Hypocrisy, Hypocrites

 THIS is almost a title of the Arians, (with an apparent allusion to 1 Tim. iv. 2. vid. Socr. i. p. 13. Athan. Orat. i. § 10, ii. § 1 and § 19, iii. § 16. Syn. § 32. Ep. Enc. 6. Ep. Æg. 18. Epiph. Hær. 73, 1,) and that in various senses. The first meaning is that, being heretics, they nevertheless used orthodox phrases and statements to deceive and seduce Catholics. The term is thus used by Alexander in the beginning of the controversy. vid. Theod. Hist. i. 3, pp. 729, 746. Again, it implies that they agreed with Arius, but would not confess it; professed to be Catholics, but would not anathematise him. vid. Athan. ad Ep. Æg. 20, or alleged untruly the Nicene Council as their ground of complaint, ibid. § 18. Again, it is used of the hollowness and pretence of their ecclesiastical proceedings, with the Emperor at their head; which were a sort of make-belief of spiritual power, or piece of acting, [ dramatourgema ]. Ep. Encycl. 2 and 6. It also means general insincerity, as if they were talking about what they did not understand, and did not realise what they said, and were blindly implicating themselves in evils of a fearful character. Thus Athan. calls them (as cited supr.) [ tous tes Areiou anias hypokritas ], Orat. ii. § 1, init.; and he speaks of the evil spirit making them his sport, [ tois hypokrinomenois ten manian autou ], ad Serap. i. 1. And hence further it is applied, at Syn. § 32, as though with severity, yet to those who were near the truth, and who, though in sin, would at length come to it or not, according as the state of their hearts was. He is here anticipating the return into the Church of those whom he thus censures. In this sense, though with far more severity in what he says, the writer of a Tract imputed to Athan. against the Catholicising Semi-Arians of 363, entitles it "On the hypocrisy of Meletius and Eusebius of Samosata." It is remarkable that what Athan. here predicts was fulfilled to the letter, even of the worst of these "hypocrites." For Acacius himself, who in 361 signed the AnomSan Confession above recorded (vid. vol. i. supr. p. 121, note), was one of those very men who accepted the Homoüsion with an explanation in 363. Hypostasis

 [ hypostasis ], subsistence, person. It is remarkable how seldom this word occurs in Athanasius except as found in Hebr. i. 3; and the more so because it is a term little known outside Christian theology, and within that theology after Athan.'s time so important and authentic. It is not found, I believe, in his first two Orations; twice in the third; in the fourth, which seems a distinct work from the three, by contrast five times, and often in S. Alexander's Letter in Theodoret, to his namesake at Constantinople. Vid. art. [ eidos ] and [ ousia ], which Athan. seems to use instead of it.

 It would seem as if there were a class of words which, in the first age, before the theological terminology was fixed by ecclesiastical determinations, admitted of standing either for the Divine Being or a Divine Person according to the occasion; and this, as being one of them, was not definite or precise enough for a mind so clear as Athan.'s; vid. Orat. iii. § 66, iv. § 1, 25, 33, 35. Vid. art. [ ousia ].