Athanasius on the Council of Ariminum

The great Athanasius also wrote about the council at Ariminum, in his letter to the Africans. This is what he says: [a]

“Things being so, who will put up with any mention of the Council of Ariminum, or of any council besides the Nicene? Who would not loathe the setting aside of the words of the fathers, and the preference for the words brought in at Ariminum by violence and party strife? Who would want to be associated with these men, fellows who, if you please, do not accept their own words? In their own ten or a dozen synods, as has already been told, they have laid down now one thing and now another, and at the present time they themselves are openly denouncing these synods one after another. They are now suffering what the traitors among the Jews suffered long ago. For as it is written in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, ‘They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and dug out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.’ In the same way these men, in their opposition to the ecumenical synod, have dug out many synods for themselves, and all of them have proved empty, like ‘ears of grain that yield no flour.’

“So let us not accept those who cite the Council of Ariminum, or any council but that of Nicaea. In fact, the very people who cite Ariminum do not seem to know what was done there; if they did, they would have held their tongues. For you, beloved, have learned from your own representatives at that council, and so you know very well, that Ursacius, Valens, Eudoxius and Auxentius, and Demophilus with them, were asked to anathematize the Arian heresy. They made excuses and chose instead to be its champions, and so they were all deposed for putting forward proposals contrary to the decrees of Nicaea. The bishops, on the other hand, who were the true servants of the Lord and held the right faith, about two hundred in number, declared that they held to the Nicene council alone, and that they would not entertain the thought of taking anything away from its decrees or adding anything to them. They have reported this decision to Constantius, by whose order the council met.

“But the bishops who were deposed at Ariminum have been received by Constantius. They have managed to have the two hundred who condemned them grossly insulted, and threatened that they will not be allowed to return to their dioceses, and that they will be made to suffer harsh treatment in Thrace, and in winter at that, to force them to accept the innovators’ measures.

“So if we hear anyone appealing to Ariminum, let us answer: ‘Show us first the sentence of deposition, and then the document drawn up by the bishops, in which they declare that they do not seek to go beyond the terms set down by the fathers of Nicaea, and appeal to no other council than that of Nicaea.’ These are the very facts they hide, while they push forward the confession forced out of them in Thrace. In this they only show themselves friends of the Arian heresy and strangers to the sound faith. Let anyone simply be willing to set that great synod side by side with these others to which they appeal, and he will see true religion on the one side and folly and disorder on the other. The fathers of Nicaea met together, not after being deposed, but after confessing that the Son is of the substance of the Father. These men were deposed once, then a second time, and then a third time at Ariminum, and after that they dared to lay down that it is wrong to attribute substance or essence to God.” [e]

So strange and so many were the tricks and schemes that the mad gang of Arius devised in the West against the teachings of the truth.