CENT. III. opinion, that the person of the Father had assumed

Beryllus.

Paul of
Samosata.

the human nature of Christ; whereas Sabellius maintained, that a certain energy only, proceeding from the Supreme Parent, or a certain portion of the divine nature, was united to the Son of God, the man Jesus; and he considered, in the same manner, the Holy Ghost, as a portion of the everlasting Father i Hence it appears, that the Sabellians, though they might with justice be called Patripassians, were yet called so by the ancients in a different sense from that in which this name was given to the Noetians.

XIV. At this same period, Beryllus an Arabian, bishop of Bozrah, and a man of eminent piety and learning, taught that Christ, before his birth, had no proper subsistence, nor any other divinity, than that of the Father; which opinion, when considered with attention, amounts to this: that Christ did not exist before Mary, but that a spirit issuing from God himself, and therefore superior to all human souls, as being a portion of the divine nature, was united to him, at the time of his birth. Beryllus, however, was refuted by Origen, with such a victorious power of argument and zeal, that he yielded up the cause, and returned into the bosom of the church ..

XV. Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, and also a magistrate, or civil judge, was very different from the pious and candid Beryllus, both in point of morals and doctrine. He was a vain and arrogant man, whom riches had rendered insolent and self-sufficient1.

i Almost all the historians, who give accounts of the ancient heresies, have made particular mention of Sabellius. Among others, see Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. vi. cap. vi. p. 252. Athanas. Lib. de sententiâ Dionysii. All the passages of the ancient authors, relating to Sabellius, are carefully collected by the learned Christopher Wormius, in his Historia Sabelliana.

Euseb. lib. vi. cap. xx. xxxiii. Hieronym. Catalog. Scriptor. Eccles. cap. lx. Socrates, Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. сар. vii. ; and, among the moderns, le Clerc, Ars Critica, vol. i. part ii. sect. i. cap. xiv. Chauffepied, Nouveau Diction. Hist. et Crit. tom. i. i Euseb. lib. vii. cap. xxx.

He introduced great confusion and trouble into the CENT. III. eastern churches, by his new explication of the doctrine of the Gospel concerning the nature of God and Christ, and left behind him a sect, that assumed the title of Paulians, or Paulianists. As far as we can judge of his doctrine, by the accounts of it that have been transmitted to us, it seems to have amounted to this: "That the Son and the Holy Ghost exist in "God, in the same manner as the faculties of reason "and activity do in man; that Christ was born a mere man; but that the reason or wisdom of the "Father descended into him, and by him wrought "miracles upon earth, and instructed the nations; "and finally, that, on account of this union of the "divine word with the man Jesus, Christ might, "though improperly, be called God."

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Such were the real sentiments of Paul. He involved them, however, in such deep obscurity, by the ambiguous forms of speech with which he affected to explain and defend them, that, in several councils convoked for an inquiry into his errors, he could not be convicted of heresy. At length, however, a council was assembled in the year 269, in which Malchion, the rhetorician, drew him forth from his obscurity, detected his evasions, and exposed him in his true colors; in consequence of which he was degraded from the episcopal order m.

XVI. It was not only in the point now mentioned, Absurdities that the doctrine of the Gospel suffered, at this time, of some from the erroneous fancies of wrong-headed doctors; losophers. for there sprang up now, in Arabia, a certain sort of minute philosophers, the disciples of a master, whose obscurity has concealed him from the knowlege of after-ages, who denied the immortality of the soul, and believed that it perished with the body; but maintained, at the same time, that it was to be recalled to life with the body, by the power of God.

m

Epistol. Concil. Antioch. ad Paulum in Bibliothecâ Patrum, tom. xi. p. 302. Dionysii Alex. Ep. ad Paulum. Decem Pauli Samosateni Quæstiones.

CENT. II. The philosophers, who held this opinion, were denominated Arabians from their country. Origen was called from Egypt, to make head against this rising sect, and disputed against them, in a full council, with such remarkable success, that they abandoned their erroneous sentiments, and returned to the received doctrine of the church.

The troubles excited in

XVII. Among the sects that arose in this centhe church tury, we place that of the Novatians the last. This by the Nova-sect cannot be charged with having corrupted the tians. doctrine of Christianity by their opinions; their

crime was, that, by the unreasonable severity of their discipline, they gave occasion to the most deplorable divisions, and made an unhappy schism in the church. Novatian, a presbyter of the church of Rome, a man of uncommon learning and eloquence, but of an austere and rigid character, entertained the most unfavorable sentiments of those who had been separated from the communion of the ehurch. He indulged his inclination to severity so far, as to deny that such as had fallen into the commission of grievous transgressions, especially those who had apostatised from the faith, under the persecution set on foot by Decius, were to be again received into the bosom of the church. The greatest part of the presbyters were of a different opinion in this matter, especially Cornelius, whose credit and influence were raised to the highest pitch by the esteem and admiration which his eminent virtues so naturally excited. Hence it happened, that when a bishop was to be chosen, in the year 250, to succeed Fabianus in the see of Rome, Novatian opposed the election of Cornelius, with the greatest activity and bitterness. His opposition, however, was in vain; for Cornelius was chosen to that eminent office of which his distinguished merit rendered him so highly worthy. Novatian, upon this, separated himself from the jurisdiction of Cornelius, who, in his turn, called a council at Rome, in the year 251, and cut off Novatian and his partisans from the com

munion of the church. This turbulent man, being CENT. III. thus excommunicated, erected a new society, of which he was the first bishop; and, which, on account of the severity of its discipline, was followed by many, and flourished, until the fifth century, in the greatest part of those provinces which had received the Gospel. The chief person who assisted him in this enterprise was Novatus, a Carthaginian presbyter, a man of no sound principles, who, during the heat of this controversy, had come from Carthage to Rome, to escape the resentment and excommunication of Cyprian, his bishop, with whom he was highly at variance.

of the Nova

XVIII. There was no difference, in point of doc- The severity trine, between the Novatians and other Christians. tians against What peculiarly distinguished them, was their refusing the lapsed. to re-admit, to the communion of the church, those who, after baptism, had fallen into the commission of heinous crimes, though they did not pretend, that even such were excluded from all possibility or hopes of salvation. They considered the Christian church as a society where virtue and innocence reigned universally, and none of whose members, from their entrance into it, had defiled themselves with any enormous crime; and, in consequence, they looked upon every society, which re-admitted heinous offenders to its communion, as unworthy of the title of a true Christian church. For that reason, also, they assumed the title of Cathari, i. e. the pure; and what shewed a still more extravagant degree of vanity and arrogance, they obliged such as came over to them from the general body of Christians, to submit to be baptised a second time, as a necessary preparation for entering into their society; for such deep root had their favorite opinion concerning the irrevocable rejection of heinous offenders taken in their minds, and so great was its influence upon the sentiments they entertained of other Christian societies, that they considered the baptism administered in those

CENT. III. churches, which received the lapsed to their communion, even after the most sincere and undoubted repentance, as absolutely divested of the power of imparting the remission of sins".

Eusebius, lib. vi. cap. xliii. Cyprianus, in variis Epistolis, xlix. &c. Albaspinæus, Observat. Eccles. lib. ii. cap. xx. xxi. Jos. Aug. Orsi, de Criminum capital. inter veteres Christianos Absolutione, p. 254. Kenckel, de Hæresi Novatianâ.