cquiesced in this mode
of toleration; but their reason was feeble and inconstant, and their
obedience was despised as timid and servile by the vehement spirit of
their brethren. On a subject which engrossed the thoughts and discourses
of men, it was difficult to preserve an exact neutrality; a book, a
sermon, a prayer, rekindled the flame of controversy; and the bonds of
communion were alternately broken and renewed by the private animosity
of the bishops. The space between Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by
a thousand shades of language and opinion; the _acephali_ of Egypt, and
the Roman pontiffs, of equal valor, though of unequal strength, may be
found at the two extremities of the theological scale. The acephali,
without a king or a bishop, were separated above three hundred years
from the patriarchs of Alexandria, who had accepted the communion of
Constantinople, without exacting a formal condemnation of the synod of
Chalcedon. For accepting the communion of Alexandria, without a formal
approbation of the same synod, the patriarchs of Constantinople were
anathematized by the popes. Their inflexible despotism involved the most
orthodox of the Greek churches in this spiritual contagion, denied or
doubted the validity of their sacraments, and fomented, thirty-five
years, the schism of the East and West, till they finally abolished the
memory of four Byzantine pontiffs, who had dared to oppose the supremacy
of St. Peter. Before that period, the precarious truce of Constantinople
and Egypt had been violated by the zeal of the rival prelates.
Macedonius, who was suspected of the Nestorian heresy, asserted, in
disgrace and exile, the synod of Chalcedon, while the successor of Cyril
would have purchased its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds
of gold.

In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound of a syllable,
was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The Trisagion (thrice
holy,) "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!" is supposed, by the
Greeks, to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally
repeat before the throne of God, and which, about the middle of
the fifth century, was miraculously revealed to the church of
Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added, "who was crucified
for us!" and this grateful address, either to Christ alone, or to the
whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been
gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and