of Ephesus, was condemned by that of
Chalcedon in 451. But to this decision, though given by 636 bishops, the
Copts refused assent--a refusal which profoundly affected both the
religious and the political history of their country. From that moment
they were treated as heretics. The emperor appointed a new bishop of
Alexandria, whose adherents the Copts styled Melkites or Imperialists,
while the Copts are distinguished as Monophysites and Jacobites. The
court party and the native party each maintained its own line of
patriarchs, and each treated the other with bitter hostility. For nearly
two centuries strife and persecution continued. The well-meant ecthesis
of Heraclius was a failure and was followed by repression, till in 640
the Copts were released from the Roman dominion by the Saracen invasion.
But it was only after prolonged resistance to the Arabs that the Copts
accepted a change of masters, which gave them for a while religious
freedom. The orthodox or Melkite party, consisting mostly of Byzantine
Greeks, was swept away, and the double succession of patriarchs
practically ceased. True, even now there is an orthodox patriarch of
Alexandria living in Cairo, but he has only a few Greeks for followers,
and scarcely a nominal succession has been maintained. But the Coptic
succession has been continuous and real.

Doctrine.

The distinctive Monophysite doctrine of the Copts is not easy to state
intelligibly, and yet they cling to it with something of the tenacity
which has marked their whole history. They repudiate the heresy of
Eutyches as strongly as that of Nestorius, and claim to stand between
the two doctrines teaching that Christ was one person with one nature
which was made up by the indissoluble union of a divine and a human
nature, but that notwithstanding this absolute union the two natures
remained after union distinct, unconfounded and uncommingled, separate
though inseparable. The creed thus savours of paradox, not to say
contradiction. It is set forth in the Liturgy and recited at every
Coptic mass in the following words:--"I believe that this is the
life-giving flesh which thine only Son took from the ... Holy Mary. He
united it with His Divinity without mingling and without confusion and
without alteration.... I believe that His Divinity was not separated
from His Manhood for one moment or for the twinkling of an eye." On all
other points of dogma, including the single procession of the Holy
Ghos