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CHAP. Christ, but his ears were offended with the rash and recent XLVII

title of mother of God,34 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 39 unknown to the apostles, unauthorised 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.86 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:37 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 was secretly displeased with the intrusion of a stranger; whatever is superstitious or absurd, might claim the protection of the monks; and the people was interested in the glory of their virgin patron tolicus La Crozianus, tom. iii.p. 276..280.) has detected the use of o decuae tns, and ó xupios 1,085, which, in the ivth, vth, and vith centuries, discriminate the school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his Nestorian disciples.

34 OLOTOXOS... Deipera: 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 10 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 epithet of 8EOTOXOS so easily slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic MS.

35 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.

36 The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new Cybele of the Chris. tians (Isidor. l. 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.

37 The artidosis of the Greeks, a mutualloan 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 Gram. mar of Petavius (Dogmata Theolog. tom. v.I iv.c. 14, 15. p. 209, &c.).

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ress.38 The sermons of the archbishop, and the service of char. the altar, were disturbed by seditious clamour; his autho

XLVII rity 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 for. midable 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 anathemaga, 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

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

39 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 vith book of his Doginala Theologica.

First coun

CHAP. serious, and perhaps the sincere, professions of Nestorius XLVII.

have satisfied the wiser and less partial theologians of the present times.co

Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the East were cil of

disposed to obey the mandate of an Italian priest; and a Ephesus, A. D. 431, synod of the Catholic, or rather of the Greek church, was June.Oc- unanimously demanded as the sole remedy that could appease tober

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 sum. mons was dispatched 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

49 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.

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

42 The Christians of the four first centuries were ignorant of the death and burial of Mary. The tradition of Ephesus is a dirmed by the synod (ενθα ο θεολογος Ιωαννης, και η θεοτοκος παρθενος η αγια Μαρια. Concil,

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transported Cyril from Alexandria was laden with the rich- CHAP. es of Egypt; and he disembarked a numerous body of ma

XLVII. riners, 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.43 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 journies from the distant capital of the East. Impatient of a delay

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 Chrysostom, to disclaim the jurisdiction and to disobey the summons of his enemies: they hastened his trial, and his accuser presided in the seat of judgment. Sixty-eight bishops, twenty-two of metropolitan rank, defended his cause by a modest and temperate protest ; they were excluded from the counsels of their brethren. Candidian, in the emperor's name, requested a delay of four days: the profane magistrate was driven with outrage and insult from the assembly of the saints. The Condemwhole of this momentous transaction was crowded into the nation of

Nestorius, compass of a summer's day; the bishops delivered their se- June 22. parate opinions ; but the uniformity of style reveals the intom. ii. p. 1102); yet it has been superseded by the claim of Jerusalem; and her empty sepulchre, as it was shewn 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).

43 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 patriarch.

44 Civil or ecclesiastical business detained the bishops at Antioch till the 18th of May. Ephesus was at the distance of thirty days journey; and ten days more may be fairly allowed for accidents and repose. The march of Xenophon over the same ground enumerates above 260 parasangs or leagues; and this measure might be illustrated from ancient and modern itineraries, if I knew how to compare the speed of an army, a synod, and a caravan. John of Antioch is reluctantly acquitted by Tillemont himself (Mem. Eccles. tom. siv. p. 386...389).

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CHAP. fluence or the hand of a master, who has been accused of XLVII.

corrupting the public evidence of their acts and subscriptions.45 Without a dissenting voice, they recognized in the epistles of Cyril, the Nicene creed and the doctrine of the fathers : but the partial extracts from the letters and homilies of Nestorius were interrupted by curses and anathemas: and the heretic was degraded from his episcopal and ecclesiastical dignity. The sentence, maliciously inscribed to the new Judas, was affixed and proclaimed in the streets of Ephesus: the weary prelates, as they issued from the church of the mother of God, were saluted as her champions; and her victory was celebrated by the illuminations, the songs, and

the tumult of the night. Opposition On the fifth day, the triumph was clouded by the arrival of the Ori and indignation of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of

June 27, &c. the inn, before he had wiped the dust from his shoes, John

of Antioch gave audience to Candidian the Imperial minister; who related his ineffectual efforts to prevent or to annul the hasty violence of the Egyptian. With equal haste and violence, the Oriental synod of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their episcopal honours, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom of the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as a monster,

, born and educated for the destruction of the church.46 His throne was distant and inaccessible; but they instantly resolved to bestow on the flock of Ephesus the blessing of a faithful shepherd. By the vigilance of Memnon, the churches were shut against them, and a strong garrison was thrown into the cathedral. The troops, under the command of Candidian, advanced to the assault; the outguards were routed and put to the sword, but the place was impregnable: the besiegers retired; their retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally; they lost their horses, and many of the soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs and stones. Ephesus, the

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45 Μεμφομενον μη κατα το δεον τα εν Εφεσω συντεθηναι υπομνηματα πανεργια

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και τινι αθεσμω καινοτομια Κυριλλε τεχναζοντος. Evagrius, 1. i. c. 7. The same imputation was urged by count Irenæus (tom. iii. p. 1249); and the orthodox critics do not find it an easy task to defend the purity of the Greek or Latin copies of the Acts.

46 “Ο δε επ' ολεθρο των εκκλησιων τεχθεις και τραφεις. After the coalition of John and Cyril, these invectives were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation inust never be confounded with the genuine sense which respectable enemies entertain of each other's merit (Concil. tom. üi. p. 1244).

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