Council of Chalcedon

“ The Council satisfied nobody. Pope Vigilius, detained at Constantinople and Marmora with something of the same violence with which Napoleon I. detained Pius VI. at Valence, declined to preside over a gathering so exclusively oriental. The West was outraged by the constitution of the synod, irrespective of its decisions. The Monophysites were disappointed that the credit of Chalcedon should be even nominally saved by the nice distinction which damaged the writings, but professed complete agreement with the council which had refused to damn the writers. ”

“ Councils.—Other acclamations meet us in the acts of some of the early councils. They seem in most cases to have taken the form of compliments to the emperors, and may often perhaps be no more significant than a toast to the king and royal family at a modern banquet. But we read of other cries, for instance, that at the first session of the Council of Chalcedon (October, 451) the Fathers shouted, regarding Dioscurus: "The scoffer always runs away. Christ has deposed Dioscurus, Christ has deposed the murderer" ”

“ Of the Letters: these are mostly rather later (i.e. about 12th or 13th century) : but (1) 1322 is of an older date, and contains besides the epistles, all the acts of the Council of Chalcedon: (2) 5759 is earlier than the 9th century ”

“ In 548 he declared the condemnation in his ludicatum, while strongly upholding Chalcedon. The Western bishops were very angry. Then Justinian, in defiance of his promise, before the council met, published a much sharper decree against the Three Chapters. Vigilius protested, and was taken prisoner and ill-treated by the Emperor's order. He gave, and then retracted, his consent to a council. In any case the Western bishops would not come to it. The council met in May, 553; 165 bishops were present, all Easterns, except six Africans. ”

“ The council of 553, the fifth ecumenical, grew out of the controversy of the “Three Chapters,” an adequate account of which, up to the time of the council, may be found in the articles Justinian and Vigilius. The council convened, in response to the imperial summons, on the 4th of May 553. Of the 165 bishops who subscribed the acts all but the five or six from Egypt were Oriental; the pope, Vigilius, refused to attend (he had made his escape from Constantinople, and from his retreat in Chalcedon sent forth a vain protest against the council) . The synod was utterly subservient to the emperor. ”

“ Nothing is more remarkable than their minute care as to observance of rules of procedure. In both cases, imperial assessors were appointed. At Ephesus the Count Candidian was commissioned to maintain order, but took little part in the proceedings. At Chalcedon, on the other hand, the imperial commissioners decided points of order, kept the synod to the question, took the votes and adjourned the court. But the synod alone judged and pronounced sentence. No oecumenical synod has tried a patriarch of Old Rome while yet in the flesh. ”

“ He now sought to win back the able Halifax; he issued a proclamation, protesting that he would protect the Church, and maintain the Act of Uniformity; that Catholics should no longer be admitted to Parliament or the Council. He sent for the bishops, and asked for their earnest advice in the restoration of public affairs. He ordered the restoration of the deposed magistrates and lords-lieutenants; he reinstated Compton, Bishop of London; he gave back the charter to the City, and, a few days after, the charters of the provincial corporations; he immediately abolished the Court of High Commission ”

“ But a government based upon the principle of the concurring majority, where each great interest possesses within itself the means of self-protection, which ultimately requires the mutual consent of all the parts, necessarily causes that unanimity in council and ardent attachment of all the parts to the whole which give an irresistible energy to a government so constituted. ”

“ They were conservatives in so far as they opposed the radicals, but in 1832 they granted a political charter in which they accepted liberal principles; they respected municipal {205} liberties and the liberty of the press, surrounded all the powers of the State with prestige and authority, as also the senate and the magistrature, created a Council of State, so necessary in an improvised democracy, protected Catholicism, and limited the suffrage. To be a citizen a man required "an assured subsistence without subjection to any one whatever in the quality of servant or workman." ”

“ The new form of government bears evidence of its origin; it is intended rather to fetter the king than to extend or develop the action of the community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of select committees, betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat irksome duty of attendance in parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. ”

“ Council of Regency became simply a rule of terror. "The greater part of the people," one of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, "is not in favour of defending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries; on that side are the greater part of the nobles, who absent themselves from Court, all the bishops save three or four, almost all the judges and lawyers, almost all the justices of the peace, the priests who can move their flocks any way, for the whole of the commonalty is in such a state of irritation that it will easily follow any stir towards change." ”

“ Lilburne protested against the provision that Parliament should only sit six months every two years, and that the Council should rule the other eighteen. This example was extensively followed, and the table of the House was quickly loaded with petitions demanding a new Parliament every year; a committee of the House to govern during the recess; no member of one Parliament to be a member of the next; the Self-denying Ordinance to be enforced; the term of every officer's commission in the army to be limited; the High Court of Justice and Council of State to be abolished as instruments of tyranny ”

“ In the administrative tradition indeed of the last hundred years the Council had become all-important to the Crown. It brought it in contact with public opinion, less efficiently, no doubt, but more constantly than the Parliament itself; it gave to its acts an imposing sanction and assured to them a powerful support; above all it provided a body which stood at every crisis between the nation and the monarchy, which broke the shock of any conflict, and which could stand forth as mediator, should conflict arise, without any loss of dignity on the part of the sovereign. ”

“ Alsop (who on many occasions has shewed himself a lover of the law and liberty,) made answer, "That it did not much surprise him; for that every thing that had been done of late in the Council had been so new and strange that he could not understand it." And he added, "That the members of the late Council were extremely unwilling that any of the decisions given in the province should be carried by appeal to England, and that they were determined to do all they could to prevent it."
About an hour after this breaking up of the Council in this sudden manner, Mr. du Calvet went to wait upon Mr. ”

“ Lord Castlereagh continued to be a principal minister of the Crown, and was at that very time a free member of Parliament; Sir Francis Burdett had been dragged from the bosom of his family and committed to the Tower, for exercising the right of constitutional discussion, common and undeniable to all, whilst Spencer Perceval continued a member of the House, taking a lead in its deliberations, the first minister of the Crown, and the chief adviser of the royal council. ”

“ Altogether the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his. And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised ”

“ The council of revision fell with hardly a friend to speak for it. It was one of those checks upon popular power of which Federalists had been fond. It consisted of the governor with the chancellor and the judges of the Supreme Court, and had a veto power upon bills passed by the legislature. As the chancellor and judges held office during [Pg 83] good behavior until they had reached the limit of age, the council was almost a chamber of life peers. The exercise of its power had provoked great animosity. ”

“ Even now the Commons had reached the presence of the king and the nobles, and stood there boldly declaring their rights, and putting an ever-growing restraint on regal and aristocratic licence.
In the Parliament which met in January, 1380, the Commons complained loudly of the extravagance of the expenditure. They demanded that the king's council should be dismissed; that the king should govern only by the aid of the usual Crown officers—the chancellor, treasurer, privy seal, chamberlain, and steward of the household; and that these ministers should be chosen by Parliament. ”

“ Wherefore the function of this Council, which is very rare in a senate, was executive, and consisted in the administration of the law made; and whereas the Council itself is often understood in Scripture by the priest and the Levite, there is no more in that save only that the priests and the Levites, who otherwise had no power at all, being in the younger years of this commonwealth, those that were best studied in the laws were the most frequently elected into the Sanhedrim. ”

“ The Privy Council, of course, would have its meetings, its officers, its records, its rules of proceeding, and its various usages, and these grew, in time, to be laws and rights; but still it was, in theory, only a sort of expansion of the king, as if to make a kind of artificial being, with one soul, but many heads and hands, because no natural human being could possibly have capacities and powers extensive and multifarious enough for the exigencies of reigning. Charles thus had a council who took charge of every thing, except so far as he chose to interpose. ”

“ The council, apprehensive of mischief, and especially from Gloucester after the departure of Bedford, required both dukes to swear that, during the minority of the king, and for the peace and security of his throne, they would "be advised, demeaned, and ruled by the lords of the council; and obey unto the king and to them as lowly as the least and poorest of his subjects." ”

“ It is true that chapters 21 and 39 may possibly be read confirming the judicial power of the Council in a certain limited group of cases. Earls and barons are not to be amerced except by their peers (per pares suos) , and the natural place for these “equals” of a Crown vassal to assemble for this purpose would be the Commune Concilium. This, however, is merely matter of inference; chapter 21 makes no mention of the Council; and it is equally possible that its requirements would be met by the presence among the officials of the Exchequer of a few Crown tenants. ”

“ He and his council, in fact, showed that they were in earnest to make the execution of justice cheap and prompt, and to revive a pure and zealous ministry of the gospel. In one of these ordinances, they effected the herculean labour which the Barebone parliament had aimed at—the reformation of the court of chancery, the ordinance for this purpose consisting of no less than sixty-seven articles. ”

“ Short of a council which should include every bishop of the entire Church, in unanimous agreement,—an impossible contingency,—the claims of any given council to be truly ecumenical are relative, not absolute; and no consistent theory is possible of the conditions under which a council could by virtue of its constitution claim infallibility for its decisions. The supposed infallibility of general councils lies in reality outside them, in the authority which sanctions and consecrates their decisions. ”

“ Under Cleisthenes the council reached its full development as a democratic representative body. Its actual organization is still uncertain, but it may be inferred that it became gradually a more strictly self-existent body than the Solonian council. Every full citizen of thirty years of age was eligible, and, unlike other civil offices, it was permissible to serve twice, but not more than twice (Ath. Pol. c. 62) . ”

“ If the control of taxation by a national assembly, if the conception of representation, if the indissoluble connection of these two principles with each other, ever really found a place in Magna Carta, they were contemptuously ejected from it in 1216, and failed to find a champion in 1217 to demand their restoration.
A modern statesman, with any knowledge of the value of constitutional principles, would have gladly seized the occasion of the revision of the terms of the Charter, to assert and define the functions and rights of the Great Council with precision and with emphasis. ”