erned before his
last banishment, and of those which were in the hands of the Arians, and
Paulinus was continued in his care of the Eustathians. St. Meletius
zealously reformed the disorders which heresy and divisions {404} had
produced, and provided his church with excellent ministers. In 379 he
presided in a council at Antioch, in which the errors of Apollinarius
were condemned without any mention of his name. Theodosius, whom Gratian
declared Augustus, and his partner in the empire at Sirmich, on the 19th
of January, soon after his arrival at Constantinople, concurred
zealously in assembling the second general council which was opened at
Constantinople, in the year 381. Only the prelates of the Eastern empire
assisted, so that we find no mention of legates of pope Damasus, and it
was general, not in the celebration, but by the acceptation of the
universal church. St. Meletius presided as the first patriarch that was
present; in it one hundred and fifty Catholic bishops, and thirty-six of
the Macedonian sect, made their appearance; but all these latter chose
rather to withdraw than to retract their error, or confess the divinity
of the Holy Ghost. The council approved of the election of St. Gregory
of Nazianzen to the see of Constantinople, though he resigned it to
satisfy the scruples and complaints of some, who, by mistake, thought it
made against the Nicene canon, which forbade translations of bishops;
which could not be understood of him who had never been allowed to take
possession of his former see. The council then proceeded to condemn the
Macedonian heresy, and to publish the Nicene creed, with certain
additions. In the second, among the seven canons of discipline, the two
oriental patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch were acknowledged. In
the third, the prerogative of honor, next to the see of Rome, is given
to that of Constantinople, which before was subject to the metropolitan
of Heraclea, in Thrace. This canon laid the foundation of the
patriarchal dignity to which that see was raised by the council of
Calcedon, though not allowed for some time after in the West. St.
Meletius died at Constantinople while the council was sitting, to the
inexpressible grief of the fathers, and of the good emperor. By an
evangelical meekness, which was his characteristic, he had converted the
various trials that he had gone through into occasions of virtue, and
had exceedingly endeared himself to all that had the happiness o