It is characteristic of the church of Christ that it was left free to mould its constitution according to its circumstances. The founders of Christianity left no detailed constitutional code. And as in other regards, so it was here; neither Christ nor the apostles prescribed a synodal system for the infant church, or enacted when and where councils should assemble, how they should be constituted, and what they should determine. Much zealous labour has been spent in proving that the councils, even as a developed organization, are a divine institution,—a difficult task certainly, if it be necessary to agree that what is human is therefore not divine, but accidental and “invented.” The most various Christian parties have with one consent sought the prototype of all Christian councils in that assembled at Jerusalem under the apostles; and from its scanty record in Acts. xv. (the other apostolic assemblies reported in Acts i., vi., xxi., being passed by as irrelevant) the advocates of the most divergent systems have extracted precise rules for the convening and the guidance of ecclesiastical assemblies. But even if we fully accept the historical accuracy of the report, it is impossible to decide with certainty the relation of the apostles to the “presbyters,” and of both to the “brethren;” and the decree embodying the decision of the Jerusalem Council contains rather a practical compromise, the arrangement of a modus vivendi in the spirit of peace and mutual forbearance, than a final settlement on grounds of principle of the grave and long-lasting problem as to what should be the relations between the new Christian church and the old Jewish law. It points to temporary concession, not to the formulation of a permanent creed.

It is not till after the middle of the 2d century that we find the example of Jerusalem followed, and councils called to solve questions that threatened the unity and well-being of the Christian church and community. The earliest councils historically attested are those convened in Asia Minor against the Montanists; though it is by no means unlikely that at a much earlier period the Christian Greeks gave scope, in ecclesiastical affairs, to their instinct for organization, for taking common action in regard to matters affecting the public good. Near the end of the 2d century again, varying views as to the celebration of Easter led to councils in Palestine, at Borne, in Pontus, Gaul, Mesopotamia, and at Ephesus. These councils were all specially called to consider particular questions. But before the middle of the 3d century, it seems that in Asia Minor at least the councils or synods had become a standing institution, and met yearly. About the same time we find councils in the Latin Church of North Africa. Before the end of this century there were councils meeting regularly in almost every province in Christendom, from Spain and Gaul to Arabia and Mesopotamia; and by extension and further organization, there was soon formed a system of mutually correspondent synods that gave to the church the aspect of a federative republic.

The developing episcopal system suggested plainly enough a gradation of rank and functions for the various synods. A synod composed of all the clergy under one bishop, with their bishop as president, stood at the bottom, of the scale, and is commonly named the diocesan synod. The metropolitan synod, or provincial council, met under the presidency of the metropolitan, and included all the bishops of his ecclesiastical province. Such metropolitan synods the Council of Nicaea recommended to be held, twice a year. When all the bishops of a patriarchate met under the patriarch, or all those of a nation under its primate or first metropolitan, the council was patriarchal or national or primatial (not infrequently termed concilium generale or plenarium). Occasionally the bishops of adjoining provinces met, the senior metropolitan presiding, for the consideration of matters common to a district of wider area than the one ecclesiastical province. The συvoδoι tvδyp,ovσαt held at Constantinople by the metropolitan, who invited as many bishops to meet him as chanced to be then in the city, though not irregular, corresponded to no territorial division of the church. Concilia mixta, held chiefly during the Middle Ages in Germany, England, Spain, and Italy, were constituted not less of temporal than of spiritual princes, and resolved questions not solely ecclesiastical. General synod was usually the name for an assembly of the bishops from all portions either of the Western or of the Oriental division of the church. Such a synod was that of Arles, whither, in 314 A.D., Constantine summoned the bishops of the Western Church. But the minor councils were soon overshadowed by the oecumenical councils, at which the whole of Christendom was held to be represented, and which by universal agreement came ultimately to be regarded as having authority for the whole church.

At the diocesan synods, presbyters were members as well as the bishop, but they had only a votum consιdtativum. The regular members of the higher synods were the bishops alone or their representatives, and exercised the votum decisivum. But other clergy, deacons, doctors of theology and of canon law, and abbots, were invited to assist the bishops with their advice, and it seems that sometimes at least the abbots were permitted to give a decisive vote. Laics, especially emperors, kings, and their commissioners, were often present, and to some English councils even abbesses were admitted. Save at the Councils of Constance and Basel, the voting was by count of heads; but at Const nice the voting was according to nations, in order to counteract the numerical predominance of the Italian Bishops. A similar method was adopted at the Council of Basel.

It has never been settled beyond dispute which of the councils are to be regarded as truly and authoritatively rtq presentative of the Christian oi.Kovpi.vq. And of those that may fairly be called oecumenical, one differs widely from another not merely in its catholicity of spirit and in the abiding interest of the questions discussed, but in the width of area from which its members were drawn, and the extent •of territory throughout which its authority was at the time recognized. At the earliest universal councils the representatives of the Western Church were a small minority; at Nicaea hardly 10 of the 318 (?) bishops were of the Latinspeaking church. The council at Constantinople in 381 was at first only a general synod of the Oriental church; and it was not till the Gth century that it was recognized as oecumenical in the West. Some councils, such as those summoned to Pavia and Siena, were designed to be oecumenical, but led to no such result. The whole Greek Church acknowledges still but seven oecumenical councils. The English Church after the Reformation practically recognized the first five. The doctrinal definitions of the first four councils became the common property of the churches of the Reformation, but Protestant authors rarely refer to the later councils save polemically. The Latins even are not entirely agreed amongst themselves. The claims of the council at Sardica in 393 to universal authority have been asserted but seldom conceded. Some Catholics have protested against the aecumenicity of the synod in 1311 at Vienne, generally reckoned the 15th oecumenical. Most Catholics, including some of those most anxious to promote reforms, refused to admit the Gallican claim in favour of the council summoned to Pisa in 1409; and its rank as a universal council has never been allowed by the most approved Catholic theologians. The Gallicans wished to have the Council of Constance recognized as oecumenical throughout; good Catholics acknowledge only the sittings held after Pope Martin V. was chosen, or such earlier decrees as were afterwards sanctioned by this Pope. Some Gallicans regard the Council of Basel as oecumenical from beginning to end; most insist on regarding it as legitimate only till it was transferred to Ferrara; many Catholics, amongst others Bellarmine, decline to admit the aecumenicity of any of its decrees. The Council of Ferrara-Florence, a Papal continuation of that at Basel, was at first protested against by the Gallican party, but is fully accepted by most Catholic theologians and canonists. The Gallicans were also slow to admit the binding authority of the 5th Lateran synod, the 18th oecumenical council.

The question as to the number of councils is naturally of most consequence to the only section of the church that still assumes the right to summon councils and to call them oecumenical. The view that prevails in the Roman Catholic Church may best be shown by giving a list of the councils accepted as oecumenical by Hefele (Conciliengeschiclde, 2d ed. vol. i. pp. 59, 60). [table]

These oecumenical councils fall naturally into several groups or series. The first eight, including that at Constantinople in 869, were summoned by the emperors, all the later ones by the popes,—and this though the analogy of the inferior councils seems to demand that the representative assemblies of the universal church should be summoned by the head of the church alone. Catholics always assert that no council can be oecumenical unless called by the Pope, or by a temporal prince with and by the Pope’s assent obtained before or after; and Catholic authors have been at pains to attempt a proof that, even at the councils undoubtedly summoned by the emperors, the bishop of Rome stood to the calling of them in a relation different from that of the other patriarchs. In the case of the 3d oecumenical council, for example, Hefele contends that the Pope did not merely, like the other bishops, passively assent, but actively sanctioned the summons.

The exclusive right of the popes to preside was^ unhesitatingly admitted at all the later councils; but at the earlier ones, where manifestly emperors, empresses, or their commissioncts were the formal presidents, Catholic canonists have persuaded themselves that such presidency was merely in regard to external matters, and that the true president was always episcopal. Even at the Council of Nicaea, they argue, Hosius and the two Roman presbyters who signed the decrees first must have done so as deputies of the Roman bishop, and as such must have been the true presidents.

The first eight councils differed from the rest in that, whereas all others met within the bounds of the Western Church, they were all held in the East. Further, the great majority of those who attended them were Greeks, and spoke Greek alone; and the chief subjects of debate at several turned on distinctions not safely translatable into the Western tongues. The first six of these eight councils were occupied mainly, though by no means exclusively, with aspects of the great trinitarian and christological controversies, and their decrees are accordingly of high dogmatical interest.

Of councils held in the West a well-defined sub-group includes the 9th (the lst Lateran) to the 15th (at Vienne in 1311). The first of these is significantly enough concerned with the dispute about the right of investiture; and though some of this series of seven discussed or defined dogmas, as did the brilliant 4th Lateran Council, they were for the most part busied with matters pertaining to the rights and dignity of the popes and with questions concerning their election. Indeed several of them have less the aspect of free and independent councils than of assemblies gathered for the official ratification of the proceedings of Pope and Curia.

The reasons for the calling of universal synods are of various kinds. When a serious heresy or schism has arisen, when it is doubtful w j hich of two opposing popes is legitimate, when it is proposed to undertake some grand design against the enemies of the church, when the Popo is accused of heresy or other grave fault, when the cardinals will not or cannot elect a Pope, and when a root and branch reformation of the church is in view,—councils may or must be summoned. It was the last of these grounds for assembling the universal church that led to tho 16th, 17th, and 18th oecumenical councils; and the 19th, that of Trent, though the sufficiency of the reforms agreed to by it was unanimously denied by Protestant reformers, must also be reckoned amongst the reforming councils.

The Vatican Council is the last of those claiming to be oecumenical; and in decreeing the infallibility of the Pope, it has appeared to many that the 20th council has shown cause why, for all essential purposes, there needs never bo another. The very institution of councils seems in itself an admission that apart from them there was no source of accessible and infallible authority on disputed points. If the assembly at Jerusalem was really a council, then even where Paul and at least one of the original twelve apostles were present, the settlement of a question with vast doctrinal and practical issues was arrived at by means of open debate amongst the members of the synod. Unhesitating belief in frequent and miraculous manifestations of the divine will was universal for centuries; yet when the illumination of the Holy Spirit was most urgently needed for the establishment of Christian truth, recourse was had to the collective opinion of assembled representatives, to discussion more or less calm and candid, and to the counting of votes,—a most noteworthy feature in the development of the church. And it deserves to be remarked that thus, in times of allembracing despotism, the church secured for the representatives of the Christian community one side of corporate and individual freedom, a measure of independence such as could not fail to keep alive a feeling hostile to the extension of imperial, though Christian, tyranny into at least one of the provinces of thought and action.

The infallibility of universal councils, ultimately admitted by the whole Catholic Church, was early claimed. “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,” words occurring in the Jerusalem decree, could not but suggest to the successors of the apostles that the synods assembled under them were favoured by the special superintendence of the Holy Ghost; and this was distinctly asserted by Cyprian. But the sanction of the Pope has always been held by modern Catholics as necessary to the infallibility of any council; and the decrees even of the minor councils attain to infallibility if approved by the Pope and accepted by the church at large. A limitation of synodical authority that merely recognized the Pope as an integral part of the church might be agreed to even by those who asserted that oecumenical councils are superior to the popes, a theory long and vehemently contended for and against in the church. That the councils are above the popes was the view of the Councils of Constance and Basel, and was formulated as one of the four Gallican propositions; whereas at the 5th Lateran Council Pope Leo X. roundly asserted the authority of the Pope over all councils.

Yet the infallibility of universal councils w as most confidently accepted by the very parties in the church which were least disposed to concede absolute authority to any other ecclesiastical institution,—notably by the Gallicans and by the German Reformers in the early stages of the Reformation. And the institution of councils, both of occasional councils called for special purposes and of those meeting statedly, was inherited by the Protestant churches. The Synod of Dort is an instance of a general council of churches adhering to the Reformed confessions; the Westminster Assembly was designed to be a national council. It is of course in the Presbyterian churches that councils have received their most systematic development, and, without claiming infallible authority, retain the most extended powers as legislative, administrative, and judicial. In the Church of Scotland the regular gradation of kirk sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assembly of representative ministers and elders supervises and regulates all the functions of the church, and forms a compact and balanced system of constitutional government. In non-presbyterian churches synods have various degrees of deliberative or decisive authority. Even now the reorganization of the synodical system of the United Protestant Church of Prussia is regarded both by churchmen and by statesmen in Germany as one of the ecclesiastical questions of the day.

The chief collections of the Acts of the Councils of the Catholic Church are that by Hardouin, published at Paris in 1715 in 12 folios and. the still more complete one by Mansi (Floι - cnce and

Venice, 1758-1799) in 31 folio vols, but extending only to the 15th century. By far the most elaborate recent work on the Councils is the Conciliengeschichte of Dr Hefele, bishop of Rottenburg (7 vols. 1st ed. 1⅛55-1874; 2d ed. 1873, sqq. ).

Of the eighteen councils denominated “general” by the Papists, four have already been enumerated; and they with the next four constitute the eight eastern councils, which alone, according to the “Body of Civil Law,” each of the popes of Rome, on his elevation to the pontificate, solemnly professes to maintain. The fifth was convened at Constantinople, A. D. 556, by the emperor Justinian; the sixth, also at Constantinople, in 681, in which the emperor Constantine IV, himself presided; the seventh at Nice, in 787, by the empress Irene; and the eighth, at Constantinople, in 870, by the emperor Basilius. It is matter of historical record, and therefore cannot be denied, that the convening of all these councils appertained solely to the respective emperors; that they alone exercised authority on such occasions; that the bishop of Rome was never thought to possess any, although his power may be said to have been set up between the fifth and sixth general councils; nor did the bishop himself, _pro tempore_, think himself entitled to an authority of the kind. The other councils which the Romish church dignifies with the title of “general,” are the ten western ones, which are here subjoined:--(9.) The first council of Lateran, held under Pope Calixtus, A. D. 1123; (10.) the second of Lateran, under Innocent II, in 1139; (11.) the third of Lateran, under Alexander III, in 1179, the decrees of which were intended to extirpate the Albigenses, as well as the Waldenses, who were variously called Leonists, or poor men of Lyons; (12.) the fourth of Lateran, under Innocent III, in 1215, which incited Christian Europe to engage in a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land, and whose canons obtruded on the church the monstrous doctrines of transubstantiation and auricular confession, the latter being ranked among the duties prescribed by the law of Christ; (13.) the first of Lyons, under Innocent IV, in 1245; (14.) the second of Lyons, under Gregory X, in 1274; (15.) that of Vienne, under Clement V, in 1311; (16.) that of Florence, under Eugenius IV, in 1439; (17.) the fifth of Lateran, under the infamous Julius II; and (18.) the council of Trent, of which an account is given in the preceding paragraph, and which grounds its fame on its opposition to the progress of the reformation under Luther. Though, according to Bellarmine, these eighteen alone are recognised by the Romish church œcumenical or universal councils, yet some of them did not deserve even the more restricted appellation of “general.” For the council of Trent itself, in some of its sessions, could scarcely number more than forty or fifty ecclesiastics, and, of those, not one eminent for profound theological or classical knowledge. The lawyers who attended, says Father Paul, “knew little of religion, while the few divines were of less than ordinary sufficiency.” Some of the other councils which are not acknowledged by the Papists to be “general” with respect to all their sessions, (as those of Basle and Constance,) are in part received by them, and in part rejected. Bellarmine and other celebrated writers of his church, are dubious about determining whether or not “the fifth of Lateran” was really a general council, and leave it as a thing discretionary with the faithful either to retain or reject it; if it be rejected, the only refuge which they have, is to receive in its place the council of Constance, held under John XXIII, in 1414, which is disclaimed by the Italian clergy but admitted by those of France, and which is rendered infamous in the annals of religion and humanity by its cruel and treacherous conduct toward those two early Protestant martyrs, John Huss and Jerome of Prague; “who went to the stake,” says, Æneas Sylvius, “as if it had been to a banquet, without uttering a complaint that could betray the least weakness of mind. When they began to burn, they sung a hymn, which even the crackling of the flames could not interrupt. Never did any philosopher suffer death with so much courage, as they endured the fire.” But this acknowledgment of Constance as one of the eighteen is resisted _vi et armis_, by the crafty Cisalpine ecclesiastics, because one of the earliest acts of that council declared the representatives of the church in general council assembled to be superior to the sovereign pontiff, not only when schism prevailed, but at all other times whatsoever.

A general council being composed of men every one of whom is fallible, they must also be liable to error when collected together; and that they actually have erred is sufficiently evident from this fact, that different general councils have made decrees directly opposite to each other, particularly in the Arian and Eutychian controversies, which were upon subjects immediately “pertaining unto God.” Indeed, neither the first general councils themselves, nor those who defended their decisions, ever pretended to infallibility; this was a claim of a much more recent date, suited to the dark ages in which it was asserted and maintained, but now considered equally groundless and absurd in the case of general councils as in that of popes. If God had been pleased to exempt them from a possibility of error, he would have announced that important privilege in his written word; but no such promise or assurance is mentioned in the New Testament If infallibility belonged to the whole church collectively, or to any individual part of it, it must be so prominent and conspicuous that no mistake or doubt could exist upon the subject; and above all, it must have prevented those dissensions, contests, heresies, and schisms, which have abounded among Christians from the days of the Apostles to the present time; and of which that very church, which is the asserter and patron of this doctrine, has had its full share. The Scriptures being the only source from which we can learn the terms of salvation, it follows that things ordained by general councils as necessary to salvation, have neither strength nor authority, as the church of England has well said, unless it may be declared that they he taken out of Holy Scripture. It is upon this ground we receive the decisions of the first four general councils, in which we find the truths revealed in the Scriptures, and therefore we believe them. We reverence the councils for the sake of the doctrines which they declared and maintained, but we do not believe the doctrines upon the authority of the councils.