vouchsafed to descend from heaven, and to stoop so low as to enter into the womb of the virgin; where being united to our nature, which was formed and conceived there. He submitted to a second generation according to the flesh. So that this Son of God was truly the Son of the virgin, and consequently, she that brought forth the man was really the mother of God, and by her cousin Elizabeth she is styled the mother of her Lord; which word. Lord, was accounted equivalent to the word God."[1] But the Nestorians rendered, so to speak, immeasurably more jealous of the doctrine of God's impassibility by the Eutychian heresies which, by confounding the human and Divine Natures, seemed to lead to the monstrous conclusion that the Godhead suffered, shrunk from the use of a term which savoured of the very essence of Monophysitism, and finding no authority for it in the Sacred Scriptures they rejected it, as they do at this day. Their reasons for so doing are given seriatim in Appendix B. Part iii. c. vi., each and all of which tend to confirm what has been suggested, that an innate horror of Eutychianism led them to denounce the title as verging on blasphemy. They flattered themselves, perhaps, that by adopting the confession of two Natures, two Persons one Parsopa, they avoided the semblance of ascribing passibility to God, and fortified their theology against so gross an error far better than it could be secured by the Catholic doctrine of two Natures and one Person, whereas, so far as I may judge, they can, agreeably with its teaching, apply the title of θεότοκος to the Virgin Mary, in the true Catholic sense, as consistently as Nelson could.
The quotation given in § 8 affords decisive proof that in rejecting the appellative "Mother of God," the Nestorians do not intend to detract aught from the blessedness of the Virgin Mary. On the contrary, the whole tenour of the poem, and there are many of like import in their rituals, goes to substantiate the fact, that if they have erred in this respect, the error lies in their tendency to Mariolatry, of which they can hardly be pronounced innocent by the most lenient judgment. However, not to enlarge on this point, which will be treated of more fully hereafter, it is clear from several passages in the extract referred
- ↑ Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England. Art. "the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin."
