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 it prudent to retire to his native Armenia till the storm had blown over (Greg. Nys. ib. p. 291), but found means to reinstate himself in the emperor's favour, and at the close of 359 was chosen successor of Macedonius in the imperial see. Constantius had the utmost abhorrence of the Anomoeans and their teaching. Aetius was therefore sacrificed by the Arians as a scapegoat, while Eunomius was persuaded to separate himself reluctantly from his old teacher and conceal his heterodoxy, that he might secure a position of influence from which to secretly disseminate his views. Eudoxius procured for him from the emperor the bishopric of Cyzicus, vacant by the deposition of the semi-Arian ; but after a while, weary of dissimulation, he began to propound his doctrines, at first privately, and then in public assemblies. Complaints of his heterodoxy were laid before Eudoxius, who, forced by Constantius, summoned Eunomius before a council of bishops at Constantinople, but sent him a secret message counselling flight. Eunomius, not appearing, was condemned in his absence, deposed, and banished (Theod. Haer. Fab. iv. 3; H. E. ii. 29; Philost. H. E. vi. 1). On this he broke altogether with his former associates, and headed a party of his own, called after him Eunomians, professing the extreme Anomoean doctrines of the general comprehensibleness of the Divine Essence, and the absolute unlikeness of the Son to the Father. The accession of Julian in 361 recalled Eunomius and Aetius among the other bishops banished by Constantius. They both settled in Constantinople during the reigns of Julian and his successor Jovian (Philost. H. E. vi. 7, vii. 6). The growing popularity of Eunomianism at Constantinople caused jealousy in Eudoxius, who took advantage of the commotions caused by the rebellion of Procopius on the accession of Valens in 364 to expel Eunomius and Aetius from the city. Eunomius retired to his country house near Chalcedon. Procopius having also taken refuge there in Eunomius's absence, Eunomius was accused of favouring his designs, and was in danger of being capitally condemned. Sentence of banishment to Mauritania was actually passed upon him, 367. But on his way thither, passing through Mursa, the Arian bishop Valens, by personal application to the emperor Valens, obtained the repeal of his sentence (ib. iv. 4-8). He was, the same year, again sentenced to banishment by Modestus, the prefect of the Praetorian guards, as a disturber of the public peace (ib. ix. 11). But he was again at Constantinople, or at least at Chalcedon, early in the reign of Theodosius, 379, to whom in 383 he, with other bishops, presented a confession of faith which is still extant. The next year Theodosius, finding some officers of the court infected with Eunomian views, expelled them from the palace, and having seized Eunomius at Chalcedon, banished him to Halmyris in Moesia, on the Danube. Halmyris being captured by the Goths, who had crossed the frozen river, Eunomius was transported to Caesarea in Cappadocia. The fact that he had attacked their late venerated bishop, Basil the Great, in his writings, made him so unpopular there that his life was hardly safe. He was therefore permitted to retire to his paternal estate at Dacora, where he died in extreme old age soon after. 392, when, according to Jerome (Vir. Illust. c. 120), he was still living, and writing much against the church. His body was buried there, but transferred to Tyana, by order of Eutropius, c. 396, and there carefully guarded by the monks—to prevent its being carried by his adherents to Constantinople and buried beside his master Aetius, to whom he had himself given a splendid funeral (Soz. H. E. vii. 17; Philost. H. E. ix. 6, xi. 5).

Eunomianism, a cold, logical system, lacked elements of vitality, and notwithstanding its popularity at first, did not long survive its authors. In the following century, when Theodoret wrote, the body had dwindled to a scanty remnant, compelled to conceal themselves and hold their meetings in such obscure corners that they had gained the name of "Troglodytes" (Theod. Haer. Fab. iv. 3). St. Augustine remarked that in his time the few Anomoeans existing were all in the East and that there were none in Africa (Aug. de Past. Cur. c. 8, p. 278).

Eunomius endeavoured to develop Arianism as a formal doctrinal system; starting with the conception of God as the absolute simple Being, of Whom neither self-communication nor generation can be predicated. His essence is in this, that He is what He is of Himself alone, underived, unbegotten—and as being the only unbegotten One, the Father, in the strict sense of Deity, is alone God; and as He is unbegotten, inasmuch as begetting necessarily involves the division and impartation of being, so it is impossible for Him to beget. If that which was begotten shared in the Θεότης of the Deity, God would not be the absolute unbegotten One, but would be divided into a begotten and an unbegotten God. A communication of the essence of God, such as that involved in the idea of generation, would transfer to the Absolute Deity the notions of time and sense. An eternal generation was to Eunomius a thing absolutely inconceivable. A begetting, a bringing forth, could not be imagined as without beginning and end. The generation of the Son of God must therefore have had its beginning, as it must have had its termination, at a definite point of time. It is, therefore, incompatible with the predicate of eternity. If that can be rightly asserted of the Son, He must equally, with the Father, be unbegotten. This denial of the eternal generation of the Son involved also the denial of the likeness of His essence to that of the Father, from which the designation of the party, "Anomoean," was derived. That which is begotten, he asserted, cannot possibly resemble the essence of that which is unbegotten; hence, equality of essence, "Homoousian," or even similarity of essence, "Homoiousian," is untenable. Were the begotten to resemble the unbegotten in its essence, it must cease to be unbegotten. Were the Father and the Son equal, the Son must also be unbegotten, a consequence utterly destructive of the fundamental doctrine of generation and subordination. Such generation, moreover, Eunomius held to be essentially impossible. If then, according to the teaching of the church, the