Then there were the Tritheites, who appeared in the reign of Justin ii. under the leadership of John Askunages ("Bottle-shoes") who, according to Bar Hebræus stated his views thus: "I confess one nature of Christ, the Incarnate Word; but in the Trinity I reckon the natures and substances and godheads according to the number of the persons." There was a clearness and logical consistency in the views of these people not attained by less daring thinkers. If the humanity of Christ is so absorbed and transmuted as to be entirely lost in His Divinity, either you must have a Patripassion or at least a Sabellian Monarchianism, or you must find His distinctive individuality in His Divine nature. In the latter case, if as God He is a distinct individual by the side of the Father, you have two Gods, and as the same is said of the Holy Ghost, the consequence is Tritheism. Later there appeared people known as Tetratheists, in consequence of the teaching of Damianus, a Syrian, the Severian or Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria—Peter's successor—at the end of the sixth century. He recognised first the essential personality of the one substance, God in Himself, and then a separate individuality for each of the Three Persons of the Trinity. His opponent, Peter of Calinicus, would make him push his argument further, and so come to have a separate divinity for each property of God, a perfect pantheon, if he would be consistent with his root principle. But John of Asia describes him as an untrustworthy and inconsistent man.[1] Other divisions of the Monophysites are more closely associated with Alexandria and the Coptic Church than with the Syrian. But they have lingered on in Syria down to the present day. The Jacobites are now mostly found in Mesopotamia, especially at Mosul and Mardeen. There are scarcely any left in Palestine and few in Damascus. But they have a monastery at Jerusalem, and some of them are to be found at Hamah and Aleppo. Etheridge calculates that apart from the colony at Malabar the total number of Jacobites is now probably not more
- ↑ John of Asia, p. 306.
