"This renowned Father is in ecclesiastical history the special doctor of the sacred truth which Arius denied, bringing it out into shape and system so fully and luminously, that he may be said to have exhausted his subject, as far as it lies open to the human intellect. But, besides this, writing as a controversialist, not primarily as a priest and teacher, he accompanies his exposition of doctrine with manifestations of character which are of great interest and value. "The fundamental idea with which he starts in the controversy is a deep sense of the authority of tradition, which he considers to have a definitive jurisdiction even in the interpretation of Scripture, though at the same time he seems to consider that Scripture, thus interpreted, is a document of final appeal in inquiry and in disputation. Hence, in his view of religion, is the magnitude of the evil which he is combating, and which exists prior to that extreme aggravation of it (about which no Catholic can doubt) involved in the characteristic tenet of Arianism itself. According to him, opposition to the witness of the Church, separation from its communion, private judgment overbearing the authorised catechetical teaching, the fact of a denomination, as men now speak,—this is a self-condemnation; and the heretical tenet, whatever it may happen to be, which is its formal life, is a spiritual poison and nothing else, the sowing of the evil one upon the good seed, in whatever age and place it is found; and he applies to all separatists the Apostle's words, 'They went out from us, for they were not of us,' Accordingly, speaking of one Rhetorius, an Egyptian, who, as St. Austin tells us, taught that 'all heresies were in the right path and spoke truth,' he says that the impiety of such doctrine is frightful to mention. "This is the explanation of the fierceness of his language when speaking of the Arians; they were simply, as Elymas, 'full of all guile and of all deceit, children of the devil, enemies of all justice,' θεομάχοι—by court influence, by violent persecution, by sophistry, seducing, unsettling, perverting the people of God. "Athanasius considers Scripture sufficient for the proof of such fundamental doctrines as came into controversy during the Arian troubles; but while in consequence he ever appeals to Scripture (and, indeed, has scarcely any other authoritative document to quote), he ever speaks against interpreting it by a private rule instead of adhering to ecclesiastical tradition. Tradition is with him of supreme authority, including therein catechetical instruction, the teaching of the _schola_, ecumenical belief, the φρόνημα of Catholics, the ecclesiastical scope, the analogy of faith, &c.