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| Chapter XI. Examples from Church History, confirming the words of Moses,--Nestorius, Photinus, Apollinaris.
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Chapter XI.
Examples from Church History, confirming the words of
Moses,—Nestorius, Photinus, Apollinaris.
[29.] Here, perhaps, some
one will require us to illustrate the words of holy Moses by examples
from Church History. The demand is a fair one, nor shall it wait long
for satisfaction.
For to take first a very recent and very plain
case: what sort of trial, think we, was that which the Church had
experience of the other day, when that unhappy Nestorius,462
| 462 Nestorius was a
native of Germanicia, a town in the patriarchate of Antioch, of which
Church he became a Presbyter. On the See of Constantinople becoming
vacant by the death of Sisinnius, the Emperor Theodosius sent for him
and caused him to be consecrated Archbishop. He was at first extremely
popular, and so eloquent that people said of him (what was much to be
said of a successor of Chrysostom), that there had never before been
such a bishop. He was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, in 431. The
emperor, after ordering him to return to the monastery to which he
formally belonged, eventually banished him to the great Oasis, whence
he was harried from place to place till death put an end to his
sufferings, in 440. Evagrius, I. 7. | all at once metamorphosed from a sheep
into a wolf, began to make havoc of the flock of Christ, while as yet a
large proportion of those whom he was devouring believed him to be a
sheep, and consequently were the more exposed to his attacks? For who
would readily suppose him to be in error, who was known to have been
elected by the high choice of the Emperor, and to be held in the
greatest esteem by the priesthood? who would readily suppose him to be
in error, who, greatly beloved by the holy brethren, and in high favor
with the populace, expounded the Scriptures in public daily, and
confuted the pestilent errors both of Jews and Heathens? Who could
choose but believe that his teaching was Orthodox, his preaching
Orthodox, his belief Orthodox, who, that he might open the way to one
heresy of his own, was zealously inveighing against the blasphemies of
all heresies? But this was the very thing which Moses says: “The
Lord your God doth try you that He may know whether you love Him or
not.”
[30.] Leaving Nestorius, in whom there was always
more that men admired than they were profited by, more of show than of
reality, whom natural ability, rather than divine grace, magnified, for
a time in the opinion of the common people, let us pass on to speak of
those who, being persons of great attainments and of much industry,
proved no small trial to Catholics. Such, for instance, was Photinus,
in Pannonia,463
| 463 Photinus, bishop of
Sirmium in Pannonia, was a native of Galatia, and a disciple of
Marcellus of Ancyra. Bishop Pearson (on the Creed, Art. 11) has an
elaborate note, in which he collects together many notices of him left
by the ancients. These agree with Vincentius in representing him as a
man of extraordinary ability and of consummate eloquence. His heresy
consisted in the denial of our blessed Lord’s divine nature, whom
he regarded as man, and nothing more, ψιλὸς
ἄνθρωπος, and as
having had no existence before his birth of the Virgin. He was
condemned in several synods, the fifth of which, a Council of the
Western bishops, held at Sirmium, in 350, deposed him. But in spite of
the deposition, so great was his popularity, that he could not even yet
be removed. The following year however he was by another council, held
at the same place, again condemned, and sent into banishment. He died
in Galatia in 377. See Cave, Hist. Lit., who refers with praise
to a learned dissertation on Photinus by Larroque. | who, in the
memory
of our fathers, is
said to have been a trial to the Church of Sirmium, where, when he had
been raised to the priesthood with universal approbation, and had
discharged the office for some time as a Catholic, all of a sudden,
like that evil prophet or dreamer of dreams whom Moses refers to, he
began to persuade the people whom God had intrusted, to his charge, to
follow “strange gods,” that is, strange errors, which
before they knew not. But there was nothing unusual in this: the
mischief of the matter was, that for the perpetration of so great
wickedness he availed himself of no ordinary helps. For he was of great
natural ability and of powerful eloquence, and had a wealth of
learning, disputing and writing copiously and forcibly in both
languages, as his books which remain, composed partly in Greek, partly
in Latin, testify. But happily the sheep of Christ committed to him,
vigilant and wary for the Catholic faith, quickly turned their eyes to
the premonitory words of Moses, and, though admiring the eloquence of
their prophet and pastor, were not blind to the trial. For from
thenceforward they began to flee from him as a wolf, whom formerly they
had followed as the ram of the flock.
[31.] Nor is it only in the instance of Photinus
that we learn the danger of this trial to the Church, and are
admonished withal of the need of double diligence in guarding the
faith. Apollinaris464
| 464 Apollinaris the
younger (a contemporary of Photinus), bishop of Laodicea in Syria, was
one of the most distinguished men of the age in which he lived.
Epiphanius (Hær. lxxvii. 2), referring to his fall
into heresy, says that when it first began to be spoken of, people
would hardly credit it, so great was the estimation in which he was
held. His heresy, which consisted in the denial of the verity of our
Lord’s human nature, the Divine Word
supplying the place of the rational soul, and in the assertion that his
flesh was not derived from the Virgin, but was brought down from
heaven, was condemned by the Council of Constantinople, in 381 (Canon
I.). It was in reference to the latter form of it that the clause
“of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary” was inserted in the
Nicene Creed. | holds out a like
warning. For he gave rise to great burning questions and sore
perplexities among his disciples, the Church’s authority drawing
them one way, their Master’s influence the opposite; so that,
wavering and tossed hither and thither between the two, they were at a
loss what course to take.
But perhaps he was a person of no weight of
character. On the contrary, he was so eminent and so highly esteemed
that his word would only too readily be taken on whatsoever subject.
For what could exceed his acuteness, his adroitness, his learning? How
many heresies did he, in many volumes, annihilate! How many errors,
hostile to the faith, did he confute! A proof of which is that most
noble and vast work, of not less than thirty books, in which, with a
great mass of arguments, he repelled the insane calumnies of
Porphyry.465
| 465 This work of which St.
Jerome speaks in high terms (de Viris Illustr., c. 104), has not
come down to us, nor indeed have his other writings, except in
fragments. | It would take a
long time to enumerate all his works, which assuredly would have placed
him on a level with the very chief of the Church’s builders, if
that profane lust of heretical curiosity had not led him to devise I
know not what novelty which as though through the contagion of a sort
of leprosy both defiled all his labours, and caused his teachings to be
pronounced the Church’s trial instead of the Church’s
edification.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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