with outrage and insult from the assembly of the
saints. The whole of this momentous transaction was crowded into
the compass of a summer's day: the bishops delivered their separate
opinions; but the uniformity of style reveals the influence or the hand
of a master, who has been accused of corrupting the public evidence
of their acts and subscriptions. Without a dissenting voice, they
recognized in the epistles of Cyril the Nicene creed and the doctrine of
the fathers: but the partial extracts from the letters and homilies of
Nestorius were interrupted by curses and anathemas: and the heretic was
degraded from his episcopal and ecclesiastical dignity. The sentence,
maliciously inscribed to the new Judas, was affixed and proclaimed in
the streets of Ephesus: the weary prelates, as they issued from the
church of the mother of God, were saluted as her champions; and her
victory was celebrated by the illuminations, the songs, and the tumult
of the night.

On the fifth day, the triumph was clouded by the arrival and indignation
of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of the inn, before he had wiped
the dust from his shoes, John of Antioch gave audience to Candidian, the
Imperial minister; who related his ineffectual efforts to prevent or to
annul the hasty violence of the Egyptian. With equal haste and violence,
the Oriental synod of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their
episcopal honors, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom
of the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as a
monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church. His throne
was distant and inaccessible; but they instantly resolved to bestow
on the flock of Ephesus the blessing of a faithful shepherd. By the
vigilance of Memnon, the churches were shut against them, and a strong
garrison was thrown into the cathedral. The troops, under the command of
Candidian, advanced to the assault; the outguards were routed and put to
the sword, but the place was impregnable: the besiegers retired; their
retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally; they lost their horses, and
many of their soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs and stones.
Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with rage and clamor,
with sedition and blood; the rival synods darted anathemas and
excommunications from their spiritual engines; and the court of
Theodosius was perplexed by the adverse and contradictory narratives of
the Syrian and Egyp