himself, the second person of an equal and
consubstantial trinity, was manifested in the flesh; _that_ a being who
pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary; _that_ his
eternal duration had been marked by the days, and months, and years of
human existence; _that_ the Almighty had been scourged and crucified;
_that_ his impassible essence had felt pain and anguish; _that_ his
omniscience was not exempt from ignorance; and that the source of life
and immortality expired on Mount Calvary. These alarming consequences
were affirmed with unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, bishop of
Laodicea, and one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned
grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece; eloquence,
erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes of Apollinaris,
were humbly devoted to the service of religion. The worthy friend of
Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian, he bravely wrestled
with the Arians and Polytheists, and though he affected the rigor of
geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and
allegorical sense of the Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated
in the looseness of popular belief, was defined by his perverse
diligence in a technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable
words, "One incarnate nature of Christ," which are still reechoed with
hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and AEthiopia. He taught
that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man; and that
the _Logos_, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place and
office of a human soul. Yet as the profound doctor had been terrified at
his own rashness, Apollinaris was heard to mutter some faint accents
of excuse and explanation. He acquiesced in the old distinction of the
Greek philosophers between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that
he might reserve the _Logos_ for intellectual functions, and employ the
subordinate human principle in the meaner actions of animal life. With
the moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual, rather than
as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body either came from heaven,
impassible and incorruptible, or was absorbed, and as it were
transformed, into the essence of the Deity. The system of Apollinaris
was strenuously encountered by the Asiatic and Syrian divines whose
schools are honored by the names of Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom, and
tainted by those of Diodorus, Theodore, and Nestori