softened
his anathemas, and confessed, with ambiguity and reluctance, a twofold
nature of Christ, before he was permitted to satiate his revenge against
the unfortunate Nestorius.

The rash and obstinate Nestorius, before the end of the synod, was
oppressed by Cyril, betrayed by the court, and faintly supported by his
Eastern friends. A sentiment or fear or indignation prompted him, while
it was yet time, to affect the glory of a voluntary abdication: his
wish, or at least his request, was readily granted; he was conducted
with honor from Ephesus to his old monastery of Antioch; and, after a
short pause, his successors, Maximian and Proclus, were acknowledged as
the lawful bishops of Constantinople. But in the silence of his cell,
the degraded patriarch could no longer resume the innocence and security
of a private monk. The past he regretted, he was discontented with the
present, and the future he had reason to dread: the Oriental bishops
successively disengaged their cause from his unpopular name, and each
day decreased the number of the schismatics who revered Nestorius as the
confessor of the faith. After a residence at Antioch of four years, the
hand of Theodosius subscribed an edict, which ranked him with Simon the
magician, proscribed his opinions and followers, condemned his writings
to the flames, and banished his person first to Petra, in Arabia, and at
length to Oasis, one of the islands of the Libyan desert. Secluded from
the church and from the world, the exile was still pursued by the rage
of bigotry and war. A wandering tribe of the Blemmyes or Nubians invaded
his solitary prison: in their retreat they dismissed a crowd of useless
captives: but no sooner had Nestorius reached the banks of the Nile,
than he would gladly have escaped from a Roman and orthodox city, to the
milder servitude of the savages. His flight was punished as a new crime:
the soul of the patriarch inspired the civil and ecclesiastical powers
of Egypt; the magistrates, the soldiers, the monks, devoutly tortured
the enemy of Christ and St. Cyril; and, as far as the confines of
AEthiopia, the heretic was alternately dragged and recalled, till his
aged body was broken by the hardships and accidents of these reiterated
journeys. Yet his mind was still independent and erect; the president
of Thebais was awed by his pastoral letters; he survived the Catholic
tyrant of Alexandria, and, after sixteen years' banishment, the synod of
Chalcedon w