Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/32

20 Thus, if we are interested by what the Treatise of Heraclides teaches us about the life of Nestorius, in no less a degree ought our interest to be awakened by what we learn about his doctrine.

As early as about 440 Socrates the church-historian defended, with the impartiality which distinguished him, his contemporary Nestorius against the grave misrepresentation to which his doctrine was exposed. People, as he says, thought that Nestorius regarded the Lord as a mere human being, as did Paul of Samosata and Photinus. But, so he continues, I read his writings and I will say the truth: he did not hold the same opinions as Paid of Samosata and Photinus nor did he at all regard the Lord as a mere man, only he abhorred the term as a bugbear.

In a still higher degree Luther did justice to Nestorius. In his book Von Conciliis und Kirchen he confesses that he himself for some time did not understand what the error of Nestorius was, and that he also thought that Nestorius had held Christ to be nothing more than a man, as the popish decrees and all popish writers declared; but that after having looked more accurately at the accounts he saw that this was false. This, too, according to Luther, was wrongly assumed about Nestorius, that he made two persons of the e Christ. Nestorius, Luther says, really does not teach more