Progress in Catholicity
It never occurred to Athanasius that the Arian and the various non-Nicene views of the Godhead had roots in the undeniably orthodox teachings of such writers as the Apologists of the second century, Hippolytus of Rome and Irenaeus. Such views even had some affinities with the pronouncements of Tertullian. Tertullian, after all, saw no difficulty for Christian theism in the statement that "there was a time when ... the Son was not," the very sentiment for which Arius was condemned.
James Bradley and Richard Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids,MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2016), 35