the Nicene Creed., which is sec- ond in authority only to the ever venerable Apostles' Creed. This symbol was, however, not finally settled and completed - This is the usual estimate, resting on the authority of Athanasius, Basil (Ep. 114; Opera, t. iii. p 207, ed. Beued.), Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret ; whence the council is sometimes called the Assembly of the Three Hundred and Eighteen. Other data reduce the number to three hundred, or to two hundred and seventy, or two hundred and fifty, or two hundred and eighteen ; while later tradition swells it to two thousand or more. - For some time the Egyptian and Syrian churches commemorated the council of Nicaea by an annual festival. 350 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. in its present form (excepting the still later Latia insertion of Jilioqiie), until tlie second general council. Besides this the fathers assembled at Xiceea issued a number of canons, usually reckoned twenty, on various questions of discipline ; the most important being those on the rights of metropolitans, the time of Easter, and the validity of heretical baptism. 2. The CoNciLiuitf Constaxti^^opolitanum I., a. d. 381 ; summoned by Theodosius the Great, and held at the imperial city, which had not even name in history till five years after the former council. This council, however, was exclusively oriental, and comprised only a hundred and fifty bishops, as the emperor had summoned none but the adherents of the Nicene party, which had become very much reduced under the previous reign. The emperor did not attend it. Meletius of Antioch was president till his death ; then Gregory Nazian- zen ; and, after his resignation, the newly elected patriarch Nectarius of Constantinople, The council enlarged the Kicene confession by an article on the divinity and personality of the Holy Ghost, in opposition to the Macedonians or Pneumato- machists (hence the title Si/7nl)olum Nicceno-Constantinojpoli- tamim)^ and issued seven more canons, of which the Latin versions, however, give only the first four, leaving the genuine- ness of the other three, as many think, in doubt. 3. The Concilium Ephesinijm, a. d. 431 ; called by Theo- dosius II., in connection with the Western co-emperor Yalen- tinian III., and held under the dii-ection of the ambitious and violent Cyril of Alexandria. This council consisted of, at first, a hundred and sixty bishops, afterward a hundred and ninety- eight,' including, for the first time, papal delegates from Rome, who were instructed not to mix in the debates, but to sit as judges over the opinions of the rest. It condemned the error of Nestorius on the relation of the two natures in Christ, without stating clearly the correct doctrine. It produced, therefore, but a negative result, and is the least important of the first ' The opposition council, which John of Antioch, on his subsequent arrival, held in the same city in the cause of Nestorius and under the protection of the imperial commissioner Candidian, numbered forty-three members, and excommunicated Cyril, as