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Translated by P. E. Pusey
This Part: 115 Pages
Page 21
Nestorius seems to have thought it to have been his office to convert the Church to his misbelief. He says,
' [100] I see in our people much reverence and most fervent piety, but that they are blinded as to the dogma of the knowledge of God. But this is not the fault of the people, but (how shall I say it courteously?) that the teachers had not opportunity to set before you aught of the more accurate teaching.'
This was strong language, that the people of Constantinople were in error as to the faith through the fault of its former Bishops; but he also owned thereby, that his faith was different from theirs. 'Art thou then,' Cassian [101] apostrophises him, 'the amender of former Bishops, the condemner of former Priests? art thou more excellent than Gregory, more approved than Nectarius, surpassing John?'
Nestorius seems to have chosen for himself the office of arbiter between ideal parties. In his third Epistle to S. Celestine he says,
['][102][ ]It is known to your Blessedness, that if two sects stand over against one another, and one of them only uses the word Theotocos, and the other only Anthropotocos, and each sect draws the other to its own confession, so that, if it do not obtain this, there is peril lest it fall from the Church, it will be necessary, that one deputed to the consideration of this matter, having care for each sect, should remedy the peril of either party, by a word delivered by the Evangelist which signifies both natures. For that word, Christotocos, tempers the assertion of both, because it both removes the blasphemy of the Samosatene which is spoken of Christ, the Lord of all, as if He were a pure man, and also puts to flight the malice of Arius and Apollinarius.'
It is strange that he did not see (if indeed he did not see what every one else saw), that Christotocos, as opposed to Theotocos, could only mean 'mother of the Messiah,' i. e. mother of Him who should be the Messiah. Vincent of Lerins uses the homely illustration,
'[103] as we speak of the mother of a Presbyter or a Bishop, not that she bare one who was already a Presbyter or a Bishop, but a man who was afterwards made a Presbyter or Bishop.'
S. John Damascene says,
'[104] We do not call the holy Virgin Christotocos, because Nestorius invented it to deny the word Theotocos.'
100. [g] Serm. 2 in Marius Mercator ii. 9. ed. Garn.
102. [i] in Mercat. pp. 80, 81.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius.asp?pg=21