The Arians would have done much more harm to the Church if they had not become divided among themselves, after the Nicene Council, and split into sects which could not endure each other. Unhappily the Arian contests produced, as was very natural, some new sects. Some persons, while eager to avoid and to confute the opinions of Arius, fell into opinions equally dangerous. Others, after treading in the footsteps of Arius, ventured on far beyond him and became still greater errorists. The human mind, weak and subject to the control of the senses and the imagination, seldom exerts all its energies to comprehend divine subjects in such a manner as to be duly guarded against extremes. In the former class I would reckon Apollinaris the Younger, bishop of Laodicea, though otherwise a man of great merit, and one who in various ways rendered important service to the Church. He manfully asserted the divinity of Christ against the Arians, but by philosophizing too freely and too eagerly he almost set aside the human nature of the Saviour. This great man was led astray, not merely by the ardor of debate, but likewise by his immoderate attachment to the Platonic doctrine concerning a twofold soul, from which if the divines of the age had been free they would have formed more wise and more correct judgments on many points. The doctrine of Apollinaris met the approbation of many in nearly all the eastern provinces, and, being explained in different ways, it became a source of new sects. But as it was assailed by the laws of the emperors, the decrees of councils, and the writings of learned men, it gradually sunk under these united assaults.