Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers

There, however, Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, a city of Aquitania Secunda, had gone ahead of him. Hilary had already strengthened the bishops of Italy and Gaul in the doctrines of the orthodox faith, for he had returned from exile to those countries first. So the two of them nobly joined their efforts in defense of the faith. Hilary was a very eloquent man, and in books he wrote in Latin he upheld the doctrine of the homoousion with great power. In them he gave the doctrine solid support and refuted the Arian teachings beyond any answer. These things took place shortly after the recall of those who had been banished. [a]

It should be noted, though, that at this same time Macedonius, Eleusius, Eustathius and Sophronius, with all their followers, who went by the single common name of Macedonians, held frequent synods in various places. They called together those from Seleucia who shared their views and anathematized the bishops of the other party, that is, the Acacians. Rejecting the creed of Ariminum, they confirmed the one that had been read at Seleucia. As I said in the previous book, this was the same creed that had earlier been published at Antioch. Someone asked them, “If you really hold different views, why have you, who until now have been called Macedonians, kept communion with the Acacians as though you agreed with them?” They answered through Sophronius, bishop of Pompeiopolis, a city of Paphlagonia. “Those in the West,” he said, “were infected with the homoousian error as with a disease. In the East, Aetius corrupted the purity of the faith by bringing in the claim of an unlikeness of substance. Both of these teachings are illegitimate. The first rashly blended the distinct persons of the Father and the Son into one, binding them together with that cord of wickedness, the term homoousion. Aetius, for his part, entirely cut the Son off from his kinship of nature with the Father by the word anomoion, that is, unlike in substance or essence. Since these two opinions run to opposite extremes, the middle way between them seemed to us more in keeping with truth and piety. So we say that the Son is ‘like the Father in subsistence.’”

That was the answer the Macedonians gave to the question through Sophronius, as Sabinus assures us in his Collection of the Acts of Synods. But in blaming Aetius as the author of the Anomoion doctrine, and not Acacius, they blatantly disguise the truth, so as to seem as far removed from the Arians on the one side as from the Homoousians on the other. For their own words prove that they separated from both merely out of love of novelty. With these remarks we close our account of these people. [f]