HERESIES IN THE 300's A.D.
It
is said that when the devil tried to destroy the infant Church from
the outside through persecution and found it unsuccessful, he
switched tactics and attacked the Church from within through the
instrumentations of cockles, his followers within the Church.
From
the earliest times, the authors of heresy were priests and
bishops.
The
first and most pervading heresy was Arianism introduced by a
Catholic priest, Arius of Alexandria. The heresy was so bad that the
followers of Arius put to death countless Catholic bishops to
install their own heretical Arian bishops.
The
heretical bishops, in turn, exiled the Pope and held their councils
at Arles, Milan and Rimini. They took over the entire Church of
Constantinople. St. Jerome, thunderstruck by the heresy, commented
that the whole world groaned to wake up and find itself suddenly
Arian.
St.
Athanasius almost single-handedly fought this heresy.
Like
the Protestant movement in the 1500's, Arianism spread far and wide;
it became the national religion of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths,
Burgundians, Suevi, Vandals and Lombards.
The
Arians held that Christ was inferior to the Father. If so, the Holy
Spirit would also be inferior to the Father, says the Macedonianism
heresy, a heresy started by 360 Arian bishops. This was followed by
Apollinarianism, stating that Christ did not have a rational soul,
started by the Bishop of Laodicea.
In
Spain, the heresy , Priscillianism, a form of Manichaeism, was
introduced by the Bishop of Avila with the help of two other
bishops. By the grace of God, this sect was reconciled to the
Church.
One
need not wonder that with bishops like the above, the Church needed
no external enemies. On the part of the evil one, it was a master
stroke.
(07-25-05) |