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In the conclusion, the tenets of Arians were thus explicitly anathematized, including the position of the mutability of the Son of God, which Arius seems at some time to have disavowed:-Tous dè Xéyovtovs, ὅτι ἦν ποτὲ ὅτε οὐκ ἦν, καὶ πρὶν γεννηθῆναι οὐκ ἦν, καὶ ὅτε ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐγένετο, ἢ ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας φάσκοντας εἶναι, ἢ κτιστὸν, ἢ τρεπτὸν, ἢ ἀλλοιωτὸν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀναθεματίζει ἡ ἁγία καθολικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ ἐκκλησία.

Having disposed of the main question for which they had been convened, the council did not separate without settling the dispute which had long unhappily existed respecting the celebration of Easter, and enacting a series of canons respecting the discipline of the Church. Their decision was immediately followed by the imperial edict, which, after assimilating the perverseness of Arius to that of Porphyry, and designating his followers by the opprobrious appellation of Porphyrians, condemned his books to the flames, and exiled those who refused to subscribe the synodial decree. Some of the Arian party now pretended to admit the insignificance of the point in dispute, compared with the importance of preserving the unity of the Church; and contrived, by an unworthy artifice, to avoid the alternative which awaited them. By the insertion of a single letter, the confession of faith which they presented to the council was made to represent the Son, not as opoovorov, of the same essence, but as oporovolov, of a like essence, with the Father. For this act of duplicity Eusebius of Nicomedia was severely upbraided by one of the more honest of the party; but the majority complied with the urgency of the case, and submitted, with this reservation, to the will of the emperor.

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After the death of Constantine, his three sons, who succeeded to the empire, took different sides in the Arian contest. Constantius espoused the Arians; while his brothers maintained the decrees of the council of Nice. The younger Constantine, who ruled in Gaul, sent back Athanasius to his see with every mark of respect, in accordance, as he said, with the declared intention of his father. By the death of his patron, however, the bishop was again thrown into the power of Constantius and when the murder of Constantius, in the year 350, placed the greater part of the Western Empire under his control, his deposition was again effected with every additional circumstance of violence and injustice. He retired into the deserts of the Thebais; and there, with a price set upon his head, and suffering the most cruel privation, his courage never forsook him, nor did he relax, in the place of his seclusion, his opposition to the heretical faction. In the mean time, Constantius, not content with individual persecution, compelled or seduced many others of the Clergy into compliance; and, among the rest, the pious and exemplary Hosius, weighed down by the infirmities of a hundred years, was reluctantly persuaded to sign the Arian confession. Such proceedings had the effect of disgusting every sincere Christian; and, on the death of Constantius, the influence of the Arians sensibly decreased. Athanasius returned to his bishopric; and, though forced again to retire by the apostate Julian, he was formally reinstated by his successor Jovian, under whose auspices the Nicene confession was again received throughout all the western and most of the eastern provinces of the empire. In the joint reign of Valentinian and Valens, Athanasius was again

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induced to withdraw from the persecution of the latter, who favoured the Arians; but the popular feeling was so strong against the party that he was speedily recalled. During his absence he had taken refuge in the sepulchre of his father. Gratian used every exertion to annihilate the Arians; and Athanasius lived to see the true doctrine of the cross established beyond the power of his enemies. He died in peace, in the year 373, and was buried in Alexandria.

Among the causes which tended to bring Arianism into disrepute, the divisions among the members of the sect were not the least influential. The different modifications of their creed were exceedingly numerous. Those who conformed to the genuine tenet of their founder, denied altogether the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, and maintained that their essences were totally distinct and dissimilar. Hence they were called also Anomorans; and, from one of their most eminent teachers, Eunomians. Between these and the Semi-Arians, called also Eusebians, from Eusebius of Nicomedia, the distinction seems to have been rather nominal than real. They communicated with the Arians; and, although they admitted the perfect likeness of the Father and the Son for the sake of eluding the decree of the council of Nice, they equally denied their consubstantiality. From this peculiarity, which seems at least to have originated in intrigue, they were denominated Homoiousians, in opposition to the Catholician Homoousians. There were also various subdivisions of this branch; among whom were the Douliani, who maintained that the Son was the servant of the Father; and the Acacians, who simply asserted a likeness of the Father and the Son, without specifying a similitude of substance. Acacius, the leader of these last, afterwards retreated, and subscribed to the orthodox faith. Besides these principal denominations, into which the heresy was broken, it included also the Aetrans, Psathyrians, and various others, whom it is needless to particularize. It may be proper, however, to mention that, about the middle of the fourth century, Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, introduced in the Arian, or rather Semi-Arian creed, a denial of the divinity of the third Person of the Trinity, whom he asserted to be ктɩσrìv, a creature. The arguments by which he supported his opinion were precisely similar to those which the Arians employed against the divinity of the Son. His followers were also

called Pneumatomachians.

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On the accession of Theodosius the Great to the imperial dignity, declared himself unequivocally in favour of the orthodox creed, and asserted his resolution to sanction no other religion within his dominion than that which acknowledged the essential unity of the Son with the Father and the Holy Ghost. In accordance with his view, the second Ecumenical Council was summoned at Constantinople in 381, at which 150 bishops assembled. It was the main object of this council to confirm the decision of the council of Nice, to condemn the Macedonian heresy, which impugned the divinity and distinct personality of the Holy Spirit. From this period Arianism dwindled into complete insignificance; and, at the close of the fourth century, with the exception of a few individuals who privately professed its forsaken creed, it had literally disappeared throughout the whole extent of the Roman Empire. It survived till a later period among the Goths and Vandals, who had

overrun the western provinces; and in the fifth century had found its way, not only into Gaul, but into various parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The early Saxon churches seem to have been only slightly infected by it; though Bede (Lib. I. 8.) plainly intimates the existence of the heresy among them. Towards the end of the seventh century it reappeared in Italy for a short time, among the Lombards; but from that period little was heard of it, till its revival in England in the beginning of the last century. In 1531, Servetus, a Spanish physician, gave a momentary impulse to Arian opinions in the west; but he was burnt as a heretic, at the instigation of Calvin, who subsequently refuted his theory, which a few of his followers carried to Geneva. Grotius also, and Erasmus, have been accused of favouring the tenet of Arius; but the latter, at least, disavowed the charge. Nulla hæresis, he observes, magis extincta est, quam Arianorum.

In our next paper we shall speak of the rise and progress of Arianism in England.

OBSERVATIONS ON MR. BINNEYS ADDRESS.

MR. EDITOR, After the able review of the Episcopo - Dissento Address of Mr. Binney, with which your readers were favoured last month, it may scarcely be thought necessary to occupy your pages with a further notice of that gentleman; but his ignorance is in reality so great, and his impudence so marvellous, that I must beg the favour of your inserting my few "Observations."

T. Binney, a few years ago, appeared before the public in the character of a biographer of a Mr. Morrel, an independent minister of the "Congregational order." Well do I remember the impression made on my mind, when I opened on the frontispiece, a profile of the subject of the Memoir. I verily thought that we were about to read the adventures of some first-rate Bond-street exquisite, adorned with "hair erect and glasses on." Mr. Binney's hero, however, it appeared, was a martyr of the "voluntary system:"—for I found there innuendos, that the said Mr. Morrel had died of a broken-heart, in consequence of the pious treatment received from some humble-minded "lord-deacon" and "church-members." A perusal of the Memoir will give its readers some insight into the delectabilities of the "in-dependent" scheme, and confirm a charge against the "lord-deacons" and "members," advanced by a prophet of their own ;—that the "in-dependent ministers," "in presence of some of their lay-tyrants, are only permitted to peep and mutter from the dust."*

The time which intervened between the birth of the "Biography" and that of the "Address," afforded the parent a sufficient opportunity of waxing wiser, by more closely and impartially investigating the charges which, in the former production, he had made against the Church of England. His admission, that he had advanced those charges without having sufficiently weighed them, had led some simple-hearted folks to

*James's Church Member's Guide, 1st edit. p. 60.

hope, that T. Binney would have profited by the indiscretion of a rash step. There is no standing still in the path of wisdom or of folly: and if Mr. Binney has not progressed in wisdom's way, the "Address" indicates that he has not been stationary in the way of folly.

The "Address was delivered on laying the first stone of the New King's Weigh-house." I am not certain whether the expression denotes the "Weigh-house" of "the New King," or "the New Weigh-house of the King." The solution of my doubt is immaterial. Only I wish that, if "the King's Weigh-house" is to be used for the purpose of weighing the merits or demerits of the Church, a more competent and a more honest officer than T. Binney may be appointed.

I had not proceeded through many lines of the "Address," before I discovered the same lack of common honesty that is discoverable in every dissenting publication, which impugns the Articles, Services, or Constitution of the English Church. "As we are assembled this day to lay the foundation of an edifice sacred to religion—a structure, intended for the use of a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God will be preached, and the sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance." Here we have a garbled quotation from the Nineteenth Article of the Church; but "T. Binney" found it convenient to cut the Article short. Why so? He, probably, had some misgiving as to the compatibility of the residue of the sentence with the authority of dissenting teachers. "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same."--Art. XIX. One of "all those things" is a regularly ordained and authorized ministry,-such as is not to be found in the "Congregational order."

Dissenters, when attempting to fix on the Church the charge and the odium of ruling men's conscience in matters of faith, independently of God's holy word, resort to a similar subterfuge: for they quote only a few words of the Twentieth Article,—" Of the authority of the Church.” "The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith." This is all of this article which dissenting writers set before their readers: and the proposition, unqualified by what follows, is full to the purpose of dissenting controversialists. "The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing contrary to the same, so, beside the same, ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation." With this compare the Sixth Article: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." We know not whether a 66 Congregational Church" does, or does not interfere "in controversies of faith;" or whether some shorter method be or be not

adopted to settle such "controversies," by submitting to the unquestioned "authority" of some 66 lord-deacon," whom Mr. James, a dissenting writer, designates as "the patron of the living, the Bible of the minister, and the wolf of the flock," "who thinks that, in virtue of his office, his opinion is to be law in all matters of church-government, whether temporal or SPIRITUAL.

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In the "Address," Mr. Binney tells us, that "the principle of persecution was formerly common to all sects.' "The Catholics persecuted the Protestants;-the Protestants, the Catholics;-and one class of Protestants, another." From the persecuting Protestants, Mr. Binney has excluded 66 one class,❞—the Independents. This class, the zealous preachers of " civil and religious liberty," never dreamed of persecuting any other body of Christians, who might take the liberty of thinking for themselves. So Master Binney would have us opine. There are, however, some querish facts on record since the halcyon days of the regicide Cromwell,—the great champion of "civil and religious liberty." During the alternately usurped ascendency of the Presbyterians and Independents under Cromwell, Episcopalians were not permitted to worship God after the manner of their forefathers, and the dictate of their own conscience; and a penalty of five pounds sterling was inflicted on any person, in whose possession THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER WAS FOUND. It was the ardent love of "civil and religious liberty," that inwardly moved the Regicide and his religious fanatics, to deprive the Clergy of their churches, their homes, and their bread, and of the means of honestly earning their daily sustenance: for they were not permitted even to keep schools for the maintenance of themselves and starving families. The same love of "civil and religious liberty" now warms and invigorates the many christianly publications of Dissenters, especially those of the "Ecclesiastical Knowledge" Society, which are circulated with so great an assiduity throughout the land.

"All the evils of persecution have arisen from the notion-fundamentally false, but once universally admitted,—that religion is to be established and supported by the State."-"This has been the fruitful source of every enormity. Had Christianity never been allied to the State, persecution never could have existed or prevailed." So saith T. Binney. Now, we ask, is it at all credible, that any man, pretending to be the minister of the gospel,- -an instructor of others,-and a writer of Biographies and Addresses, can be so consummately ignorant of Church history, or so audaciously determined to pervert the truths of that history, as to venture on publishing such monstrous falsehoods as those which we have just quoted from the "Address." Was the alliance of the Church and State" the fruitful source of every enormity," whether heresy in doctrine, or persecution with fire and sword, which "existed" and " prevailed" in the first three centuries of the Church of Christ, when no such alliance existed? And in subsequent ages, and in different nations, when and where " Christianity had never been allied to the State," were the cruel immolations of the almost numberless martyrs for the truth as it is in Jesus, to be ascribed to the support

* James's Church Member's Guide, 1st edit. pp. 146, 147.

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