demned him of heresy, deposed and excommunicated him. From this proceeding Eutyches appealed to a general council. A council (the authority of which has been solemnly denied, but with what adequate reason, it belongs not to our present inquiry to determine,) was convened at Ephesus in the following year by the Emperor Theodosius. The proceedings of this assembly were accompanied by lamentable unfairness and violence. Eutyches was acquitted and restored by this council, and his accusers were condemned and persecuted; Flavianus, Archbishop of Constantinople, who had summoned the preceding council, being even scourged and exiled. That patriarch, in his distress, sought the good offices of Leo, Bishop of Rome, who espoused his cause; but who failed, nevertheless, of inducing Theodosius to convene a general council. His successor Marcian, however, consented; and, in the year 451, the Council was convened, which first meeting at Nice, was by adjournment removed to Chalcedon. In this council all the proceedings, as well of the Council of Constantinople as of Ephesus, were rehearsed at length; and, from a close examination of the proceedings of those three councils, only one inference seems deducible,-namely, that the invocation of the Virgin Mary had not then obtained that place in the Christian Church which the Church of Rome now assigns to it; a place, however, which the Church of England, among other branches of the Catholic Church, maintains that it cannot, without a sacrifice of the sound and unalterable principles of religious worship, be suffered to retain.

The grand question then, agitated with too much asperity and too little charity, was this; Whether, by the

incarnation, our blessed Saviour became possessed of two natures, the divine and human. Subordinate to this, and necessary for its decision, was involved the question, What part of his nature, if any, Christ derived from the Virgin Mary? Again and again does this question bring the name, the office, the circumstances, and the nature of that holy and blessed mother of our Lord before these councils. The name of Mary is continually in the mouth of the accusers, the accused, the judges, and the witnesses; and had Christian pastors then entertained the same feelings of devotion towards her, had they professed the same belief as to her assumption into heaven, and her influence and authority in directing the destinies of man, and in protecting the Church on earth,-had they habitually appealed to her with the same prayers for her intercession and good offices, and placed the same confidence in her as we find now exhibited even in the authorized services of the Roman Ritual,—it is impossible to conceive that no signs, no intimation, not the slightest reference to such views and feelings, should, either directly or incidentally, have shewn themselves, somewhere or other, among the manifold and protracted proceedings of these councils. A diligent search has been made; but no expression on the part of the orthodox can be found as to Mary's nature and office, or as to our feelings and conduct towards her, in which a member of the Church of England would not heartily acquiesce. No sentiment can be found implying invocation or religious worship of any kind, or in any degree; no allusion to her assumption is there.

The works of Leo, who in the documents of this coun

"the

cil is frequently called Archbishop of Rome,* and who is a canonized saint of that Church, will be hereafter examined as affording independent testimony. In his letters to Julian, Bishop of Cos, he speaks of Christ as born of "a Virgin;" "the blessed Virgin;" "the pure undefiled Virgin ;" and, in his letters to the Empress Pulcheria, he calls the mother of our Lord simply Virgin Mary;" or "the blessed Virgin Mary;" or simply "the Virgin-Mother." In his celebrated letter to Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople, (not one word of which, according to the decree of the Roman council under Gelasius, is to be questioned by any man, on pain of incurring an anathema,) Pope Leo says, that Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary his mother, who brought him forth with the same virgin purity with which she had conceived him. Flavianus, in his confession of faith to the Emperor Theodosius, affirms that Christ was born" of Mary the Virgin, of the same substance with the Father according to his Godhead, of the same substance with his mother according to his manhood."‡ He speaks of her afterwards as "the holy Virgin."

There is, indeed, one expression, to which we have already referred, used in a quotation from Cyril of Alexandria, and adopted in these transactions, which requires a few words of especial observation. The word is THEOTOCOS, which the Latins were accustomed to transfer into their works, only substituting the Roman for the Greek characters, but which afterwards the writers of the Church of Rome translated by DEIPARA, and in more recent times by * Vol. v. p. 1418.

+ Leo, Works, vol. i. pp. 1049, 980, 801, &c.

Vol. vi. p. 539.

Dei Mater (Mother of God), Dei Genitrix, Creatoris Genitrix; employing those terms, not in explanation of the two-fold nature of Christ, as was the case in these councils, but in exaltation of Mary, his VirginMother. This word, as we have seen, in its primitive sense, was adopted by Christians in much earlier times than the Council of Chalcedon; but it was employed to express more strongly the Catholic belief in the divine and human nature of Him who was Son both of God and man, and by no means for the purpose of raising Mary into an object of religious adoration.* The sense in which it was used was explained in the 7th act of the Council of Constantinople, repeated at Chalcedon, as given by Cyril of Alexandria: "According to this sense of an unconfused union, we confess the Holy Virgin to be THEOTOCOS, because that God the Word was made flesh, and became man, and from that very conception united with himself the temple received from her."

Nothing in our present inquiry turns upon the real meaning of the word THEOTOcos. Some, who have been among the brightest ornaments of the Church of England, have adopted the language, "Mother of God;" while many others among us believe that the original sense would be more correctly conveyed by the expression, "Mother of Him who was God."

It is curious to remark, that (according to Balusius) all the ancient books, and all the editions of the records of these councils before the Roman edition, retained in the Latin translation the Greek word THEOTOCOS; and when it was, at length, translated by "Dei Genitrix," the editor thought it necessary, in justification of so novel a form, to ask, "Who doubts that this is a good interpretation ?" Vol. vi. p. 735.

SECTION II.

There are other points in the course of these important proceedings to which our attention is invited, with the view of contrasting the sentiments of the Bishop of Rome in the middle of the fifth century, and also the expressions employed by other chief pastors of Christ's flock, with the language of the appointed authorized services of the Roman Church now, and the sentiments of her reigning Pontiff and accredited ministers.

The circumstances of the Church throughout Christendom, as represented in Leo's letter in the fifth century, and the circumstances of the Church of Rome, as lamented by the present Pope in 1832,* are in many respects very similar. The end desired by Leo and by Flavianus, his brother-pastor and contemporary, Bishop of Constantinople, and by Gregory, now Bishop of Rome, is one and the same; namely, the suppression of heresy, the prevalence of the truth, and the unity of the Christian Church. But how widely and how strikingly different are the foundations on which they respectively build their hopes for the attainment of that end!

The present Roman Pontiff's hopes, and desires, and exhortations are thus expressed:

"That all may have a successful and happy issue, let us raise our eyes to the most blessed Virgin Mary, WHO ALONE destroys heresies, who is our greatest hope, YEA, THE ENTIRE GROUND OF OUR HOPE. May she exert her patronage to draw down an efficacious blessing on our desires, our plans, and proceedings in

* See page 59 of this work.