112 THE DECLINE AND FALL title of mother of God,"* vhich had been insensibly adopted since the origin of the Arian controversy. From the pulpit of Constantinople, a friend of the patriarch, and afterwards the patriarch himself, repeatedly preached against the use, or the abuse, of a word "■' unkno^vn to the apostles, unauthorised by the church, and which could only tend to alarm the timorous, to mislead the simple, to amuse the profane, and to justify, by a seeming resemblance, the old genealogy of Olympus."^" In his calmer moments Nestorius confessed that it might be tolerated or excused by the union of the two natures and the communication of their idioms ; ^"^ but he was exasperated, by contradiction, to disclaim the worship of a new-bom, an infant Deity, to draw his inadequate similes from the conjugal or civil partnerships of life, and to describe the manhood of Christ as the robe, the instrument, the tabernacle of his Godhead. At these blasphemous sounds, the pillars of the sanctuary were shaken. The unsuccessful competitors of Nestorius indulged their pious or personal resentments ; the Byzantine clergy was secretly displeased with the intrusion of a stranger ; whatever is superstitious or absurd, might claim the protection of the monks ; and the people were interested in the glory of their virgin patroness. ^'^ The sermons of the archbishop and the service of the altar were disturbed by seditious clamour ; his authority and doctrine were renounced by separate congrega- '■'-* eeoToico? — Deipara : as in zoology we familiarly speak of oviparous and viviparous animals. It is not easy to fix the invention of this word, which La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. i6) ascribes to Eusebius of Caesarea and the Arians. The orthodox testimonies are produced by Cyril and Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. torn. v. 1. v. c. 15, p. 254, &c. ); but the veracity of the saint is questionable, and the epithet of SeoTOKos so easily slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic Ms. ^^Basnage, in his Histoire de I'Eglise, a work of controversy (tom. i. p. 505), justifies the mother, by the blood, of God (.'cts xx. 28, with Mill's various read- ings). But the Greek Mss. are far from unanimous ; and the primitive style of the blood of Christ is preserved in the Syriac version, even in those copies which were used by the Christians of St. Thomas on the coast of Malabar (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 347). The jealousy of the Nestorians and Monophysites has guarded the purity of their text. 36 The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new Cybele of the Christians (Isidor. 1. i. epist. 54) : a letter was forged in the name of Hypatia, to ridicule the theology of her assassin (Synodicon, c. 216, in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484). In the artide of Nestorius, Bayle has scattered some loose philosophy on the worship of the Virgin Mary. "'The <ii/Ti6o<ri? of the Greeks, a mutual loan or transfer of the idioms or proper- ties of each nature to the other — of infinity to man, passibility to God, &c. Twelve rules on this nicest of subjects compose the Theological Grammar of Petavius (Dog- mata Theolog. tom. v. 1. iv. c. 14, 13, p. 209, &c. ). ■**See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, 1. i. p. 30, &c.
