can almost always
distinguish at a glance errors that threaten the essentials of the
Faith from those that do not. In the fourth and fifth centuries the
case was otherwise. Christianity was then one among many conflicting
systems of religion. Its intellectual bases were as yet only
imperfectly thought out. Any doctrinal error seemed capable of
poisoning the whole body of belief. Heresy, so the orthodox held, was
of the devil. No charitable view of it was allowable. That
uncompromising attitude was, to a large extent, justified because many
articles of the heretical creeds were of purely pagan origin. Given
similar conditions to-day, our easy tolerance of opinion would
disappear. If Islam, for instance, were to-day a serious menace to the
Faith, Christians would automatically stiffen their attitude towards
monophysite doctrines. Toleration of the false Christology would,
under those circumstances, be treason to the true. The Church of the
fifth century was menaced from many sides. Monophysitism was the foe
at her gates. That heresy was not a variety of Christianity. It was a
semi-pagan theosophy, a product of Greek and oriental, as well as of
purely Christian speculation; therefore it was anathema to the orthodox.

THE ELEMENTAL FORMS OF CHRISTOLOGICAL ERROR--DOCETISM AND EBIONITISM

We propose to begin the study of the antecedents of monophysitism by
examining those of a Christian or semi-Christian character. For that
purpose it will be necessary to give a brief sketch of the early
heresies in so far as they bear on the Christological problem.

The two primitive forms of doctrinal error, to which the Church, even
in apostolic days, was exposed, were docetism and ebionitism. These
are the elemental heresies. All the later Christological heresies are
refinements of one or other of these two. They constitute the extremes
of Christological thought: between them runs the _via media_ of
orthodoxy. Each of the two sees but one aspect of the two-fold life of
Christ. Docetism lays an exclusive emphasis on His real divinity,
ebionitism on His real humanity. Each mistakes a half truth for a
whole truth.

The docetists denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. His
body, they taught, was an apparition. He ate and drank, but the
physical frame received no sustenance. He appeared to suffer, but felt
no pain. The reality behind the semblance was the divine spirit-being,
who conjured up the illusio