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THE partisans of Acacius were not able to remain in tranquillity;
and they therefore assembled together with a few others in Antioch,
and condemned the decrees which they had themselves enacted. They
decided to erase the term "similar" from the formulary which had been
read at Ariminum and at Constantinople, and affirmed that in all
respects, in substance and in will, the Son is dissimilar from the
Father, and that He proceeded from what had no previous existence,
even as Arius had taught from the commencement. They were joined by
the partisans of Aetius, who had been the first after Arius to
venture openly upon the profession of these opinions; hence Aetius was
called atheist, and his approvers, Anomians and Exucontians.
When those who maintained the Nicene doctrines demanded of the
Acacians how they could say that the Son is dissimilar from the
Father, and that He proceeded out of nothing, when it was affirmed
in their own formulary that He is "God of God," they replied that
the Apostle Paul had declared that "All things are of God," and
that the Son is included in the term "all things"; and that it was
in this sense, and in accordance with the Sacred Scriptures, that
the expressions in their formulary were to be understood. Such were
the equivocations and sophistry to which they had recourse. At
length, finding that they could advance no efficient argument to
justify themselves in the opinion of those who pressed them on this
point, they withdrew from the assembly, after the formulary of
Constantinople had been read a second time, and returned to their own
cities.
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