cause of truth, and which, if uniformly applied in our religious discussions, would soon bring controversy within far narrower limits, and gradually convert it from angry warfare into a friendly interchange of opinions : "Nor do I consider these sentiments concerning Athanasius to be affirmed with any detriment to the Church; for the Church suffers no loss on this account, who, being the pillar and ground of the truth, shrinks very far from seeking, like Esop's jackdaw, helps and ornaments which are not her own: the bare truth shines more beautiful in her own naked simplicity."

And yet, after this utter repudiation of the whole homily, as a work falsely attributed to Athanasius; after its unqualified condemnation by Bellarmin; after the Benedictine editors have declared, that "there was no learned man who did not adjudge it to be spurious, the forgery being self-condemned by evidence clearer than the sun; after Baronius has expressed his assurance that ALL LEARNED MEN DESIROUS OF THE TRUTH would agree with him in pronouncing it to be spurious;-after all this, we find it quoted in evidence as the genuine work of Athanasius in the middle of the nineteenth century, without the faintest shadow of an allusion to the combined judgment by which it has been condemned, or even to any suspicion ever having been entertained of its being a forgery.

The genuine works of Athanasius himself prove him to have thought and spoken with the Church of England, and not with the Church of Rome, on the invocation of the Virgin Mary. Whilst he speaks of God having taken our nature upon him, Athanasius again and again calls Mary" the holy Virgin who bare

God."* But not one single sentence has been found indicating either his acknowledgment of her as a mediator and intercessor, or his practice of invoking her succour and her prayers. But many passages might be cited which prove him to have looked to God alone, through Christ alone, for the supply of all his temporal and spiritual wants. We have been detained so long on the spurious homily assigned to him, that we cannot make room (as we should have wished) for his entire comment on St. Paul's expressions, 1 Thess. chap. iii. v. 11, when, in his third oration against the Arians, he would prove from it the unity of the Father and the Son. The argument at large will amply repay a careful examination; its opening sentences are these:

“Thus then again, when he is praying for the Thessalonians, and saying, 'Now our God and Father himself, and the Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you,' he preserves the unity of the Father and the Son; for he says not, 'May THEY direct,' as though a two-fold grace were given from Him AND Him, but, May HE direct,' to shew that the Father giveth this through the Son. For if there was not an unity, and the Word was not the proper offspring of the Father's substance, as the radiation of the light, but the Son was distinct in nature from the Father, it had sufficed for the Father alone to have made the gift, no generated being partaking with the Maker in the gifts. But now such a giving proves the unity of the Father and the Son. Thus, no one would pray to receive any thing from God AND the angels, or FROM ANY OTHER CREATED BEING; nor would any one say, May God AND the angels give it thee;' but from the Father and the Son,

See the close of his work on the Incarnation.

because of their unity, and the oneness of the gifts. For whatsoever is given, is given through the Son; noris there anything which the Father works, except through the Son; for thus the receiver has the gracious favour without fail.”

In what broad contrast does this doctrine of Athanasius stand with a prayer said to be approved by Pius VI., and defended by Dr. Wiseman in his Remarks on a Letter from the Rev. W. Palmer; London, 1841, p. 36: “ 36: Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I offer you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, assist me in my last agony. agony. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, may my soul expire in peace with you." These things are now, but from the beginning it was not so.

Athanasius was ever bent on establishing the perfect divinity and humanity of Christ, and he thus speaks: "The general scope of Holy Scripture is to make a general announcement concerning the Saviour, that he was always God, and is a Son, being the Word, and brightness, and wisdom of the Father; and that He afterwards became man for us, taking flesh of the Virgin Mary, WHO BARE GOD."*

*Tis EOTÓKOV. Those who would depend upon this word theotocos as a proof of the exalted honour in which the early Christians held the Virgin, and not rather of their anxiety to preserve whole and entire the doctrine of the union of perfect God and perfect man in the person of Christ deriving his manhood through her, would do well to weigh the language of the Fathers in some analogous cases. The Apostle James (for example), called in Scripture the Lord's brother, was afterwards named Adelphotheos, or God's brother; not to exalt him above his fellow Apostles, but to declare the faith of those who gave him that name, that the Lord Jesus was very God. Just so the word theotocos or "she who gave birth to God"—-was applied to Mary, not to exalt her, but to declare the Catholic faith in the Godhead of Him, who was born of Mary. See Joan. Damasc. Hom. ii. c. 18. In Dormit. Virg. vol. ii. p. 881. Le Quien, Paris, 1712.

The works of St. Athanasius have been carefully examined, with a view to our present inquiry; and not one single passage can be discovered indicative of any worship of the Virgin, or any belief in her power and intercession, or any invocation of her even for her prayers. "No one would pray," he says, "to receive any thing from God AND the holy angels, or ANY OTHER CREATED BEING."*

* Benedict. vol. i. p. 561; Paduan ed. vol. i. p. 444.

PART IV.

FROM THE COUNCIL OF NICEA TO THE END OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.-SECTION I.

CYRIL OF JERUSALEM, A. d. 340.*

THE link in the chain of primitive writers which connects the testimonies of those who flourished before or during the Nicene Council with those who followed, is Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem. This celebrated and revered patriarch in the Christian household was probably born about ten years before that council, and was ordained deacon by Macarius, and priest by Maximus, who were his immediate predecessors in the episcopate of Jerusalem, and who probably had both attended at Nicæa.

The principal work of Cyril, and which has been generally ranked among the most interesting remains of Christian antiquity, consists of eighteen catechetical lectures which he delivered to the candidates for baptism through the weeks before Easter, and five which he addressed after that festival to those who had then been admitted into the Church. These lectures take so wide and so general a view of all the doctrines of

* Edit. Oxford, 1703, by T. Miles; Paris, 1728, Ed. Benedict. ; Venice, 1763, ditto.