Marcellus, Bishop of
Ancyra, and his pupil Photinus, are anathematized in the Creed called
Μακρόστιχος
as holding that Christ first became “Son of God when He took our
flesh from the Virgin.…For they will have it that then Christ
began His Kingdom, and that it will have an end after the consummation
of all and the judgment. Such are the disciples of Marcellus and
Scotinus of Galatian Ancyra, &c.” See Newman on
Athanasius, de Synodis, § 26, (5), notes a and
b. Compare the description of Marcellus in the Letter of
the Oriental Bishops who had withdrawn from the Council of Sardica to
Philippopolis (a.d. 344). “There
has arisen in our days a certain Marcellus of Galatia, the most
execrable pest of all heretics, who with sacrilegious mind, and impious
mouth, and wicked argument seeks to set bounds to the perpetual,
eternal, and timeless kingdom of our Lord Christ, saying that He began
to reign four hundred years since, and shall end at the dissolution of
the present world” (Hilar. Pictav. Ex Opere Hist.
Fragm. iii.).