Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2 Volume 3 by Early Church Fathers

Author:Early Church Fathers [Fathers, Early Church]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Early Church Fathers
Publisher: Bennie Blount Ministries
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Your piety, which shines forth for the good of the empire and of the churches of God, has commanded us to assemble at Ephesus, in order to bring about peace and gain for the Church, rather than to confuse and disturb it. And the commands of your majesty plainly and distinctly indicate your pious and peaceful intentions for the churches of Christ. But Cyril of Alexandria, a man, it would seem, born and bred for the bane of the churches, after taking into partnership the audacity of Memnon of Ephesus, has first of all transgressed against your quieting and pious decree, and has so shewed his general depravity. Your majesty had ordered an investigation and careful testing to be made concerning the faith, and that with the consent and concord of all. Cyril, challenged, or rather himself convicting himself, on the count of the Apollinarian doctrines, by means of the letter which he lately sent to the imperial city, with anathematisms, whereby he is convicted of sharing the views of the impious and heretic Apollinarius, pays no heed to this condition of things, and, as though we were living with no emperor to govern us, is proceeding to every kind of lawlessness. He ought himself to be called to account for his unsound opinion about our Lord Jesus Christ; but, usurping an authority given him neither by the canons, nor by your edicts, he is hurrying headlong into every kind of disorder and illegality.

Moved by these things the holy Synod, which has refused to accept his devices for the damage of the faith, for the aforesaid reasons deposes him. It deposes Memnon also, who has been his counsellor and abettor through all, who has kept up constant agitation against the very holy bishops for refusing to assent to his pernicious heterodoxy; who has shut the churches and every place of prayer, as if we were living among the heathen and the enemies of God; who has brought in the Ephesian mob, so that every day we are in supreme danger, while we look not to defence, but heed the right doctrines of true religion. For the destruction of these men is identical with the establishment of orthodoxy.

From his own Chapters your majesty can have no difficulty in perceiving his impious mind. He is convicted of trying, so to say, to raise from Hades the impious Apollinarius, who died in his heresy, and of attacking the churches and the orthodox faith. He is shewn in his publications to anathematize at once evangelists and apostles and them that succeeded them as forefathers of the Church, who, moved not by their own imaginations, but by the holy Spirit, have preached the true faith, and proclaimed the gospel; a faith and gospel indeed opposed to what this man holds and teaches and by inculcating which he wishes to give his own private iniquity the mastery of the world. Since this is intolerable to us we have followed the proper course, relying at once on the divine grace and on your majesty's good will.

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