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Select Treatises of St. Athanasius in Controversy With the Arians
Select Treatises of St Athanasius in Controversy With the Arians Author:Saint Athanasius General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1881 Original Publisher: Pickering Subjects: Arianism Religion / Christianity / History Religion / History Religion / Christian Theology / General Religion / Christian Theology / Apologetics Religion / Christian Church / History Notes: This is a black and white OC... more »R reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: EPISTLE OF ATHANASIUS IN DEFENCE OF THE NICENE DEFINITION OF THE HOMOUSION. PKEPATORY NOTICE. We have no means of determining the date of this Epistle, and critics do but offer conjectures at variance with each other. The Bollandista consider it to be earlier than A. d. 347, if not soon after the Nieene Council, e. g. 330 (Vit. Athan. c. 26). Montfaucon assigns some time between 350 and 354. Tillemont between 342 and 361. Other aids towards determining it are such as these : it was written in a lime of peace, after the experience and with the anticipation of persecution; but from 325 to 330 there was no such experience, from 330 to 347 no peace, and from 352 to 361 severe persecution ; what interval is left for the date is from 348 to 352, which fulfils the requisite conditions, as being an interval of peace, with persecution before and after it. It may be added that the rise of the Anomoeans was about A. d. 350, and about the same time Acacius became the leader of the Eusebian or court party on the tactic in controversy of confining definitions of doctrine to Scripture language, and thereby virtually of annihilating dogmatic faith. Now the main topic and the occasion of this Epistle, as Athanasius shows again and again, is the revival of Arianism proper in its original outspoken vigour, the prominence of Acacius, and the appeal to Scripture against orthodoxy by him and ot...« less