purposes. These then are those who have become apostates: Arius, Achillas, Aithales, and
Carpones, another Arius, Sarmates, Euzoïus, Lucius, Julian, Menas, Helladis, and Gaius;
with these also must be reckoned Secundus and Theonas, who once were called bishops.
The dogmas they have invented and assert, contrary to the Scriptures, are these: That God
was not always the Father, but that there was a period when he was not the Father; that the
Word of God was not from eternity, but was made out of nothing;123 for that the ever-existing
God (‘the I AM’—the eternal One) made him who did not previously exist, out of nothing;
wherefore there was a time when he did not exist, inasmuch as the Son is a creature and a
work. That he is neither like the Father as it regards his essence, nor is by nature either the
Father’s true Word, or true Wisdom, but indeed one of his works and creatures, being erro-
neously called Word and Wisdom, since he was himself made of God’s own Word and the
Wisdom which is in God, whereby God both made all things and him also. Wherefore he
is as to his nature mutable and susceptible of change, as all other rational creatures are:
hence the Word is alien to and other than the essence of God; and the Father is inexplicable
by the Son, and invisible to him, for neither does the Word perfectly and accurately know
the Father, neither can he distinctly see him. The Son knows not the nature of his own es-
sence: for he was made on our account, in order that God might create us by him, as by an
instrument; nor would he ever have existed, unless God had wished to create us.
Some one accordingly asked them whether the Word of God could be changed, as the
devil has been? and they feared not to say, ‘Yes, he could; for being begotten, he is susceptible
of change.’ We then, with the bishops of Egypt and Libya, being assembled together to the
number of nearly a hundred, have anathematized Arius for his shameless avowal of these
heresies, together with all such as have countenanced them. Yet the partisans of Eusebius
have received them; endeavoring to blend falsehood with truth, and that which is impious
with what is sacred. But they shall not prevail, for the truth must triumph; and ‘light has no
fellowship with darkness, nor has Christ any concord with Belial.’124 Who ever heard such
blasphemies? or what man of any piety is there now hearing them that is not horror-struck,
and stops his ears, lest the filth of these expressions should pollute his sense of hearing?
Who that hears John saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word,’125 does not condemn those
that say, ‘There was a period when the Word was not’? or who, hearing in the Gospel of ‘the
only-begotten Son,’ and that ‘all things were made by him,’ will not abhor those that pro-
nounce the Son to be one of the things made? How can he be one of the things which were
made by himself? Or how can he be the only-begotten, if he is reckoned among created
things? And how could he have had his existence from nonentities, since the Father has
123 ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων γέγονεν, lit. ‘came into existence from nothing.’
124 2 Cor. vi. 14.
125 John i. 1–3, 18.
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Division begins in the Church from this Controversy; and Alexander Bishop…