Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part I

Theological History Of The Doctrine Of The Incarnation.—The Human And Divine Nature Of Christ.—Enmity Of The Patriarchs Of Alexandria And Constantinople.—St. Cyril And Nestorius. —Third General Council Of Ephesus.—Heresy Of Eutyches.—Fourth General Council Of Chalcedon.—Civil And Ecclesiastical Discord.—Intolerance Of Justinian.—The Three Chapters.—The Monothelite Controversy.—State Of The Oriental Sects:—I. The Nestorians.—II. The Jacobites.—III. The Maronites.—IV. The Armenians.—V. The Copts And Abyssinians.

After the extinction of paganism, the Christians in peace and
piety might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. But the
principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they were more
solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice the laws, of
their founder. I have already observed, that the disputes of the
Trinity were succeeded by those of the Incarnation; alike
scandalous to the church, alike pernicious to the state, still
more minute in their origin, still more durable in their effects.

It is my design to comprise in the present chapter a religious
war of two hundred and fifty years, to represent the
ecclesiastical and political schism of the Oriental sects, and to
introduce their clamorous or sanguinary contests, by a modest
inquiry into the doctrines of the primitive church. 1

1 (return) [ By what means shall I authenticate this previous
inquiry, which I have studied to circumscribe and compress?—If I
persist in supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and
special evidence, every line would demand a string of
testimonies, and every note would swell to a critical
dissertation. But the numberless passages of antiquity which I
have seen with my own eyes, are compiled, digested and
illustrated by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I
shall be content to fortify my narrative by the names and
characters of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation
of a minute or remote object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid
of the strongest glasses: 1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius
are a work of incredible labor and compass; the volumes which
relate solely to the Incarnation (two folios, vth and vith, of
837 pages) are divided into xvi. books—the first of history, the
remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit’s learning is
copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear, his
argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the
fathers, the scourge of heretics, and the enemy of truth and
candor, as often as they are inimical to the Catholic cause. 2.
The Arminian Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume
(Amsterdam, 1716) the ecclesiastical history of the two first
centuries, was free both in his temper and situation; his sense
is clear, but his thoughts are narrow; he reduces the reason or
folly of ages to the standard of his private judgment, and his
impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes tainted by his
opposition to the fathers. See the heretics (Cerinthians, lxxx.
Ebionites, ciii. Carpocratians, cxx. Valentiniins, cxxi.
Basilidians, cxxiii. Marcionites, cxli., &c.) under their proper
dates. 3. The Histoire Critique du Manicheisme (Amsterdam, 1734,
1739, in two vols. in 4to., with a posthumous dissertation sur
les Nazarenes, Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre is a treasure
of ancient philosophy and theology. The learned historian spins
with incomparable art the systematic thread of opinion, and
transforms himself by turns into the person of a saint, a sage,
or a heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive; he
betrays an amiable partiality in favor of the weaker side, and,
while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient
scope for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of
contents will direct the reader to any point that he wishes to
examine. 4. Less profound than Petavius, less independent than Le
Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre, the historian Mosheim is
full, rational, correct, and moderate. In his learned work, De
Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum (Helmstadt 1753, in 4to.,)
see the Nazarenes and Ebionites, p. 172—179, 328—332. The
Gnostics in general, p. 179, &c. Cerinthus, p. 196—202.
Basilides, p. 352—361. Carpocrates, p. 363—367. Valentinus, p.
371—389 Marcion, p. 404—410. The Manichaeans, p. 829-837, &c.]

I. A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselyte has
countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the Ebionites,
or at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished only by their
obstinate perseverance in the practice of the Mosaic rites.

Their churches have disappeared, their books are obliterated:
their obscure freedom might allow a latitude of faith, and the
softness of their infant creed would be variously moulded by the
zeal or prudence of three hundred years. Yet the most charitable
criticism must refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure
and proper divinity of Christ. Educated in the school of Jewish
prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught to elevate
their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah. 2 If they had
courage to hail their king when he appeared in a plebeian garb,
their grosser apprehensions were incapable of discerning their
God, who had studiously disguised his celestial character under
the name and person of a mortal. 3 The familiar companions of
Jesus of Nazareth conversed with their friend and countryman,
who, in all the actions of rational and animal life, appeared of
the same species with themselves. His progress from infancy to
youth and manhood was marked by a regular increase in stature and
wisdom; and after a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on
the cross. He lived and died for the service of mankind: but the
life and death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to the cause
of religion and justice; and although the stoic or the hero may
disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears which he shed over
his friend and country may be esteemed the purest evidence of his
humanity. The miracles of the gospel could not astonish a people
who held with intrepid faith the more splendid prodigies of the
Mosaic law. The prophets of ancient days had cured diseases,
raised the dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended
to heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the
Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive title of
Son of God.

2 (return) [ Jew Tryphon, (Justin. Dialog. p. 207) in the name of
his countrymen, and the modern Jews, the few who divert their
thoughts from money to religion, still hold the same language,
and allege the literal sense of the prophets. * Note: See on this
passage Bp. Kaye, Justin Martyr, p. 25.—M. Note: Most of the
modern writers, who have closely examined this subject, and who
will not be suspected of any theological bias, Rosenmüller on
Isaiah ix. 5, and on Psalm xlv. 7, and Bertholdt, Christologia
Judaeorum, c. xx., rightly ascribe much higher notions of the
Messiah to the Jews. In fact, the dispute seems to rest on the
notion that there was a definite and authorized notion of the
Messiah, among the Jews, whereas it was probably so vague, as to
admit every shade of difference, from the vulgar expectation of a
mere temporal king, to the philosophic notion of an emanation
from the Deity.—M.]

3 (return) [ Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9,
p. 183) and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c.
2, p. 3) are obliged to confess that the Divinity of Christ is
rarely mentioned by himself or his apostles.]

Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites,
a distinction is faintly noticed between the heretics, who
confounded the generation of Christ in the common order of
nature, and the less guilty schismatics, who revered the
virginity of his mother, and excluded the aid of an earthly
father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced by the
visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of the
reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the
kingdom of David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and
authentic history has been recorded in several copies of the
Gospel according to St. Matthew, 4 which these sectaries long
preserved in the original Hebrew, 5 as the sole evidence of their
faith. The natural suspicions of the husband, conscious of his
own chastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a dream) that
his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distant and
domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal observation of
the historian, he must have listened to the same voice which
dictated to Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of
a virgin, generated by the ineffable operation of the Holy
Spirit, was a creature without example or resemblance, superior
in every attribute of mind and body to the children of Adam.
Since the introduction of the Greek or Chaldean philosophy, 6 the
Jews 7 were persuaded of the preexistence, transmigration, and
immortality of souls; and providence was justified by a
supposition, that they were confined in their earthly prisons to
expiate the stains which they had contracted in a former state. 8
But the degrees of purity and corruption are almost immeasurable.
It might be fairly presumed, that the most sublime and virtuous
of human spirits was infused into the offspring of Mary and the
Holy Ghost; 9 that his abasement was the result of his voluntary
choice; and that the object of his mission was, to purify, not
his own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his native
skies, he received the immense reward of his obedience; the
everlasting kingdom of the Messiah, which had been darkly
foretold by the prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of
conquest, and of dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human
faculties of Christ to the extend of is celestial office. In the
language of antiquity, the title of God has not been severely
confined to the first parent, and his incomparable minister, his
only-begotten son, might claim, without presumption, the
religious, though secondary, worship of a subject of a subject
world.

4 (return) [ The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist
in the Ebionite copies, (Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 13;) and the
miraculous conception is one of the last articles which Dr.
Priestley has curtailed from his scanty creed. * Note: The
distinct allusion to the facts related in the two first chapters
of the Gospel, in a work evidently written about the end of the
reign of Nero, the Ascensio Isaiae, edited by Archbishop
Lawrence, seems convincing evidence that they are integral parts
of the authentic Christian history.—M.]

5 (return) [ It is probable enough that the first of the Gospels
for the use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or
Syriac idiom: the fact is attested by a chain of fathers—Papias,
Irenaeus, Origen, Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the
Catholics, and admitted by Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius,
among the Protestant critics. But this Hebrew Gospel of St.
Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we may accuse the
diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have
preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek.
Erasmus and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the
original Gospel, deprive themselves of the evidence which
declares it to be the work of an apostle. See Simon, Hist.
Critique, &c., tom. iii. c. 5—9, p. 47—101, and the Prolegomena
of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament. * Note: Surely the
extinction of the Judaeo-Christian community related from Mosheim
by Gibbon himself (c. xv.) accounts both simply and naturally for
the loss of a composition, which had become of no use—nor does it
follow that the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew is unauthorized.—M.]

6 (return) [ The metaphysics of the soul are disengaged by Cicero
(Tusculan. l. i.) and Maximus of Tyre (Dissertat. xvi.) from the
intricacies of dialogue, which sometimes amuse, and often
perplex, the readers of the Phoedrus, the Phoedon, and the Laws
of Plato.]

7 (return) [ The disciples of Jesus were persuaded that a man
might have sinned before he was born, (John, ix. 2,) and the
Pharisees held the transmigration of virtuous souls, (Joseph. de
Bell. Judaico, l. ii. c. 7;) and a modern Rabbi is modestly
assured, that Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, &c., derived their
metaphysics from his illustrious countrymen.]

8 (return) [ Four different opinions have been entertained
concerning the origin of human souls: 1. That they are eternal
and divine. 2. That they were created in a separate state of
existence, before their union with the body. 3. That they have
been propagated from the original stock of Adam, who contained in
himself the mental as well as the corporeal seed of his
posterity. 4. That each soul is occasionally created and embodied
in the moment of conception.—The last of these sentiments appears
to have prevailed among the moderns; and our spiritual history is
grown less sublime, without becoming more intelligible.]

9 (return) [ It was one of the fifteen heresies imputed to
Origen, and denied by his apologist, (Photius, Bibliothec. cod.
cxvii. p. 296.) Some of the Rabbis attribute one and the same
soul to the persons of Adam, David, and the Messiah.]

II. The seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the rocky
and ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full
maturity, to the happier climes of the Gentiles; and the
strangers of Rome or Asia, who never beheld the manhood, were the
more readily disposed to embrace the divinity, of Christ. The
polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and the Barbarian, were
alike accustomed to conceive a long succession, an infinite chain
of angels or daemons, or deities, or aeons, or emanations,
issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange or
incredible, that the first of these aeons, the Logos, or Word of
God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon
earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error, and to
conduct them in the paths of life and immortality. But the
prevailing doctrine of the eternity and inherent pravity of
matter infected the primitive churches of the East. Many among
the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that a celestial
spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been
personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh;
and, in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the
humanity, of Christ. While his blood was still recent on Mount
Calvary, 10 the Docetes, a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics,
invented the phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated
by the Marcionites, the Manichaeans, and the various names of the
Gnostic heresy. 11 They denied the truth and authenticity of the
Gospels, as far as they relate the conception of Mary, the birth
of Christ, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his
ministry. He first appeared on the banks of the Jordan in the
form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and not a
substance; a human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to
imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a
perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies.
Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the
image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more
stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual,
not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the
Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic
scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension,
of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the
benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry,
such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the
Docetes agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the
justification of pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics,
the Jehovah of Israel, the Creator of this lower world, was a
rebellious, or at least an ignorant, spirit. The Son of God
descended upon earth to abolish his temple and his law; and, for
the accomplishment of this salutary end, he dexterously
transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a
temporal Messiah.

10 (return) [ Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud
Judaeam Christi sanguine recente, Phantasma domini corpus
asserebatur. Hieronym, advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of
Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, and even the Gospel according to St.
John, are levelled against the growing error of the Docetes, who
had obtained too much credit in the world, (1 John, iv. 1—5.)]

11 (return) [ About the year 200 of the Christian aera, Irenaeus
and Hippolytus efuted the thirty-two sects, which had multiplied
to fourscore in the time of Epiphanius, (Phot. Biblioth. cod.
cxx. cxxi. cxxii.) The five books of Irenaeus exist only in
barbarous Latin; but the original might perhaps be found in some
monastery of Greece.]

One of the most subtile disputants of the Manichaean school has
pressed the danger and indecency of supposing, that the God of
the Christians, in the state of a human foetus, emerged at the
end of nine months from a female womb. The pious horror of his
antagonists provoked them to disclaim all sensual circumstances
of conception and delivery; to maintain that the divinity passed
through Mary like a sunbeam through a plate of glass; and to
assert, that the seal of her virginity remained unbroken even at
the moment when she became the mother of Christ. But the rashness
of these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of those
of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom, but
that he was clothed with an impassible and incorruptible body.
Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system, he has acquired since
his resurrection, and such he must have always possessed, if it
were capable of pervading, without resistance or injury, the
density of intermediate matter. Devoid of its most essential
properties, it might be exempt from the attributes and
infirmities of the flesh. A foetus that could increase from an
invisible point to its full maturity; a child that could attain
the stature of perfect manhood without deriving any nourishment
from the ordinary sources, might continue to exist without
repairing a daily waste by a daily supply of external matter.
Jesus might share the repasts of his disciples without being
subject to the calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity
was never sullied by the involuntary stains of sensual
concupiscence. Of a body thus singularly constituted, a question
would arise, by what means, and of what materials, it was
originally framed; and our sounder theology is startled by an
answer which was not peculiar to the Gnostics, that both the form
and the substance proceeded from the divine essence. The idea of
pure and absolute spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy:
the incorporeal essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls,
celestial beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude
the notion of extended space; and their imagination was satisfied
with a subtile nature of air, or fire, or aether, incomparably
more perfect than the grossness of the material world. If we
define the place, we must describe the figure, of the Deity. Our
experience, perhaps our vanity, represents the powers of reason
and virtue under a human form. The Anthropomorphites, who swarmed
among the monks of Egypt and the Catholics of Africa, could
produce the express declaration of Scripture, that man was made
after the image of his Creator. 12 The venerable Serapion, one of
the saints of the Nitrian deserts, relinquished, with many a
tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant, his
unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his
mind without any visible object of faith or devotion. 13

12 (return) [ The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the
beginning of the vth century, observes and laments the reign of
anthropomorphism among the monks, who were not conscious that
they embraced the system of Epicurus, (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i.
18, 34.) Ab universo propemodum genere monachorum, qui per totam
provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro simplicitatis errore susceptum
est, ut e contraric memoratum pontificem (Theophilus) velut
haeresi gravissima depravatum, pars maxima seniorum ab universo
fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum, (Cassian,
Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichaean,
he was scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar
Catholics.]

13 (return) [ Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod
illam imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione
consueverat, aboleri de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos
fletus, crebrosque singultus repente prorumpens, in terram
prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo proclamaret; “Heu me miserum!
tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc teneam non habeo, vel quem
adorem, aut interpallam am nescio.” Cassian, Collat. x. 2.]

III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more
substantial, though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived by
Cerinthus of Asia, 14 who dared to oppose the last of the
apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and Gentile world,
he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, by
confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man
and a God; and this mystic doctrine was adopted with many
fanciful improvements by Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentine,
15 the heretics of the Egyptian school. In their eyes, Jesus of
Nazareth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and
Mary: but he was the best and wisest of the human race, selected
as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the
true and supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, the
Christ, the first of the aeons, the Son of God himself, descended
on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind, and direct
his actions during the allotted period of his ministry. When the
Messiah was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ, an
immortal and impassible being, forsook his earthly tabernacle,
flew back to the pleroma or world of spirits, and left the
solitary Jesus to suffer, to complain, and to expire. But the
justice and generosity of such a desertion are strongly
questionable; and the fate of an innocent martyr, at first
impelled, and at length abandoned, by his divine companion, might
provoke the pity and indignation of the profane. Their murmurs
were variously silenced by the sectaries who espoused and
modified the double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that
when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a
miraculous apathy of mind and body, which rendered him insensible
of his apparent sufferings. It was affirmed, that these
momentary, though real, pangs would be abundantly repaid by the
temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for the Messiah in
his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was insinuated, that if he
suffered, he deserved to suffer; that human nature is never
absolutely perfect; and that the cross and passion might serve to
expiate the venial transgressions of the son of Joseph, before
his mysterious union with the Son of God. 16

14 (return) [ St. John and Cerinthus (A.D. 80. Cleric. Hist.
Eccles. p. 493) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus;
but the apostle fled from the heretic, lest the building should
tumble on their heads. This foolish story, reprobated by Dr.
Middleton, (Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii.,) is related, however,
by Irenaeus, (iii. 3,) on the evidence of Polycarp, and was
probably suited to the time and residence of Cerinthus. The
obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John, iv. 3 alludes
to the double nature of that primitive heretic. * Note: Griesbach
asserts that all the Greek Mss., all the translators, and all the
Greek fathers, support the common reading.—Nov. Test. in loc.—M]

15 (return) [ The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost
incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were aeons, though
of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the
other as the divine spirit of the Savior. 2. At the time of the
passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a
human body. 3. Even that body was aethereal, and perhaps
apparent.—Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I
much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenaeus, and
whether Irenaeus and the Valetinians understood themselves.]

16 (return) [ The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Rousseau, who has
drawn an eloquent, but indecent, parallel between Christ and
Socrates, forgets that not a word of impatience or despair
escaped from the mouth of the dying philosopher. In the Messiah,
such sentiments could be only apparent; and such ill-sounding
words were properly explained as the application of a psalm and
prophecy.]

IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a
specious and noble tenet, must confess, from their present
experience, the incomprehensible union of mind and matter. A
similar union is not inconsistent with a much higher, or even
with the highest, degree of mental faculties; and the incarnation
of an aeon or archangel, the most perfect of created spirits,
does not involve any positive contradiction or absurdity. In the
age of religious freedom, which was determined by the council of
Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private judgment
according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or
tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been
established on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics
trembled on the edge of a precipice where it was impossible to
recede, dangerous to stand, dreadful to fall and the manifold
inconveniences of their creed were aggravated by the sublime
character of their theology. They hesitated to pronounce; that
God himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial
trinity, was manifested in the flesh; 17 that a being who
pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary;
that his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and
months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty had been
scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence had felt pain
and anguish; that his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance;
and that the source of life and immortality expired on Mount
Calvary. These alarming consequences were affirmed with
unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, 18 bishop of Laodicea, and
one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned
grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece;
eloquence, erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes
of Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of religion.
The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian,
he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and though
he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his
commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the
Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated in the looseness of
popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a
technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, “One
incarnate nature of Christ,” which are still reechoed with
hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He
taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a
man; and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the
flesh the place and office of a human soul. Yet as the profound
doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, Apollinaris was
heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse and explanation. He
acquiesced in the old distinction of the Greek philosophers
between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that he might
reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the
subordinate human principle in the meaner actions of animal life.

With the moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual,
rather than as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body either
came from heaven, impassible and incorruptible, or was absorbed,
and as it were transformed, into the essence of the Deity. The
system of Apollinaris was strenuously encountered by the Asiatic
and Syrian divines whose schools are honored by the names of
Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom, and tainted by those of Diodorus,
Theodore, and Nestorius. But the person of the aged bishop of
Laedicea, his character and dignity, remained inviolate; and his
rivals, since we may not suspect them of the weakness of
toleration, were astonished, perhaps, by the novelty of the
argument, and diffident of the final sentence of the Catholic
church. Her judgment at length inclined in their favor; the
heresy of Apollinaris was condemned, and the separate
congregations of his disciples were proscribed by the Imperial
laws. But his principles were secretly entertained in the
monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies felt the hatred of
Theophilus and Cyril, the successive patriarchs of Alexandria.

17 (return) [ This strong expression might be justified by the
language of St. Paul, (1 Tim. iii. 16;) but we are deceived by
our modern Bibles. The word which was altered to God at
Constantinople in the beginning of the vith century: the true
reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still
exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as of the Latin
fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St.
John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two
letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique,
tom. xv. p. 148—190, 351—390.) I have weighed the arguments, and
may yield to the authority of the first of philosophers, who was
deeply skilled in critical and theological studies. Note: It
should be Griesbach in loc. The weight of authority is so much
against the common reading in both these points, that they are no
longer urged by prudent controversialists. Would Gibbon’s
deference for the first of philosophers have extended to all his
theological conclusions?—M.]

18 (return) [ For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, l. ii.
c. 46, l. iii. c. 16 Sazomen, l. v. c. 18, 1. vi. c. 25, 27.
Theodoret, l. v. 3, 10, 11. Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques,
tom. vii. p. 602—638. Not. p. 789—794, in 4to. Venise, 1732. The
contemporary saint always mentions the bishop of Laodicea as a
friend and brother. The style of the more recent historians is
harsh and hostile: yet Philostorgius compares him (l. viii. c.
11-15) to Basil and Gregory.]

V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the fantastic Docetes, were
rejected and 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 coexistence 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 most 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 principles of their adversaries. To
escape from 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 19 of the Oriental sects have
shaken the pillars of the church and state.

19 (return) [ I appeal to the confession of two Oriental
prelates, Gregory Abulpharagius 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 favor this charitable judgment; but the
zeal of Petavius is loud and angry, and the moderation of Dupin
is conveyed in a whisper.]

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
indefatigable ardor, that in the course 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. 20
Cyril prayed and fasted in the desert, but his thoughts (it is
the reproach of a friend) 21 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; 22 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 realized the hopes
of his nephew. The clergy of Alexandria was divided; the soldiers
and their general supported the claims of the archdeacon; but a
resistless multitude, with voices and with hands, asserted the
cause of their favorite; and after a period of thirty-nine years,
Cyril was seated on the throne of Athanasius. 23

20 (return) [ La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme des Indes, tom. i.
p. 24) avows his contempt for the genius and writings of Cyril.
De tous les on vrages des anciens, il y en a peu qu’on lise avec
moins d’utilite: and Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom.
iv. p. 42—52,) in words of respect, teaches us to despise them.]

21 (return) [ 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.)]

22 (return) [ A grammarian is named by Socrates (l. vii. c. 13).]

23 (return) [ See the youth and promotion of Cyril, in Socrates,
(l. vii. c. 7) and Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarchs. Alexandrin. p.
106, 108.) The Abbe Renaudot drew his materials from the Arabic
history of Severus, bishop of Hermopolis Magma, or Ashmunein, in
the xth century, who can never be trusted, unless our assent is
extorted by the internal evidence of facts.]