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and censure of his defects as inaequalis, nimius, confusus, in style, method, and doctrine. Dr. Woodham (in his edition of Tertullian's Apology, preliminary Essays, ed. 1850) protests against the obscurity and neglect which have attended his name; holds that his "peculiar position and character invest his sentiments and reasoning with very singular interest and value"; pronounces him to be in some respects "the keenest of the apologists," and to be remarkably apposite to the popular arguments of modern times (pp. 21, 29, 52, 53).

To the whole of this verdict we subscribe. Arnobius presents as a man a mind and character combining much ardour with much common sense. His sincerity is eminently manifest. He has apprehended to a degree nowhere and never common the great fact of human ignorance. As a writer, he appears as the practised and facile, but not very fanciful, rhetorician of his time and country; and is even a master and model of that peculiar style of a declining age which consists in a subtle medium between the dictions of poetry and of prose.

As a storehouse of old Latinity and of allusions to points of antiquity—to heathen mythology and ceremonial; to law, education, and amusements—his work is of the greatest interest and importance.

The following editions of Arnobius may be mentioned:—1816, Leipz., J. C. Orellius (excellent for a full and learned commentary); Halle, 1844, ed. G. F. Hildebrand; Paris, 1844, Migne's Patr. Lat.; Reifferscheid, Vienna, 1875 (Corpus Script. Eccl. Lat. iv.). For an Eng. trans. see Ante-Nicene Lib. (T.& T. Clark).

[H.C.G.M.]

Arnobius, Junior, a presbyter, or possibly bp., of Gaul; presumed, from internal evidence of his writings, to have lived at least as late as A.D. 460.

The only external notices seem to be those of Venerable Bede, who praises his Commentary on the Psalms, and of Alcuin, who favourably alludes to his Altercation with Serapion in a letter addressed to Flavius Merius, and in the sixth book of his treatise Contra Felicem Urgelitanum. The internal evidence is based upon the Commentarium in Psalmos, the Notes on some passages of the Gospels, and the Altercatio cum Serapione. The Commentary and Altercation may both be found in the Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima (tom. viii.), Lyons, 1677; but the contents render it very difficult to believe that the same person was author of both.

The Commentary on the Psalms is avowed by its author, who dedicates it to Leontius, bp. of Arles, and to Rusticus, bp. of Narbonne. The comments are devout, practical, and pointed, but brief and uncritical, interpreting everything as referring to Christ and the church. They are, however, accused of a semi-Pelagian tendency; and a very learned writer, whose Hist. Eccl. appeared c. 1686, Natalis Alexander, invites special attention to remarks of Arnobius upon Pss. l. ciii. cviii. and cxxvi. (in the Heb.; in A.V., li. civ. etc.). But Nat. Alexander was a Jansenist; and anti-Jansenist writers, such as the Bollandists, might maintain that the majority were

capable of an orthodox interpretation. It must, however, be allowed that the author of the Commentary is anti-Augustinian; as on Ps. cviii. (cix.) 16, 17, he speaks of the heresy, "quae dicit Deum aliquos praedestinâsse ad benedictionem, alios ad maledictionem."

The Altercatio cum Serapione is a dialogue, represented as having been held between Arnobius and Serapion. Serapion by turns plays the part of a Sabellian, an Arian, and a Pelagian, and is gradually driven from each position. Considerable learning is displayed and a clear apprehension of the points at issue, combined with much real ingenuity of argument. The circumstance of Arnobius being the chief speaker does not of course prove that the authorship is his, any more than the position of Socrates in certain of the Platonic dialogues would prove that Socrates wrote them. Moreover, just as we cannot make Socrates responsible for all that Plato has put into his mouth, so neither can Arnobius junior be justly credited with the tenets here ascribed to him by some unknown author. Both the style and tone of the Altercation seem different from that of the Commentary; and though there is in both works a consentient rejection of the errors condemned in the first four general councils, yet it is hardly possible that an author of semi-Pelagian leanings, who had stigmatized predestinarian doctrine as a heresy, should declare, as Arnobius is made to do towards the conclusion of the Altercatio cum Serapione, that he "accepts and defends the dicta of St. Augustine concerning Pelagianism, as if they were the most hallowed writings of the Apostles."

The Notes on some passages of the Gospels, which seem really to belong to Arnobius junior, are given in the edition of his works by Laurence de la Barre (Paris, 1639). But for a new view of the authorship of these works see G. Morin in Revue Bénédictine (1903). He thinks that the author of the Adnotationes, the Altercatio, and the Predestinatus is probably an Illyrian, who lived in Rome. Of the events of our author's life we are wholly ignorant.

[J.G.C.]

Arsacius, the intruding archbp. of Constantinople, after the violent expulsion of Chrysostom (A.D. 404). He was the brother of Nectarius, Chrysostom's predecessor, and had served as archpresbyter under Chrysostom (Photius C. 59). In earlier life his brother had selected him for the bishopric of Tarsus, and had attributed his refusal to an ambitious design of becoming his successor at Constantinople. On this, Palladius asserts, he swore voluntarily that he would never accept the see of Constantinople (Pallad. c. xi.). After he had passed his 80th year, the success of the base intrigue of Eudoxia and Theophilus against Chrysostom opened an unexpected way for his elevation to the archiepiscopal throne. Eudoxia and the party now triumphant wanted for their new archbishop a facile tool, under whose authority they might shelter the violence of their proceedings. Such an instrument they had in Arsacius. Moreover, his hostility to Chrysostom had been sufficiently testified at the synod of the Oak, when he appeared as a witness against him and vehemently pressed his condemna-