V. Orthodox con

V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the sent and verbal phantastic Docetes, were rejected and disputes. forgotten the recent zeal against the errors of Apollinaris, reduced the catholics to a seeming agreement with the double nature of Cerinthus. But instead of a temporary and occasional alliance, they established, and we still embrace, the substantial, indissoluble, and everlasting union of a perfect God with a perfect man, of the second person of the Trinity with a reasonable soul and human flesh. In the beginning of the fifth century the unity of the two natures was the prevailing doctrine of the church. On all sides, it was confessed, that the mode of their co-existence could neither be represented by our ideas, nor expressed by our language. Yet a secret and incurable discord was cherished, between those who were most apprehensive of confounding, and those who were more fearful of separating, the divinity and the humanity of Christ. Impelled by religious frenzy, they fled with adverse haste from the error which they mutually deemed most destructive of truth and salvation. On either hand they were anxious to guard, they were jealous to defend, the union and the distinction of the two natures, and to invent such forms of speech, such symbols of doctrine, as were least susceptible of doubt or ambiguity. The poverty of ideas and language tempted them to ransack art and nature for every possible comparison, and each comparison misled their fancy in the explanation of an incomparable mystery. In the polemic microscope, an atom is enlarged to a monster, and each party was skilful to exaggerate the absurd or impious conclusions that might be extorted from the

t I appeal to the confession of two oriental prelates, Gregory Abul. pharagius the Jacobite primate of the east, and Elias the Nestorian metropolitan of Damascus, (see Asseman. Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. ii. p. 291. tom. iii. p. 514, &c.) that the Melchites, Jacobites, Nestorians, &c. agree in the doctrine, and differ only in the expression. Our most learned and rational divines-Basnage, Le Clerc, Beausobre, La Croze, Mosheim, Jablonski-are inclined to favour this charitable judgment; but the zeal of Petavius is loud and angry, and the moderation of Du. pin is conveyed in a whisper.

u La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 24.) avows his contempt for the genius and writings of Cyril. De tous les ou

t

A. D. 412. Oct. 18.A. D. 444. June 27.

each other, they wandered through many a dark and devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy. To purge themselves from the guilt or reproach of damnable error, they disavowed their consequences, explained their principles, excused their indiscretions, and unanimously pronounced the sounds of concord and faith. Yet a latent and almost invisible spark still lurked among the embers of controversy; by the breath of prejudice and passion, it was quickly kindled to a mighty flame, and the verbal disputes of the oriental sects have shaken the pillars of the church and state. The name of CYRIL of Alexandria is famous in controversial story, and the title of saint is a mark that his opinions and his party have finally prevailed. In the house of his uncle, the archbishop Theophilus, he imbibed the orthodox lessons of zeal and dominion, and five years of his youth were profitably spent in the adjacent monasteries of Nitria. Under the tuition of the abbot Serapion, he applied himself to ecclesiastical studies with such Cyril patriarch indefatigable ardour, that in the course of Alexandria, of one sleepless night he has perused the four gospels, the catholic epistles, and the epistle to the Romans. Origen he detested; but the writings of Clemens and Dionysius, of Athanasius and Basil, were continually in his hands: by the theory and practice of dispute, his faith was confirmed and his wit was sharpened; he extended round his cell the cobwebs of scholastic theology, and meditated the works of allegory and metaphysics, whose remains, in seven verbose folios, now peaceably slumber by the side of their rivals." Cyril prayed and fasted in the desert, but his thoughts (it is the reproach of a friend) were still fixed on the world; and the call of Theophilus, who summoned him to the tumult of cities and synods, was too readily obeyed by the aspiring hermit. With the approbation of his uncle he assumed the office, and acquired the fame, of a popular preacher. His comely person adorned the pulpit, the harmony of his voice resounded in the cathedral, his friends were stationed to lead or second the applause of the congregation, and the hasty notes of the scribes preserved his discourses, which, in their effect, though not in their composition, might be compared with those of the Athenian orators. The death of Theophilus expanded and

vrages des anciens, il y en a peu qu'on lise avec moins d'utilité: and Dupin (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. iv. p. 42-52.) in words of respect, teaches us to despise them.

x Of Isidore of Pelusium, (l. i. epist. 25. p. 8.) As the letter is not of the most creditable sort, Tillemont, less sincere than the Bollandists, affects a doubt whether this Cyril is the nephew of Theophilus. (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 268.)

y A grammarian is named by Socrates (1. vii. 13.) diaπupos de akpoаτης του επισκόπου Κυρίλλου καθέτως, και περι το κρότους εν ταις διδασ καλίαις αυτόν εγείρειν ην σπουδαιότατος.

Nestorius, patriarch of Coustantinople, A. D. 428. April 10. Cyril had accompanied his uncle to the iniquitous synod of the Oak. When the memory of Chrysostom was restored and consecrated, the nephew of Theophilus, at the head of a dying faction, *still maintained the justice of his sentence; nor was it till after a tedious delay and an obstinate resistance, that he yielded to the consent of the catholic world. His enmity to the Byzantine pontiffs was a sense of interest, not a sally of passion: he envied their fortunate station in the sunshine of the imperial court; and he dreaded their upstart ambition, which oppressed the metropolitans of Europe and Asia, invaded the provinces of Antioch and Alex-❘ andria, and measured their diocese by the limits of the empire. The long moderation of Atticus, the mild usurper of the throne of Chrysostom, suspended the animosities of the eastern patriarchs; but Cyril was at length awakened by the exaltation of a rival more worthy of his esteem and hatred. After the short and troubled reign of Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople, the factions of the clergy and people were appeased by the choice of the emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame, and invited the merit of a stranger. Nestorius, a native of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was recommended by the austerity of his life, and the eloquence of his sermons; but the first homily which he preached before the devout Theodosius betrayed the acrimony and impatience of his zeal. "Give me, O Cæsar!" he exclaimed, "give me the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you in exchange the kingdom of heaven. Exterminate with me the heretics; and with you I will exterminate the Persians." On the fifth day, as if the treaty had been already signed, the patriarch of Constantinople discovered, surprised, and attacked, a secret conventicle of the Arians: they preferred death to submission; the flames that were kindled by their despair, soon spread to the neighbouring houses, and the triumph of Nestorius was clouded by the name of incendiary. On either side of the Helles

Superstition, perhaps, would more gently expiate the blood of a virgin, than the banishment of a saint; and

torian who coolly styles the murderers of Hypatia άνδρες το φρονημα ένθερμοι. At the mention of that injured name, I am pleased to ob serve a blush even on the cheek of Baronius. (A. D. 415. No. 48.)

e He was deaf to the entreaties of Atticus of Constantinople, and of Isidore of Pelusium, and yielded only (if we may believe Nicephorus, 1. xiv. c. 18.) to the personal intercession of the Virgin. Yet in his last years he still muttered that John Chrysostom had been justly con demned. (Tillemont. Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 278-282. Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 412. No. 46-64.)

f See their characters in the history of Socrates, (1. vii. c. 25-28.) their power and pretensions, in the huge compilation of Thomasin. (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 80-91.)

g His elevation and conduct are described by Socrates, (1. vii. c. 29. 31.) and Marcellinus seems to have applied the loquentiæ satis, sapientiæ parum, of Sallust.

h Cod. Theodos. I. xvi. tit. v. leg. 65. with the illustrations of Baronius, (A. D. 428. N. 25. &c.) Godefroy, (ad locum) and Pagi. (Critica, tom. ii. p. 208.)

i Isidore of Pelusium, (1. iv. Epist. 57.) His words are strong and scandalous-τι θαυμάζεις, ει και νυν περὶ πράγμα θείον και λογο κρειτ τον διαφωνείν προσποιώνται υπο φιλαρχίας εκβακχευομενοι. Isidore is a saint, but he never became a bishop; and I half suspect that the pride of Diogenes trampled on the pride of Plato.

k La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 44-53. Thesaurus Epistolicus La Crozianus, tom. iii. p. 276-280.) has detected the use of o deσorns and o kupios Ineous, which, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, discriminate the school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his Nestorian disciples.

pont his episcopal vigour imposed a rigid formulary of faith and discipline; a chronological error concerning the festival of Easter was punished as an offence against the church and state. Lydia and Caria, Sardes and Miletus, were purified with the blood of the obstinate Quartodecimans; and the edict of the emperor, or rather of the patriarch, enumerates three and twenty degrees and denominations in the guilt and punishment of heresy. But the sword of persecution, which Nestorius so furiously wielded, was soon turned against his own breast. Religion was the pretence; but, in the judgment of a contemporary saint, ambition was the genuine motive of episcopal warfare.i

In the Syrian school, Nestorius had His heresy, been taught to abhor the confusion of A. D. 429-431. the two natures, and nicely to discriminate the humanity of his master Christ from the divinity of the Lord Jesus. The Blessed Virgin he revered as the mother of Christ, but his ears were offended with the rash and recent title of mother of God,' which had been insensibly adopted since the origin of the Arian controversy. From the pulpit of Constantinople, a friend of the patriarch, and afterwards the patriarch himself, repeatedly preached against the use, or the abuse, of a word unknown to the apostles, unauthorized by the church, and which could only tend to alarm the timorous, to mislead the simple, to amuse the profane, and to justify, by a seeming resemblance, the old genealogy of Olympus." In his calmer moments Nestorius confessed, that it might be tolerated or excused by the union of the two natures, and the communication of their idioms: but he was exasperated, by contradiction, to disclaim the worship of a new-born, an infant Deity, to draw his inadequate similes from the conjugal or civil partnerships of life, and to describe the manhood of Christ as the robe, the instrument, the tabernacle of his Godhead. At these blasphemous sounds, the pillars of the sanctuary were shaken. The unsuccessful competitors of Nestorius indulged their pious or personal resentment, the Byzantine clergy were secretly displeased with the intrusion of a stranger: whatever is super

¡ OcоToxos-Deipara: as in zoology we familiarly speak of oviparous and viviparous animals. It is not easy to fix the invention of this word, which La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom i. p. 16.) ascribes to Eusebius of Cæsarea and the Arians. The orthodox testimonies are produced by Cyril and Petavius, (Dogmat. Theolog, tom. v. l. v. c. 15. p. 254, &c.) but the veracity of the saint is questionable, and the epi. thet of BEOTOKOS so easily slides from the margin to the text of a catholic MS.

m Basnage, in his Histoire de l'Eglise, a work of controversy, (tom. i. p. 505.) justifies the mother, by the blood, of God. (Acts xx. 28. with Mill's various readings.) But the Greek MSS. are far from unanimous; and the primitive style of the blood of Christ is preserved in the Syriac version, even in those copies which were used by the christians of St. Thomas on the coast of Malabar. (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, tom, i. p. 347.) The jealousy of the Nestorians and Monophysites has guarded the purity of their text.

n The pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new Cybele of the christians, (Isidor. 1. i. epist. 54.) a letter was forged in the name of Hypatia, to ridicule the theology of her assassin. (Synodicon, c. 216. in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484.) In the article of NESTORIUS, Bayle has scattered some loose philosophy on the worship of the Virgin Mary. o The avridoos of the Greeks, a mutual loan or transfer of the idioms or properties of each nature to the other-of infinity to man, passibility to God, &c. Twelve rules on this nicest of subjects compose the Theological Grammar of Petavius. (Dogmata Theolog. tom. v. I. iv. c. 14, 15. p. 209, &c.)

stitious or absurd, might claim the protection of the monks; and the people were interested in the glory of their virgin patroness. The sermons of the archbishop, and the service of the altar, were disturbed by seditious clamour; his authority and doctrine were renounced by separate congregations; every wind scattered round the empire the leaves of controversy; and the voice of the combatants on a sonorous theatre re-echoed in the cells of Palestine and Egypt. It was the duty of Cyril to enlighten the zeal and ignorance of his innumerable monks: in the school of Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed the incarnation of one nature; and the successor of Athanasius consulted his pride and ambition, when he rose in arms against another Arius, more formidable and more guilty, on the second throne of the hierarchy. After a short correspondence, in which the rival prelates disguised | their hatred in the hollow language of respect and charity, the patriarch of Alexandria denounced to the prince and people, to the east and to the west, the damnable errors of the Byzantine pontiff. From the east, more especially from Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of toleration and silence, which were addressed to both parties while they favoured the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received with open arms the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of Celestine was flattered by the appeal; and the partial version of a monk decided the faith of the pope, who, with his Latin clergy, was ignorant of the language, the arts, and the theology of the Greeks. At the head of an Italian synod, Celestine weighed the merits of the cause, approved the creed of Cyril, condemned the sentiments and person of Nestorius, degraded the heretic from his episcopal dignity, allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and penance, and delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and illegal sentence. But the patriarch of Alexandria, whilst he darted the thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal; and his twelve anathemas still torture the orthodox slaves, who adore the memory of a saint, without forfeiting their allegiance to the synod of Chalcedon. These bold assertions are indelibly tinged with the colours of the Apollinarian heresy ; but the serious, and perhaps the sincere, professions of Nestorius have satisfied the wiser and less partial theologians of the present times. First council of Yet neither the emperor nor the A. D. 431. primate of the east were disposed to June-October. obey the mandate of an Italian priest;

Ephesus,

p See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, 1. i. p. 30, &c.

q Concil. tom. iii. p. 943. They have never been directly approved by the church. (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 368-372.) I almost pity the agony of rage and sophistry with which Petavius seems to be agitated in the sixth book of his Dogmata Theologica.

r Such as the rational Basnage, (ad tom. i. Variar. Lection. Canisii in Præfat. c. ii. p. 11-23.) and La Croze, the universal scholar. (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16-20. De l'Ethiopie, p. 26, 27. Thesaur. Epist. p. 176, &c. 283. 285.) His free sentence is confirmed by that of his friends Jablonski (Thesaur. Epist. tom. i. p. 193-201.) and Mosheim; (idem. p. 304. Nestorium crimine caruisse est et mea sententia ;) and three more respectable judges will not easily be found. Asseman, a learned and modest slave, can hardly discern (Bibliothec. Orient. tom. iv. p. 190-224.) the guilt and error of the Nestorians.

8 The origin and progress of the Nestorian controversy, till the synod of Ephesus, may be found in Socrates, (1. vii. c. 32) Evagrius, (Í. i. c. 1, 2.) Liberatus, (Brev. c. 1-4.) the original Acts, (Concil.

and a synod of the catholic or rather of the Greek church was unanimously demanded as the sole remedy that could appease or decide this ecclesiastical quarrel. Ephesus, on all sides accessible by sea and land, was chosen for the place, the festival of Pentecost for the day, of the meeting; a writ of summons was despatched to each metropolitan, and a guard was stationed to protect and confine the fathers till they should settle the mysteries of heaven, and the faith of the earth. Nestorius appeared not as a criminal, but as a judge; he depended on the weight rather than the number of his prelates, and his sturdy slaves from the baths of Zeuxippus were armed for every service of injury or defence. But his adversary Cyril was more powerful in the weapons both of the flesh and of the spirit. Disobedient to the letter, or at least to the meaning, of the royal summons, he was attended by fifty Egyptian bishops, who expected from their patriarch's nod the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He had contracted an intimate alliance with Memnon bishop of Ephesus. The despotic primate of Asia disposed of the ready succours of thirty or forty episcopal votes; a crowd of peasants, the slaves of the church, was poured into the city to support with blows and clamours a metaphysical argument; and the people zealously asserted the honour of the Virgin, whose body reposed within the walls of Ephesus. The fleet which had transported Cyril from Alexandria was laden with the riches of Egypt; and he disembarked a numerous body of mariners, slaves, and fanatics, enlisted with blind obedience under the banner of St. Mark and the mother of God. The fathers, and even the guards, of the council were awed by this martial array; the adversaries of Cyril and Mary were insulted in the streets, or threatened in their houses; his eloquence and liberality made a daily increase in the number of his adherents; and the Egyptian soon computed that he might command the attendance and the voices of two hundred bishops." But the author of the twelve anathemas foresaw and dreaded the opposition of John of Antioch, who, with a small, though respectable, train of metropolitans and divines, was advancing by slow journeys from the distant capital of the east. Impatient of a delay which he stigmatized as voluntary and culpable, Cyril announced the opening of the synod sixteen days after the festival of Pentecost. Nestorius, who depended on the near approach of his eastern friends, persisted, like his predecessor

tom. iii. p. 551-991. edit. Venise, 1728.) the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, and the faithful collections of Tillemont. (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 283-377.)

t The christians of the four first centuries were ignorant of the death and burial of Mary. The tradition of Ephesus is affirmed by the synod, (εν θα ὁ θεολογος Ιωαννης, και ή θεοτοκος παρθένος ή άγια Mapia. Concil. tom. iii. p. 1102.) yet it has been superseded by the claim of Jerusalem; and her empty sepulchre, as it was shown to the pilgrims, produced the fable of her resurrection and assumption, in which the Greek and Latin churches have piously acquiesced. See Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A. D. 48. No. 6, &c.) and Tillemont. (Mem. Eccles. tom. i. p. 467-477.)

The Acts of Chalcedon' (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1405. 1408.) exhibit a lively picture of the blind, obstinate servitude of the bishops of Egypt to their patriarchi.

x Civil or ecclesiastical business detained the bishops at Antioch till the 18th of May. Ephesus was at the distance of thirty days' journey;