of the second ecumenical council, for assigning to the bishop of Con- stantinople the first rank after the bishop of Rome ; and for tanum quoque, in quo Eunomii et Macedonii error convincitur ; Epheshuim etiam primum, iu quo Nestorii impietas judicatur ; Chalcedonense vero, in quo Eutychetii [Eutychis] Dioscorique pravitas reprobatur, tota devotione complector, integerrima approbatione custodio : quia in his velut in quadrato lapide, sanctoe fidei structura consurgit, et cujuslibet vitae atque actionis existat, quisquis coram soliditatem non tenet, etiam si lapis esse cernitur, tamen extra sedificium jacet. Quiutum quoque concilium pariter veneror, in quo et epistola, quae Ibse dicitur, erroris plena, re- probatur," etc. ' Justin. Novell, cxxxi. : " Quatuor synodorum dogmata sieut sanctas scriptu- ras accipimus, et regulas sicut leges observamus." " Cone. Nic. can. 15 : " Cian a-nh TrSKtas els ttSAiv ixrj fzeTa^aiveiy nvre (tt'ktko- TTov /LiVTe Trp€(Tl3vT€pov ;uf)Te SiaKovov. This prohibition arose from the theory of the relation between a clergyman and his congregation, as a mystical marriage, and was designed to restrain clerical ambition. It appears in the Can. Apost. 13, 14, but was often violated. At the Nicene council itself there were several bishops, like Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Eustathius of Antioch, who had exchanged their first bishopric for another and a better. ' iiSfiovs iraKat Te&rrj/cJTos, Carm. de vita sua, v. 1810. § 65. TIIK ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 343 the same reason lie protested against the twenty-eighth canon of the fourth ecumenical council.' Indeed the Roman church has made no point of adopting all the disciplinary laws enacted by those synods. Augustine, the ablest and the most devout of the fathers, conceived, in the best vein of his age, a philosophical view of this authority of the councils, which strikes a wise and whole- some mean between the extremes of veneration and disparage- ment, and approaches the free spint of evangelical Protestant- ism. He justly subordinates these councils to the Holy Scrij)tures, which are the highest and the perfect rule of faith, and supposes that the decrees of a council may be, not indeed set aside and repealed, yet enlarged and completed by the deeper research of a later day. They embody, for the general need, the results already duly prepared by preceding theologi- cal controversies, and give the consciousness of the church, on the subject in question, the clearest and most precise expres- sion possible at the time. But this consciousness itself is sub- ject to development. While the Holy Scriptures present the truth unequivocally and infallibly, and allow no room for doubt, the judgment of bishops may be corrected and enriched with new truths from the word of God, by the wiser judgment of other bishops ; the judgment of the provincial council by that of a general ; and the views of one general council by those of a later.° In this Augustine presumed, that all the ' Epist. 106 (al. 80) ad Anatolium, and Epist. 105 ad Pulcheriam. Comp. above, § 57. Even Gregory I., so