X

(whom some writers improbably represent as having at last renounced his heresy), followed soon after. Felix remained at Lyons with Leidrad, and afterwards with his successor Agobard. He occasionally vented some of his old opinions, but, when Agobard argued with him, he professed to be convinced. After his death, however, which took place in 818, it was found that he had left a paper containing the chief points of his heresy in the form of question and answer; and Agobard found himself obliged to undertake a refutation of this, in order to counteract the mischief which it was likely to produce, as coming from a person who had been much revered for sanctity. Although the Adoptionist doctrine has been revived or justified by some writers of later times, it never afterwards gained any considerable influence."

b

IV. Towards the end of Charlemagne's reign a controversy arose as to the Procession of the Holy Spirit. In the Latin Church it had always been held that the Third Person of the Godhead proceeds from the Second as well as from the First. The same doctrine which the Latins thus expressed-that the Godhead of the Holy Spirit is communicated not only from the Father but from the Son-had also been held by the Greeks in general; but, as the word proceed is in Scripture used only of his relation to the Father, they had not applied it to express his relation to the Son. Thus the second General Council, in the words which it added to the Nicene creed in opposition to the Macedonian heresy, defined only that the Holy Ghost "proceedeth from the Father." Theodoret, indeed, had used language which seems irreconcilable with the western belief; but it is not to be understood as expressing more than the private opinion of a writer whose orthodoxy was not unimpeached on other points; and as yet no controversy either of fact or of expression had arisen as to this subject between the two great divisions of the church.

specimen of the Spanish primate's style: "Reverendissimo fratri Albino diacono, non Christi ministro, sed antiphrasii Beati fœtidissimi discipulo. . . . novo Arrio, sanctorum venerabilium patrum Ambrosii, Augustini, Isidori, Hieronymi, doctrinis contrario-si se converterit ab errore viæ suæ, a Domino æternam salutem; et si noluerit, æternam damnationem." The slaves are supposed to have been those attached to the estates belonging to St. Martin's Abbey and to Alcuin's other preferments. See his answer to the charge, Ep. ad Leidr. t. i. 861.

* Vita Beati ap. Mabill. v. 737 ;, Ma

In the west, the procession of the Spirit from the Son was in timé introduced into creeds. It is found in the Athanasian Creed, a form which was undoubtedly of western composition, but of which the date is much disputed. The first appearance of the doctrine in the Nicene or Constantinopolitan creed was at the third council of Toledo, in 589; and it was often enforced by later Spanish councils, under the sanction of an anathema. It would seem to have been from Spain that the definition made its way into France, where the truth of the Double Procession was not controverted, but some questions were raised as to the expediency or lawfulness of adding to the Nicene Creed.'

A.D. 767.

m

The origin of the differences on this subject in the period now before us is not clear. There was some discussion of it at the council of Gentilly, where the ambassadors of Constantine Copronymus were present; but (as has been already stated") the details of that council are unknown. At the council of Friuli, in 796, Paulinus maintained the expediency of the definition, "on account of those heretics who whisper that the Holy Spirit is of the Father alone, and proceedeth from the Father alone;" he defended it against the charge of novelty, as being not an addition to the Nicene Creed, but an explanation of it; and the council adopted a profession of faith in which the Double Procession was laid down.P

The matter came in a more pressing form before a synod held at Aix in 809, when a complaint was made that one John, a monk

e See Petav. vii. 2.

f A table of the different opinions as to its date and authorship is given by Waterland, iii. 117, ed. 1843. Gerard Vossius once thought that it was the work of a Frenchman, in the reign of Pipin or of Charlemagne, but afterwards modified his opinion so far as to say that the Creed was not older than A.D. 600 (ib. 108). Quesnel ascribed it to Vigilius of Tapsus (A.D. 484), and has been followed by many in this opinion (ib. 111). Waterland himself (ib. 2139) supposes it the work of Hilary of Arles, composed after his elevation to the bishoprick (A.D. 429), and in consequence of the retractation of Leporius (see vol. i. p. 436). Gieseler, in his posthumous Lectures on the History of Doctrines (Lehrb. vi. 325), says that it is probably of the sixth century; but in another passage (which may have been composed or revised later than the Lectures, although it was published during his lifetime) he refers it to the seventh

or eighth century, and says that the testimonies alleged for it before the latter part of the eighth are very uncertain. He considers the name Files Athanasii to be intended as the opposite of Files Ari, and infers that the Creed was composed in Spain, the country where Arianism kept the longest hold (II. i. 109-110). Mr. Harvey thinks that it was probably made by Vietricius, bishop of Rouen, in defending himself against a charge of heresy, A.D. 401. (The Three Creeds,' 584 seqq., Camb. 1854.) The proof of this does not appear very convincing.

of St. Sabas, had attacked the Frankish monks and pilgrims at Jerusalem on account of this doctrine, and had attempted to drive them away by force. The council approved of the addition to the creed,' and Charlemagne sent two bishops and Adelhard, abbot of Corbie, to Rome, with a request that the pope would confirm the judgment. Leo, at a conference with the envoys, of which a curious account is preserved, expressed his agreement in the doctrine of the Double Procession, but decidedly opposed the insertion of it into the creed. It would, he said, be wrong to insert it, since a council guided by wisdom from above had omitted it; and, moreover, the point was one of those which are not necessary to salvation for the mass of ordinary Christians. It is said that he put up in St. Peter's two silver shields engraved with the creed of Constantinople in Greek and in Latin, and that on both the words which express the procession of the Spirit from the Son were omitted. But, in order that there might be no doubt as to his opinion on the question of doctrine, he sent into the east a confession of faith in which the Double Procession was twice distinctly affirmed. We hear no more of the difference between the Eastern and Western Churches on this subject until at a later time it was revived and led to important consequences.

It may be difficult to follow, and impossible to read with interest, the history of such controversies as those on Monothelism and Adoptionism; and the Church has often been reproached with the agitation into which it was thrown by questions which never enter into the consideration of the great body of Christian believers. We ought, however, to remember that an error which is to agitate the Church internally must not begin by setting at nought the decisions of former times; the spirit of speculation must fix on some point which is apparently within the limits already prescribed for orthodoxy. Hence, in the controversies which relate to the highest Christian doctrines, the ground is continually narrowed, as we proceed from Arianism to Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and

Ep. Monachorum in Monte Oliveti habitantium (Patrol. cxxix. 1257); Einhard, A.D. 809; Ado, A.D. 809 (Patrol. exxiii.). Ado finds the double procession clearly (aperte) laid down in Revelat. xxii. 1. (col. 133.)

Baronius says that the question at Aix did not relate to doctrine, but solely to the addition of Filioque in the Creed

(809-53). Pagi argues against him (xiii. 455-6). Comp. Mosheim, ii. 167, and Schröckh, xx. 506.

sHard. iv. 969-973.

Leo, Ep. 15 (Patrol. cii.); Anastas. ib. cxxviii. 1237; Pet. Lombard, Sentent. I. xi. 2 (ib. excii.); Pagi, xiii. 457. See Hefele, iii. 702-3.

from these to the errors which have lately come before us; while each question, as it arose, required to be discussed and decided by the lights of Scripture and of the judgments which had been before pronounced. It is not, therefore, the Church that deserves to be blamed, if the opinions against which its solemn condemnations were directed became successively more and more subtle; and the reader must be content to bear with the writer, if their path should sometimes lie through intricacies which both must feel to be uninviting and wearisome.

CHAPTER VII I.

THE ORIENTAL SECTS.

I. IT has been mentioned, in the sketch of the Mahometan conquests, that the Arabs took advantage of the enmity between the Catholics and the Jacobites (or Monophysites) to enlist the depressed and persecuted sectaries on their side. For the services thus rendered, the Jacobites were repaid by a superior degree of favour from their new masters when Egypt and Syria had fallen under the rule of the caliphs. Many of those whom the measures of Heraclius had driven to profess Catholicism now returned to the open avowal of their old opinions; and the church further lost, not only by the progress of the sword and doctrines of Islam, but by the defection. of many of its own members to the heretical Christianity.

The Jacobites continued to be strong in Egypt, and also in the more westerly countries of Asia, where they were now under the government of a patriarch resident at Amida. But the party had been extirpated in Persia, and it made no further progress towards the east.c

II. The history of the Nestorians during this period was more remarkable. They, like the opposite sect, were at first courted and afterwards favoured by the Mussulmans on account of their hostility to the orthodox church. At their head was a bishop known by the title of Catholic or Patriarch of Babylon; his residence was originally at Seleucia or Ctesiphon, but on the foundation of Bagdad by Almansur, in 762, the patriarch removed his seat to that city. In the eighth century, the Nestorians got a footing in Egypt; and in the east they laboured with great activity to propagate their form of Christianity, without, apparently, any rivalry on the part of the Catholics. Following the course of trade, Nestorian missionaries made their way by sea from India to China, while others penetrated across the deserts to its northern frontier.g A stone discovered at Si-ngan-foo, in 1625, bears a long inscription, partly Syriac and partly Chinese, recording the names of missionaries who had laboured in China,