Arianism had in fact a close connexion with the existing Aristotelic school. This might have been conjectured, even had there been no proof of the fact, adapted as that philosopher’s logical system confessedly is to baffle an adversary, or at most to detect error, rather than to establish truth ⁹. But we have actually reason, in the circumstances of its history, for considering it as the off-shoot of those schools of inquiry and debate which acknowledged Aristotle as their principal authority, and were conducted by teachers who went by the name of Sophists. It was in these schools that the leaders of the heretical body were educated for the part assigned them in the troubles of the Church. The oratory of Paulus of Samosata is characterized by the distinguishing traits of the scholastic eloquence in the descriptive letter of the Council which condemned him; in which, moreover, he is stigmatized by the most disgraceful title to which a Sophist was exposed by the degraded exercise of his profession ¹⁰. The skill of Arius in the art of disputation is well known. Asterius was a Sophist by profession. Aetius came from the School of an Aristotelian of Alexandria. Eunomius, his pupil, who re-constructed the Arian doctrine on its original basis, at the end of the reign of Constantius, is represented by Ruffinus as “pre-eminent in dialectic power.” ¹¹ At a later period still, the like disputatious spirit and spurious originality are indirectly ascribed to the heterodox school, in the advice of Sisinnius to Nectarius of Constantinople, when the Emperor Theodosius required the latter to renew the controversy with a view to its final settlement ¹². Well versed in theological learning, and aware that adroitness in debate was the very life and weapon of heresy, Sisinnius proposed to the Patriarch, to drop the use of dialectics, and merely challenge his opponents to utter a general anathema against all such Ante-Nicene Fathers as had taught what they themselves now denounced as false doctrine. On the experiment being tried, the heretics would neither consent to be tried by the opinions of the ancients, nor yet dared condemn those whom “all the people counted as prophets.” “Upon this,” say the historians who record the story, “the Emperor perceived that they rested their cause on their dialectic skill, and not on the testimony of the early Church.” ¹³

Abundant evidence, were more required, could be added to the above, in proof of the connexion of the Arians with the schools of heathen disputation. The two Gregories, Basil, Ambrose, and Cyril, protest with one voice against the dialectics of their opponents; and the sum of their declarations is briefly expressed by a writer of the fourth century, who calls Aristotle the Bishop of the Arians ¹⁴.

2.

And while the science of argumentation provided the means, their practice of disputing for the sake of exercise or amusement supplied the temptation, of assailing received opinions. This practice, which had long prevailed in the Schools, was early introduced into the Eastern Church ¹⁵. It was there employed as a means of preparing the Christian teacher for the controversy with unbelievers. The discussion sometimes proceeded in the form of a lecture delivered by the master of the school to his pupils; sometimes in that of an inquiry, to be submitted to the criticism of his hearers; sometimes by way of dialogue, in which opposite sides were taken for argument-sake. In some cases, it was taken down in notes by the bystanders, at the time; in others committed to writing by the parties engaged in it ¹⁶. Necessary as these exercises would be for the purpose designed, yet they were obviously open to abuse, though moderated by ever so orthodox and strictly scriptural a rule, in an age when no sufficient ecclesiastical symbol existed, as a guide to the memory and judgment of the eager disputant. It is evident, too, how difficult it would be to secure opinions or arguments from publicity, which were but hazarded in the confidence of Christian friendship, and which, when viewed apart from the circumstances of the case, lent a seemingly deliberate sanction to heterodox novelties. Athanasius implies ¹⁷, that in the theological works of Origen and Theognostus, while the orthodox faith was explicitly maintained, nevertheless heretical tenets were discussed, and in their place more or less defended, by way of exercise in argument. The countenance thus accidentally given to the cause of error is evidenced in his eagerness to give the explanation. But far greater was the evil, when men destitute of religious seriousness and earnestness engaged in the like theological discussions, not with any definite ecclesiastical object, but as a mere trial of skill, or as a literary recreation; regardless of the mischief thus done to the simplicity of Christian morals, and the evil encouragement given to fallacious reasonings and sceptical views. The error of the ancient Sophists had consisted in their indulging without restraint or discrimination in the discussion of practical topics, whether religious or political, instead of selecting such as might exercise, without demoralizing, their minds. The rhetoricians of Christian times introduced the same error into their treatment of the highest and most sacred subjects of theology. We are told, that Julian commenced his opposition to the true faith by defending the heathen side of religious questions, in disputing with his brother Gallus ¹⁸; and probably he would not have been able himself to assign the point of time at which he ceased merely to take a part, and became earnest in his unbelief. But it is unnecessary to have recourse to particular instances, in order to prove the consequences of a practice so evidently destructive of a reverential and sober spirit.

Moreover, in these theological discussions, the disputants were in danger of being misled by the unsoundness of the positions which they assumed, as elementary truths or axioms in the argument. As logic and rhetoric made them expert in proof and refutation, so there was much in other sciences, which formed a liberal education, in geometry and arithmetic, to confine the mind to the contemplation of material objects, as if these could supply suitable tests and standards for examining those of a moral and spiritual nature; whereas there are truths foreign to the province of the most exercised intellect, some of them the peculiar discoveries of the improved moral sense (or what Scripture terms “the Spirit”), and others still less on a level with our reason, and received on the sole authority of Revelation. Then, however, as now, the minds of speculative men were impatient of ignorance, and loth to confess that the laws of truth and falsehood, which their experience of this world furnished, could not at once be applied to measure and determine the facts of another. Accordingly, nothing was left for those who would not believe the incomprehensibility of the Divine Essence, but to conceive of it by the analogy of sense; and using the figurative terms of theology in their literal meaning as if landmarks in their inquiries, to suppose that then, and then only, they steered in a safe course, when they avoided every contradiction of a mathematical and material nature. Hence, canons grounded on physics were made the basis of discussions about possibilities and impossibilities in a spiritual substance, as confidently and as fallaciously, as those which in modern times have been derived from the same false analogies against the existence of moral self-action or free-will. Thus the argument by which Paulus of Samosata baffled the Antiochene Council, was drawn from a sophistical use of the very word substance, which the orthodox had employed in expressing the scriptural notion of the unity subsisting between the Father and the Son ¹⁹. Such too was the mode of reasoning adopted at Rome by the Artemas or Artemon, already mentioned, and his followers, at the end of the second century. A contemporary writer, after saying that they supported their “God-denying apostasy” by syllogistic forms of argument, proceeds, “Abandoning the inspired writings, they devote themselves to geometry, as becomes those who are of the earth, and speak of the earth, and are ignorant of Him who is from above. Euclid’s treatises, for instance, are zealously studied by some of them; Aristotle and Theophrastus are objects of their admiration; while Galen may be said even to be adored by others. It is needless to declare that such perverters of the sciences of unbelievers to the purposes of their own heresy, such diluters of the simple Scripture faith with heathen subtleties, have no claim whatever to be called believers.” ²⁰ And such is Epiphanius’s description of the Anomœans, the genuine offspring of the original Arian stock. “Aiming,” he says, “to exhibit the Divine Nature by means of Aristotelic syllogisms and geometrical data, they are thence led on to declare that Christ cannot be derived from God.” ²¹

3.

Lastly, the absence of an adequate symbol of doctrine increased the evils thus existing, by affording an excuse and sometimes a reason for investigations, the necessity of which had not yet been superseded by the authority of an ecclesiastical decision. The traditionary system, received from the first age of the Church, had been as yet but partially set forth in authoritative forms; and by the time of the Nicene Council, the voices of the Apostles were but faintly heard throughout Christendom, and might be plausibly disregarded by those who were unwilling to hear. Even at the beginning of the third century, the disciples of Artemas boldly pronounced their heresy to be apostolical, and maintained that all the bishops of Rome had held it till Victor inclusive ²², whose episcopate was but a few years before their own time. The progress of unbelief naturally led them on to disparage, rather than to appeal to their predecessors; and to trust their cause to their own ingenuity, instead of defending an inconvenient fiction concerning the opinions of a former age. It ended in teaching them to regard the ecclesiastical authorities of former times as on a level with the uneducated and unenlightened of their own days. Paulus did not scruple to express contempt for the received expositors of Scripture at Antioch; and it is one of the first accusations brought by Alexander against Arius and his party, that “they put themselves above the ancients, and the teachers of our youth, and the prelates of the day; considering themselves alone to be wise, and to have discovered truths, which had never been revealed to man before them.” ²³

On the other hand, while the line of tradition, drawn out as it was to the distance of two centuries from the Apostles, had at length become of too frail a texture, to resist the touch of subtle and ill-directed reason, the Church was naturally unwilling to have recourse to the novel, though necessary measure, of imposing an authoritative creed upon those whom it invested with the office of teaching. If I avow my belief, that freedom from symbols and articles is abstractedly the highest state of Christian communion, and the peculiar privilege of the primitive Church ²⁴, it is not from any tenderness towards that proud impatience of control in which many exult, as in a virtue: but first, because technicality and formalism are, in their degree, inevitable results of public confessions of faith; and next, because when confessions do not exist, the mysteries of divine truth, instead of being exposed to the gaze of the profane and uninstructed, are kept hidden in the bosom of the Church, far more faithfully than is otherwise possible; and reserved by a private teaching, through the channel of her ministers, as rewards in due measure and season, for those who are prepared to profit by them; for those, that is, who are diligently passing through the successive stages of faith and obedience. And thus, while the Church is not committed to declarations, which, most true as they are, still are daily wrested by infidels to their ruin; on the other hand, much of that mischievous fanaticism is avoided, which at present abounds from the vanity of men, who think that they can explain the sublime doctrines and exuberant promises of the Gospel, before they have yet learned to know themselves and to discern the holiness of God, under the preparatory discipline of the Law and of Natural Religion. Influenced, as we may suppose, by these various considerations, from reverence for the free spirit of Christian faith, and still more for the sacred truths which are the objects of it, and again from tenderness both for the heathen and the neophyte, who were unequal to the reception of the strong meat of the full Gospel, the rulers of the Church were dilatory in applying a remedy, which nevertheless the circumstances of the times imperatively required. They were loth to confess, that the Church had grown too old to enjoy the free, unsuspicious teaching with which her childhood was blest; and that her disciples must, for the future, calculate and reason before they spoke and acted. So much was this the case, that in the Council of Antioch (as has been said), on the objection of Paulus, they actually withdrew a test which was eventually adopted by the more experienced Fathers at Nicæa; and which, if then sanctioned, might, as far as the Church was concerned, have extinguished the heretical spirit in the very place of its birth.—Meanwhile, the adoption of Christianity, as the religion of the empire, augmented the evil consequences of this omission, excommunication becoming more difficult, while entrance into the Church was less restricted than before.

Footnotes

1. 1.[anapedosi gar hos lusseteres kunes eis echthron amunan]. Epiph. Hær. lxix. 15. Vide the whole passage. ↩

2. Vide § 5, infra. [Gregory Naz. speaks of a [galene] after these heresies, and before Arianism. Orat. xxv. 8.] ↩

3. Euseb. Hist. vii. 28. Cave, Hist. Literar. vol. 1. p. 158. ↩

4. [[sphodra katapolemountai hoi polemioi, hotan tois auton hoplois chrometha kat’ auton]. Socr. iii. 16.] ↩

5. Bull. Defens. Fid. Nic. ii. i. § 9-14. ↩

6. Epiph. Hær. lxix. 3. ↩

7. Socr. i. 5, 6. Theod. Hist. i. 5. Epiphan. Hær. lxix. 7, 8. Philostorg. ii. 2. Athan. de Decret. 16. ↩

8. Petav. Dogm. Theol. t. ii. i. 9 and 10. ↩

9. “Omnem vim venenorum suorum in dialectica disputatione constituunt, quæ philosophorum sententia definitur non adstruendi vim habere, sed studium destruendi. Sed non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum.” Ambros. de Fide, i. 5. [§ 42.] ↩

10. [sophistes kai goes], a juggler. Vide Cressol. Theatr. Rhetor. i. 13. iii. 17. ↩

11. Petav. Theol. prolegom. iii. 3. Baltus, Defense des Peres, ii. 19. Brucker, vol. iii. p. 288. Cave, Hist. Literar. vol. 1. ↩

12. Bull, Defens. Fid. Nic. Epilog. ↩

13. Socr. Hist. v. 10. Soz. Hist. vii. 12. ↩

14. Petav. Dogm. Theol. supra. Brucker, vol. iii. pp. 324, 352, 353. Epiph. Hær. lxix. 69. [Vigil. Thaps. contr. Eutych. i. 2.] ↩

15. The art was called [eristike] and the actual discussion, [gymnasia]. Cressol. Theatr. Rhet. ii. 3. [Vide also Athan. Tr. p. 44, e. Also a remarkable instance in Ernesti from Origen, ap Lumper, t. 10, p. 148. Contrasted with [gymnastikoi logoi] were [agonistikoi], in earnest, according to Sextus Empiricus, vide Hypot. i. 33, p. 57, with Fabricius’s note.] ↩

16. Dodw. Diss. in Iren. v. 14. Socr. Hist. i. 5. ↩

17. Athan. de Decret. 25 and 27. [He says the same of Marcellus in his defence, Apol. contr. Ar. 47.] ↩

18. Greg. Nazianz. Orat. iii. 27, 31. [iv. 30.] ↩

19. Bull, Defens. F. N. ii. 1. § 10. ↩

20. Euseb. Hist. v. 28. ↩

21. Epiph. Hær. p. 809. ↩

22. Euseb. ibid. ↩

23. Theod. Hist. i. 4. [“Solæ in contemptu sunt divinæ literæ, quæ nec suam scholam nec magistros habeant, et de quibus peritissimè disputare se credat, qui nunquam didicit.” Facund. p. 581. ed. Sirm.; vide also, p. 565.] ↩

24. [“Non eguistis literâ, qui spiritu abundabatis, etc. Ubi sensus conscientiæ periclitatur, illic litera postulator.” Hilar. de Syn. 63. Vide the Benedictine note.] ↩