Paulianists, a sect of heretics, so denominated from their founder Paul of Samosata, who was elected bishop of Antioch in 262. His doctrine seems to have amounted to this, that the Son and the Holy Ghost exist in God in the same manner as the faculties of reason and activity do in man; that Christ was born a mere man, but that the reason or wisdom of the Father descended into him, and by him wrought miracles upon earth, instructing the nations; and that, on account of this union of the Divine Word with the man Jesus, Christ might be called God, though, as he conceived, improperly. It is also said that he did not baptize in the name of the Son; for which reason the council of Nice ordered those who had been baptized by him to be rebaptized.

Being condemned by Dionysius Alexandrinus in a council, he abjured his errors to avoid deposition; but he soon afterwards resumed them, and was actually deposed by another council in 269. This man may be considered as the father of the modern Socinians; and his errors were severely condemned by the council of Nice. The creed agreed upon by the Nicene fathers, with a view to the errors of Paul of Samosata, concludes thus: "But those who say there was a time when he was not, and that he was not before he was born, the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes."

To those who have any veneration for the council of Nice this must appear a very severe, and perhaps not unjust, censure of some other modern sects, as well as that of the Socinians.