Nestorius, which resulted in his defeat and banishment. The council of Ephesus, in 431, which sat in judgment upon him, accomplished little during its session in the way of a positive construction of Christology. The creed which came in as a supplement to its work, and was signed by representatives of the contending parties, was of the nature of a compromise, affirming at once the term theotokos, and ascribing two natures to Christ.

The extremists of neither party were satisfied with such a settlement. A sect was finally formed in the interest of the Nestorian doctrine, a refuge being found for the same within the Persian dominion. On the other hand, the radical wing of the Cyrillian party began to agitate for the doctrine of a single nature in Christ. This party found a mouthpiece in Eutyches, who presided over a cloister in Constantinople. He taught that the human attributes were assimilated to the divine in Christ, so that His body is not consubstantial with ours, and nothing human, in the stricter sense, is to be found in Him. Eutyches was condemned by a synod at Constantinople in 448; but his cause was zealously supported by the Alexandrian bishop Dioscurus, together with a large section of the Church in Egypt. The synod of Ephesus, in 449, was dominated by this party, and declared in favor of Eutyches. This decision, distasteful to the greater part of the Church, both on account of its doctrinal import and the violent measures by which it was gained, served as an incentive to the calling of a new ecumenical council. This was convened at Chalcedon in 451, and both in numbers and in doctrinal significance ranks among the foremost councils in the history of the Church.

Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, was largely instrumental in the assembling of the council, and its decisions followed his definitions, as they had been expressed in his letter to Flavian. The creed of Chalcedon is as follows: "Following the holy fathers, we unanimously teach one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; complete as to His God

head, and complete as to His manhood; truly God, and truly man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; consubstantial with the Father as to His Godhead, and consubstantial also with us as to His manhood; like unto us in all things, yet without sin; as to His Godhead begotten of the Father before all worlds, but as to His manhood in these last days born, for us men and for our salvation, of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, known in two natures, without confusion, without conversion, without severance, and without division; the distinction of the natures being in no wise abolished by their union, but the peculiarity of each nature being maintained, and both concurring in one person and hypostasis. We confess not a Son divided and sundered into two persons, but one and the same Son, and Only-begotten, and God-Logos, our Lord Jesus Christ."

On the merits of this creed theologians, even those acknowledging both the divine and the human in Christ, have been divided. Some have regarded it as the most finished exposition of Christology which has been, or is likely to be, produced; but others, especially those writing from the standpoint of Lutheranism, have criticised it as seriously defective. While, as they maintain, it sets forth the factors that are to be acknowledged in Christ, it does not bring them into suitable reconciliation with each other. Dorner, among others, indulges this criticism. The one merit, in his view, of the Chalcedonian symbol, is that it points out the extremes that must be avoided, declaring "that no doctrine of the person of Christ can lay claim to the name of Christian which puts a double Christ in place of the incarnate Son of God, or which teaches either a mere conversion of God into a man, or, vice versa, of a man into God.”

A long-continued agitation followed the council of Chalcedon. The cause of this was the opposition of a large party to the decisions of that council, their intrigues with

the government, and the attempts of the government to reconcile them to the Catholic Church. As advocates of only one nature in Christ, this party acquired the name of Monophysites. A sort of tribute was paid to them by the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople, in 553, inasmuch as it condemned certain objects of their special dislike; namely, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the anti-Cyrillian writings of Theodoret, and the letter of Ibas, - the so-called Three Chapters. This, however, is no indication that the views of the Monophysites were taken into favor by the Church, since the council was the mere product of diplomacy and governmental influence. At the sixth ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 680, the doctrines of the Monophysites were decidedly repudiated. The compromise scheme, the so-called Monothelite, which acknowledged in Christ but one will, or one indivisible operation of will, (a scheme which the Emperors patronized with the design of winning back the Monophysites,) was condemned by this council. Thus was consummated the last prominent stage in a controversy which had disturbed the Church more or less for three centuries.

The Monophysites passed into a state of permanent schism. They are known to history in several branches, namely, the Jacobites, the Copts and Abyssinians, and the Armenians. The Maronites, as a sect, were an offshoot of the closing stage of the christological controversy, and were distinguished by their adherence to the Monothelite doctrine. It was the common tenet of the Monophysites that there is only one nature in Christ. They were not unanimous, however, in their conception of His person. Some favored the theory of Eutyches, and taught that the human attributes were changed in essence and assimilated to the divine. Others allowed the continuance of the human attributes, only denying that they were united into a second nature, and advocating accordingly a composite nature with two sets of attributes.

The section ought not, perhaps, to be concluded without a reference to the doctrine of the kenosis. When their statements are fully analyzed, the Catholic theologians of the period are found to agree upon this subject with the following sentence of Augustine: "When He [the Son of God] emptied Himself in order to assume the form of a servant, He laid not down what He had, but assumed that which He had not before." (Tract. in Joan., LV. 7. Compare Hilary, Tract. super Psal., LXV. 25; De Trin., X. 7; Fulgentius, Ad Tras., III. 10; Cyril of Alexandria, as interpreted by Dorner, Thomasius, and Bruce.)

SECTION II. THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST.

THE subject of redemption remained still among comparatively undeveloped themes. In conjunction with other views, the theory found place that the redemptive work was specially connected with the rights and the dominion of Satan. A few went to the full length of the Origenistic doctrine, and spoke not merely of a right in Satan over fallen men, but also of the cancelling of that right by the payment of a redemptive price. This was the case with Gregory of Nyssa. As he represents, men had sold themselves to the devil, and, like those who have parted with their liberty for money, were in a condition of slavery from which they could not justly be rescued by force. The just mode of recovery was to give the possessor the ransom which he desired. Christ came to be such a ransom. The spectacle of His wonderful life attracted the eager attention and avaricious desires of the devil. At the same time the garment of flesh which He wore concealed His divinity, and caused that the adversary should not be repelled by fear. Hence it came about that the devil regarded Christ as a most desirable prize, and was willing to accept Him as an equivalent for all those whom he held in the prison of

death. Thus far the account by Gregory presumes upon a right in Satan and the payment to him of a ransom. But, as in the case of Origen's description, the issue is a defrauding of the devil rather than an exchange with him. The flesh of Christ, as Gregory represents, served as a bait by which the devil was lured to his own defeat. At once he found his right over men lost, and himself powerless against the unveiled divinity of the Son of God. (Orat. Catech., XXII.-XXVI.) The divine artifice, or fraud (ámárη), (ảπátη), which Gregory himself allows that the transaction involved, is regarded by him as justified by its design. It was like the act, he avers, of a physician, who secretly mixes medicine with the food of a patient. The deception was for the good of all, the devil himself included. In other words, the "fraud" had not so much the character of a real fraud as of a wise and legitimate stratagem. This idea that the devil was outwitted by the incarnation appears with a number of writers who do not, like Gregory, intimate that the satanic claim upon men was relinquished in virtue of a contract. In such cases the only deception imputed to God would consist in providing conditions likely to be misinterpreted by the devil, and allowing him, in his sinful greed and malice, to misinterpret them.

The total theory of Gregory of Nyssa, including the notion that Satan had a claim which was cancelled by the payment of a ransom, found but a limited acceptance in the Greek Church. Gregory Nazianzen rejects it in emphatic terms, characterizing it as an audacious theory, and exclaiming, "Then had the robber received, not merely something from God, but God Himself, as a ransom, and a surpassingly great reward for his tyranny." (Orat., XLV. 22.) Other Greek writers may be cited, either as making no reference to the theory in question, or as indulging statements contradictory to a belief in the same. Epiphanius, for example, in his comments on the word "redemption," teaches that it by no means signifies acquisition by the payment of a