Letter to Marius Victorinus

I. Although you may gather many arguments and examples, O friend Victorinus, by which you strive to prove that Christ was born, not made: nevertheless Arius, a man of keen intellect, and his disciples, and among the eminent ones the outstanding Eusebius, have set forth their opinions on this matter in their letters; which letters we now append below. Arius to Eusebius: "To the most beloved lord, faithful man of God, of right opinion, Arius, who suffers persecution from Bishop Alexander unjustly, on account of the truth which conquers all things, for which you also contend, greeting in the Lord.

My father Ammonius coming to Nicomedia, it seemed fitting to salute you through him, and at the same time to make known to you the charity innate in you, and the affection which you have toward the brethren, for the sake of the Lord and His Christ: since the bishop magnificently drives us out and persecutes us, and stirs up every evil against us, so as to banish us from the city as men without God, because we do not agree with him when he publicly says: The Unbegotten is begotten, always God, always Son, at the same time Father, at the same time Son, the Son coexists unbegottenly with the Father: He is always begotten: God does not precede the Son either in understanding or by any small interval: always the Son is from God Himself.

And because Eusebius your brother who is in Caesarea, and Theodotus, and Paulinus, and Athanasius, and Gregory, and Aetius, and all those throughout the East who say that God pre-exists the Son without beginning: they have been made anathema, with the sole exception of Philogonius, and Hellanicus, and Macarius, men who are heretics, to whom it has not been proclaimed, since some call the Son an eructation, others an emission, others co-unbegotten. But their sacrileges we cannot even hear, even if the heretics threaten us with ten thousand deaths. But we say and hold, and have taught and do teach: that the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of the unbegotten in that manner, nor from any underlying subject, but that He subsists by will and thought before times and ages, full God, only-begotten, and immutable, and before He was begotten or created or defined or founded, He was not: for He was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we said: the Son has a beginning, but God is without beginning.

For this reason we are persecuted, and also because we said that He is not from things that exist. But we said this, in accordance with the fact that He is neither a part of God, nor from any underlying subject: for this reason we are persecuted. Now you know.

I pray that you be strengthened in the Lord, mindful of our tribulations, fellow Lucianist, truly Eusebius." Thus speaks Arius. II. And concerning these matters Eusebius writes to Paulinus in this manner as follows: "For since we have heard neither of two unbegottens, nor of one divided into two, nor do we say or believe anything corporeal that suffers, O lord: but one indeed unbegotten, and one truly from Him, and not made from His substance, sharing in no way in the universal nature of His which is unbegotten, nor participating, or not from His substance: but made altogether other in nature and power, unto the perfect likeness of the disposition and power of Him who effects what is made. The beginning of which we have believed to be not only inexpressible in word, but also altogether incomprehensible in thought; not only to men, but also to those who are above men. And these things we have not read as substituted for ourselves, but we have learned them from holy scripture.

We say that He was created, and founded, and made in substance; and we have learned of His immutable and ineffable nature and of the likeness which is toward the Maker: As the Lord Himself says: God created me the beginning of His ways, and before the age He founded me, before all the hills He begot me. But if He is from Him, that is, was from Him as a part of Him or from an effluence of His substance, He would no longer be said to be created or founded, as you too are not ignorant, O lord.