Adolf Harnack · 5 of 21

Expulsion of Modalistic Monarchianism · Part 2

(b) The last stages of Modalism in the West, and the State of Theology.

Our information is very defective concerning the destinies of Monarchianism in Rome and the West, after the close of the first thirty years of the third century; nor are we any better off in respect to the gradual acceptance of the Logos Christology. The excommunication of Sabellius by Callistus in Rome resulted at once in the Monarchians ceasing to find any followers in the West, and in the complete withdrawal soon afterwards of strict and aggressive Modalism. Callistus himself has, besides, not left to posterity an altogether clean reputation as regards his Christology, although he had covered himself in the main point by his compromise formula. Hippolytus’ sect had ceased to exist about A.D. 250; nay, it is not altogether improbable that he himself made his peace with the great Church shortly before his death. We can infer from Novatian’s important work “De trinitate”, that the following tenets were recognised in Rome about 250: (1) Christ did not first become God. (2) The Father did not suffer. (3) Christ pre-existed and is true God and man. But it was not only in Rome that these tenets were established, but also in many provinces. If the Roman Bishop Dionysius could write in a work of his own against the Sabellians, that “Sabellius blasphemed, saying that the Son was himself Father”, then we must conclude that this doctrine was then held inadmissible in the West. Cyprian again has expressed himself as follows (Ep. 73. 4): “Patripassiani, Valentiniani, Appelletiani, Ophitæ, Marcionitæ et cetere hæreticorum pestes” ( — the other plagues of heretics), and we must decide that the strict Modalistic form of doctrine was then almost universally condemned in the West. Of the difficulties met with in the ejection of the heresy, or the means employed, we have no information. Nothing was changed in the traditional Creed — a noteworthy and momentous difference from the oriental Churches! But we know of one case in which an important alteration was proposed. The Creed of the Church of Aquileia began, in the fourth century, with the words “I believe in God the Father omnipotent, invisible, and impassible” (Credo in deo patre omnipotente, invisibili et impassibili), and Rufinus, who has preserved it for us, tells that the addition was made, at any rate as early as the third century, in order to exclude the Patripassians.

But the exclusion of the strict Modalists involved neither their immediate end, nor the wholesale of the teaching of Tertullian and Hippolytus, of the philosophical doctrine of the Logos. As regards the latter, the recognition of the name of Logos for Christ, side by side with other titles, did not at once involve the reception of the Logos doctrine, and the very fact, that no change was made in the Creed, shows how reluctant men were to give more than a necessary minimum of space to philosophical speculations. They were content with the formula, extracted from the Creed, “Jesus Christus, deus et homo”, and with the combination of the Biblical predicates applied to Christ, predicates which also governed their conception of the Logos. In this respect the second Book of the Testimonies of Cyprian is of great importance. In the first six chapters the divinity of Christ is discussed, in terms of Holy Scripture, under the following headings. (1) Christum primogenitum esse et ipsum esse sapientiam dei, per quem omnia facta sunt; (2) quod sapientia dei Christus; (3) quod Christus idem sit et sermo dei; (4) quod Christus idem manus et brachium dei; (5) quod idem angelus et deus; (6) quod deus Christus. Then follows, after some sections on the appearing of Christ: (10) quod et homo et deus Christus. The later Nicene and Chalcedonian doctrine was the property of the Western Church from the third century, not in the form of a philosophically technical speculation, but in that of a categorical Creed-like expression of faith — see Novatian’s “De trinitate”, in which the doctrine of the Logos falls into the background. Accordingly the statement of Socrates (H. E. III. 7) is not incredible, that the Western Churchman Hosius had already declared the distinction between οὐσία and ὑπόστασις (substantia and persona) before the Council of Nicæa. The West welcomed in the fourth century all statements which contained the complete divinity of Christ, without troubling itself much about arguments and proofs, and the controversy between the two Dionysii in the middle of the third century (see under), proves that a declared interest was kept up in the complete divinity of Christ, as an inheritance from the Monarchian period in Rome. Nay, a latent Monarchian element really continued to exist in the Western Church; this we can still study in the poems of Commodian. Commodian, again, was not yet acquainted with speculations regarding the “complete” humanity of Jesus; he is satisfied with the flesh of Christ being represented as a sheath, (V. 224, “And suffers, as he willed, in our likeness”; on the other hand, V. 280, “now the flesh was God, in which the virtue of God acted.”) But these are only symptoms of a Christian standpoint which was fundamentally different from that of oriental theologians, and which Commodian was by no means the only one to occupy. He, Lactantius, and Arnobius are very different from each other. Commodian was a practical Churchman; Arnobius was an empiricist and in some form also a sceptic and decided opponent of Platonism; while Lactantius was a disciple of Cicero and well acquainted besides with the speculations of Greek Christian theology. But they are all three closely connected in the contrast they present to the Greek theologians of the school of Origen; there is nothing mystical about them, they are not Neoplatonists. Lactantius has, indeed, expounded the doctrine of Christ, the Logos, as well as any Greek; as a professional teacher it was all known and familiar to him; but as he nowhere encounters any problems in his Christology, as he discusses doctrines with very few theological or philosophical formulas, almost in a light tone, as if they were mere matters of course, we see that he had no interest of his own in them. He was rather interested in exactly the same questions as Arnobius and Commodian, who again showed no anxiety to go beyond the simplest Christological formulas — that Christ was God, that he had, however, also assumed flesh, or united himself with a man, since otherwise we could not have borne the deity: “And God was man, that he might possess us in the future” (Et fuit homo deus, ut nos in futuro haberet). The Christianity and theology which these Latins energetically supported against polytheism, were summed up in Monotheism, a powerfully elaborated morality, the hope of the Resurrection which was secured by the work of the God Christ who had crushed the demons, and in unadulterated Chiliasm. Monotheism — in the sense of Cicero “De natura deorum” — Moralism, and Chiliasm: these are the clearly perceived and firmly held points, and not only for Apologetic purposes, but also, as is proved especially by the second book of Commodian’s “Instructiones”, in independent and positive expositions. These Instructions are, along with the Carmen Apolog., of the highest importance for our estimate of Western Christianity in the period A.D. 250-315. We discover here, 100 years after the Gnostic fight, a Christianity that was affected, neither by the theology of the anti-gnostic Church Fathers, nor specially by that of the Alexandrians, one which the dogmatic contentions and conquests of the years 150-250 have passed over, hardly leaving a trace. Almost all that is required to explain it by the historian who starts with the period of Justin is to be found in the slightly altered conditions of the Roman world of culture, and in the development of the Church system as a practical power, a political and social quantity. Even in the use of Scripture this Christianity of the West reveals its conservatism. The Books of the O. T. and the Apocalypse are those still most in vogue. Commodian does not stand alone, nor are the features to be observed in his “Instructiones” accidental. And we are not limited to the Apologists Arnobius and Lactantius for purposes of comparison. We learn much the same thing as to African Christianity from the works of Cyprian, or, even from the theological attitude of the Bishop himself, as we infer from Commodian’s poems. And, on the other hand, Latin Church Fathers of the fourth century, e.g., Zeno and Hilary, show in their writings that we must not look for the theological interests of the West in the same quarter as those of the East. In fact the West did not, strictly speaking, possess a specifically Church “theology” at all. It was only from the second half of the fourth century that the West was invaded by the Platonic theology which Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Novatian had cultivated, to all appearance without any thorough success. Some of its results were accepted, but the theology itself was not. Nor, in some ways, was it later on, when the Western structure of Monotheism, energetic practical morality, and conservative Chiliasm fell a prey to destruction. The mystical tendencies, or the perceptions that led to them, were themselves awanting. Yet there is no mistake, on the other hand, as we are taught by the Institutiones of Lactantius as well as the Tractates of Cyprian, that the rejection of Modalism and the recognition of Christ as the Logos forced upon the West the necessity of rising from faith to a philosophical and, in fact, a distinctively Neoplatonic dogmatic. It was simply a question of time when this departure should take place. The recognition of the Logos could not fail ultimately to produce everywhere a ferment which transformed the Rule of Faith into the compendium of a scientific religion. It is hardly possible to conjecture how long and where Monarchians maintained their ground as independent sects in the West. It is yet most probable that there were Patripassians in Rome in the fourth century. The Western Fathers and opponents of heretics from the middle of the fourth century speak not infrequently of Monarchians — Sabellians; but they, as a rule, have simply copied Greek sources, from which they have transferred the confusion that prevailed among the Greek representatives of Sabellianism, and to a still greater extent, we must admit, among the historians who were hostile to it.

(c) The Modalistic Monarchians in the East: Sabellianism and the History of Philosophical Christology and Theology after Origen.

After the close of the third century the name of “Sabellians” became the common title of Modalistic Monarchians in the East. In the West also the term was used here and there, in the same way, in the fourth and fifth centuries. In consequence of this the traditional account of the doctrines taught by Sabellius and his immediate disciples is very confused. Zahn has the credit of having shown that the propositions, especially, which were first published by Marcellus of Ancyra, were characterised by opponents as Sabellian because Monarchian, and in later times they have been to the older theologian. But not only does the work of Marcellus pass under the name of Sabellius up to the present day, Monarchianism undoubtedly assumed very different forms in the East in the period between Hippolytus and Athanasius. It was steeped in philosophical speculation. Doctrines based on kenosis and transformation were developed. And the whole was provided by the historians with the same label. At the same time these writers went on drawing inferences, until they have described forms of doctrine which, in this connection, in all probability never existed at all. Accordingly, even after the most careful examination and sifting of the information handed down, it is now unfortunately impossible to write a history of Monarchianism from Sabellius to Marcellus; for the accounts are not only confused, but fragmentary and curt. It is quite as impossible to give a connected history of the Logos Christology from Origen to Arius and Athanasius, although the tradition is in this case somewhat fuller. But the orthodox of the fourth and fifth centuries found little to please them in the Logos doctrine of those earlier disciples of Origen, and consequently they transmitted a very insignificant part of their writings to posterity. This much is certain, however, that in the East the fight against Monarchianism in the second half of the third century was a violent one, and that even the development of the Logos Christology (of Origen) was directly and lastingly influenced by this opposition. The circumstance, that “Sabelliansim” was almost the only name by which Monarchianism was known in the East, points, for the rest, to schisms having resulted only from, or, at any rate, after the appearance and labours of Sabellius in the East, therefore at the earliest since about 230-240. So long as Origen lived in Alexandria no schism took place in Egypt over the Christological question.

Sabellius, perhaps by birth a Lybian from Pentapolis, seems after his excommunication to have remained at the head of a small community in Rome. He was still there, to all appearance, when Hippolytus wrote the Philosophumena. Nor do we know of his ever having left the city, — we are nowhere told that he did. Yet he must have, at least, set an important movement at work abroad from Rome as his centre, and have especially fostered relations with the East. When, in Pentapolis, about A.D. 260, and several years after the death of Origen, the Monarchian doctrine took hold of the Churches there (Dionys., l.c.) — Churches which, it is significant, were to some extent Latin in their culture — Sabellius can hardly have been alive, yet it was under his name that the heresy was promoted. But it would seem as if this prominence was given to him for the first time about A.D. 260. Origen at least had not, so far as I know, mentioned the name of Sabellius in his discussions of Monarchianism. These date from as early as A.D. 215. At the time, Origen was in Rome, Zephyrine being still Bishop. From the relations which he then entered into with Hippolytus, it has been rightly concluded that he did not hold aloof from the contentions in Rome, and took the side of Hippolytus. This attitude of Origen’s may not have been without influence on his condemnation afterwards in Rome by Pontian, 231 or 232. Origen’s writings, moreover, contain many sharp censures on Bishops who, in order to glorify God, made the distinction between Father and Son merely nominal. And this again seems to have been said not without reference to the state of matters in Rome. The theology of Origen made him an especially energetic opponent of the Modalistic form of doctrine; for although the new principles set up by him — that the Logos, looking to the content of his nature, possessed the complete deity, and that he from eternity was created from the being of the Father — approached apparently a Monarchian mode of thought, yet they in fact repelled it more energetically then Tertullian and Hippolytus could possibly have done. He who followed the philosophical theology of Origen was proof against all Monarchianism. But it is important to notice that in all places where Origen comes to speak about Monarchians, he merely seems to know their doctrines in an extremely simple form, and without any speculative embroidery. They are always people who “deny that Father and Son are two Hypostases” (they say: ἓν οὐ μόνον οὐσίᾳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑποκειμέῳ), who “fuse together” Father and Son (συγχέειν), who admit distinctions in God only in “conception” and “name”, and not in “number”, etc. Origen considers them therefore to be untheological creatures, mere “believers”. Accordingly, he did not know the doctrine of Sabellius, and living in Syria and Palestine had even had no opportunity of learning it.

That doctrine was undoubtedly closely allied, as Epiphanius has rightly seen (H. 62. 1), to the teaching of Noëtus; it was distinguished from the latter, however, both by a more careful theological elaboration, and by the place given to the . The opinion of Nitzsch and others, that we must distinguish between two stages in the theology of Sabellius, is unnecessary, whenever we eliminate the unreliable sources. The central proposition of Sabellius ran that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were the same. Three names accordingly were attached to one and the same being. It was his interest in monotheism that influenced Sabellius. “What shall we say,” urge his followers in Epiphanius (ch. 2), “have we one God or three Gods?” (τί ἂν εἴπωμεν, ἕνα Θεόν ἔχόεν, ἢ τρεῖς Θεούς); and Epiphanius (ch. 3) replies: “we do not propound polytheism” (οὐ πολυθεΐαν εἰσηγούμεθα). Whether Sabellius himself used the comparison between the threefold nature of man and the sun remains a question (one nature, three energies: τὸ φωτιστικόν light giving, τὸ θάλπον heat giving, τὸ σχῆμα the form). The one being was also called by Sabellius υἱοπάτωρ, an expression which was certainly chosen to remove any misunderstanding, to make it impossible to suppose that two beings were in question. This υἱοπάτωρ (son-father) was in Sabellius the ultimate designation for God Himself, and not, say, merely for certain manifestations of a μονάς (unit) resting in the background. Sabellius, however, taught — according to Epiphanius and Athanasius — that God was not at the same time Father and Son; but that he had, rather, put forth his activity in three successive “energies”; first, in the Prosopon (= form of manifestation, figure; not = Hypostasis) of the Father as Creator and Lawgiver; secondly, in the Prosopon of the Son as Redeemer, beginning with the incarnation and ending at the ascension; finally, and up till the present hour, in the Prosopon of the Spirit as giver and sustainer of life. We do not know whether Sabellius was able strictly to carry out the idea of the strict succession of the Prosopa, so that the one should form the boundary of the other. It is possible, indeed it is not improbable, that he could not fail to recognise in nature a continuous energy of God as Father. It is self-evident that the Sabellians would approve of the Catholic Canon; that they did, is confirmed by Epiphanius. They are said to have appealed especially to passages like Deut. VI. 4, Exod. XX. 3, Isa. XLIV. 6 and John X. 38. But Epiphanius remarks besides that the Sabellians derived their whole heresy and its strength from certain Apocrypha, especially the so-called Gospel of the Egyptians. This note is instructive; for it not only recalls to our recollection a lost literature of the second century, especially the Gospel of the Egyptians, but it also shows that the use of an uncanonical Gospel had long continued among Catholics in the Pentapolis, or at any rate in Egypt. Finally, it confirms the view that the Christology of Sabellius cannot have been essentially different from the older, the so-called Patripassian doctrine. It is distinguished from the latter neither by the assumption of a transcendental Monas resting behind the Prosopa, nor by the introduction of the category of the Logos — which was made use of by Callistus, but not by Sabellius; nor by a speculative theory, borrowed from the Stoa, of the Deity, self-contained, and again unfolding itself; nor, finally, by a doctrine of the constructed in any fashion or by the expression υἱοπάτωρ, which, as used by Sabellius, simply affirmed the single personality of God. As to the doctrine of the Trinity, a triad was distinctly out of the question in Sabellius. The only noteworthy and real differences are found in these three points; first, in the attempt to demonstrate the succession of the Prosopa; secondly, as observed above, in the reference to the Holy Spirit; thirdly, in formally placing the Father on a parallel line with the two other Prosopa. The attempt mentioned above may be regarded as a return to the strict form of Modalism, which it was possible to hold was impugned by formulas like the compassus est pater filio (the Father suffered in sympathy with the Son). In the reference to the Holy Spirit, Sabellius simply followed the new theology, which was beginning to take the Spirit more thoroughly into account. Most important is the third point mentioned. For in ranging the Prosopon and energy of the Father in a series with the two others, not only was cosmology introduced into the Modalistic doctrine as a parallel to soteriology, but the preëminence of the Father over the other Prosopa was departed from in principle, and thus, in a curious fashion, the way was prepared for the Athanasian, and still more for the Western and Augustinian Christology. Here, undoubtedly, we have the decisive advance marked by Sabellianism within Monarchianism. It led up to the exclusive ὁμοούσιος (consubstantial); for it is probable that Sabellians employed this expression. They could apply it with perfect right. Further, while up to this time no evident bond had connected cosmology and soteriology within Modalistic theology, Sabellius now made the histories of the world and salvation into a history of the God who revealed himself in them. In other words, this Monarchianism became commensurate in form with that theology which employed the conception of the Logos, and this fact may have constituted by no means the least part of the attractiveness which Sabellianism proved itself to possess in no small degree up to the beginning of the fourth century and even later. However, it is not to be concealed that the teaching of Sabellius relative to the Prosopon of the Father is particularly obscure. The sentence attributed to him by Athanasius, “as there are diversities of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit, so also the Father is the same, but unfolds himself in Son and Spirit” — seems at the first glance to contradict the details given above. Yet the different gifts are certainly the Spirit himself, which so unfolds himself in them that he does not remain an element behind them, but is completely merged in them. In the same way the Father unfolds himself in the Prosopa. The witnesses to the succession of the Prosopa in Sabellius are too strong to allow us to infer from this passage that the Father still remained Father after the unfolding (πλατυσμός) in the Son. But this passage shows that philosophical speculations could readily attach themselves to the simple theory of Sabellius. Marcellus rejected his doctrine which he knew accurately. What he missed in it was the recognition of the Logos; therefore the idea of God had also not been correctly apprehended by him. But the form given to Monarchianism by Marcellus won few friends for that type of doctrine. Alexandrian theologians, or Western scholars who came to their assistance, had already perfected the combination of Origen’s doctrine of the Logos with the Monarchian Ὁμοούσιος; in other words, they had turned the category used by Origen against the λόγος κτίσμα conception (the Logos-created) of Origen himself. The saving formula, , the Logos of the same substance, not made” (λόγος ὁμοούσιος οὐ ποιηθείς), was already uttered, and, suspiciously like Monarchianism as it sounded at first, became for that very reason the means of making Monarchianism superfluous in the Church, and of putting an end to it.

But that only happened after great fights. One of these we know, the controversy of the two Dionysii, a prelude to the Arian conflict. In the Pentapolis the Sabellian doctrine had, soon after the death of Origen, won a great following even among the Bishops, “so that the Son of God was no longer preached.” Dionysius of Alexandria, therefore, composed various letters in which he tried to recall those who had been misled, and to refute Sabellianism. In one of these, directed to Euphranor and Ammonius, he gave an extreme exposition of Origen’s doctrine of the subordination of the Son. This letter seemed very questionable to some Christians — probably in Alexandria, perhaps in Pentapolis. They lodged a complaint, soon after A.D. 260, against the Alexandrian Bishop with Dionysius in Rome. The latter assembled a synod at Rome, which disapproved of the expressions used by the Alexandrian, and himself despatched to Alexandria a didactic letter against the Sabellians and their opponents, who inclined to subordinationism. In this letter the Bishop so far spared his colleague as not to mention his name; but he sent him a letter privately, calling for explanations. The Alexandrian Bishop sought to himself in a long document in four books (ἔλεγ χος καὶ ἀπολογία), maintained that his accusers had wickedly torn sentences from their context, and gave explanations which seem to have satisfied the Roman Bishop, and which Athanasius at any rate admitted to be thoroughly orthodox. But the letter of the Roman Bishop appears to have had no immediate influence on the further development in Alexandria (see under); the universal collapse of the Empire in the following decades permitted the Alexandrian theologians to continue their speculations, without needing to fear further immediate reproofs from Roman Bishops.

Two facts give a special interest to the controversy of the Dionysii. First, in spite of the acceptance of the sacred Triad, the Romans adhered simply, without any speculative harmonising, to the unity of the Deity, and decided that Origen’s doctrine of subordination was Tritheism. Secondly, no scruple was felt at Alexandria in carrying out the subordination of the Son to the Father until it involved separation, though it was well known that such a view was supported, not by the tradition of the Church, but by philosophy alone. The accusers of the Alexandrian Dionysius charged him with separating Father and Son; denying the eternal existence of the Son; naming the Father without the Son and vice versâ;omitting to use the word ὁμοούσιος; and finally, with regarding the Son as a creature, related to the Father as the vine to the gardener, or the boat to the shipbuilder. In these censures, which were not inaccurate, it is obvious that Dionysius, continuing the Neoplatonic speculations of his teacher, conceived the λόγος as portio and derivatio of the μονάς, thus, in order to meet Sabellianism, actually dividing him from the deity. Dionysius sought to excuse himself in his ἔλεγχος (Refutation), and emphasised exclusively the other side of Origen’s doctrine, at the same time admitting that in his incriminated writing he had incidentally employed somewhat unsuitable similes. Now he said that the Father had always been Father, and that Christ had always existed as the Logos and wisdom and power of God; that the Son had his being from the Father, and that he was related to the Father as the rays are to the light. He explained that while he had not used the word ὁμοούσιος, because it did not occur in Holy Scripture, figures were to be found in his earlier writings which corresponded to it; thus the figure of parents and children, of seed or root and plant, and of source and stream. The Father was the source of all good, the Son the outflow; the Father the mind (νοῦς), the Son the word (λόγος) — reminding us very forcibly of Neoplatonism — or the emanating mind (νοῦς προπηδῶν), while the νοῦς itself remains “and is what it was” (καὶ ἔστιν οἷος ἦν). “But being sent he flew forth and is borne everywhere, and thus each is in each, the one being of the other, and they are one, being two’ (Ὁ δὲ ἐξέπτη προπεμφθεὶς καὶ φέρεται πανταχοῦ καὶ οὕτως ἐστὶν ἑκάτερος ἐν ἑκατέρω ἓτερος ὤν θατέρου, καὶ ἓν εἰσιν, ὄντες δύο). But he now went further: any separation between Father and Son was to be repudiated. “I say Father, and before I add the Son, I have already included and designated him in the Father.” The same holds true of the Holy Spirit. Their very names always bind all three together inseparably. “How then do I who use these names think that these are divided and entirely separated from each other? (πῶς οὖν ὁ τούτοις χρώμενος τοῖς ὀνόμασι μεμερίσθαι ταῦτα καὶ ἀφωρίσθαι παντελῶς ἀλλήλων οἴομαι;). In these words the retreat was sounded; for what the Roman Bishop rejected, but Alexandrian theology never ventured wholly to discard, was the “dividing” (μερίζεσθαι). The reservation lies in the word “entirely” (παντελῶς). Dionysius added in conclusion: “Thus we unfold the unit into the triad without dividing it, and we sum up the triad again into the unit without diminishing it,” (οὕτω μὲν ἡμεῖς εἴς τε τὴν τριάδα τὴν μονάδα πλατύνομεν ἀδιαίρετον, καὶ τὴν τριάδα πάλιν ἀμείωτον εἰς τὴν μονάδα συγκεφαλαιούμεθα). In this he has accommodated himself to a mode of looking at things which he could only allege to be his own under a mental reservation, as in the case of the qualification “entirely” (παντελῶς). For the terms πλατύνειν and συγκεφαλαιοῦσθαι were not those current in the school of Origen, and admit of a different interpretation. Finally, Dionysius denied the charge of the “sycophants” that he made the Father the Creator of Christ.

The letter of Dionysius of Rome falls midway between these two manifestoes, which are so different, of the Alexandrian Bishop. We have to regret very deeply that Athanasius has only preserved one, though a comprehensive, fragment of this document. It is extremely characteristic of the Roman Bishop, to begin with, that it seeks to settle the sound doctrine by representing it as the just mean between the false unitarian or Sabellian, and the false trinitarian or Alexandrian doctrine. The second characteristic of the letter is that it regards the Alexandrian doctrine as teaching that there are three Gods, and draws a parallel between it and the Three principles of the Marcionites. This proves that the Roman Bishop did not trouble himself with the speculation of the Alexandrians, and simply confined himself to the result — as he conceived it — of three separate Hypostases. Finally — and this is the third characteristic feature — the letter shows that Dionysius had nothing positive to say, further than that it was necessary to adhere to the ancient Creed, definitely interpreting it to mean that the three, Father, Son, and Spirit, were equally one. Absolutely no attempt is made to explain or to prove this paradox. But here undoubtedly lies the strength of the Roman Bishop’s position. When we compare his letter with that of Leo I. to Flavian and Agatho’s to the Emperor, we are astonished at the close affinity of these Roman manifestoes. In form they are absolutely identical. The three Popes did not trouble themselves about proofs or arguments, but fixed their attention solely on the consequences, or what seemed to them consequences, of disputed doctrines. Starting with these deductions they refuted doctrines of the right and left, and simply fixed a middle theory, which existed merely in words, for it was self-contradictory. This they grounded formally on their ancient Creed without even attempting to argue out the connection: one God — Father, Son and Spirit; one Person — perfect God and perfect man; one Person — two wills. Their contentment with establishing a middle line, which possessed the attribute of that known in mathematics, is, however, a proof that they had not a positive, but merely a negative, religious interest in these speculations. Otherwise they would not have been satisfied with a definition it was impossible to grasp; for no religion lives in conceptions which cannot be represented and realised. Their religious interest centred in the God Jesus, who had assumed the substantia humana.