zeal and ignorance of his innumerable
monks: in the school of Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed the
incarnation of one nature; and the successor of Athanasius consulted
his pride and ambition, when he rose in arms against another Arius, more
formidable and more guilty, on the second throne of the hierarchy. After
a short correspondence, in which the rival prelates disguised their
hatred in the hollow language of respect and charity, the patriarch of
Alexandria denounced to the prince and people, to the East and to the
West, the damnable errors of the Byzantine pontiff. From the East,
more especially from Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of
toleration and silence, which were addressed to both parties while they
favored the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received with open arms
the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of Celestine was flattered by the
appeal; and the partial version of a monk decided the faith of the pope,
who with his Latin clergy was ignorant of the language, the arts, and
the theology of the Greeks. At the head of an Italian synod, Celestine
weighed the merits of the cause, approved the creed of Cyril, condemned
the sentiments and person of Nestorius, degraded the heretic from his
episcopal dignity, allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and
penance, and delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and
illegal sentence. But the patriarch of Alexandria, while he darted the
thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal; and his
twelve anathemas still torture the orthodox slaves, who adore the
memory of a saint, without forfeiting their allegiance to the synod of
Chalcedon. These bold assertions are indelibly tinged with the colors
of the Apollinarian heresy; but the serious, and perhaps the sincere
professions of Nestorius have satisfied the wiser and less partial
theologians of the present times.

Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the East were disposed to
obey the mandate of an Italian priest; and a synod of the Catholic, or
rather of the Greek church, was unanimously demanded as the sole remedy
that could appease or decide this ecclesiastical quarrel. Ephesus, on
all sides accessible by sea and land, was chosen for the place, the
festival of Pentecost for the day, of the meeting; a writ of summons was
despatched to each metropolitan, and a guard was stationed to protect
and confine the fathers till they should settle the mysteries of heaven,
and