§ 171. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. 941
belieAing buul is saved.'" These and otlier extra\'agant praises are interspersed with polemic thrusts against ISTestorius. Yet Cyril did not, like Augustine, exempt the Yirgin from sin or infirmity, but, like Basil, he ascribed to her a serious doubt at the crucifixion concerning the true divinity of Christy and a shrinking from the cross, similar to that of Peter, when he was scandalized at the bare mention of it, and exclaimed : *' Be it far from thee, Lord ! " (Matt. xvi. 22.) In commenting on John xix. 25, Cj^ril says: " The female sex somehow is evei fond of tears,"^ and given to much lamentation. ... It was the purpose of the holy evangelist to teach, that probably even the mother of the Lord Himself took offence' at the unexpected passion ; and the death upon the cross, being so very bitter, was near unsettling her from her fitting mind. . . . Doubt not that she admitted * some such thoughts as these : I bore Him who is laughed at on the wood ; but when He said He was the true Son of the Omnipotent God, perhaps somehow He was mistaken." He said, ' I am the Life ; ' how then has He been crucified ? how has He been strangled by the cords of His murderers? how did He not prevail over the plot of His persecutors? why does He not descend from the cross, since He bade Lazarus to return to life, and filled all Judaea with amazement at His miracles? And it is very natural that woman,* not knowing the mystery, should slide into some such trains of thought. For we should understand, that the gravity of the circumstances of the Passion was enough to overturn even a self-possessed mind ; it is no wonder then if woman' slipped into this reasoning." Cyril thus understands the prophecy of Simeon (Luke ii. 35) concerning the sword, which, he says, " meant the most acute pain, cutting
' Ai' ^s iraffa irvo)) irttrTfiovcra crdCfTO-t,
' EaKai'Sd\icre TraSor.
* EitreSc'laTo.
* *A\A' vlhv favrhy aXrjdtvhy elvai Xe-ywr tov izivTcev KparovvTos 0aoD, rdxci to* Kol dterrtpdWeTo.
* Or woman's nature, rb ^uvatr, whici; is sometimes used in a contempluoof ecjQse, like the German Weibsbild.
* Ti yiaioy.
948 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
down the woniau's mind into extravagant thouglits. Foi temptations tost the liearts of those who suffer them, and make bare the thoughts which are iu them." '
Aside from his partisan excesses, he powerfully and successfully represented the important truth of the unity of the person of Christ against the abstract dyophysitism of IS^estorius.
For this reason his Christological writings against ^estoriua and Tlieodoret are of the greatest importance to the history of doctrine.^ Besides these he has left us a valuable apologetic work, composed in the year 433, and dedicated to the emperor Theodosius II., in refutation of the attack of Julian the Apostate upon Christianity ; ' and a doctrinal work on the Trinity and
' Cyril, in Joanii. lib. xii. (iu Migne'.s ed. of Cyril, vol. vii. col. 6G1 sq.). Dr. J. H. Newman (in his Letter to Dr. Pusey on his Eirenicon, Lond. 18t5G, p. 136) escapes the force of the argument of this and similar passages of Basil and Chrysoatom against the Roman Mariolatry by the sophistical distinction, that they are not directed against the Virgin's person, so much as against her nature (rb 71'i'aiov), of which the fathers had the low estimation then prevalent, looking upon womankind as the "varium et mutabile semper," and knowing little of that true nobihty which is exemplified in the females of the Germanic races, and in those of the old Jewish stock, Miriam, Deborah, Judith, Susanna. But it was to the human nature 0/ Mary, and not to human nature in the abstract, that Cyril, whether right or wrong, attributed a doubt concerning the true divinity of her Son. I think there is no warrant for such a supposition in the accounts of the crucifixion, and the sword in the prophecy of Simeon means anguish rather than doubt. But this makes the antagonism of these Greek fathers with the pres(!ut Roman Mariology only the mora striking. Newman (1. c. p. 144) gratuitously assumes that the tradition of the sinlessness of the holy Virgin was obliterated and confused at Antioch and New Caesarea by the Arian troubles. But this would apply at best only to Chrysostom and Basil, and not to Cyril of Alexandria, who lived half a century after the defeat of Arianism at the second ecumenical council, and who was the leading champion of the theotokoH in the Noetorian controversy. Besides there is no clear trace of the doctrine of the sinlessness of Mary before St. Augustine, either among the Greek pr Latin fathers ; for the tradition of Mary as the second Eve docs not necessarily imply that doctrine, and was associated in Irena'us and Tertulhan with views similar to those expressed by Basil, Chrysostom, and Cyril. Comp. gg 81 and 82, above.
' Adversus Ncstorii blasphemias contradictionum libri v (Kara -rdiv NtaTwpioL Su(T<prifit(iv irevTa&i&Koi avTi^f>r]Tiis) ] Explaiiatio xii capiturn s. auathematisntorure ('ETri\u(T4j Toij' SciSeica KcpaKaiwv) ; Apologeticus pro xii capltibus adversus Orien< tales episcopos ; Contra Theodoretum pro xii capitibus — all in the last volume of the edition of Aubert (in Migne, in torn. ix.).
' Contra Julianum Apostatam hbri x, toiu. vi. in Aubert (torn. ix. iu Migne) also in Spanheim's Opera JuUani. Comp. §§ 4 and 9, above.