ith Justin and culminates in
Origen. From him there proceed two opposite modes of conception, the
Athanasian and the Arian, of which the former at last triumphs in the
Council of Nice, and confirms its victory in the Council of
Constantinople." By the Ebionites Christ was regarded as a mere man. By
the Gnostics he was considered as superhuman; but in that capacity as one
of a very numerous class. The doctrine of the absolute unity of God,
alike in essence and personal subsistence, was held by the Monachians,
who are divided respectively into Dynamistic and Modalistic. As the
latter held that the whole fulness of the Deity dwelt in Christ and only
found in him a peculiar mode of manifestation, it was assumed that the
natural inference was that the Father himself had died on the Cross.
Hence to these heretics the name of Patripassians was applied by the
orthodox. Sabellius, who maintained a Trinity, not of divine Persons but
of successive manifestations under the names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
was one of the chief Patripassians. The Arian controversy, as Dean
Stanley shows, turned on the relations of the divine persons before the
first beginning of time.

If Dean Stanley be correct, at this time the Abyssinian Church is
agitated by seventy distinct doctrines as to the union of the two natures
in Christ. It is clear, then, no one man can epitomize all that has been
uttered and written on this pregnant theme, over which the Church
contended fiercely three hundred years. "Latin Christianity," writes
Dean Milman, "contemplated with almost equal indifference Nestorianism
and all its prolific race, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism."
When the Reformation quickened free inquiry and religious life, Socinus
appeared; the epitaph on his tomb shows what his friends thought of his
doctrine. "Luther took off the roof of Babylon, Calvin threw down the
walls, Socinus dug up the foundations." Furious persecution was the fate
of the holders of his opinions; Servetus was burnt by Calvin; and Joan
Bocher was sentenced to a similar fate by the boy-king Edward VI. for
denying the doctrine of the Trinity. With tears in his eyes as he signed
the warrant, he appealed to the Archbishop. "My Lord Archbishop, in this
case I resign myself to your judgment; you must be answerable to God for
it."

Unitarianism has made way in England. When Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act
became law the Unitarians in England were a small sect,