Note (return) — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

The Benedictine editors begin their preface thus: "That this discourse is spurious, there is NO LEARNED MAN WHO DOES NOT NOW ADJUDGE ... The style proves itself more clear than the sun, to be different from that of Athanasius. Besides this, very many trifles show themselves here unworthy of any sensible man whatever, not to say Athanasius ... and a great number of expressions unknown to Athanasius ... so that it savours of inferior Greek. And truly his subtle disputation on the hypostasis of Christ, and on the two natures in Christ, persuades us, that he lived after the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon; of which councils moreover he uses the identical words, whereas his dissertation on the two wills in Christ seems to argue, that he lived after the spreading of the error of the Monothelites. But (continue these Benedictine editors) we would add here the dissertation of Baronius on this subject, sent to us by our brethren from Rome. That illustrious annotator, indeed, having read only the Latin version of Nannius, which is clearer than the Greek, did not observe the astonishing perplexity of the style65."