ARIANISM

ARIANISM, or Arianism,an ancient Heresy in the Church, broached by Arius, in the beginning of the fourth Century. See ARIAN.

He denied that the Son was God consubstantial and coequal with the Father. He owned that the Son was the Word, but denied that Word to have been eternal; asserting that it had only been created before all other Beings—See TRINITY, SON, FATHER, etc.



This Heresy was condemned in the first Council of Nice in 325; but notwithstanding that, was not extinguished:On the contrary, it became the reigning Religion, especially in the East, where it obtained much more than in the West.

—At the Time of St. Gregory Nazianzen, the Arians were Masters of the Capital City of the Empire, and frequently upbraided the Orthodox with the Smallness of their Numbers. Accordingly, that Father begins his 25th Oration against the Arians, thus: Where are those who reproach us with our Poverty, and define the Church by the Multitude of People; despising the little Flock, &c.

Arianism was carried into Africa under the Vandals; and into Asia under the Goths: Italy, the Gauls, and Spain, were also deeply infected with it. But having reigned 30 Years with great Splendor, it sunk almost all at once.

Erasmus seemed to have aimed, in some measure, to restore Arianism, at the beginning of the 16th Century; in his Commentaries on the New Testament: Accordingly, he was reproached by his Adversaries, with Arian Interpretations and Glosses, Arian Tenets, &c. To which he made little Answer, save that there was no Heresy more thoroughly extinct than that of the Arians: Nulla Heresis magis extinta quam Arianorum.

But the Face of Things was soon changed: Servetus, a Spaniard by Nation, published in 1531, a little Treatise against the Mystery of the Trinity; which once more set the Heresy of the Arians on foot in the West.—Indeed he rather showed himself a Photinian, than an Arian; only that he made use of the same Passages of Scripture, and the same Arguments against the Divinity of our Saviour; with the proper Arians. See SERVETUS.

'Tis true, Servetus had not, properly speaking, any Disciples; but he gave occasion, after his Death, to the forming of a new System of Arianism in Geneva, much subtler and more artful than his, and which did not a little perplex Calvin—From Geneva the new Arians removed to Poland, where they gained considerable Ground; but at length degenerated, in great measure, into Socinians. See SOCINIAN.

The learned Grotius himself, seems to have bordered a little on Arianism, in his Notes on the New Testament; where he mounts the Father too high above the Son; as if the Father alone were supreme God, and the Son inferior to him even in respect of his Divinity. And yet 'tis rather the Doctrine of the Semi-Arians, than of the Arians, that he seems to give into.—In England, the Progress of Arianism, or rather Eusebianism, is too recent, to need a Detail,

ARIANISM