THE SABELLIANS.

(Bright. Ut supra.)

"The Sabellians," whose theory is traceable to Noetus and Praxeas in the 

latter part of the second century: they regarded the Son and the Holy 

Spirit as aspects and modes of, or as emanations from, the One Person of 

the Father (see Newman's Arians, pp. 120 et seqq.). Such a view tended 

directly to dissolve Christian belief in the Trinity and in the 

Incarnation (Vide Wilberforce, Incarnation, pp, 112, 197). Hence the 

gentle Dionysius of Alexandria characterised it in severe terms as 

involving "blasphemy, unbelief, and irreverence, towards the Father, the 

Son, and the Holy Spirit" (Euseb., H. E., vii.. 6). Hence the deep 

repugnance which it excited, and the facility with which the imputation 

of "Sabellianizing" could be utilised by the Arians against maintainers 

of the Consubstantiality (Hilary, De Trinit., iv., 4; De Synod., 68; 

Fragm., 11; Basil, Epist., 189, 2). No organized Sabellian sect was in 

existence

at the date of this anathema: but Sabellian ideas were "in the air," and 

St. Basil could speak of a revival of this old misbelief (Epist., 126). 

We find it again asserted by Chilperic I., King of Neustria, in the 

latter part of the sixth century (Greg. Turon., Hist. Fr., v., 45).