19 After these proceedings the Council was dissolved. All returned in gladness to their own provinces. For the Emperor and all good men had one and the same aim, that the East and West should be knit together by the bond of fellowship. But wickedness does not long lie hidden, and the sore that is healed superficially before the bad humour has been worked off breaks out again. Valens and Ursacius and others associated with them in their wickedness, eminent Christian bishops of course, began to wave their palms, and to say they had not denied that He was a creature, but that He was like other creatures.
At that moment the term Usia was abolished: the Nicene Faith stood condemned by acclamation. The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian. Some, therefore, remained in their own communion, others began to send letters to those Confessors who as adherents of Athanasius were in exile; several despairingly bewailed the better relations into which they had entered. But a few, true to human nature, defended their mistake as an exhibition of wisdom. The ship of the Apostles was in peril, she was driven by the wind, her sides beaten with the waves: no hope was now left.
But the Lord awoke and bade the tempest cease; the beast died, and there was a calm once again. To speak more plainly, all the bishops who had been banished from their sees, by the clemency of the new emperor returned to their Churches. Then Egypt welcomed the triumphant Athanasius; then Hilary returned from the battle to the embrace of the Church of Gaul; then Eusebius returned and Italy laid aside her mourning weeds. The bishops who had been caught in the snare at Ariminum and had unwittingly come to be reported of as heretics, began to assemble, while they called the Body of our Lord and all that is holy in the Church to witness that they had not a suspicion of anything faulty in their own faith.
We thought, said they, the words were to be taken in their natural meaning, and we had no suspicion that in the Church of God, the very home of simplicity and sincerity in the confession of truth, one thing could be kept secret in the heart, another uttered by the lips. We thought too well of bad men and were deceived. We did not suppose that the bishops of Christ were fighting against Christ. There was much besides which they said with tears, but I pass it over for brevity's sake.
They were ready to condemn their former subscription as well as all the blasphemies of the Arians. Here I ask our excessively scrupulous friends what they think ought to have been done with those who made this Confession? Deprive the old bishops, they will say, and ordain new ones. The plan was tried. But how many whose conscience does not condemn them will allow themselves to be deprived. Particularly when all the people who loved their bishops flocked together, ready to stone and slay those who attempted to deprive them.
The bishops should, it may be said, have kept to themselves within their own communion. That is to say, with senseless cruelty they would have surrendered the whole world to the devil. Why condemn those who were not Arians? Why rend the Church when it was continuing in the harmony of the faith? Lastly, were they by obstinacy to make Arians of orthodox believers? We know that at the Council of Nicæa, which was assembled on account of the Arian perfidy, eight Arian bishops were welcomed, and there is not a bishop in the world at the present day whose ordination is not dependent on that Council. This being so, how could they act in opposition to it, when their loyalty to it had cost them the pain of exile?
Source: The Dialogue Against the Luciferians (New Advent)