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Among the Asiatics, however, there was a small but influential group of Arianizers, disciples of Lucian like Arius himself. Chief of these was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was rather a court politician than a student like his namesake of Cæsarea, and might be expected to influence the Emperor as much as any one. With him went the bishops of Ephesus and Nicæa itself, and Maris of Chalcedon.
Pontus indeed was devoted to conservatism, and the decided Arianizers were hardly more than a busy clique even in Asia and Syria. Its decisions show the awkwardness to be expected from men who have had to make a sudden change of front, and exhibit well the transition from Eusebian to Semiarian conservatism.
Altogether there were about a dozen more or less decided Arianizers thinly scattered over the country from the slopes of Taurus to the Jordan valley. Of the Pontic bishops we need notice only Marcellus of Ancyra and the confessor Paul of Neocæsarea. Arianism had no friends in Pontus to our knowledge, and Marcellus was the busiest of its enemies.
He was brought at last to communicate with the Arianizers, but even in his last illness refused to condemn Athanasius. After this there was but one power in the West which could not be summarily dealt with. The grandeur of Hosius was merely personal, but Liberius claimed the universal reverence due to the apostolic and imperial See of Rome.
We anathematize also the Anomoeans, in spite of their pretence not to be Arians. We anathematize finally the Arianizers who separate the Word from the Son, giving the latter a beginning at the incarnation because they do not confess him to be very God.
The Anomoean leaders took their stand on the doctrine of Arius himself, and dwelt with most emphasis on its most offensive aspects. Arius had long ago laid down the absolute unlikeness of the Son to the Father, but for years past the Arianizers had prudently softened it down.
We can now sum up in a sentence. Every blow struck at Christianity by Julian fell first on the Arianizers whom Constantius had left in power, and the reaction he provoked against heathen learning directly threatened the philosophical postulates of Arianism within the church. In both ways he powerfully helped the Nicene cause.
Defeated in a free council, the wire-pullers a few months later assembled a cabal of their own, and drew up a fourth creed, which a deputation of notorious Arianizers presented to Constans in Gaul as the genuine work of the council.
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