42. Because St. Hilary calls the formula signed by Liberius a perfidy, the argument is not weakened, for Noel Alexander supposes that these words and the anathema hurled against Liberius, in St. Hilary's fragments, were foisted in by some other hand, for these fragments were written after the return of Liberius to Rome, when he most strenuously refused to approve of the formula of the Council of Rimini; others again, as Juenin, imagined that St. Hilary called the formula perfidious, taking it in the perverse sense as understood by the Arians, since speaking of it before (considered absolutely in itself), he called it a Catholic formula. Another argument is deduced from the Chronicle of St. Jerome, for he writes, that Liberius, conquered by a weary exile, subscribed to heretical pravity, and entered Rome almost like a conqueror. Noel Alexander says, that St. Jerome means by this, not that he signed a formula in itself heretical, but that he communicated with heretics, and although the communion with heretics was an error, it was not heresy itself. Another answer is, that St. Jerome might have written this under the belief that it was true, since, as Sozymen informs us, the heretics spread everywhere abroad, that Liberius, in subscribing the formula, not only denied the consubstantiality, but even the likeness of the Son to the Father; but, withal, we do not justify Liberius for condemning St. Athanasius and communicating with heretics. He afterwards refused to sign the formula of Rimini, and was, in consequence, obliged to conceal himself in the catacombs till the death of Constantius[1].
43. When Liberius returned to Rome, in the year 358, or the following year, according to Baronius, he was received, Orsi says, with the liveliest demonstrations of joy by the clergy and people; but Baronius says, that there was a large section of the people opposed to him on account of his fall, and that they adhered to Felix II., who, in the commencement, was a schismatic, and unlawfully ordained by three Arian bishops, to whose sect he belonged at the time. Nevertheless, when he learned the lapse of Liberius, he joined the Catholics, and excommunicated the Emperor; and he was thenceforth looked on as the lawful Pope, and Liberius as fallen from his office. However, as Baronius tells us, it appears from the Book of the Pontiffs, that he was taken and conveyed by the Imperial Ministers to Ceri, seventeen miles from Rome, and beheaded. The schismatic Marcellinus, quoted by Fleury, says, that Felix lived eight years after the return of Liberius; but Sozymen, on the contrary, tells us he died almost immediately after that event. Benedict XIV. says, that there is no doubt about the sanctity and martyrdom of Felix, but the learned are divided as to whether he died by the sword or by the sufferings he endured for Christ Baronius says, that there was a doubt in the time of Gregory XIII.
- ↑ Nat. Alex. & cit.
