The heresies of the last century were continued in this, and various new ones arose.  Chief among these was the heresy of Nestorius, a Bishop of Constantinople, who distinguished so strongly between the two natures in Christ as to make a double personality, and he regarded the Virgin Mary as mother of Christ, but not mother of God.  The Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) was called to decide the point, and was presided over by the great antagonist of Nestorius, Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria.  The matter was settled very quickly.  Church Councils vote on disputed points, and the vote of the majority constitutes orthodoxy.  The Council was held before the arrival of the bishops who sympathised with Nestorius, and thus, by the simple expedient of getting everything over before the opponents arrived, it was settled for evermore that Christ is one person with two natures.  A heresy of the very opposite character was that of Eutyches, abbot of the monastery in Constantinople.  He maintained that in Christ there was only one nature, “that of the incarnate word,” and his opinion was endorsed by a council called at Ephesus, A.D. 449; but this decree was annulled by the Council of Chalcedon (reckoned the fourth OEcumenical), A.D. 451, wherein it was again declared that Christ had two natures in one person.  It was at the Council of Ephesus, in A.D. 449, that Flavianus, Bishop of Constantinople, was so beaten by the other bishops that he died of his wounds, and the bishops who held with him hid themselves under benches to get out of the way of their infuriate brothers in Christ (see notes on pp. 136, 137).  The Theopaschites were a branch of the Eutychian heresy, and the Monophysites were a cognate sect; from these arose the Acephali, Anthropomorphites, Barsanuphites, and Esaianists.  Not less important than the heresy of Eutyches was that of Pelagius, a British monk, who taught that man did not inherit original sin on account of Adam’s fall, but that each was born unspotted into the world, and was capable of rising to the height of virtue by the exercise of his natural faculties.  The semi-Pelagians held that man could turn to God by his own strength, but that divine grace was necessary to enable him to persevere.

One heretic of this period deserves a special word of record.  Vigilantius was a Gallic priest, remarkable for his eloquence and learning, and he devoted himself to an effort to reform the Church in Spain.  “Among other things, he denied that the tombs and the bones of the martyrs were to be honoured with any sort of homage or worship; and therefore censured pilgrimages that were made to places that were reputed holy.  He turned into derision the prodigies which were said to be wrought in the temples consecrated to martyrs, and condemned the custom of performing vigils in them.  He asserted, and indeed with reason, that the custom of burning tapers at the tombs of the martyrs in broad day, was imprudently borrowed from the ancient superstition