The Arians of the Fourth Century. By John Henry Newman, formerly Fellow of Oriel College. Third Edition. London: E. Lumley. For sale by The Catholic Publication Society, New York.
This work was written in 1832, and saw the light in the following year. The author had already made his mark in Oxford as a keen and deep thinker, as a scholar of wide and accurate erudition, and as a clear and vigorous writer. He was a prominent leader in the Oxford or Puseyite movement, and was, as we know from his Apologia, a stanch Anglican. The work, looked for at the time with interest, was received as fully equal to the high reputation of the author. Its singularly lucid treatment of a subject involving the most abstruse questions of ancient theological controversy, as well as the intricate and shifting phases of a very eventful period of ecclesiastical history, was a valuable addition to English theological literature. The author had evidently thrown his soul into the work. The history he was treating seemed to him to present many points of parallelism to their own living struggle in the Anglican Church. The Anomœans and kindred Arian sects were representatives of the Socinianism which had reached even the highest dignities, and the rationalism and humanitarianism which were beginning to spread among the clergy and the laity of its fold. The Semiarians with their compromises
and varying phrases and formulas of faith, which might mean much or little, as each one chose to understand them, were equally good representatives of the modern Broad Church compromisers. The Eusebians, ever seeking to bask in the imperial favor, and to guide or to wield the civil power for their own interests, were the type of the modern Erastians, who look for nothing higher than an act of parliament or an exercise of the royal supremacy. And the continual assumption of ecclesiastical authority by the Arian and Semiarian emperors in the fourth century, and their often tyrannical action towards faithful bishops and clergy, who would not give to Cæsar the things that are God’s, made the Puseyites think of the enthralled condition of their “own branch,” in which the sovereign claims and exercises the exclusive right of appointing the archbishops and bishops, and of deciding finally all questions of doctrine, discipline, or church law, and without whose sanction convocations cannot meet, nor synods be held or pass decrees. In the fourth century, the church, though long and sorely pressed, ever struggled on, and finally succeeded in vindicating her own liberty, and casting the heresy out of her fold. It was hoped that the example might teach them how their English Church might similarly struggle and eventually triumph.
A few years sufficed to convince
Dr. Newman that such hopes were futile, and that his position was false. He and others sought refuge in the fold of the true church. Meanwhile, within the Anglican Church, the successive decisions in the Gorham case and in several other cases that have since come before the Privy Council, show that the evils he lamented and feared have increased in strength, while the power of opposing them has grown gradually weaker.
The present is a third edition of the work under the care of the author; we can scarcely say, revised by him. German professors, in publishing successive editions of their works on any subject to which they devote continuous study, have no scruple in retracting, cancelling, or directly confuting what they had previously published, as often as they may be led to change their opinions on material points, so much so that you must be sure you have the right edition before you can quote it. We turned to this edition to see if Dr. Newman had followed such a course. He has not. With him, litera scripta manet. The book is the same now as when it first appeared. In a few instances he changes the structure of a sentence, that his thought may stand out more clearly. He has added a few more references in the foot-notes, scrupulously indicating such additions by enclosing them in brackets. He has enlarged the table of contents at the beginning and the chronological table at the end of the volume. No change has been made affecting the opinions, sentiments, or speculations of the original edition. There are expressions which now, of course, displease him as a Catholic; but he lets them hold their place. He has cast out only two sentences, as needlessly put in originally, and even these he has, in signal humility, pilloried, as it were, in a page by themselves at the end of the appendix. This appendix, at the close of the volume, is mostly made up of extracts from
subsequent works of his own, and are intended to throw further light on several points touched on in the original work.
The volume presents an admirable critical, theological, and historical summary of the whole Arian controversy in the fourth century, and was a turning-point in English Protestant literature on the subject. Dr. Newman was the first to establish what has since been generally accepted, that Arianism was connected, historically and intellectually, with the Judaic Aristotelic schools of thought prevailing at Antioch and through Asia Minor, and not, as had been previously held by many, with the Platonic schools of Alexandria.
The work deserves and will amply reward a careful study. The Catholic reader will, of course, find himself in something of a Protestant atmosphere. The authority and action of the Roman Pontiffs is scarcely glanced at. Twice or thrice reference is made to the important support which the Roman See gave to St. Athanasius, and to the determined resistance which honorably distinguishes the primitive Roman Church in its dealing with heresy, and the ground is taken that the acute and sophistical training of the Eastern intellects led them to indulge in abstruse distinctions and discussions which the calmer and more practical minds of the Western Church entered into with difficulty, and could scarcely express in their Latin tongue, so much less pliable than the Greek. Theologically speaking, as well as historically, the controversy in the fourth century was Eastern, rather than Latin. Still, we are sure that, were Dr. Newman to write afresh this history, now that he is a Catholic, the important part acted by the Roman Pontiffs would be more strongly set forth. Writing as a Protestant, he was sufficiently emphatic on the case of Liberius—so much so that he has added a footnote to say that there is a difference
among writers which was the Sirmian formula that Liberius subscribed; and the appendix further shows that there is also a discrepancy as to the number and the chronological order of the various formulas, and that in some cases alterations and additions were subsequently made in the original text. It might also be added that there are grave reasons for doubting the fact of any such subscription by Liberius, inasmuch as the charge seems to have been first put forth by heated controversialists long after his death, and is scarcely reconcilable with the undoubted facts of his life after the date of the alleged subscription.