That Ibas held an ill suspicion concerning Cyril's chapters did not seem to the Synod a reason on account of which it should judge his letter deserving of condemnation. This alone, then, remains—that, together with the malicious and obstinate accusers of the venerable Ibas, the heretics or their abettors may find fault in his letter, because concerning the blessed Cyril he reckoned otherwise than the matter stood, as did many others also. Although in this too these men are proved the more malicious and obstinate, who drag a man's ignorance of a man into the charge of heresy: because they do this after the sentence of the Council, which those others did before it; nor do they suffer calumnies long ago refuted to grow old, but revive in renewed contention those once buried with their authors.
But concerning this ignorance, through which the said most reverend Ibas, together with the bishops of so many provinces, was deceived as to the person of the blessed Cyril, much has already been said, and it has been shown more than sufficiently that this matter does not make a man a heretic. But because we see that some are more lenient in their own sins and more vehement in others', and parade their own sanctity in exaggerating the offenses of their neighbors, let us also remove that odious charge by which they grievously complain, saying that in these chapters it was not so much the blessed Cyril as the Synod of Ephesus, which had already received them, that was faulted; and that this letter cannot be approved unless that same Synod be disapproved.
Hereby they wish to effect that the great Council of Chalcedon, which judged that letter orthodox, may seem to impugn the decrees of the very Synod of Ephesus. But I say that for this very reason it the more often pronounced the said letter orthodox, namely because it saw that, in accordance with the decrees of the Synod of Ephesus itself, it confessed the one Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be in two natures.
Whence it prudently recognized that its writer alone, together with the Eastern bishops and those of the other provinces, in all that was there done, failed to understand how he might justly receive the chapters of the blessed Cyril, in which it was thought by them that he had so said that God the Word became man as to take away the difference of the natures and to declare there to be one nature of the deity and the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ—which every catholic abhors.
But the great Synod of Chalcedon, knowing the intent of those chapters—which the Synod of Ephesus had diligently learned from the blessed Cyril when present, while Ibas and others, as absent, had, as the outcome of the case showed, remained ignorant of it—judged it to make no difference that in those same chapters they had failed to understand the intent, alike of the blessed Cyril who spoke them and of the holy Synod of Ephesus which approved them: since the faith of both was the same, by which all alike believed that God the Word became man in such wise that in the one person of Christ the difference of the two natures should remain. In this, indeed, there was no ignorance on either side, no dissension.
And even if the one party believed otherwise concerning the other, or each concerning the other—which does not pertain to heresy—yet concerning the Christian faith the opinion of both parties was the same. But if anyone says that Ibas and the Easterns and the bishops of the other provinces (for the case of all these is one) ought, even in those things which they did not understand, to have followed the authority of the Council of Ephesus, he himself ought first to consider that the Synod of Chalcedon too is to be believed to have considered this: that, with so many dissenting who had been admonished to assemble together in that very Council, the authority of the Ephesine Council could not at that time be as great as it now is, since it was not yet confirmed by the judgment of the great Synod of Chalcedon.
For antiquity itself also adds much strength to authority. Next, of what rashness and profanation is he said to be, in that the blessed Cyril dared, for the sake of the Easterns' wishes, to retract those things which were now not his own but of the whole Synod of Ephesus, by whose authority they had been confirmed? And if it be imputed to the Nestorian heresy that the Easterns, together with the bishops of the other provinces, not understanding the intent of his chapters in the least, believed that the Synod of Ephesus ought not to have received them—
then the blessed Cyril will be said to have communicated with that same Nestorian heresy, since with the Easterns themselves, who thus reckoned concerning his chapters (whose retraction they demanded) and concerning the Synod of Ephesus, he communicated and subscribed to their confession. For if this opinion is weighed so heavily as to be judged heresy, Cyril ought in no way to have yielded to those same Easterns, but rather to have compelled them, so that even in those things which they less understood they should subject themselves to the authority of the Synod, and should likewise publicly, and as a monument to posterity, condemn by an alleged written confession their own presumption, by which, through a promulgated decree, they had condemned the said chapters;
and not even thus to subscribe to the definition of the Easterns, but rather to require of them that they should subscribe to those same chapters—interpreted not according to their will, but as they had before been received by the Synod of Ephesus—and that they should anathematize as heresy the very suspicion by which they had condemned them, and only so receive them into communion. Whence not even the other Fathers who had assembled with him at Ephesus, and had communicated with the aforesaid Easterns who thus believed concerning the very Council of Ephesus, could have been excused.
But because both the blessed Cyril and the others who at Ephesus had approved those things recognized that that ignorance of theirs was not about the Christian faith itself, but about the intent of their own sayings, it seemed to them base and unworthy to contend on this score, and hereby to prolong the dissension of the Churches—which we, after a hundred years, by restless inexperience are stirring up, though the modesty of the holy Fathers had lulled it to sleep. And would that we were merely troubling some Churches that had been moved in that first dissension, and were not also compelling causes long ago consigned to oblivion, set far away—causes which it irks even those who know them to recall—to be inquired into, and, once found, to be ventilated, by the necessity of answering, not without offense to the hearers.
As for that other point which they likewise allege—that the Synod ought on this account to have judged this letter heretical, because, after the union had been made, its writer Ibas ought not to have said or held such things—we have already answered in the preceding book. But how is the holy Synod, in approving that same letter for the right confession of faith which it contains, said to have impugned the decrees of the Council of Ephesus, when rather, if it had judged it heretical on account of this suspicion, it would be seen at the same time to have censured both the blessed Cyril and the very Council of Ephesus, who communicated with the Easterns who so suspected, judging them without doubt to be orthodox?
You discern therefore, emperor, that those things which in the preceding book, as we had promised, we showed, are here too again and often demonstrated. Wherefore, if the Synod of Chalcedon be called Nestorian because it judged this letter orthodox, then the blessed Cyril and the Synod of Ephesus too will consequently be said to have afterward turned aside into the Nestorian heresy, because they judged orthodox the Easterns who believed this very thing—nay, not the Easterns alone, but the bishops also of the other nine provinces which we mentioned above, who together condemned the same blessed Cyril and Memnon of Ephesus and the aforesaid chapters, passing also against the other bishops, for having received them, the sentence of excommunication.
But this suspicion of the Easterns and of the other Fathers concerning the Synod of Ephesus—who, reckoning that it had transgressed the paternal traditions, strove against it for the very faith which they commonly held—seems to me like that suspicion which had arisen in the days of Joshua the son of Nun among the people of Israel (Josh. xxii), when, laudably, a part of that people, solicitous for the worship of God, was stirred up against another part equally solicitous, being ignorant of its intent. For when that same people of Israel was proceeding to take all the land which God had promised to Abraham, the sons of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, before they had entered the Jordan (Num.
xxxii), had chosen to dwell in the region of Jazer and the region of Gilead, because it was a place suited to the beasts, of which they had great abundance; nor did they wish to take possession beyond the Jordan with the tribes of Israel—yet they went on with their brethren into the land of Canaan to make war upon the nations which the Lord drove out before their face. But further, when the Lord had given Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they had received it for an inheritance, those same sons of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, returning into the land of Gilead—that is, into the land of their possession which they had received for an inheritance—came, as it is written (Josh. xxii, 10), to Geliloth of the Jordan, which is
in Canaan, and there they built an altar upon the Jordan. In Canaan the other tribes had received their possession, in which were the tabernacle and the altar of God; but they themselves, on this side of the Jordan, lest their descendants should become strangers to the worship of God, as though separated from his people by the boundary of the Jordan—out of a religious intent indeed, and fervent with zeal for God—had erected that altar, that it might be for a testimony and a monument to their posterity, that they too pertained to the worship of God and to his people.
But when this intent of theirs was hidden from the other tribes who in the land of Canaan beyond the Jordan had obtained their inheritance, and they supposed that those same sons of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, had built that altar for this purpose—that, segregating themselves from the congregation of all Israel, they might, against the observance of the divine worship, offer sacrifice upon it to the Lord (which it was not lawful to do save at the one altar that was before his tabernacle)—being fervent with the same zeal for God and contending for the same worship of God, they all assembled at Shiloh to go up and make war upon them. And when the sons of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh gave them an account with what purpose and intent they had erected the altar, those others said:
«This day we have known that the Lord is with us, because you have not committed this transgression in the sight of the Lord, and because you have delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of the Lord» (Josh. xxii, 31). You see therefore, Augustus, that for the sake of the same religion by which God is rightly worshiped, the religious and most upright are able not only to dissent from one another, but even laudably to fight against one another, so long as it is not the reason of the divine worship but the intent of the one or the other that lies hidden from them. Wherefore those who say to us, «If you have received the Synod of Ephesus, condemn the bishops of the province of the East and of the other nine provinces»—
will deservedly hear that, if they themselves receive the sons of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh, let them condemn the tribe of Levi and the other nine tribes, which had assembled to make war upon them, while their brethren's intent lay hidden from them. And surely in that people there were also prophets, and no one imputes it to them that they did not perceive the prudent counsel of their brethren's minds, when it could easily have been revealed to those who prayed, out of the received grace of prophecy: but all the Eastern prelates and those of the other provinces, from whom the intent of the chapters of the blessed Cyril lay hidden, so that they faulted the Synod of Ephesus for receiving them, we call bishops, not prophets.
Therefore we who do not impute it to the prophets that they were ignorant of the religious intent of their brethren, but rather praise them that they were stirred up against them out of that same religious intent—how can we impute it to the non-prophet Eastern Fathers and others, that they were stirred up out of a religious intent against those who approved of those things? Inquire into the intent of the sons of Reuben and Gad, and of the half-tribe of Manasseh, and on the other side of the tribe of Levi and the other nine tribes of Israel, and you will find that both parties were solicitous for the divine worship. Inquire into the ignorance, and you will find neither party to be such as pertains to the divine worship, but the one party ignorant of the intent of the other.
Inquire into the intent of the Synod of Ephesus, and on the other side of the prelates of the province of the East and of the other nine provinces, and you will find that both parties were solicitous for the divine worship. Inquire into the ignorance, and you will find neither party to be such as pertains to the divine worship, but the one party ignorant of the intent of the other. This is sufficiently apparent from the fact that, through the venerable Paul bishop of Emesa, neither did the Eastern Fathers require anything impious to be confessed by the blessed Cyril, nor did the blessed Cyril himself deny any of those things which were required.
But if we cannot condemn the Eastern Fathers and the others who were with them, on account of their ignorance of another's intent—just as we cannot condemn those many tribes of Israel—how would the Synod of Chalcedon condemn the letter of the venerable Ibas, which according to their suspicion complained of the reception of the chapters of the blessed Cyril? For is the bishop Ibas, or are any other prelates of the many provinces, ever shown to have faulted the Synod of Ephesus, because it confirmed that against Nestorius, albeit in two natures, yet one Son of God and man, Jesus Christ, was to be confessed?—so that it could be believed that he both resisted the faith which he held concerning the incarnation of Christ, and preached something else?
There is nothing therefore that the Eutychians may complain of in this letter, even concerning the intent of the chapters of the blessed Cyril and of the Synod of Ephesus.