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.