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LECTURE XIV.

THE subject of the present lecture is remarks on the origin, the nature, and the consequences of the controversies that, in the early ages, arose in the church, and on the methods that were taken to terminate them by diocesan synods, and ecumenical councils. Though this may, at first sight, appear a digression from the examination of the Roman policy, exercised in raising the wonderful fabric of spiritual tyranny; yet, on a nearer view, it will be found to be intimately connected with that policy, insomuch, that the progress of the latter is, without a competent knowledge of the former, scarcely intelligible.

I observed, in my last prelection, that, for several centuries, almost all our theological disputes originated among the Greeks; that to this sort of exercitation their national character, their education, and early habits, conspired to inure them. They spoke a language which was both copious and ductile to an amazing degree. Let me add, that the people in general, especially since they had been brought under a foreign yoke, were become extremely adulatory in their manner of address, abounding in titles and complimental appellations. To this their native speech may be said, in some respect, to have contributed, by the facility wherewith it supplied them with compound epithets, suited to almost every possible occasion, and expressive of almost every possible combination of circumstances.-This peculiarity, in the genius of their tongue, gratified also their taste both for variety and for novelty; for they were thereby enabled to form new compositions from words in use, almost without end; and when they formed them analogically, were not liable to the charge of barbarism.

Hence sprang up the many flattering titles they gave to their saints and clergy, ιερομαρτυρ, ιερόψυχος, τρισάγιος, τρισμακαριΘ, τρισ μακαριςος, τρισμέγιςος, αξιομακαρις, Θεοφιλος, Θεοφορο, Θεοδιδακ &, θεοπρεπεσάζος, Θεομακαρισδιάζος, χρισόφιλος, χριστοφορα, χρισοκινη, and a thousand others.

The same mode of adulation they introduced into their public worship; for though no terms can exceed, or even equal, the majesty and perfections of the Supreme Being, the practice of loading their addresses with such epithets, betrayed but too evidently their tendency to think God such a one as themselves, to be gained by fair speeches and pompous titles: for it is a common and just observation, that they are the greatest flatterers who love most to be flattered. An exuberance of inadequate and vain words does but injure the simplicity and the dignity of worship. In their explanation of the mysteries, as they were called, and in their encomiums on the saints, they abounded in such terms, and were ever exercising their invention in coining new ones.

The genius of the Latin tongue, on the contrary, did not admit this freedom; nor had the people, who spoke it, to do them justice, so much levity and vanity as to give them the like propension. What they afterwards contracted of this disposition, they derived solely from their intercourse with the Greeks, and the translation of their writings. Indeed, in their versions from the Greek, as the translator was often obliged, in order to express in Latin such compound epithets, to recur either to circumlocution, or to some composition which the analogy of the language could hardly bear, those things appeared awkward and stiff in a Latin dress, which, in a Grecian habit, moved easily and agreeably.

Now, several of the early disputes, it may be remarked, took their rise from the affectation of employing these high-sounding titles. Hence, in a great measure, the noise that was raised about the terms μουσι@, μοιεσια, υποσίασις, υπόσαμκΘ, Θεοτόκος, χρισο woxes, when first introduced into their theology. To these terms, the Latins had no single words properly corresponding. Augustin, one of the most eminent of the Latin fathers, seems to have been so sensible of this defect in discoursing on the Trinity, (L. v. c. 9.) that he apologizes for his language, and considers the expressions he employs, as only preferable to a total silence on the subject, but not as equally adapted with the Greek. "Dictum est," says he, "tres personæ, non ut illud "diceretur, sed ne taceretur." The truth is, so little do the Greek terms, and the Latin, on this subject correspond, that if

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you regard the ordinary significations of the words, (and I know not whence else we should get a meaning to them,) the doctrine of the East was one, and that of the West was another, on this article. In the East, it was one essence and three substances, μια έσια, τρεις υποςάσεις; in the West, it was one substance and three persons, "una substantia, tres persone." The phrases pagww, in Greek, tres substantiæ, in Latin, would both, I imagine, have been exposed to the charge of tritheism. But which of the two, the Greek or the Latin phraseology, was most suited to the truth of the case, is a question I will not take upon me to determine. I shall only say of Augustin's apology, that it is a very odd one, and seems to imply, that on subjects above our comprehension, and to which all human elocution is inadequate, it is better to speak nonsense than be silent. It were to be wished, that on topics so sublime, men had thought proper to confine themselves to the simple but majestic diction of the sacred scriptures.

It was, then, the extravagant humour of these fanciful and prating Orientals, assisted by their native idiom, which produced many of the newfangled and questionable terms I have been speaking of; the terms produced the controversies; and these, in return, gave such consequence to the terms that gave them birth, and created so violent an attachment in the party that favoured them, that people could not persuade themselves that it was possible that the doctrine of the gospel should subsist, and be understood or conveyed by any body without them. Men never seemed to reflect, that the gospel had been both better taught and better understood, as well as better practised, long before this fantastic dress, borrowed from the schools of the sophists, was devised and adapted to it. However, the consequence which these disputes gave to the Greek terms, occasioned an imitation of them in the less pliant language of the Occidentals. Hence these barbarisms, or at least, unclassic words, in Latin, essentialis, substantialis, consubstantialis, Christipara, Deipara, and several others of the same stamp, to be found in the writings of the ecclesiastic authors of the fifth and following centuries. All those subtle questions, which so long distracted and disgraced the church, would then, we may well believe, both from the character of the people, and from the genius of the

tongue, much more readily originate, as history informs us that they did, among the Greeks than among the Latins. Indeed the latter were often slower than we should have expected in coming into the dispute. For this we may justly assign, as one principal reason, the general ignorance of the Latins at that time. Letters had, long before Constantine, been in their decline at Rome; insomuch, that at the period I allude to, when those controversies were most hotly agitated, the greater part, even of men in respectable stations, understood no tongue but their own. If they had studied any other, doubtless it would have been Greek, which was become the language of the imperial court, now at Constantinople; and not only of Greece itself, but of almost all the east, particularly of all the men of rank and letters in Asia, Syria, and Egypt. And if even Greek was little understood at Rome, we may safely conclude, that other languages were hardly known at all.

Yet that it was very little known in the fifth century, in the time of Pope Celestine, when the controversy betwixt Cyril and Nestorius broke out, is evident from this single circumstance: When Nestorius wrote to the Pope, sending him an account of the contest, together with a copy of his homilies, containing his doctrine on the point in question, all in Greek, his mother tongue; not only was the pontiff himself ignorant of that language, but it would seem, all the Roman clergy, consisting of many hundreds, knew no more of it than he. And, though we cannot suppose, that there were not then many in Rome who understood Greek, yet there seem to have been none of that consideration, that the Pope could decently employ them in a business of so great consequence. Accordingly, he was obliged to send the whole writings to Cassian, a man of learning, a native of Thrace, who then resided at Marseilles in Gaul, to be translated by him into Latin. This delay gave Cyril no small advantage; for though he wrote to the Pope after Nestorius, yet knowing better, it would seem, the low state of literature at that time in Rome, he prudently employed the Latin tongue, in giving his representation of the affair; and, in this way, produced a prepossession in the mind of the pontiff, which it was impossible for Nestorius afterwards to remove.

Perhaps, too, it may have contributed to make the Latins

less disposed, at first, to enter with warmth into the controversies which sprang up, that the terms whereby the Greek words, on both sides of the question, were latinized, rather than translated, appeared so uncouth and barbarous, that they had little inclination to adopt them. But when time had familiarized their ears to them, we find they could enter into the subject as passionately as the Greeks.

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When controversies once were started, the natural vanity of the disputants, together with the conceived importance of the subject, as relating to religion, (an importance which every one, in proportion to the resentment contracted from the contradiction he had met with, was disposed to magnify,) inflamed their zeal, and raised a violence in the parties which the world had never witnessed before. In whatever corner of Christendom the controversy originated, the flame came by degrees to spread throughout the whole, so that the Latin as well as the Greek churches never failed, sooner or later, to be involved in the dispute. As the former, however, for the reasons abovementioned, came almost always last into the contest, they had previous opportunity of knowing both on what side those who, for learning, parts, and piety, had attained the highest reputation, declared themselves, and to what side the people generally swayed. With these advantages, the Latins, though less intelligent in philological and metaphysical disputes, yet being more united among themselves, a consequence, in a great measure, of their ignorance, which made them more implicit followers, (these I say) when they did declare in favour of a side, commonly, by their number, decided the question, thereby ascertaining what was orthodox, and what was not.

It may also account in part for their greater unanimity, that they had fewer leaders. There were several eminent sees in the east, which were a sort of rivals to one another, for not to mention the exarchal sees of Ephesus and Cæsarea, there were the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, each considerable enough to be a check upon the rest. In the west, there was no see whatever that could cope with Rome. But it must be owned, that there was not only a closer union, but in general, more steadiness, among the Latins, than among their rivals, the Greeks. This may be accounted for partly

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