316 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



Council of Basle, and the right to dissolve it, the members 

 took the sharpest of means with him, and anticipated his bull 

 by a decree, in which they affirmed that the representatives of 

 the Church militant on earth were invested with a divine and 

 spiritual jurisdiction over all Christians, without excepting the 

 Pope ; and that a general council could not be dissolved, pro- 

 rogued, or transferred, except on its own free deliberation and 

 consent. Following np this boldness of speech by boldness 

 of action, they gave the Pope sixty days to repent of his 

 folly, promising, unless he withdrew his offensive pretensions, 

 they would suspend him from the exercise of his spiritual and ! 

 temporal functions. Eugenius recanted, and with his own hand | 

 rescinded the bull he intended to fulminate against the council. | 

 Gradually, with the patience which belongs to an institution ' 

 that considers itself eternal, the Roman churchmen arrogated j 

 to themselves a power over the lay prince who was their con- | 

 stitutional head, and went so far at the Council of Lyons, held j 

 in 1245, under the presidency of Innocent IV., as to depose 

 the Emperor Frederick on account of the firm stand he had 

 made against ecclesiastical usurpation and the claim of the 

 so-called saints to judge the world, as represented by kings 

 obnoxious to the Church's interests. And so it came about that, 

 whereas the emperors alone had in former times the right to 

 summon a council, councils became perfectly independent of 

 the emperor, and could and did act upon their own authority, 

 to the complete exclusion of the lay element. 



A glance at the following list will show the number, date, 

 and occasion of the great councils which have been held. Those 

 numbered in Roman letters are the general or oecumenical 

 councils ; but the others are of importance enough, though only 

 provincial synods, to merit a place in the list : 



I. FIRST (ECUMENICAL OB GENERAL COUNCIL, held at Nice, A.D. 



in Bithynia. Constantine the Great presided . . 323 



At Tyre, against Athanasius of Alexandria . . 335 



At Constantinople, when the Arian heresy gained ground 337 



At Home, in favour of Athanasius .... 342 



At Sardis, attended by 370 bishops. The Arians con- 

 demned ......... 347 



At Kimiiii, attended by 400 bishops. A new confession 



of faith drawn up ... . . . 359 



II. CONSTANTINOPLE 381 



III. EPHESUS. Pelagius censured. Pelagius was an English- 



man, who taught that physical death was not a con- 

 sequence of Adam's fall, but would have happened in 

 any case ; that the consequences of Adam's sin were 

 confined to himself; that new-born infants are as 

 Adam was before the fall ; that the law qualified men 

 for heaven as well as the Gospel ; and that the general 

 resurrection did not follow because of Christ's resur- 

 rection from the dead 431 



IV. CHALCEDON. Eutychiauism censured. Eutyches, au 



abbot, taught the creed (professed this day by Copts 

 and Armenians) that there was but one nature in 

 Christ, the human having been absorbed in the 

 divine ......... 451 



V. CONSTANTINOPLE. Origen's teaching condemned. 

 Origen, who lived in 185-253, taught that Christ was 

 the Sou of God only by adoption and grace ; that 

 souls were created before the bodies ; that the planets 

 and stars had souls; that the punishment of the 

 damned was not eternal ; and that the fallen angels 

 would one day be restored ..... 553 



VI. CONSTANTINOPLE, against the Monothelites, or 



Eutychians 681 



VII. SECOND NICENE COUNCIL, against Iconoclasts, or breakers 

 of images in churches, the Church having been 

 violently sundered by the question whether it was 

 lawful or not to use images in the churches . . 787 

 VIII. CONSTANTINOPLE, against Iconoclasts .... 870 

 The Council of Clerrnont, attended by 310 bishops, 



authorised the crusades 1095 



IX. FIRST LATERAN. The right of investiture, or presen- 

 tation to ecclesiastical benefices, which had been 

 claimed both by pope and emperor, and had been the 

 subject of bitter wars, and was yet to be so, arranged 

 for a time by treaty between Pope Calixtus II. and 



the Emperor Henry V 1123 



X. SECOND LATERAN. Innocent II. presided. The chief 

 subject of discussion was how most effectually to 

 preserve the temporalities of churchmen . . . 1139 



XI. THIRD LATERAN. Schismatics condemned . . . 1179 

 XII. FOURTH LATERAN. Innocent III. presided, and autho- 

 rised the crusade against the Albigenses. Doctrine 

 of transubstantiation promulgated .... 1215 



XIII. LYONS, under luuonent IV. Deposed the Emperor A - D 

 Frederic, on the ground that the saints being com- 

 missioned to judge the world, kings were not 

 exempted, and that it behoved the Church to punish 

 offenders against her, without respect of persons . 1245 

 XIV. LYONS. A temporary union effected between the Greek 



and Latin Churches ...... 1274 



XV. VIENNE IN DAUPHINE. Clement V. presided. The 



Order of the Knights Templars suppressed . . 1312 

 XVI. PISA. Of the three claimants of the Papal throne, 

 Gregory XII. and Benedict called XIII., who held his 

 court at Avignon, deposed, and Alexander V. elected 1W9 

 XVII. CONSTANCE Martin V. elected pope in plnce of 

 John XXIII., deposed. John Huss and Jerome of 

 Prague condemned for heresy, and burned 



XVIII. BASLE. Eugenius IV. deposed from the papacy, and 

 Amadeus of Savoy chosen ..... 



XIX. FIFTH LATERAN, against the pragmatic sanction of the 

 French kings, asserting the rights of the Gallican 

 Church as agaiust the Pope ..... 1512 



XX. TRENT. Satforeighteen years, and condemned, amongst 

 other tilings already mentioned, the doctrines of 

 Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle .... 1545-1563 



Such are the principal councils held by the Roman Church 

 till the last meeting of the council of the Vatican, of which the 

 main object seems to have been to obviate the necessity of 

 calling councils in future, by declaring transferred to the Pope, 

 as head of the Church, that quality of infallibility hitherto 

 supposed to be a peculiar attribute of councils only. This 

 notion of infallibility, residing somewhere in the body of the 

 Church militant, was first formulated into an article of faith 

 by the great architect of the Roman Church power, Hildebrand 

 (Gregory VII.). It had been mooted before, but never esta- 

 blished as an essential part of the creed. Until long immunity 

 from the persecution and adversity in which the Church of 

 Christ had first grew and flourished, had made the Christian 

 clergy seekers after new things, and aspire to kingdoms which 

 are of this world, the Church was content to leave alone such 

 awful questions as those which now are spoken trippingly by 

 the tongues of courtiers in the palace of him who in effect sits 

 in the temple of God, saying, " I am God." The rise and 

 spread of differences in opinion, the schisms which, as will be 

 seen in reference to the above list, separated into distinct 

 and even antagonistic churches, large bodies of those who had 

 formerly " lived together in unity," seemed to call for some 

 authority which should decide all differences, that authority 

 being guided in its decisions by an unerring instinct directing 

 it unconsciously to an absolutely truthful conclusion. Such 

 an authority, it was thought, must be indwelling in the body 

 of the Cliurch with which Christ had promised to be always, 

 even unto the end of the world ; in the Church that was 

 built upon the rock against which the gates of hell shall not 

 prevail. 



Once established that such an authority was necessary, it was 

 easy to find a place where it might be supposed to dwell. 

 Start with the belief that truth is not many-sided, that absolute 

 truth can be found, and that one telescope only can reveal it 

 all other telescopes, no matter by whom made, being bad and 

 deceptive and you are driven to seek some infallible oracle 

 such as that now demanded at Rome. The transfer of the 

 attribute from council to pope is simply a matter of conve- 

 nience, and is really no more startling in itself than the original 

 claim of councils to be infallible. But it has taken the Roman 

 Church several centuries to arrive at the ultimate consequence 

 of the claim on the part of any human being, or body of human 

 beings, to be infallible. It was Gregory VII. who first pro- 

 claimed the infallibility of the Church. Before his time, Chris- 

 tians were content to meet in council for the purpose of dis- 

 cussion, and of agreeing, without intolerance of others who 

 could not but think differently, upon questions on which it 

 seemed desirable to have a common faith. They did not declare 

 all men eternally lost who had different degrees or different 

 kinds of light. Uniformity, however, was necessary to the 

 ideal of Christianity which Hildebrand and his advisers formed 

 in their own minds ; to secure uniformity it was necessary to 

 proclaim infallibility ; and infallibility was accordingly asserted 

 to dwell in the Church of Rome not of Christ, be it observed 

 which " has been, is, and will continue, infallible." 



The effect of this decree has been to justify, as the direct 

 inspiration of God himself, some of the most blasphemous, some 



