Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/58

46 also by a very ungracious imperial letter, which in the strongest terms required his appearance before this synodical court. Under these circumstances Nestorius could, on the 6th of December 430, receive with perfect composure the letters from Rome and Alexandria. The council would examine the matter, as he believed; and he looked forward to it without any fear. For he was convinced of the orthodoxy of his teaching, and the emperor was favourably inclined toward him; Cyril, on the contrary, was under suspicion for his doings and, as Nestorius with many others thought, also for his doctrine, and was out of favour with the emperor.

But Cyril was clever enough to change his position in Ephesus from that of anvil to that of hammer. Three things enabled him to do so. Firstly the great number of Egyptian bishops he had brought with him, secondly the support he found in Memnon the bishop of Ephesus and so in the population of that city, thirdly the effrontery with which he, who as having been accused ought to have remained in the background, pushed himself forward into a leading position. Before the Antiochian bishops and the Roman legates had arrived he and his adherents opened the council on the 22nd of June, though 15 days after the appointed