There were, (1.) The Damianitæ, who held that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, were distinct persons; each not God in himself, but God by participation in a common divine nature. (2.) The Petritæ, sectators of Peter of Antioch, who professed to believe that each person in the blessed Trinity is in himself God, by independent nature, substance, and individuality; and with these merely symbolized, (3.) The Cononitæ, or followers of Conon, bishop of Tarsus; while, (4.) The Philoponiaci, so called from Philoponus, a schoolman of Alexandria, holding the same views with the Peterites on the Trinity, differed from them on several other points of doctrine. (5.) The Agnoëtæ, or Ignorantians, who held, with respect to the second person of the Trinity, that though all things were known to him, yet, on account of his hypostatical union with our humanity, he willed to be ignorant of some things. (6.) The Condobauditæ, (from the place where they were mostly found,) who attributed ignorance to Christ, and denied the co-equality of the three persons in the Godhead. Besides these, there were the followers of Paul the Black, the Sergiani, the Nicobitæ, and other sub-sects, which it would be useless to enumerate.
This painful anarchy of docrine, with the manifold evils attendant upon it, continued to afflict and desolate the church for more than seventy years. During this time, though the authority of the council of Chalcedon was resolutely maintained by a minority, and often a small one, of faithful men, the Eutychian, or rather Monophysite, cause, by the success of factious intrigue and the partiality of the emperors, held sway over nearly the entire East. The emperor Basilicus compelled no less than five hundred bishops to condemn the creed of Chalcedon; while the Henoticon, or Irenical Decree, of Zeno, though in words condemnatory both of Nestorius
