'I come now to the second chapter of your Love, wherein I begin to praise the parting of the natures in regard to Godhead and Manhood and their connection into one |xxi Person, and that we must not say that God the Word needed a second generation out of a woman, and must confess that the Godhead is unrecipient of suffering. For such statements are truly orthodox and counter to the ill-reputes of all the heresies, as to the Lord's natures. As to the rest, whether they bring to the ears of the readers some hidden incomprehensible wisdom, pertains to your accuracy to know; to me they seem to overturn what preceded. For Him Who in the preceding is proclaimed Impassible and non-recipient of a second birth, they introduce as somehow passible and new-created, as though the qualities by nature adherent in God the Word were corrupted by connection with the Temple &c. '
And yet S. Cyril's language is so carefully guarded, that no one who believed in True Union of Godhead and Manhood in the Incarnate Son would mistake it.
Nestorius does not appear to have taken any notice of S. Cyril's Paschal Homily, but he preached against the Letter to the Monks more than once, as we see from the extracts of such of his sermons as S. Cyril had access to. The passages of the Letter to the Monks referred to by Nestorius are;
' These letters were directed by me against the Egyptian .... He, omitting to tell me by letter whether any thing appeared to him to need marking as blasphemous or wicked, moved by fear of proofs and looking out therefore for disturbances which should aid him, turns him to Celestine of Rome, as one too simple to fathom the force of the doctrines. And finding the simplicity of the man in regard to this matter, he in childish fashion circumvents his ears with crafty letters, long ago sending him my writings, as a proof which might not be gainsaid, as though I were making Christ out to be a |xxii mere man, I who at the very beginning of my consecration obtained a Law against those who say that Christ is a mere man and against other heresies.
'But he compiled writings, interweaving extracts of my sermons, in order that the slander put on me by the piecing of extracts might not be found out. And some things he added to my sermons, he broke off bits of others and pieced what I had said of the Lord's Incarnation as though I had said them of a mere man. Things again which I had said in praise of the Godhead he cut entirely away from the context, leaving some out of their proper place, and thus made out a plausible misleading. And to publish his wickedness in a few instances such as it is in the rest, I said somewhere, speaking against the heathen who say that we preach that the Essence of God has been newly created from a Virgin, 'Mary, my friends, bare not the Godhead; she bare a man the inseparable instrument of Godhead.' But he changing the word, Godhead, made it, 'Mary, my friends, bare not God.' Here to say God, and to say the Godhead, makes very much difference. For the one signifies the Divine and unembodied Essence, but does not mean the flesh. For flesh is compound and created. But the word God belongs to the temple also of the Godhead, which obtains the dignity by union with the Divine Essence of God, yet is not changed into that Divine Essence.
'Again in another place I spoke against those who, hearing the like name, are offended as though like honour were also given. And when I say, Mother of Christ, they shudder as though the Godhead of the Lord Christ were denied by this name, seeing that many have been similarly called by this name in the Old Testament. And hence they think that we are calling Him Christ like these. Against these people therefore (as I said) I said in church-sermons, that equality of honour does not follow likeness of name. And this is what I said, 'Or if the Temple of Godhead, wo say that the descent of the Holy Ghost is not the same as was wrought on |xxiii the Prophets, not the same as was celebrated on the Apostles, nor yet the same as takes place in regard to the Angels who are strengthened unto the Divine Mysteries. For the Lord Christ is Lord of all, as to the body too. As therefore we say that God is the Creator of all things, yet does the Scripture call Moses too god, for it says, I have made thee a god to Pharoah, and yet we by no means attach equal honour to that word, so neither, because the word is common by which we say, Christ and Son, ought we to stumble at the likeness of expression. For as Israel is named son, for He says, Israel is My first-born son, and the Lord again Son, for He says, This is My Beloved Son, yet not, as the expression is one, is the meaning also one. And as Saul is called christ and David christ and again Cyrus christ and, besides, the Babylonian, albeit they were surely not equal in piety to David; so we call the Lord too Christ or Son, yet the community of names does not makes an equality of dignity.' From this which I said, he every where subtracting the last words, i.e. 'Christ,' and, 'we say, that not the same is the indwelling as was wrought on the prophets, not the same as was wrought on the Apostles,' and, ' we by no means allot like honour by like words,' and, 'yet the community of names does not make equality of dignity; ' cutting out all these expressions with the teeth of slander, he flings in the ears of men what precedes these words: i.e., ' We call the |xxiv Creator of all God, yet does the Scripture also call Moses god:, and, 'Israel is called God's son, Son too is the Lord called;' and, 'Saul is called christ and David christ yea and the Babylonian; thus then do we call Christ the Lord also christ.' He therefore thus piecing these things and chipping them off from the rest (as we said), made up here by his slander like as if from Paul's words by which he contests writing, If ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing, one were to rend off what he says first, If ye he circumcised, and accuse Paul as though he preached, Christ shall profit you |xxv nothing. And why need we prolong our recital by going through each instance? In short Cyril using many such robberies and additions as pleased him, soon not others only but Celestine also were led away by his misleadings.'
Much about this time S. Cyril probably wrote his Scholia on the Incarnation . The treatise is very simple and almost uncontroversial, illustrating the Incarnation by simple analogies and Bible-types . It contains one of S. Cyril's most careful statements of the doctrine, excluding Apollinarianism . In the concluding sections , which may have been written at the very beginning of the controversy with Nestorius, are striking and simple statements, how God the Son's Passion is His, though Godhead cannot suffer.
Soon after this S. Cyril wrote his first extant letter to Nestorius, a short letter, saying that he hears that Nestorius was very angry at S. Cyril's letter to the Monks, yet that since 'expositions,' whether Nestorius' or not, had been brought to Egypt and had gravely misled many, it became a duty to God to put forth the right doctrine. S. Cyril also says that S. Celestine and the Bishops with him had asked whether those 'expositions' which had come thither were Nestorius' or not. S. Cyril did not know. Finally, S. Cyril asked him to heal the confusion by the use of the one word Theotocos, of the Holy Virgin. For fear of misapprehension he mentions also a book, which he had written in the Episcopate of Atticus of blessed |xxvi memory, on the Holy and Consnbstantial Trinity, in which he had interwoven some things on the Incarnation, like what he had now written.
We do not know what time intervened between this and the second Letter which S. Cyril wrote in Synod to Nestorius, containing an exposition of the Incarnation, which, from its acceptance by the Council of Ephesus and the whole Church subsequently, has Ecumenical authority . It was probably written before the close of A.D. 429 and is the Letter quoted above , which Nestorius' reply shewed that he could not understand. It has been supposed that it was in consequence of Nestorius' allusion to the Imperial Court in the close of his reply, that S. Cyril wrote his Three Treatises de recta fide; whereof the first is to the Emperor Theodosius; the other two to the Emperor's Queen and Sisters. John Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, in the century following S. Cyril, quotes from both among his extracts in defence of the Council of Chalcedon . From the title with which he introduces his extracts, we learn that the longer Treatise was addressed to the Emperor's two younger sisters, the Princesses Marina and Arcadia, and the last of the Three to the Two Augusta's, Theodosius' Empress Eudocia, and his eldest sister Pulcheria who had the title of Augusta, from having been Regent for the Emperor in his minority. S. Cyril afterwards recast his Treatise to the Emperor in the form of a Dialogue, omitting what was specially addressed to the Emperor, and giving little touches here and there to the language. |xxvii Thus the expression " neither do we say Two christs, even though we believe that the Temple united to the Word has been ensouled with rational soul," becomes in the Dialogue, " neither do we say Two christs, even though we believe that out of perfect man and out of God the Word has been wrought the concurrence unto unity of Emmanuel." A little further on, " we say that the whole Word out of Grod has been co-united with the whole manhood that is of us," becomes, " we say therefore that the whole Word has been united to whole man." This Dialogue was probably appended by S. Cyril to his older Dialogues de Trinitate. It is quoted as the seventh of those Dialogues. The other two treatises are chiefly made up of expositions of texts to prove that Christ is God and Man. Near the beginning of that to the Augusta's, S. Cyril alludes to his former treatise.
"In my treatise to the holy Virgins [i. e. the Princesses Marina and Arcadia who had embraced the virgin estate] I made a very large provision of more obvious sayings which had nothing hard to understand; but in this I have made mention of the obscurer. For your Pious Authority ought both to know these and not to be ignorant of the other, in order that by means of both, perfection in knowledge, like a light, may dwell in your most pure understanding "
Bishop Hefele thinks that there are indications that the two Princesses had, in contrast with the Emperor, spoken for Cyril and against Nestorius.
Of the five sermons of Nestorius on the |xxviii Incarnation which Marius Mercator translated into Latin, S. Cyril has cited copiously from the second: the fourth and fifth of Mercator's collection belong to the close of A.D. 430; for the fourth is dated the eighth of the Ides of December (Dec. 6), the Saturday after Nestorius had received S. Cyril's four Bishops with S. Celestine's Letter and S. Cyril's with the 12 Chapters. In it Nestorius recapitulates some of the teaching which S. Cyril had quoted from an earlier sermon, i.e. on God sending forth His Son. Of that earlier sermon we have only fragments, but it was preached against S. Cyril's letter to the Monks . Nestorius speaks of S. Cyril as the " wrangler , " the heretic ," and he apostrophises S. Cyril or S. Proclus, "O heretic in clerical form ."
The last of that series in Mercator's collection was preached on Sunday Dec. 7.
Count Irenaeus has also preserved it; the compiler of the Synodicon gives it in another translation .
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One of the interests and employments of the Bishops during their first days at Ephesus will have been the becoming acquainted with some whom they had never before seen. This time was probably the beginning of a lasting friendship between S. Cyril and Acacius the metropolitan of Melitene, on the borders of Armenia towards Cappadocia: the long letter which he wrote to Valerian Bishop of Iconium points at S. Cyril's having |xxix readied some degree of intimacy with him; he wrote too to Donatus, Bishop of Nicopolis, on the west of Greece, and no doubt there were other friendships too as the fruit of the long sojourn at Ephesus. Some of S. Cyril's letters shew how warm-hearted and sensitive he was, notwithstanding his mighty will and unswerving purpose.
But there were other sadder things belonging to that summer at Ephesus, sickness and death, the sickness probably the fever so prevalent now along all that poisonous coast, and passing in many cases into dysentery. "We do not know what Bishops the Council lost; for our knowledge of those who composed it is derived from the lists of names at the opening of the first and sixth session and the signatures to those two sessions. But the fact is mentioned several times: S. Cyril in the first session of the Council says,
"some have fallen into sickness and some are dead;"
the Council in its Relatio to the Emperors, says,
"and some of the holy Bishops weighed down by age did not endure their stay in a strange place; some were imperilled in weakness; some have even undergone the close of their life in the Capital of the Ephesians;"
in its account to S. Celestine,
"although many both Bishops and Clergy were both pressed by sickness and oppressed by expense and some had even deceased."
After waiting a fortnight, during which time, if all had been there, the business might have been completed and the Bishops dismissed, S. Cyril wrote to John Archbishop of Antioch. John, in his Relatio to the Emperors, says,
"and Cyril himself of Alexandria sent to me of Antioch |xxx two days before the assembly made by them [the Council], that the whole Synod is awaiting my presence ."
S. Cyril too alludes to the Letter. He says of John,