of our Saviour was impassible and immortal; that it was not taken of the Virgin _Mary_; that he was not born of her; that his Birth, Passion, Death, and Resurrection, were mere Illusions; or else, that the Divine Nature was passible: both which Absurdities were admitted by some of the Sects into which the _Apollinarists_ were afterwards divided[1077]. [Sidenote: Apollinaris _not known nor suspected to be the Author of the Heresy he broached_.] This Doctrine was first heard of in 362. and condemned the same Year in the Council of _Alexandria_. In 373. it began to make a great Noise in the Church; but it was not known even then by whom it had been broached: for _Apollinaris_ was so far from owning himself the Author of those Tenets, that, in one of his Letters to _Serapion_ Bishop of _Thmuis_ in _Egypt_, which is still extant[1078], he expresses, in the strongest Terms, his Approbation of a Letter from _Athanasius_ to _Epictetus_ Bishop of _Corinth_, confuting the very Errors he held; and at the same time condemns the Folly of those, who maintained the Flesh to be consubstantial to the Divine Nature. In another Letter to the same _Serapion_, he owns the Body of our Saviour to have been taken of the Virgin _Mary_, to have been formed in her Womb, and his Flesh to have been of the same Substance with ours; adding, _And these are Truths not to be called in question_[1079]. In a Third Letter he assures _Serapion_, that he has ever denied in his Writings the Flesh of our Saviour to have descended from Heaven, or to be of the same Substance with the Divinity[1080]. _Apollinaris_, by thus publicly declaring against the Doctrine, which at the same time he was privately propagating, eluded the Vigilance of _Athanasius_ himself, who, in confuting his Errors, never mentions his Name, nor seems to have entertained the least Suspicion of him; nay, he recommended _Timotheus_, a favourite Disciple of his, to _Damasus_, as a Person whose Orthodoxy was not to be questioned; and as such he was received, not only by the Bishop of _Rome_, but by all the Western Bishops, of whom he obtained Letters, on his Return, directed to _Apollinaris_, as to a Bishop of the Catholic Communion[1081]. [Sidenote: _His Errors condemned in a Council at_ Rome.]