was condemned not for endeavouring to put a period to her worship, but for striking at the root of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The question between the Church with S. Cyril, and Nestorius was, whether Christ was merely a man inhabited by the personal Son and Word of God dwelling in him the personal Son of Mary, as He dwelt in S. Paul or S. John; or whether the union of the Godhead and manhood were personal, and made one Son and one person only: whether it were merely an inhabitation of God in man, by a mere moral union, or ' union of honour;' or whether it were a personal oneness of God and man. Denying the hypostatic union, Nestorius inevitably denied the Incarnation; and to this his heresy tends. The word 'Theotokos' had been in use long before the days of Nestorius, as Suicer would have shown Mr. Greenwood, had he consulted his pages. There was, too, an Arian taint in, and in connexion with, this heresy, as has been shown by more than one of its historians and thus it was no mere hair-splitting, but the denial of at least one vital doctrine of Christianity, against which S. Cyril was called on to stand.'

Mr. Greenwood also reflects on S. Cyril as having acted in an arbitrary and one-sided manner in the Council of Ephesus; and instead of condemning the irregular conduct of Nestorius' ally, John of Antioch, for pretending to hold a Council by himself, and for his presumption in taking on him to excommunicate S. Cyril, he sees in him the only right-minded leader on either side.'

1 We remember the words of the deepest and most earnest teacher of the truth of this profound mystery which the later Church has seen, and which show us, in their fulness and rich abundance, the poverty of almost everything else that has been said on the subject:-'Some things He doth as God, because His Deity alone is the well-spring from which they flow; some things as man, because they issue from His mere human nature; some things jointly, as both God and man, because both natures concur as principles thereunto'... A kind of mutual commutation there is, whereby those concrete names God and Man, when we speak of Christ, do take interchangeably one another's room, so that for truth of speech, it skilleth not whether we say that the Son of God hath created the world, and the Son of Man by his death hath saved it; or else, that the Son of Man did create, and the Son of God died to save the world. Howbeit, as oft as we attribute to God what the manhood of Christ claimeth, or to man what His deity hath right unto, we understand by the name of God and the name of Man, neither the one nor the other nature, but the whole person of Christ, in whom both natures are. When the Apostle saith of the Jews that they crucified the Lord of Glory, and when the Son of Man being on earth affirmeth that the Son of Man was in heaven at the same instant, there is in these two speeches that mutual circulation, before mentioned. In the one, there is attributed to God, or the Lord of Glory, death, whereof Divine nature is not capable; in the other, ubiquity unto man, which human nature admitteth not. Therefore, by the Lord of Glory we must needs understand the whole person of Christ, who, being Lord of Glory, was indeed crucified, but not in that nature for which He is termed the Lord of Glory. In like manner, by the Son of Man the whole person of Christ must necessarily be meant, who, being man upon earth, filled heaven with His glorious presence; but not according to that nature for which the title of Man is given Him.'-Hooker, book v. chap. liii. §§ 3, 4.

We should wonder at this favour shown by Mr. Greenwood to the defeated Heresiarch, and the aversion he manifests to S. Cyril, did he not, in many other places of his work, betray that characteristic of the school to which he belongs, of sympathising with heretical teachers, and casting opprobrium on their opponents. It seems to be considered by those who allow themselves in this custom to be more profound and original, to enunciate views and give relations of events quite different to those of previous historians; as if the latter had been wholly mistaken, and it were now the privilege of their more happy and clear-sighted followers to put them right.

And, as might be expected, S. Cyril, who finds so little favour with Mr. Greenwood in relation to his conduct in the Nestorian heresy, is to be made responsible for that of Eutyches. We prefer to follow the forcible and true view given by Hooker:

'But forasmuch as S. Cyril, the chiefest of those two hundred Bishops assembled in the Council of Ephesus, where the heresy of Nestorius was condemned, had in his writings against the Arians avouched that the Word or Wisdom of God hath but one nature which is eternal, and whereunto he assumed flesh. again, forasmuch as the same Cyril had given instance in the body and soul of man no farther than only to enforce by example against Nestorius, that a visible and invisible, a mortal and immortal substance may united make one person, the words of Cyril were in process of time so taken as though it had been his drift to teach, that even as in us the body and the soul, so in Christ God and man make but one nature. Of which error, six hundred and thirty fathers in the Council of Chalcedon condemned Eutyches.'1

It seems to us impossible to doubt that S. Cyril did not hold anything like Eutychianism. He had to do with heretics who held two natures without union, and therefore two persons. To repress this, as far as in him lay, S. Cyril had necessarily to lay all possible stress on the fact of the oneness: he seems indeed to extend this oneness from the person to the natures; but whether (as Hooker in the above passage, and others, think) he meant 'person' by 'nature' or not, he is clearly opposed to the peculiar tenet of Eutyches; for he says, ' Each remains in its natural propriety, and being unspeakably made one, 'there is one nature, but incarnated;'-'Ev idiótηti, tŷ katà φύσιν, ἑκατέρου μένοντος τε καὶ νοουμένου, is as far as it goes equivalent to, and expresses precisely the same doctrine, as the grander and more developed words of S. Leo in his letter to Flavian:

2

'Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communione, quod proprium est. Verbo silicet operante quod verbi est, et carne exsequente quod

carnis est.'

1 Book v. chap. lii. § 4.

2 Epist. post. ad Success. The question is fully discussed by Petavius, De Incarn. Lib. IV. cap. vi. vii. viii.

And

'Ut agnosceretur in eo proprietas divinæ humanæque naturæ, individua permanere.' (Chap. v.)

And lastly, in that to Julian

'Idem enim et sempiternus ex Patre, et temporalis ex Matre; in sua virtute inviolabilis, in nostra infirmitate passibilis: in Deitate Trinitatis cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto unius ejusdémque naturæ ; in susceptione autem hominis non unius substantiæ, sed unius ejusdémque personæ; ut idem esset dives in paupertate, omnipotens in objectione, impassibilis in supplicio, immortalis in morte. Nec enim Verbum aut in carnem, aut in animam aliqua sui parte conversum est; cûm simplex et incommutabilis natura Deitatis, tota in sua sit semper essentia, nec damnum sui recipiens, nec augmentum: et sic assumtam naturam beatificans, ut glorificata in glorificante permaneat.'—P. 246.

S. Cyril, in the first part of the sentence quoted above, expressly denies any such confusion of the humanity with the Divinity, or conversion into it, or cessation of the natural properties of each nature, as Eutyches taught. In the first clause he teaches the 'utriusque naturæ proprietates,' afterwards denied by Eutyches; and, in the second, he opposes the doctrine of Nestorius. It was no fault of his if afterwards, Eutyches, relying upon words and expressions, perverted his true and essential meaning. Whatever that Heresiarch or his followers may pretend, he has not the Doctor of the Humanity for his master; and we cannot, for our own part, doubt, that could S. Cyril himself have been appealed to on the question, he would have indignantly repudiated any fellowship with the doctrine he is supposed to have originated.

The last point we can notice is the account of the life and acts of S. Leo. The chapters given to these are by far the best in the book, and form a truly valuable addition to ecclesiastical history. There are indeed one or two statements, as regards the doctrinal part of the subject, to which we can hardly assent. Mr. Greenwood does not see, as he did with S. Cyril and Nestorius, merely one Bishop persecuting another for a point difficult of comprehension, and of little or no moment in itself, in which, perhaps, the condemned was more right than his judge: he acknow.. ledges that the Eutychians were heretics, and that their doctrine did require to be suppressed; but he hardly seems to have apprehended rightly S. Leo's own doctrine or duty in the question. He says that S. Leo took the task on himself of so 'framing a theory of the Incarnation, as to steer a middle course between the Nestorian and Eutychian doctrines of the two natures in Christ.' (P. 492.) The Church's truths are not formed by the theorizing of her individual Doctors; and S. Leo's duty was not to construct any opinion or system merely his own (which would necessarily have been rejected as such), but to declare authoritatively what was the teaching of Holy Scripture

and the Church on the subject; and this he has most effectually done. Again, when Mr. Greenwood says that

'S. Leo contended against the hypostatic union, and had easy work in refuting the opinion that the Son of God had not been born, lived, suffered, and died as God manifest in the flesh,' (p. 494,)

he seems, unless there is some strange mistake in the print, to make him hold opinions contrary to each other. On the one hand, to oppose the hypostatic union would be to commit himself to Nestorianism: and, on the other hand, to maintain that the Son of God was born and died, was to assert the Catholic faith against that heresy; in fact, to teach, not to oppose the hypostatic union. And he is in error too in thinking that S. Leo, in his letter to Flavian, uses the word forma, as synonymous with persona.' (P. 493.) If so, in the following passage of that letter he teaches pure Nestorianism,—

6

'Sicut enim Deus non mutatur miseratione, ita homo non consumitur dignitate. Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est. Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi est, et carne exsequente

quod carnis est.'1

The context clearly fixes the meaning of 'forma' as synonymous with natura,' and not with persona.' We take the 'utraque forma' here to be equivalent to the 'utráque natura' in the following passage, which forms the commencement of the next chapter of the Epistle.

'Propter hanc ergo unitatem personæ in utrâque naturâ intelligendam, et filius, hominis legitur descendisse de cœlo, cùm filius Dei carnem de eâ Virgine, de quâ est natus, assumserit.' 2

In fact, S. Leo's utraque forma' has the same force as S. Paul's poppy Sovλov laßov; or as it is in the Vulgate, formam servi accipiens:' i. e., not having two personalities, but taking human nature.

Mr. Greenwood has, however, effectually proved his main point, that S. Leo greatly advanced the power and assumption of the see of Rome; partly, however, from the nature of the case, and partly from having been compelled to give so much space to prior and more important questions, we are under the necessity of referring our readers for proof of this assertion to Mr. Greenwood's own pages. It would be an injustice too, both to his subject and to himself, to attempt to compress or give an abbreviated account of his able statements of the matter.

Before we adopt an author's conclusions, we must be sure that we can accept his premises; and we regret that such has not always been the case with this, in the main, valuable and carefully written work. Whatever be Mr. Greenwood's mistakes, or as we think his fundamental errors, his main point, we repeat, is proved: that the modern claims of the Church of 2 Epist. ad. Fla. Cap. v.

1 Epistola ad Flavianum, Cap. iv.

Rome are not apostolic, and were not known to the early ages of the Church; and therefore cannot, of necessity, claim either our faith or obedience.

In parting from Mr. Greenwood, on the one hand, we are pleased to see that he has the application requisite for the production of some great work; and what is more, the faith to labour without looking for any reward, and the patience not to rush before the world with anything imperfect or unfinished, or written merely to sell; he can await the poet's prescribed period

Nonumque prematur in annum,
Membranis intus positis,'1

or if necessary, double the time, until he sees that his work is really perfect. But with all respect for his standing and achievements in a difficult field of literature, we would say, let him be on his guard against something in his pages not unlike selfconfidence, that not seldom jars on his reader's mind; and an occasional tendency arbitrarily to lay down the law on dogmatic questions, which no single individual, even though he were a Doctor of the Church, can or ought to decide. In addition, he should cast off the undue influence he at present accords to the opinions of Chevalier Bunsen, and the, we must say, falsely called critical school, of which he has been allowed to become the coryphæus.

Lastly, let him bear in mind, that the Christian Church was never meant to be simply an arena for the contention of conflicting intellects, nor her faith a subject for mere logical and scholastic disquisitions. Without their wonderful grace to do and to endure, the ancient champions of the faith could never have attained the place they hold in the favour of God and the estimation of men; and a single good action done, or one injury borne, for the truth, is of more value in the sight of God than the most subtle and profound exhibition in her cause of the mere powers of intellect. The work of the Church is not done-it is, at best, but begun—when she has laid down her definitions and stated her verities.

Bearing this in mind, and perhaps a little subduing his tone in accordance with it, the continuation of his work which Mr. Greenwood half promises us, will, at least by us, be gladly welcomed; and the faults we have now ventured to point out being amended, we doubt not that the Church will yet give among her historians, a high rank to the Author of the Cathedra Petri.'

1 Horace, De Arte l'oeticâ.