The purpose of Cyril’s attendance at
Seleucia was to appeal against his deposition by Acacius, and there is
apparently no evidence of his having taken part in the doctrinal
discussions, or signed the Creed of Antioch There is, I
believe, no extant list of signatures: “Whether the few
Homoüsians and Hilary were among those who signed is not
said” (Hefele, Councils, II. p. 264.). What is certain is that Cyril’s
bitterest enemies who refused to sit with him in the Council were
Acacius and his Arian allies, who expressly rejected both
ὁμοούσιος and
ὁμοιούσιος
and “altogether denied the Nicene formula and censured the
Council, while the others, who were the majority, accepted the whole
proceedings of the Council, except that they complained of the word
‘Co-essential,’ as obscure, and so open to
suspicion Athan. De
Synod. c. 12..” It thus
appears that Cyril’s friends at Seleucia were partly those who
approved the word “ Co-essential,” and partly those of whom
Athanasius speaks as “brothers, who mean what we mean, and
dispute only about the word Ib. c. 41..” It
needed in fact the profound insight of an Athanasius to foresee that in
the end that word must triumph over all opposition, and be accepted by
the Universal Church as the one true safeguard of the Christian
Faith. Meanwhile it was the standard round which debate, and
strife, and hatred, and persecution, were to rage for fifty years with
unexampled fury.