The third and fourth general councils seem to have met upon an occasion of much the like importance. The first council of Nice determined the Son to be a distinct hypostasis, or person from, but of the same nature with the Father. The second at Constantinople, added the Holy Ghost to the same substance of the Father, and made the same individual nature to belong equally and wholly to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; thus making them three distinct persons in one undivided essence. But as they determined the Son to be truly man, as well as truly God, the bishops brought a new controversy into the church, and fell into furious debates and quarrels about his personality.
Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, with his followers, maintained two distinct persons in Christ, agreeable to his two distinct natures. But St. Cyril, the implacable enemy of Nestorius, got a council to decree, that the two natures of God and man being united together in our Lord, made one person or Christ; and to curse all who should affirm that there were two distinct persons or subsistencies in him.
It is evident, that either Cyril and his council must have been in the wrong in this decree, or the two former councils of Nice and Constantinople wrong in theirs; because it is certain, that they decreed the word PERSON to be used in two infinitely different senses. According to those of Nice and Constantinople, one individual nature or essence contained three distinct persons; according to Cyril’s council, two natures or essences infinitely different, and as distinct as those of God and man, constituted but one person. Now how “one nature should be three persons, and yet two natures one person,” will require the skill even of infallibility itself to explain; and as these decrees are evidently contradictory to one another, I am afraid we must allow that the Holy Ghost had no hand in one or other of them.
This some of the clergy very easily observed; and therefore, to maintain the unity of the person of Christ, Eutyches and Dioscorus maintained, that though Christ consisted of two natures before his incarnation, yet after that he had but one nature only. But this was condemned by the council of Chalcedon, and the contradictions of the former councils declared all to be true, and rendered sacred with the stamp of orthodoxy. This was also ratified by the fifth council under Justinian, who also piously and charitably raked into the dust of poor Origen, and damned him for an heretic.
But still there was a difficulty[difficulty] yet remaining, about the person of Christ: for as Christ’s being one person did not destroy the distinction of his two natures, it became a very important and warm controversy, whether Christ had any more than one will, as he was but one person in two natures? or, whether he had not two wills, agreeable to his two distinct natures, united in one person? This occasioned the calling the sixth general council, who determined it for the two wills; in which, according to my poor judgment, they were very wrong. And had I had the honour to have been of this venerable assembly, I would have completed the mystery, by decreeing, that as Christ had but one person, he could have but one personal will; but however, that as he had two natures, he must also have two natural wills.
I beg my reader’s pardon for thus presuming to offer my own judgment, in opposition to the decree of the holy fathers; but at the same time I cannot help smiling at the thought of two or three hundred venerable bishops and fathers thus trifling in council, and solemnly playing at questions and commands, to puzzle others, and divert themselves. Were it not for the fatal consequences that attended their decisions, I should look on them as “Bishops in masquerade,” met together only to ridicule the order, or to set the people a laughing at so awkward a mixture of gravity and folly. Surely the reverend clergy of those days had but little to do amongst their flocks, or but little regard to the nature and end of their office. Had they been faithful to their character instead of “doting[“doting] about questions and strifes of words, whereof came envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness, “they would have” consented to, and taught wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the doctrine which is according to godliness.
But this was not the temper of the times. It would have been indeed more tolerable, had the clergy confined their quarrels to themselves, and quarrelled only about speculative doctrines and harmless contradictions. But to interest the whole christian world in these contentions, and to excite furious persecutions for the support of doctrines and practices, even opposite to the nature, and destructive of the very end of christianity, is equally monstrous and astonishing. And yet this is the case of the seventh general council, who decreed the adoration of the Virgin Mary, of angels and of saints, of relicts, of images and pictures, and who thereby obscured the dignity, and corrupted the simplicity of the christian worship and doctrine. This the venerable fathers of that council did, and pronounced anathemas against all who would not come into their idolatrous practices, and excited the civil power to oppress and destroy them.
SECT. III.
Pride, ambition, and covetousness, the grand sources of persecution.
Surely it could not be zeal for God and Christ, and the truth and honour of christianity; no real love to piety and virtue, that prompted and led the bishops and their clergy on to these acts of injustice and cruelty. Without any breach of charity, it may be asserted of most, if not all of them, that it was their pride, and their immoderate love of dominion, grandeur and riches, that influenced them to these unworthy and wicked measures. The interest of religion and truth, the honour of God and the church, is I know the stale pretence; but a pretence, I am afraid, that hath but little probability or truth to support it.