us. But the person
of the aged bishop of Laodicea, his character and dignity, remained
inviolate; and his rivals, since we may not suspect them of the weakness
of toleration, were astonished, perhaps, by the novelty of the argument,
and diffident of the final sentence of the Catholic church. Her judgment
at length inclined in their favor; the heresy of Apollinaris was
condemned, and the separate congregations of his disciples were
proscribed by the Imperial laws. But his principles were secretly
entertained in the monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies felt the hatred
of Theophilus and Cyril, the successive patriarchs of Alexandria.

V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the fantastic Docetes, were rejected and
forgotten: the recent zeal against the errors of Apollinaris reduced the
Catholics to a seeming agreement with the double nature of Cerinthus.
But instead of a temporary and occasional alliance, _they_ established,
and we still embrace, the substantial, indissoluble, and everlasting
union of a perfect God with a perfect man, of the second person of the
trinity with a reasonable soul and human flesh. In the beginning of
the fifth century, the _unity_ of the _two natures_ was the prevailing
doctrine of the church. On all sides, it was confessed, that the mode
of their coexistence could neither be represented by our ideas, nor
expressed by our language. Yet a secret and incurable discord was
cherished, between those who were most apprehensive of confounding,
and those who were most fearful of separating, the divinity, and the
humanity, of Christ. Impelled by religious frenzy, they fled with
adverse haste from the error which they mutually deemed most destructive
of truth and salvation. On either hand they were anxious to guard,
they were jealous to defend, the union and the distinction of the two
natures, and to invent such forms of speech, such symbols of doctrine,
as were least susceptible of doubt or ambiguity. The poverty of ideas
and language tempted them to ransack art and nature for every possible
comparison, and each comparison mislead their fancy in the explanation
of an incomparable mystery. In the polemic microscope, an atom is
enlarged to a monster, and each party was skilful to exaggerate the
absurd or impious conclusions that might be extorted from the principles
of their adversaries. To escape from each other, they wandered through
many a dark and devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid
phan