311-590. reformation in part, and the Zwinglian and Calvinistic almost entirely renounced. Yet tliis is not to say that much may not still be learned, in the sphere of discipline, from those councils, and that perhaps many an ancient custom or institution is not worthy to be revived in the spirit of evangelical freedom. The moral character of those councils was substMutially parallel with that of earlier and later ecclesiastical assemblies, and cannot therefore be made a criterion of their historical im- portance and their dogmatic authority. They faithfully reflect both the light and the shade of the ancient church. They bear the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. If even among the inspired apostles at the council of Jerusalem there was much debate,' and soon after, among Peter, Paul, and Barna- bas, a violent, though only temporary collision, we must of course expect much worse of the bishops of the Nicene and the succeeding age, and of a church already interwoven with a morally degenerate state. Together with abundant talents, attainments, and virtues, there were gathered also at the coun- cils ignorance, intrigues, and partisan passions, which had already been excited on all sides by long controversies preced- ing, and now met and arrayed themselves, as hostile armies, for open combat. For those great councils, all occasioned by controversies on the most important and the most difficult problems of theology, are, in fact, to the history of doctrine, what decisive battles are to the history of war. Just because religion is the deepest and holiest interest of man, are religious passions wont to be the most violent and bitter ; especially in a time when all classes, from imperial court to market stall, take the liveliest interest in theological speculation, and are drawn into the common vortex of excitement. Hence the notorious rabies theologorum was more active in the fourth and fifth centuries than it has been in any other period of history, excei)ting, perhaps, in the great revolution of the sixteenth century, and the confessionel polemics of the seventeenth. "We have on this point the testimony of contemporaries and * Acts XV. 6: rioXA^r om^TjTTJo-eois yivoixivyj's \ which Luther indeed rcndera quite too strongly: "After they had wrangled long." The English versions from Tyndale to King James translate : " much disputing." § 65. THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 347 of the acts of the councils themselves. St. Gregory Kazian- zen, who, in the judgment of Socrates, was the most devout and eloquent man of his age,' and who himself, as bishop of Constantinople, presided for a time over the second ecumeni- cal council, had so bitter an observation and experience as even to lose, though without sufficient reason, all confidence in councils, and to call them in his poems " assemblies of cranes and geese." " To tell the truth " — thus in 382 (a year after the second ecumenical council, and doubtless including that assembly in his allusion) he answered Procopius, who in the name of the emperor