However, Arians made a sustained effort to return to the church and to restore their beliefs after 325 with a prolonged theological dispute ensuing.
At the second Council of Sirmium in 351, Basil, bishop of Ancyra (now Ankara) and leader of the semi-Arians, had Photinus deposed.
But since many persons are disturbed by questions concerning what is called in Latin substantia, but in Greek ousia, that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to 'coessential,' or what is called, 'like-in-essence,' there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor exposition of them in the Church, for this reason and for this consideration, that in divine Scripture nothing is written about them, and that they are above men's knowledge and above men's understanding;[1]A Council of Ancyra in 358, chaired by Basil, released a statement using the term homoousios.
But the fourth Council of Sirmium, also in 358, proposed a vague compromise: it said simply that the Son was homoios ("like") the Father.
Ursacius of Singidunum and Valens of Mursa soon proposed a new creed, drafted at the Fourth Council of Sirmium in 359 but not presented there, holding that the Son was similar to the Father "according to the scriptures," and avoiding the controversial terms "same substance" and "similar substance.
[3] The opponents of Sirmium wrote a letter to the emperor Constantius, praising Nicaea and condemning any reconsideration of it, before many of them left the council.
[4] The council was considered a defeat for trinitarianism, and Saint Jerome wrote: "The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.