te votes and vehement
acclamations, was overturned in the next session by the opposition of
the legates and their Oriental friends. It was in vain that a multitude
of episcopal voices repeated in chorus, "The definition of the fathers
is orthodox and immutable! The heretics are now discovered! Anathema
to the Nestorians! Let them depart from the synod! Let them repair to
Rome." [66] The legates threatened, the emperor was absolute, and a
committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed
on the reluctant assembly. In the name of the fourth general council,
the Christ in one person, but in two natures, was announced to the
Catholic world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of
Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to paradise,
a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the
master-hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of blindness
and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions from the oracle of
the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already varnished with the rust of
antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the creed of the reformers,
who disclaimed the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod of
Chalcedon still triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment of
controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the present
day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief concerning the
mystery of the incarnation.

[Footnote 64: Those who reverence the infallibility of synods, may try
to ascertain their sense. The leading bishops were attended by partial
or careless scribes, who dispersed their copies round the world. Our
Greek Mss. are sullied with the false and prescribed reading of (Concil.
tom. iii. p. 1460:) the authentic translation of Pope Leo I. does not
seem to have been executed, and the old Latin versions materially differ
from the present Vulgate, which was revised (A.D. 550) by Rusticus,
a Roman priest, from the best Mss. at Constantinople, (Ducange, C. P.
Christiana, l. iv. p. 151,) a famous monastery of Latins, Greeks, and
Syrians. See Concil. tom. iv. p. 1959--2049, and Pagi, Critica, tom. ii.
p. 326, &c.]

[Footnote 65: It is darkly represented in the microscope of Petavius,
(tom. v. l. iii. c. 5;) yet the subtle theologian is himself afraid--ne
quis fortasse supervacaneam, et nimis anxiam putet hujusmodi vocularum
inquisitionem, et ab instituti theologici gravitate alienam, (p. 124.)]

[Footnote 66