CEconomy {oiKovoj-da, steu-ardship) is a term sometimes used to designate the entire suppression or temporary withholding, in the instruction of the great mass of Christians, of a large portion of the Gospel doc- trines which are the most earnestly set forth in Script- ure, as a sort of esoteric mystery of •which ordinary be- lievers are unworthy, and which should be dealt out with the managing discretion of a steward (o'tKovofioq), only as a reward for a long course of pious submission. Those who vindicate this system represent it to them- selves and others as the same with the gradual initia- tion of Christians in the knowledge of their religion, in proportion as they " are able to bear it :" able, that is, and willing to understand each point that is presented to their minds. The opponents of the system, on the other hand, maintain that it confounds things essen- tially different. While they allow the necessity of gradual teaching, as of reading the first line of a passage before a second ; and while they readily admit that care is requisite to avoid teaching anything which, though true in itself, would be falsely understood by the hear- ers, they contend that this necessary caution is not to be confounded with the system of withholding a portion of Gospel truth from those able and willing to receive it, the system of "shunning to set before man all the counsel of God," and of having one kind of religion for the initiated few, and another for the mass of the Chris- tian world. The opponents of the " oeconomical" sys- tem assert, moreover, that very different was the apostle Paul's Gospel, which he assures us, "if it was hid, was hid from them that are lost" (men on the road to de- struction, cnroWvuivotc), "whom the god of this world hath blinded" (2 Cor. "iv, 4, 5). — Eden, Ch. Did, s. v. See Reserve.
CEcumenical (or Universal) Bishop is the title now assumed by the popes of Rome. It was stubbornly claimed by John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, in the end of the Gth century. The assumption of so lofty a title by Constantinopolitan patriarchs was strong- ly remonstrated against by the rival bishops of Rome, particularly b}' Gregory the Great, who maintained the title to be profane, antichristian, and infernal ; and, in order to make sure of a clear claim of Rome's superiority over Constantinople, he assumed the appellation " Ser- vus servorum Dei," in reference to Matt, xxiii, 10. (See Alzog, Kirchengesch. i, 341 [R. C] ; Soames, The Latin Ch. in A nrj(o-Saxo7i Times, p. 19 ; Neale, Hist. East. Ch. [Introd.],' i, 29.) In A.D. 606, however, the Roman pontiff Boniface III obtained this very title from Phocas, the Greek emperor; and from that period down to the present day the pope of Rome claims to be the CEcumenical or Universal Bishop, having authority over the whole Church of Christ upon earth. All other churches except the Roman Catholic Church repudi- ate such a claim as alike unfounded, antichristian, and blasphemous. (J. II.W.)
CEcumenical Council is the name of an ecclesi- astical convention of cardinals, bishops, and dignitaries of the Church of Rome, called together by the pope to
deliberate really on the interests of the Romish Church, but, as it claims, on the interests of Christianity at large. The council is called (Ecumenical (i. e. an imperial gathering) from oiKovp'tvt], or empire (technical mean- ing of the word, even in N.-T. Greek), because orig- inally such councils were convened only by the em- peror. Thus the Church of England teaches in its 21st of the Thirty-nine Articles that "general councils may not be gathered together but by the command- ment and will of princes." This was clearly the as- sumption of the first oecumenical synod held (see Ni- c.EAN Council), and of all the Eastern councils. " Not only no single bishop, but no single prince (unless we take the word in its most ancient sense), was sufficient to convene a general assembly from all parts of that vast territory; a council was part, as it were, of the original constitution of the Christian empire; and how- ever much disputed afterwards in the entanglements of the civil and ecclesiastical relation in the West, the principle has never been wholly abandoned. When the Western empire fell, the Eastern emperor still retained the inalienable right; and when the Eastern emperor became inaccessible to the needs of European Christen- dom, and a new holy ' Roman empire' was erected in the West, then the emperor of Germany (solely, or more properly, conjointly with his Byzantine brother) suc- ceeded to the rights of Constantine" (Stanley, Lect. East. Ch. p. 159). With the establishment of the tem- poral power of the papacy the bishop of Rome assumed the prerogative of calling the synods of the Church, as its spiritual head and sovereign lord. In the ar- ticle Council we have already considered the general utility of such gatherings and their ecclesiastical au- thority. The conditions necessary to constitute an oe- cumenical council are a subject of much controversy among Romanists. As the subject is of less impor- tance in Protestant divinity, it will be enough to ex- plain here that a council is said by Roman Catholic divines to be cecumenical in three different ways, viz., in convocation, in celebration, and in acceptation. For the first, the summons of the pope, direct or indirect, is held to be necessary ; this summons must be addressed to all the bishops of the entire Church. For the second, it is necessary tliat bishops from all parts of the Church should be present, and in sufficient numbers to consti- tute a really representative assembly : they must be pre- sided over by the pope, or b}' a delegate or delegates of the pope; and they must enjoy liberty of discussion and of speech. For the third, the decrees of the council must be accepted by the pope, and by the body of the bishops throughout the Church, at least tacitly. The last of these conditions is absolutely required to entitle the decrees of a council to the character of oecumenical ; and even the decrees of provincial or national councils, so accepted, may acquire all the weight of infallible de- cisions in the eyes of Roman Catholics. It remains now onlj^ to name the councils regarded as oecumenical. Yet this is by no means an easy task, for Church his- torians arc not agreed as to the total number of such synods hitherto held. The well -known mnemonic hexameter, " Ni Co E, Chal Co Co, Ni Co La, La La La, Ly Ly Yi. Flo Tri," standing for Nica?a, Constantinople, Ephesus, etc., which counts but seventeen, is not ac- cepted by all. While, e. g., the cecumenical council of Ephesus, in 449, had decided, not without the aid of " swords and sticks, and many monks' heels," that Eu- tj^ches's opinion about the nature of Christ was the orthodox one, another oecumenical council, held eleven years later at Chalcedon, decided that the decision of its predecessor was nuU and void ; and that so far from being an oecumenical coiuicil, it was a council of brig- ands, " Latrocinium Ephesimim." Even so the Council of Basle was called " Basiliacorum spelunca dcemonum- que caterva," because it rebelled against the pope, its master. (See Deutsch, Literary Reminiscences, ch. xi; McElhinney, The Doctrine of the Ch. p. 81-84.) See also Synod. The Protestants have in recent times