Sabellius

, a Lybian, known in ecclesiastical history as the head of the sect called Sabellians, lived in the third century, and was born at Ptolemais, and was a disciple of Noetus. He reduced the three persons in the Trinity to three states, or relations, or rather reduced the whole Trinity to the one person of the Father; making the Word and Holy Spirit to be the only emanations or functions thereof. Epiphanius tells us, that the God of the Sabellians, whom they called the Father, resembled the Son, and was a mere subtraction, whereof the Son was the illuminative virtue or quality, and the Holy Ghost the

warming virtue. This sect had many followers in Mesopotamia and Rome; but their doctrines are so obscurely -expressed, as to create doubts as to what they really were. It is certain, however, that they were condemned by the Trinitarians, and therefore Lardner, and his followers, seem pleased to add Sabellius to the scanty list of Unitarians of the early ages ¹