one book, of the unity of God, was answered in the
three books, which are still extant, of Eusebius.----After a long and
careful examination, Petavius (tom. ii. l. i. c. 14, p. 78) has
reluctantly pronounced the condemnation of Marcellus.]

The authority of a general council, to which the Arians themselves had
been compelled to submit, inscribed on the banners of the orthodox party
the mysterious characters of the word Homoousion, which essentially
contributed, notwithstanding some obscure disputes, some nocturnal
combats, to maintain and perpetuate the uniformity of faith, or at least
of language. The consubstantialists, who by their success have deserved
and obtained the title of Catholics, gloried in the simplicity and
steadiness of their own creed, and insulted the repeated variations of
their adversaries, who were destitute of any certain rule of faith. The
sincerity or the cunning of the Arian chiefs, the fear of the laws or of
the people, their reverence for Christ, their hatred of Athanasius, all
the causes, human and divine, that influence and disturb the counsels
of a theological faction, introduced among the sectaries a spirit of
discord and inconstancy, which, in the course of a few years, erected
eighteen different models of religion, [63] and avenged the violated
dignity of the church. The zealous Hilary, [64] who, from the peculiar
hardships of his situation, was inclined to extenuate rather than to
aggravate the errors of the Oriental clergy, declares, that in the wide
extent of the ten provinces of Asia, to which he had been banished,
there could be found very few prelates who had preserved the knowledge
of the true God. [65] The oppression which he had felt, the disorders
of which he was the spectator and the victim, appeased, during a short
interval, the angry passions of his soul; and in the following passage,
of which I shall transcribe a few lines, the bishop of Poitiers unwarily
deviates into the style of a Christian philosopher. "It is a thing,"
says Hilary, "equally deplorable and dangerous, that there are as many
creeds as opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as
many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us; because we make
creeds arbitrarily, and explain them as arbitrarily. The Homoousion is
rejected, and received, and explained away by successive synods. The
partial or total resemblance of the Father and of the Son is a subject
of dispute for these unhappy times