THE MARCELLIANS.

(Bright. Ut supra.)

"The Marcellians," called after Marcellus bishop of Ancyra, who was 

persistently denounced not only by the Arianizers, but by St. Basil, and 

for a time, at least, suspected by St. Athanasius (Vide Epiphan., Hoer., 

72, 4) as one who held notions akin to Sabellianism, and fatal to a true 

belief in the Divine Sonship and the Incarnation. The theory ascribed to 

him was that the Logos was an impersonal Divine power, immanent from 

eternity in God, but issuing from him in the act of creation, and 

entering at last into relations with the human person of Jesus, who thus 

became God's Son. But this expansion of the original divine unity would 

be followed by a "contraction," when the Logos would retire from Jesus, 

and God would again be all in all. Some nine years before the council, 

Marcellus, then in extreme old age, had sent his deacon Eugenius to St. 

Athanasius, with a written confession of faith, quite orthodox as to the 

eternity of the Trinity, and the identity of the Logos with a pre-

existing and personal Son, although not verbally explicit as to the 

permanence of Christ's "kingdom,"--the point insisted on in one of the 

Epiphanian-Constantinopolitan additions to the Creed (Montfaucon, 

Collect. Nov., ii., 1). The question whether Marcellus was personally 

heterodox--i.e. whether the extracts from his treatise, made by his 

adversary Eusebius of Caesarea, give a fair account of his real views-- 

has been answered unfavourably by some writers, as Newman (Athanasian 

Treatises, ii., 200, ed. 2), and Dollinger (Hippolytus and Callistus, p. 

217, E. T. p. 201), while others, like Neale, think that "charity and 

truth" suggest his "acquittal" (Hist. Patr. Antioch., p. 106). 

Montfaucon thinks that his written statements might be favourably 

interpreted, but that his oral statements must have given ground for 

suspicion.