Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume II/Sozomen/Book IV/Chapter 29
Chapter XXIX.—The Partisans of Acacius again do not remain Quiet, but strive to abolish the Term “Consubstantial,” and to confirm the Heresy of Arius.
The partisans of Acacius[1]
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 Aëtius, who had been the
first after Arius to venture openly upon the profession of these
opinions; hence Aëtius 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,”[2]
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.