: And elsewhere.]
The next step was to secure outside support. Arius betook himself to
Cæsarea in Palestine, and thence appealed to the Eastern churches
generally. Nor did he look for help in vain. His doctrine fell in with
the prevailing dread of Sabellianism, his personal misfortunes excited
interest, his dignified bearing commanded respect, and his connection
with the school of Lucian secured him learned and influential sympathy.
Great Syrian bishops like those of Cæsarea, Tyre, and Laodicea gave him
more or less encouragement; and when the old Lucianist Eusebius of
Nicomedia held a council in Bithynia to demand his recall, it became
clear that the controversy was more than a local dispute. Arius even
boasted that the Eastern bishops agreed with him, 'except a few
heretical and ill-taught men,' like those of Antioch and Jerusalem.
[Sidenote: Constantine's interference.]
The Eastern Emperor, Licinius, let the dispute take its course. He was a
rude old heathen soldier, and could only let it alone. If Eusebius of
Nicomedia tried to use his influence in favour of Arius, he had small
success. But when the battle of Chrysopolis (323) laid the Empire at the
feet of Constantine, it seemed time to get the question somehow settled.