...talisman of lead...

Four discourses against the arians

CHAPTER II.

EXTRACTS FROM THE THALIA OF ARIUS.

Arius maintains that God became a Father, and the Son was not always; the Son

out of nothing; once He was not; He was not before his generation; He was

created; named Wisdom and Word after God's attributes; made that He might make

us; one out of many powers of God; alterable; exalted on God's foreknowledge

of what He was to be; not very God; but called so as others by participation;

foreign in essence from the Father; does not know or see the Father; does not

know Himself.

5. Now the commencement of Arius's Thalia and flippancy, effeminate in

tune and nature, runs thus:-- 'According to faith of God's elect, God's

prudent ones, Holy children, rightly dividing, God's Holy Spirit

receiving,

Have I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,

Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all

things.

Along their track, have I been walking, with like

opinions.

I the very famous, the much suffering for God's

glory;

And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and

knowledge.'

And the mockeries which he utters in it, repulsive and most irreligious,

are such as these(1):--'God was not always a Father;(1) but 'once God was

alone, and not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father.' 'The Son was

not always;' for, whereas all things were made out of nothing, and all

existing creatures and works were made, so the Word of God Himself was 'made

out of nothing,' and 'once He was not,' and 'He was not before His

309

origination,' but He as others 'had an origin of creation.' 'For God,' he

says, was alone, and the Word as yet was not, nor the Wisdom. Then, wishing to

form us, thereupon He made a certain one, and named Him Word and Wisdom and

Son, that He might form us by means of Him.' Accordingly, he says that there

are two wisdoms, first, the attribute co-existent with God, and next, that in

this wisdom the Son was originated, and was only named Wisdom and Word as

partaking of it. 'For Wisdom,' saith he, 'by the will of the wise God, had its

existence in Wisdom.' In like manner, he says, that there is another Word in

God besides the Son, and that the Son again, as partaking of it, is named Word

and Son according to grace. And this too is an idea proper to their heresy, as

shewn in other works of theirs, that there are many powers; one of which is

God's own by nature and eternal; but that Christ, on the other hand, is not

the true power of God; but, as others, one of the so-called powers, one of

which, namely, the locust and the caterpillar(2), is called in Scripture, not

merely the power, but the 'great power.' The others are many and are like the

Son, and of them David speaks in the Psalms, when he says, 'The Lord of hosts'

or 'powers(3).' And by nature, as all others, so the Word Himself is

alterable, and remains good by His own free will, while He chooseth; when,

however, He wills, He can alter as we can, as being of an alterable nature.

For 'therefore,' saith he, 'as foreknowing that He would be good, did God by

anticipation bestow on Him this glory, which afterwards, as man, He attained

from virtue. Thus in consequence of His works fore-known(4), did God bring it

to pass that He being such, should come to be.'

6. Moreover he has dared to say, that 'the Word is not the very God;'

'though He is called God, yet He is not very God,' but 'by participation of

grace, He, as others, is God only in name.' And, whereas all beings are

foreign and different from God in essence, so too is 'the Word alien and

unlike in all things to the Father's essence and propriety,' but belongs to

things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he

had succeeded to the devil's recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that

'even to the Son the Father is invisible,' and 'the Word cannot perfectly and

exactly either see or know His own Father;' but even what He knows and what He

sees, He knows and sees 'in proportion to His own measure,' as we also know

according to our own power. For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the

Father exactly, for He fails in comprehension(5), but 'He knows not even His

own essence;'--and that 'the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy

Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien(6),

and without participation of each other(7);' and, in his own words, 'utterly

unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.' Thus as to

'likeness of glory and essence,' he says that the Word is entirely diverse

from both the Father and the Holy Ghost. With such words hath the irreligious

spoken; maintaining that the Son is distinct by Himself, and in no respect

partaker of the Father. These are portions of Arius's fables as they occur in

that jocose composition.

7. Who is there that hears all this, nay, the of the Thalia, but must

hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage(8)?

who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as

the serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading what follows in his work,

but must discern in his irreligious doctrine that error, into which by his

sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman? who at such

blasphemies is not transported? 'The heaven,' as the Prophet says, 'was

astonished, and the earth shuddered(9)' at the transgression of the Law. But

the sun, with greater horror, impatient of the bodily contumelies, which the

common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us, turned away, and recalling his

rays made that day sunless. And shall not all human kind at Arius's

blasphemies be struck speechless, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to

escape hearing them or seeing their author? Rather, will not the Lord Himself

have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words

which He has already uttered by the prophet Hosea, 'Woe unto them, for they

have fled from Me; destruction upon

310

them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet

they have spoken lies against Me(10).' And soon after, 'They imagine mischief

against Me; they turn away to nothing(11).' For to turn away from the Word of

God, which is, and to fashion to themselves one that is not, is to fall to

what is nothing. For this was why the Ecumenical(1) Council, when Arius thus

spoke, cast him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such

irreligion. And ever since has Arius's error been reckoned for a heresy more

than ordinary, being known as Christ's foe, and harbinger(2) of Antichrist.

Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men

flee from that irreligious heresy(3), as I said above, yet since certain

persons called Christian, either in ignorance or pretence, think it, as I then

said, little different from the Truth, and call its professors Christians;

proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers, thereby to

expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy. Perhaps, when thus caught, they

will be silenced, and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent.

__ ____________________ __

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Title Page

__ _____________________ __

© 1996-2008 The Museum Of Jurassic Technology, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232