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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 115 Pages
Page 8
Nestorius repeats the same in his second letter to S. Celestine [27]. S. Cyril having in his first Ecumenical Letter to Nestorius put forth clearly the mode of the Union in these words, Nestorius does not understand the language and says thus of it,
'I come now to the second chapter of your Love, wherein I begin to praise the parting of the natures in regard to Godhead and Manhood and their connection into one Person, and that we must not say that God the Word needed a second generation out of a woman, and must confess that the Godhead is unrecipient of suffering. For such statements are truly orthodox and counter to the ill-reputes of all the heresies, as to the Lord's natures. As to the rest, whether they bring to the ears of the readers some hidden incomprehensible wisdom, pertains to your accuracy to know; to me they seem to overturn what preceded. For Him Who in the preceding is proclaimed Impassible and non-recipient of a second birth, they introduce as somehow passible and new-created, as though the qualities by nature adherent in God the Word were corrupted by connection with the Temple &c. [28] '
And yet S. Cyril's language is so carefully guarded, that no one who believed in True Union of Godhead and Manhood in the Incarnate Son would mistake it.
Nestorius does not appear to have taken any notice of S. Cyril's Paschal Homily, but he preached against the Letter to the Monks more than once, as we see from the extracts of such of his sermons as S. Cyril had access to. The passages of the Letter to the Monks referred to by Nestorius are;
' [29] These letters were directed by me against the Egyptian .... He, omitting to tell me by letter whether any thing appeared to him to need marking as blasphemous or wicked, moved by fear of proofs and looking out therefore for disturbances which should aid him, turns him to Celestine of Rome, as one too simple to fathom the force of the doctrines. And finding the simplicity of the man in regard to this matter, he in childish fashion circumvents his ears with crafty letters, long ago sending him my writings, as a proof which might not be gainsaid, as though I were making Christ out to be a mere man, I who at the very beginning of my consecration obtained a Law against those who say that Christ is a mere man and against other heresies.
'But he compiled writings, interweaving extracts of my sermons, in order that the slander put on me by the piecing of extracts might not be found out. And some things he added to my sermons, he broke off bits of others and pieced what I had said of the Lord's Incarnation as though I had said them of a mere man. Things again which I had said in praise of the Godhead he cut entirely away from the context, leaving some out of their proper place, and thus made out a plausible misleading. And to publish his wickedness in a few instances such as it is in the rest, I said somewhere, speaking against the heathen who say that we preach that the Essence of God has been newly created from a Virgin, 'Mary, my friends, bare not the Godhead; she bare a man the inseparable instrument of Godhead.' But he changing the word, Godhead, made it, 'Mary, my friends, bare not God.' Here to say God, and to say the Godhead, makes very much difference. For the one signifies the Divine and unembodied Essence, but does not mean the flesh. For flesh is compound and created. But the word God belongs to the temple also of the Godhead, which obtains the dignity by union with the Divine Essence of God, yet is not changed into that Divine Essence.
29. [f] Epist. v. in Garn. Diss. v. ap. Theodoret Opp. T. v. p. 625 ed. Schulz.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius.asp?pg=8
