Nicaea endures; later councils are empty

And they have profited nothing up to now by writing, erasing, and using force, not knowing that "Every plant that the heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted out" (Matthew 15:13), but the word of the Lord that came through the ecumenical council at Nicaea remains forever. For if someone compares number with number, those at Nicaea are more than the partial ones, just as the whole is greater than the part. And if someone wishes to discern the reason for the council at Nicaea and for the many councils that came after it from these people, he would find that the one at Nicaea had a reasonable cause, while the others were assembled out of hatred and rivalry by violence. For the one was gathered because of the Arian heresy and because of the Passover, since those in Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia were in disagreement with us and were celebrating at the same time as the Jews. But thanks be to the Lord, just as concerning the faith, so also concerning the holy feast there came to be agreement. And this was the reason for the council at Nicaea. But the ones after it were beyond number, and they were devised against the ecumenical council. Since these things are so clearly shown, who will accept those who name Ariminum or another council alongside the one at Nicaea? Or who would not hate those who reject the things of the Fathers and prefer the newer things composed at Ariminum out of rivalry and violence? Who would wish to assemble with these men, who do not even accept their own decisions? For in their own ten or more councils, as we said before, they wrote different things at different times, and they are clearly becoming accusers of each one of them. They suffer something like what the traitors among the Jews suffered then. For as those men, abandoning the only fountain of living water, dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water—and this is written in the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 2:13)—so these men, fighting against the one ecumenical council, dug for themselves many councils, and all of them appeared among them as empty, like a sheaf with no strength. Let us not, then, put up with those who name Ariminum or another council alongside the one that took place at Nicaea. For even those who name Ariminum seem not to know what was done there; otherwise they would have been silent. For you know, beloved, having learned also from those who came from you to Ariminum, that Ursacius and Valens, Eudoxius and Auxentius—and Demophilus was there with them—were deposed when they wanted to write things other than those at Nicaea. When they were required to anathematize the Arian heresy, they refused and preferred to be its champions. But the bishops who were truly genuine servants of the Lord and believed rightly—there were about two hundred of them—wrote that they were satisfied with Nicaea alone and sought or thought nothing more or less than that. They made this clear also to Constantius, who had ordered the council to take place. But those who were deposed at Ariminum went to Constantius and caused insults to occur and threats to be made that those who had voted against them would not return to their own districts, and they caused those bishops to suffer violence in Thrace in the dead of winter, so that they would put up with the innovations made by the deposed men.