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BIOGRAPHYCAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY |
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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
XTHE ARIAN CONTROVERSYIF 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. Adus 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 someone 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 shown
that it is wise for ecclesiastical superiors to give able men of marked power and
originality considerable latitude in the expression of their views.
As time went on, however, it became clear that Alexander must intervene.
Arius was now the enthusiastic advocate of theories which aimed at the very
root of the Christian religion, inasmuch as they denied the essential Godhead
of Christ. It was no longer a case of a daring thinker tentatively hinting at
doctrines which were hardly in accord with established belief. Arius was
devoting himself just to those points where he was at variance with his
fellows, was insisting upon them in season and out of season, and was treating
them as the very essence of Christianity. He had issued his challenge;
Alexander was compelled to take it up. The Patriarch sent for him privately. He
wished either to convince him of his error or to induce him to be silent. But
the interview was of no avail. Arius simply preached the more. Alexander then
summoned a meeting of the clergy of Alexandria, and brought forward for
discussion the accepted doctrine of the Holy Trinity which Arius had
challenged. Arius and his sympathizers were present and the controversy was so
prolonged that the meeting had to be adjourned; when it reassembled, the
Patriarch endeavoured to bring the debate to a close by restating the doctrine
of the Holy Trinity in a form which he hoped would be unanimously approved. But
this merely precipitated an open rupture. For Arius immediately rose and
denounced Alexander for falling into the heresy of Sabellianism and reducing
the Second Person in the Trinity to a mere manifestation of the First.
It is to be remembered that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity—difficult
as it is even now, after centuries of discussion, to state in terms that are
free from all equivocation—must have been far more difficult to state then,
before the Arian controversy had, so to speak, crystallized the exact meaning
of the terms employed. It seems quite clear, moreover, from what subsequently
took place, that Alexander was no match for Arius in dialectical subtlety and
that Arius found it easy to twist his chief's unskilful arguments and
expressions into bearing an interpretation which Alexander had not intended. At
any rate the inevitable result of the conference was that both sides parted in
anger, and Arius continued as before to preach the doctrine that the Son of God
was a creature. For this was the leading tenet of Arianism and the basis of the
whole heresy, that the Son of God was a creature, the first of all creatures,
it is true, and created before the angels and archangels, ineffably superior to
all other creatures, yet still a creature and, as such, ineffably inferior to
the Creator, God the Father Himself.
It does not fall within the scope of this book to discuss in detail the
theological conceptions of Arius and the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. But it
is necessary to say a few words about this new doctrine which was to shake the
world, and to show how it came into being. Arius started from the Sonship of
Christ, and argued thus: If Christ be really, and not simply metaphorically,
the Son of God, and if the Divine Sonship is to be interpreted in the same way
as the relationship between human father and son, then the Divine Father must
have existed before the Divine Son. Therefore, there must have been a time when
the Son did not exist. Therefore, the Son was a creature composed of an essence
or being which had previously not been existent. And inasmuch as the Father was
in essence eternal and ever existent, the Son could not be of the same essence
as the Father. Such was the Arian theory stated in the fewest possible words.
“Its essential propositions”, as Canon Bright has said, “were these two, that
the Son had not existed from eternity and that he differed from other creatures
in degree and not in kind”. There can be nothing more misleading than to
represent the Arian controversy as a futile logomachy, a mere quarrel about
words, about a single vowel even, as Gibbon has done in a famous passage. It
was a vital controversy upon a vital dogma of the Christian Church.
Two years seem to have passed before Bishop Alexander, finding that
Arius was growing bolder in declared opposition, felt compelled to make an
attempt to enforce discipline within his diocese. The insubordinate priest of Baucalis had rejected the personal appeal of his bishop and
disregarded the wishes of a majority of the Alexandrian clergy, and we may
reasonably suppose that his polemics would grow all the more bitter as he
became aware of the rapidly deepening estrangement. He would sharpen the edge
of his sarcasm upon the logical obtuseness of his nominal superiors, for his
appeal was always to reason and to logic. Given my premises, he would say,
where is the flaw in my deductions, and wherein do my syllogisms break down? By
the year 321 Arius was the typical rebellious priest, profoundly
self-confident, rejoicing in controversy, dealing hard blows all around him,
and prepared to stoop to any artifice in order to gain adherents. To win over
the mob, he was ready to degrade his principles to the mob's understanding.
Alexander summoned a provincial synod of a hundred Egyptian and Libyan
bishops to pronounce judgment upon the doctrines and the person of Arius.
Attended by his principal supporters, Arius appeared before the synod and
boldly stood to his guns. He maintained, that is to say, that God had not
always been Father; that the Word was the creature and handiwork of the Father;
that the Son was not like the Father according to substance and was neither the
true Word nor the true Wisdom, having been created by the Word and Wisdom which
are in God; that by His nature He was subject to change like all other rational
creatures; that the Son does not perfectly know either the Father or His own
essence, and that Jesus Christ is not true God. The majority of the bishops
listened with horror as Arius thus unfolded his daring and, in their ears,
blasphemous creed. One of them at length put a searching test question. “If”,
he asked, “the Word of God is subject to change, would it have been possible
for the Word to change, as Satan had changed, from goodness to wickedness?”.
“Yes”, came the answer. Thereupon the synod promptly excommunicated Arius and
his friends, including two bishops, Secundus of
Ptolemais in the Pentapolis and Theonas of Marmorica, together with six priests and six deacons. The
synod also anathematized his doctrines. The Arian heresy had formally begun.
Arius quitted Alexandria and betook himself to Palestine, where he and
his companions received hospitable treatment at the hands of some of the
bishops, notably Eusebius of Caesarea and Paulinus of Tyre. He bore himself
very modestly, assuming the role not of a rebel against authority, but of one
who had been deeply wronged, because he had been grievously misunderstood. He
was no longer the turbulent priest, strong in the knowledge of his intellectual
superiority over his bishop, but a minister of the Church who had been cast out
from among the faithful and whose one absorbing desire was to be restored to
communion. He did not ask his kindly hosts to associate themselves with him.
Ile merely begged that they should use their good offices with Alexander to
effect a reconciliation, and that they should not refuse to treat him as a true
member of the Church. A few, like Macarius of Jerusalem, rejected his overtures,
but a large number of bishops in the Province—if we may so term it—of the
Patriarch of Antioch acceded to his wishes. No doubt Arius presented his case,
when he was suing for recognition and favour, in a very different form from
that in which he had presented it from the rostrum of his church at Baucalis. He was as subtle in his knowledge of the ways of
the world as in his knowledge of the processes of logic. Nevertheless, he
cannot possibly have disguised the main doctrine which he had preached for years—the
doctrine, that is to say, that the Son was inferior to the Father and had been
created by the Father out of a substance other than His own—and the fact that
the champion of such a doctrine received recognition at the hands of so many
bishops seems to prove that the Church had not yet formulated her belief in
respect of this mystery with anything like precision; that theories similar to
those advocated by Arius were rife throughout the East and were by no means
repugnant to the general tendency of its thought.
Arianism would naturally, and did actually, make a most potent appeal to
minds of very varying quality and calibre. It appealed, for example, to those
Christians who had not quite succeeded in throwing off the influences of the
paganism around them, a class obviously large and comprising within it alike
the educated who were under the spell of the religious philosophy of
the—Neo-Platonists, and the uneducated and illiterate who believed, or at any
rate spoke as if they believed, in a multiplicity of gods. To minds, therefore,
still insensibly thinking in terms of polytheism one can understand the
attraction of the leading thought of Arianism, viz., one supreme, eternal,
omnipotent God, God the Father, and a secondary God, God the Son, God and creature
in one, and therefore the better fitted to be intermediary between the
unapproachable God and fallen humanity. For how many long centuries had not the
world believed in demi-gods as it had believed in gods? Arianism, on one side
of its character, enabled men to cast a lingering look behind on an outworn
creed which had not been wholly gross and which had not been too exacting for
human frailty. Moreover, there were many texts in Holy Scripture which seemed
in the most explicit language to corroborate the truth of Arius’s teaching. “My
Father is greater than I,” so Christ had Himself said, and the obvious and
literal meaning of the words seemed entirely inconsistent with any essential
co-equality of Son and Father. The text, of course, is subject to another—if
more recondite—interpretation, but the history of religion has shown that the
origin of most sects has been due to people fastening upon individual texts and
founding upon them doctrines both great and small.
Again,—and perhaps this was the strongest claim that Arianism could put
forward—it appealed to men's pride and belief in the adequacy of their reason.
Mankind has always hungered after a religious system based on reason, founded
in reason; secure against all objectors, something four-square and solid
against all possible assailants. Arianism claimed to provide such a system, and
it unquestionably had the greater appearance—at any rate to a superficial
view—of being based upon irrefutable argument. Canon Bright put the case very
well where he wrote:
“Arianism would appeal to not a few minds by adopting a position
virtually rationalistic, and by promising to secure a Christianity which should
stand clear of philosophical objections, and Catholics would answer by
insisting that the truths pertaining to the Divine Nature must be pre-eminently
matter of adoring faith, that it was rash to speculate beyond the limit of
revelation, and that the Arian position was itself open to criticism from
reason's own point of view. Arians would call on Catholics to be logical, to
admit the prior existence of the Father as involved in the very primary notion
of fatherhood; to halt no more between a premise and a conclusion, to exchange
their sentimental pietism for convictions sustainable by argument. And
Catholics would bid them in turn remember the inevitably limited scope of human
logic in regard to things divine and would point out the sublime uniqueness of
the divine relation called Fatherhood”.
If we consider the subsequent history of the Arian doctrine, its continual
rebirth, the permanent appeal which, in at least some of its phases, it makes
to certain types of intellect including some of the loftiest and shrewdest,
there can be no reason for surprise that Arius met with so much recognition and
sympathy, even among those who refused him their active and definite support.
Alexander was both troubled and annoyed to find that so many of the Eastern
bishops took Arius's part, and he sent round a circular letter of remonstrance
which had the effect of arousing some of these kindly ecclesiastics to a sense
of the danger which lurked in the Arian doctrine. But Arius was soon to find
his ablest and most influential champion in the person of another Eusebius,
Bishop of Nicomedia in Bithynia. This Eusebius had been Bishop of Berytus (Beyrout), and it has
been thought that he owed his translation from that see to the more important
one of Nicomedia to the influence of Constantia, sister of Constantine and wife
of Licinius. He had, at any rate, been sufficiently astute to obtain the
good-will of Constantine on the fall of his old patron and he stood well with
the court circle.
He and Arius were old friends, for they had been fellow-pupils of the
famous Lucian of Antioch. It has been suggested that Eusebius was rather the
teacher than the pupil of Arius, but probably neither word expresses the true
relationship. They were simply old friends who thought very much alike. Arius's
letter to Eusebius asking for his help is one of the most interesting documents
of the period. Arius writes with hot indignation of the persecution to which he
has been subjected by Alexander, who, he says, had expelled him and his friends
from Alexandria as impious atheists because they had refused to subscribe to
the outrageous doctrines which the Bishop professed. He then gives in brief his
version of Alexander's teaching and of his own, which he declares is that of
Eusebius of Caesarea and all the Eastern bishops, with the exception of a few.
“We are persecuted”, he continues, “because we have said, the Son has a
beginning, but God is without a beginning, and the Son is made of that which is
not, and the Son is not part of God nor is he of any substance”. It is the
letter of a man angry at what he conceives to be the harsh treatment meted out
to him, and it has the ring of honesty about it, for even , though it distorts
the views put forward by Alexander, there never yet was a convinced theologian
who stated his opponent’s case precisely as that opponent would state it for
himself.
We have not Eusebius's answer to this letter, the closing sentence of
which begged him as “a true fellow-pupil of Lucian” not to fail him. But we
know at least that it was favourable, for we next find Arius at Nicomedia
itself, under the wing of the popular and powerful Bishop, who vigorously stood
up for his friend. Eusebius wrote more than once to Alexander pleading the
cause of the banished presbyter, and Arius himself also wrote to his old
Bishop, restating his convictions and reopening the entire question in a
temperate form. The tone of that letter certainly compares most favourably with
that of the famous document which Alexander addressed to his namesake at
Byzantium, warning him to be on guard against Arius and his friends. He can
find no epithets strong enough in which to describe them. They are possessed of
the Devil, who dwells in them and goads them to fury; they are jugglers and
tricksters, clever conjurors with seductive words; they are brigands who have
built lairs for themselves wherein day and night they curse Christ and the
faithful; they are no better than the Jews or Greeks or pagans, whose good
opinion they eagerly covet, joining them in scoffing at the Catholic doctrine
and stirring up faction and persecution. The Bishop in his fury even declares
that the Arians are threatening lawsuits against the Church at the instance of
disorderly women whom they have led astray, and accuses them of seeking to make
proselytes through the agency of the loose young women of the town. In short,
they have torn the unbroken tunic of Christ. And so on throughout the letter.
The historians of the Church have done the cause of truth a poor service
in concealing or glossing over the outrageous language employed by the
Patriarch, whose violence raises the suspicion that he must have been conscious
of the weakness of his own dialectical power in thus disqualifying his
opponents and ruling them out of court as a set of frantic madmen. “What
impious arrogance”, he exclaims. “What measureless madness! What vainglorious
melancholy! What a devilish spirit it is that indurates their unholy souls!”.
Even when every allowance is made, this method of conducting a controversy
creates prejudice against the person employing it. It is, moreover, in the very
sharpest contrast with the method employed by Arius, and with the tenor of the
letter written by Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus of Tyre, praying him to
write to “My lord, Alexander”. Eusebius hotly resented the tone of the
Patriarch’s letter, and, summoning a synod of Bithynian bishops, laid the whole
matter before them for discussion. Sympathizing with Arius, these bishops
addressed a circular letter “to all the bishops throughout the Empire”, begging
them not to deny communion to the Arians and also to seek to induce Alexander
to do the same. Alexander, however, stood out for unconditional surrender.
Arius returned to Palestine where three bishops permitted him to hold
services for his followers, and the wordy war continued. Alexander drew up a
long encyclical which he addressed “to all his fellow-workers of the universal
Catholic Church”, couched in language not quite so violent as that which he had
employed in writing to the Bishop of Byzantium, yet denouncing the Arians in no
measured terms as “lawless men and fighters against Christ, teaching an
apostasy which one may rightly describe as preparing the way for anti-Christ”.
In it he attacks Eusebius of Nicomedia by name, accusing him of “believing that
the welfare of the Church depended upon his nod”, and of championing the cause
of Arius not because he sincerely believed the Arian doctrine so much as in
order to further his own ambitious interests. Evidently, this was not the first
time that the two prelates had been at variance, and private animosities
accentuated their doctrinal differences. The more closely the original
authorities are studied, the more evident is the need for caution in accepting
the traditional character sketches of Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia.
Alexander declares that he is prostrated with sorrow at the thought that Arius
and his friends are eternally lost, after having once known the truth and
denied it. But he adds, “I am not surprised. Did not Judas betray his Master
after being a disciple?”. We are skeptical of
Alexander’s sorrow. He closes his letter with a plea for the absolute
excommunication of the Arians. Christians must have nothing to do with the
enemies of Christ and the destroyers of souls. They must not even offer them
the compliment of a morning salutation. To say “Good-morning” to an Arian was
to hold communication with the lost. Such a manifesto merely added fuel to the
fire, and the two parties drew farther and farther apart.
Nor was Arius idle. It must have been about this time that he composed
the notorious poem, Thalia, in which he embodied his doctrines. He
selected the metre of a pagan poet, Sotades of Crete,
of whom we know nothing save that his verses had the reputation of being
exceedingly licentious. Arius did this of deliberate purpose. His object was to
popularize his doctrines. Sotades had a vogue; Arius
desired one. What he did was precisely similar to what in our own time the
Salvation Army has done in setting its hymns to the popular tunes and
music-hall ditties of the day. This was at first a cause of scandal to many
worthy people, who now admit the cleverness and admire the shrewdness of the
idea. Similarly, Arius got people to sing his doctrines to the very tunes to
which they had previously sung the indecencies of Sotades.
He wrote ballads, so we are told by Philostorgius—the one Arian historian who
has survived—for sailors, millers, and travellers. But it is certainly
difficult to understand their popularity, judging from the isolated fragments
which are quoted by Athanasius in his First Discourse Against the Arians (chap. XI). According to Athanasius, the Talia opened as follows :
“According to faith of God’s elect, God’s prudent ones, Holy children,
rightly dividing, God’s Holy Spirit receiving, Have I learned this from the
partakers of wisdom, Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.
Along their track have I been walking, with like opinions. I am very famous,
the much suffering for God's glory, And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom
and knowledge”.
It is rather the unspeakable tediousness and frigidity of this exordium
than its arrogant impiety that strike the modern reader. Athanasius then
proceeds to quote examples of Arius’s “repulsive and most impious mockeries”.
For example, “God was not always a Father; there was once a time when God was
alone and was not yet a Father. But afterwards He became a Father”. Or, “the
Son was not always”, or “the Word is not very God, but by participation in
Grace, He, as all others, is God only in name”. If these are good specimens of
what Athanasius calls “the fables to be found in Arius's jocose composition”,
the standard of the jocose or the ridiculous must have altered greatly. Why
such a poem should have been called the Thalia or “Merrymaking”, it is
hard to conceive.
Yet, one can understand how the ribald wits of Alexandria gladly seized
upon this portentous controversy and twisted its prominent phrases into the
catch-words of the day. There is a passage in Gregory of Nyssa bearing on this
subject which has frequently been quoted.
“Every corner of Constantinople”, he says, “was full of their
discussions, the streets, the market-place, the shops of the money-changers and
the victuallers. Ask a tradesman how many obols he wants for some article in
his shop, and he replies with a disquisition on generated and ungenerated being. Ask the price of bread today, and the
baker tells you. The Son is subordinate to the Father. Ask your servant if the
bath is ready and he makes answer, The Son arose out of nothing. Great is the
only Begotten, declared the Catholics, and the Arians rejoined, But greater is
He that begot”.
It was a subject that lent itself to irreverent jesting and cheap
profanity. The baser sort of Arians appealed to boys to tell them whether there
were one or two Ingenerates, and to women to say whether a son could exist
before he was born. Even in the present day, any theological doctrine which has
the misfortune to become the subject of excited popular debate is inevitably
dragged through the mire by the ignorant partisanship and gross scurrilities of
the contending factions. We may be sure that the “Ariomaniacs”—as
they are called—were neither worse nor better than the champions of the
Catholic side, and the result was tumult and disorder. In fact, says Eusebius
of Caesarea, "in every city bishops were engaged in obstinate conflict
with bishops, people rose against people, and almost, like the fabled Symplegades, came into violent collision with each other.
Nay, some were so far transported beyond the bounds of reason as to be guilty
of reckless and outrageous conduct and even to insult the statues of the
Emperor."
Constantine felt obliged to intervene and addressed a long letter to
Alexander and Arius, which he confided to the care of his spiritual adviser,
Osius, Bishop of Cordova, bidding him go to Alexandria in person and do what he
could to mediate between the disputants. We need not give the text in full.
Constantine began with his usual exordium. His consuming passion, he said, was
for unity of religious opinion, as the precursor and best guarantee of peace.
Deeply disappointed by Africa, he had hoped for better things from “the bosom
of the East”, whence had arisen the dawn of divine light. Then he continues :
“But Ah! glorious and Divine Providence, what a wound was inflicted not
alone on my ears but on my heart, when I heard that divisions existed among
yourselves, even more grievous than those of Africa, so that you, through whose
agency I hoped to bring healing to others, need a remedy worse than they. And
yet, after making careful enquiry into the origin of these discussions, I find
that the cause is quite insignificant and entirely disproportionate to such a
quarrel. I gather then that the present controversy originated as follows. For
when you, Alexander, asked each of the presbyters what he thought about a
certain passage in the Scriptures, or rather what he thought about a certain
aspect of a foolish question, and you, Arius, without due consideration laid
down propositions which never ought to have been conceived at all, or, if
conceived, ought to have been buried in silence, dissension arose between you;
communion was forbidden; and the most holy people, torn in twain, no longer
preserved the unity of a common body”.
The Emperor then exhorts them to let both the unguarded question and the
inconsiderate answer be forgotten and forgiven. The subject, he says, never
ought to have been broached, but there is always mischief found for idle hands
to do and idle brains to think. The difference between you, he insists, has not
arisen on any cardinal doctrine laid down in the Scriptures, nor has any new
doctrine been introduced. “You hold one and the same view”; reunion, therefore,
is easily possible. So little does the Emperor appreciate the importance of the
questions at issue, that he goes on to quote the example of the pagan
philosophers who agree to disagree on details, while holding the same general
principles. How then, he asks, can it be right for brethren to behave towards
one another like enemies because of mere trifling and verbal differences?
"Such conduct is vulgar, childish, and petulant, ill-befitting priests of
God and men of sense. It is a wile and temptation of the Devil. Let us have
done with it. If we cannot all think alike on all topics, we can at least all
be united on the great essentials. As far as regards divine Providence, let
there be one faith and one understanding, one united opinion in reference to
God." And then the letter concludes with the passionate outburst:
“Restore me then my quiet days and untroubled nights, that I may retain
my joy in the pure light and, for the rest of my days, enjoy the gladness of a
peaceful life. Else I needs must groan and be diffused wholly in tears, and
know no comfort of mind till I die. For while the people of God, my
fellow-servants, are thus torn asunder in unlawful and pernicious controversy,
how can I be of tranquil mind?”
Some have seen in this letter proof of the Emperor's consummate wisdom,
and have described its language as golden and the triumph of common sense. It
seems to us a complete exposure of his profound ignorance of the subject in
which he had interfered. It was easy to say that the question should not have
been raised. Quieta non movere is an
excellent motto in theology as in politics. But this was precisely one of those
questions which, when once raised, are bound to go forward to an issue. The
time was ripe for it. It suited the taste and temper of the age, and the
resultant storm of controversy, so easily stirred up, was not easily allayed. For
Constantine to tell Alexander and Arius that theirs was merely a verbal quarrel
on an insignificant and non-essential point, or that they were really of one
and the same mind, and held one and the same view on all essentials, was
grotesquely absurd. The question at issue was none other than the Divine Nature
of the Son of God. If theology is of any value or importance at all, it is
impossible to conceive a more essential problem.
XITHE COUNCIL OF NICEA
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