and Diasterius,[1] and others, who were pronounced at the sixth Council to be most depraved heretics, and filled with the spirit of the devil? For why do ye say, ‘I believe in God the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son’? Truly it is marvellous and horrible to speak of, that ye thus dare pervert the faith, while from the beginning it has been constantly sung in all Churches throughout the whole world, ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who, together with the Father and the Son, is worshipped and glorified’. Why then do ye not say as all other Christians do, instead of making additions, and introducing a new doctrine, while on the other hand the Apostle declares, ‘If any man preach to you more than those things which we have declared to you, let him be anathema.’ I hope ye may not fall under that curse, for it is a dangerous and a fearful thing to alter and pervert the Scripture of God, composed by the saints. Do ye not know how very great is your error? For ye
- ↑ The editor has sought in vain for information respecting this heresiarch. Neither Tillemont, Walch, Pluquet, nor Mosheim, make any allusion to the name of Diasterius. Possibly, by an error, this name has been written for that of Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria, who adopted the opinions of Eutyches. He supported those opinions at the Council of Ephesus, in 449; and, on his return to Alexandria, had the boldness to excommunicate the pope, Leo the Great; but in the following year he was deposed from his patriarchate, at the Council of Constantinople, and in 451 was deprived of his bishopric and priesthood at the Council of Chalcedon. He died in exile, A.D. 458, at Gangra, in Paphlagonia,—the place above alluded to, at p. 63, as the seat of a council which was held in the year 324.
Constantinople at the time when Nestorius promulgated his heresy: he left his retreat in order to defend the faith, but fell himself into a new heresy, which he began to disseminate in 448. He taught that there was only one nature in Jesus Christ, namely the divine nature, in which his human nature was absorbed like a drop of water in the sea. His followers, many of whom still exist in the East, are called Eutychians, or Monophysites.
