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Cyril, in which he let himself go the whole length both of his logic and his language, were declared to be the orthodox faith.

The death of Theodosius II in 450 was the downfall of the party in the court and the imperial household which had been for Eutyches. The new rulers, Theodosius' sister, Pulcheria, and her husband, the emperor Marcian, leaned the other way. To put an end to the strife they convened another general council at Chalcedon in 451. In numbers it exceeded all its predecessors; more than five hundred and twenty bishops sat in it, all from the eastern half of the empire, except the Pope's legates (one of whom presided) and two African bishops. Dioscurus was brought to account for the doings of his "robber synod" and deposed, the sentence being read by the legate in the name of Pope Leo-"by us and by this council."

The council then, after reaffirming the creed of Nicæa and that of Constantinople (381), adopted a statement intended to exclude on one side the errors which had been labelled with the name of Nestorius and on the other those of Eutyches. The definition of the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ is in substance that which Pope Leo had sent to the council of 449 (the so-called "Tome of Leo") but for the sake of conciliation as much use as possible was made of the phraseology of Cyril.1

The statement affirms that Christ is perfect equally in his divinity and his humanity; he is of the same nature (oμooúoios) with the Father in his divinity, of the same nature with us in his humanity, in all respects like us except for sin. He was begotten of the Father before all ages as regards his divinity, and, as regards his humanity, in these last times born of Mary the Virgin, the Mother of God; the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-Begotten, in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, with

1 Especially as he expressed himself in a letter to Nestorius, penned in a cautious moment and disguising his real opinion.

2 Leo's év triumphed over Cyril's K.

out separation; the difference of the two natures being in no wise done away by reason of the union, but rather the peculiarity of each nature being preserved and concurring in one nature and one individual (vπóσтaσis); he not being divided nor separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-Begotten, God-Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The West stood fast by the decree of Chalcedon in the sense of the Tome of Leo. The situation in the East was very different. There a large part of the church regarded this doctrine as a thinly disguised Nestorianism. To them Christ was God without any circumlocution; "two natures," however qualified or extenuated, left him but half God. These Monophysites ("partisans of one nature"), as their opponents named them, who were the great majority in Egypt, and everywhere counted in their number most of the monks, took their doctrine from Cyril in those writings in which he spoke out his whole mind, especially from his "anathemas," which had been adopted by the council at Ephesus in 449.

Their watchword was "God was crucified." The emperor Zeno's attempt in 482 to unite the distracted church by a Henoticon, or formula of union, in which the doctrine of Chalcedon was virtually surrendered, failed; but it had an unexpected result it made a breach with the Western church which lasted for a quarter of a century. The statement of Chalcedon was formally reaffirmed by the emperor Justin in 519. A Cyrillian interpretation was put upon it, to the exclusion of all others, by the Council of Constantinople in 553, and emphasised by the imperial condemnation of the writings of the Oriental opponents or critics of Cyril. The Chalcedonian formula is, therefore, the official orthodoxy of both the Eastern and the Western church, but is officially interpreted in contrary senses. The thoroughgoing Monophysites were not to be won back by such partial concessions; Egypt was almost solidly Moncphysite, and the Coptic church, with its dependency, the church of

Abyssinia, the Armenian (Gregorian) church, and the Jacobite Syrians remain unreconciled to this day.

Another effort for union in the seventh century raised a new controversy over the question whether there were in Christ two wills, a divine and a human, or only one, the divine will. After fifty years of contention and vacillation, an œcumenical council at Constantinople in 681 decided for two, the human will obediently following and being subject to the divine; and anathematised, among others, Pope Honorius, for being of the other opinion.

CHAPTER VII

CHRISTIANITY

LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM

Latin Christianity-Augustine The Trinity-The Pelagian Controversy-Augustine's Doctrine of Sin and Grace; Incomplete Reception in the Church-Asceticism: Hermits and Monasteries in Egypt-Monachism in other Lands-Benedict of NursiaMysticism: Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus Confessor.

THE Christian church in the West was in the beginning a Greek-speaking church, and down to the end of the second century, in Rome as well as in the provinces, the literature which it produced was in Greek. Proconsular Africa seems to have been the first region where Christianity gained a foothold among a Latin-speaking population. There, in all probability, the earliest Latin translations of the books of the New Testament were made and a Christian literature in Latin had its beginnings. At the end of the second century and in the first decades of the third the African church had in Tertullian a writer who may fairly be said to have created Christian Latinity, and in whom a Western type of Christianity first appears. In the next generation Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (d. 258), was the greatest figure in all the West, a statesman of the church, who did more than any other to define and defend the catholic idea of the church. Before the third century was far advanced the Western church had become a Latin church; but there was close communication with the East. Greek authors were much read in the original or in translations; many of the leading men of the Latin church in the fourth centurymen like Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Cagliari-were learned in Greek theology, and several of them had lived in the East. The Latins were less inclined,

in general, to subtleties of theological speculation than the Greeks, but they took their part in the controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, and both at Nicæa and at Chalcedon the West shaped the dogma of the church.

The man who gave its distinctive character to Western Christianity was Augustine. Born at Tagaste, in Numidia, in 354, of a heathen father and a Christian mother, he was educated for the career of a rhetorician-we should say a professor of Latin literature. While a student at Carthage he was drawn into the company of the Manichæans,1 and was for ten years or more a catechumen (auditor) in their church. His gradual disillusion was succeeded by a period in which Academic scepticism of a Ciceronian type seemed to him the proper attitude of mind in matters of religion. Meanwhile he had removed from Carthage to Rome, whence he was called to Milan to fill a public professorship. There the instruction of the great bishop Ambrose so far overcame his misunderstandings and prejudices about Catholic Christianity that he became a catechumen.

Augustine found his way to an intellectual acceptance of Christianity through translations of Neoplatonic writings which came into his hands in Milan. In this philosophy both dualism and scepticism were overcome; by it, for him, the rationality of Christian doctrine was established. Neoplatonism was for Augustine much more than the bridge by which he passed over to the church; it entered into his religious experience, and its influence on his thinking was pervasive and permanent. In his earlier writings it predominates; in later years he was more biblical and more churchly, but his fundamental philosophy was unchanged. Coincident with the intellectual epoch which Platonism made in Augustine's life was a moral crisis. A recital of

1 Manichæanism was a composite religion in which Christian (Gnostic) and Zoroastrian elements were combined in varying proportions. Its outstanding feature was a religious dualism. It was for a long time a serious competitor of Christianity, not only in the East, where it arose, but in Africa and Italy.

2 By Victorinus.

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