killed by the club of
Peter the Reader [A.D. 415]. The corpse was cut to pieces, the flesh was
scraped from the bones with shells, and the remnants cast into a fire.
For this frightful crime Cyril was never called to account. It seemed to
be admitted that the end sanctified the means" (Draper's "Conflict
between Religion and Science," p. 55).

The heresies of the last century were continued in this, and various new
ones arose. Chief among these was the heresy of Nestorius, a Bishop of
Constantinople, who distinguished so strongly between the two natures in
Christ as to make a double personality, and he regarded the Virgin Mary
as mother of _Christ_, but not mother of _God_. The Council of Ephesus
(A.D. 431) was called to decide the point, and was presided over by the
great antagonist of Nestorius, Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. The matter
was settled very quickly. Church Councils vote on disputed points, and
the vote of the majority constitutes orthodoxy. The Council was held
before the arrival of the bishops who sympathised with Nestorius, and
thus, by the simple expedient of getting everything over before the
opponents arrived, it was settled for evermore that Christ is one person
with two natures. A heresy of the very opposite character was that of
Eutyches, abbot of the monastery in Constantinople. He maintained that
in Christ there was only one nature, "that of the incarnate word," and
his opinion was endorsed by a council called at Ephesus, A.D. 449; but
this decree was annulled by the Council of Chalcedon (reckoned the
fourth OEcumenical), A.D. 451, wherein it was again declared that Christ
had two natures in one person. It was at the Council of Ephesus, in A.D.
449, that Flavianus, Bishop of Constantinople, was so beaten by the
other bishops that he died of his wounds, and the bishops who held with
him hid themselves under benches to get out of the way of their
infuriate brothers in Christ (see notes on pp. 136, 137). The
Theopaschites were a branch of the Eutychian heresy, and the
Monophysites were a cognate sect; from these arose the Acephali,
Anthropomorphites, Barsanuphites, and Esaianists. Not less important
than the heresy of Eutyches was that of Pelagius, a British monk, who
taught that man did not inherit original sin on account of Adam's fall,
but that each was born unspotted into the world, and was capable of
rising to the height of virtue by the exercise of his natural faculties.
The semi-Pelagians held