te: The Semiarian failure.]

The Semiarians had won a complete victory. Their next step was to throw
it away. The Anomoean leaders were sent into exile. After all, these
Easterns only wanted to replace one tyranny by another. The exiles were
soon recalled, and the strife began again with more bitterness than
ever.

[Sidenote: Rise of the Homoeans.]

Here was an opening for a new party. Semiarians, Nicenes, and
Anomoeans were equally unable to settle this interminable controversy.
The Anomoeans indeed almost deserved success for their boldness and
activity, but pure Arianism was hopelessly discredited throughout the
Empire. The Nicenes had Egypt and the West, but they could not at
present overcome the court and Asia. The Semiarians might have mediated,
but men who began with persecutions and wholesale exiles were not likely
to end with peace. In this deadlock better men than Ursacius and Valens
might have been tempted to try some scheme of compromise. But existing
parties left no room for anything but vague and spacious charity. If we
may say neither _of one essence_ nor _of like essence_, nor yet
_unlike_, the only course open is to say _like_, and forbid nearer
definition. This was the plan of the new Homoean party formed by
Acacius in the East, Ursacius and Valens in the West.

[Sidenote: New relations of parties.]

Parties began to group themselves afresh. The Anomoeans leaned to the
side of Acacius. They had no favour to expect from Nicenes or
Semiarians, but to the Homoeans they could look for connivance at
least. The Semiarians were therefore obliged to draw still closer to the
Nicenes. Here came in Hilary of Poitiers. If he had seen in exile the
worldliness of too many of the Asiatic bishops, he had also found among
them men of a better sort who were in earnest against Arianism, and not
so far from the Nicene faith as was supposed. To soften the mutual
suspicions of East and West, he addressed his _De Synodis_ to his
Gaulish friends about the end of 358. In it he reviews the Eusebian
creeds to show that they are not indefensible. He also compares the
rival phrases _of one essence_ and _of like essence_, to shew that
either of them may be rightly or wrongly used. The two, however, are
properly identical, for there is no likeness but that of unity, and no
use in the idea of likeness but to exclude Sabellian confusion. Only the
Nicene phrase guards against evasion, and the other does not.

[Sidenote: Summons