ostles, that is to wit, "Our Saviour, Jesus
Christ." And forasmuch as we heard God Himself speaking unto us in His
word, and saw also the notable examples of the old and primitive Church;
again, how uncertain a matter it was to wait for a general council, and
that the success thereof would be much more uncertain, but specially
forsomuch as we were most ascertained of God's will, and counted it a
wickedness to be too careful and overcumbered about the judgments of
mortal men: we could no longer stand taking advice with flesh and blood,
but rather thought good to do the same thing, that both might rightly be
done, and hath also many a time been done, as well of good men as of many
Catholic bishops--that is, to remedy our own churches by a provincial
synod. For thus know we the old fathers used to put in experience before
they came to the public universal council. There remain yet at this day
canons written in councils of free cities, as of Carthage under Cyprian,
as of Ancyra, Neocaesarea, and Gangra, which is in Paphlagonia, as some
think, before that the name of the general council at Nice was ever heard
of. After this fashion in old time did they speedily meet with and cut
short those heretics, the Pelagians and the Donatists at home, by private
disputation, without any general council. Thus, also, when the Emperor
Constantine evidently and earnestly took part with Auxentius, the bishop
of the Arians' faction, Ambrose, the bishop of the Christians, appealed
not unto a general council, where he saw no good could be done, by reason
of the emperor's might and great labour, but appealed to his own clergy
and people, that is to say, to a provincial synod. And thus it was
decreed in the council at Nice that the bishops should assemble twice
every year. And in the council at Carthage it was decreed that the
bishops should meet together in each of their provinces at least once in
the year, which was done, as saith the council of Chalcedon, of purpose
that if any errors and abuses had happened to spring up anywhere, they
might immediately at the first entry be destroyed where they first began.
So likewise when Secundus and Palladius rejected the council at Aquileia,
because it was not a general and a common council, Ambrose, bishop of
Milan, made answer that no man ought to take it for a new or strange
matter that the bishops of the west part of the world did call together
synods, and make private assemblies in their provin