On the death of Constantius, in the year 362, the prosperous days of the Arians were at an end.
Continuing Arianism and the First Nicene Council,
with a selection by Johann L. Von Mosheim.
Previously in Arianism and the First Nicene Council.
Time: 325
Place: Nicaea (now Iznik in Turkey)
After the death of Constantine the Great, one of his sons, Constantius, the Emperor of the East, with his wife and his court, was very partial to the Arian cause but Constantine and Constans supported in the western parts, where they governed, the decisions of the Nicene Council. Hence the broils, the commotions, the plots, the injuries had neither measure nor bounds and on both sides councils were assembled to oppose councils. Constans died in the year 350 and two years afterward a great part of the West, particularly Italy and Rome, came under the dominion of his brother Constantius. This revolution was most disastrous to the friends of the Nicene Council; for this Emperor, being devoted to the Arians, involved the others in numerous evils and calamities and by threats and punishments compelled many of them to apostatize to that sect to which he was himself attached. The Nicene party made no hesitation to return the same treatment as soon as time, place and opportunity were afforded them and the history of Christianity under Constantius presents the picture of a most stormy period and of a war among brethren which was carried on without religion or justice or humanity.
On the death of Constantius, in the year 362, the prosperous days of the Arians were at an end. Julian had no partiality for either and therefore patronized neither the Arians nor the orthodox. Jovian espoused the orthodox sentiments and therefore all the West, with no small part of the East, rejecting Arian views, reverted to the doctrines of the Nicene Council. But the scene was changed under the two brothers Valentinian and Valens, who were advanced to the government of the Empire in the year 364. Valentinian adhered to the decisions at Nice and therefore in the West the Arian sect, a few churches excepted, was wholly extirpated. Valens, on the contrary, took sides with the Arians and hence in the eastern provinces many calamities befell the orthodox. But when this Emperor had fallen in a war with the Goths, A.D. 378, Gratian — who succeeded Valentinian in the West, in the year 376 and became master of the whole empire in 378 — restored peace to the orthodox. After him Theodosius the Great, by depriving the Arians of all their churches and enacting severe laws against them, caused the decisions of the Nicene Council to triumph everywhere and none could any longer publicly profess Arian doctrines except among the barbarous nations, the Goths, the Vandals and the Burgundians. That there were great faults on both sides in this long and violent contest no candid person can deny but which party was guilty of the greatest wrong it is difficult to say.
The Arians would have done much more harm to the Church if they had not become divided among themselves, after the Nicene Council and split into sects which could not endure each other. Unhappily the Arian contests produced, as was very natural, some new sects. Some persons, while eager to avoid and to confute the opinions of Arius, fell into opinions equally dangerous. Others, after treading in the footsteps of Arius, ventured on far beyond him and became still greater errorists. The human mind, weak and subject to the control of the senses and the imagination, seldom exerts all its energies to comprehend divine subjects in such a manner as to be duly guarded against extremes. In the former class I would reckon Apollinaris the Younger, bishop of Laodicea, though otherwise a man of great merit and one who in various ways rendered important service to the Church. He manfully asserted the divinity of Christ against the Arians but by philosophizing too freely and too eagerly he almost set aside the human nature of the Saviour. This great man was led astray, not merely by the ardor of debate but likewise by his immoderate attachment to the Platonic doctrine concerning a twofold soul, from which if the divines of the age had been free they would have formed more wise and more correct judgments on many points. The doctrine of Apollinaris met the approbation of many in nearly all the eastern provinces, and, being explained in different ways, it became a source of new sects. But as it was assailed by the laws of the emperors, the decrees of councils and the writings of learned men, it gradually sunk under these united assaults.
At the head of those whom the contests with Arius led into still greater errors may undoubtedly be placed Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, who in the year 343 advanced opinions concerning God equally remote from those of the orthodox and those of the Arians. The temerity of the man was chastened not only by the orthodox, in their councils of Antioch in 345, of Milan in 347 and of Sirmium but also by the Arians in a council held at Sirmium in 351. He was deprived of his office and died in exile in the year 372. After him Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople, a distinguished semi-Arian teacher, being deprived of his office by the Council of Constantinople, in the year 360, in his exile founded the sect of the Pneumatomachi. He openly professed that the Holy Spirit is a divine energy diffused throughout the universe and not a person distinct from the Father and the Son. This doctrine was embraced by many in the Asiatic provinces; but the Council of Constantinople, assembled by Theodosius the Great, in the year 381 and which is commonly considered as the second ecumenical council, early dissipated by its authority this young and immature sect. One hundred and fifty bishops present in this council defined fully and perfectly the doctrine of three persons and one God, as it is still professed by the great body of Christians, which the Nicene Council had only in part performed. They also anathematized all the heresies then known.
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