15. Dionysius’s critics laid a formal complaint against him before his namesake (Dionysius), who had by now succeeded the martyred Xystus II as Bishop of Rome; they accused him of having fallen into five errors himself, while correcting the false views of the Sabellians.
They were as follows, as we gather them from Athan., _de sent. Dion._:—
(3) Naming the Father without the Son and the Son without the Father.
(4) Virtually rejecting the term ὁµοούσιος (of one substance) as descriptive of the Son.
(5) Speaking of the Son as a creature of the Father and using misleading illustrations of their relation to One Another.
One or two of these illustrations which were objected to will be found in the extract translated on p. 103, and they are sufficient to give some idea of the rest. It may, however, be acknowledged that neither Dionysius himself in his original statements and in his attempts to explain them, nor Athanasius, who, when Arius afterwards appealed to Dionysius in support of his opinions, put forward an elaborate defence of him, was altogether happy or successful.
16. Upon receiving the complaint mentioned, the Bishop of Rome appears to have convened a synod, which condemned the expressions complained of, and a letter was addressed by him on the modes of correcting the heresy to the Church of Alexandria. From motives of delicacy he made no actual mention of his Alexandrian brother-bishop in this letter, while criticizing his views, though he wrote to him privately asking for an explanation. A considerable portion of the public letter has been preserved for us by Athanasius, but it is not included in this volume, nor is it necessary to particularize his treatment of the question or to say more than this, that, though the Roman Bishop wrote quite good Greek and gives no impression that he felt hampered by it in expressing his meaning, yet he does naturally exhibit distinct traces of Western modes of thought as opposed to Eastern, and is not always quite fair in his representation and interpretation of what Dionysius had said.
Dionysius’s answer to his Roman brother was embodied in the treatise called _Refutation and Defence_ (Ἔλεγχοσ καὶ Ἀπολογία), some extracts from which (as given by Athanasius) will be found on pp. 101 ff.