CHAPTER LXIX

ORIGIN OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALEXANDER AND ARIUS—THESE QUESTIONS ARE NOT FIT SUBJECTS FOR CONTROVERSY

“I UNDERSTAND, then, that the occasion of your present controversy is to be traced to the following circumstances; that you, Alexander, demanded of the presbyters what opinion they severally maintained respecting a certain passage in the Divine law, or rather, I should say, that you asked them something connected with an unprofitable question; and then that you, Arius, inconsiderately gave utterance to objections which ought never to have been conceived at all, or if conceived, should have been buried in profound silence. Hence it was that a dissension arose between you; the meeting of the synod was prohibited; and the holy people, rent into diverse parties, no longer preserved the unity of the one body. Now therefore do ye both exhibit an equal degree of forbearance, and receive the advice which your fellow-servant feels himself justly entitled to give. What then is this advice? It was wrong in the first instance to propose such questions as these, or to reply to them when propounded. For those points of discussion which are enjoined by the authority of no law, but rather suggested by the contentious spirit which is fostered by misused leisure, even though they may be intended merely as an intellectual exercise, ought certainly to be confined to the region of our own thoughts, and neither hastily produced in the public assemblies of the saints, nor unadvisedly intrusted to the general ear. For how very few are there able either accurately to comprehend, or adequately to explain subjects so sublime and abstruse in their nature? Or, granting that one were fully competent for this, in how few ordinary minds will he succeed in producing conviction? Or who, again, in dealing with questions of such subtle nicety as these, can secure himself against a dangerous declension from the truth? It is incumbent therefore on us in these cases to be sparing of our words, lest, in case we ourselves are unable, through the feebleness of our natural faculties, to give a clear explanation of the subject before us, or, on the other hand, in case the slowness of our hearers’ understandings disables them from arriving at an accurate apprehension of what we say, from one or other of these causes we reduce the people to the alternative either of blasphemy or schism.