CHAPTER XIV

DISSENSION BETWEEN THE PARTIZANS OF MACEDONIUS AND THOSE OF ACACIUS

AT this period, the adherents of Macedonius, among whom were Eleusius, Eustathius, and Sophronius, who now began to be called Macedonians, as constituting a distinct sect, adopted the bold measure, on the death of Constantius, of calling together those of their own sentiments who had been convened at Seleucia, and of holding several councils. They condemned the partizans of Acacius, and the faith which had been established at Ariminum, and confirmed the doctrines which had been set forth at Antioch, and afterwards approved at Seleucia. When interrogated as to the cause of their dispute with the partizans of Acacius, with whom, as being of the same sentiments as themselves, they had formerly held communion, they replied, by the mouth of Sophronius, a bishop of Paphlagonia, that while the Christians in the West maintained the use of the term “consubstantial,” the followers of Aetius in the East, upheld the dogma of dissimilarity as to substance; that the former party confounded the persons of the Father and of the Son, by their use of the term “consubstantial,” and that the latter party represented too great a difference as existing between the hypostases of the Father and of the Son; but that they themselves preserved the mean between the two extremes, and avoided both errors, by religiously maintaining that, in hypostasis, the Son is like unto the Father. It was by such representations as these that the Macedonians vindicated themselves from blame.