The Death of Hypatia brought an Infamy on Cyril and the Christian Church: She was no Catholick, but a Heathen.

Thus ended the Life of Hypatia, whose Memory will ever last, and whose Murder happen’d in the fourth Year of Cyril’s Episcopate, Honorius being the tenth Time and Theodosius the sixth Time Consuls, in the Month of March, in the Time of Lent, and in the Year 415. “That Action (says Socrates) brought no small Infamy not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Church of Alexandria; for Slaughters, and Fightings, and such like Things, are quite foreign to the Christian Institution.” There’s nothing surer, there’s nothing truer; but of genuine Christianity there remain’d very little at that Time, unless Christianity be made to consist in the bare Name and Profession; for, were I disposed to take this Trouble upon me, I should think it no difficult Task to shew, that neither the Doctrines nor Distinctions then in Vogue were ever taught by Christ or his Apostles; and that the Ceremonies injoined or practised were all utterly unknown to them. No, no, they were no Christians that kill’d Hypatia; nor are any Christian Clergymen now to be attack’d through the Sides of her Murderers, but those that resemble them; by substituting precarious Traditions, scholastick Fictions, and an usurped Dominion, to the salutiferous Institution of the holy Jesus. Photius is very angry with Philostorgius, whom he stigmatizes as an impious Man, for saying that the Homoousians, or the Athanasian Trinitarians, tore her to Pieces; but is he not an impudent Man, or something worse, that dares to deny this? when none were more remarkable Sticklers for the Homoousian, than Cyril and his Adherents. This only the Truth of History requires to be specially noted; for with me the Homoiousion and the Homoousion are of no Account, in Comparison of the Bible, where neither of them are to be found. In the mean Time ’twill not be amiss to hear Gothofred on this Occasion. “Observe here (says he) the Arian Poison of Philostorgius against the Homoousians, or Catholicks; as if the Murder of Hypatia were the Crime of the Catholicks, and not of the indiscrete Populace. Thus much however may be gathered from this Passage, that this same Hypatia was no Catholick.” Admirable Gothofred! Not to say any thing to your Arian Poison, for which I am not a whit concern’d neither of the People’s Guilt, whom I have sufficiently clear’d before; nor yet of the nice Distinction between the Populace and the Catholicks, as if the Bulk of the Catholicks were not the Populace: Your Conclusion that Hypatia was not a Catholick is unspeakably acute, when in Reality she was not as much as a Christian; her Father having been a Heathen Philosopher, and herself the Wife of one, without the least Appearance that she was ever any other with regard to her own Persuasion. As for a ridiculous Letter, pretended to be written by her to Cyril, about the Paschal Cycle, ’tis a manifest Forgery; for she was murdered the sixth Year of Theodosius, and therefore one and twenty Years before the Exile of Nestorius, who yet is mention’d in that Letter under the Epithet of impious.