How does heresy take over a Local Church? Is it sudden or gradual? Does everyone realize what is happening? What happened? Are some ignorant?
St. Hilary of Poitiers had to deal with very difficult problems in the 4th century. Oftentimes there were those who were heretics, had attacked the First Ecumenical Council, but, did this in sly manners, in ways to provide a sort of 'plausible deniability' as they continued their heretical agenda and punished those who opposed them. These individuals, in many places, constituted the "Official Church"; in the West, the most grievous offender was the Cappadocian import, Auxentius of Milan, who was an inveterate enemy of St. Hilary of Poitiers.
In his text "Against Auxentius", St. Hilary explains how the Arians, like Auxentius, were double-tongued, their words always had more insidious meanings:
"They ascribed to Christ the name of God, because this was given to men. They confessed Him to be truly the Son of God, but only as everyone else is made truly the son of God, by the Sacrament of Baptism. They allowed Him to be before time and ages, because this may be said of angels and the devil. So in reality they ascribed nothing more to Christ the Lord, than what was proper to men or angels. His peculiar property they denied; that He was Christ the True God, that is, of the Same Divinity with the Father. But all this impiety was for a long time coloured over, and carried on by fraud and artifice. And so it happened that the people of Christ were not mortally hurt under the priests of Antichrist, while they thought their faith and meaning had been agreeable to their words. They heard Christ called God, and they supposed Him to be truly so. They heard Him called the Son of God, and they though the verity of a Son was implied in the Nativity of God. They heard Him said to be before all time, and they though that being before all time was the same thing as being Eternal. So the people's ears were much more pious than the hearts of the priests."
Yet, St. Hilary says, once the clergy and people learn the truth behind the subterfuge of seemingly Orthodox words, action must be taken:
"They ought no longer to communicate with them as ministers of Christ, but to avoid them as antichrists, as angels of Satan, as enemies of Christ, as devils, though by the Emperor's favour they were in possession of the churches. They should not be so much in love with walls and buildings, as to think the True Church of God was confined to them, and for their sakes have peace with the Arians. For Antichrist himself was to sit within the walls of the church. So that mountains, and woods, and lakes, and prisons where the Prophets of God were cast, were safer places than the buildings of the church in such a condition. Therefore depart from Auxentius, that angel of Satan, that enemy of Christ, that wicked destroyer, that denier of the Faith, which he made profession of before the Emperor, in such a manner as to decieve him; and so deceived him, as to blaspheme Christ. Let him gather as many synods as he pleases against me; let him proscribe me as an heretic by public titles, as he has often done already; let him stir up the anger of great men as much as he will against me: yet he shall never be any better, in mine opinion, than a devil, because he is an Arian. Nor will I ever desire to be at peace with any but those, who, according to the rule of the Nicene Fathers, anathematize the Arians, and preach Christ to be the True God." [Contra Auxentium, St. Hilary of Poitiers, as quoted in Bingham's "Origines Ecclesiasticae; or, the Antiquities of the Christian Church," pages 284-285]
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