4.D. 318-325.] ETIUS AND EUNOMIUS. 413 man, a travelling tinker, a goldsmith, a physician, a schoolmaster, a theologian, and at last the apostle of a new church, which was propagated by the abilities of his disciple Eunomius.* Armed with texts of Scripture, and with captious syllogisms from the logic of Aristotle, the subtle Etius had acquired the fame of an invincible disputant, whom it was impossible either to silence or to convince. Such talents engaged the friendship of the Arian bishops, till they were forced to renounce, and even to persecute, a dangerous ally, who, by the accuracy of his reasoning, had prejudiced their cause in the popular opinion, and offended the piety of their most devoted followers. 2. The omnipotence of the Creator suggested a specious and respectful solution of the likeness of the Father and the Son; and faith might humbly receive what reason could not presume to deny, that the supreme God might communicate his infinite perfections, and create a being similar only to himself. These Arians were powerfully supported by the weight and abilities of their leaders, who had succeeded to the management of the Eusebian interest, and who occupied the principal thrones of the east. They detested, perhaps with some affectation, the impiety of Etius; they professed to believe, either without reserve, or according to the Scriptures, that the Son was different from all other creatures, and similar only to the Father. But they denied that he was either of the same, or of a similar substance; sometimes boldly justifying their dissent, and sometimes objecting to the use of the word substance, which seems to imply an adequate, or at least a distinct notion of the nature of the Deity. 3. The sect which asserted the doctrine of a similar substance was the most numerous, at least in the provinces of Asia; and when the leaders of both parties were assembled in the council of invented. According to the judgment of a man who respected both these sectaries, Etius had been endowed with a stronger understanding, and Eunomius had acquired more art and learning. (Philostorgius, lib. 8, c. 18.) The confession and apology of Eunomius (Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. viii, p. 258-305) is one of the few heretical pieces which have escaped. Yet, according to the opinion of Estius and Bull (p. 297), there is one power, that of creation, which God cannot communicate to a creature. Estius, who so accu rately defined the limits of omnipotence, was a Dutchman by birth, 414 THE SEMI-ARIANS. [CH. III. Seleucia, their opinion would have prevailed by a majority of one hundred and five to forty-three bishops. The Greek word, which was chosen to express this mysterious resemblance, bears so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol, that the profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoiousians. As it frequently happens, that the sounds and characters which approach the nearest to each other accidentally represent the most opposite ideas, the observation would be itself ridiculous, if it were possible to mark any real and sensible distinction between the doctrine of the Semi-Arians, as they were improperly styled, and that of the Catholics themselves. The bishop of Poitiers, who, in his Phrygian exile, very wisely aimed at a coalition of parties, endeavours to prove that, by a pious and faithful interpretation, the Homoiousion may be reduced to a consubstantial sense. Yet he confesses that the word has a dark and suspicious aspect; and, as if darkness were congenial to theological disputes, the Semi-Arians, who advanced to the doors of the church, assailed them with the most unrelenting fury. The provinces of Egypt and Asia, which cultivated the language and manners of the Greeks, had deeply imbibed the venom of the Arian controversy. The familiar study of the Platonic system, a vain and argumentative disposition, a copious and flexible idiom, supplied the clergy and people of the east with an inexhaustible flow of words and distinctions; and, in the midst of their fierce contentions they easily forgot the doubt which is recommended by philosophy, and the submission which is enjoined by religion. The inhabitants of the west were of a less inquisitive spirit; their passions were not so forcibly moved by invisible objects; their minds were less frequently exercised by the habits of and by trade a scholastic divine. Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles. tom. xvii, p. 45. * Sabinus (ap. Socrat. lib. 2, c. 39) had copied the acts; Athanasius and Hilary have explained the divisions of this Arian Jynod; the other circumstances which are relative to it are carefully collected by Baronius and Tillemont. +Fideli et piâ intelligentia De Synod. c. 77, p. 1193. In his short apologetical notes (first published by the Benedictines from a MS. of Chartres) he observes, that he used this cautious expression, qui intelligerem et impiam, p. 1206. See p. 1146. Philostorgius, who saw those objects through a different A.D. 318-325.] ORTHODOXY OF THE WEST. 413 aispute, and such was the happy ignorance of the Gallicaa church, that Hilary himself, above thirty years after the first general council, was still a stranger to the Nicene creed. The Latins had received the rays of divine know. ledge through the dark and doubtful medium of a transla tion. The poverty and stubbornness of their native tongue was not always capable of affording just equivalents for the Greek terms, for the technical words of the Platonic phi losophy, which had been consecrated by the gospel or by the church, to express the mysteries of the Christian faith; and a verbal defect might introduce into the Latin theology a long train of error or perplexity. But as the western provincials had the good fortune of deriving their religion from an orthodox source, they preserved with steadiness the doctrine which they had accepted with docility; and when the Arian pestilence approached their frontiers, they were supplied with the seasonable preservative of the Homoousion, by the paternal care of the Roman pontiff. Their sentiments and their temper were displayed in the memorable synod of Rimini, which surpassed in numbers the council of Nice, since it was composed of above four hundred bishops of Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Illyricum. From the first debates it appeared, that only fourscore prelates adhered to the party, though they affected to anathematize the name and memory of Arius. But this inferiority was compensated by the advantages of skill, of experience, and of discipline; and the minority was conducted by Valens and Ursacius, two bishops of Illyricum, who had spent their lives in the intrigues of courts and councils, and who had been trained under the Eusebian. medium, is inclined to forget the difference of the important diphthong. See in particular, 8, 17, and Godefroy, p. 352. *Testor Deum cœli atque terræ me cum neutrum audissem, semper tamen utrumque sensisse Regeneratur pridem et in episcopatu aliquantisper manens fidem Nicenam nunquam nisi exsulaturus audivi. Hilar. de Synodis, c. 91, p. 1205. The Benedictines are persuaded that he governed the diocese of Poitiers several years before his exile. + Seneca (Epist. 58) complains that even the rò ov of the Platonists (the ens of the bolder schoolmen) could not be expressed by a Latin noun. The preference which the fourth council of the Lateran at length gave to a numerical rather than a generical unity (see Petav. tom. ii, 1. 4, c. 13, p. 424) was favoured by the Latin language: тpiag seems to excite the idea of substance, trinitas of qualities. 416 THE COUNCIL OF RIMINI. [CII. XXL banner, in the religious wars of the east. By their argu ments and negotiations, they embarrassed, they confounded, they at last deceived, the honest simplicity of the Latin bishops, who suffered the palladium of the faith to be ex torted from their hands by fraud and importunity, rather than by open violence. The council of Rimini was not allowed to separate, till the members had imprudently subscribed a captious creed, in which some expressions, sus ceptible of an heretical sense, were inserted in the room of the Homoousion. It was on this occasion, that, according to Jerome, the world was surprised to find itself Arian.* But the bishops of the Latin provinces had no sooner reached their respective dioceses, than they discovered their mistake, and repented of their weakness. The ignominious capitulation was rejected with disdain and abhor rence; and the Homoousian standard, which had been shaken, but not overthrown, was more firmly replanted in all the churches of the west.t Such was the rise and progress, and such were the natural revolutions of those theological disputes, which disturbed the peace of Christianity under the reigns of Constantine and of his sons. But as those princes presumed to extend their despotism over the faith, as well as over the lives and fortunes of their subjects, the weight of their suffrage sometimes inclined the ecclesiastical balance, and the prerogatives of the King of Heaven were settled, or changed, or modified, in the cabinet of an earthly monarch. The unhappy spirit of discord which pervaded the provinces of the east interrupted the triumph of Constantine; but the emperor continued for some time to view, with cool and careless indifference, the object of the dispute. As he was yet ignorant of the difficulty of appeasing the quarrels of theologians, he addressed to the contending parties, to Alexander and to Arius, a moderating epistle; which may Ingemuit totus crois, et Arianum se esse miratus est. Hieronym. adv. Lucifer, tom. i, p. 145 The story of the council of Rimini is very elegantly told by Sulpicius Severus (Hist. Sacra. 1. 2, p. 419-430, edit. Lugd. Bat. 1647), and by Jerome, in his dialogue against the Luciferians. The design of the latter is to apologize for the conduct of the Latin bishops, who were deceived, and who repented. Eusebius, in Vit. Constant. lib. ii, c. 64-72. The principles of toleration and religious indifference, contained in this epistle, have given great offence to Baronius, Tillemont, &c., who suppose that the A.D. 324.] THE COUNCIL OF NICE. 417 be ascribed, with far greater reason, to the untutored sense of a soldier and statesman, than to the dictates of any of his episcopal counsellors. He attributes the origin of the whole controversy to a trifling and subtile question, concerning an incomprehensible point of the law, which was foolishly asked by the bishop, and imprudently resolved by the presbyter. He laments that the Christian people, who had the same God, the same religion, and the same worship, should be divided by such inconsiderable distinctions; and he seriously recommends to the clergy of Alexandria the example of the Greek philosophers, who could maintain their arguments without losing their temper, and assert their freedom without violating their friendship. The indifference and contempt of the sovereign would have been, perhaps, the most effectual method of silencing the dispute, if the popular current had been less rapid and impetuous, and if Constantine himself, in the midst of faction and fanaticism, could have preserved the calm possession of his own mind. But his ecclesiastical ministers soon contrived to seduce the impartiality of the magistrate, and to awaken the zeal of the proselyte. He was provoked by the insults which had been offered to his statues; he was alarmed by the real, as well as the imaginary, magnitude of the spreading mischief; and he extinguished the hope of peace and toleration, from the moment that he assembled three hundred bishops within the walls of the same palace. The presence of the monarch swelled the importance of the debate; his attention multiplied the arguments; and he exposed his person with a patient intrepidity, which animated the valour of the combatants. Notwithstanding the applause which has been bestowed on the eloquence and sagacity of Constantine,* a Roman general, whose religion might be still a subject of doubt, and whose mind had not been enlightened either by study or inspiration, was indifferently qualified to discuss, in the Greek language, a metaphysical question, or an article of faith. But the credit of his favourite Osius, who appears to have presided in the council of Nice, might dispose the emperor in favour of the orthodox party; and a well-timed insinuation, that the same Eusebius of Nicoemperor had some evil counsellor, either Satan or Eusebius, at his elbow. See Jortin's Remarks, tom. ii, p. 183. * Eusebius, in Vit. 2 = VOL. II. |