History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0169/01696.txt

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$Title{History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Part I.}
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$Author{Gibbon, Edward}
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human
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$Date{1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)}
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Title:       History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Book:        Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.
Author:      Gibbon, Edward
Date:        1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

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

[Footnote 1: 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.

[Footnote 2: 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, Rosenmuller 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.]

[Footnote 3: 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.

[Footnote 4: 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.]

[Footnote 5: 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.]

[Footnote 6: 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.]

[Footnote 7: 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.]

[Footnote 8: 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.]

[Footnote 9: 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.

[Footnote 10: 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.)]

[Footnote 11: 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

[Footnote 12: 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.]

[Footnote 13: 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

[Footnote 14: 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]

[Footnote 15: 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.]

[Footnote 16: 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.

[Footnote 17: 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.]

[Footnote 18: 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 mislead 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.

[Footnote 19: 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

[Footnote 20: 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.]

[Footnote 21: 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.)]

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

[Footnote 23: 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.]