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AFTER this letter they irritated the emperor, and got the majority
of the bishops, against their will, to a certain town of Thrace, of
the name of Nica. Some simple men they deluded, and others they
terrified, into carrying out their old contrivance for injuring the
true religion, by erasing the words "Substance" and "of one
Substance" from the Creed, and inserting instead of them the word
"like." I insert their formula in this history, not as being
couched in proper terms, but because it convicts the faction of
Arius, for it is not even accepted by the disaffected of the present
time. Now, instead of "the like" they preach "the unlike ."
Unsound Creed put forth at Nica in Thrace.
"We believe in one only true God, Father Almighty, of Whom are
all things. And in the only-begotten Son of God, Who before all
ages and before every beginning was begotten of God, through Whom all
things were made, both visible and invisible: alone begotten,
only-begotten of the Father alone, God of God: like the Father
that begat Him, according to the Scriptures, Whose generation no
one knoweth except only the Father that begot Him. This
Only-begotten Son of God, sent by His Father, we know to have
come down from heaven, as it is written, for the destruction of sin
and death; begotten of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, as it
is written, according to the flesh. Who companied with His
disciples, and when the dispensation was fulfilled, according to the
Father's will, was crucified, dead, and buried, and descended to
the world below, at Whom Hell himself trembled. On the third day
He rose from the dead and companied with His disciples forty days.
He was taken up into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of His
Father, and is coming at the last day of the Resurrection, in His
Father's Glory, to render to every one according to his works. And
we believe in the Holy Ghost, which the Only-begotten Son of
God, Jesus Christ, both God and Lord, promised to send to man,
the Comforter, as it is written, the Spirit of Truth. This
Spirit He Himself sent after He had ascended into Heaven and sat at
the right hand of the Father, from thence to come to judge both quick
and dead. But the word 'the Substance,' which was too simply
inserted by the Fathers, and, not being understood by the people,
was a cause of scandal through its not being found in the Scriptures,
it hath seemed good to us to remove, and that for the future no mention
whatever be permitted of 'Substance,' on account of the sacred
Scriptures nowhere making any mention of the 'Substance' of the
Father and the Son. Nor must one 'essence ' be named in relation
to the person s of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And we call the
Son like the Father, as the Holy Scriptures call Him and teach;
but all the heresies, both those already condemned, and any, if such
there be, which have risen against the document thus put forth, let
them be Anathema."
This Creed was subscribed by the bishops, some being frightened and
some cajoled, but those who refused to give in their adhesion were
banished to the most remote regions of the world.
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