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"Impelled by avarice and ambition, evil-minded persons have ever
plotted against the wellbeing of the most important dioceses. Under
various pretexts, they attack the religion of the Church; and, being
maddened by the devil, who works in them, they start aside from all
piety according to their own pleasure, and trample under foot the fear
of the judgment of God. Suffering as I do from them myself, I deem
it necessary to inform your piety, that you may be on your guard
against them, lest they or any of their party should presume to enter
your diocese (for these cheats are skilful in deception), or should
circulate false and specious letters, calculated to delude one who has
devoted himself to the simple and undefiled faith.
"Arius and Achillas have lately formed a conspiracy, and, emulating
the ambition of Colluthus, have gone far beyond him He indeed sought
to find a pretext for his own pernicious line of action in the charges
he brought against them. But they, beholding his making a trade of
Christ for lucre, refused to remain any longer in subjection to the
Church; but built for themselves caves, like robbers, and now
constantly assemble in them, and day and night ply slanders there
against Christ and against us. They revile every godly apostolical
doctrine, and in Jewish fashion have organized a gang to fight against
Christ, denying His divinity, and declaring Him to be on a level
with other men. They pick out every passage which refers to the
dispensation of salvation, and to His humiliation for our sake; they
endeavour to collect from them their own impious assertion, while they
evade all those which declare His eternal divinity, and the unceasing
glory which He possesses with the Father. They maintain the ungodly
doctrine entertained by the Greeks and the Jews concerning Jesus
Christ; and thus, by every means in their power, hunt for their
applause. Everything which outsiders ridicule in us they officiously
practise. They daily excite persecutions and seditions against us.
On the one hand they bring accusations against us before the courts,
suborning as witnesses certain unprincipled women whom they have seduced
into error. On the other they dishonour Christianity by permitting
their young women to ramble about the streets. Nay, they have had the
audacity to rend the seamless garment of Christ, which the soldiers
dared not divide.
"When these actions, in keeping with their course of life, and the
impious enterprise which had been long concealed, became tardily known
to us, we unanimously ejected them from the Church which worships the
divinity of Christ. They then ran hither and thither to form cabals
against us, even addressing themselves to our fellow-ministers who
were of one mind with us, under the pretence of seeking peace and unity
with them, but in truth endeavouring by means of fair words, to sweep
some among them away into their own disease. They ask them to write a
wordy letter, and then read the contents to those whom they have
deceived, in order that they may not retract, but be confirmed in
their impiety, by finding that bishops agree with and support their
views. They make no acknowledgment of the evil doctrines and practices
for which they have been expelled by us, but they either impart them
without comment, or carry on the deception by fallacies and forgeries.
Thus concealing their destructive doctrine by persuasive and meanly
truckling language, they catch the unwary, and lose no opportunity of
calumniating our religion. Hence it arises that several have been led
to sign their letter, and to receive them into communion, a proceeding
on the part of our fellow-ministers which I consider highly
reprehensible; for they thus not only disobey the apostolical rule,
but even help to inflame their diabolical action against Christ. It
is on this account, beloved brethren, that without delay I have
stirred myself up to inform you of the unbelief of certain persons who
say that "There was a time when the Son of God was not ;" and
"He who previously had no existence subsequently came into existence;
and when at some time He came into existence He became such as every
other man is." God, they say, created all things out of that which
was non-existent, and they include in the number of creatures, both
rational and irrational, even the Son of God. Consistently with
this doctrine they, as a necessary consequence, affirm that He is by
nature liable to change, and capable both of virtue and of vice, and
thus, by their hypothesis of his having been created out of that which
was non-existent, they overthrow the testimony of the Divine
Scriptures, which declare the immutability of the Word and the
Divinity of the Wisdom of the Word, which Word and Wisdom is
Christ. 'We are also able,' say these accursed wretches, 'to
become like Him, the sons of God; for it is written, I have
nourished and brought up children s.' When the continuation of this
text is brought before them, which is, and they have rebelled against
Me, and it is objected that these words are inconsistent with the
Saviour's nature, which is immutable, they throw aside oil
reverence, and affirm that God foreknew and foresaw that His Son
would not rebel against Him, and that He therefore chose Him in
preference to all others. They likewise assert that He was not chosen
because. He had by nature any thing superior to the other sons of
God; for no man, say they, is son of God by nature, nor has any
peculiar relation to Him. He was chosen, they allege, because,
though mutable by nature, His painstaking character suffered no
deterioration. As though, forsooth, even if a Paul and a Peter
made like endeavours, their sonship would in no respects differ from
His.
"To establish this insane doctrine they insuit the Scriptures, and
bring forward what is said in the Psalms of Christ, 'Thou hast
loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore thy God hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. Now that the
Son of God was not created out of the non-existent, and that there
never was a time in which He was not, is expressly taught by John the
Evangelist, who speaks of Him as 'the only begotten Son which is in
the bosom of the Fathers. This divine teacher desired to show that
the Father and the Son are inseparable; and, therefore, he said,
'that the Son is in the bosom of the Father.' Moreover, the same
John affirms that the Word of God is not classed among things created
out of the non-existent, for, he says that 'all things were made by
Him,' and he also declares His individual personality in the
following words: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Ward was God. . . . All things were made by
Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made' If,
then, all things were made by Him, how is it that He who thus
bestowed existence on all, could at any period have had no existence
himself? The Word, the creating power, can in no way be defined as
of the same nature as the things created, if indeed He was in the
beginning, and all things were made by Him, and were called by Him
out of the non-existent into being. ' That which is' must be of an
opposite nature to, and essentially different from, things created out
of the non-existent. This shows, likewise, that there is no
separation between the Father and the Son, and that the idea of
separation cannot even be conceived by the mind; while the fact that
the world was created out of the nonexistent involves a later and fresh
genesis of its essential nature, all things having been endowed with
such an origin of existence by the Father through the Son. John,
the most pious apostle, perceiving that the word 'was' applied to the
Word of God was far beyond and above the intelligence of created
beings, did not presume to speak of His generation or creation, nor
yet dared to name the Maker and the creature m equivalent syllables.
Not that the Son of God is unbegotten, for the Father alone is
unbegotten; but that the ineffable personality of the only-begotten
God is beyond the keenest conception of the evangelists and perhaps
even of angels. Therefore, I do not think men ought to be considered
pious who presume to investigate this subject, in disobedience to the
injunction, 'Seek not what is too difficult for thee, neither
enquire into what is too high for thee.' For if the knowledge of many
other things incomparably inferior is beyond the capacity of the human
mind, and cannot therefore be attained, as has been said by Paul,
'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man, the things which God hath prepared far them that lave
Him', and as God also said to Abraham, that the stars could not be
numbered by him; and it is likewise said,' Who shall number the
grains of sand by the sea-shore, or the drops of rain?' how then can
any one but a madman presume to enquire into the nature of the Word of
God? It is said by the Spirit of prophecy, 'Who shall declare
His generation?' And, therefore, our Saviour in His kindness to
those men who were the pillars of the whole world, desiring to relieve
them of the burden of striving after this knowledge, told them that it
was beyond their natural comprehension, and that the Father alone
could discern this most divine mystery; 'No man,' said He,
'knoweth the Son but the Father, and no man knoweth the Father save
the Son.' It was, I think, concerning this same subject that the
Father said, 'My secret is for Me and far Mine.'
"But the insane folly of imagining that the Son of God came into
being out of that which had no being, and that His sending forth took
place in time, is plain from the words 'which l had no being,'
although the foolish are incapable of perceiving the folly of their own
utterances. For the phrase 'He was not' must either have reference
to time, or to some interval in the ages. If then it be true that all
things were made by Him, it is evident that every age, time, all
intervals of time, and that 'when' in which 'was not' has its
place, were made by Him. And is it not absurd to say that there was
a time when He who created all time, and ages, and seasons, with
which the 'was not' is confused, was not? For it would be the
height of ignorance, and contrary indeed to all reason, to affirm that
the cause of any created thing can be posterior to that caused by it.
The interval during which they say the Son was still unbegotten of the
Father was, according to their opinion, prior to the wisdom of God,
by whom all things were created. They thus contradict the Scripture
which declares Him to be' the firstborn of every creature.' In
consonance with this doctrine, Paul with his usual mighty voice cries
concerning Him; 'whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom
also He made the worlds.' 'For by Him were all things created that
are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether
they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all
things were created by Him and far Him: and He is before all
things.' Since the hypothesis implied in the phrase 'out of the
non-existent' is manifestly impious, it follows that the Father is
always Father. And He is Father from the continual presence of the
Son, on account of whom He is called Father. And the Son being
ever present with Him, the Father is ever perfect, wanting in no
good thing, for He did not beget His only Son in time, or in any
interval of time, nor out of that which had no previous existence.
"Is it not then impious to say that there was a time when the wisdom
of God was not? Who saith,' I was by Him as one brought up with
Him: I was daily His delight?' Or that once the power of God was
not, or His Word, or anything else by which the Son is known, or
the Father designated, defective? To assert that the brightness of
the Father's glory' once did not exist,' destroys also the original
light of which it is the brightness; and if there ever was a time in
which the image of God was not, it is plain that He Whose image He
is, is not always: nay, by the non-existence of the express image of
God's Person, He also is taken away of whom this is ever the
express image. Hence it may be seen, that the Sonship of our
Saviour has not even anything in common with the sonship of men. For
just as it has been shown that the nature of His existence cannot be
expressed by language, and infinitely surpasses in excellence all
things to which He has given being, so His Sonship, naturally
partaking in His paternal Divinity, is unspeakably different from the
sonship of those who, by His appointment, have been adopted as sons.
He is by nature immutable, perfect, and all-sufficient, whereas men
are liable to change, and need His help. What further advance can be
made by the wisdom of God? What can the Very Truth, or God the
Word, add to itself? How can the Life or the True Light in any
way be bettered? And is it not still more contrary to nature to
suppose that wisdom can be susceptible of folly? that the power of God
can be united with weakness? that reason itself can be dimmed by
unreasonableness, or that darkness can be mixed with the true light?
Does not the Apostle say, 'What communion hath light with darkness
? and what concord hath Christ with Belial?' and Solomon, that
'the way of a serpent upon a rack' was 'too wonderful' for the human
mind to comprehend, which 'rock,' according to St. Paul, is
Christ. Men and angels, however, who are His creatures, have
received His blessing, enabling them to exercise themselves in virtue
and in obedience to His commands, that thus they may avoid sin. And
it is on this account that our Lord being by nature the Son of the
Father, is worshipped by all; and they who have put off the spirit of
bondage, and by brave deeds and advance in virtue have received the
spirit of adoption through the kindness of Him Who is the Son of God
by nature, by adoption also become sons. "His true, peculiar,
natural, and special Sonship was declared by Paul, who, speaking of
God, says, that 'He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him
up for us, who are not by nature His sons. It was to distinguish
Him from those who are not 'His own,' that he called Him 'His
own son.' It is also written in the Gospel, ' This is My beloved
San in whom I am well pleased;' and in the Psalms the Saviour
says, 'The Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son. By proclaiming
natural sonship He shows that there are no other natural sons besides
Himself.
"And do not these words, I begot thee 'from the womb before the
morning' plainly show the natural sonship of the paternal birth of One
whose lot it is, not from diligence of conduct, or exercise in moral
progress, but by individuality of nature? Hence it ensues that the
filiation of the only-begotten Son of the Father is incapable of
fall; while the adoption of reasonable beings who are not His sons by
nature, but merely on account of fitness of character, and by the
bounty of God, may fall away, as it is written in the word, 'The
sons of God saw the daughters of men, and took them as wives,' and
so forth. And God, speaking by Isaiah, said, 'I have nourished
and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me'
"I have many things to say, beloved, but because I fear that I
shall cause weariness by further admonishing teachers who are of one
mind with myself, I pass them by. You, having been taught of God,
are not ignorant that the teaching at variance with the religion of the
Church which has just arisen, is the same as that propagated by Ebion
and Artemas, and rivals that of Paul of Samosata, bishop of
Antioch, who was excommunicated by a council of all the bishops.
Lucianus, his successor, withdrew himself from communion with these
bishops during a period of many years.
"And now amongst us there have sprung up, 'out of the
non-existent' men who have greedily sucked down the dregs of this
impiety, offsets of the same stock: I mean Arius and Achillas,.
and all their gang of rogues. Three bishops of Syria, appointed no
one knows how, by consenting to them, fire them to more fatal heat.
I refer their sentence to your decision. Retaining in their memory
all that they can collect concerning the suffering, humiliation,
emptying of Himself, and so-called poverty, and everything of which
the Saviour for our sake accepted the acquired name, they bring
forward those passages to disprove His eternal. existence and
divinity, while they forget all those which declare His glory and
nobility and abiding with the Father; as for instance, 'I and My
father are one.' In these words the Lord does not proclaim Himself
to be the Father, neither does He represent two natures as one; but
that the essence of the Son of the Father preserves accurately the
likeness of the Father, His nature taking off the impress of likeness
to Him in all things, being the exact image of the Father and the
express stamp of the prototype. When,. therefore, Philip,
desirous of seeing the Father, said to Him, 'Lord, show us the
Father,' the Lord with abundant plainness said to him, 'He that
hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' as though the Father were
beheld in the spotless and living mirror of His image. The same idea
is conveyed in the Psalms, where the saints say, 'In Thy light we
shall see light.' It is on this account that 'he who honoureth the
Son, honoureth the Father' And rightly, for every impious word
which men dare to utter against the Son is spoken also against the
Father.
"After this no one can wonder at the false calumnies which I am about
to detail, my beloved brethren, propagated by them against me, and
against our most religious people. They not only set their battle in
array against the divinity of Christ, but ungratefully insult us.
They think it beneath them to be compared with any of those of old
time, nor do they endure to be put on a par with the teachers we have
been conversant with from childhood. They will not admit that any of
our fellow-ministers anywhere possess even mediocrity of intelligence.
They say that they themselves alone are the wise and the poor, and
discoverers of doctrines, and to them alone have been revealed those
truths which, say they, have never entered the mind of any other
individuals under the sun. O what wicked arrogance! O what excessive
folly! What false boasting, joined with madness and Satanic pride,
has hardened their impious hearts 'They are not ashamed to oppose the
godly clearness of the ancient scriptures, nor yet does the unanimous
piety of all our fellow-ministers concerning Christ blunt their
audacity. Even devils will not suffer impiety like this; for even
they refrain from speaking blasphemy against the Son of God.
"These then are the questions I have to raise, according to the
ability I possess, with those who from their rude resources throw dust
on the Christ, and try to slander our reverence for Him. These
inventors of silly tales assert that we, who reject their impious and
unscriptural blasphemy concerning the creation of Christ from the
non-existent, teach that there are two unbegotten Beings. For these
ill-instructed men contend that one of these alternatives must hold;
either He must be believed to have come out of the non-existent, or
there are two unbegotten Beings. In their ignorance and want of
practice in theology they do not realize how vast must be the distance
between the Father who is uncreate, and the creatures, whether
rational or irrational, which He created out of the non-existent;
and that the only-begotten nature of Him Who is the Word of God,
by Whom the Father created the universe out of the non-existent,
standing, as it were, in the middle between the two, was begotten of
the self-existent Father, as the Lord Himself testified when He
said, 'Every one that loveth the Father, loveth also the Son that
is begotten of Him.'
"We believe, as is taught by the apostolical Church, in an only
unbegotten Father, Who of His being hath no cause, immutable and
invariable, and Who subsists always in one state of being, admitting
neither of progression nor of diminution; Who gave the law, and the
prophets, and the gospel; of patriarchs and apostles, and of all
saints, Lord: and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, begotten not out of that which is not, but of the
Father, Who is; yet not after the manner of material bodies, by
severance or emanation, as Sabellius and Valentinus taught; but in
an inexpressible and inexplicable manner, according to the saying which
we quoted above, 'Who shall declare His generations?' since no
mortal intellect can comprehend the nature of His Person, as the
Father Himself cannot be comprehended, because the nature of
reasonable beings is unable to grasp the manner in which He was
begotten of the Father..
"But those who are led by the Spirit of truth have no need to learn
these things of me, for the words long since spoken by the Saviour yet
sound in our ears, 'No one knoweth who the Father is but the Son,
and no one knoweth who the Son is but the Father.' We have learnt
that the Son is immutable and unchangeable, all-sufficient and
perfect, like the Father, lacking only His "unbegotten." He is
the exact and precisely similar image of His Father. For it is clear
that the image fully contains everything by which the greater likeness
exists, as the Lord taught us when He said, ' My Father is
greater than I.' And in accordance with this we believe that the
Son always existed of the Father; for he is the brightness of His
glory, and the express image of His Father's Person,.' But let
no one be led by the word 'always' to imagine that the Son is
unbegotten, as is thought by some who have their intellects blinded:
for to say that He was, that He has always been, and that before all
ages, is not to say that He is unbegotten.
"The mind of man could not possibly invent a term expressive of what
is meant by being unbegotten. I believe that you are of this opinion;
and, indeed, I feel confident in your orthodox view that none of
these terms in any way signify the unbegotten. For all the terms
appear to signify merely the extension of time, and are not adequate to
express the divinity and, as it were, the primaeval being of the
only-begotten Son. They were used by the holy men who earnestly
endeavoured to clear up the mystery, and who asked pardon from those
who heard them, with a reasonable excuse for their failure, by saying
'as far as our comprehension has reached.' But if those who allege
that what was 'known in part' has been ' done away, for them,
expect from human lips anything beyond human powers, it is plain that
the terms 'was,' and 'ever,' and 'before all ages,' fall far
short of this expectation. But whatever. they may mean, it is not
the same as 'the unbegotten.' Therefore His own individual dignity
must be reserved to the Father as the Unbegotten One, no one being
called the cause of His existence: to the Son likewise must be given
the honour which befits Him, there being to Him a generation from the
Father which has no beginning; we must render Him worship, as we
have already said, only piously and religiously ascribing to Him the
'was' and the 'ever,' and the ' before all ages;' not however
rejecting His divinity, but ascribing to Him a perfect likeness in
all things to His Father. while at the same time we ascribe to the
Father alone His own proper glory of 'the unbegotten,' even as the
Saviour Himself says, 'My Father is greater than I.'
"And in addition to this pious belief respecting the Father and the
Son, we confess as the Sacred Scriptures teach us, one Holy
Ghost, who moved the saints of the Old Testament, and the divine
teachers of that which is called the New. We believe in one only
Catholic Church, the apostolical, which cannot be destroyed even
though all the world were to take counsel to fight against it, and
which gains the victory over all the impious attacks of the heterodox;
for we are emboldened by the words of its Master, 'Be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world.' After this, we receive the
doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ our
Lord became the first-fruits; Who bore a Body, in truth, not in
semblance, derived from Mary the mother of God in the fulness of time
sojourning among the race, for the remission of sins: who was
crucified and died, yet for all this suffered no diminution of His
Godhead. He rose from the dead, was taken into heaven, and sat down
at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
"In this epistle I have only mentioned these things in part, deeming
it, as I have said, wearisome to dwell minutely on each article,
since they are well known to your pious diligence. These things we
teach, these things we preach; these are the dogmas of the apostolic
Church, for which we are ready to die, caring little for those who
would force us to forswear them; for we will never relinquish our hope
in them, though they should try to compel us by tortures.
"Arius and Achillas, together with their fellow foes, have been
expelled from the Church, because they have become aliens from our
pious doctrine: according to the blessed Paul, who said, 'If any
of you preach any, other gospel than that which you have received, let
him be accursed, even though he should pretend to be an angel from
heaven, and 'But if any man teach otherwise, and consent not to
wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to
the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing
nothing' and so forth. Since, then, they have been condemned by the
brotherhood, let none of you receive them, nor attend to what they say
or write. They are deceivers, and propagate lies, and they never
adhere to the truth. They go about to different cities with no other
intent than to deliver letters under the pretext of friendship and in
the name of peace, and by hypocrisy and flattery to obtain other
letters in return, in order to deceive a few 'silly women who are
laden with sins' I beseech you, beloved brethren, to avoid those who
have thus dared to act against Christ, who have publicly held up the
Christian religion to ridicule, and have eagerly sought to make a
display before judicial tribunals, who have endeavoured to excite a
persecution against us at a period of the most entire peace, and who
have enervated the unspeakable mystery of the generation of Christ.
Unite unanimously in opposition to them, as some of our
fellow-ministers have already done, who, being filled with
indignation, wrote to me against them, and signed our formulary.
"I have sent you these letters by my son Apion, the deacon; being
those of (the ministers in) all Egypt and the Thebaid, also of
those of Libya, and the Pentapolis, of Syria, Lycia,
Pamphylia, Asia, Cappadocia, and in the other adjoining
countries. Whose example you likewise, I trust, will follow. Many
kindly attempts have been made by me to gain back those who have been
led astray, but no remedy has proved more efficacious in restoring the
laity who have been deceived by them and leading them to repentance,
than the manifestation of the union of our fellow-ministers. Salute
one another, with the brotherhood that is with you. I pray that you
may be strong in the Lord, my beloved, anti that I may receive the
fruit of your love to Christ.
"The following are the name of those who have been anathematized as
heretics: among the presbyters, Arius; among the deacons,
Achillas, Euzoius, Aithales, Lucius, Sarmates, Julius,
Menas, another Arius, and Helladius." Alexander wrote in the
same strain to Philogonius, bishop of Antioch, to Eustathius, who
then ruled the church of the Beroeans, and to all those who defended
the doctrines of the Apostles. But Arius could not endure to keep
quiet, but wrote to all those whom he believed to agree with him in
opinion. His letter to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, is a clear
proof that the divine Alexander wrote nothing that was false concerning
him. I shall here insert his letter, in order that the names of those
who were implicated in his impiety may become generally known.
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