“They are adherents,” he says, “of the Devil, who is their father; they are insane, traitors, irreligious, profane, ranged against God and enemies of the Holy Church. Would to Heaven!” he concludes, “that these heretics or schismatics might have regard even now for their own salvation, and, brushing aside the darkness, turn their eyes to see the true light, leaving the Devil, and flying for refuge, late though it be, to the one and true God, who is the judge of all! But since they are set upon remaining in their wickedness and wish to die in their iniquities, our warning and our previous long continued exhortations must suffice. For if they had been willing to obey our commandments, they would now be free from all evil.”
Evidently the Emperor was thoroughly weary of the whole controversy, and disgusted at such unreasoning contumacy. The same feelings find powerful expression in the letters and manifestoes of St. Augustine, a century later, when the great Bishop of Hippo constituted himself the champion of the Catholic Church and played the foremost part in the stormy debates which preceded the final disappearance of the Donatist schism, after the Council of Carthage in 410. Then the momentous decision was reached that all bishops who, after three appeals to them to return to the Church, still refused submission, should be brought back to the Catholic fold by force. The point in dispute was still just what it had been in the days of Constantine, whether a Christian Church could be considered worthy of the name if it had admitted faithless and unworthy members, or if the ministers had been ordained by bishops who had temporised with their consciences and fallen short of the loftiest ideal of duty. That was the great underlying principle at stake in the Donatist controversy, though, as in all such controversies, the personal element was paramount when the schism began, and was still the cause of the bitterness and fury with which the quarrel was conducted long after the intrigues of Lucilla and the personal animosities between Cæcilianus and the Numidian bishops had ceased to be of interest or moment to the living Church. And it is interesting to note that while it was the Donatists themselves who had made the first appeal unto Cæsar by asking Constantine to judge between them and Cæcilianus, in St. Augustine’s day the Donatists hotly denied the capacity of the State to take cognisance of spiritual things. What, they asked, has an Emperor to do with the Church? Quid est Imperatori cum Ecclesia?
STATUE OF CONSTANTINE FROM THE PORCH OF SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERAN, AT ROME.
CHAPTER X
THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY
If Constantine beheld with impatience the irreconcilable fury of the Donatists, who refused either to respect his wishes for Christian unity or to obey the bishops of the Western Church; if he angrily washed his hands of their stubborn factiousness and committed them in despair to the judgment of God, we may imagine with what bitterness of soul he beheld the gathering of the storm of violent controversy which is associated with the two great names of Arius and Athanasius. This was a controversy, and Arianism was a heresy, which, unlike the Donatist schism, were confined to no single province of the Empire, but spread like a flood over the Eastern Church, raising issues of tremendous importance, vital to the very existence of Christianity. It started in Alexandria. No birthplace could have been more appropriate to a system of theology which was professedly based upon pure reason than the great university city where East and West met, the home of Neo-Platonism, the inheritor of the Hellenic tradition, and the chief exponent of Hellenism, as understood and professed by Greeks who for centuries had been subject to and profoundly modified by Oriental ideas and thought.
We must deal very briefly with its origin. Arius was born in the third quarter of the third century, according to some accounts in Libya, according to others in Alexandria. He was ordained deacon by the Patriarch Peter and presbyter by Achillas, who appointed him to the church called Baucalis, the oldest and one of the most important of the city churches of Alexandria. Arius had been in schism in his earlier years. He had joined the party of Meletius, Bishop of Lycopolis, who was condemned by a synod of Egyptian bishops in 306 for insubordination and irregularity of conduct; but he had made submission to Achillas, and during the latter’s short tenure of the see, Arius became a power in Alexandria. We are told, indeed, that on the death of Achillas in 312 or 313 Arius was a candidate for the vacant throne, and Theodoretus states that he was greatly mortified at being passed over in favour of Alexander. But there is no indication of personal animosity or quarrel between the bishop and the parish priest until five or six years later. On the contrary, Alexander is said to have held Arius in high esteem, and the fame of the priest of Baucalis spread abroad through the city as that of an earnest worker, a strict and ascetic liver, and a powerful preacher who dealt boldly and frankly with the great principles of the faith. In person, Arius was of tall and striking presence, conspicuous wherever he moved by his sleeveless tunic and narrow cloak, and gifted with great conversational powers and charm of manner. He was also capable of infecting others with the enthusiasm which he felt himself. Arius has been described for us mainly by his enemies, who considered him a very anti-Christ, and attributed his remarkable success to the direct help of the Evil One. We may be sure that, like all the great religious leaders of the world,—among whom, heretic though he was, he deserves a place,—he was fanatically sincere and the doctrine which he preached was vital and fecund, even though the vitality and fecundity were those of error.
It was not, apparently, until the year 319 that serious disturbance began in the Christian circles of Alexandria. There would first of all be whispers that Arius was preaching strange doctrine and handling the great mysteries somewhat boldly and dogmatically. Many would doubt the wisdom of such outspokenness, quite apart from the question whether the doctrine taught was sound; others would exhibit the ordinary distrust of innovation; others would welcome this new kindling of theological interest from the mere pleasure of debate and controversy. We do not suppose that any one, not even Arius himself, foresaw—at any rate, at first—the extraordinary and lamentable consequences that were to follow from his teaching. The Patriarch Alexander has been blamed for not crushing the infant heresy at its birth, for not stopping the mouth of Arius before the mischief was done. It is easy to be wise after the event. Doubtless Alexander did not appreciate the danger; possibly also he thought that if he waited, the movement would subside of itself. He may very well have believed that this popular preacher would lose his hold, that some one else would take his place as the fashionable clergyman of the hour, that the extravagance of his doctrines would speedily be forgotten. Moreover, Arius was a zealous priest, doing good work in his own way, and long experience has shewn that it is wise for ecclesiastical superiors to give able men of marked power and originality considerable latitude in the expression of their views.