Mansi, iv. 891). Cyril wrote another letter to some of his own clergy resident at Constantinople; the Nestorian argument from the impassibility of the Godhead he put aside as not to the purpose; and charged Nestorianism with making two Christs and two Sons (Cyr. Ep. p. 32; Mansi, iv. 1003). This letter recognizes the proverbial eloquence of "John" Chrysostom, and expresses the writer's desire for peace, if peace could be had without a sacrifice of truth. He disapproved of a draft petition to the emperor, sent him by these clerics, as too vehement. In a similar strain he wrote to a common friend of Nestorius and himself, declaring earnestly that he cared for nothing so much as the faith, and desired that Nestorius might be preserved from the charge of heresy (Cyr. Ep. p. 31, Mansi, iv. 899). A long letter "On the Right Faith," which he wrote about the same time to the emperor Theodosius, contained an elaborate survey of former heresies, and of the error now spreading in the church (Cyr. tom. v. par. 2; Mansi, iv. 617). Cyril's keen-eyed speculative orthodoxy did not stand coldly apart from all care for practical religion. He felt the vital importance of his cherished doctrine in its bearings on the Christian life; he urged in this treatise that if the Word were not personally incarnate, i.e. if the human Teacher and Sufferer were not really one with the eternal Son of God, the faith of Christian men would be made void, the work of their salvation annihilated, and the cross lose its virtue. For the very principle of Christian redemption lay in this, that it was one and the same "Ego" Who, possessing, by virtue of His incarnation, at once a divine and a human sphere of existence, could be at once the God of mankind and the Saviour Who died for them. In c. 21 he dwells, in pursuance of this idea, on the death of Christ as being a full satisfaction (δῶρον ἀληθῶς ἀντάξιον). This treatise contains an argument on which Cyril was never weary of insisting: it was particularly congenial to the depth and awe, the richness and the tenderness, of his thoughts on the great mystery of incorporation into Christ. From the admitted truth that the flesh of Christ was received in the Eucharist as life-giving, he argued that it must be, in a real sense, the flesh of God. In c. 6 of the treatise, he says that Nestorians would not have erred by dwelling simply on the difference between the natures of "God" and "flesh"—that difference was undeniable; but they went on to assert an individual and separate being for the man Jesus as apart from the Divine Word, and this was the very point of their heresy. In c. 27 he rises to almost Chrysostomic eloquence when he sets forth the superangelic greatness involved in the idea of "the Lord of Glory." Another treatise, in two books, was addressed to the princesses, Pulcheria, the gifted sister of the feeble emperor, Arcadia, and Marina (Cyr. tom. v. par. 2; Mansi, iv. 679 seq.). In bk. i. he argued at length from Scripture for the oneness and Divinity of Christ, for His position as the true object of faith, and for His office as life-giver and atoner; and among the texts he urged were Heb. i. 3, 6, xiii. 8; Tit. ii. 13; I. Cor. ii. 8; II. Cor. viii. 9; Eph. iii. 17; Gal. i. 1; Phil. ii. 6; Matt. xi. 28, xvi. 16, 20; John i. 14, xvii. 3; I. John v. 5 (without the words about the "heavenly witnesses"). He laid great stress on the vastness of the claim advanced by and for Christ in Scripture, and on the unreasonableness of demanding so absolute an obedience if He were not personally Divine. He asked how the death of a mere man could be of such importance for the race? Many a saint had lived and died, but not one by dying had become the saviour of his fellows. He quoted nine passages from earlier writers in support of the term "Theotokos," or of the doctrine which it guarded. In bk. ii. he explained texts relied on by Nestorians, including parts of Heb. ii. and Matt. xxvii. 46, Luke ii. 40, 52, John iv. 22, Mark xii. 32; in the last text seeming to recognize, as he does elsewhere (though sometimes favouring a different view), a limitation of knowledge in Christ's manhood, analogous to His submission, in His human sphere, to pain and want, and consistent with a perpetual omniscience in His Divine consciousness (ad Regin. ii. 17). In accordance with the emphatic assertion (ii. 7) of the value imparted to Christ's death by His Divinity, the work concludes with "for all our hope is in Christ, by Whom and with Whom," etc.
In these treatises, if some texts are strained beyond their natural meaning, there is yet a remarkable exhibition of acuteness and fertility of thought, pervaded and quickened by what Dorner calls Cyril's "warm interest" in Christianity as a religion. Probably c. Apr. 430 Cyril answered the letter of the Roman bishop, received a year before (Ep. p. 26); he informed him that the main body of the faithful of Constantinople (acting on the principle fully recognized in the ancient church, that loyalty to the faith was a higher duty than ecclesiastical subordination) were holding off from the communion of Nestorius, but greatly needed support and countenance; and in very deferential terms asked Celestine to say whether any fellowship could be maintained by orthodox bishops with one who was disseminating heresy (Mansi, iv. 1011). With this letter he sent a series of passages illustrative of what Nestorius held and of what church-writers had taught, translated into Latin "as well as Alexandrians could" perform such a task, and to be shewn by his messenger Posidonius to Celestine, if the latter had received anything from Nestorius. One other letter of Cyril's belongs to the summer of 430: he addressed himself to the aged Acacius, bp. of Berrhoea, who communicated the letter to John, patriarch of Antioch, but informed Cyril that many who had come to Syria, fresh from the preaching of Nestorius, were disposed to think him not committed to heresy. It is observable that Cyril tells Acacius that some had been led on by Nestorianism into an express denial that Christ was God (see Mansi, iv. 1053).
We now reach a landmark in the story. On Aug. 11, 430, Celestine, having held a synod which pronounced Nestorius heretical, gave Cyril a stringent commission (see this letter in Mansi, iv. 1017) to "join the authority of the Roman see to his own" in warning Nestorius that unless a written retraction were exe-
