or to persecute the worshippers of Christ and the
citizens of Rome. The Henoticon was most pleasing to the Egyptians; yet
the smallest blemish has not been described by the jealous, and even
jaundiced eyes of our orthodox schoolmen, and it accurately represents
the Catholic faith of the incarnation, without adopting or disclaiming
the peculiar terms of tenets of the hostile sects. A solemn anathema is
pronounced against Nestorius and Eutyches; against all heretics by
whom Christ is divided, or confounded, or reduced to a phantom. Without
defining the number or the article of the word nature, the pure system
of St. Cyril, the faith of Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, is
respectfully confirmed; but, instead of bowing at the name of the
fourth council, the subject is dismissed by the censure of all
contrary doctrines, if any such have been taught either elsewhere or at
Chalcedon. Under this ambiguous expression, the friends and the enemies
of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace. The most reasonable
Christians acquiesced in this mode of toleration; but their reason was
feeble and inconstant, and their obedience was despised as timid and
servile by the vehement spirit of their brethren. On a subject which
engrossed the thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to
preserve an exact neutrality; a book, a sermon, a prayer, rekindled the
flame of controversy; and the bonds of communion were alternately broken
and renewed by the private animosity of the bishops. The space between
Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by a thousand shades of language and
opinion; the acephali [73] of Egypt, and the Roman pontiffs, of equal
valor, though of unequal strength, may be found at the two extremities
of the theological scale. The acephali, without a king or a bishop, were
separated above three hundred years from the patriarchs of Alexandria,
who had accepted the communion of Constantinople, without exacting
a formal condemnation of the synod of Chalcedon. For accepting the
communion of Alexandria, without a formal approbation of the same synod,
the patriarchs of Constantinople were anathematized by the popes. Their
inflexible despotism involved the most orthodox of the Greek churches
in this spiritual contagion, denied or doubted the validity of their
sacraments, [74] and fomented, thirty-five years, the schism of the
East and West, till they finally abolished the memory of four Byzantine
pontiffs, who had dared to oppose th