XVI.] GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 293 ment of bishops, who had other reasons for being unfriendly to Gregory, the assault was turned against himself. The bishops in question came from Egypt; and in order to understand the history of the Eastern Church for centuries after the adoption of Constantine's new capital, you must bear in mind the bitter jealousy that raged between Alexandria and Constantinople. The Bishop of Alexandria had hitherto ranked as the second bishop in Christendom; and he saw with disgust the rivalry of the upstart Byzantium. In the present case the election of Gregory had foiled an attempt of the Alexandrian bishop to thrust into the see of Constantinople a nominee of his own. Consequently Gregory must be got rid of. The point was raised, that as he had been originally consecrated to another see, his translation to Constantinople was a violation of the ancient canons. Gregory, though indignant that an obsolete canon should be invoked against him, professed himself much delighted to return to his retirement, and willing to be thrown overboard, like Jonah, if it would give peace to the Church. We need not doubt his sincerity. A man who undertakes uncongenial work may cheerfully continue at it as long as he feels he is doing it successfully, but be glad to retire when it is perceived that he has been a failure. Yet when Gregory was taken at his word, there remained on his mind, as was not unnatural, the greatest soreness at his treatment; and he has left both in prose, and still more in the verses in which he was fond of giving vent to his feelings, descriptions which show that the one hundred and fifty venerable fathers of Constantinople looked much less venerable when seen close at hand than at a distance. He begins his verses by saying: You may boldly face a lion; a leopard is a gentle beast after all; a snake may frighten you and yet flee from you: there is just one animal to be dreaded-a bad bishop.' The context of the verses themselves, and the occasion on which they were written, leave no reasonable room for doubt that the bad bishops whom he proceeds to describe, were those who formed the majority of the Council, and from whom he had personally suffered. It seems to me likely that in the coarse, illiterate men whom he describes, he had especially in view the Egyptian contingent; for, as we shall presently see, there is abundant evidence of the rude and unchristian violence with which theological controversy was carried on in that part of the world. It has been suggested that Gregory had only Arian bishops in view; but he brings no charge of false doctrine against the objects of his invective: if he counts them unfit for their office, it is because of their want of education, and still more on account of their low morality. They seem to him to have arrived at their dignity in answer to the call of a herald who had summoned all the gluttons, villains, liars, false swearers, of the empire;* 'they are "chameleons that change their colour with every stone over which they pass;" "illiterate, lowborn, filled with all the pride of upstarts, fresh from the tables of false accountants," "peasants from the plough," "unwashed blacksmiths," "deserters from the army or navy, still stinking from the holds of the ships."† But it may be said the Apostles were unlearned. True; and give me a real apostle and I will reverence him however illiterate; but these are time-servers, waiting not on God, but on the rise and flow of the tide, or the straw on the wind; angry lions to the small, fawning spaniels to the great; flatterers of ladies; snuffing up the smell of good dinners; ever at the gates, not of the wise, but of the powerful; unable to speak themselves, but having sufficient sense to stop the ὡς δοκέω μοι Κήρυκος βοόωντος ἐνὶ μεσάτοισιν ἀκούειν· Δεῦρ ̓ ἴθ ̓ ὅσοι κακίης ἐπιβήτορες, αἴσχεα φωτῶν, Γάστορες, εὐρυτένοντες, ἀναιδέες, ὀφρυοέντες, Ζωροπόται, πλάγκται, φιλοκέρτομοι, ἁβροχίτωνες Ψεῦσται θ', ὑβρισταί τε θοῶς ἐπίορκον ὁμοῦντες, κ. τ. λ. -Ad. Episc. 74 In the text I make use of the form in which Dean Stanley (Christian Institutions, p. 312) has compressed Gregory's diffuse invectives. The two poems, De Episcopis and Ad Episcopos, occupy some sixty folio pages in Caillau's edition. XVI.] GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 295 mouths of those who can; made wild by their elevation; affecting manners not their own; the long beard, the downcast look, the head bowed, the subdued voice, the slow walk, the got-up devotee; the wisdom anywhere but in the mind. 'Councils, congresses, we greet afar off, from which (to use moderate terms) we have suffered many evils. I will not sit in one of these Councils of geese and cranes; I fly from every meeting of bishops; for I never saw a good end of any such, nor termination, but rather an addition of evils.' Οὐδὲ τί που συνόδοισιν ὁμόθρονος ἔσσομ' ἔγωγε Ενθ' ἔρις, ἔνθα μόθος τε καὶ αἴσχεα κρυπτὰ πάροιθεν -Adv. fals. Episc. 92. But I find that I had better reserve to another Lecture the rest of what I have to say about Councils. XVII. GENERAL COUNCILS. IF PART II. F I had contented myself, as logically I might, with one proof of the comparative novelty of the doctrine of the Infallibility of General Councils, I need not have gone lower down than the history of the first Ecumenical Council, that of Nicæa. According to modern ideas, its decision ought to have put an end to all controversy. We all approve of that decision as correct. It was arrived at by an overwhelming majority of a fairly representative assembly of the bishops of Christendom. It expressed the sentiments of the Bishop of Rome, and was endorsed by the civil authority. Yet to the eye of a Romanist the history of the Church for the rest of the fourth century presents a scene of awful confusion; Council after Council meeting to try to settle the already settled question, throwing the Nicene Creed overboard, and attempting to improve on it. What ailed them, not to acquiesce in conclusions adopted by infallible authority? Simply that, at the time, there was no suspicion of its infallibility. There was no idea then but that what one Council had done another Council might improve on. Cardinal Newman (Historical Sketches, iii. 352) describes the fourth-century Councils, to which I have just referred, as 'a scandal to the Christian name;' and he goes on to say:'The Councils of the next century, even such as were orthodox, took their tone and temper from those which had gone before them; and even those which were Ecumenical have nothing to boast of as regards the mass of the Fathers, XVII.] THE COUNCILS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY. 297 taken individually, who composed them.' It is of these Ecumenical Councils of the fifth century I come now to speak. We must be on our guard against the temptation to which party feeling exposes men, whether in religious or political disputes, namely, reluctance to express disapprobation of any men or any means that have helped to bring about the triumph of the right side. I feel very strongly that the side which triumphed, both at the third and at the fourth Ecumenical Council, was the right side. We of the present day are not concerned with the merely personal question, whether Nestorius was misrepresented; or whether he only expressed himself incautiously, without himself holding what we call Nestorianism. But we can heartily join in condemning that Nestorianism as being practically equivalent to a denial of our Lord's Divinity. Breaking up our Lord's Personality into two is a scheme which enables a man to use the loftiest language concerning the Divinity which dwelt in Jesus, while at the same time holding Jesus Himself to be a man imperfect morally as well as intellectually. If we hold that the Deity did but dwell in Jesus without being truly and properly one with him, this is to ascribe to him no exclusive prerogative. Might not the Deity thus dwell with many men? You will find that one would be able to affirm, in the same words, concerning the founder of Buddhism, everything that, according to the Nestorian hypothesis, you can affirm as to the Divinity of the Founder of the Christian religion. And if I have no sympathy with Nestorianism, neither have I any with the heresy condemned at the fourth General Council, which practically is equivalent to a denial that our Saviour was truly and properly man. But without having sympathy with either heresy, we are still free to inquire whether we can approve of the measures taken to suppress it, and whether these measures were, in point of fact, successful. Now, when we come down from the second General Council to the third and fourth, our documentary means of knowledge increase, but not so our respect for Councils. More and more I find myself forced to say, that if I believe |