Page:History of the First Council of Nice.djvu/96

86 Thalia means "The Banquet." Only fragments of this work are extant, and they are in the works of Athanasius. Thalia was partly in prose and partly in verse.

Athanasius quotes passages, as follows: "God has not always been Father; later he became so. The Son is not from eternity; He came from nothing. When God wished to create us, He first created a being which He called the Logos, Sophia, and Son, who should create us as an instrument.

"There are two Sophias: one is in God (i. e., endiathetos), by which even the Son was made. It is only by sharing the nature of this inner Sophia of God that the Son was also called Wisdom. So, also, besides the Son, there is another Logos—he who is God; as the Son participates in this Logos, He also is by grace called Logos and Son."

"The Logos does not perfectly know the Father. He cannot entirely understand his own nature. The substance of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are entirely different, the one from the other.

"These three persons are, in their essence, thoroughly and infinitely dissimilar.

"God is ineffable, and nothing (therefore not even the Son) is equal to or like Him, or of the same glory.

"This eternal God made the Son before all creatures, and adopted Him for His Son. The Son has nothing in his own nature akin to God, and is not like to Him in essence."—Clark's Hefele.

Athanasius, in different parts of his works, above mentioned, expresses the following ideas, which will show how he was accustomed to argue certain points of doctrine, etc. Speaking of Arius, he says,—"He vomits forth the poison of impiety." "The Nicene fathers, hearing his impiety, closed their ears." "He trusts in the violence and the menaces of Eusebius." "He puts forth the Thalia in imitation of the filthy Sotades." "He draws up a rescript of faith for Constantine, in which he conceals the venom of heresy, by usurping the naked words of Scripture." "He dies by a sudden, miraculous death, on the Sabbath day," and "His death is an argument against the Arian heresy." "Arius, the Sotadeän." "Arius, the Atheist." "Arius is like the serpent that deceived Eve." "The devil is the father of the Arian heresy." "The Thalia is of an effeminate style, being written in imitation of Sotades, an Egyptian poet." "Thalia is accustomed to be sung among tipplers."—See the complete extant works of St. Athanasius, Archhishop of Alexandria, edited by J. P. Migne, from which I translate. of the celebrated Alexander, communicated the following intelligence in the letter addressed to the Africans:—