Theodoret thought good to defend Theodore against S. Cyril, arguing against all the authorities which S. Cyril had adduced . The one fragment which remains is written sharply . S. Cyril had explained and re-explained his Anathematisms against Theodoret's attacks; for the alienated Antiochenes had to be reconciled, and a breach to be healed. This censure of his work against Theodore concerned only himself, so he went on his way in peace.
* * *
S. Cyril's strong natural love has been incidentally noticed . One could hardly picture him, such as he has been ordinarily represented, in advancing years, enfolding and kissing the letter of his friend Acacius, Bishop of Melitene, enquiring about a type in the Old Testament, 'the scapegoat .' Yet since all service to God must involve self-denial, perhaps one of strong natural love was the fitter instrument of God for the hard service of that dreary warfare, as it must have aided him in the congenial office of reconciling the alienated.
Outward events give but little insight into the inward mind. S. Cyril is now chiefly known (as far as he is known at all) as the zealous defender of the Faith. But it was the Faith in Him, his |xcix God and his All. Many must have been his peaceful years before he was called out by the needs of his own people, to defend the truth of God against a living assailant. His work against the Emperor Julian (which even his opponent Theodoret admired , in the midst of his hottest hostility) was written, he says, on the exhortation of many, because the heathen perplexed Christians, alleging that he was not refuted, because he could not . This then too was written out of a love for souls. He himself explained to Nestorius that, in his book on the Holy Trinity, he had written some things akin to what he then wrote, but with no reference to him, since it was written before Nestorius himself wrote.
Controversy was not his natural element. Cassiodorus counts him among those who were said at least to have commented on the whole of Holy Scripture. His Commentaries are the largest portion of His extant works, yet these are but a part of a larger whole . From these peaceful meditations on God's word he was roused by the disturbance of his monks through writings of Nestorius. |c
It has been noticed already that types of our Lord were the chief object of interest to him in his first book on the Pentateuch, 'on the adoration in spirit and in truth:' his faith in the Incarnation and our union to God through It, are naturally prominent, as indeed it gleams through everywhere . His was the exact contrary of the mind of Theodore of Mopsuestia of the Antiochene school: as has been said of our Bishop Horne and another, 'the one sees Christ every where, the other no where.' A mind which so meditates on God's word, not on particular expressions, but on the whole, is not that of the fierce controversialist which some of late have pictured him.
* * *
It remains only to collect what has been said as to the contents of this volume.
i. The Five books against Nestorius. 'These,' it has been said , 'may be well called, a Defence of S. Proclus. For S. Cyril in it mainly answers the |ci sermons preached by Nestorius against S. Proclus. For the first two books are on the Virgin being Θεοτόκος , and the term 'birth' ascribed to God; the third is of His being our Priest, Who is God; the fourth and fifth are for the most part on God suffering and dying.'
S. Cyril himself says that he undertook the work with reluctance, but that the homilies were written in a popular and attractive style and were full of heavy accusations against the doctrines of the truth, and left him no choice . Nestorius is not named in it. Hence it has been inferred that the work was written before the Council of Ephesus . Photius notices that 'in the first book, he refutes six heads of the blasphemies of Nestorius; in the second, 14; in the third, 6; in the fourth and fifth, 7 each.' He adds that 'his mode of interpretation is framed according to his wonted way of expression, yet brought down to a lower style.'
ii. The Scholia are said by Photius to 'contain much which is useful.' S. Cyril, with his wonted simplicity, speaks of them as ' brief expositions of the dispensation of Christ, very good and useful.' A modern writer says, ' The value of the work may be inferred from this, that scarce any subsequent writer, who employed the authority of Cyril in explaining the mystery of the Incarnation, failed to take a passage or more from the Scholia.' This work also was quoted, with two other passages of S. Cyril, among the testimonies from the books of Catholic fathers, appended to the Epistle of S. Leo |cii to the Emperor Leo . It closed the collection laid before the Council of Chalcedon and then ensued the acclamations, 'Eternal be the memory of Cyril.----Leo and Cyril taught alike.' It is quoted even by Theodoret with sayings of 19 other fathers, in proof that 'Saints distinguished the Natures after the Union.' He alleges three places from it , two from his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews , one from the Epistle to Nestorius , one from the defence against the Easterns , and two more not identified. The Scholia are quoted also by Facundus , Leontius of Byzantium , and S. Ephrem of Antioch repeatedly . They not only quote it as S. Cyril's, but confirm the faith by testimonies from it.
It was translated into Latin by S. Cyril's contemporary, Marius Mercator. It is extant also in a Syriac translation, from which my son, here and there, corrected or explained the Latin text of Mercator.
Garnier remarks upon the careful arrangement which S. Cyril employed in its construction. 'He first explains single words; what is Christ; what, Emmanuel; what, Jesus; what, One; what, Union. Then, he turns to the propositions, commonly used |ciii herein, and discusses in what way Christ is One; Emmanuel, One; Jesus, One; i.e. One Lord, &c. Further, how the Word is said to have been 'emptied,' united with the flesh, made Man, and yet not therefore changed, or ceasing to be God. Thence, how Christ is not a man Θεοφόρος , [bearing God,] or inspired by God, but is really man-God [better, God-Man]; then, in what way the Word is said to dwell in us, to be sent to us, to have His own proper Body, and how the Holy Virgin is said to be Theotocos. Lastly, that the Only-Begotten, appearing in visible flesh is called God and Man; how He suffered: in which last he refutes those who suppose, that things belonging to man can be spoken of God, relatively only. I have already said, that almost every chapter is full of distinctions useful in turning aside the objections of heretics.' Photius divides it into ten heads; ' These things,' he said, 'are clearly explained in it; What is Christ; in what way the word 'Emmanuel' is to be understood, and what is 'Jesus the Christ;' and in what respect the Word of God is called Man; then, in what respect the Word of God is said to have been emptied; and how Christ is One, and how Emmanuel is One; and what we say is the Union, and about the coal which Elias saw, and other things like these.'
iii. That Christ is One. The treatise must have been written after the condemnation of Nestorius, since he is refuted by name in it. It must, however, have been written not later than A. D. 441, since it is quoted by Andrew of Samosata. It is |civ quoted with praise by S. Eulogius and Leontius of Byzantium . . . The Père Garnier says of it; ' Eo nihil exactius elucubratiusque ad historiam dogmatis Cyrillus scripsit, ut videatur opus artificis praecedentibus laboribus absolute eruditi.'
iv. S. Cyril wrote the three books against Diodore and Theodore of Mopsuestia and that against the Synousiastae or Apollinarians at a later period, when, the writings of Nestorius being proscribed, Nestorianisers betook themselves to those of Diodore and Theodore, the real originators of Nestorianism. The fragments have been collected with great pains from every source, hitherto known. Some were ready at hand, having been collected for the 5th General Council, and embodied in its Acts; others were collected by John, Bishop of Caesarea, in his defence of the Council of Chalcedon, which is still extant in MS., in Syriac and in Greek at Venice and at Cairo (where my son saw it); others by Severus of Antioch . The sources, whence the extracts are derived, are mentioned in the notes. The originals, as extant in Greek and Syriac, are among the collection of Fragments appended to my son's third volume of S. Cyril's Commentary on S. John . It is the completest collection extant.
* * *
S. Cyril was my own early teacher on the connection of the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Holy Eucharist, which Hooker all but reached. It |cv was at my wish that, in his uniform filial love, my son took as the central work of his life, to make the text of his works as exact as it could be made. For this he visited libraries in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Mt. Athos, Cairo, Mt. Sinai, and applied to this the knowledge of Syriac, which he had perfected in view of another object which I had suggested to him, the re-editing of that now much undervalued Critical authority, the Peshito. Almighty God was pleased to break off the work "in the midst of the years." If in this completion of his Preface to his volume I have cleared any thing as to the self-forgetful, God-devoted character of my early Benefactor, S. Cyril, thanks be for this also to Him Who gave and Who took away.
E. B. P.
C HRISTMAS E VE , 1881.
[Footnotes numbered and placed at the end]
1. S. Cyrille d' Alex. Art. i. init.
2. Ep. 370.
3. Ep. 25.
4. Synodicon c. 56.
5. So the three Paschal homilies of the Archbishop Theophilus preserved by S. Jerome, are addressed, To the Bishops of the whole of Egypt, t. i. 555, 577, 605 Vall.