Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

spirit and individual suspicion. 1342 But what storm at sea was ever so fierce and wild as this
tempest of the Churches? In it every landmark of the Fathers has been moved; every
foundation, every bulwark of opinion has been shaken: everything buoyed up on the unsound
is dashed about and shaken down. We attack one another. We are overthrown by one another.
If our enemy is not the first to strike us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side.
If a foeman is stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down. There is at least this
bond of union between us that we hate our common foes, but no sooner have the enemy
gone by than we find enemies in one another. And who could make a complete list of all
the wrecks? Some have gone to the bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through the
unsuspected treachery of their allies, some from the blundering of their own officers. We
see, as it were, whole churches, crews and all, dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefs
of disingenuous heresy, while others of the enemies of the Spirit 1343 of Salvation have seized
1342 In Ep. ccxlii. written in 376, St. Basil says: “This is the thirteenth year since the outbreak of the war of
heretics against us.” 363 is the date of the Acacian Council of Antioch; 364 of the accession of Valens and
Valentian, of the Semi-Arian Synod of Lampsacus, and of St. Basil’s ordination to the priesthood and book
against Eunomius. On the propagation by scission and innumerable subdivisions of Arianism Cannon Bright
writes: The extraordinary versatility, the argumentative subtlety, and the too frequent profanity of Arianism are
matters of which a few lines can give no idea. But it is necessary, in even the briefest notice of this long-lived
heresy, to remark on the contrast between its changeable inventiveness and the simple steadfastness of Catholic
doctrine. On the one side, some twenty different creeds (of which several, however, were rather negatively than
positively heterodox) and three main sects, the Semi-Arians, with their formula of Homoiousion, i.e. the Son is
like in essence to the Father; the Acacians, vaguely calling Him like (Homoion); the Aetians, boldly calling Him
unlike, as much as to say He is in no sense Divine. On the other side, the Church with the Nicene Creed, con-
fessing Him as Homoousion, ‘of one essence with the Father,’ meaning thereby, as her great champion repeatedly
bore witness, to secure belief in the reality of the Divine Sonship, and therefore in the real Deity, as distinguished
from the titular deity which was so freely conceded to Him by the Arians.” Cannon Bright, St. Leo on the Incarn-
ation, p. 140 Socrates (ii. 41), pausing at 360, enumerates, after Nicæa: 1. 1st of Antioch (omitted the ὁμοούσιον,
a.d. 341). 2. 2d of Antioch (omitted the ὁμοούσιον, a.d. 341). 3. The Creed brought to Constans in Gaul by
Narcissus and other Arians in 342. 4. The Creed “sent by Eudoxius of Germanicia into Italy,” i.e. the “Macrostich,”
or “Lengthy Creed,” rejected at Milan in 346. 5. The 1st Creed of Sirmium; i.e. the Macrostich with 26 additional
clauses, 351. 6. The 2d Sirmian Creed. The “manifesto;” called by Athanasius (De Synod. 28) “the blasphemy,”
357. 7. The 3d Sirmian, or “dated Creed,” in the consulship of Flavius Eusebius and Hypatius, May 22d, 359.
8. The Acacian Creed of Seleucia, 359. 9. The Creed of Ariminum adopted at Constantinople, as revised at
Nike.
Exposition of the present state of the Churches.
1343 On the authority of the ms. of the tenth century at Paris, called by the Ben. Editors Regius Secundus,
they read for πνεύματος πάθους, denying πνευματος to be consistent with the style and practice of Basil, who
they say, never uses the epithet σωτήοιος of the Spirit. Mr. C.F.H. Johnston notes that St. Basil “always attributes
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