so many had a right to that name. The last General Council was that held at Trent, for the purpose of checking the progress of the Reformation. It first met by the command of Pope Paul the Third, a. D. 1545; it was suspended during the latter part of the pontificate of his successor Julius the Third, and the whole of the pontificates of Marcellus the Second and Paul the Fourth, that is, from 1552 to 1562, in which year it met again by the authority of Pope Pius the Fourth, and it ended, while he was pope, in the year 1563. Provincial Councils were very numerous; Baxter enumerates 481, and Dufresnoy many more (c).

GENERAL COUNCILS MAY NOT BE GATHER

ED TOGETHER WITHOUT THE COMMANDMENT

AND WILL OF PRINCES. As the Clergy must be always subject to the civil power (d), it cannot be lawful for them to assemble in General Councils without the consent of the government of the countries to which they respectively belong. If

the

(c) There is a History of Councils, published at Paris in 1644, in 37 vols. folio. Cave gives a concise account of all the considerable Councils, both general and particular, in his Historia Literaria; and Broughton, in his dictionary, under the word Synod, states very briefly what passed at the principal General Councils.

(d) This will appear from the thirty-seventh article.

the clergy were in this respect bound to obey the command of any foreign bishop or potentate, it would be an infringement of the rights and privileges which belong to every independent state, and must be productive of many inconveniencies. It has been already observed, that the first four General Councils were summoned by the emperors of the East, whose dominions included the whole, or nearly the whole, of Christendom; and they continued to exercise the same power for several centuries afterwards; but at length the popes of Rome, among other usurpations, assumed to themselves the right of summoning General Councils, and the first which met by their authority was the first Lateran council, in the

year 1132. AND WHEN THEY BE GATHERED TOGETHER (FORASMUCH AS THEY BE AN ASSEMBLY OF MEN, WHEREOF ALL BE NOT GOVERNED WITH THE SPIRIT AND word of God) THEY MAY ERR, AND SOMETIMES HAVE ERRED, EVEN IN THINGS PERTAINING UNTO GOD. A General Council being composed of men, every one of whom is fallible, they must also be liable to error when collected together; and that they actually have erred is sufficiently evident from hence, that different General Councils have made decrees directly opposite to each other, particularly in the

Arian and Eutychian controversies, which were upon subjects immediately" pertaining unto God." Indeed, neither the first General Councils themselves, nor those who defended their decisions, ever pretended to Infallibility; this was a claim of a much more recent date, suited to the dark ages in which it was asserted and maintained, but now considered equally groundless and absurd, in the case of General Councils as in that of Popes. The observation which we made upon the pretended claim of Infallibility in the Roman Pontiffs, may be extended to General Councils. If God had been pleased to exempt them from a possibility of error, he would have announced that important privilege in his written word; but no such promise or assurance is mentioned in the New Testament. If Infallibility belonged to the whole church collectively, or to any individual part of it, it must be so prominent and conspicuous, that no mistake or doubt could exist upon the subject; and above all, it must have prevented those dissensions, contests, heresies, and schisms, which have abounded among Christians from the days of the Apostles to the present times; and of which that very church, which is the assertor and patron of this doctrine, has had its full share.

The

The Scriptures, as has been often mentioned, being the only source from which we can learn the terms of salvation, it follows that THINGS OR

DAINED BY GENERAL COUNCILS AS NECESSARY TO SALVATION, HAVE NEITHER STRENGTH NOR AUTHORITY, UNLESS IT MAY BE DECLARED THAT THEY BE TAKEN OUT OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

It is upon this ground we receive the decisions of the first four General Councils, in which we find the truths (e) revealed in the Scriptures, and therefore we believe them. We reverence the Councils for the sake of the doctrines which they declared and maintained, but we do not believe the doctrines upon the authority of the Councils.

(e) At Nice it was declared, that the Son is truly God, of the same substance with the Father; at Constantinople, that the Holy Ghost is also truly God; at Ephesus, that the divine nature was truly united to the human in Christ, in one person; at Chalcedon, that both natures remained distinct, and that the human nature was not lost or absorbed in the divine.

ARTICLE THE TWENTY-SECOND.

Of Purgatory.

THE ROMISH DOCTRINE CONCERNING PURGATORY, PARDONS, WORSHIPPING, AND ADORATION, AS WELL OF IMAGES AS OF RELIQUES, AND ALSO INVOCATION OF SAINTS, IS A FOND THING VAINLY INVENTED, AND GROUNDED UPON NO WARRANTY OF SCRIPTURE, BUT RATHER REPUGNANT TO THE WORD OF GOD.

THIS Article is intitled "Of Purgatory," but it relates to four other doctrines, as well as Purgatory, all of which were maintained by the church of Rome, and were rejected by our church, and indeed by all Protestants, at the time of the Reformation.

THE ROMISH DOCTRINE CONCERNING PURGATORY, as asserted in the councils of Florence and Trent, is this:

That every man is subject both to temporal and eternal punishment for his sins: that God does indeed pardon sin, as to its eternal punishment, for the sake of the death and merits of Christ, but that the sinner is still liable to tem, poral punishment; that this temporal punishment must be expiated by voluntary acts of

penance