ored peace to the
orthodox. After him Theodosius the Great, by depriving the Arians of all
their churches and enacting severe laws against them, caused the
decisions of the Nicene Council to triumph everywhere, and none could
any longer publicly profess Arian doctrines except among the barbarous
nations, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians. That there were
great faults on both sides in this long and violent contest no candid
person can deny, but which party was guilty of the greatest wrong it is
difficult to say.

The Arians would have done much more harm to the Church if they had not
become divided among themselves, after the Nicene Council, and split
into sects which could not endure each other. Unhappily the Arian
contests produced, as was very natural, some new sects. Some persons,
while eager to avoid and to confute the opinions of Arius, fell into
opinions equally dangerous. Others, after treading in the footsteps of
Arius, ventured on far beyond him and became still greater errorists.
The human mind, weak and subject to the control of the senses and the
imagination, seldom exerts all its energies to comprehend divine
subjects in such a manner as to be duly guarded against extremes. In the
former class I would reckon Apollinaris the Younger, bishop of Laodicea,
though otherwise a man of great merit, and one who in various ways
rendered important service to the Church. He manfully asserted the
divinity of Christ against the Arians, but by philosophizing too freely
and too eagerly he almost set aside the human nature of the Saviour.
This great man was led astray, not merely by the ardor of debate, but
likewise by his immoderate attachment to the Platonic doctrine
concerning a twofold soul, from which if the divines of the age had been
free they would have formed more wise and more correct judgments on many
points. The doctrine of Apollinaris met the approbation of many in
nearly all the eastern provinces, and, being explained in different
ways, it became a source of new sects. But as it was assailed by the
laws of the emperors, the decrees of councils, and the writings of
learned men, it gradually sunk under these united assaults.

At the head of those whom the contests with Arius led into still greater
errors may undoubtedly be placed Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, who in the
year 343 advanced opinions concerning God equally remote from those of
the orthodox and those of the Arians. The temerity of the man w