ARI 
325. Arius acknowledged Christ to be 
God, in a subordinate sense, and considered 
his death to be a propitiation for sin. The 
Arians acknowledge, that the Son was the 
word, though they deny its being eternal, 
contending only that it had been created 
prior to all other beings. They maintain 
that Christ is not the eternal God ; but, in 
opposition to the Unitarians, they contend 
for his pre-existence, a doctrine which they 
found on various passages of -scripture, par- 
ticularly these two, “ before Abraham was, 
I am;” and “glorify me with the glory 
which I had with thee before the world 
was.” Arians diifer among themselves as 
to the extent of the doctrine. Some of 
them believe Christ to have been the Crea- 
tor of the world, and on that account has a 
claim to religious worship ; others admit of 
his pre-existence simply. Hence the ap- 
pellations, high and low Arians. Dr. 
Clarke, Rector of St. James, in his “ Scrip- 
ture Doctrine of the Trinity ;” Mr. Henry 
Taylor, Vicar of Portsmouth, in a work 
entitled, “Ben Mordicai's Apology;” Mr. 
Tomkins, in his “ Mediator ;” and Mr. 
Hopkins in his “ Appeal to the Common 
Sense of all Christian People,’’ have been 
deemed among the most able advocates of 
Arianism. Dr. Price has been one of the 
last writers in behalf of this doctrine : in his 
sermons “ On the Christian Doctrine,” will 
be found an able defence of low Arianism. 
See also a tract published in 1805, by Ba- 
sanistes. 
ARIES, in astronomy, a constellation of 
fixed stars, drawn on the globe in the figure 
of a ram. It is the first of the twelve signs 
of the zodiac, from which a twelfth part of 
the ecliptic takes its denomination. It is 
marked thus <Y>, and consists of sixty-six 
stars. 
ARISH, a long measure used in Persia, 
containing 3197 English feet. 
ARISTA, among botanists, a long needle- 
like beard, which stands out from the husk 
of a grain of corn, grass, &c. 
ARISTARCHUS, in biography, a cele- 
brated Greek philosopher and astronomer, 
and a native of the city of Samos ; but at 
what period he flourished is not certain. It 
must have been before the time of Archi- 
medes, as some parts of his writings and 
opinions are cited by that author. He held 
the doctrine of Pythagoras as to the system 
of the world, but whether he lived before 
or after him is not known. He maintained 
that the sun and stars were fixed in the hea- 
vens, and that the earth moved in a circle 
ARI 
about the sun, at the same time that it re- 
volved about its own axis. He determined 
that the annual orbit of the earth, compared 
with the distance of the fixed stars, is but 
as a point. For these his opinions, which 
time has proved to be undeniably true, he 
was censured by his contemporaries, some 
of whom went about to prove that Greece 
ought to have punished Aristarchus for his 
heresy. This philosopher invented a pecu- 
liar kind of sun-dial, mentioned by Vitru- 
vius. There is now extant only a treatise 
upon the magnitude and distance of the sun 
and moon, which was translated into Latin, 
and commented upon by Commandine, who 
published it with Pappus’s explanations in 
1572. 
ARISTEA, in botany, a genus of plants 
of the Triandria Monogynia class and order. 
Petals six ; style declined ; stigma funnel- 
form, gaping; capsule inferior, many-seeded. 
There is but one species : a Cape plant, 
low ; leaves veined and narrow ; flowers in 
downy heads. 
ARISTIDA, in botany, a genus of the 
Triandria Digynia class of plants, the calyx 
of which is a bivalve subulated glume, of 
the length of the corolla ; the corolla is a 
glume of one valve, opening longitudinally, 
hairy at the base, and terminated by three 
sub-equal patulous aristae ; the fruit is a 
connivent glume, containing a naked fili- 
form single seed, of the length of tire co- 
rolla. There are ten species. 
ARISTOCRACY, a form of government 
where the supreme power is vested in the 
principal persons of tire state, either on ac- 
count of their nobility, or their capacity 
and probity. 
Aristocracies, says Archdeacon Paley, 
are of two kinds ; first, where the power of 
the nobility belongs to them in their collec- 
tive capacity alone ; that is, where, although 
the government reside in an assembly of 
the order, yet the members of the assem- 
bly, separately and individually, possess no 
authority or privilege beyond the rest of the 
community : such is the case in the consti- 
tution of Venice. Secondly, where the no- 
bles are severally invested with great perso- 
nal power and immunities, and where the 
power of the senate is little more than the 
aggregate power of the individuals who 
compose it : such was the case in the con- 
stitution of Poland. Of these two forms 
of government, the first is more tolerable 
than the last ; for although many, or even 
all the members of a senate, should be so 
profligate as to abuse the authority of their 
