The following testimonies exhibit the authority of church councils in its true light. Jortin is quoted by Cox as saying:—
“In such assemblies, the best and the most moderate men seldom have the ascendant, and they are often led or driven by others who are far inferior to them in good qualities.”[770]
The same writer gives us Baxter’s opinion of the famous Westminster Assembly. Baxter says:—
“I have lived to see an assembly of ministers, where three or four leading men were so prevalent as to form a confession in the name of the whole party, which had that in it which particular members did disown. And when about a controverted article, one man hath charged me deeply with questioning the words of the church, others, who were at the forming of that article have laid it all on that same man, the rest being loth to strive much against him; and so it was he himself was the church whose authority he so much urged.”[771]
Such has been the nature of councils in all ages; yet they have ever claimed infallibility, and have largely used that infallibility in the suppression of the Sabbath and the establishment of the festival of Sunday. Of first-day sacredness prior to, and as late as, the time of Chrysostom, Kitto thus testifies:—
“Though in later times we find considerable reference to a sort of consecration of the day, it does not seem at any period of the ancient church to have assumed the form of such an observance as some modern religious communities have contended for. Nor do these writers in any instance pretend to allege any divine command, or even apostolic practice, in support of it.... Chrysostom (A. D. 360) concludes one of his Homilies by dismissing his audience to their respective ordinary occupations.”[772]
It was reserved for modern theologians to discover the divine or apostolic authority for Sunday observance. The ancient doctors of the church were unaware that any such authority existed; and hence they deemed it lawful and proper to engage in usual worldly business on that day when their religious worship was concluded. Thus, Heylyn bears witness concerning St. Chrysostom that he
“Confessed it to be lawful for a man to look unto his worldly business on the Lord’s day, after the congregation was dismissed.”[773]
St. Jerome, a few years after this, at the opening of the fifth century, in his commendation of the lady Paula, shows his own opinion of Sunday labor. Thus he says:—