doctrine was always but the secondary. Their great political talents and address were constantly exerted in modelling and employing the latter, in such a manner as to render it instrumental in promoting the former. This cannot, with equal truth, be affirmed of the Greeks. The many philosophic sects which had arisen among them when in a state of paganism, had produced the pestilent itch of disputation, together with that species of subtlety, which enables those possessed of this miserable cacoethes to find, on every subject, materials for gratifying it. Such were the disposition and habits which, on their conversion to Christianity, they brought with them into the new religion; every doctrine of which was, by this frivolous, though ingenious, inquisitive, loquacious, and disputatious people, most unnaturally perverted into matter of metaphysical discussion. Hence sprang those numerous sects into which the Christian community was so early divided.

It deserves our notice, that, for several ages, all the controversies, almost without exception, originated among the Greeks. I use the term Greeks in the same latitude wherein it is generally used, in ecclesiastic history, for the oriental churches which spoke the Greek language, as contradistinguished to the occidental, which spoke the Latin. Almost the only exception to the remark I have made is the Pelagian heresy, which doubtless arose in the west. The origin of the African sect of the Donatists was more properly a difference, in regard to discipline, than in the explanation of any article of faith. It may also deserve our notice, that though the Jewish state, from the time of Moses, had subsisted for many centuries, in very different situations, and under different forms of government, yea, and in different countries, there were no traces of different sects, or of any theological disputes among them, till after the Macedonian conquests, when they became acquainted with the Grecians.

But some remarks on the origin, the nature, and the consequences of the controversies that arose in the church, and on the methods that were taken to terminate them by diocesan synods and ecumenical councils, which constitute a most essential part of ecclesiastical history, and therefore require to be treated more particularly, shall be reserved for a separate discourse.

LECTURE XIV.

THE subject of the present lecture is remarks on the origin, the nature, and the consequences of the controversies that in the early ages arose in the church, and on the methods that were taken to terminate them by diocesan synods and ecumenical councils. Though this may, at first sight, appear a digression from the examination of the Roman policy exercised in raising the wonderful fabric of spiritual tyranny, yet, on a nearer view, it will be found to be intimately connected with that policy, insomuch that the progress of the latter is, without a competent knowledge of the former, scarcely intelligible.

I observed, in my last prelection, that, for several centuries, almost all our theological disputes originated among the Greeks; that to this sort of exercitation their national character, their education, and early habits, conspired to inure them. They spoke a language which was both copious and ductile to an amazing degree. Let me add, that the people in general, especially since they had been brought under a foreign yoke, were become extremely adulatory in their manner of address, abounding in titles and complimental appellations. To this their native speech may be said in some respect to have contributed, by the facility wherewith it supplied them with compound epithets, suited to almost every possible occasion, and expressive of almost every possible combination of circumstances.-This peculiarity in the genius of their tongue, gratified also their taste both for variety and for novelty; for they were thereby enabled to form new compositions from words in use, almost without end; and, when they formed them analogically, were not liable to the charge of barbarism.

Hence sprang up the many flattering titles they gave to their saints and clergy, ἱερομάρτυς, ἱεροψυχος, τρισάγιος, τρισμακάριος, τρισμακάρισος, τρισμέγιτος, αξιομακάρισος, θεοφιλος, θεοφορος, Θεοδίδακτος, θεοπρεπέςατος, θεομακαριότατος, χριςοφιλος, χρισοφόρος, χριςοκινητος, and a thousand others. The same mode of adulation they intro

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duced into their public worship; for though no terms can exceed, or even equal the majesty and perfections of the Supreme Being, the practice of loading their addresses with such epithets betrayed but too evidently their tendency to think God such a one as themselves, to be gained by fair speeches and pompous titles: for it is a common and just observation, that they are the greatest flatterers who love most to be flattered. An exuberance of inadequate and vain words does but injure the simplicity and the dignity of worship. In their explanation of the mysteries, as they were called, and in their encomiums on the saints, they abounded in such terms, and were ever exercising their invention in coining

new ones.

The genius of the Latin tongue, on the contrary, did not admit this freedom; nor had the people who spoke it, to do them justice, so much levity and vanity as to give them the like propension. What they afterwards contracted of this disposition, they derived solely from their intercourse with the Greeks, and the translation of their writings. Indeed, in their versions from the Greek, as the translator was often obliged, in order to express in Latin such compound epithets, to recur either to circumlocution, or to some composition which the analogy of the language could hardly bear, those things appeared awkward and stiff in a Latin dress, which, in a Grecian habit, moved easily and agreeably.

Now, several of the early disputes, it may be remarked, took their rise from the affectation of employing these highsounding titles. Hence, in a great measure, the noise that was raised about the terms όμως τα όμοια, ὑποςασις, υποςατικο, θεοτοκος, Χριςοτοκος, when first introduced into their theology. To these terms the Latins had no single words properly corresponding. Augustine, one of the most eminent of the Latin fathers, seems to have been so sensible of this defect in discoursing on the Trinity, (l. v. c. 9.), that he apologizes for his language, and considers the expressions he employs as only preferable to a total silence on the subject, but not as equally adapted with the Greek. "Dictum est," says he, " tres personæ, non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur." The truth is, so little do the Greek terms and the Latin, on this subject, cor

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respond, that if you regard the ordinary significations of the words, (and I know not whence else we should get a meaning to them), the doctrine of the East was one, and that of the West was another, on this article. In the East, it was one essence and three substances, Mid 8σid, TEEIS Uπ West, it was one substance and three 66 persons, una substantia, tres personæ." The phrases Tgiα goа in Greek, tres substantiæ in Latin, would both, I imagine, have been exposed to the charge of tritheism. But which of the two, the Greek or the Latin phraseology, was most suited to the truth of the case, is a question I will not take upon me to determine. I shall only say of Augustine's apology, that it is a very odd one, and seems to imply, that on subjects above our comprehension, and to which all human elocution is inadequate, it is better to speak nonsense than be silent. It were to be wished, that, on topics so sublime, men had thought proper to confine themselves to the simple but majestic diction of the sacred scriptures.

It was, then, the extravagant humour of these fanciful and prating Orientals, assisted by their native idiom, which produced many of the newfangled and questionable terms I have been speaking of; the terms produced the controversies; and these, in return, gave such consequence to the terms that gave them birth, and created so violent an attachment in the party that favoured them, that people could not persuade themselves that it was possible that the doctrine of the gospel should subsist, and be understood or conveyed by any body without them. Men never seemed to reflect, that the gospel had been both better taught and better understood, as well as better practised, long before this fantastic dress, borrowed from the schools of the sophists, was devised and adapted to it. However, the consequence which these disputes gave to the Greek terms, occasioned an imitation of them in the less pliant language of the Occidentals. Hence these barbarisms, or at least unclassic words, in Latin, essentialis, substantialis, consubstantialis, Christipara, Deipara, and several others of the same stamp, to be found in the writings of the ecclesiastic authors of the fifth and following centuries. All those subtile questions which so long distracted and disgraced the

church, would then, we may well believe, both from the character of the people and from the genius of the tongue, much more readily originate, as history informs us that they did, among the Greeks than among the Latins. Indeed the latter were often slower than we should have expected in coming into the dispute. For this we may justly assign, as one principal reason, the general ignorance of the Latins at that time. Letters had, long before Constantine, been in their decline at Rome; insomuch that, at the period I allude to, when those controversies were most hotly agitated, the greater part, even of men in respectable stations, understood no tongue but their own. If they had studied any other, doubtless it would have been Greek, which was become the language of the imperial court, now at Constantinople; and not only of Greece itself, but of almost all the East, particularly of all the men of rank and letters in Asia, Syria, and Egypt. And if even Greek was little understood at Rome, we may safely conclude, that other languages were hardly known at all.

Yet that it was very little known in the fifth century, in the time of Pope Celestine, when the controversy betwixt Cyril and Nestorius broke out, is evident from this single circumstance: When Nestorius wrote to the Pope, sending him an account of the contest, together with a copy of his homilies containing his doctrine on the point in question, all in Greek, his mother tongue, not only was the pontiff himself ignorant of that language, but it would seem all the Roman clergy, consisting of many hundreds, knew no more of it than he. And though we cannot suppose that there were not then many in Rome who understood Greek, yet there seem to have been none of that consideration that the Pope could decently employ them in a business of so great consequence. Accordingly, he was obliged to send the whole writings to Cassian, a man of learning, a native of Thrace, who then resided at Marseilles in Gaul, to be translated by him into Latin. This delay gave Cyril no small advantage; for though he wrote to the Pope after Nestorius, yet knowing better, it would seem, the low state of literature at that time in Rome, he prudently employed the Latin tongue in giving