Unitarians. To oppose this dishonouring error the Monophysite presented himself as the champion of the perfect Divinity of Christ. Moreover, the popularity of the term Theotokos, the watchword of anti-Nestorianism, tended in the same direction. With this, and powerfully aided by it, came the growing cult of the Virgin, especially welcome in Egypt, the original home of the Mother-god Isis. The visitor to Cairo will see displayed in shops of antiquities statuettes of Isis with Horus in her arms, found in ancient Egyptian tombs, which are almost perfect counterparts of Christian statuettes of the Virgin and child. There came gradually into use such phrases as "God was born"; "God died." The whole tendency of thought in the Church was moving in this direction. It was rather hard on the Monophysites that they were excommunicated as heretics, since generation after generation of the orthodox was moving nearer and nearer to their position during the course of the succeeding centuries. In fact, all through the later patristic period and down into the Middle Ages the humanity of Christ became more and more shadowy, and His Divinity increasingly dominated the minds of the Church teachers, so that sorrowful people who were craving for human sympathy turned from the awful Byzantine Christ to the compassionate Mary, and found in the mother that actual human sympathy which it had been the object of the now neglected incarnation to bring them in her Son. It is hardly too much to say that Mary became to all intents and purposes the incarnate Saviour, while the humanity of Christ and His incarnation were lost in the grandeur of His Divinity.
But while these religious and doctrinal tendencies were influencing serious minds, the disgraceful history of the dispute shows that personal pique, party passion, political intrigue, jealousy, and ambition only too often swept all before them, impelling men to the clash of collision with little or no genuine appreciation of the merits of the cause they were defending. We must go further afield, beyond the Church and the cell, to the decaying society of
