shall be a cessation of the pains of hell. This error likewise, ori. ginated in the misinterpretation of the Apocalypse.

MONOTHELISM-a term of Greek derivation signifying the doctrine of but one will in Christ. Athanasius its author was patriarch of the Jacobites or Eutychians in Syria. In Christ he acknowledged two distinct natures, the Divine and the human; but only one will. This Demi-Eutychianism is a glaring inconsistency; for the will is an essential property of the nature: and Christ himself sometimes speaks of his human will as distinct from the Divine; for instance, in his prayer during his agony in the garden. This Monothelite heresy which seems to have been invented as an expedient to compound with Eutychianism, the emperor Heraclius confirmed by an edict called Ecthesis, or the Exposition; declaring that there is only one will in Christ, namely, that of the Divine Word: it was condemned by pope John IV. Cyrus bishop of Phasis, a bigotted Monothelite, was by Heraclius preferred to the patriarchate of Alexandria in 629. Here St Sophronius, prostrate at his feet, in vain besought him not to publish his erroneous sentiments. Travelling thence into Syria in 634, this servant of God was elected patriarch of Jeru salem; and in the course of the same year he assembled a council of all the bishops of his patriarchate to condemn Monothelism and composed a synodal letter-to explain and prove the catholic faith. This learned epistle, afterwards approved in the sixth general council, he sent to pope Honorius, and to Sergius of Constantinople. The latter, by an insidious letter and captious expressions, had persuaded pope Honorius to recommend a mysterious kind of silence on the subject, conformably to the intentions of Heraclius. It is evident, notwithstanding, from the most authentic monuments, that Honorius never assented to that error, but always adhered to the truth. (See Nat. Alex. sæc. 7. Witasse and Tournely, Tr. de Incarn.) However, his silence was ill-timed, and might be deemed a species of connivance; and he himself together with Sergius and the other chief abettors of Monothelism, was by name condemned in the sixth general council, celebrated at Constantinople in 680. Thirty years afterwards, the emperor Philippicus patronised anew the cause of Monothelism; but he reigned only two years; and, under Leo the Isaurian, the heresy of the Iconoclasts caused that of the Monothelites to sink into oblivion: the remnants of the sect were confounded with the Eutychians.

MONTANISTS-were the adherents to the tenets of Montanus. This man was a convert and a native of Mysia on the confines of Phrygia, whose disappointed ambition to occupy the first dignities of the church, impelled him to impugn its doctrines. He commenced prophet, and began, in an enthusiastic strain, to ut

ter extraordinary expressions. Prisca or Priscilla, and Maximilla, two women of quality but of abandoned morals, left their husbands, and, like Montanus, affected a mysterious kind of jargon; pretending that they succeeded the prophets. Montanus ranked himself above the apostles, and said he had received the Paraclete, or the Holy Ghost, promised by our Redeemer to perfect his new law of the gospel. He denied that the church had power to forgive the sins of idolatry, of murder and impurity; and hardly would admit any sinners to repentance. St Paul had allowed second marriages. Montanus prohibited them, as inconsistent with the perfect law of chastity; and he forbade christians to flee in time of persecution. Thus did this hypocritical innovator affect a severity of doctrine, to which his manners did not correspond. His followers were also denominated from their native country-Cataphryges, and Pepuzeni from Pepuzium, a little town in Phrygia which was their metropolis; and which they called Jerusalem. (Euseb. 1. 5. c. 17. St Hier. ep. 54. ad Marcel. Tert. 1. de Fugâ. de Pudic. &c.)

The Montanists boasted of their martyrs, as did also the Marcionites; a thing not very ordinary with sectarists in general, as St Ireneus and Origen remark; nor indeed could these with any plausibility support their high pretensions. Asterius Urbanus, one of the writers that undertook a refutation of their errors, positively affirms, that the Montanists never had had any martyrs, and that among the few whom they pretended to be such, some had paid a sum of money for their enlargement out of prison, and the rest had suffered for real crimes. Apollonius, another catholic author, quoted by Eusebius, confounding the hypocrisy of the Montanists, reproached their pretended prophetesses with infamous debaucheries. And "does a prophet," exclaims this ancient writer, "colour his hair, paint his eyebrows, play at dice, or lend out money upon usury ? Of these things I will prove them to be guilty." Their pretended prophecies and errors being condemned as impious, the followers of Montanus were excommunicated. Montanus himself, and Maximilla, agitated by the evil spirit that possessed them, afterwards-according to a popular tradition when Eusebius wrote, laid violent hands upon themselves.

These enthusiasts pretended that, besides the fast of Lent observed by catholics, there were other fasts imposed by the Divine Spirit. Accordingly they kept three Lents in the year, each of two weeks,-and upon dry-meats, as necessary injunctions of the spirit-by the new revelations made to Montanus which they preferred to the writings of the apostles; and they said, these laws were to be observed for ever. The great Tertullian, as St Jerom informs us, resenting some affronts which he imagined had been put upon him by the Roman clergy, in revenge became a Montanist; forgetting in his passion those

maxims by which he had himself triumphantly refuted all heresies-both of past and future ages. (See his admirable book of Prescriptions, &c.) Nor does his prevarication take from the solidity and acuteness of his former arguments, any more than the fall of Solomon can affect the excellence of his former inspired writings.

A certain protestant writer in 1751, undertook to shew, that the Montanists had been ranked in the class of heretics without sufficient reason. But Mosheim vindicates the justice of their condemnation, 1st, because it was a very reprehensible error to pretend to teach a morality more perfect than that of Jesus Christ; 2nd, it was not less unpardonable to atttempt to persuade the people-that God himself spoke by the mouth of Montanus; 3rd, it was the Montanists that separated from the church, rather than the church that expelled them from its pale: it was on their part an intolerable pride-to pretend to establish a society more perfect than the church of Christ, and to nick-name the members of her holy communion Psychici, or sensual animals. And is it not somewhat singular, that Mosheim, in arguing thus against the Montanists, was not aware of the argument being perfectly applicable to his own dearlybeloved Lutheranism?

The Montanists divided into various branches. SS. Epiphanius and Augustine speak of the Artotyrites, the Ascites, &c. (See those articles.) Some of them adopted part of the dreams of the Valentinians and Markesians. The Passalorynchites or PettaLorynchites lay mighty stress on the ceremony of putting their fingers upon their noses and into their mouths-during prayer, and almost always when they had their hands at liberty,-to signify their extraordinary recollection and religious silence. Jerom tells us, that some of these still subsisted in Galatia; who were the object of certain imperial ordinances-so late as the commencement of the fifth age: such is the delirium of fanaticism !

MORAVIANS. See ANABAPTISTS.

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NAZAREANS-were a sect equally obnoxious to Jews and Christians. They allowed Christ to be the greatest of the prophets; but said he was a mere man, whose natural parents were Joseph and Mary: they joined all the ceremonies of the old law with those of the new, and observed both the Jewish Sabbath,

and the Sunday. Mosheim in his ecclesiastical history affects to blame St Epiphanius, for placing the Nazaréans on the list with heretics. If then, they denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, and in spite of the decisions of the council at Jerusalem still persisted in the superstitious observance of the Jewish ceremonies, were they notwithstanding, in the eyes of the protestants, very

orthodox?

NESTORIANS the followers of Nestorius, a monk and priest of Antioch, who was promoted to the see of Constantinople in 428. The retiredness and severity of his life, joined with the exterior of apparent virtue, a superficial learning and a fluency of words, had gained him some reputation in the world. The study of the fathers he had neglected; was a man of weak judgment, extremely vain, violent and obstinate. Such is the character which he bears in the history of those times, and which is given him by Socrates and Theodoret. The latter he had formerly imposed upon by his hypocrisy. Marius Mercator informs us, that immediately upon his preferment, he began to persecute with great fury-the Arians, the Macedonians, the Manichees and Quartodecimans, whom he caused to be banished from his diocese: while he himself denied the necessity of grace, and-on that account-received to his communion Celestius and Julian, though previously condemned by the popes Innocent and Zozimus, and exiled by the emperor Honorius, for Pelagianism. Theodosius, however, commanded them to leave Constantinople, notwithstanding the protection of the bishop. Nestorius himself soon began to teach new errors-from the pulpit; maintaining there were two persons in Christ, that of God, and that of man, joined only by a moral union; by which, he said, the Godhead dwelt in the humanity, merely as in its temple. Hence he denied the incarnation, or that God or—that was made man; and said, the Blessed Virgin ought not to be styled the mother of God, but only of the man who was Christ; whose humanity was no more than the temple of the Divinity,not a nature hypostatically assumed by the Divine Person; though at length, overruled by the common suffrage of antiquity, he allowed her the empty title of mother of God; but continued to deny the mystery. At these novelties the people were not a little shocked; and the priests St Proclus and Eusebius, bishop afterwards of Doryloum, with many others, separated themselves from his communion, after having in vain attempted to reclaim him by remonstrances. His homilies every where excited clamour-against the errors and the blasphemies which they contained. St Cyril of Alexandria having read them, sent to him a mild expostulation; but was answered with haughtiness and disdain. Pope Celestine being applied to by both parties, examined his doctrine in a council at Rome,-and pronounced

a sentence of excommunication and deposition against the author, unless within ten days after notification of the sentence he publicly condemned and retracted it; appointing St Cyril his vicegerent in this affair, to see the sentence put in execution. (Conc. T. 3. p. 343. Liberat. in Breviar. c. 4.)

St Cyril, together with his third and last summons, sent to Nestorius twelve propositions, accompanied with as many anathemas, hence called his anathematisms,-to be signed by him as a proof of his orthodoxy. But Nestorius appeared more obstinate than ever. This occasioned the calling of the third general council opened at Ephesus in 431 by two hundred bishopswith St Cyril at their head, as legate and representative of pope Celestine. (St Leo, Ep. 72, c. 3. Conc. T. 3, p. 656, 980.) Nestorius, though in the town and thrice cited, refused to appear. His heretical sermons were read, and depositions were received against him; after which his doctrine was condemned, and the sentence of excommunication and deposition was pronounced against him, and notified to the emperor.

Six days after this, John, the patriarch of Antioch, arrived at Ephesus with forty-one Oriental bishops; who secretly favoring the person-not the errors of Nestorius, of which they deemed him innocent-had advanced but slowly on their journey to the place. On their arrival, instead of communing with the council, they assembled apart, and presumed to excommunicate St Cyril and his adherents. Both sides applied to the emperor for redress, by whose orders St Cyril and Nestorius were soon after both arrested and confined; but Cyril was the worst treated of the two. He was even upon the point, through the greater interest of his antagonist at court, of being banishedwhen three legates from pope Celestine ;-Arcadius and Projectus-bishops, and Philip a priest,-arrived at Ephesus. This gave a new turn to affairs in St Cyril's favor. The three legates having considered the proceedings of the council, the condemnation of Nestorius was confirmed; Cyril's conduct was approved; and the sentence pronounced against him was declared null and invalid. He therefore was enlarged with honor. The Orientals, notwithstanding, persisted in their schism-till the year 433, when they made their peace with Cyril, condemned Nestorius, and gave a clear and orthodox exposition of their faith. The heresiarch retreated from Constantinople to his monastery at Antioch; where John, though formerly his friend, finding him very perverse and obstinate in his heresy, and attempting to pervert others, entreated the emperor Theodosius to remove him. In conclusion, he was banished to Oasis, situate in the desert of Upper Egypt, on the borders of Lybia, in 431; and there ended his days in misery and impenitence. His sect remains to the present time very numerous in the East.