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By Archibald Robertson.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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128 Pages (Part I)
Page 119
In January, at the dedication of the Great Church of Constantine, the second step was taken. The revised creed of Nike was reissued without the anathemas of Ariminum. Aetius was offered by his friend Eudoxius as a sacrifice to the Emperor's scruples (see the account of the previous debates in Thdt. ubi supra), much as Arius had been sacrificed by his fellow-Lucianists at Nicaea (S:2 supra: nine bishops protested, but were allowed six months to reconsider their objection; the six months lasted two years, and then a reconciliation with Aetius took place for a time, Philost. vii. 6). Next a clean sweep was made of the leading semi-Arians on miscellaneous charges (Soz. iv. 24, sq.), and Eudoxius was installed as bishop of the New Rome in the place of Macedonius. The sacrifice of Aetius gave the Homoeans a free hand against their opponents, and was compensated by the appointment of numerous Anomoeans to vacant sees. In particular Eunomius replaced Eleusius at Cyzicus. In the eastern half of the Empire Homoeanism was supreme, and remained so politically for nearly twenty years. But not in the West. Before the Council of Constantinople met, the power of the West had passed away from Constantius. Gaul had acknowledged Julian as Augustus, and from Gaul came the voice of defiance for the Homoean leaders and sympathy for their deposed opponents (Hil. Frag. xi.). And even in the East, throughout their twenty years the Homoeans retained their hold upon the Church by a dead hand. 'The moral strength of Christendom lay elsewhere;' on the one hand the followers of Eunomius were breaking loose from Eudoxius and forming a definitely Arian sect, those of Macedonius crystallising their cruder conservatism into the illogical creed of the 'Pneumatomachi;' on the other hand the second generation of the 'semi-Arians' were, under the influence of Athanasius, working their way to the Greek Catholicism of the future, the Catholicism of the neo-Nicene school, of Basil and the two Gregories.
The lack of inner cohesion in the Homoean ranks was exemplified at the start in the election of a new bishop for Antioch. Eudoxius had vacated the see for that of New Rome; Anianus, the nominee of the Homoeusian majority of Seleucia, was out of the question; accordingly at a Council in 361 the Acacians fixed upon Meletius, who had in the previous year accepted from the Homoeans of CP. the See of Sebaste in the room of the exiled Eustathius. The new Bishop was requested by the Emperor to preach on the test passage Prov. viii. 22. This he did to a vast and eagerly expectant congregation. To the delight of the majority (headed by Diodorus and Flavian), although he avoided the homoousion, he spoke with no uncertain sound on the essential likeness of the Son to the Father. Formally 'Nicene,' indeed, the sermon was not (text in Epiph. Haer. lxxiii. 29-33, see Hort, p. 96, note 1), but the dismay of the Homoean bishops equalled the joy of the Catholic laity. Meletius was 'deposed' in favour of the old Arian Euzoius (infr., p. 70), and after his return under Jovian gave in his formal adhesion to the Nicene test.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/athanasius-life-arianism.asp?pg=119
