OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 113 tions ; every Avind scattered round the empire the leaves of controversy ; and the voice of the combatants on a sonorous theatre re-echoed in the cells of Palestine and Egypt. It was the duty of Cyril to enlighten the zeal and ignorance of his innumerable monks : in the school of Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed the incarnation of one nature ; and the successor of Athanasius consulted his pride and ambition when he rose in arms against another Arius, more formidable and more guilty, on the second throne of the hierarchy. After a short correspondence, in which the rival prelates disguised their hatred in the hollow language of respect and charity, the patriarch of Alexandria denounced to the prince and people, to the East and to the West, the damnable errors of the Byzantine pontiff. From the East, more especially from Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of toleration and silence, which were addressed to both parties while they favoured the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received with open arms the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of Celestine was flattered by the appeal ; and the partial version of a monk decided the faith of the pope, who, with his I^atin clergy, was ignorant of the language, the arts, and the theology of the Greeks. At the head of an Italian synod, Celestine weighed the merits of the cause, approved the creed of Cyril, condemned the sentiments and person of Nestorius, degi'aded the heretic from his episcopal dignity, allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and penance, and delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and illegal sentence. But the patri- arch of Alexandria, whilst he darted the thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal ; and his twelve anathemas -^^ still torture the orthodox slaves who adore the memory of a saint, without forfeiting their allegiance to the synod of Chalcedon. These bold assertions are indelibly tinged with the colours of the Apollinarian heresy ; but the serious, and perhaps the sincere, professions of Nestorius have satisfied the wiser and less partial theologians of the present times.^*^ "sConcil. torn. iii. p. 943. They have never been directly approved by the church (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. torn. xiv. p. 368-372). I almost pity the agony of rage and sophistry with which F'etavius seems to be agitated in the vith book o'f his Dogmata 'rheologica. ■"•Such as the rational Basnage (ad torn. i. Variar. Lection, Canisii in Pr.-sfat. c. ii. p. 11-23) ^rid La Croze, the universal scholar (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. ,16-20. De I'Ethiopie, p. 26, 27. I'hesaur. Epist. p. 176, &c. 283, 285). His free sentence is confirmed by that of his friends Jablonski (Thesaur. Epist. tom. i. p. 193-201) and Mosheim (idem, p. 304: Nestorium crimine caruisse est et mea VOL. V. 8
