Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/270

 was somewhat largely construed as carrying with it, by implication, the condemnation of other writers more or less identified with his school of thought. See Tillemont's "comparison of Didymus with St. Gregory of Nyssa" (x. 396). Didymus's work On the Holy Spirit was clearly a protest against Macedonianism (see Tillemont, x. 393).

His comments on the Catholic Epistles are extant, as translated by Epiphanius Scholasticus (see Galland. Bib. Vet. Patr. ii.). His notes on I. Peter shew a dislike of Chiliasm, as a carnal and frivolous theory; he asserts free will, opposes Manicheans, admits the possibility of faults on the part of angels being cleansed through Christ; and in words very characteristic of the indomitable student and teacher, rebukes Christians who neglect sacred studies and attend only to practical life (on I. Peter iii. 15). He comments briefly on II. Peter, but sets it aside as spurious and "not in the canon," although (see infra) in the de Trinitate he cites it as Petrine. The chief features of his remarks on St. John's three Epistles are, (1) the earnestness against Docetism, Valentinianism, all speculations injurious to the Maker of the world, (2) the assertion that a true knowledge of God is possible without a knowledge of His essence, (3) care to urge the necessity of combining orthodoxy with right action. In the notes on Jude, he says that Christ is called the only Sovereign because He is the only true God. He speaks of the doom of those who turn away absolutely to evil as hopeless.

His treatise Against the Manicheans (pub. by Combefis in his Auctarium Novum, 1672) begins with logical formulae, intended to disprove the existence of two unoriginated Principles. From the blame and punishment attached to evil, he infers that Satan and his followers are not evil by nature; he discusses the terms "by nature children of wrath" (which he understands to mean "really children of wrath"), "children of this world," "son of perdition," "generation of vipers," with the aim of shewing that they do not contravene the great moral facts of free will and responsibility. The devil, he urges, was created good, and became a devil by his own free will. If it be objected, why then did God make a being who was to become so pestilent? the objection really lies against the whole plan of God's moral government, which intends His rational creatures to become good by choosing goodness, and therefore leaves them capable of choosing evil, and drawing on themselves the result of such a choice. He also asserts the transmission of original sin: a Saviour born by ordinary generation would have incurred the sin entailed on Adam's whole posterity. His three books On the Trinity have not reached us in a perfect state. They are interesting as exhibiting the Athanasian character, so to speak, of his thought in presence of Anomoeans and of Macedonians. He admits II. Peter as genuine: perhaps the opinion he had formerly held as to its non-canonicity had been reconsidered. He is very earnest, almost in the style of the "Athanasian Creed," on the co-equality of the Divine Hypostases (he uses that term in the sense which the younger generation of Catholics had adopted since the earlier days of the Arian strife). He enforces the perpetuity of Christ's kingdom (as if in controversy with Marcellians), and speaks of the Virgin Mother as Theotokos (ii. 4). He bestows much time and pains on the Macedonian controversy. Occasionally he kindles and glows with strong devotional fervour, and concludes an eloquent passage on the glory of the Holy Trinity with a thrice-repeated Amen. Shortly before this passage he invokes the archangels, and expresses his belief in the intercession of the saints (ii. 7).

[W.B.]

Dimoeritae, another name for the followers of Apollinarius, probably to be explained by a passage in a letter of Gregory of Nazianzum to Nectarius of Constantinople (Ep. 202, al. Or. 46). Gregory says that Apollinarius's book affirmed that He Who had come down from above had no νοῦς, but that τὴν θεότητα τοῦ Μονογενοῦς τὴν τοῦ νοῦ φύσιν ἀναπληρώσασαν. Hence, as the Apollinarians maintained that our Lord assumed only (διμοιρία) two of the three parts (σῶμα, ψυχή, νοῦς) of which perfect humanity consists, they were called Dimoeritae by Epiphanius, who says (Haer. lxxvii.) that "some denied especially the perfect Incarnation of Christ; some asserted His body consubstantial with His divinity; some emphatically denied that He had ever taken a soul; others not less emphatically refused to Him a mind."

Among the leaders of the Dimoeritae was one. Both Gregory of Nazianzum and Epiphanius came in contact with him; the former while Vitalius was, it would seem, a presbyter, the latter when he had been made a bishop of the sect. Epiphanius at Antioch, in a long discussion with Vitalius, put the crucial question: "You admit the Incarnation, do you also admit that Christ took a mind (νοῦν)?" "The answer was, "No." Epiphanius persisted: "In what sense then do you call Christ τέλειος?" The point was debated without results. Epiphanius urged that not only was nothing gained by excluding mind, as we understand it, from the nature of Christ; but also that by such exclusion much was lost which made His nature, character, and actions intelligible. Vitalius and his followers avoided Epiphanius's arguments by reverting to their favourite texts, e.g. "We have the mind of Christ" (I. Cor. ii. 16), etc.

The Dimoeritae probably existed, as a sect, for a few years only, either under that name or as Vitalians, Synusiasts, Polemians, Valentinians, after some favourite leader or opinion. Then they died out, or merged themselves into other bodies holding similar views, or were brought back to the church. The books, psalteries, and hymns composed and issued by Apollinarius and his principal followers were met, and their effects counteracted, by books and hymns such as have given to Gregory of Nazianzum a name among ecclesiastical song writers. Epiphanius, Panaria, iii. 11; Haer. lxxvii. (ed. Dindorf, iii. 1, p. 454); Oehler, Corpus Haereseolog. ii. 330, etc.; and the usual Church histories, e.g. Neander, Niedner, Hase, Robertson, s.v. "Apollinarianism," should be consulted.

[J.M.F.]

Dinooth, Dinothus, abbat of Bangor Iscoed,