pressions he has uttered, in affirming, that the Son of God sprang from nothing, and that there was a time when he was not; saying, moreover, that the Son of God was possessed of free-will, so as to be capable either of vice or virtue; and calling him a creature and a work. All these sentiments the holy Synod has anathematized. So contagious has his pestilential error proved, as to involve, in the same perdition, Theonas, bishop of Marmarica, and Secundus of Ptolemais; for they have suffered the same condemnation as himself."[1]
"It should be here observed," says Socrates, "that Arius had written a treatise on his own opinion, which he entitled 'Thalia;'[2] but the character
- ↑ See the same letter as quoted by Theodoret, who renders it somewhat differently from Socrates, though not very essentially so.
- ↑ This work was written by Arius subsequently to his excommunication by the Alexandrian Synod of A. D. 321, according to some authorities. Philostorgius says, he wrote also a collection of songs for sailors, millers, and pilgrims,—an old expedient for spreading religious opinions among the common people, as Neander observes. Milman, in Gibbon's Rome, notes the fact thus: "Arius appears to have been the first, who availed himself of this means of impressing his doctrines on the popular ear, beguiling the ignorant, as Philostorgius terms it, by the sweetness of his music, into the impiety of his doctrines."
According to Sozomen, "Arian singers used to parade the streets of Constantinople by night, till Chrysostom arrayed against them a band of Orthodox choristers."—Soz. B., viii. chap. 8.
St. Ambrose composed hymns in Latin to the glory to the Trinity, for the people to sing in churches, A. D. 374.—See Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church.
An old rhetorican at Rome, named Fabius Marius Victorinus, composed hymns to advance the Orthodox Trinitarian cause.
The following lines are the beginning of one of old Victorinus' hymns, as I find them printed in Patrologiæ, viii. 1159:
Hymnus Primus.
Adesto, lumen verum, pater omnipotens, Deus.
Adesto, lumen luminis, mysterium et virtus Dei.
Adesto, sancte spiritus, patris, et filii copula.
