SABELLITIS, a celebrated African heresiarch of the 3d c., was b. probably at Ptole mais in the Pentapulis, where, at all events, his opinions were first promulgated. Nothing is known regarding his life—tile few statements current on the subject being of a con tradictory and untrustworthy character, and it is generally thought that he did not broach his heresy till shortly before his death—the date of which is also unknown. Sabellius pronounced by Neander "the most original and profound thinker among the Monarelii ans"—i.e., the Unitarians; but unfortunately only a few fragmentary notices of his teach ing have been preserved, and these by his theological adversaries. It would appear that he did not reject the scriptural phraseology used in speaking of the Godhead. "Father." " Son," and " Holy Ghost" were sacred and venerable names to him as well as to ortho dox Christians; but he was strongly opposed to the ecclesiastical conception of this Trinity, as a trinity of distinct persons, or snbsistenees (hypostases), which he (like many other persons since) held to be absurd and unthinkable, and argued that what is to be understood is a Trinity of manifestation. The single absolute Divine essence—the manes or "pure Deity," unfolds itself in creation and the history of man as a Trinity.' His words, as quoted by Athanasius, are: He mon& platuntheise llegone tries. The "energy" ny which God called into being and sustains the universe is the "Logos," after whose image men were created; but when they had fallen front perfection, it became necessary for the "Logos." or divine energy, to hypostatize itself in a human in order to raise and redeem them; hence in the man Christ Jesus dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily; while the same divine energy. operating spiritually and impersonally in the hearts
of believers. is the "Holy Ghost." This is not, perhaps, so very heretical after all. But. on the other hand, we must not overlook the fact that Sabellius held these Divine " mani festations" to be merely temporary, and that after the "Logos" and the "Holy Ghat" had done their work, they would be reabc"rbed in the absolute Deity—the tries would again resolve itself into the mones; or, in language of St. Paul, that " God would be all in all." Epiphanies alleges that Sabellins derived his system from an apocryphal "gospel to the Egyptians;" and there arc (as Neander points out) so many points of resemblance in Sabellianism to both the Alexandrian Jewish theology in general, and the particular gospel referred to, that the statement maybe regarded as at least indicating the direction from which proceeded the influences that determined the theosophy of the unknown Pentapolimn. The followers of Sabellius were formally suppressed by the Catholic church in the 4th c.; but his doctrine, which, divested of its Gnostic and Nen platonic phraseology about "emanation" and " rcabsorption," etc., is substantially Unitarian, has seldom wanted eminent advocates in any subsequent age of Christianity. —Consult Tillemont's Lardner's Grechbitity of the Gospel; and the Church His tories of Mosheim, Meander, and Milmau.