312 THIRD TEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
tion council in the neigliboriiig town of Pliilippopulis ; and tin city of Sardica, too, with the praefecture of Illyricum, at that tinie belonged to the AVestern empire and the Roman patriarchate : it was not detached from them till 379. The council ft^as intended, indeed, to be ecumenical ; but it consisted at first of only a hundred and seventy bishops, and after th« secession of the seventy-six orientals, it had only ninety-four ; and even by the two hundred signatures of absent bishops, mostly Egyptian, to whom the acts were sent for their approval, the East, and even the Latin Africa, with its three hundred bishoprics, were very feebly represented. It was not sanctioned by the emperor Constantius, and has by no subsequent authority been declared ecumenical.' Accordhigly its decrees soon fell into oblivion, and in the further course of the Arian controversy, and even thi-oughout the Nestorian, where the bishops of Alexandria, and not those of Ivome, were evidently at the head of the orthodox sentiment, they were utterly unnoticed.'' The general councils of 381, 451, and 680 knew nothing of such a supreme appellate tribunal, but unanimously enacted, that all ecclesiastical matters, without exception, should first be decided in the provincial councils, with the right of appeal — not to the bishop of Rome, but to the patriarch of the proper diocese. Rome alone did not forget the Sardicai decrees, but built on this single precedent a universal right. Pope Zosimus, in the case of the deposed presbyter Apiarius of Sicca (a. d. 417-418), made the significant mistake of taking the Sardican decrees for Nicene, and thus giving them greater weight than they really possessed ; but he was referred by the Africans to the genuine text of the Nicene canon. The later popes, however, transcended the Sardican decrees, withdrawing from the provincial council, according to the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, the right of deposing a bishop, which had been
' Baronius, Natal is Alexander, and Mansi have endeavored indeed to establish for the counc'd an ccnincnical character, but in opposition to the weightiest ancienj and modern authorities of the Catholic church. Comp. Ilefele, i. 590 sqq.
' It is also to be observed, that the synodal letters, as well as the orthodox cedeeiastical writers of this and the succeeding age, which take notice of this council, like Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Basil, make no mention of those decree* loncerniiig Rome.
§ 62. DECREES OF COUNCILS ON PAPAL ATTIHOEITT. 3 1 il
allowed bj Sardica, and vesting it, as a causa major, eKclu bivelj in themselves.
Finall}', in regard to the four great ecnimenical coimcils, the first of Nice, the first of Constantinople, that of Ephesus, and that of Chalcedon : we have already presented their position on this question in connection with their legislation on the patriarchal system.' We have seen that they accord to the bishop of Rome a precedence of honor among the five ofluicially coequal patriarchs, and thus acknowledge him primus inter pares, but, by that very concession, disallow his claims to supremacy of jurisdiction, and to monarchical authority over the entire church. The whole patriarchal system, in fact, was not monarchy, but oligarchy. Hence the protest of the Roman delegates and of Pope Leo against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon in 451, which coincided with that of Constantinople in 381. This protest was insufficient to annul the decree, and in the East it made no lasting impression ; for the subsequent incidental concessions of Greek patriarclis and emperors, like that of the usurper Phocas in 600, and even of the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople in G'80, to the see of Rome, have no general significance, but are distinctly traceable to special circumstances and prejudices.
It is, therefore, an undeniable historical fact, that the greatest dogmatic and legislative authorities of the ancien church bear as decidedly against the specific papal claims of the Roman bishopric, as in favor of its patriarchal rights and an honorary primacy in the patriarchal oligarchy. The subsequent separation of the Greek church from the Latin proves to this day, that she was never willing to sacrifice her independence to Rome, or to depart from the decrees of her oAvn ii,reatest councils.
Here lies the dificrence, however, between the Greek and the Protestant opposition to the universal monarchy of the papacy. The Greek church protested against it from the basia of the oligarchical patriarchal hierarchy of tht fifth century ; in an age, therefore, and upon a principle of church organiza
' Comp. § 56.