John Damascene, Anastasius, and Nicephorus refer to the letter as authentic, nor does Harduin venture to dispute it; but there are several points of evidence which seem to mark it as belonging to a later age than that of Chrysostom. It is not quoted before Leontius, in the latter part of the sixth century, although it might usefully have been employed against the Eutychians. There are expressions in it which were not in common use till after Cyril of Alexandria had employed them against Nestorius. The language generally is that of one who had lived in the midst of the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, and the style of the Greek fragments, as well as the tone of the Latin translation, are extremely unlike Chrysostom’s manner: the sentences are abrupt and rugged, and a kind of scholastic, dogmatic tone pervades the whole composition. The general scope of the letter is clear: it is to maintain the doctrine of the two natures under one person in Jesus Christ, against the heresy of the Apollinarians; or, if we accept the theory of Montfaucon, the intention of the author, living in the time of the Eutychian heresy, was to strike a blow at that by forging a letter supposed to be addressed by Chrysostom to a friend, warning him against Apollinarian errors, which had much in common with the Eutychian. The passage in which the writer illustrates his position by a reference to the Holy Eucharist has been construed by Roman Catholics and Protestants in a sense agreeable to their own views on the subject. The writer has been labouring to prove that there were two distinct natures in the one person of God the Son Incarnate, and he proceeds as follows:—“Just as the bread before consecration is called bread, but when the Divine grace sanctifies it through the agency of the priest it is liberated from the appellation of bread, and is regarded as worthy of the appellation of the Lord’s body, although the nature of bread remains in it, and we speak not of two bodies, but one body of the Son; so here, the Divine nature being seated in the human body, the two together make up but one Son, one Person.”
[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] In the case of Savonarola such a want has now been fairly well supplied by Villari and other writers. For a good portrait of Erasmus, see “Erasmus, his Life and Character,” by Robert Blackley Drummond, B.A. 2 vols., 1873.
[2] “That godly clerk and great preacher” is the description of him in the English Homilies, Hom. i.
[3] “Remains,” vol. iii. Letters to Dr. Woodward and Mrs. Hannah More.
[4] Wall, on Infant Baptism, endeavours to prove that she was a Pagan, in order to account for the delay in Chrysostom’s baptism, but his reasons are far from convincing.
[5] De Sacerdot. lib. i. c. 5.
[6] Julian: Misopogon, p. 363.