Christ is God manifest in the flesh : therefore she was the Mother of God. The infant Saviour was a divine person. Christians do not hesitate to say that God purchased his Church with his own blood. According to the usage of Scripture, the person of Christ may be designated from one nature, when the predicate belongs to the other. He may be called the Son of man when we speak of his filling immensity ; and He may be called God when we speak of his being born, (e.) Nevertheless, although the designa- tion be in itself justifiable, in the state of feeling which then per- vaded the Church, the decision of the Council tended to increase the superstitious reverence for the Virgin. It was considered by the common people as tantamount to a declaration of divinity. The members of the Council were escorted from their place of meeting by a multitude bearing torches, preceded by women bearing censers filled with burning incense. In combating the assumed Nestorian doctrine of two persons in Christ, there was a strong tendency to the opposite, to the doctrine of Eutyches, who held that there was in our Lord but one nature. According to this view the Virgin might be regarded as the Mother of God in the same sense that any ordinary mother is the parent of her child. However it may be accounted for, the fact is that the de- cision of the Council of Ephesus marks a distinct epoch in the progress of the deification of the Virgin.
The fourth step soon followed in the dedication to her honour of numerous churches, shrines, and festivals ; and in the introduction of solemn offices designed for public and private worship in which she was solemnly invoked. No limit was placed to the titles of^ honour by which she was addressed or to the prerogatives and powers which were attributed to her. She was declared to be deificata. She was called the Queen of heaven, Queen of queens ; said to be exalted above all principalities and powers ; to be seated at the right hand of Christ, to share with Him in the universal and absolute power committed to his hands. All the blessings of salvation were sought at her hands, as well as protec- tion from all enemies, and deliverance from all evils. Prayers, hymns, and doxologies were allowed and prescribed to be ad- dressed to her. The whole Psalter has been transformed into a book of praise and confession to the Mother of Christ. What in the Bible is said to God and of God, is in this book addressed to the Virgin. In the First Psalm, for example, it is said, " Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly," etc. In the Psalter of the Virgin it reads, " Blessed is the man who