NESTOR I ANS

The followers of Nestor i us, patriarch of Constantinople, in the first half of the fifth century. This prelate agitated the Christian world, after the Arian controversy had been quietly settled, by the introduction of ceruin subtle disputations concerning the incarnation of our Lord, from whence debates and contentions arose which hara ed the church for the space of more than two centuries. He affected to distinguish with peculiar fire cis i on between the divine and human natures united n Christ; and, in guarding over carefully against the propensity which he discovered in the Christians of his own day to confuse the two, and look upon them as absorbed mto one compound substance, he forbade men to entertain any combined notion at all, and kept constantly before tlieir eyes both the god and the man. He insisted, for nistance, that the Virgin should not be entitled Mother of God, but Mother qf Christ, or of Man, the human nature being e entially distinct from and only inhabited by the divine, as a temple by its divinity. The opmions of the Nestor i ans were, indeed, little more than subtle logical refinements upon mysteries which will not bear the application of such tests; and it was the habit of mnid which they engendered that chiefly rendered them pernicious, and the fierce pa ions with which they were combined that gave them their celebrity and widely S extended influence. Nestor i us himself was condemned the third general c(.uncil held at ICphesus, in the year I: his principal adversary being the president of the Miiembly. Cyril, the learned patriarch of Alexandria. Ihe heretical prelate was deposed, and banished by the M?S„'. ^° u" ''*"'" '" ^''P^'" ^«yP'' ■»^here he died. MIS opinions, however, spread throughout Asia, and appear rhH.H«^'° carried along, with the advancing streain of ChrliUanUj, to the furthest parts of India and China. In NEUTRALITY. more central regions, they were soon afterwards counteracted by the spread of the opposite heresy of Eutyches. For notices of the opinions which sprang out of these rival dogmatists, see Incarnation, Eutychians, MonoPH YsiTEs, MoNOTHELiTES. Bcsides the well-known authorities, the reader may consult Doucin, Hist, du Nestor i an is me, 1698; A emann's Biblioth. Oriental is; and Grant's Residence amons the Nestor i an Christians, 8vo, 1841. NESTS, [s. 835]