that new developement, which set them in a state of separation from the Byzantine and Latin churches, and rendered them a distinct communion of themselves.

NOTE A, page 44.-The city of Seleucia was not built close upon the Tigris, but about a league from the river, on a canal which communicated between it and the Euphrates. The ruins on the western bank of the Tigris, (opposite to those of Ctesiphon,) which are mentioned by some travellers as those of Seleucia, are in reality the remains of Koché or Coca, a city of far greater antiquity. Ctesiphon, also, according to St. Ephrem, (Comment. in Genesim,) occupied the site of a very ancient settlement called Chalene.

There are three other places to which the name of Seluk, or Seleucia, is given by the Jacobite writers: 1. A town in Isauria; 2. Another in Syria, now called Pieria, at the embrochure of the Orontes; 3. Seleucia Beli, to the south of Antioch.

NOTE B, page 44.-All this part of Mesopotamia is strewed with the debris of cities and towns, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arab, confounded in similar ruin. Adrien Balbi has well observed, that their edifices, from the nature of the country, could not conveniently be built of marble, but of bricks, made of the native argillaceous clay, with bitumen and lime. These, though capable, in architectural masses, of producing very imposing effects, as appears by the testimony of ancient writers, were not adapted for those delicate details of sculpture which gave such a finish to the more enduring marbles of the western cities. But by facility of transport, when one of these Babylonians settlements fell, its materials served for the one which replaced it elsewhere; a circumstance that accounts in a great measure for the comparative paucity of the remains now found on sites once unquestionably crowded with prodigious assemblages of buildings.

THE NESTORIANS.

I. ORIGIN OF THEIR DOCTRINAL ERROR.

THE theological dogma which has been associated with the name of Nestorius, and which effected so vast and permanent a schism in the oriental church, did not originate with that prelate; for, about ten years earlier, Leporius, a member of some monastery in Gaul, had broached the same doctrine, but, having been refuted by St. Augustine, had published a retractation of it.* The opinions of Nestorius appear also to have been formed under the influence of his master, the eminent Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia, a most voluminous writer, and a commentator of pre-eminent repute in those days; but a divine whose principles, in relation to some of the great verities of revelation, were such as would be classed in our own time with those distinguished by the term "rationalism." He seems to have been the forerunner of a school, the members of which have not scrupled to consider the teachings of holy writ amenable to the sovereign tribunal of human reason; and every discovery of revelation which does not agree in all respects with the dictates and prescriptions of the mind of man, capable of being modified so as to produce such a conformity. In the course of his investigations Theodore applied himself to the task of divesting the glorious and awful reality of THE INCARNATION of whatever had hitherto been regarded as mysterious and inscrutable. He considered this to be a service to the cause of truth, by removing a stumbling-block to the conversion of the more intelligent Pagans, who affected to be either shocked or amused by the idea of " a God having a mother," "a God three months old," and "a

* AUG. Epist. 219.

God who could die!"

The wise and holy men who had been the instructors of the church for more than three hundred years, had never dared to attempt bringing down to the handling and inspection of man's limited and enfeebled reason that divine fact, which inspiration had declared to be "without controversy a great mystery.”* But Theodore had essayed to do this; and in the estimation of his disciples had succeeded : "In the womb of the virgin was conceived by the Holy Ghost that Son of Man, in whom, as in a temple, the divine Word dwells as a perpetual inhabitant." Hence, he who was born was the man and not the God; and he who died, the same. This certainly was sufficiently simple and intelligible; nevertheless, however paradoxical the assertion may seem, these very pretensions condemned the theory as untrue; for, where the word of God has so explicitly announced the subject as a "great mystery," the Christian believer feels himself obligated to reject a doctrine which would prove it to be the reverse.

II. NESTORIUS.

NESTORIUS, with whom this doctrine became afterwards so universally identified, had belonged to a monastery near Antioch. His character had been not only irreproachable, but adorned with much excellence; and in the offices of catechist and preacher, he had become widely known as a zealous antagonist of many prevailing errors of the time. Habituated to a life of self-denial and indefatigable study, and endowed with a copiousness of expression, which is said to have called up memories of the eloquence of Chrysostom, his elevation to the see of Constantinople, in the place of Sisinnius, was regarded as an auspicious event for that great diocese. Soon, however, the hopes of the faithful were changed * 1 Tim. iii. 16.

into apprehensions for the cause of truth itself, which seemed to be now in danger of betrayal by the man who had been esteemed as one of its ablest defenders. Nestorius did not propound his doctrine fully at the outset, but commenced by an attack upon a custom in many respects certainly questionable in itself, and liable to serious abuses; and the discussion of which naturally led to the more complete developement of his own opinions; the usage, namely, which had become established in the Greek and Latin churches, of applying to the blessed Virgin the title of OEOтóxos, or "Mother of God." The reverence and honour so undeniably due to the memory of her who was "most blessed among women," had even at that period been exaggerated far beyond its proper limits, and was rapidly verging upon that absurd and guilty creature-worship, which soon became one of the distinctive features of the church's apostasy. How justifiable soever might have been such a title upon abstract theologic principles, yet, inasmuch as it had been neither used in the apostolic age, nor warranted by direct scripture-precedent, and as it was, moreover, capable of leading to injurious misapprehensions in the minds of the simple and unlearned, as well as of presenting a distorted view of Christianity to the eyes of the numerous philosophic spiritualists of the Platonic and Alexandrine schools, so as to create an invincible objection to their reception of the gospel, the choice of it at the first, and the subsequent maintenance of it as a sort of catholic " shibboleth," must be rightly considered only as a calamity.

Nestorius did not commence the aggressive in person, but employed a monk, named Anastasius, an early friend of his at Antioch, to attack from the pulpit the favourite title of the Virgin. By this plan the bishop first appeared in the matter, not as the direct impugner of the popular prejudice, but as an authoritative judge on a subject of

controversy.

Anastasius performed the task assigned him in an elaborate train of argument; but the effect was to shock rather than convince the minds of his auditors. All men looked at once to Nestorius, who was not slow to give a decision in favour of the preacher, and to follow up this first stroke himself by a series of discourses in which he affirmed the correctness of the views unfolded by his friend, and entered largely into a defence of them.

[In his sermon, delivered on Christmas-day, A. D. 428, he speaks to this effect :-"No, Mary hath not given birth to a God; for that which is born of the flesh is flesh. A creature could not bring forth the Creator of all; but she brought forth a human being, who was an instrument or temple of the Deity." And afterwards : "In the resurrection of Christ, God resuscitated that in which he was incarnate. I adore the vestment on account of him who wears it; I adore that which is external for the sake of the God who dwells inseparably within it." And in another, delivered in the beginning of January, apparently on the day of the Epiphany, he argues, that it was wrong to say, that the Divine Word was born of Mary, or that he died; for those accidents could be affirmed only of the man in whom the Word dwelt. These references will show what were really his views.] An advocate of Constantinople, named Eusebius, then a laic, but afterwards bishop of Dorylea, took the lead against Nestorius. At the bishop's first sermon on the subject, he denounced the doctrine as heretical in the open congregation; and, shortly after, put forth a protest against it, addressed to the whole church, in which he pointed out the contrariety of the new doctrine to that of the established symbols of faith and the teaching of the fathers. Nestorius, in reply, admitted the correctness of