ing of the terms: so we must begin and examine what makes ART. a general council; whether all the bishops must be present in XXI. person, or by proxy? And what share the laity, or the princes that are thought to represent their people, ought to have in a council? It is next to be considered, whether a general citation is enough to make a council general, were the appearance of the bishops ever so small at their first opening? It is next to be considered, whether any come thither and sit there as representing others; and if votes ought to be reckoned according to the numbers of the bishops, or of the others who depute and send them? And whether nations ought to vote in a body as integral parts of the church; or every single bishop by himself? And finally, whether the decisions of councils must be unanimous, before they can be esteemed infallible? or whether the major vote, though exceeding only by one, or if some greater inequality is necessary; such as two-thirds, or any other proportion? That there may be just cause of raising scruples upon every one of these, is apparent at first view. It is certain, a bare name cannot qualify a number of bishops. sitting together, to be this general council. The number of bishops does it not neither. A hundred and fifty was a small number at Constantinople: even the famous three hundred and eighteen at Nice were far exceeded by those at Arimini. All the first general councils were made up for the most part of eastern bishops; there being a very inconsiderable number of the western among any of them; scarce any at all being to be found in some. If this had been the body to whom Christ had left this infallibility, it cannot be imagined but that some definition or description of the constitution of it would have been given us in the scripture: and the profound silence that is about it gives just occasion to think, that how wise and how good soever such a constitution may be, if well pursued, yet it is not of a divine institution; otherwise somewhat concerning so important a head as this is must have been mentioned in the scripture. The natural idea of a general council, is a meeting of all the bishops of Christendom, or at least of proxies instructed by them and their clergy. Now if any will stand to this description, then we are very sure that there was never yet a true general council; which will appear to every one that reads the subscriptions of the councils. Therefore we must conclude, that general councils are not constituted by a divine authority; since we have no direction given us from God, by which we may know what they are, and what is necessary to their constitution. And we cannot suppose that God has granted any privileges, much less infallibility, which is the greatest of all, to a body of men, of whom, or of whose constitution, he has said nothing to us. For suppose we should yield that there were an infallibility lodged in general in the church diffusive, so that the church in some part or other shall be always pre XXI. ART. served from error; yet the restraining this to the greater number of such bishops as shall happen to come to a council, they living perhaps near it, or being more capable and more forward to undertake a journey, being healthier, richer, or more active, than others; or, which is as probable, because it has often fallen out, they being picked out by parties or princes to carry on cabals, and manage such intrigues as may be on foot at the council; the restraining the infallibility, I say, to the greater number of such persons, unless there is a divine authority for doing it, is the transferring the infallibility from the whole body to a select number of persons, who of themselves are the least likely to consent to the engrossing this privilege to the majority of their body, it being their interest to maintain their right to it, free from intrigue or management. We need not wonder if such things have happened in the latter ages, when Nazianzen laments the corruptions, the ambition, and the contentions, that reigned in those assemblies in his own time; so that he never desired to see any more of them. He was not only present at one of the general councils, but he himself felt the effects of jealousy and violence in it. Further, it will appear a thing incredible, that there is an infallibility in councils because they are called general, and are assembled out of a great many kingdoms and provinces ; when we see them go backward and forward, according to the influences of courts, and of interests directed from thence. We know how differently councils decreed in the Arian controversies; and what a variety of them Constantius set up against that at Nice. So it was in the Eutychian heresy, approved in the second council at Ephesus, but soon after condemned at Chalcedon. So it was in the business of images, condemned at Constantinople in the east; but soon after upon another change at court maintained in the second at Nice; and not long after condemned in a very numerous council at Francfort. And in the point in hand, as to the authority of councils, it was asserted at Constance and Basil, but condemned in the Lateran; and was upon the matter laid aside at Trent. Here were great numbers of all hands; both sides took the name of general councils. It will be a further prejudice against this, if we see great violence and disorders entering into the management of some councils; and craft and artifice into the conduct of others. Numbers of factious and furious monks came to some councils, and drove on matters by their clamours; so it was at Ephesus. We see gross fraud in the second at Nice, both in the persons set up to represent the absent patriarchs, and in the books and authorities that were vouched for the worship of images. The intrigues at Trent, as they are set out even by cardinal Pallavicini, were more subtile, but not less apparent, nor less scandalous. Nothing was trusted to a session, till it was first XXI. canvassed in congregations; which were what a committee of ART. the whole house is in our parliaments; and then every man's vote was known; so that there was hereby great occasion given for practice. This alone, if there had been no more, shewed plainly that they themselves knew they were not guided by the Spirit of God, or by infallibility; since a session was not thought safe to be ventured on, but after a long previous canvassing. Another question remains yet to be cleared, concerning their manner of proceeding; whether the infallibility is affixed to their vote, whatsoever their proceedings may be? or whether they are bound to discuss matters fully? The first cannot be said, unless it is pretended that they vote by a special inspiration. If the second is allowed, then we must examine both what makes a full discussion; and whether they have made it? If we find opinions falsely represented; if books that are spurious have been relied on; if passages of scripture, or of the fathers, on which it appears the stress of the decision has turned, have been manifestly misunderstood and wrested, so that in a more enlightened age no person pretends to justify the authority that determined them, can we imagine that there should be more truth in their conclusions, than we do plainly see was in the premises out of which they were drawn? So it must either be said, that they vote by an immediate inspiration, or all persons cannot be bound to submit to their judgment till they have examined their methods of proceeding, and the grounds on which they went: and when all is done, the question comes, concerning the authority of such decrees after they are made; whether it follows immediately upon their being made, or must stay for the confirmatory bulls? If it must stay for the bull, then the infallibility is not in the council: and that is only a more solemn way of preparing matters in order to the laying them before the pope. If they are infallible before the confirmation, then the infallibility is wholly in the council; and the subsequent bull does, instead of confirming their decrees, derogate much from them: for to pretend to confirm them, imports that they wanted that addition of authority, which destroys the supposition of their infallibility, since what is infallible cannot be made stronger; and the pretending to add strength to it, implies that it is not infallible. Human constitutions may be indeed so modelled, that there must be a joint concurrence before a law can be made: and though it is the last consent that settles the law, yet the previous consents were necessary steps to the giving it the authority of a law. And thus it is not to be denied, but that, as to the matters of government, the church may cast herself into such a model, that as by a decree of the council of Nice the bishops of a province might conclude nothing without the consent of the XXI. govern ART. metropolitan; so another decree might even limit a general council to stay for the consent of one or more patriarchs. But this must only take place in matters of order and ment, which are left to the disposal of the church, but not in decisions about matters of faith. For if there is an infallibility in the church, it must be derived from a special grant made by Christ to his church: and it must go according to the nature of that grant, unless it can be pretended that there is a clause in that grant, empowering the church to dispose of it, and model it at pleasure. For if there is no such power, as it is plain there is not, then Christ's grant is either to a single person, or to the whole community: if to a single person, then the infallibility is wholly in him, and he is to manage it as he thinks best for if he calls a council, it is only an act of his humility and condescension, to hear the opinions of many in different corners of the church, that so he may know all that comes from all quarters: it may also seem a prudent way to make his authority to be the more easily borne and submitted to, since what is gently managed is best obeyed: but after all, these are only prudential and discreet methods. The infallibility must be only in him, if Christ has by the grant tied him to such a succession. Whereas on the other hand, if the infallibility is granted to the whole community, or to their representatives, then all the applications that they may make to any one see must only be in order to the execution of their decrees, like the addresses that they make to princes for the civil sanction. But still the infallibility is where Christ put it. It rests wholly in their decision, and belongs only to that: and any other confirmation that they desire, unless it be restrained singly to the execution of their decrees, is a wound given by themselves to their own infallibility, if not a direct disclaiming of it. When the confirmation of the council is over, a new difficulty arises concerning the receiving the decrees: and here it may be said, that if Christ's grant is to the whole community, so that a council is only the authentical declarer of the tradition, the whole body of the church that is possessed of the tradition, and conveys it down, must have a right to examine the decision that the council has made, and so is not bound to receive it, but as it finds it to be conformable to tradition. Here it is to be supposed, that every bishop, or at the least all the bishops of any national church, know best the tradition of their own church and nation: and so they will have a right to re-examine things after they have been adjudged in a general council. This will entirely destroy the whole pretension to infallibility and yet either this ought to have been done after the councils at Arimini, or the second of Ephesus, or else the world must have received semi-Arianism, or Eutychianism, XXI. implicitly from them. It is also no small prejudice against ART. this opinion, that the church was constituted, the scriptures were received, many heresies were rejected, and the persecutions were gone through, in a course of three centuries; in all which time there was nothing that could pretend to be called a general council. And when the ages came, in which councils met often, neither the councils themselves, who must be supposed to understand their own authority best, nor those who wrote in defence of their decrees, who must be supposed to be inclined enough to magnify their authority, being of the same side; neither of these, I say, ever pretended to argue for their opinions, from the infallibility of those councils that decreed them. They do indeed speak of them with great respect, as of bodies of men that were guided by the Spirit of God: and so do we of our reformers, and of those who prepared our Liturgy but we do not ascribe infallibility to them, and no more did they. Nor did they lay the stress of their arguments upon the authority of such decisions; they knew that the objection might have been made as strong against them, as they could put the argument for them; and therefore they offered to wave the point, and to appeal to the scripture, setting aside the definitions that had been made in councils both ways. To conclude this argument. If the infallibility is supposed to be in councils, then the church may justly apprehend that she has lost it: for as there has been no council that has pretended to that title, now during one hundred and thirty years, so there is no great probability of our ever seeing another. The charge and noise, the expectations and disappointments, of that at Trent, has taught the world to expect nothing from one: they plainly see that the management from Rome must carry every thing in a council: neither princes nor people, no nor the bishops themselves, desire or expect to see one. The claim set up at Rome for infallibility makes the demand of one seem not only needless there, but to imply a doubting of their authority, when other methods are looked after, which will certainly be always unacceptable to those who are in possession, and act as if they were infallible: nor can it be apprehended, that they will desire a council to reform those abuses in discipline, which are all occasioned by that absolute and universal authority of which they are now possessed. So by all the judgments that can be made from the state of things, from the interests of men, and the last management at Trent, one may without a spirit of prophecy conclude, that, unless Christendom puts on a new face, there will be no more general councils. And so here infallibility |