become the normal state of Christian theologians." A passage which Gibbon calls worthy of a Christian philosopher, and which is sometimes read or quoted without due remembrance of the fact that, in Hilary's view, as in that of Athanasius, all this deplorable and scandalous uncertainty was the product of a restless heresy that was consistent in nothing but in aversion to the Nicene faith. Hilary, in this tract, requested leave to address the Emperor and the Council on the matters of doctrine involved in the Arian controversy: professing at the same time his own immovable fidelity to the creed of his regeneration, an older and simpler formula than the Nicene, but, as he believed, in entire accordance with it. The request was refused: he thereupon relieved his mind by composing, but taking care not to publish, an unmeasured invective Against Constantius," and was afterwards sent back into Gaul, as a sower of discord and a disturber of the East." And here we may close our review of that triumph which had been achieved by the persistency and diplomacy of Acacian Arianism.

CHAPTER XV.

RESULTS OF THE COUNCIL OF ARIMINUM.

THE cause of apostolic Christianity, as it had been vindicated and guarded in the Nicene Council, might, to human judgment, have seemed well-nigh a lost cause at the opening of the year 360. A great Western Council, whose proceedings had begun with an exhibition of unmistakable fidelity to the Nicene faith, had been partly wearied, partly menaced, partly beguiled into the acceptance, not of Semi-Arianism, but of that Acacian form of Arianism which, as managed by shifty and worldly-minded prelates, was effectively working in the interests of an extreme development of heresy, even although its representatives might find it convenient to disown and condemn the latter, and to put forward their Homoion as avoiding alike the technicality of the Homoiousion and the coarse impiety of the Anomoion-as embodying in a simple and "Scriptural" formula whatever was really necessary for saving faith in the Son of God. And the Semi-Arian Council of Seleucia, which had included several who were rather verbally than really separate from the orthodox position, had apparently witnessed in vain against the lower grades of Arianism, and had been followed by the submission of its representatives to that same Homœan formula which had secured the assent of the Westerns at Ariminum. It mattered little, comparatively, that the avowed upholder of the Anomoion, Aetius, whom zealous Churchmen called "the Godless," had been made a scapegoat for the Acacians, or even that the Anomoion had been in express terms repudiated by the less candid but not less profane Eudoxius. All who could really discern the true bearings of the case would feel that the proscription not only of the Catholic, but of the Semi-Arian creed, and the enforcement of the Homoion by a Council in the imperial city, and by the full weight of the imperial power, meant nothing else than the ultimate,

and probably the not distant triumph of Ultra-Arianism; unless, in the providence of God, some turn of events should deprive Arianism of the support of the State, or some vigorous reaction provoked by the Acacians' insolent triumph should neutralise the effect of the events at Ariminum, and impel the best of the Semi-Arians to take some further steps in the direction of Catholicity.

The "fearful troubles," as Tillemont expresses it, "which were excited in the Church by the exaction of signatures" to the Ariminian Creed, involved a persecution which Sozomen does not hesitate to call more grievous than those of the pagan emperors, inasmuch as, "if it seemed more moderate in regard to bodily inflictions, it entailed more disgrace to the Christian name, for both the persecutors and the persecuted were originally members of the Church," and fellow-Christians were treated as no Christian ought to treat any fellow-man. Jerome's famous hyperbole has already been quoted; in another passage he says that nearly all Churches were polluted by communion with Arians, under the pretext of "peace" and "the Emperor's will." Gregory of Nazianzus, who knew well what he was writing about, describes the expulsion of several bishops who refused to sign the new creed, and the substitution of others who accepted the episcopate on these terms. "The ink was ready, the informer was at hand;" many prelates subscribed against their own privately retained convictions, under pressure of menaces or under the influence of smooth persuasions. Some, says Gregory, had whatever excuse ignorance could furnish; but that, in the eye of Roman law, would be held no excuse at all. And the flocks, in many cases, followed blindly as their pastors went, accepting mechanically what they accepted: it was not so in other cases, as when Dianius of Cappadocian Cæsarea signed the creed, and Basil and "many others," who in his native country "feared the Lord," were exceedingly shocked and grieved at such compliance, and could not be satisfied until they were assured that the signature was given "in simplicity of heart," and "without any intention to abandon the faith of Nicæa." Gregory Nazianzen's father, the old bishop of Nazianzus, was, as his son expresses it, "carried away by his simplicity" to subscribe the Arianizing symbol, but was believed, at the time, to have not "defiled his soul with the ink" of the signature, but preserved his faith intact. The " more zealous Churchmen" of the city, while protesting against his act, admitted that it was a mistake, and not an apostasy.

Jerome describes the confusion which filled the Church, and the varying lines of action adopted by various bishops after the real bearing of the Ariminian catastrophe became apparent. "Some confined themselves to the communion of their own local church; some began to write to those who were in exile for their adherence to Athanasius; some, despairing of anything better, deplored the communion which they had adopted; a few-as men will dodefended their mistake as if it were a deliberate action." Lucifer, from his place of exile, began to pour forth pamphlet after pamphlet in denunciation of the injustice and tyranny of an Emperor who had, in his view, apostatized from the faith to Arianism; and it must be said that the volcanic fury of these outbursts was neither helpful nor honourable to the cause which had fired this zeal. He never thinks of measuring his words, of the responsibility attaching to sheer vehemence; he never stops to ask whether this or that phrase befits a Christian confessor. The title of one of his treatises is sufficiently significant-"One must not spare those who offend against God;" and his notion of "not sparing" is illustrated by one sentence: "God calls you (Constantius) a scorpion; are you angry with me for calling you so?" In another of these diatribes he says, "We think you as bad as worshippers of all the demons." Gregory, bishop of Elvira, wrote vigorously in behalf of the Nicene faith, and received a letter of congratulation from Eusebius of Vercellæ. "As long as you persevere in the same confession, and hold no intercourse with the hypocrites, promise yourself our communion. . . . All the hope of the Arian fanatics depends on the protection of secular sovereignty; they know not the text, 'Cursed are they that put their trust in man!'" Liberius himself, and Vincent of Capua, effaced, as Tillemont expresses it, the disgrace of their previous weakness by "refusing to consent to the decrees of Ariminum." In Gaul, the Council of Paris (the first of a series of synods held in that city, which was now associated with the court of the Cæsar Julian, who afterwards as Emperor looked back fondly to "his dear Lutetia") addressed to the Eastern bishopsthat is,' to those who had been represented at Seleucia, and had upheld the use of the term Ousia against the Acacian and cryptoAnomoan intriguers--a letter preserved among the "Fragments of St. Hilary. From this letter it appears that the Seleucians had written to Hilary, denouncing those intriguers, and narrating the failure of their own attempt to keep the Ariminian delegates from

consenting to Arian "blasphemy." Hilary, who had now returned to Gaul, had evidently set before his brethren the true state of the case; they found that "their simplicity had been deceived into an abandonment of the word Ousia," according to the terms of the Ariminian formulary: they accordingly, in this Council, explicitly confessed the Homoousion itself, as the true expression of the actual "birth of the Only-begotten God" (as in one reading of John i. 18) "from God the Father;" defining the relation of the Son to the Father as not a "union in the Sabellian sense, but a 'unity" in the Catholic; identifying "ousia" with their own Latin "substantia;" condemning all the Anomaan "blasphemies," of which the Easterns had sent a list; announcing that they regarded as excommunicate Ursacius and Valens, and the other Ariminian delegates, together with Saturninus, and with those "apostate bishops" who, "by the ignorance or impiety of certain persons, had been set in the place of brethren undeservedly exiled; and promising and declaring in the presence of God, that whosoever should resist the decisions of the Council within Gaul should be expelled from the communion and from sacerdotal dignity." This Council of Paris was one of the first signs of hope, of a possible restoration of orthodoxy and unity, among the distressed and bewildered Churches of the West.

Nor were the Catholics of the East without some grounds of encouragement at the close of 360 and the beginning of 361. Anomœanism, to do its representatives justice, was usually associated with a downright frankness which makes them, comparatively, objects of respect, in contrast with the shifty insincerities of several less notorious Arians. But according to a story told by Theodoret, Eunomius, their ablest man, had been placed by Eudoxius in the see of Cyzicus, on the understanding, or rather with the hope, that he would not shock the ears of his flock by calling the Son of God a creature. "Eleusius has accustomed them to regard him as uncreate; you must not, by hasty and premature disclosure of your own sentiments, alienate those whom a little patience will bring round; when the right time comes, you can proclaim what, for the present, a prudent reserve must keep in the background.” Eunomius, at first, adopted this advice, and used ambiguous language, which some of his orthodox hearers well understood to be a disguise for Anomanism. Thereupon, meeting craft by craft, they went to the new bishop's house; and, as if zealous for definite teaching, begged him to speak out, and save the flock