ain a refutation of the blasphemous homilies
of that heresiarch, who yet is never {281} named in them; by which
circumstance they seem to have been written before his condemnation. St.
Cyril sent to Nestorius twelve Anathematisms against his errors. This
work was read in the council of Ephesus, and is entirely orthodox, yet
some censured it as favoring Apollinarism, or as denying the distinction
of two natures in Christ, the divine and human, after the Incarnation;
and the Eutychians afterwards strained them in favor of their heresy.
John, patriarch of Antioch, prepossessed against St. Cyril, pretended
for some time to discover that error in them; and persuaded Andrew,
bishop of Samosata, and the great Theodoret of Cyr, to write against
them. St. Cyril gave in his clear Explication of them to the council of
Ephesus, at its desire, extant, p. 145.

He also wrote, soon after that synod, two Apologies of the
Anathematisms; one against Andrew of Samosata, and other Oriental
prelates, who through mistake were offended at them; and the other,
against Theodoret of Cyr. And lastly, An Apologetic for them to the
emperor Theodosius, to remove some sinister suspicions which his enemies
had endeavored to give that prince against his sentiments in that work.

The Anthropomorphite heretics felt likewise the effects of St. Cyril's
zeal. These were certain ignorant monks of Egypt, who having been taught
by the elders, in order to help their gross minds in the continual
practice of the presence of God, to represent him to themselves under a
corporeal human figure, by which they at length really believed him to
be not a pure spirit, but corporeal, like a man; because man was created
to his image. Theophilus immediately condemned, and the whole church
exploded, this monstrous absurdity. St. Cyril wrote a letter to confute
it to Calosyrius, bishop of Arsinoe, showing that man is framed
according to the Divine image, not in his body, for God being the most
pure Spirit, can have no sensible figure, but in being endued with
reason, and capable of virtue. In the same letter he rejects a second
error of other ignorant monks, who imagined that the blessed Eucharist
lost its consecration if kept to the following day. He reprehends other
anchorets, who, upon a pretence of continual prayer, did not work at
certain hours of the day, making it a cloak of gluttony and laziness.
The saint has left us another book against the Anthropomorphites, in
whic