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We have now transcribed the letter of the council of Ariminum.
Ursacius and Valens, with their adherents, anticipating the arrival
of the deputies of the council, showed to the emperor the document
which they had read, and calumniated the council. The emperor was
displeased at the rejection of this formulary, as it had been composed
in his presence at Sirmium, and he therefore treated Ursacius and
Valens with honor; while, on the other hand, he manifested great
contempt towards the deputies, and even delayed granting them an
audience. At length, however, he wrote to the Synod, and informed
them that an expedition which he was compelled to undertake against the
barbarians prevented him from conferring with the deputies; and that he
had, therefore, commanded them to remain at Adrianople until his
return, in order that, when public business had been dismissed, his
mind might be at liberty to hear and test the representations of the
deputies; "for it is right," he said, "to bring to the
investigation of Divine subjects, a mind unfettered by other cares."
Such was the strain of his letter.
The bishops replied that they could never depart from the decision they
had formed, as they had before declared in writing, and had charged
their deputies to declare; and they besought him to regard them with
favor, and to give audience to their deputies, and to read their
letter. They told him that it must appear grievous to him that so mary
churches should be deprived of their bishops; and that, if agreeable
to him, they would return to their churches before the winter. After
writing this letter, which was full of supplications and entreaties,
the bishops waited for a time for a reply; but as no answer was granted
them, they afterwards returned to their own cities.
What I have above stated clearly proves that the bishops who were
convened at Ariminum confirmed the decrees which had of old been set
forth at Nicaea. Let us now consider how it was that they eventually
assented to the formulary of faith compiled by Valens and Ursacius and
their followers. Various accounts have been given me of this
transaction. Some say that the emperor was offended at the bishops
having departed from Ariminum without his permission, and allowed
Valens and his partisans to govern the churches of the West according
to their own will, to set forth their own formulary, to eject those
who refused to sign it from the churches, and to ordain others in their
place. They say that, taking advantage of this power, Valens
compelled some of the bishops to sign the formulary, and that he drove
many who refused compliance, from their churches, and first of all
Liberius, bishop of Rome. It is further asserted that when Valens
and his adherents had acted in this manner in Italy, they resolved to
handle the Eastern churches in the same way. As these persecutors
were passing through Thrace, they stopped, it is said, at Nicaea,
a city of that province. They there convened a council, and read the
formulary of Ariminum, which they had translated into the Greek
language, and by representing that it had been approved by a general
council, they obtained its adoption at Nicaea; they then cunningly
denominated it the Nicaean formulary of faith, in order, by the
resemblance of names, to deceive the simple, and cause it to be
mistaken for the ancient formulary set forth by the Nicaean council.
Such is the account given by some parties. Others say that the
bishops who were convened at the council of Ariminum were wearied by
their detention in that city, as the emperor neither honored them with
a reply to their letter, nor granted them permission to return to their
own churches; and that, at this juncture, those who had espoused the
opposite heresy represented to them that it was not right that divisions
should exist between the priests of the whole world for the sake of one
word, and that it was only requisite to admit that the Son is like
unto the Father in order to put an end to all disputes; for that the
bishops of the East would never rest until the term "substance" was
rejected. By these representations, it is said, the members of the
council were at length persuaded to assent to the formulary which
Ursacius had so sedulously pressed upon them. Ursacius and his
partisans, being apprehensive lest the deputies sent by the council to
the emperor should declare what firmness was in the first place evinced
by the Western bishops, and should expose the true cause of the
rejection of the term "consubstantial," detained these deputies at
Nicaea in Thrace throughout the winter, under the pretext that no
public conveyance could be then obtained, and that the roads were in a
bad state for traveling; and they then induced them, it is said, to
translate the formulary they had accepted from Latin into Greek, and
to send it to the Eastern bishops. By this means, they anticipated
that the formulary would produce the impression they intended without
the fraud being detected; for there was no one to testify that the
members of the council of Ariminum had not voluntarily rejected the
term" substance" from deference to the Eastern bishops, who were
averse to the use of that word. But this was evidently a false
account; for all the members of the council, with the exception of a
few, maintained strenuously that the Son is like unto the Father in
substance, and the only differences of opinion existing between them
were that some said that the Son is of the same substance as the
Father, while others asserted that he is of like substance with the
Father. Some state this matter in one form, others in a different
one.
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