Letter 157: Report of the Council of the Eastern Bishops to the Emperor,

Report of the Council of the Eastern Bishops to the Emperor, Your piety, which shines forth for the good of the empire and the churches of God, commanded us to assemble at Ephesus to bring about peace and benefit for the Church, not to confuse and disturb it. Your majesty's orders plainly indicate your pious and peaceful intentions for the churches of Christ. But Cyril of Alexandria, a man who seems born and bred for the ruin of the churches, joined forces with the reckless Memnon of Ephesus and first transgressed your calming and pious decree, thus revealing his general depravity. Your majesty had ordered a careful investigation of the faith, to be conducted with the consent and agreement of all. Cyril -- indicted, or rather self-convicted, on the charge of Apollinarian doctrine by the letter he recently sent to the capital with its anathemas, which prove he shares the views of the impious heretic Apollinaris -- pays no attention to any of this. As though we lived under no emperor, he rushes headlong into every kind of lawlessness. He himself ought to be called to account for his unsound beliefs about our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, seizing an authority given him neither by the canons nor by your edicts, he plunges into every kind of disorder and illegality. For these reasons the holy synod, which has refused to accept his schemes to damage the faith, deposes him. It deposes Memnon also, who has been his counselor and accomplice throughout -- stirring up constant trouble against the bishops who refused to agree to his destructive heterodoxy, shutting the churches and every place of prayer as if we lived among pagans, and unleashing the Ephesian mob so that every day we face the gravest danger while we attend not to self-defense but to the true doctrines of religion. For the downfall of these men is identical with the establishment of orthodoxy. From Cyril's own Chapters your majesty can easily perceive his impious mind. He stands convicted of trying to raise from the grave, as it were, the impious Apollinaris who died in his heresy, and of attacking the churches and the orthodox faith.

Letter 157