our blessed Saviour a sort of third nature, compounded of the human and divine, it threatened to render his suffering for us imperfect and incapable of obtaining salvation for men; for unless Christ had been very and perfect man to suffer, and very God to confer an infinite value on those sufferings, his death would have been inadequate to the accomplishment of so great a work. Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria, who was deposed by the œcumenical synod of Chalcedon for his outrageous proceedings against the opponents of the Eutychian heresy, and who refused to believe the orthodox doctrine defined by the synod and approved by the whole Christian world, was legitimately succeeded by Proterius in the see of Alexandria; but the Monophysite, Timothy Alurus, intruded into that see, having obtained ordination from two deposed Egyptian bishops of the same party; and his adherents murdered Proterius. In the same manner Theodosius, a monk of Palestine, usurped the see of Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem, while the latter was absent at Constantinople, and ordained Monophysite bishops throughout Palestine in opposition to the catholic bishops. Some time after, another Monophysite, Peter Fullo, came to Antioch under the protection of Zeno the governor, and excited a schism against the patriarch Martyrius, on whose retirement he seized the bishopric, but was soon compelled to fly by the orders of the emperor. Such was the origin of the Monophysites, who attempted then, and afterwards by the aid of the civil power, to usurp the various sees of the Church; and who established a rival communion, anathematizing the Council of Chalcedon approved by the whole Christian world, reckoning its adherents 8 Ibid. s. iv. among the heretics, and including among the saints Dioscorus, Barsumus, Timothy, Severus, Jacobus, Theodosius, and others who were notoriously opposed to the catholic doctrine, and guilty of offences against the law of unity. Hence, although some of the Monophysites in later times have expressed themselves in terms that seem to render the difference in doctrine but inconsiderable", there seems to be no reason to suppose that they form a portion of the catholic church, having been originally excluded from that church as well by its decree as by their own separation from us: nor have they ever ceased to treat the doctrine of the church as heretical, styling us Chalcedonians', and reckoning us among the heretics to this day. It seems therefore that the Nestorians and Monophysites, or Jacobites, are no part of the church of Christ, for (as I have elsewhere observed'), the assumption that they hold what are called fundamental doctrines, and are therefore free from heresy, is founded on an uncertain and arbitrary distinction. We need not however pronounce them heretics in such a sense as imports a grievous sin on their parts, and the loss of salvation: "Them that are without, God judgeth;" but we cannot consider them as the people of God, invested with those privileges which revelation gives to God's children, to those who are within his kingdom. h Assemani Bibl. Orient. t. ii. p. 277.97. iSee Buchanan's Christian Researches, p. 123, where the creed of the Syrian Christians of St. Thomas in India, is stated to include a condemnation of the errors of "Arius, Sabellius, Macedonius, Manes, Marcianus, Julianus, Nestorius, and the Chalcedonians." Chapter V. Appendix on Fundamentals. A TREATISE ON THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. PART II.-CHAPTER I. ON THE CHARACTERS OF THE TEMPORAL PROMOTERS OF THE REFORMATION. It is my design in this Part to examine the reformation of the church in Great Britain and Ireland, to trace its conformity with the faith and discipline of the catholic church, and to reply to the various imputations of heresy, schism, variation, and inconsistency advanced by Bossuet in his "Variations," and by other opponents of the church of England. The real facts of the reformation in England have been so misrepresented from ignorance or design, that there is no part of our controversies which merits from members of the catholic churches of these nations a more attentive study. It is perpetually and confidently asserted by our opponents, that the various corrections in ecclesiastical matters, made in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, were effected, and can only be defended on principles subversive of ecclesiastical authority and unity; therefore that we cannot |