Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/71

Rh Still, when we make due allowance for all such considerations, it may yet strike us as remarkable that a system so artificial in structure, and so harsh in outline, should have won its way in the Church. The objections to it were obvious. On the face of it Arianism toned down the honour that enthusiastic Christians were eagerly offering to their Lord. While it allowed of a Mediator, this strange being was neither God nor man, neither united to the Divine on the one hand nor to the human on the other. Thus the gulf still remained unbridged, and all that was offered was a monstrous figure standing isolated in the middle of it; or if we view the idea another way, while Christ was not one with us in human nature, He did belong to our created nature, so that if we think of God on one side of the gulf and creation on the other, Christ adheres completely to the side of creation, and there is no real mediation at all. Nevertheless, it is allowed that some measure of worship may be offered to Him, and He may be called God in a secondary sense, as the locust is called the "great power" of God. But then, since He is but a creature, such worship is the worship of the creature, that is to say, idolatry. The essential paganism of the scheme was apparent to Athanasius, who urged this charge home against the Arians. They were importing the demi-god of the heathen world into the Church of the only true, living God.

Since these objections are obvious, we may wonder how it came about that Arianism got a lodgment in the Church, spread so rapidly, and attained to so much influence as was the case. Something may be set down to the personal fascination of its author. Athanasius' first attack on the heresy is based on its name, the Arians naming themselves after a man while the orthodox called themselves simply "Christians." This is significant, showing that the name was not a label attached to them by their enemies, like the title "Swedenborgian" commonly given to the community