§ 122. THE FENAL VICTvjRY OF OKTHODOXT. 63£
the Koman empire. Soon after bis accession he issued, in 3S0j the celebrated edict, in which he required all his subjects Ic confess the orthodox faith, and threatened the heretics with punishment. After his entrance into Constantinople he raised Gregory Nazianzen to the patriarchal chair in place of Demophilus (who honestly refused to renounce his heretical ^on^action), and drove the Arians, after their foi'ty years' reign, out of all the churches of the capital.
To give these forcible measures the sanction of law, and to restore unity in the church of the whole empire, Theodosius called the second ecumenical council at Constantinople in May, 381. This council, after the exit of the thirty-six Semi-Arian Macedonians or Pneumatomachi, consisted of only a hundred and lifty bishops. The Latin church was not represented at all.' Meletius (who died soon after the opening), Gregory Nazianzen, and after his resignation Nectarius of Constantinople, successively presided. This preferment of the patriarch of Constantinople before the patriarch of Alexandria is explained by the third canon of the council, which assigns to the bishop of new Rome the first rank after the bishop of old Rome. The emperor attended the opening of the sessions, and showed the bishops all honor.
At this council no new symbol was framed, but the Nicene Creed, with some unessential changes and an important addition respecting the deity of the Holy Ghost against Macedonianism or Pneumatomachism, was adopted." In this improved
* In the earliest Latin translation of the canons of this council, indeed, three Roman legates, Paschasinus, Lucentius, and Bonifacius, are recorded among the signers (in Mansi, t. vi. p. 1 1 76), but from an evident confusion of this council with the fouitli ecumenical of 451, which these delegates attended. Comp. Hefele, ii. p. 3 and 393. The assertion of Baronius that in reality pope Damasus summoned the council, rests likewise on a mistake of the first council of Constantinople for the second in 382.
' This modification and enlargement of the Nicene Creed seems not to hav« originated with the second ecumenical council, but to have been current in sub- Biunce about ten years earlier. For Epiphanius, in his Ancoratus, which was con> posed in 374, gives two similar creeds, which were then already in use in the East , the shorter one literally agrees with that of Constantinople (c. 119, ed. Migne, torn. iiL p. 231) ; the longer one (c. 120) is more lengthy on the Holy Ghost; bott have the anathema. Hefele, ii 10, overlooks the shorter and more important fornt
()40 THU{D PEKIOD, A.D. 311-590.
form the JSTicene Creed has been received, though in tlie Greek church without the later Latin addition : jilioque.
In the seven genuine canons of this council the heresies of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, of tlie Arians or Eudoxians, of the Semi- Arians or Pneumatoraachi, of the Sabellians, Marcellians, and Apollinarians, were condemned, and questions of discipline adjusted.
The emj^eror ratified the decrees of the council, and as early as July, 381, enacted the law that all churches shouli l)e given up to bishops who believed in the equal divinity cf the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and who stood in church fellowship with certain designated orthodox bishops. The public worship of heretics was forbidden.
Thus Arianisni and the kindred errors were forever de Btroyed in the Roman empire, though kindred opinions continually reappear as isolated cases and in other connections.'
But* among the different barbarian peoples of the West, especially in Gaul and Spain, wdio had received Christianity from the Tioman empire during the ascendency of Arianism, this doctrine was per})ctuated two centuries longer : among the Goths till 587 ; among the Suevi in Spain till 500 ; among the Vandals who conquered North Africa in 429 and cruelly persecuted the Catholi(;s, till their expulsion by Belisarius in 530 ; among the Bui'gundians till their incoi'poration in the Frank
' John Milton and If-aac Newton cannot properly be termed Arians, Their view of the relation of the Son to the Jatlier was akin to that of Arius, but their sj)irit and their system of ideas were totally different. Bishop Bull's great work, Defensio tidei Nicasna?, first published 1685, was directed against Socinian and Ariau views which obtained in England, but purely with liistorical arguments drawn from the ante- Nicene fathers. Shortly afterwards the high Arian view was revived and ably defended with exegetical, patristic, and philosophical arguments by Whiston, "WniTBT, and especially by Dr. Samuel Clarke (died 172!)), in his treatise on the '"Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity" (1712), wliich gave rise to a protracted controversy, and to the strongest dialectical defence (though broken and irregular in method) of the Nicciie doctrine in the Englisli language by Dr. Wateuland. Thia trinitarian controversy, one of the ablest and most important in the liistory of English theology, is very briefly and superficially touched in the great works of Dr. Baur (vol. iii. p. 68f> If.) and Dorner (vol. ii. p. 903 ff.); but the defect baa been supplied by Prof. Patuick Faiubaihn in an Appendix to the English tram lation of Domer's Hifltoiy of Christology, Divis. Seed. vol. iil. p. S?7 ff.