Page:History of Heresies (Liguori).djvu/106

98 Dominum et vivificantem, ex Patre procedentem, cum Patre ct Filio coadorandum et conglorificandum, qui locutus est per Prophetas" (Act. Conc. Const.) When this was read in the Council, all the bishops cried out: "This is the faith of all; this is the orthodox faith; this we all believe".

75. We have now to speak of Apollinaris, who was condemned in the same Council of Constantinople. He was Bishop of Laodicea, and St. Jerome's master in sacred literature; but he broached another heresy, concerning the person of Jesus Christ. His principal error, as Noel Alexander tells us, and on the authority of St. Epiphanius, St. Leo, St. Augustin, and Socrates, was, that he supposed the human nature of Jesus Christ only half human nature—he supposed that Christ had no soul, but that, in place of one, the Word made flesh answered as a soul to his body. He softened down this doctrine a little after, for then he admitted that Christ was not without a soul altogether, for he possessed that part of the sensitive soul, with which we see and feel in common with all other sensitive beings; but that he had not the reasoning part, or the mind, and the Word, he said, supplied that in the Person of Christ. This error is founded on the false philosophy of Plato, who wished to establish in man three substances, to wit—the body, the soul, and the mind.

76. The Apollinarists added three other errors; First, that the body of Christ, born of Mary, was consubstantial with the Divinity of the Word, and hence it followed that the Divinity of the Word was passible, and suffered, in reality, torments and death. Eranistes, an Apollinarist, contended that the Divine Nature suffered in the flesh, just as the soul suffers, conjoined with the body, in the sufferings of the body. But even in this illustration he was in error, because the body without the soul is not capable of suffering, and, when the body is hurt, it is the soul that suffers in reality, by the communication it has with the body; so that, according to their system, the Divine Nature would suffer, if the flesh, supposed to be consubstantial to the Divinity, was hurt. The second error was, that the Divine Word did not take flesh from the Virgin, but brought it down from heaven, and, on that account, they called the Catholics, who believed that the body of Christ was taken from Mary, Homicolists, and accused them of establishing, not a Trinity, but a Quaternity, of Persons, because, besides the three Divine Persons, they admitted a fourth substance, entirely distinct, Christ-God, and Man. Thirdly—The last error was, that the Divine substance of the Word was converted into flesh; but these three errors, N. Alexander says, were not taught by Apollinaris, but by his disciples. Apollinaris erred also in the doctrine of the Trinity,