|
The great Athanasius also, in his letter to the Africans, writes
thus about the council at Ariminum. "Under these circumstances who
will tolerate any mention of the council of Ariminum or any other
beside the Nicene? Who would not express detestation of the setting
aside of the words of the Fathers, and the preference for those
introduced at Ariminum by violence and party strife? Who would wish
to be associated with these men, fellows who do not, forsooth, accept
their own words? In their own ten or a dozen synods they have laid
down, as has been narrated already, now one thing now another; and at
the present time these synods, one after another, they are themselves
openly denouncing. They are now suffering the fate undergone of old by
the traitors of the Jews. For as is written in the Book of the
Prophet Jeremiah "they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters
and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water,"
so these men, in their opposition to the OEcumenical synod, have
hewed for themselves many synods which have all proved vain and like
"buds that yield no meal," let us not therefore admit those who cite
the council of Ariminum or any other but that of Nicaea, for indeed
the very citers of Ariminum do not seem to know what was done there;
if they had they would have held their tongues. For you, beloved,
have learnt from your own representatives at that Council, and are
consequently very well aware, that Ursacius, Valens, Eudoxius,
and Auxentius, and with them Demophilus were asked to anathematize
the Arian heresy, and made excuse, choosing rather to be its
champions, and so were all deposed for making propositions contrary to
the Nicene decrees. The bishops, on the contrary, who were the true
servants of the Lord, and of the right faith, about two hundred in
number, declared their adherence to the Nicene Council alone, and
their refusal to entertain the thought of either subtraction from, or
addition to, its decrees. This conclusion they have communicated to
Constantius, by whose order the council assembled.
On the other hand the bishops who were deposed at Ariminum have been
received by Constantius, and have succeeded in getting the two hundred
who sentenced them grossly insulted, and threatened with not being
allowed to return to their dioceses, and with having to undergo
rigorous treatment in Thrace, and that in the winter, in order to
force them to accept the innovators' measures.
If, then, we hear any one appealing to Ariminum, show us, let us
rejoin, first the sentence of deposition, and then the document drawn
up by the bishops, in which they declare that they do not seek to go
beyond the terms drawn up by the Nicene Fathers, nor appeal to any
other council than that of Nicaea. In reality, these are just the
facts they conceal, while they put prominently forward the forced
confession of Thrace. They do but shew themselves friends of the
Arian heresy, and strangers to the sound faith. Only let any one be
willing to put side by side that great synod, and those others to which
these men appeal, and he will perceive, on the one side, true
religion, on the other, folly and disorder. The fathers of Nicaea
met together not after being deposed, but after confessing that the
Son was of the Substance of the Father. These men were deposed
once, a second time, and again a third time at Ariminum, and then
dared to lay down that it is wrong to attribute Substance or Essence
to God. So strange and so many were the tricks and machinations
concocted by the mad gang of Arius in the West against the dogmas of
the Truth.
|
|