aptism, withdrew to a
monastery in the vicinity of that city. His great reputation for
eloquence, and the regularity of his life, induced the emperor Theodosius
to select him for the see of Constantinople; and he was consecrated bishop
of that church A. D. 429. He became a violent persecutor of heretics; but,
because he favored the doctrine of his friend Anastasius, that "the virgin
Mary cannot with propriety be called the mother of God," he was
anathematized by Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, who, in his turn, was
anathematized by Nestorius. In the council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, (the
third General Council of the church,) at which Cyril presided, and at
which Nestorius was not present, he was judged and condemned without being
heard, and deprived of his see. He then retired to his monastery, in
Antioch, and was afterwards banished to Petra, in Arabia, and thence to
Oasis, in Egypt, where he died, about A. D. 435 or 439.

The decision of the council of Ephesus caused many difficulties in the
church; and the friends of Nestorius carried his doctrines through all the
Oriental provinces, and established numerous congregations, professing an
invincible opposition to the decrees of the Ephesian council. Nestorianism
spread rapidly over the East, and was embraced by a large number of the
oriental bishops. Barsumas, bishop of Nisibis, labored with great zeal and
activity to procure for the Nestorians a solid and permanent footing in
Persia; and his success was so remarkable that his fame extended
throughout the East. He established a school at Nisibis, which became very
famous, and from which issued those Nestorian doctors who, in that and the
following centuries, spread abroad their tenets through Egypt, Syria,
Arabia, India, Tartary, and China.

The Nestorian church is Episcopal in its government, like all the other
Oriental churches. Its doctrines, also, are, in general, the same with
those of those churches, and they receive and repeat, in their public
worship, the Nicene creed. Their _distinguishing_ doctrines appear to be,
their believing that Mary was not the mother of Jesus Christ, _as God_,
but only _as man_, and that there are, consequently, _two persons_, as
well as _two natures_, in the Son of God. This notion was looked upon in
the earlier ages of the church as a most momentous error; but it has in
later times been considered more as an error of words than of doctrine;
and that the error of Nestorius was in the words