OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 105 worthy friend of Athaiiasius, the worthy antagonist of .Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and, though he affected the rigour 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," Avhich are still re-echoed with hostile clamours in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and i^ithiopia. He taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man ; and that the Logos, the eternal wis- dom, supplied in the flesh the place and oflice of an human soul. Yet, as the profound doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, ApoUinaris 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 oc.isitive soul of man ; that he might reserve the Lugo.s for intellectual functions, and employ the subordinate human principle in the iTieaner 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 froxn heaven, impassible and incorru})tible, or was absorbed, and as it were transformed, into the essence of the Deity. The system of ApoUinaris was strenuously encountered by the Asiatic and Syrian divines, whose schools are honoured 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 Laodicea, his character and dignity, remained inviolate ; and his rivals, since we may not suspect them of the weakness of toleration, were astonished, perha})S, by the novelty of tlie argument, and diflident of the final sentence of the Catholic church. Her judgment at length inclined in their favour ; the heresy of ApoUinaris was condemned, and the separate congregations of his disciples were proscribed by the Imperial laws. But his prin- ciples were secretly entertained in the monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies felt the hatred of Theophilus and Cyril, the successive patriarchs of Alexandria. V. The grovelling Ebionite and the fantastic Docetes were v. orthodox rejected and forgotten; the recent zeal against the errors of verbal dis- Apollinaris reduced the Catholics to a seeming agreement with the double nature of Cerinthus. But, instead of a temporary and occasional alliance, theij established, and ivc still embrace, the substantial, indissoluble, and everlasting union of a perfect
