decrees, is sufficient proof that the Nestorians believe that such councils "may err, and have erred, in things pertaining to God."31
The same doctrine may be inferred from the following extract: "O thou who hast been affianced to Christ, seek not after another bridegroom, for He is the true Bridegroom who has been from everlasting, and shall exist for ever. He has given thee His body to be thy food, and His truth for thy faith; exchange it not with any other, lest He become thine adversary. The jealousy of Him Who has affianced thee is great; prove thou faithful to His love lest He write thy bill of divorcement, and thou become a derision unto all those who are called to thy wedding. The wedding of a mortal bridegroom comes to an end after three days; but if thou wilt, thy wedding shall last from this time forth and for ever." From the service appointed in the Khudhra for the first Sunday of the "Sanctification of the Church."
The Nestorians, however, maintain that the Church founded by Christ can never fail from off the earth. On this subject the author of the Warda, in a poem on the Resurrection, writes: "Let the believing Church rejoice, because He Who has affianced her has truly risen, and has so raised her and her children that they cannot fall." And again: "Blessed is He who through His Name founded His Church, and promised and confirmed to Peter, that the bars of hell, which are of old, shall never prevail against her." From the service in the Khudhra for the first Sunday of the "Sanctification of the Church."
who opposed him, and took from them their dignity. Moreover, he and Eutyches wrote a decree, that if any should maintain that after the Union there was other than one Person and one Nature, he should be excommunicated, and whosoever did not receive the Twelve Sentences drawn up by Cyril, should in like manner be expelled the Church. Dioscorus wrote also on this wise to Yeshua, Patriarch of the East, and attempted to force his acceptance of the decree; but he sent him an answer which greatly incensed and effectually silenced him. And because he could not reply to what the Patriarch had written, he spread abroad the report that the Easterns were one with Nestorius, and therefore were to be called 'Nestorians.' And this name has been applied to them from that day up to the present time, and they find it difficult to cast it off, and cannot get rid of it, although they dislike it, because it takes its rise from a man who was not one of them, whom they never saw, one who was not of their language, neither their Patriarch, who was young and they old in the faith."
