as
chastened not only by the orthodox, in their councils of Antioch in 345,
of Milan in 347, and of Sirmium, but also by the Arians in a council
held at Sirmium in 351. He was deprived of his office, and died in
exile in the year 372. After him Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople, a
distinguished semi-Arian teacher, being deprived of his office by the
Council of Constantinople, in the year 360, in his exile founded the
sect of the Pneumatomachi. He openly professed that the Holy Spirit is a
divine energy diffused throughout the universe, and not a person
distinct from the Father and the Son. This doctrine was embraced by many
in the Asiatic provinces; but the Council of Constantinople, assembled
by Theodosius the Great, in the year 381, and which is commonly
considered as the second ecumenical council, early dissipated by its
authority this young and immature sect. One hundred and fifty bishops
present in this council defined fully and perfectly the doctrine of
three persons and one God, as it is still professed by the great body of
Christians, which the Nicene Council had only in part performed. They
also anathematized all the heresies then known.

* * * * *

In the fifth century the Arians, oppressed and persecuted by the
imperial edicts, took refuge among those barbarous nations who gradually
overturned the Roman Empire in the West; and found among the Goths,
Heruli, Suevi, Vandals, and Burgundians a fixed residence and a quiet
retreat. Being now safe, they treated the orthodox with the same
violence which the orthodox had employed against them and other
heretics, and had no hesitation about persecuting the adherents to the
Nicene doctrines in a variety of ways. The Vandals, who had established
their kingdom in Africa, surpassed all the rest in cruelty and
injustice. At first Genseric, their king, and then Huneric, his son,
demolished the temples of such Christians as maintained the divinity of
the Saviour, sent their bishops into exile, mutilated many of the more
firm and decided, and tortured them in various ways; and they expressly
stated that they were authorized to do so by the example of the
emperors, who had enacted similar laws against the Donatists in Africa,
the Arians, and others who dissented from them in religion.

At the beginning of the sixth century the Arians were triumphant in some
parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Not a few of the Asiatic bishops
favored them. Th