e the
times of Constantine, was always to facilitate the conversion of the
Pagans, assumed, after the fall of Rome, a more decided character, and the
system of useful concessions became general in all the churches of Europe;
and it cannot be doubted that its results have been favourable to the
propagation of Christian ideas.(23)

"There is, moreover, a peculiar cause to which the rapid decline of the
pagan doctrines in the west must be ascribed, and I shall endeavour to
place this powerful cause in its true light, carefully avoiding mixing up
with a subject of this importance all considerations foreign to the object
of my researches.

"Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, after having defended a long time
the true faith, strayed from it on a subject which proved a
stumbling-stone to so many theologians--I mean, the nature of Jesus Christ.
Nestorius distinguished in the Son of God two natures, a divine and a
human one; and he maintained that the Virgin Mary was not the mother of
God ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), but the mother of the man ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}). This doctrine,
which was a new and bolder form given to Arianism, spread in the two
empires, and gained a great number of partisans amongst the monasteries of
Egypt. Many monks could not almost suffer that Jesus Christ should be
acknowledged as God, and considered him only as an instrument of the
Divinity, or a vessel which bore it ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}).

"The celebrated St Cyrillus, bishop of Alexandria, wrote an epistle to
those monks, in order to call them back to respect for the traditions
established in the church, if not by the apostles--who, in speaking of the
holy virgin, never made use of the expression, _mother of Go