Appendix: Letter of Eusebius of Cæsarea to the People of his Diocese
A Defense of
The Nicene Definition
(De Decretis)
By
ST. ATHANASIUS
Translated by
BL. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
2014
Copyright © 2014 Assumption Press. While the original text contained here is in the public domain, the distinctive features and footnotes of this edition are retained under copyright, with all rights reserved.
Newman’s translation of A Defense of the Nicene Definition was originally published in Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, by James Parker and Co. in1842. A revised edition was published Longmans, Green, and Co. in 1881. This edition follows the 1881 edition with some additional material from the 1842 version.
Cover image: The Council of Nicaea, Artist Unknown
Contents
Testimony of Dionysius of Alexandria
Testimony of Dionysius of Rome
Appendix: Letter of Eusebius of Cæsarea to the People of his Diocese
Epistle of Athanasius
In Defence of the Nicene Definition
(De Decretis)
Prefatory Notice
We have no means of determining the date of this Epistle, and critics do but offer conjectures at variance with each other. The Bollandists consider it to be earlier than A.D. 347, if not soon after the Nicene Council, e.g. 330 (Vit. Athan. c. 26). Montfaucon assigns some time between 350 and 354. Tillemont between 342 and 361.
Other aids towards determining it are such as these: it was written in a time of peace, after the experience and with the anticipation of persecution; but from 325 to 330 there was no such experience, from 330 to 347 no peace, and from 352 to 361 severe persecution; what interval is left for the date is from 348 to 352, which fulfils the requisite conditions, as being an interval of peace, with persecution before and after it.
It may be added that the rise of the Anomœans was about A.D. 350, and about the same time Acacius became the leader of the Eusebian or court party on the tactic in controversy of confining definitions of doctrine to Scripture language, and thereby virtually of annihilating dogmatic faith. Now the main topic and the occasion of this Epistle, as Athanasius shows again and again, is the revival of Arianism proper in its original outspoken vigour, the prominence of Acacius, and the appeal to Scripture against orthodoxy by him and other successors of Eusebius.