By Water & Blood

On Arius

Finding Arius also longing for human glory, he kindled in him the passion of arrogance and planted in him the deceit of the heresy. For this man, enrolled among the priests of the Church of Alexandria, when he saw the great Alexander seated on the archiepiscopal throne, received the sting of envy; and seeking occasions for a quarrel with him, he found a pretext in impiety of doctrines.

For while that man was offering the apostolic pasture to the flock and leading the sheep to the evangelical springs, this one contradicted what was said; and when the all-wise teacher called the Son consubstantial with the Father, this one spoke against him, naming as a creature him whom he had called a genuine Son. And when that man said that the God Word is coeternal with God the Father, as being in the beginning, and being God the Word, and the radiance of glory, this one said that the One who is had come into being from things that are not, and asserted that he has a changeable nature.

Moreover he mutilated the account of the incarnation. For he said that he took a body without a soul, and that the divinity performed the functions of the soul, so as to attach to it the sympathy that arises from the body.

This man also abandoned the rules of doxology which those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word handed down, and introduced another form, teaching those he deceived to glorify the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. And the invocation made at divine baptism he did not dare to change, because of the obviousness of the transgression; but according to the Master’s command he handed down baptism into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; yet he forbade glorifying according to the law of baptism—although our God and Savior commanded not simply to baptize, but first to make disciples. For he said, “Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

According to this law the divine apostles also, and the teachers of the Church after them, instruct those who come forward to believe into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and baptize those who have been made disciples into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For this reason those who have enjoyed the gift, as they were discipled and baptized, glorify the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For it would be shameful that those who received the gift of baptism from the Holy Trinity should offer the doxology to the Father alone and leave the Son and the all-holy Spirit without honor.

But these things we have set out at length in what we wrote against them; the aim of the present composition is to exhibit the character of each heresy.

This Arius, then, holding these opinions, the holy Fathers gathered at Nicaea openly repudiated, as introducing doctrines altogether alien to the divine oracles and foreign. Later in time, feigning repentance, he persuaded those who held power under the great emperor Constantine to grant him room for repentance. Receiving the petition, the emperor ordered the bishop of the imperial city to stretch out a hand to the one longing for salvation.

But the divine Alexander (for he held the helm of that Church) first tried to persuade the emperor not to be led at all by Arius’s fabricated words. When he saw him annoyed, he went out in silence. It had been decided that Arius should be received at dawn; for it was a Sabbath when these things were said. So the man who was truly God’s man, with two companions, ran into the divine temple and, prostrate on the ground before the sacred altars and pouring out tears, begged the Master of the Churches not to allow the wolf to be mixed with the sheep, if indeed he who wished truly to do the works of wolves was wrapping himself in the fleece of a sheep. They say he also added this word to the prayer: “But if you grant him entry even while he has planned such things, because of your ineffable economy (for your judgments are unsearchable), free me your servant from the present life.” Having made the prayer thus, he went up weeping to his chamber.

But Arius, thinking the emperor’s promises would be confirmed, came forward about dawn. Then, his belly pressing him for excretion, he entered the public latrines, leaving the attendant servant outside. Suddenly his bowels dissolved and were discharged, and sitting inside he died. Those sitting nearby, seeing the disaster and crying out, the servant ran in, and seeing him dead announced what had happened to his companions. When the God-sent blow was reported throughout the most populous city, all ran together to the divine temple. And when they learned both the emperor’s promise and the priest’s prayer, they hymned the protector of the Churches and abhorred the impiety of the heresy.

Yet even after these things had happened thus, and the divine verdict had been shown so very clearly, those who had received the disease persisted, sharpening their tongues against the Only-begotten and the all-holy Spirit. But having written these things at length in the Ecclesiastical History, I think it superfluous to say the same again. Leaving aside, then, Eusebius and Theognis and Theodotus of Perinthus and Menophantus of Ephesus and Patrophilus of Scythopolis and the others, I will mention Eudoxius alone. For the narratives concerning Aetius and Eunomius demand remembrance of him.