disposes in heaven, and to place his throne above the stars, and promises that he would be like the Most High. He fashioned himself after the likeness of the Most High; he sought to call the Most High into his own likeness. For he proclaimed that he was merely a man born, taking away the mystery of the incarnation, and rendering it void, nay rather attacking it, upon which our faith and salvation according to the creed rest. It is no longer a time for contention, once the enemy has been prostrate: we must pass on from those things that incited wars; it is inopportune in a time of victory to still dispute about battles.
5. What greater proof of things can there be here, what greater reason, than the palm? Let us enjoy, with the Lord as author, this good and pleasant thing, because we have begun again to dwell together as brothers. We wish your Holiness to proclaim these things which you write. You have experienced, from the outcome of the present business, what it is to think with us. The blessed apostle Peter handed down in his successors that which he received. Who would wish to separate himself from the doctrine of him whom the Teacher himself instructed as the first among the apostles? Not hearing through another, not a read sermon instructed him: he was taught with the others by the mouth of the Teacher. He suffered no question of scriptures or of writers; he received an absolute and simple faith, and one that would have no controversy, which we certainly ought always to meditate upon and remain in, so that, following the apostles with a pure mind, we may deserve to be among the apostolic ones. Not a little burden, not a little labor lies upon us, that the Church of the Lord might be without spot or wrinkle. B
6. But for that which, as the Apostle says, there is one faith, and which C overcame victoriously, let us say that it must be believed, and let us say that it must be held. Let nothing further be permitted to novelty, because it is fitting that nothing be added to antiquity. Let the clear belief of our ancestors not be muddied by any admixture of mire. He has proven to us the man, our brother and fellow-bishop Maximian, a priest of the Constantinopolitan Church, consecrated there by divine judgment, so that the disease of the infirmity which the poisons of intrigue alone had poured in, may be overcome by the sweetness of simplicity succeeding it; for he will not be able to preach anything there other than what we believe, except what he heard frequently while he was placed with us by my predecessors. Given on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Theodosius (fourteenth time) and Maximus.
LETTER LIII.
CYRILLUS TO THE HOLY POPE XYSTUS
(Fragment.)I for my part am not convicted of having at any time entertained any opinion other than what appears to the truth, nor have I ever said that the divine nature of the Word is susceptible to passion. And shortly after: But I know also that the nature of God is impassible and D unchangeable and immutable, even in the nature of humanity, and one in both and e...