One Substance or Like Substance

In the meantime the Arians proclaimed their monstrous heretical teachings no longer in secret, as before, but openly and in public. What is more, they interpreted the Synod of Nicaea to suit their own views, and by adding one letter to its decision they cast a kind of darkness over the truth. For where the word Homoousion had been written, which means “of one substance,” they claimed that Homoiousion was written, which means simply “of like substance.” In this way they granted a likeness but took away the unity. For likeness is very different from unity: to give an illustration, a picture of a human body might be like a man, and yet have nothing of the reality of a man. But some of them went even further, and held to Anomoiousia, that is, an unlike substance. [a]

These controversies spread so far that the whole world was caught up in these monstrous errors. For Valens and Ursacius, with their supporters, whose names we have given, infected Italy, Illyricum, and the East with these opinions. Saturninus, bishop of Arles, a violent and factious man, harassed our own country of Gaul in the same way. There was also a widespread belief that Hosius of Spain had gone over to the same faithless party. This seems all the more surprising and hard to believe, because almost all his life he had been the most determined upholder of our views, and the Synod of Nicaea was considered to have been held at his urging. If he did go over, the reason may have been that in his extreme old age he had fallen into his dotage; for he was then more than a hundred years old, as Saint Hilary relates in his letters. While the world was troubled by these things, and the churches were wasting away as if from a kind of disease, a worry pressed on the emperor that was less stirring, but no less serious: although the Arians, whom he favored, seemed the stronger party, there was still no agreement among the bishops about the faith.