e) on unwilling conservatives, but only to have
succeeded in making great confusion. This was a new turn of their
policy, and not a hopeful one. Constantine's death indeed left them free
to try if they could replace the Nicene creed by something else; but the
friends of Athanasius could accept no substitute, and even the
conservatives could hardly agree to make the Lord's divinity an open
question. The result was twenty years of busy creed-making, and twenty
more of confusion, before it was finally seen that there was no escape
from the dilemma which had been decisive at Nicaea.

[Sidenote: The Lucianic creed (second of Antioch).]

The Eusebians began by offering a meagre and evasive creed, much like
the confession of Arius and Euzoius, prefacing it with a declaration
that they were not followers of Arius, but his independent adherents.
They overshot their mark, for the conservatives were not willing to go
so far as this, and, moreover, had older standards of their own.
Instead, therefore, of drawing up a new creed, they put forward a work
of the venerated martyr Lucian of Antioch. Such it was said to be, and
such in the main it probably was, though the anathemas must have been
added now. This Lucianic formula then is essentially conservative, but
leans much more to the Nicene than to the Arian side. Its central clause
declares the Son of God 'not subject to moral change or alteration, but
the unvarying image of the deity and essence and power and counsel and
glory of the Father,' while its anathemas condemn 'those who say that
there was once _a time_ when the Son of God was not, or that he is a
creature _as one of the creatures_.' These are strong words, but they do
not in the least shut out Arianism. No doubt the phrase 'unvarying image
of the essence' means that there is no change of essence in passing from
the Father to the Son, and is therefore logically equivalent to 'of one
essence' (_homoousion_); but the conservatives meant nothing more than
'of like essence' (_homoiousion_), which is consistent with great
unlikeness in attributes. The anathemas also are the Nicene with
insertions which might have been made for the very purpose of letting
the Arians escape. However, the conservatives were well satisfied with
the Lucianic creed, and frequently refer to it with a veneration akin to
that of Athanasius for the Nicene. But the wire-pullers were determined
to upset it. The confession next presented by Theophronius of