Decree of the
Council Against Nestorius.
(
Found in all the
Concilia
in Greek with Latin
Versions
.)
As, in addition to other things, the impious Nestorius
has not obeyed our citation, and did not receive the holy bishops who
were sent by us to him, we were compelled to examine his ungodly
doctrines. We discovered that he had held and published impious
doctrines in his letters and treatises, as well as in discourses which
he delivered in this city, and which have been testified to.
Compelled thereto by the canons and by the letter (
ἀναγκαίως
κατεπειχθέντες
ἀπό τε τῶν
κανόνων, καὶ
ἐκ τὴς
ἐπιστολῆς,
κ.τ.λ
.) of our most holy father and
fellow-servant Cœlestine, the Roman bishop, we have come, with
many tears, to this sorrowful sentence against him, namely, that our
Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has blasphemed, decrees by the holy Synod
that Nestorius be excluded from the episcopal dignity, and from all
priestly communion.
Notes.
The words for which I have given the original Greek, are
not mentioned by Canon Bright in his Article on St. Cyril in Smith and
Wace’s
Dictionary of Christian Biography
; nor by Ffoulkes
in his article on the Council of Ephesus in Smith and Cheetham’s
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities
. They do not appear in
Canon Robertson’s
History of the Church
.
And strangest of all, Dean Milman
cites the sentence in English in the text and in Greek in a note but in
each case omits all mention of the letter of the Pope, marking however
in the Greek that there is an omission. (
Lat. Chr
., Bk.
II., Chap. III.)
257
I also note
that the translation in the English edition of Hefele’s
History of the Councils
(Vol. III., p. 51) is misleading and
inaccurate, “Urged by the canons, and in accordance with the
letter etc.” The participle by itself might mean nothing
more than “urged” (
vide
Liddell and Scott on this
verb and also
ἐπείγω
) but the adverb
which precedes it,
ἀναγκαίως
, certainly is sufficient to necessitate the
coacti
of the old
Latin version which I have followed, translating “compelled
thereto.” It will also be noticed that while the
prepositions used with regard to the “canons” and the
“letter” are different, yet that their grammatical relation
to the verb is identical is shewn by the
τε
—
καὶ
, which proves the translation cited
above to be utterly incorrect.
Hefele for the “canons” refers to canon
number lxxiv. of the Apostolic Canons; which orders an absent bishop to
be summoned thrice before sentence be given against him.
257
Complaint of all this
has very justly been made recently by the Rev. Luke Rivington, a Roman
Catholic writer, in his work
The Primitive Church and the See of
Peter
, p. 336.