The truce was hollow and the rest precarious, but the mere cessation of hostilities was not without its influence. As Nicenes and conservatives were fundamentally agreed on the reality of the Lord's divinity, minor jealousies began to disappear when they were less busily encouraged. The Eusebian phase of conservatism, which emphasised the Lord's personal distinction from the Father, was giving way to the Semiarian, where stress was rather laid on his essential likeness to the Father. Thus 'of a like essence' (_homoiousion_) and 'like in all things' became more and more the watchwords of conservatism. The Nicenes, on the other side, were warned by the excesses of Marcellus that there was some reason for the conservative dread of the Nicene 'of one essence' (_homoousion_) as Sabellian. The word could not be withdrawn, but it might be put forward less conspicuously, and explained rather as a safe and emphatic form of the Semiarian 'of like essence' than as a rival doctrine. Henceforth it came to mean absolute likeness of attributes rather than common possession of the divine essence. Thus by the time the war is renewed, we can already foresee the possibility of a new alliance between Nicenes and conservatives. [Sidenote: Rise of Anomoeans.] We see also the rise of a new and more defiant Arian school, more in earnest than the older generation, impatient of their shuffling diplomacy and less pliant to court influences. Aetius was a man of learning and no small dialectic skill, who had passed through many troubles in his earlier life and been the disciple of several scholars, mostly of the Lucianic school, before he came to rest in a clear and simple form of Arianism. Christianity without mystery seems to have been his aim. The Anomoean leaders took their stand on the doctrine of Arius himself, and dwelt with most emphasis on its most offensive aspects. Arius had long ago laid down the absolute unlikeness of the Son to the Father, but for years past the Arianizers had prudently softened it down. Now, however, 'unlike' became the watchword of Aetius and Eunomius, and their followers delighted to shock all sober feeling by the harshest and profanest declarations of it. The scandalous jests of Eudoxius must have given deep offence to thousands; but the great novelty of the Anomoean doctrine was its audacious self-sufficiency. Seeing that Arius was illogical in regarding the divine nature as incomprehensible, and yet reasoning as if its relations were fully explained by human types, the Anomoeans boldly declared that it is no mystery at all. If the divine essence is simple, man can perfectly understand it. 'Canst thou by searching find out God?' Yes, and know him quite as well as he knows me. Such was the new school of Arianism--presumptuous and shallow, quarrelsome and heathenising, yet not without a directness and a firmness of conviction which gives it a certain dignity in spite of its wrangling and irreverence. Its