the
admixture of Christianity and paganism, and doubtless by this means the
bitterness of the rivalry between those antagonists was somewhat abated.
The heaven of the popular, the fashionable Christianity was the old
Olympus, from which the venerable Greek divinities had been removed.
There, on a great white throne, sat God the Father, on his right the
Son, and then the blessed Virgin, clad in a golden robe, and "covered
with various female adornments;" on the left sat God the Holy Ghost.
Surrounding these thrones were hosts of angels with their harps. The
vast expanse beyond was filled with tables, seated at which the happy
spirits of the just enjoyed a perpetual banquet.

If, satisfied with this picture of happiness, illiterate persons never
inquired how the details of such a heaven were carried out, or how much
pleasure there could be in the ennui of such an eternally unchanging,
unmoving scene, it was not so with the intelligent. As we are soon to
see, there were among the higher ecclesiastics those who rejected with
sentiments of horror these carnal, these materialistic conceptions, and
raised their protesting voices in vindication of the attributes of the
Omnipresent, the Almighty God.

EGYPTIAN DOCTRINES. In the paganization of religion, now in all
directions taking place, it became the interest of every bishop to
procure an adoption of the ideas which, time out of mind, had been
current in the community under his charge. The Egyptians had already
thus forced on the Church their peculiar Trinitarian views; and now they
were resolved that, under the form of the adoration of the Virgin Mary,
the worship of Isis should be restored.

THE NESTORIANS. It so happened that Nestor, the Bishop of Antioch, who
entertained the philosophical views of Theodore of Mopsuestia, had
been called by the Emperor Theodosius the Younger to the Episcopate
of Constantinople (A.D. 427). Nestor rejected the base popular
anthropomorphism, looking upon it as little better than blasphemous,
and pictured to himself an awful eternal Divinity, who pervaded the
universe, and had none of the aspects or attributes of man. Nestor
was deeply imbued with the doctrines of Aristotle, and attempted to
coordinate them with what he considered to be orthodox Christian tenets.
Between him and Cyril, the Bishop or Patriarch of Alexandria, a
quarrel accordingly arose. Cyril represented the paganizing, Nestor the
philosophizing party of the Church. This was