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Rh controversy. Anastasius performed the task assigned him in an elaborate train of argument; but the effect was to shock rather than convince the minds of his auditors. All men looked at once to Nestorius, who was not slow to give a decision in favour of the preacher, and to follow up this first stroke himself by a series of discourses in which he affirmed the correctness of the views unfolded by his friend, and entered largely into a defence of them.

[In his sermon, delivered on Christmas-day, 428, he speaks to this effect:—"No, Mary hath not given birth to a God; for that which is born of the flesh is flesh. A creature could not bring forth the Creator of all; but she brought forth a human being, who was an instrument or temple of the Deity." And afterwards: "In the resurrection of Christ, God resuscitated that in which he was incarnate. I adore the vestment on account of him who wears it; I adore that which is external for the sake of the God who dwells inseparably within it." And in another, delivered in the beginning of January, apparently on the day of the Epiphany, he argues, that it was wrong to say, that the Divine Word was born of Mary, or that he died; for those accidents could be affirmed only of the man in whom the Word dwelt. These references will show what were really his views.]

An advocate of Constantinople, named Eusebius, then a laic, but afterwards bishop of Dorylea, took the lead against Nestorius. At the bishop's first sermon on the subject, he denounced the doctrine as heretical in the open congregation; and, shortly after, put forth a protest against it, addressed to the whole church, in which he pointed out the contrariety of the new doctrine to that of the established symbols of faith and the teaching of the fathers. Nestorius, in reply, admitted the correctness of