urch. The monks
of Upper Egypt, who were mostly ignorant and unlettered men, were
anthropomorphites, or believers that God was in outward shape like a
man. They quoted from the Jewish Scriptures that he made man in his own
image, in support of their opinion. They held that he was of a strictly
human form, like Jesus, which to them seemed fully asserted in the
Nicene creed. In this opinion they were opposed by those who were better
educated, and it suited the policy of Theophilus to side with the more
ignorant and larger party. He branded with the name of Origenists those
who argued that God was without form, and who quoted the writings of
Origen in support of their opinion. This naturally led to a dispute
about Origen's orthodoxy; and that admirable writer, who had been
praised by all parties for two hundred years, and who had been quoted as
authority as much by Athanasius as by the Arians, was declared to be a
heretic by a council of bishops. The writings of Origen were accordingly
forbidden to be read, because they contradicted the anthropomorphite
opinions.

The quarrel between the Origenists and the anthropomorphites did not end
in words. A proposition in theology, or a doubt in metaphysics, was no
better cause of civil war than the old quarrels about the bull Apis or
the crocodile; but a change of religion had not changed the national
character. The patriarch, finding his party the stronger, attacked the
enemy in their own monasteries; he marched to Mount Nitria at the head
of a strong body of soldiers, and, enrolling under his banners the
anthropomorphite monks, attacked Dioscorus and the Origenists, set fire
to their monasteries, and laid waste the place.

Theophilus next quarrelled with Peter, the chief of the Alexandrian
presbyters, whom he accused of admitting to the sacraments of the
church a woman who had not renounced the Manichean heresy; and he then
quarrelled with Isidorus, who had the charge of the poor of the church,
because he bore witness that Peter had the orders of Theophilus himself
for what he did.

In this century there was a general digging up of the bodies of the
most celebrated Christians of former ages, to heal the diseases and
strengthen the faith of the living; and Constantinople, which as the
capital of the empire had been ornamented by the spoils of its subject
provinces, had latterly been enriching its churches with the remains of
numerous Christian saints. The tombs of Egypt, crowde