§ 138. TEE ECrMENICAL COUNJIL OF EPHE5U8. 721
oomproinise was effected. John of Antioch sent the aged bishop Paul of Eniisa a messenger to Alexandria with a creed which lie had already, in a shorter form, laid before the empe ror, and which broke the doctrinal antagonism by asserting the duality of the natures against Cyril, and the predicate mother of God against ]S"estorius.' " We confess," says thia ^symbol, which was composed by Theodoret, " that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and body subsisting*' as to his Godhead begotten of the Father before all time, but as to his manhood, born of the Virgin Mary in the end of the days for us and for our salvation ; of the same essence with the Father as to liis Godhead, and of the same substance with us as to his manhood ; ' for two natures are united with one another.* Therefore we confess one Christ, one Lord, and one Son. By reason of this union, which yet is vnthout confusion," we also confess that the holy Virgin is mother of God, because God the Logos was made flesh and man, and united with himself the temple [humanity] even from the conception ; which temple he took from the Virgin. But concerning the words of the Gospel and Epistles respecting Christ, we know that theologians apply some which refer to the one person to the two natures in common, but separate others as referring to the two natures, and assign the expressions which become God to the Godhead of Christ, but the expressions of humiliation to his manhood." "
" In Mansi, torn. v. fol. 305; Hefele, ii. 246; and Gieseler, i. ii. p. 150.
* Qibv Tf\eiov Kal avSipanTov TeAeior eV 'i'^xv^ AoyiKrjs (against Apollinaris) koI fftiaaros.
' 'O/J-oov'Jtov t£ Trarpl kuto. T7]v SeorrjTa, Kal Sfiooiatoy VM-^" xa-ra ttjv av^pcuTTo- TTjTa. Here homoonsios, at least in the second clause^ evidently does not imply numerical unity, but only generic unity.
* Avo yap (pvcrccov evu^ais ytyove, in opposition to the /ui'o tpvais of Cyril.
* Kara Tair-qf rl}v ttjs aavyx^'r ov (against Cyril) e ydaf a t twoiav.
* Kal Tos ftXv dfOTTpeirels Kara ttju ^e6Tr]Ta tov X/jicttov, tos Se Taireii/ii Kara T^v a.v^pc»TT6TriTa avrov irapaSiSJi/Tas. Gieseler says (i. ii. p. 152), Nestorius nerer asserted anything but what agrees with this confession which Cyril subscribed. But he pressed the distinction of the natures in Christ so far that it amounted, in substance, though not in expression, to two persons ; he taught not a true becoming man, but the union of the Logos with a reXnos ^vboanroi, a human person ther&
728 THIBD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Cyril assented to this confession, and repeated it verbally. with some further doctrinal explanation?, in his answer to the irenical letter of the patriarch of Antioch, but insisted on the condemnation and deposition of N^estorius as the indispensable condition of church fellowship. At the same time he knew how to gain the imperial court to the orthodox side by all kinds of presents, which, according to the Oriental custom of testifying submission to princes by presents, were not necessarily regarded as bribes. The Antiochians, satisfied with saving the doctrine of two natures, thought it best to sacrifice the person of Nestorius to the unity of the church, and to anathematize his " wicked and unholy innovations." ' Thus in 433 union was eflfected, thougli not without much contradiction on both sides, nor without acts of imjjerial force.
The unhappy Nestorius was dragged from the stillness of his former cloister, the cloister of Euprepius before the gates of Antioch, in which he had enjoyed four years of repose, from one place of exile to another, first to Arabia, then to Egypt, and was compelled to drink to the di'egs the bitter cup of persecution which he himself, in the days of his power, had forced upon the heretics. He endured his suffering with resignation and independence, wrote his life under the significant title of Tragedy,'' and died after 439, no one knows where nor when. Characteristic of the fanaticism of tiie times is the statement quoted by Evagrius,' that Nestorius, after having his tongue gnawed by worms in j)unishment for his blasphemy, passed to the harder torments of eternity. The Monophysite Jacobites are accustomed from year to year to cast
fore not nature; and he constantly denied the tkcotokos, except in an improper sense. His doctrine was unquestionably much distorted by his cotcmporaries ; but BO also was the doctrine of Cyril.
' Tas <pav\oL^ avrov koX j86)3rjAou? Kaivotp(tivias.
"^ Fragments in Evagrius, H. E. i. 7, and in the Synodicon adversus Tragcediam Irenaii, c. 6. That the book bore the name of Tragedy, is stated by Ebedjesu, a Nestorian metropolitan. The imperial commissioner, Irenajus, afterwards bishop of Tyre, a friend of Nestorius, composed a book concerning him and the ecclesiastical Iiistory of his time, likewise under the title of Trarndii, fragments of which, in a Latin translation, are preserved in the so-called Synodicon, in Mausi, v. 731 sqq.
" Hist. Ecc'. i. 6.