COUNCILS.

UNITY OF ROMAN CHURCH.

The Council of Nice assembled in Asia Minor by the direction of Constantine in the year 325. Here we see more than two hundred and fifty bishops, mostly from the east, with presbyters, deacons and others, engaged in an effort to settle the Arian heresy, which consisted in maintaining that Christ was the most exalted of all created things, but inferior to God the Father. This opinion was first ventilated in the year 318. It was publicly condemned by the Council of Alexandria in the year 320, and then by the Council of Nice. This Council maintained the perfect equality of essence of both Father and Son, and could only express their relation by terming it eternal generation, which Dr. Adam Clark calls eternal nonsense.

"Arius and his partisans were banished by the Council of Alexandria, but as he had powerful adherents he found means to return at the express command of Constantine. He was on his way to receive the oath of ministerial allegiance when he very suddenly, as some say, died by poison. His death was in the year 336. It is said that Constantine was baptized into the Arian communion in the year 337. The followers of Arius increased greatly after his death. Under Constantius, called Flavius Julius, Arianism became the religion of the court, and it even penetrated as far as Rome, which was obliged to receive into its communion Felix, an Arian bishop. But the divisions which grew among the Arians themselves prepared for the Catholic church an easy victory over them and led to their final extinction." It is worthy of being remembered at all times, and under all circumstances, that this whole controversy is unauthorized in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, faith in him as the Son of the living God being the great truth upon which the Church of God is built. What eternal nonsense it is to be quarreling about whether he and his Father are of the same essence. The truths of Christianity and of Protestantism are found in the teachings of the anti-Nicene fathers, but we must remember that these were uninspired men, and therefore displayed no standard of truth. The term fathers, without qualification, includes a vast range, comprising a period of eleven hundred years, from Clemens to Bernard, from the Bishop of Rome to the Monk of Clairvaux.

Immediately after the Council of Nice their works took on the infections of popery. Each succeeding writer in each succeeding century added to the gathering mass of error and superstition. The filth and dirt accumulated until the system of delusion was fully developed in the "man of sin." The Fathers, as they are called, are entitled to no more than other men. They should never be resorted to as authoritative or inspired, for they were not. They may be used as witnesses to show the customs of their times. So far as they are concerned as the standard of truth, we may just as well, with safety and without remorse, deliver them to the Vatican to rot with the lumber and legends of the dark ages. The anti-Nicene fathers had many errors, but theirs were not the errors of Romanism. The religious productions of the first three centuries of our era contain, in the main, the principles of Protestantism. The post-Nicene fathers, or popery, may be compared to a field of wheat overrun with weeds. The great work of the Protestant reformers was to eradicate the weeds. Failing to accomplish this in the Roman field, they gathered the pure seed grain and sowed it in the Lord's field, "the world," where it now waves in beauty, tending to a glorious harvest. Once on a time a person was asked where Protestantism was before the Reformation. He answered in turn, It was where your face was this morning before it was washed. The reply was just. Dirt could be no part of the human countenance, and removing the filth by washing could neither change the features of the face nor destroy its identity. By this cleansing operation the face only assumed its normal and natural appearance. In like manner the superstitious traditions of the Roman church were no part of Christianity. It was but proper that the reformers should dismiss the adulterations of the ages and plant their feet away back in the land of Israel with the Christ of God.

Arius was regarded as an innovater on the true faith. The great enemy of Arianism was simply Trinitarianism. The council of Nice was presided over by Hosius. The assembled fathers declared the consubstantiality of the son for the establishment of Trinitarianism and the extermination of Arianism. This wonderful term, consubstantiality, had been rejected by the synod of Antioch sixty years before, and by Dionysius, of Alexandria, in opposition to Sabellianism.

In 359 the Emperor Constantius assembled the council of Rimini, a city of Central Italy. Six hundred bishops and a number of priests now undo all that the council of Nice had done. This council was as accommodating to Arian Constantius as to the Trinitarian Constantine. Constantius, forsaking the Trinitarian system, adopted Arianism, and Greeks and Latins complied with the imperial wishes, and, like dutiful subjects, signed the Arian and semi-Arian confessions of Sirneium, Seleucia, Milan and Ariminum. The western and eastern prelacy subscribed in compliance with their sovereign to the Arian creed, which, as Du Pin has shown, was signed by his infallibility, Pope Liberius.

Next in our programme comes Theodosius I., assembling a council of one hundred and fifty bishops at Constantinople in the year 381. Theodosius was a zealous Catholic; he was baptized before the end of the first year of his reign, and immediately published an edict in support of the doctrine of the Trinity, branding all who did not hold it as heretics. His council was presided over by St. Gregory Nazianzen. The chief work of this council was to anathematise the Council of Rimini, which was composed of six hundred bishops and a multitude of priests. This work was done, and so one hundred and fifty bishops curse and denounce as heretical and false six hundred bishops and a multitude of priests; so the voice of the many is not always the voice of God, nor yet the voice of a council the voice of a Pope; neither is the infallibility of a Pope always found in a council, nor is the infallibility of one Pope always found in the voice of another.

Theodosius II. convened a council in 431. Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, seems to have been the cause of this convocation, having persecuted all who were not of his opinions; now undergoes persecution for having plead that the Holy Virgin Mary was not the mother of God. He plead that Jesus Christ being the word, consubstantial with the Father, Mary could not, at the same time, be the mother of God the Father and of God the Son. To settle this quarrel Nestorius demands a council and obtains it. This council condemned Nestorius, and one of its committees displaced Cyril. The Emperor, Theodosius II., reversed all that was done, and then permitted it to reassemble. The deputies from Rome, John, Patriarch of Antioch, with twenty-six suffragans, arrived five days after the transaction, and it is on record that his arrival was followed by one of the most distinguished cursing matches of antiquity. The Roman bishops on occasions of this character always had recourse to cursing, and they scarcely ever failed to ease themselves up with an overflow of anathemas and execrations. Cyril and Nestorius exchanged mutual imprecations, even before the sitting of the council. The saint, it is said, had launched twelve anathemas at the heretic in an Alexandrian synod in the year 430, and the heretic Nestorius thanked the saint by returning the same number of inverted blessings. This has been a heavy business among Popes for many centuries. John and Cyril engaged in the same kind of warfare immediately after John's arrival at Ephesus. John and his party congratulated Cyril, Memnon, and their accomplices by deposing and excommunicating them, and now the parties continue, for some time, to give vent to their feelings in mutual anathemas. These benedictions were the only articles of mutual exchange, current and of legal tender value between the parties. At last the Emperor had Nestorius and Cyril arrested, and ordered all the bishops to return each to his church, and so no conclusion was reached. The Greeks called the second assembly at Ephesus a gang of felons, but the first, it is said, excelled it in all the arts of villainy. The contest was finally ended, not by the church, but by the state. The Emperor reinstated Cyril and banished Nestorius, and the western diocese was in the end reduced to submission and the church to unity, not by ecclesiastical authority, but by imperial power. (See Evagrius 1, 5; Liberatus c. 6; Godeau 3, 310.) The Council of Chalcedon met in the year 451. St. Leo, bishop of Rome, took the advantage of the troubles which the quarrel about the two natures occasioned in the empire, and presided at the council by his legates, which was a new feature in councils. But the fathers of the council apprehending that the church of the west would, from this precedent, pretend to the superiority over the eastern church, decided, by their twenty-eighth canon, that the see of Constantinople and the see of Rome should enjoy alike the same advantages and privileges. This was the origin of the long enmity which prevailed and still prevails between the two churches, the eastern and the western. This council endorsed and established the "two natures in one person." The twenty-eighth canon of this council has been rejected and condemned by the Latins, yet Pelagius, Gregory, Pascal and Boniface acknowledged this council, thereby placing the seal of infallibility upon it as much as they ever did upon other councils.

In 553 Justinian assembled a council at Constantinople to discuss the three chapters, as they were designated, composed by Ibas, Theodoret and Theodorus. Vigilius, bishop of Rome, with bishops and deacons from Italy, Africa and the east, was in Constantinople during the entire sittings of this council, and refused to attend although invited. But the council went on, all the same. His infallibility, supported by his clique, opposed the emperor and his council, but in vain. He formed his bishops and deacons into a separate council, published a constitution defending, in modified terms, the three chapters, and interdicting all further discussion upon the subject by the authority of the Apostolic See; pronounced anathemas against the persons and defenders of the authors of the three chapters. Having now made himself a partisan of the authors, who were condemned by the emperor's council, he was cursed for promoting heresy, and banished in dishonor. This served to bring him to his senses upon several matters, and so he turned about and approved what he had before condemned. And so heresy was converted into orthodoxy by the magical power of an emperor at the expense of the infallibility of Vigilius. The Italians, Tuscans, Ligurians, Istrians, French, Illyrians and Africans, who took a stand against the emperor, were like the pope, the "vicar general of God," converted by the sword of Justinian. The Italian clergy who resisted were banished.

"In 681 there was a council at Constantinople, convoked by Constantine, the bearded. This council was called by the Latins 'in trullo,' because it was held in an apartment of the imperial palace. The emperor himself presided. The bishops of Constantinople and Antioch were on his right hand, and the deputies from Jerusalem and Rome were on his left. In this council it was decided that Jesus Christ had two wills." Here "Pope Honorius I. was condemned as a monothelite, that is, as wishing Jesus Christ to have but one will." O, shame! What will come next? Well, we are out at sea in the very darkest periods of the dark ages, and there is no telling how much our senses may be shocked. We find next what is known as the Second Council of Nice. It was assembled by a woman, Mrs. Irene, in the name of her son, whose eyes she had caused to be put out. Her husband, Leo, had abolished the worship of images as leading to idolatry. This woman re-established this worship. During Constantine's minority she executed the imperial power. She was a bold defender and patron of emblematic or image worship. It is said that she had the ambition of Lucifer and the malignity of a demon. She is accused of being connected with the murder of her husband. "She put out the eyes of Nicephorus, and amputated the tongues of Christopher, Nicetas, Athenius and Eudoxas, Constantine's sons, for suspicion of conspiracy. She destroyed the eyes of her own son." "No woman," says Bruys, "was ever less worthy of life than this princess." Her ambition, says Godeau, made her violate all the laws of God and man. Now listen, but first prepare to experience all that the opposite extreme can possibly produce. Is there any place in your nature where life and death, or heaven and hell, can meet in festive joys? No. Then bear with my story the best you can, for it must be told. Here it is: Theodorus and Theophanes extol that vile woman for her VIRTUE AND EXCELLENCE(?). The Greeks placed her among the saints in their menology, and in holy festivity celebrate her anniversary. Hartman and Binius, in more modern times, flatter her prudence and piety(?). Alexander lauds her religion and faith as worthy of immortal honor(?), though the blinding of her son, he admits, exposed her to reprehension. Baronius justifies the assassination of her son. He commends the inhumanity which arose from zeal for religion. Here let the curtain drop till my next on councils makes its appearance.