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THE spirit of innovation is self-laudatory, and hence it advanced
further and further, and crept along to greater novelties with
increasing self-conceit, and in scorn of the fathers it enacted laws
of its own, nor does it honor the doctrines of the ancients concerning
God, but is always thinking out strange dogmas and restlessly adds
novelty to novelty as the events now show. For after Macedonius had
been deposed from the church of Constantinople, he renounced the
tenets; of Acacius and Eudoxius. He began to teach that the Son is
God, and that He is in all respects and in substance like unto the
Father. But he affirmed that the Holy Ghost is not a participant of
the same dignities, and designated Him a minister and a servant, and
applied to Him whatever could, without error, be said of the holy
angels. This doctrine was embraced by Eleusius, Eustathius, and by
all the other bishops who had been deposed at Constantinople, by the
partisans of the opposite heresy. Their example was quickly followed
by no small part of the people of Constantinople, Bithynia,
Thrace, the Hellespont, and of the neighboring provinces. For
their mode of life had no little influence, and to this do the people
give special attention. They assumed great gravity of demeanor, and
their discipline was like that of the monks; their conversation was
plain and of a style fitted to persuade. It is said that all these
qualifications were united in Marathonius. He originally held a
public appointment in the army, under the command of the prefect.
After amassing some money in this employment, he quit military
science, and undertook the superintendence of the establishments for
the relief of the sick and the destitute. Afterwards, at the
suggestion of Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, he embraced an ascetic
mode of life, and founded a monastical institution in Constantinople
which exists to the present day. He brought so much zeal, and so much
of his own wealth to the support of the aforesaid, heresy, that the
Macedonians were by many termed Marathonians, and it seems to me not
without reason; for it appears that he alone, together with his
institutions, was the cause that it was not altogether extinguished in
Constantinople. In fact, after the deposition of Macedonius, the
Macedonians possessed neither churches nor bishops until the reign of
Arcadius.
The Arians, who drove out of the churches and rigorously persecuted
all who held different sentiments from themselves, deprived them of all
these privileges. It would be no easy task to enumerate the names of
the priests who were at this period ejected from their own cities; for
I believe that no province of the empire was exempted from such a
calamity.
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