1. Introduction.

FROM the great work of Irenæus and the anti-gnostic writings of Tertullian, it would seem as if the doctrine of the Logos, or, the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ as a distinct person, was at the end of the second century an undisputed tenet of Church orthodoxy, and formed a universally recognised portion of the baptismal confession interpreted anti-gnostically, i.e., of the rule of faith.⁴⁴See Vol. II., pp. 20-38 and Iren. I. 10, 1; Tertull. De præscr. 13; Adv. Prax. 2. In the rule of faith, De virg., vel. I, there is no statement as to the pre-existence of the Son of God. But certain as it is that the Logos Christology was in the second century not merely the property of a few Christian philosophers,⁵⁵See Vol. I., p. 192, Note (John's Gospel, Revelation, Κήρυγμα Πέτρου, Ignatius, and esp. Celsus in Orig. II. 31, etc.). it is, on the other hand, as clear that it did not belong to the solid structure of the Catholic faith. It was not on the same footing as, e.g., the doctrines of God the Creator, the real body of Christ, the resurrection of the body, etc. The great conflicts which, after c. A.D. 170, 2were waged for more than a century within the Catholic Church rather show, that the doctrine only gradually found its way into the creed of the Church.⁶⁶The observation that Irenæus and Tertullian treat it as a fixed portion of the rule of faith is very instructive; for it shows that these theologians were ahead of the Church of their time. Here we have a point given, at which we can estimate the relation of what Irenæus maintained to be the creed of the Church, to the doctrine which was, as a matter of fact, generally held at the time in the Church. We may turn this insight to account for the history of the Canon and the constitution, where, unfortunately, an estimate of the statements of Irenæus is rendered difficult. But a higher than merely Christological interest attaches to the gradual incorporation of the Logos doctrine in the rule of faith. The formula of the Logos, as it was almost universally understood, legitimised speculation, i.e., Neo-platonic philosophy, within the creed of the Church.⁷⁷By Neo-platonic philosophy we, of course, do not here mean Neo-platonism, but the philosophy (in method and also in part, in results), developed before Neoplatonism by Philo, Valentinus, Numenius, and others. When Christ was designated the incarnate Logos of God, and when this was set up as His supreme characterisation, men were directed to think of the divine in Christ as the reason of God realised in the structure of the world and the history of mankind. This implied a definite philosophical view of God, of creation, and of the world, and the baptismal confession became a compendium of scientific dogmatics, i.e., of a system of doctrine entwined with the Metaphysics of Plato and the Stoics. But at the same time an urgent impulse necessarily made itself felt to define the contents and value of the Redeemer's life and work, not, primarily, from the point of view of the proclamation of the Gospel, and the hopes of a future state, but from that of the cosmic significance attaching to his divine nature concealed in the flesh. Insomuch, however, as such a view could only really reach and be intelligible to those who had been trained in philosophical speculations, the establishing of the Logos Christology within the rule of faith was equivalent for the great mass of Christians to the setting up of a mystery, which in the first place could only make an impression through its high-pitched formulas and the glamour of the incomprehensible. But as soon as a religion expresses the 3loftiest contents of its creed in formulas which must remain mysterious and unintelligible to the great mass of its adherents, those adherents come under guardians. In other words, the multitude must believe in the creed; at the same time they no longer derive from it directly the motives of their religious and moral life; and they are dependent on the theologians, who, as professors of the mysterious, alone understand and are capable of interpreting and practically applying the creed. The necessary consequence of this development was that the mysterious creed, being no longer in a position practically to control life, was superseded by the authority of the Church, the cultus, and prescribed duties, in determining the religious life of the laity; while the theologians, or the priests, appeared alone as the possessors of an independent faith and knowledge. But as soon as the laity were actuated by a desire for religious independence, which produced a reaction, and yet was not powerful enough to correct the conditions out of which this state of matters arose, there made its appearance only an expedient of a conservative sort, viz., the order of the monks. As this order did not tamper with the prevailing system of the Church, the Church could tolerate it, and could even use it as a valve, by which to provide an outlet for all religious subjectivity, and for the energies of a piety that renounced the world. The history of the Church shows us, or, at any rate, lets us divine, this situation at the transition from the 3rd to the 4th century. On the one hand, we see—at least in the East—that the Christian faith had become a theology, which was regarded, to all intents without question, as the revealed faith, and only capable of being represented and expounded by "teachers". On the other hand, we find a lay Christendom tied to the priest, the cultus, the sacraments, and a ceremonial penitence, and revering the creed as a mystery. Between these arose with elemental force the order of the monks, which—apart from a few phenomena—did not attack the ecclesiastical system, and which could not be suppressed by priests and theologians, because it strove to realise on earth the object to which they themselves had subordinated the whole of theology, because it, as it were, sought to soar on wings to the same height, to 4which the steps of the long ladders constructed by theology were meant to conduct.⁸⁸See my lecture on Monachism, 3rd ed. 1886.

Now the incorporation in the creed of philosophic (Platonic) speculation, i.e., the Hellenising of the traditional doctrines, was not the only condition, but it was certainly one of the most important of the conditions, that led to the rise of this threefold Christendom of clergy, laity, and monks, in the Church. That the Catholic Church was capable of accommodating these three orders in its midst is a proof of its power. That the combination forms up to the present day the signature of Catholic Churches is evidence, moreover, of the practical value attached by the Church to this unified differentiation. It, in fact, could not but best correspond to the different wants of men united to form a universal Church. So far as it was a consequence of the general conditions under which the Church existed in the third century, we must here leave its origin untouched,⁹⁹Yet see Vol. II., pp. 122-127. but so far as it was due to the reception of philosophical speculation into the Church, its prior history must be presented. Yet it may not be superfluous to begin by noticing expressly, that the confidence with which first the Apologists identified the Logos of the philosophers and the Christ of faith, and the zeal with which the anti-gnostic Fathers then incorporated the Logos-Christ in the creed of believers, are also to be explained from a Christian interest. In their scientific conception of the world the Logos had a fixed place, and was held to be the "alter ego" of God, though at the same time he was also regarded as the representative of the Reason that operated in the Cosmos. Their conception of Christ as the appearance of the Logos in a personal form only proves that they sought to make the highest possible assertion concerning him, to justify worship being rendered him, and to demonstrate the absolute and unique nature of the contents of the Christian religion. The Christian religion was only in a position to gain the cultured, to conquer Gnosticism, and to thrust aside Polytheism in the Roman empire, because it had concluded an alliance with that intellectual potentate which already swayed the minds and hearts of the 5best men, the philosophic-religious ethics of the age. This alliance found expression in the formula: Christ is word and law (Χριστὸς λόγος καὶ νόμος). The philosophic Christology arose, so to speak, at the circumference of the Church, and thence moved gradually to the centre of the Christian faith. The same is true of theology generally; its most concise description is philosophic Christology. A complete fusion of the old faith and theology, one that tranquillised the minds of the devout, was not consummated till the fourth, strictly speaking, indeed, till the fifth century (Cyril of Alexandria). Valentinus, Origen, the Cappadocians mark the stages of the process. Valentinus was very speedily ejected as a heretic. Origen, in spite of the immense influence which he exerted, was in the end unable to retain his footing in the Church. The Cappadocians almost perfected the complete fusion of the traditional faith of the Church conceived as mystery and philosophy, by removing Origen's distinction between those who knew and those who believed (Gnostics and Pistics); meanwhile they retained much that was comparatively free and looked on with suspicion by the traditionalists. Cyril's theology first marked the complete agreement between faith and philosophy, authority and speculation, an agreement which finally, in the sixth century, suppressed every independent theology. But from the end of the second century up to the closing years of the third, the fundamental principle of philosophic theology had naturalised itself, in the very faith of the Church. This process in which, on the one hand, certain results of speculative theology became legitimised within the Church as revelations and mysteries, and on the other—as a sort of antidote—the freedom of theology was limited, is to be described in what follows.

It has been shown above (Vol. I., p. 190 ff.) that about the middle of the second century there existed side by side in the Churches chiefly two conceptions of the person of Christ. In the Adoptian view Jesus was regarded as the man in whom divinity or the spirit of God dwelt, and who was finally exalted to godlike honour. In the Pneumatic conception, Jesus was looked upon as a heavenly spirit who assumed an earthly body. The latter was adopted in their speculations by the Apologists. 6The fixing of the apostolic tradition, which took place in opposition to the Gnostics, as also to the so-called Montanists, in the course of the second half of the second century, did not yet decide in favour of either view.¹⁰¹⁰The points, which, as regards Christ, belonged in the second half of the second century to ecclesiastical orthodoxy, are given in the clauses of the Roman baptismal confession to which ἀληθῶς is added, in the precise elaboration of the idea of creation, in the εἷς placed alongside Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς, and in the identification of the Catholic institution of the Church with the Holy Church. The Holy Scriptures could be appealed to in support of both. But those had decidedly the best of it, in the circumstances of the time, who recognised the incarnation of a special divine nature in Christ; and as certainly were the others in the right, in view of the Synoptic gospels, who saw in Jesus the man chosen to be his Son by God, and possessed of the Spirit. The former conception corresponded to the interpretation of the O. T. theophanies which had been accepted by the Alexandrians, and had proved so convincing in apologetic arguments;¹¹¹¹The Christian doctrine of the Son of God could be most easily rendered acceptable to cultured heathens by means of the Logos doctrine; see the memorable confession of Celsus placed by him in the lips of his "Jew" (II. 31); ὡς εἴγε ὁ λόγος ἐστὶν ὑμῖν υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐπαινοῦμεν; see also the preceeding: σοφίζονται οἱ Χριστιανοὶ ἐν τῷ λέγειν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ εἶναι αὐτολόγον.  it could be supported by the testimony of a series of Apostolic writings, whose authority was absolute;¹²¹²The conviction of the harmony of the Apostles, or, of all Apostolic writings, could not but result in the Christology of the Synoptics and the Acts being interpreted in the light of John and Paul, or more accurately, in that of the philosophic Christology held to be attested by John and Paul. It has been up to the present day the usual fate of the Synoptics, and with them of the sayings of Jesus, to be understood, on account of their place in the Canon, in accordance with the caprices of the dogmatics prevalent at the time, Pauline and Johannine theology having assigned to it the role of mediator. The "lower" had to be explained by the "higher" (see even Clemens Alex. with his criticism of the "pneumatic", the spiritual, Fourth Gospel, as compared with the first three). In older times men transformed the sense right off; nowadays they speak of steps which lead to the higher teaching, and the dress the old illusion with a new scientific mantle. it protected the O. T. against Gnostic criticism. It, further, reduced the highest conception of the value of Christianity to a brief and convincing formula: "God became man in order that men might become gods;" and, finally,—which was not least—it could be brought, with little trouble, into line with 7the cosmological and theological tenets which had been borrowed from the religious philosophy of the age to serve as a foundation for a rational Christian theology. The adoption of the belief in the divine Logos to explain the genesis and history of the world at once decided the means by which also the divine dignity and sonship of the Redeemer were alone to be defined.¹³¹³But the substitution of the Logos for the, otherwise undefined, spiritual being (πνεῦμα) in Christ presented another very great advantage. It brought to an end, though not at once (see Clemens Alex.), the speculations which reckoned the heavenly personality of Christ in some way or other in the number of the higher angels or conceived it as one Æon among many. Through the definition of this "Spiritual Being" as Logos his transcendent and unique dignity was firmly outlined and assured. For the Logos was universally accepted as the Prius logically and temporally, and the causa not only of the world, but also of all powers, ideas, æons, and angels. He, therefore, did not belong—at least in every respect—to their order. In this procedure the theologians themselves had no danger to fear to their monotheism, even if they made the Logos more than a product of the creative will of God. Neither Justin, Tatian, nor any of the Apologists or Fathers show the slightest anxiety on this point. For the infinite substance, resting behind the world,—and as such the deity was conceived—could display and unfold itself in different subjects. It could impart its own inexhaustible being to a variety of bearers, without thereby being emptied, or its unity being dissolved (μοναρχία κατ᾽ οἰκονομίαν, as the technical expression has it).¹⁴¹⁴Augustine first wrought to end this questionable monotheism, and endeavoured to treat seriously the monotheism of the living God. But his efforts only produced an impression in the West, and even there the attempt was weakened from the start by a faulty respect for the prevalent Christology, and was forced to entangle itself in absurd formulas. In the East the accommodating Substance-Monotheism of philosophy remained with its permission of a plurality of divine persons; and this doctrine was taught with such naïvety and simplicity, that the Cappadocians, e.g., proclaimed the Christian conception of God to be the just mean between the polytheism of the heathens and the monotheism of the Jews. But, lastly, the theologians had no reason to fear for the “deity” of the Christ in whom the incarnation of that Logos was to be viewed. For the conception of the Logos was capable of the most manifold contents, and its dexterous treatment could be already supported by the most instructive precedents. This conception could be adapted to every change and accentuation of the religious interest, every deepening of speculation, as 8as to all the needs of the Cultus, nay, even to new results of Biblical exegesis. It revealed itself gradually to be a variable quantity of the most accommodating kind, capable of being at once determined by any new factor received into the theological ferment. It even admitted contents which stood in the most abrupt contradiction to the processes of thought out of which the conception itself had sprung, i.e., contents which almost completely concealed the cosmological genesis of the conception. But it was long before this point was reached. And as long as it was not, as long as the Logos was still employed as the formula under which was comprehended either the original idea of the world, or the rational law of the world, many did not entirely cease to mistrust the fitness of the conception to establish the divinity of Christ. For those, finally, could not but seek to perceive the full deity in the Redeemer, who reckoned on a deification of man. Athanasius first made this possible to them by his explanation of the Logos, but he at the same time began to empty the conception of its original cosmological contents. And the history of Christology from Athanasius to Augustine is the history of the displacing of the Logos conception by the other, destitute of all cosmical contents, of the Son,—the history of the substitution of the immanent and absolute trinity for the economic and relative. The complete divinity of the Son was thereby secured, but in the form of a complicated and artificial speculation, which neither could be maintained without reservation before the tribunal of the science of the day, nor could claim the support of an ancient tradition.

But the first formulated opposition to the Logos Christology did not spring from anxiety for the complete divinity of Christ, or even from solicitude for monotheism; it was rather called forth by interest in the evangelical, the Synoptic, idea of Christ. With this was combined the attack on the use of Platonic philosophy in Christian doctrine. The first public and literary opponents of the Christian Logos-speculations, therefore, did not escape the reproach of depreciating, if not of destroying, the dignity of the Redeemer. It was only in the subsequent period, in a second phase of the controversy, that these opponents of the Logos Christology were able to fling back the reproach at 9its defenders. With the Monarchians the first subject of interest was the man Jesus; then came monotheism and the divine dignity of Christ. From this point, however, the whole theological interpretation of the two first articles of the rule of faith, was again gradually involved in controversy. In so far as they were understood to refute a crude docetism and the severance of Jesus and Christ they were confirmed. But did not the doctrine of a heavenly æon, rendered incarnate in the Redeemer, contain another remnant of the old Gnostic leaven? Did not the sending forth of the Logos (προβολή τοῦ λόγου) to create the world recall the emanation of the æons? Was not ditheism set up, if two divine beings were to be worshipped? Not only were the uncultured Christian laity driven to such criticisms, — for what did they understand by the "economic mode of the existence of God"? — but also all those theologians who refused to give any place to Platonic philosophy in Christian dogmatics. A conflict began which lasted for more than a century, in certain branches of it for almost two centuries. Who opened it, or first assumed the aggressive, we know not. The contest engages our deepest interest in different respects, and can be described from different points of view. We cannot regard it, indeed, directly as a fight waged by theology against a still enthusiastic conception of religion; for the literary opponents of the Logos Christology were no longer enthusiasts, but, rather, from the very beginning their declared enemies. Nor was it directly a war of the theologians against the laity, for it was not laymen, but only theologians who had adopted the creed of the laity, who opposed their brethren.¹⁵¹⁵The Alogi opposed the Montanists and all prophecy; conversely the western representatives of the Logos Christology, Irenæus, Tertullian and Hippolytus were Chiliasts. But this feature makes no change in the fact that the incorporation of the Logos Christology and the fading away of eschatological apocalyptic hopes went hand in hand. Theologians were able to combine inconsistent beliefs for a time; but for the great mass of the laity in the East the mystery of the person of Christ took the place of the Christ who was to have set up his visible Kingdom of glory upon earth. See especially the refutation of the Chiliasts by Origen (περὶ ἀρχ. II. II) and Dionysius Alex. (Euseb. H. E. VII. 24, 25). The continued embodiment in new visions of those eschatological hopes and apocalyptic fancies by the monks and laymen of later times, proved that the latter could not make the received mystery of dogma fruitful for their practical religion. We must 10describe it as the strenuous effort of Stoic Platonism to obtain supremacy in the theology of the Church; the victory of Plato over Zeno and Aristotle in Christian science; the history of the displacement of the historical by the pre-existent Christ, of the Christ of reality by the Christ of thought, in dogmatics; finally, as the victorious attempt to substitute the mystery of the person of Christ for the person Himself, and, by means of a theological formula unintelligible to them, to put the laity with their Christian faith under guardians — a state desired and indeed required by them to an increasing extent. When the Logos Christology obtained a complete victory, the traditional view of the Supreme deity as one person, and, along with this, every thought of the real and complete human personality of the Redeemer was in fact condemned as being intolerable in the Church. Its place was taken by “the nature” [of Christ], which without "the person” is simply a cipher. The defeated party had right on its side, but had not succeeded in making its Christology agree with its conception of the object and result of the Christian religion. This was the very reason of its defeat. A religion which promised its adherents that their nature would be rendered divine, could only be satisfied by a redeemer who in his own person had deified human nature. If, after the gradual fading away of eschatological hopes, the above prospect was held valid, then those were right who worked out this view of the Redeemer.

In accordance with an expression coined by Tertullian, we understand by Monarchians the representatives of strict, not economic, monotheism in the ancient Church. In other words, they were theologians who held firmly by the dignity of Jesus as Redeemer, but at the same time would not give up the personal, the numerical, unity of God; and who therefore opposed the speculations which had led to the adoption of the duality or trinity of the godhead.¹⁶¹⁶This definition is, in truth, too narrow; for at least a section, if not all, of the so-called Dynamistic Monarchians recognised, besides God, the Spirit as eternal Son of God, and accordingly assumed two Hypostases. But they did not see in Jesus an incarnation of this Holy Spirit, and they were therefore monarchian in their doctrine of Christ. Besides, so far as I know, the name of Monarchians was not applied in the ancient Church to these, but only to the theologians who taught that there was in Christ an incarnation of God the Father Himself. It was not extended to the earlier Dynamistic Monarchians, because, so far as we know, the question whether God consisted of one or more persons did not enter into the dispute with them. In a wider sense, the Monarchians could be taken also to include the Arians, and all those theologians, who, while they recognised the personal independence of a divine nature in Christ, yet held this nature to have been one created by God; in any case, the Arians were undoubtedly connected with Paul of Samosata through Lucian. However, it is not advisable to extend the conception so widely; for, firstly, we would thus get too far away from the old classification, and, secondly, it is not to be overlooked that, even in the case of the most thoroughgoing Arians, their Christology reacted on their doctrine of God, and their strict Monotheism was to some extent modified. Hence, both on historical and logical grounds, it is best for our purpose to understand by Monarchians those theologians exclusively who perceived in Jesus either a man filled, in a unique way, with the Spirit, or an incarnation of God the Father; with the reservation, that the former in certain of their groups regarded the Holy Spirit as a divine Hypostasis, and were accordingly no longer really Monarchians in the strict sense of the term. For the rest, the expression “Monarchians” is in so far inappropriate as their opponents would also have certainly maintained the “monarchia” of God. See Tertulli., Adv. Prax. 3 f.; Epiphan. H. 62. 3: οὐ πολυθεΐαν εἰσηγούμεθα, ἀλλὰ μοναρχίαν κηρύττομεν. They would even have cast back at the Monarchians the reproach that they were destroying the monarchy. “Ἡ μοναρχία τοῦ Θεοῦ” was in the second century a standing title in the polemics of the theologians against polytheists and Gnostics — see the passages collected from Justin, Tatian, Irenæus etc. by Coustant in his Ep. Dionysii adv. Sabell. (Routh, Reliq. Sacræ III., p. 385 f.). Tertullian has therefore by no means used the term “Monarchians” as if he were thus directly branding his opponents as heretical; he rather names them by their favourite catch-word in a spirit of irony (Adv. Prax. 10; “vanissimi Monarchiani”). The name was therefore not really synonymous with a form of heresy in the ancient Church, even if here and there it was applied to the opponents of the doctrine of the Trinity. In order rightly to understand 11their position in the history of the genesis of the dogmatics of the Church, it is decisive, as will have been already clear from the above, that they only came to the front, after the anti-gnostic understanding of the baptismal confession had been substantially assured in the Church. It results from this that they are, generally speaking, to be criticised as men who appeared on the soil of Catholicism, and that therefore, apart from the points clearly in dispute, we must suppose agreement between them and their opponents. It is not superfluous to recall this expressly. The confusion to which the failure to note this presupposition has led and still continually leads may be seen, e.g., in the relative section in Dorner’s History of the development of the doctrine’ of the Person of Christ, or in 12Krawutzcky’s study on the origin of the Didache.¹⁷¹⁷See Theol. Quartalschr. 1884, p. 547 ff. Krawutzcky holds the Didache to be at once Ebionitic and Theodotian. The so-called Dynamistic Monarchians have had especially to suffer from this criticism, their teaching being comfortably disposed of as “Ebionitic”. However, imperative as it certainly is, in general, to describe the history of Monarchianism without reference to the ancient pre-Catholic controversies, and only to bring in the history of Montanism with great caution, still many facts observed in reference to the earliest bodies of Monarchians that come clearly before us, seem to prove that they bore features which must be characterised as pre-Catholic, but not un-Catholic. This is especially true of their attitude to certain books of the New Testament. Undoubtedly we have reason even here to complain of the scantiness and uncertainty of our historical material. The Church historians have attempted to bury or distort the true history of Monarchianism to as great an extent as they passed over and obscured that of the so-called Montanism. At a very early date, if not in the first stages of the controversy, they read Ebionitism and Gnosticism into the theses of their opponents; they attempted to discredit their theological works as products of a specific secularisation, or as travesties, of Christianity, and they sought to portray the Monarchians themselves as renegades who had abandoned the rule of faith and the Canon. By this kind of polemics they have made it difficult for after ages to decide, among other things, whether certain peculiarities of Monarchian bodies in dealing with the Canon of the N. T. writings spring from a period when there was as yet no N. T. Canon in the strict Catholic sense, or whether these characteristics are to be regarded as deviations from an already settled authority, and therefore innovations. Meanwhile, looking to the Catholicity of the whole character of Monarchian movements, and, further, to the fact that no opposition is recorded as having been made by them to the N. T. Canon after its essential contents and authority appear to have been established; considering, finally, that the Montanists, and even the Marcionites and Gnostics, were very early charged with attempts on the Catholic Canon, we need no longer 13doubt that the Monarchian deviations point exclusively to a time when no such Canon existed; and that other “heresies”, to be met with in the older groups, are to be criticised on the understanding that the Church was becoming, but not yet become, Catholic.¹⁸¹⁸It is very remarkable that Irenæus has given us no hint in his great work of a Monarchian controversy in the Church.

The history of Monarchianism is no clearer than its rise in the form of particular theological tendencies. Here also we have before us, at the present day, only scanty fragments. We cannot always trace completely even the settled distinction between Dynamistic — better, Adoptian — and Modalistic Monarchianism;¹⁹¹⁹It was pointed out above, (Vol. I., p. 193) and will be argued more fully later on, that the different Christologies could pass into one another. between the theory that made the power or Spirit of God dwell in the man Jesus, and the view that sees in Him the incarnation of the deity Himself.²⁰²⁰We have already noticed, Vol. I., p. 195, that we can only speak of a naïve Modalism in the earlier periods; Modalism first appeared as an exclusive doctrine at the close of the second century; see under.

Certainly the common element, so far as there was one, of the Monarchian movements, lay in the form of the conception of God, the distinguishing feature, in the idea of revelation. But all the phenomena under this head cannot be classified with certainty, apart from the fact that the most numerous and important “systems” exist in a very shaky tradition. A really reliable division of the Monarchianism that in all its forms rejected the idea of a physical fatherhood of God, and only saw the Son of God in the historical Jesus, is impossible on the strength of the authorities up till now known to us. Apart from a fragment or two we only possess accounts by opponents. The chronology, again, causes a special difficulty. Much labour has been spent upon it since the discovery of the Philosophumena; but most of the details have remained very uncertain. The dates of the Alogi, Artemas, Praxeas, Sabellius, the Antiochian Synods against Paul of Samosata, etc., have not yet been firmly settled. The concise remarks on the subject in what follows rest on independent labours. Finally, we 14are badly informed even as to the geographical range of the controversies. We may, however, suppose, with great probability, that at one time or other a conflict took place in all centres of Christianity in the Empire. But a connected history cannot be given.