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It is natural to feel distrust of controversialists, who, to all appearance, would not have been earnest against a doctrine or practice, except that it galled themselves. Now it so happens that each of these three Reformers lies open to this imputation. Aerius is expressly declared by Epiphanius to have been Eustathius's competitor for the see of Sebaste, and to have been disgusted at failing.
If it be right to fast, he added, each should choose his own day; for instance, Sunday rather than Wednesday and Friday: while Passion Week he spent in feasting and merriment. And this is pretty nearly all we know of Aerius, who flourished between A.D. 360 and 370. Jovinian was a Roman monk, and was condemned, first by Siricius at Rome, then by St.
What we are looking for is a Church of primitive heretics, of baptists and independents of the Apostolic age, and we must not be put off with the dark and fallible protests of the Nicene era. Far different is the tone of Epiphanius in his answer to Aerius:
I shall think so, until I find Ignatius and Aerius, in spite of their differences about bishops, agreeing in his doctrine of justification; until Irenæus and Jovinian, though at daggers drawn about baptism, shall yet declare Scripture to be the sole rule of faith; until Cyprian and Vigilantius, however at variance about the merit of virginity, uphold in common the sacred right and duty of private judgment.
"If one need refer," he says, speaking of fasting, "to the constitution of the Apostles, why did they there determine the fourth and sixth day to be ever a fast, except Pentecost? and concerning the six days of the Pascha, why do they order us to take nothing at all but bread, salt, and water?... Which of these parties is the rather correct? this deceived man, who is now among us, and is still alive, or they who were witnesses before us, possessing before our time the tradition in the Church, and they having received it from their fathers, and those very fathers again having learned it from those who lived before them?... The Church has received it, and it is unanimously confessed in the whole world, before Aerius and Aerians were born."
Aerius was an intimate friend of Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia, whose name has already occurred above. Both had embraced a monastic life; and both were Arians in creed. Eustathius, being raised to the episcopate, ordained his friend presbyter, and set him over the almshouse or hospital of the see.
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