Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume II/Socrates/Book V/Chapter 20

.&#8212;Divisions among the Arians and Other Heretics.

it right moreover not to leave unnoticed the proceedings of the other religious bodies, viz. the Arians,

Novatians, and those who received their denominations from Macedonius and Eunomius. For the Church once being divided, rested not in that schism, but the separatists taking occasion from the slightest and most frivolous pretences, disagreed among themselves. The manner and time, as well as the causes for which they raised mutual dissensions, we will state as we proceed. But let it be observed here, that the emperor Theodosius persecuted none of them except Eunomius; but inasmuch as the latter, by holding meetings in private houses at Constantinople, where he read the works he had composed, corrupted many with his doctrines, he ordered him to be sent into exile. Of the other heretics he interfered with no one; nor did he constrain them to hold communion with himself; but he allowed them all to assemble in their own conventicles, and to entertain their own opinions on points of Christian faith. Permission to build themselves churches without the cities was granted to the rest: but inasmuch as the Novatians held sentiments precisely identical with his own as to faith, he ordered that they should be suffered to continue unmolested in their churches within the cities, as I have before noticed.

Concerning these I think it opportune, however, to give in this place some farther account, and shall therefore retrace a few circumstances in their history.