In 359 the Emperor Constantius assembled the council of Rimini, a city of Central Italy. Six hundred bishops and a number of priests now undo all that the council of Nice had done. This council was as accommodating to Arian Constantius as to the Trinitarian Constantine. Constantius, forsaking the Trinitarian system, adopted Arianism, and Greeks and Latins complied with the imperial wishes, and, like dutiful subjects, signed the Arian and semi-Arian confessions of Sirneium, Seleucia, Milan and Ariminum. The western and eastern prelacy subscribed in compliance with their sovereign to the Arian creed, which, as Du Pin has shown, was signed by his infallibility, Pope Liberius.
Next in our programme comes Theodosius I., assembling a council of one hundred and fifty bishops at Constantinople in the year 381. Theodosius was a zealous Catholic; he was baptized before the end of the first year of his reign, and immediately published an edict in support of the doctrine of the Trinity, branding all who did not hold it as heretics. His council was presided over by St. Gregory Nazianzen. The chief work of this council was to anathematise the Council of Rimini, which was composed of six hundred bishops and a multitude of priests. This work was done, and so one hundred and fifty bishops curse and denounce as heretical and false six hundred bishops and a multitude of priests; so the voice of the many is not always the voice of God, nor yet the voice of a council the voice of a Pope; neither is the infallibility of a Pope always found in a council, nor is the infallibility of one Pope always found in the voice of another.
Theodosius II. convened a council in 431. Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, seems to have been the cause of this convocation, having persecuted all who were not of his opinions; now undergoes persecution for having plead that the Holy Virgin Mary was not the mother of God. He plead that Jesus Christ being the word, consubstantial with the Father, Mary could not, at the same time, be the mother of God the Father and of God the Son. To settle this quarrel Nestorius demands a council and obtains it. This council condemned Nestorius, and one of its committees displaced Cyril. The Emperor, Theodosius II., reversed all that was done, and then permitted it to reassemble. The deputies from Rome, John, Patriarch of Antioch, with twenty-six suffragans, arrived five days after the transaction, and it is on record that his arrival was followed by one of the most distinguished cursing matches of antiquity. The Roman bishops on occasions of this character always had recourse to cursing, and they scarcely ever failed to ease themselves up with an overflow of anathemas and execrations. Cyril and Nestorius exchanged mutual imprecations, even before the sitting of the council. The saint, it is said, had launched twelve anathemas at the heretic in an Alexandrian synod in the year 430, and the heretic Nestorius thanked the saint by returning the same number of inverted blessings. This has been a heavy business among Popes for many centuries. John and Cyril engaged in the same kind of warfare immediately after John's arrival at Ephesus. John and his party congratulated Cyril, Memnon, and their accomplices by deposing and excommunicating them, and now the parties continue, for some time, to give vent to their feelings in mutual anathemas. These benedictions were the only articles of mutual exchange, current and of legal tender value between the parties. At last the Emperor had Nestorius and Cyril arrested, and ordered all the bishops to return each to his church, and so no conclusion was reached. The Greeks called the second assembly at Ephesus a gang of felons, but the first, it is said, excelled it in all the arts of villainy. The contest was finally ended, not by the church, but by the state. The Emperor reinstated Cyril and banished Nestorius, and the western diocese was in the end reduced to submission and the church to unity, not by ecclesiastical authority, but by imperial power. (See Evagrius 1, 5; Liberatus c. 6; Godeau 3, 310.) The Council of Chalcedon met in the year 451. St. Leo, bishop of Rome, took the advantage of the troubles which the quarrel about the two natures occasioned in the empire, and presided at the council by his legates, which was a new feature in councils. But the fathers of the council apprehending that the church of the west would, from this precedent, pretend to the superiority over the eastern church, decided, by their twenty-eighth canon, that the see of Constantinople and the see of Rome should enjoy alike the same advantages and privileges. This was the origin of the long enmity which prevailed and still prevails between the two churches, the eastern and the western. This council endorsed and established the "two natures in one person." The twenty-eighth canon of this council has been rejected and condemned by the Latins, yet Pelagius, Gregory, Pascal and Boniface acknowledged this council, thereby placing the seal of infallibility upon it as much as they ever did upon other councils.
In 553 Justinian assembled a council at Constantinople to discuss the three chapters, as they were designated, composed by Ibas, Theodoret and Theodorus. Vigilius, bishop of Rome, with bishops and deacons from Italy, Africa and the east, was in Constantinople during the entire sittings of this council, and refused to attend although invited. But the council went on, all the same. His infallibility, supported by his clique, opposed the emperor and his council, but in vain. He formed his bishops and deacons into a separate council, published a constitution defending, in modified terms, the three chapters, and interdicting all further discussion upon the subject by the authority of the Apostolic See; pronounced anathemas against the persons and defenders of the authors of the three chapters. Having now made himself a partisan of the authors, who were condemned by the emperor's council, he was cursed for promoting heresy, and banished in dishonor. This served to bring him to his senses upon several matters, and so he turned about and approved what he had before condemned. And so heresy was converted into orthodoxy by the magical power of an emperor at the expense of the infallibility of Vigilius. The Italians, Tuscans, Ligurians, Istrians, French, Illyrians and Africans, who took a stand against the emperor, were like the pope, the "vicar general of God," converted by the sword of Justinian. The Italian clergy who resisted were banished.
"In 681 there was a council at Constantinople, convoked by Constantine, the bearded. This council was called by the Latins 'in trullo,' because it was held in an apartment of the imperial palace. The emperor himself presided. The bishops of Constantinople and Antioch were on his right hand, and the deputies from Jerusalem and Rome were on his left. In this council it was decided that Jesus Christ had two wills." Here "Pope Honorius I. was condemned as a monothelite, that is, as wishing Jesus Christ to have but one will." O, shame! What will come next? Well, we are out at sea in the very darkest periods of the dark ages, and there is no telling how much our senses may be shocked. We find next what is known as the Second Council of Nice. It was assembled by a woman, Mrs. Irene, in the name of her son, whose eyes she had caused to be put out. Her husband, Leo, had abolished the worship of images as leading to idolatry. This woman re-established this worship. During Constantine's minority she executed the imperial power. She was a bold defender and patron of emblematic or image worship. It is said that she had the ambition of Lucifer and the malignity of a demon. She is accused of being connected with the murder of her husband. "She put out the eyes of Nicephorus, and amputated the tongues of Christopher, Nicetas, Athenius and Eudoxas, Constantine's sons, for suspicion of conspiracy. She destroyed the eyes of her own son." "No woman," says Bruys, "was ever less worthy of life than this princess." Her ambition, says Godeau, made her violate all the laws of God and man. Now listen, but first prepare to experience all that the opposite extreme can possibly produce. Is there any place in your nature where life and death, or heaven and hell, can meet in festive joys? No. Then bear with my story the best you can, for it must be told. Here it is: Theodorus and Theophanes extol that vile woman for her VIRTUE AND EXCELLENCE(?). The Greeks placed her among the saints in their menology, and in holy festivity celebrate her anniversary. Hartman and Binius, in more modern times, flatter her prudence and piety(?). Alexander lauds her religion and faith as worthy of immortal honor(?), though the blinding of her son, he admits, exposed her to reprehension. Baronius justifies the assassination of her son. He commends the inhumanity which arose from zeal for religion. Here let the curtain drop till my next on councils makes its appearance.
INFIDELS IN EVIDENCE IN FAVOR OF CHRISTIANITY.
We should not be surprised when wicked men of every grade of character assail our religion, for its great Author erected a standard of duty too perfect to suit their unruly passions and lusts. Opposition to Christianity is the natural correllate of an unregenerated heart. This fact was the cause of all the sufferings of the primitive Christians, not the only cause, but the first and leading cause. One striking circumstance is worthy of notice, which is, that they have censured Christians for their zeal with an unsparing tongue, and, at the same time, they have shown as much if not more vehemence and obstinacy in their own good-for-nothing opposition. Every kind of opposition has been manifested which the ingenuity of man could dictate. Indeed, there is little urged against Christianity in our day that is original. Almost every cavil and argument may be traced to Voltaire, Porphyry, Celsus and Julian, the old enemies of the Christ. Infidels, who dislike (will you hear it?) the labor and trouble of investigating the question of the claims of the Christian religion upon their intelligence, seize with avidity upon the labors of others and parade them before the public mind. Just now there is no question put so often by men who feign to be unbelievers as, "What do you think of Colonel Ingersoll?" "He stirs you up." The little city of Logansport was favored not a great while in the past with a visit and lecture from the Colonel. After the lecture was over some half a dozen gentlemen were taking a lunch at an eating restaurant, and there was one very talkative creature in the group who had much to say of the Colonel's effort and of the "unscientific and absurd character of the Bible." Finally, one noble-hearted gentleman said to the boasting skeptic, Now you have said a great deal about the Bible, and I venture the assertion that you can't quote one verse that is in it. I challenge you to do it. Just give us one, long or short, from any chapter in all the Bible. The man failed. He couldn't do it. Then, said the Christian gentleman, you fellows are always talking about science and about the "unscientific character of the Bible," so I will now ask you one of the most simple questions known in science, and we will see whether you will answer it. It is this: How many teeth have you got in your mouth; how many does a man have? To the utter astonishment of the company the man failed again, and the company told him laughingly that he must treat to the cigars. Such fellows know comparatively nothing, and yet they are always championing their men, who contain all their knowledge and do their thinking for them. Ask the infidel who his leaders are and he will point you to Hume, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, etc. Are Christians always holding up their great minds? Suppose we test the merits of the case in this manner, then who are your infidels that will compare with Jesus Christ and his apostles? or, with such men, even, as Milton, Clarendon, Hale, Bacon, Boyle, Locke, Newton, Addison, Lyttleton, West, Johnson and Campbell? Where are your persons of such profound understanding? To compare such persons as these with Voltaire, Hume, Gibbon and Thomas Paine, is as silly as to compare manhood with infancy. No infidels try Christianity upon its own merits. If they were candid men they would separate Christianity from all foreign and irrelative circumstances, and test its evidences seriously, as the magnitude of the question deserves. Apply the same unbelief to the common and ancient records of history and you will at once get the credit of being rash and foolish. The scoffs and sarcasms and sophistries of infidels are not from a love of truth. Whatever the cause or causes may be, one thing is certain, and that is, that they do not understand Christianity itself, nor the nature and magnitude of its evidences. They condemn that which they never gave themselves the trouble to investigate.
Whoever investigates the religion of Jesus Christ will find that the character of its founder is far superior to any other character, and his apostles far superior to any other fishermen. To believe that his religion is of simple human origin is like believing that a first-class ship of war is the invention of a child. "The majesty of Christ and the divinity of his religion appears in nothing more than this, that in proportion to our acquaintance with the Scriptures of the New Testament does the light of truth shine upon the mind." The seeming successes of infidelity, and the multitude of apostates scattered over our country, makes us naturally more anxious to warn the rising generation against the errors of those who would mislead them. But there is nothing in these fearful signs of the times to shake our faith or excite our fears, because the faithful Bible student finds the condition of our world just such as the Scriptures have foretold. All the surroundings that characterize the conduct of infidels; their expertness in ridicule; their extreme folly and resoluteness; their licentiousness and anxiety for change in laws as well as society; the snares laid out by them to catch the unsteadfast, and their vain professions to free the world from slavery, while they themselves are in bondage to corruption, are drawn by the divine pencil of prophecy with so much exactness that "he who runs may read." By examining the word of God you will find that the Free-thinkers of our country, the Illuminati of Germany, Darwin, Strauss, Huxley, Tyndal, Renan, and the man of our own land who is most noted in our midst for oratorical accomplishments without logic, argument or truthfulness of statements touching the Christian religion, are all present evidences of the divinity of the prophetic words of the New Testament.