th protested against austerities,
so did Praxeas, Noetus, and Sabellius in the third protest against the
Catholic or Athanasian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. A much stronger
case surely could be made out in favour of the latter protest than of
the former. Noetus was of Asia Minor, Praxeas taught in Rome, Sabellius
in Africa. Nay, we read that in the latter country their doctrine
prevailed among the common people, then and at an earlier date, to a
very great extent, and that the true faith was hardly preached in the
churches.

3. Again, the only value of the protest of these three men would be, of
course, that they _represented_ others; that they were exponents of a
state of opinion which prevailed either in their day or before them,
and which was in the way to be overpowered by the popular corruptions.
What are Aerius and Jovinian to me as individuals? They are worth
nothing, unless they can be considered as organs and witnesses of an
expiring cause. Now, it does not appear that they themselves had any
notion that they were speaking in behalf of any one, living or dead,
besides themselves. They argued against prayers for the departed from
reason, and against celibacy, hopeless as the case might seem, from
Scripture. They ridiculed one usage, and showed the ill consequence of
another. All this might be very cogent in itself, but it was the conduct
of men who stood by themselves and were conscious of it. If Jovinian had
known of writers of the second and third centuries holding the same
views, Jovinian would have been as prompt to quote them as Lutherans are
to quote Jovinian. The protest of these men shows that certain usages
undeniably existed in the fourth century; it does not prove that they
did not exist also in the first, second, and third. And how does the
fact of their living in the fourth century prove there were Protestants
in the first? What we are looking for is a Church of primitive heretics,
of baptists and independents of the Apostolic age, and we must not be
put off with the dark and fallible protests of the Nicene era.

Far different is the tone of Epiphanius in his answer to Aerius:--

"If one need refer," he says, speaking of fasting, "to the
constitution of the Apostles, why did they there determine the
fourth and sixth day to be ever a fast, except Pentecost? and
concerning the six days of the Pascha, why do they order us to take
nothing at all but bread, salt, and water?...