Pope Leo, who is frequently in these documents [Vol. v. p. 1418.] called Archbishop of Rome, in a letter to Julianus, Bishop of Cos, speaks of Christ as born of “A Virgin,” “The blessed Virgin,” “The pure, undefiled Virgin;” and in a letter to the empress Pulcheria, he calls Mary simply “The Virgin Mary.”  In his celebrated letter to Flavianus, not one iota of which (according to the decree of the Roman council under Pope Gelasius) was to be questioned by any man on pain of incurring an anathema, Pope Leo says that Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary his mother, who brought him forth with the same virgin purity as she had conceived him.  Flavianus, Archbishop of Constantinople, in his Declaration of faith to the Emperor Theodosius, affirms, that Christ was born “of Mary, the Virgin—­of the same substance with the Father according to his Godhead—­of the same substance with his mother according to his manhood.” [Vol. vi. p. 539.] He speaks of her afterwards as “The holy Virgin.”

There is, indeed, one word used in a quotation from Cyril of Alexandria, and adopted in these transactions, which requires a few words of especial observation.  The word is theotocos[123], which the Latins were accustomed {323} to transfer into their works, substituting only Roman instead of Greek characters, but which afterwards the authors of the Church of Rome translated by Deipara, and in more recent ages by Dei Mater, Dei Genetrix, Creatoris Genetrix, &c. employing those terms not in explanation of the twofold nature of Christ’s person, as was the case in these Councils, but in exaltation of Mary, his Virgin mother.  This word was adopted by Christians in much earlier times than the Council of Chalcedon; but it was employed only to express more strongly the Catholic belief in the union of the divine and human nature in Him who was Son both of God and man; and by no means for the purpose of raising Mary into an object of religious adoration.  The sense in which it was used was explained in the seventh Act of the Council of Constantinople, (repeated at Chalcedon) as given by Cyril of Alexandria.  “According to this sense of an unconfused union, we confess the holy Virgin to be theotocos, because that God the Word was made flesh, and became man, and from that very conception united with himself the temple received from her.”

[Footnote 123:  [Greek:  Theotokos].  To those who would depend upon this word theotocos as a proof of the exalted honour in which the early Christians held the Virgin, and not as indicative of an anxiety to preserve whole and entire the doctrine of the union of perfect God and perfect man in Christ, deriving his manhood through her, I would suggest the necessity of weighing well that argument with this fact before them; that to the Apostle James, called in Scripture the Lord’s brother, was assigned the name of Adelphotheos, or God’s brother.  This name was given to James, not to exalt him