2.  You ask for the writings of Dionysius; i.e. of Alexandria. they did indeed reach me, and a great many they were; but I have not the books with me, and so have not sent them.  My opinion is, however, as follows.  I do not admire everything that is written; indeed of some things I totally disapprove.  For it may be, that of the impiety of which we are now hearing so much, I mean the Anomœan, it is he, as far as I know, who first gave men the seeds.  I do not trace his so doing to any mental depravity, but only to his earnest desire to resist Sabellius.  I often compare him to a woodman trying to straighten some ill-grown sapling, pulling so immoderately in the opposite direction as to exceed the mean, and so dragging the plant awry on the other side.  This is very much what we find to be the case with Dionysius.  While vehemently opposing the impiety of the Libyan, i.e. Sabellius.  Basil is the first writer who asserts his African birth.  In Ep. ccvii. he is “Sabellius the Libyan.”  His active life was Roman; his views popular in the Pentapolis. he is carried away unawares by his zeal into the opposite error.  It would have been quite sufficient for him to have pointed out that the Father and the Son are not identical in substance, οὐ ταυτὸν τῷ ὑποκειμένῷ.  Aristotle, Metaph. vi. 3, 1, says, μάλιστα δοκεῖ εἶναι οὐσία τὸ ὑποκείμενον τὸ πρῶτον.  On the distinction between ὁμοούσιος and ταυτὸν τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ, cf. Athan., Exp. Fid. ii., where the Sabellians are accused of holding an υἱοπατώρ, and Greg. Nyss answer to Eunomius, Second Book, p. 254 in Schaff and Wace’s  ed.  Vide also Prolegg. to Athan., p. xxxi. in this series.  Epiphanius says of Noetus, μονοτύπως τον αὐτὸν πατέρα καὶ Υἱ& 232·ν καὶ ἅγιον πνεῦμα…ἡγσάμενος (Hæres. lvii. 2) and of Sabellius, Δογματίζει οὗτος καὶ οἱ ἀπ᾽ αὐποῦ Σαβελλιανοὶ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι Πατέρα τὸν αὐτὸν Υἱ& 232·ν τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι ἅγιον πνεῦμα, ὡς εἶναι ἐν μιᾷ ὑποστάσει τρεῖς ὀνομασίας.  (Hæres. lxii. i.) and thus to score against the blasphemer.  But, in order to win an unmistakable and superabundant victory, he is not satisfied with laying down a difference of hypostases, but must needs assert also difference of substance, diminution of power, and variableness of glory.  So he exchanges one mischief for another, and diverges from the right line of doctrine.  In his writings he exhibits a miscellaneous inconsistency, and is at one time to be found disloyal to the homoousion, because of his opponent Sabellius. who made a bad use of it to the destruction of the hypostases, and at another admitting it in his Apology to his namesake. Dionysius of Rome.  Besides this he uttered very unbecoming words about the Spirit, separating Him from the Godhead, the object of worship, and assigning Him an inferior rank with created and subordinate nature.  Such is the man’s character.