Heresies grew and strengthened during this fourth century. Chief leader
in the heretic camp was Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria; he asserted
that the Son, although begotten of the Father before the creation of
aught else, was not "of the same substance" as the Father, but only "of
like substance;" a vast number of the Christians embraced his
definition, and thus began the long struggle between the Arians and the
Catholics. Arius also "took the ground that there was a time when, from
the very nature of sonship, the Son did not exist, and a time at which
he commenced to be, asserting that it is the necessary condition of the
filial relation that a father must be older than his son. But this
assertion evidently denied the co-eternity of the three persons of the
Trinity; it suggested a subordination or inequality among them, and
indeed implied a time when the Trinity did not exist. Hereupon the
bishop, who had been the successful competitor against Arius [for the
episcopate], displayed his rhetorical powers in public debates on the
question, and, the strife spreading, the Jews and Pagans, who formed a
very large portion of the population of Alexandria, amused themselves
with theatrical representations of the contest on the stage--the point
of their burlesques being the equality of age of the Father and his Son"
(Ibid, p. 53). Gibbon quotes an amusing passage to show how widely
spread was the interest in the subject debated between the rival
parties: "This city is full of mechanics and slaves, who are all of them
profound theologians, and preach in the shops and in the streets. If you
desire a man to change a piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son
differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told,
by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you
inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made
out of nothing" (Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. iii. p. 402). Arius
maintained that "the _Logos_ was a dependent and spontaneous production,
created from nothing by the will of the Father. The Son, by whom all