S.Cyril explains his own mind towards Nestorius to a zealous adherent of Nestorius, with a singular simplicity.
' If I were writing to one who knew not my disposition, I might have used many words, persuading that I am a person exceeding peaceful, not given to strife, not fond of warfare, but one who longs to love all and to be loved by all. But because I write to one who knows me, I say briefly, 'If a brother's grief could be removed by loss of money or goods, I would gladly have done it, that I might not seem to hold anything of more value |lxxii than love. But since it is a question of faith, and all the Churches (so to say) in the whole Roman Empire are offended,---- what shall we do, who are entrusted by God with the Divine mysteries?' For those who are taught the faith will accuse us in the Day of Judgement, saying that they held the faith as taught by us..... Only be the faith preserved, and I am his dear friend and yield to none as loving more than myself the most God-beloved Bishop Nestorius, who (God is my witness) I would might be of good repute in Christ and efface the blot of the past, and shew that what is commonly said by some as to his faith, are untrue accusations.'
And again to Clergy at Constantinople,
' I must make my meaning plain to you and so I write again, that although I by nature love peace, and am very ignorant of strife, yet I wish that the Churches should have peace, and that the priests of God living in peace should remember us, since Jesus Christ the Saviour of all saith, "My peace I give unto you, My peace 1 leave with you." Say then in conferences, that much has passed from them to injure us; yet there will be peace, when he shall cease to think or speak such things. If he profess the right faith, there will be a full and most firm peace. If he desires this, let him write the Catholic faith and send it to Alexandria. If this be written from his inmost heart, I too am ready, as far as in me lies, to write the like and publish a book and say that none of our fellow-bishops ought to be aggrieved, because we learn that his words have a right intention and manifest purpose. But if he continue in the perverseness of vain-glory and asks for peace, nothing remains but that we resist with all our might, lest we should seem to agree with him. For to me my chiefest |lxxiii desire is to labour and live and die for the faith which is in Christ.'
There could scarcely be a franker offer, putting aside every thing of his own, to 'write the Catholic faith.' Nestorius is tied down to no Theological expressions, but to the simple faith. He could not write it, because he had ceased to hold it.
The Bishops assembled in that Synod were of no ordinary character. Vincentius of Lerins, writing about three years after it was holden, speaks of its
' great humility and holiness, that they were for the more part metropolitans, of such condition and doctrine, that almost all could dispute about matters of faith, and yet they claimed nothing for themselves, but were careful to hand down nothing to those after them, which they had not themselves received from the Fathers.'
S. Cyril in his Apology to the Emperor, calls them ' men, very well known to your Mightiness, and exceeding well spoken of for excellence in all things.'
Nestorius came to the Council ' immediately after the Feast of Easter' with 10 or 15 Bishops, his adherents . He was also supported by a few Pelagian Bishops, whom he had admitted to Communion, and who for the time were retained in their office by the requirement of Theodosius, that everything should remain as it was, until the decision of the Council. He is said to have found |lxxiv many Bishops present. If so, they must have been Bishops from the Exarchate of Ephesus. For the rest are related to have arrived later. The Council was the plan of Nestorius, and he naturally came among the first, to guide, as he hoped, its decisions. S. Cyril, on his arrival, found that there had been active, though ineffectual, efforts against the faith. He wrote, ' The Evil one, the sleepless beast, is going about, plotting against the faith of Christ, but avails nothing.' The Evil one is, of course, Satan; but Satan acts through human agents. Nestorius says, that he had no intercourse with S. Cyril. He wrote to Scholasticus, an Eunuch of the Emperor and his friend; 'Cyril has both heretofore entirely avoided any converse with us, and until now avoids it, thinking that he shall thereby escape the conviction of the Chapters [the anathemas] because without contradiction they are heretical .' If (as has been conjectured) it was at this time that S. Cyril made the extracts from the works of Nestorius, and possibly those from older writers , containing the true doctrine, he had |lxxv enough to do. There is no reason to think that S. Cyril preached at this time against Nestorius .
The pure humanitarianism of Nestorius was elicited by the attempts of Theodotus of Ancyra, and his pious friend, Acacius, Bishop of Melitene, to bring him back to the faith. To Theodotus and several others, he repeated the well-known blasphemies about our Lord's sacred Infancy and Childhood, that he would not call Him God, who was two or three months old, or who was nurtured at the breast, or who fled into Egypt . This was stated upon oath to the Council. There was nothing further to investigate. It supplied what was yet wanting, the knowledge that Nestorius had not laid aside the heresy, for which he had been condemned the year before. S. Celestine had given the formal advice to S. Cyril , that if |lxxvi Nestorius came to a better mind, he should be received. He had, up to the moment of the opening of the Council, made things worse. He had taken into his own mouth the blasphemies, which before he had sanctioned in his adherent, Dorotheus. If one who nakedly denied the Incarnation was not fit to be Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius had decided against himself. It brought out what lay in his letter to S. Cyril which was formally condemned by the Council, that our Lord's relation to God was the same in kind, although not in degree, as that of any devout Christian.
There could be no question among any who listened to the evidence, as there was none among any of those who heard it. He was deposed on the evidence of his own letter to S. Cyril, of twenty sayings in his acknowledged works, and of contradictions to the faith in Ephesus itself.
S. Celestine had, it seems, collected a new Synod at Rome, from which he wrote to the Council. The Council itself reported that
' although the whole multitude of Bishops were hindered from coming to Ephesus by the distance, yet being gathered in those parts, they, Celestine presiding, with entire consent, uttered our mind as to the faith. Those who came, explained to this our Synod by letter the mind of the whole Western Church.'
Philip, a presbyter, and Roman legate, after reading the Acts, declared that all things had been adjudged ' according to the Canons and Ecclesiastical discipline.' |lxxvii
After long canvass on the part of the deputies of John's party to obtain a rescinding of the sentence of the Synod, the Prefect at last wrote to Nestorius,
' We have delayed long what seemed to be done by the judgment of the Synod, although many greatly blamed us and were instant that it should be. But now the letters of your Holiness have been delivered to us, shewing that the lingering at Ephesus is distasteful to you, and that your Religiousness desires to journey, we have directed those, who ought to minister to you along the whole journey, to minister to you [by sea or land], on the whole way to your monastery.....We do not suppose that you need consolation, considering the wisdom of your soul, and the many thousand goods by which you are endowed above all others.'
Nestorius in his answer accepts as a gift the command to live in his monastery.
' For nothing is more honourable to us, than a removal for piety. But I beseech your Highness, for the sake of religion, often to remind the pious Prince to set a note everywhere, by public Imperial letters, on the verbosities of Cyril which his Piety has adjudged, so that it should be read throughout the orthodox Churches, lest in the absence of letters of the pious Emperor, if the writings of Cyril should be said to be condemned by him, an occasion of scandal should arise to the simple, as if it were not said truly.'
Nestorius does not seem to mind his own deposition, so that the sentence against Cyril and |lxxviii Memnon be also confirmed; as Count John reported to the Emperor, that the party of John bore patiently the notice of the deposition of Nestorius, when united with that of Cyril and Memnon .
The public account which Nestorius gave , was, that 'he was allowed, at his own request, to retire to his monastery,' which was not more than two furlongs outside of Antioch.
There, Nestorius says, he 'received all sorts of honours and respectful presents.'
There, he himself says, he remained for four years. The adjuration of S. Celestine to Theodosius to 'remove him from all intercourse [with others], that he might have no facility to destroy others,' remained unheeded. After four years, by the decree of Theodosius, he was banished to the Oasis. Evagrius supplies the fact, that his former friend John of Antioch reported to the Emperor his continued blasphemies, and so 'Theodosius condemned him to perpetual banishment.'
He was removed from propagating his heresy personally, but could and did write in defence of it. The Oasis, to which he was finally removed, was a place not unpleasant in itself. It was however open to the incursions of a hostile tribe, the Blemmyes. With his sufferings there, in consequence of edicts of the Emperor, the Church had nothing to do. His treatment by the Emperor is unexplained. But the sufferings were God's temporal judgement inflicted through the State. The |lxxix Church was guiltless of them. Yet since "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth," they shewed that God had not abandoned him to the last.
* * *
S. Cyril's relation to Nestorius ended with the sentence upon him. His own troubles then began. S. Cyril himself, on his arrival, had anticipated a speedy close of the Council . The Bishops had urged S. Cyril to hasten the hearing. ' Some of the Bishops were weighed down by years; some were in peril of life through illness; some had died; some were straitened by poverty.' The Council had waited 16 days after the day of Pentecost, which the Emperor had peremptorily fixed for the opening of the Council. The whole Synod had exclaimed that he did not wish to be present. They supposed that he feared, ' lest the Most Reverend Nestorius, who had been taken from the Church under his jurisdiction, should be deposed, and was perhaps ashamed of the business.'