vigilance of Memnon, the churches were shut against them, and
a strong garrison was thrown into the cathedral. The troops, under the
command of Candidian, advanced to the assault; the outguards were routed
and put to the sword, but the place was impregnable: the besiegers
retired; their retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally; they lost their
horses, and many of their soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs
and stones. Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with rage and
clamor, with sedition and blood; the rival synods darted anathemas
and excommunications from their spiritual engines; and the court of
Theodosius was perplexed by the adverse and contradictory narratives of
the Syrian and Egyptian factions. During a busy period of three months,
the emperor tried every method, except the most effectual means of
indifference and contempt, to reconcile this theological quarrel. He
attempted to remove or intimidate the leaders by a common sentence, of
acquittal or condemnation; he invested his representatives at Ephesus
with ample power and military force; he summoned from either party eight
chosen deputies to a free and candid conference in the neighborhood of
the capital, far from the contagion of popular frenzy. But the Orientals
refused to yield, and the Catholics, proud of their numbers and of their
Latin allies, rejected all terms of union or toleration. The patience
of the meek Theodosius was provoked; and he dissolved in anger this
episcopal tumult, which at the distance of thirteen centuries assumes
the venerable aspect of the third oecumenical council. [47] "God is
my witness," said the pious prince, "that I am not the author of this
confusion. His providence will discern and punish the guilty. Return
to your provinces, and may your private virtues repair the mischief and
scandal of your meeting." They returned to their provinces; but the same
passions which had distracted the synod of Ephesus were diffused over
the Eastern world. After three obstinate and equal campaigns, John of
Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria condescended to explain and embrace: but
their seeming reunion must be imputed rather to prudence than to reason,
to the mutual lassitude rather than to the Christian charity of the
patriarchs.

[Footnote 46: After the coalition of John and Cyril these invectives
were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must never be
confounded with the genuine sense which respectable enemies entertain