beings,
or with a Sabellian Trinity of three temporal aspects of the one God
revealed in history; but not with a Christian Trinity of three eternal
aspects of the divine nature, facing inward on each other as well as
outward on the world. But this was not yet fully understood. The problem
was to explain the Lord's distinction from the Father without destroying
the unity of God. Sabellianism did it at the cost of his premundane and
real personality, and therefore by common consent was out of the
question. The Easterns were more inclined to theories of subordination,
to distinctions of the derivatively from the absolutely divine, and to
views of Christ as a sort of secondary God. Such theories do not really
meet the difficulty. A secondary God is necessarily a second God. Thus
heathenism still held the key of the position, and constantly threatened
to convict them of polytheism. They could not sit still, yet they could
not advance without remodelling their central doctrine of the divine
nature to agree with revelation. Nothing could be done till the Trinity
was placed inside the divine _nature_. But this is just what they could
not for a long time see. These men were not Arians, for they recoiled in
genuine horror from the polytheistic tendencies of Arianism; but they
had no logical defence against Arianism, and were willing to see if some
modification of it would not give them a foothold of some kind. To men
who dreaded the return of Sabellian confusion, Arianism was at least an
error in the right direction. It upheld the same truth as they--the
separate personality of the Son of God--and if it went further than they
could follow, it might still do service against the common enemy.

[Sidenote: Arianism at Alexandria.]

Thus the new theory made a great sensation at Alexandria, and it was not
without much hesitation and delay that Alexander ventured to
excommunicate his heterodox presbyter with his chief followers, like
Pistus, Carpones, and the deacon Euzoius--all of whom we shall meet
again. Arius was a dangerous enemy. His austere life and novel
doctrines, his dignified character and championship of 'common sense in
religion,' made him the idol of the ladies and the common people. He had
plenty of telling arguments for them. 'Did the Son of God exist before
his generation?' Or to the women, 'Were you a mother before you had a
child?' He knew also how to cultivate his popularity by pastoral
visiting--his enemies called