Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/122

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110
EARLY CHRISTIANITY

rian party as a monster born and bred for the destruction of the church[1] and in his controversial writings he laid the foundations for those dissensions by which the denunciation was at last fulfilled. Supported in some measure by passages in the works of St. Cyril, and trusting to the friendship and protection of the patriarch of Alexandria, Eutyches, a Byzantine archimandrite, or superior of three hundred monks, ventured to preach from the pulpit of the capital, in the year 488, the doctrine of one only undivided nature in Christ.[2] The heresy of Eutyches was new rather in name than in dogma. He is accused of asserting, in opposition to Nestorius, that Christ was never really man, but that his nature was one, the word, which was undivided and incarnate, bearing only whilst on earth a human shape.[3] The body of Christ was subtile, and entirety dissimilar to ours, and the Son of Mary participated in no degree of the human nature of his mother.[4] The doctrines

  1. Ὁ δε επ' ολεθρῳ των εκκλησιων τεχθεις και τραφεις. Concil. tom. iii. p. 1244 (Ed. Labb.) The Eutychians stigmatised the memory of Nestorius with names equally opprobrious; in the Syrian ritual called ܒܝܬܓܙܐ‎ Nestorius is called ܠܝܛܐaccursed. Hottinger, Topographia Eccles. p. 138.
  2. Mosheim, Hist. Eccl. cent. v. § 32.
  3. Labb. Concil. tom. iv. p. 1079.
  4. Takri-eddini Makrizii Hist. Copt. p. 57. Dioscorus, the Alexandrian primate, and the friend of Eutyches, expressed the Monophysite doctrine thus: "Messiam esse substantiam unam ex substantiis duabus, personam unam ex personis duabus, naturam unam ex naturis duabus, et voluntatem unam ex