The third and fourth general councils seem to have met upon an occasion of much the like importance. The first council of Nice determined the Son to be a distinct hypostasis, or person from, but of the same nature with the Father. The second at Constantinople, added the Holy Ghost to the same substance of the Father, and made the same individual nature to belong equally and wholly to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; thus making them three distinct persons in one undivided essence. But as they determined the Son to be truly man, as well as truly God, the bishops brought a new controversy into the church, and fell into furious debates and quarrels about his personality. Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, with his followers, maintained two distinct persons in Christ, agreeable to his two distinct natures. But St. Cyril, the implacable enemy of Nestorius, got a council to decree, that the two natures of God and man being united together in our Lord, made one person or Christ; and to curse all who should affirm that there were two distinct persons or subsistencies in him. It is evident, that either Cyril and his council must have been in the wrong in this decree, or the two former councils of Nice and Constantinople wrong in theirs; because it is certain, that they decreed the word PERSON to be used in two infinitely different senses. According to those of Nice and Constantinople, one individual nature or essence contained three distinct persons; according to Cyril’s council, two natures or essences infinitely different, and as distinct as those of God and man, constituted but one person. Now how “one nature should be three persons, and yet two natures one person,” will require the skill even of infallibility itself to explain; and as these decrees are evidently contradictory to one another, I am afraid we must allow that the Holy Ghost had no hand in one or other of them. This some of the clergy very easily observed; and therefore, to maintain the unity of the person of Christ, Eutyches and Dioscorus maintained, that though Christ consisted of two natures before his incarnation, yet after that he had but one nature only. But this was condemned by the council of Chalcedon, and the contradictions of the former councils declared all to be true, and rendered sacred with the stamp of orthodoxy. This was also ratified by the fifth council under Justinian, who also piously and charitably raked into the dust of poor Origen, and damned him for an heretic.