ARIANS

(See Councils .) Heretics, so named from Arius, their first founder: they denied the three persons in the Holy Trinity to be of the same e ence, and affirmed the Word to be a creature, and that once (although before the beginning of time ) he was not. They were condemned by the Council of Nice, in 325. The doctrine of Arius may be thus stated:—The Son sprang not from the nature of the Father , but was created from nothing: he had, indeed, an existence before the world, even before time, but not from eternity. He is, therefore, in e ence different from the Father , and is in the order of creatures, whom he, however, precedes in excellence, as God created all things, even time, by his instrumentality; whence he was called the Son of God , the Logos, or Word of God . As a creature the Son is perfect, and as like to the Father as a creature can be to the Creator. But as he has received all things as a gift, from the favour of the Father ,—as there was a period in which he was not,—so there is an infinite distance between him and the nature of the Father ; of which nature he cannot even form a perfect idea, but can enjoy only a defective knowledge of the same. His will was originally variable, capable of good and of evil, as is that of all other rational creatures: he is, comparatively at least, free from sin; not by nature, but by his good use of his power of election; the Father , therefore, foreseeing his perseverance in good, imparted to him that dignity and sublimity above all other creatures, which shall continue to be the reward of his virtues. Although he is called God , he is not so in truth, but was deified in that sense in which men, who have attained to a high degree of sanctity, may arrive at a participation of the Divine prerogatives. The idea then of a generation of the Son from the e ence of the Father is to be absolutely rejected. This doctrine, which must have corresponded to the superficial understandings, and to the yet half-pagan ideas, of many who then called themselves Christians, attacked the very soul of the Christian doctrine of the redemption; for, according to this doctrine, it was not God made man, but a changeable creature, who effected the great work of the redemption of fallen man. The devout Christian, to whom faith in the God-man, Christ , the only Divine Mediator, opened the way to an intimate union with God , saw by this doctrine that his Redeemer and Mediator was as infinitely removed from the e ence of God as himself; he saw himself driven back to the ancient pagan estrangement from God , and removed to an unattainable distance from him.—See Maimbourg, Hist. of Arians. For an account of the revival of Arianism in the last century , see Van Mildert’s Life of Water land .