obeyed the summons, calling him to appear before the Council, and had the sentence against him been pronounced after he had been permitted to speak for and to defend himself.
More than fourteen centuries have elapsed since the sentence of the Church cut off from the privileges of her communion all those who followed the dangerous error, that in Jesus Christ our Blessed Saviour, there are two distinct persons, as well as two natures. Nestorius constantly denied that he held this doctrine; and his followers in modern times are no less steadfast in disclaiming it. That the question herein involved is trifling, or that it is irrelevant to the saving faith, none will pretend, except such as do not perceive its relation to the great doctrine of the atonement,[1] or who are presumptuous enough to condemn the united piety, learning, and godly zeal of the Church in the early ages of Christianity. The doctrine established by the Council of Ephesus concerning our Blessed Lord is this: that Christ was one divine person, in whom two natures were most closely and intimately united, but without being mixed or confounded together. And this is the faith which has always been received and confessed by the majority of Christians, by the Latins, Greeks, and English, that is, in a manner by all the churches of the whole world. This is the faith which God has blessed with increase, which has gone forth and converted many nations, and spread to the uttermost parts of the earth, and which is still subduing the heathen to the sceptre of the Crucified One. Now, although it is not right to measure truth by the number of its supporters, still if our Lord sent His Apostles to teach and to baptize the nations to the end of the world, and promised always to be with them, it cannot without too great an improbability be supposed, that He suffered almost all His Church to
- ↑ An Independent Missionary at Mosul was once asked by a learned though rather disputatious Jacobite deacon, whether, when our Blessed Lord hung upon the Cross, He was God as well as man, and whether His humanity alone, or His united Divinity and humanity suffered. The missionary replied, that he did not know. Ignorance on so important a subject, sometimes real, but often affected and specious, is, to say the least, unbecoming on the part of a professing teacher of religion, and very ill-timed when expressed towards any of the Eastern sects, who are suspected of heterodoxy on points connected with this important question. On hearing the reply of the Missionary, the deacon said to him: "Then you had better return to your country without attempting to teach us."
