An Essay on the Development of Christian DoctrineNewman, John Henry
Religion
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Newman, John Henry
Catholic Church -- Doctrines; Dogma, Development of
It cannot be supposed that such a transaction would approve itself to
the Churches of Egypt, and the event showed it: they disowned the
authority of the Council, and called its adherents Chalcedonians,[313:1]
and Synodites.[313:2] For here was the West tyrannizing over the East,
forcing it into agreement with itself, resolved to have one and one only
form of words, rejecting the definition of faith which the East had
drawn up in Council, bidding it and making it frame another, dealing
peremptorily and sternly with the assembled Bishops, and casting
contempt on the most sacred traditions of Egypt! What was Eutyches to
them? He might be guilty or innocent; they gave him up: Dioscorus had
given him up at Chalcedon;[313:3] they did not agree with him:[313:4] he
was an extreme man; they would not call themselves by human titles; they
were not Eutychians; Eutyches was not their master, but Athanasius and
Cyril were their doctors.[313:5] The two great lights of their Church,
the two greatest and most successful polemical Fathers that Christianity
had seen, had both pronounced "One Nature Incarnate," though allowing
Two before the Incarnation; and though Leo and his Council had not gone
so far as to deny this phrase, they had proceeded to say what was the
contrary to it, to explain away, to overlay the truth, by defining that
the Incarnate Saviour was "in Two Natures." At Ephesus it had been
declared that the Creed should not be touched; the Chalcedonian Fathers
had, not literally, but virtually added to it: by subscribing Leo's
Tome, and promulgating their definition of faith, they had added what
might be called, "The Creed of Pope Leo."
17.
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