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THERE, however, Hilary bishop of Poictiers (a city of
Aquitania Secunda) had anticipated him, having previously confirmed
the bishops of Italy and Gaul in the doctrines of the orthodox faith;
for he first had returned from exile to these countries. Both
therefore nobly combined their energies in defense of the faith: and
Hilary being a very eloquent man, maintained with great power the
doctrine of the homoousion in books which he wrote in Latin. In these
he gave sufficient support [to the doctrine] and unanswerably confuted
the Arian tenets. These things took place shortly after the recall of
those who had been banished. But it must be observed, that at the
same time Macedonius, Eleusius, Eustathius, and Sophronius, with
all their partisans, who had but the one common designation
Macedonians, held frequent Synods in various places. Having called
together those of Seleucia who embraced their views, they
anathematized the bishops of the other party, that is the Acacian:
and rejecting the creed of Ariminum, they confirmed that which had
been read at Seleucia. This, as I have stated in the preceding
book, was the same as had been before promulgated at Antioch. When
they were asked by some one, 'Why have ye, who are called
Macedonians hitherto, retained communion with the Acacians, as
though ye, agreed in opinion, if ye really hold different
sentiments?' they replied thus, through Sophronius, bishop of
Pompeiopolis, a city of Paphlagonia: 'Those in the West,' said
he, 'were infected with the homoousian error as with a disease:
Aetius in the East adulterated the purity of the faith by introducing
the assertion of a dissimilitude of substance. Now both of these
dogmas are illegitimate; for the former rashly blended into one the
distinct persons of the Father and the Son, binding them together by
that cord of iniquity the term homoousion; while Aetius wholly
separated that affinity of nature of the Son to the Father, by the
expression anomoion, unlike as to substance or essence. Since then
both these opinions run into the very opposite extremes, the middle
course between them appeared to us to be more consistent with truth and
piety: we accordingly assert that the Son is "like the Father as to
subsistence."'
Such was the answer the Macedonians made by Sophronius to that
question, as Sabinus assures us in his Collection of the Synodical
Acts. But in decrying Aetius as the author of the Anomoion
doctrine, and not Acacius, they flagrantly disguise the truth, in
order to seem as far removed from the Arians on the one side, as from
the Homoousians on the other: for their own words convict them of
having separated from them both, merely from the love of innovation.
With these remarks we close our notice of these persons.
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