mstances which now invest the tradition, or
under any circumstances whatever, there would have been a total silence
respecting it in the Holy Scriptures? {317} That the writers of the
first four centuries should never have referred to such a fact? That the
first writer who alludes to it, should have lived in the middle of the
fifth century, or later; and that he should have declared in a letter to
his contemporaries that the subject was one on which many doubted; and
that he himself would not deny it, not because it rested upon probable
evidence, but because nothing was impossible with God; and that nothing
was known as to the time, the manner, or the persons concerned, even had
the assumption taken place? Can we place any confidence in the relation
of a writer in the middle of the sixth century, as to a tradition of
what an archbishop of Jerusalem attending the council of Chalcedon, had
told the sovereigns at Constantinople of a tradition, as to what was
said to have happened nearly four hundred years before, whilst in the
"Acts" of that Council, not the faintest trace is found of any allusion
to the supposed fact or the alleged tradition, though the transactions
of that Council in many of its most minute circumstances are recorded,
and though the discussions of that Council brought the name and
circumstances of the Virgin Mary continually before the minds of all who
attended it?

This, however, is a point of too great importance to be dismissed
summarily; and seems to require us to examine, however briefly, into the
circumstances of that Council. {318}

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.--COUNCILS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, EPHESUS, AND THE GENERAL
COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON

The legend on which the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is
founded professes to trace the tradition to Juvenal, Archbishop of
Jerusalem, when he was sojourning in Constantinople for the purpose of
attending the General Council of Chalcedon. To the Emperor and Empress,
who presided at that council, Juvenal is said to have communicated the
tradition, as received in Palestine, of the miraculous taking up of
Mary's body into heaven. This circumstance seems, as we have already
intimated, of itself, to require us to examine the records of that
Council, with the view of ascertaining whether any traces may be found
confirmatory of the tradition, or otherwise; and since that Council
cannot be regarded as an insulated assembl