LUTHER 1527 The Arian Controversy down to the Council of Nicaea, 318-325.

LUTHER 1527

What deceived the good Oecolampadius is the fact that scriptural texts which are contradictory must be reconciled, and one passage must receive an interpretation which will accord with another; for it is certain that the Scriptures cannot be at variance with themselves. But he did not notice and consider that he would be the one who alleged this variance in the Scriptures and who ought to prove it. He simply asserted it and proclaimed it as if it were already sealed and delivered. This is where he stumbled and fell.

The Arian Controversy down to the Council of Nicaea, 318-325.

The contest between these two views broke out about the year 318 or 320. Arius and his followers, for their denial of the true deity of Christ, were deposed and excommunicated by a council of a hundred Egyptian and Libyan bishops at Alexandria in 321. In spite of this he continued to hold religious assemblies of his numerous adherents, and when driven from Alexandria, agitated his doctrine in Palestine and Nicomedia, and diffused it in an entertaining work, half poetry, half prose: The Banquet, of which a few fragments are preserved in Athanasius. Several bishops, especially Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea, who either shared his view or at least considered it innocent, defended him. Alexander issued a number of circular letters to all the bishops against the apostates and Exukontians. Bishop rose against bishop, and province against province. The controversy soon involved, through the importance of the subject and the zeal of the parties, the entire church, and transformed the whole Christian East into a theological battle-field.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Schaff Volume 3 NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIANTY A.D. 311-600
(Pages 620-621)