did they always express the mind of the majority. They exhibit to us the usual phenomena of bishops fighting with bishops about subjects on which they barely understand each other. The Emperor sometimes compels them to agreement and sometimes to compromise by means of words which they take in different senses; or if this fails, he lends his influence to one party to crush the other. The first Council surpasses all the rest in good qualities; but even here the influence of Constantine cannot be ignored. He regarded the whole business with the eye of a politician, and

his main object was peace. Only thirty-eight of the

assembled bishops are put down as Arians, and only two refused to conform to the decrees of the Council. What then, we might ask, was the cause of all the disturbance? Dr. Michaud even denies the prevalence of Arianism at any time, and takes Jerome's lament that the world had become Arian as mere hyperbole. It is, indeed, easy to play at seesaw with the word Arian; but if we take the Arians as those who objected to consubstantiality, Jerome's words will be found not far from the truth. The fight may have been about a word, or, as it was in the Greek, about a letter, and that an iota; but those who objected to consubstantiality were always a numerous party, sometimes so numerous as to constitute the Catholic Church-if Catholicity is to be constituted by numbers and majorities. After the Council the strife continued, and the Arians were even able to compel the other party to subscribe creeds in which for consubstantiality, or of the same substance, was substituted a word meaning of like substance. Dr. Michaud pleads that those who thus agreed to abandon consubstantiality did not renounce the truth intended by it. Probably this is true, and it agrees to what Constantine said in his letter, already quoted, that both parties were really of the same opinion, and so the strife was all about trifles-that is, different modes of expressing the same thing. The Nicene Council,

therefore, did not give the Church the doctrine of Christ's divinity, but only a certain mode of expressing it, and if that mode is to be called a dogma, then a dogma is not a revealed doctrine, but only an opinion decreed by a Council.

The history of the other Councils shows the same scheming, fighting, and coercion which mark the most objectionable Councils held in later times, and regarded as infallible by the Church of Rome. Theodosius summoned the second Council purely to give peace to the Church militant. There were present only 186 bishops, of whom 38 were reckoned heretics. This is the Council described by Gregory Nazianzen, who says that the bishops raged like furious horses in battle, or like madmen casting dust into the air. He adds that they go even as they are led by their chief men, who to-day are of one opinion, and tomorrow, if the wind veers about, come to another judgment. The 150 orthodox, with the Emperor on their side, were too strong for the 38 on the other side, and so the latter retired from the Council, leaving the 150 to settle the faith of the Catholic world.

The third Council did not await the arrival of John of Antioch, who with his party were supporters of Nestorius. The President was the notorious Cyril of Alexandria, who urged the assembly to proceed with the condemnation of Nestorius; but Count Candidian, who represented the Emperor, refused to sanction the proceedings. When John arrived he opened a Council of his own, with forty bishops, who deposed Cyril and the Bishop of Ephesus. Both parties appealed to the Emperor, and complained of each other's partiality and injustice. The Emperor prudently decided in favour of the strongest party; but Cyril had pushed his objections against the doctrines of Nestorius so far, that he seemed to deny the two natures. His successor, Dioscurus, certainly did so, and appealed to Cyril's writings in defence of Eutyches. By the authority of

Theodosius, a Council was summoned at Ephesus, over which Dioscurus presided, when the Eutychians were declared orthodox. To condemn this Ephesian Council was the object of convening the fourth General Council. As soon as the legate of the Bishop of Rome saw Dioscurus among the bishops, he exclaimed that he had orders to depart if Dioscurus were allowed to be present. A tumult followed, in which it was evident that Dioscurus was on the losing side. Then all the bishops who had taken part with him in his Ephesian Council rose up against him, and swore that what had been done there they had been compelled to do. The same plea for going with the stream was made by the bishops of the seventh Council, who sanctioned the use of images, which once they had condemned.

A General Council seems a likely method of settling differences of doctrine. It might be supposed to give the Catholic voice of the Church, and, moreover, to manifest such Catholic wisdom as would overcome all opposition. But experience is here contrary to expectation. No General Council has ever had a tendency to heal; and every one, not excepting the first, has either made or perpetuated a schism. The more a Church defines, the more exclusive it becomes. The fires that once burned with the fury of volcanoes may now be extinct, but the divisions once made continue as petrifactions, which it seems impossible ever again to put in solution. The influence of the rash fury of Cyril is still visible in the separation of the Nestorian community, once the great missionary Church of the East. The Armenian Church is also in separation, because it never received the decrees of Chalcedon-in fact, apparently never understood how that which was condemned could be a heresy. The Jacobites of the Syrian Church are the descendants of those condemned at Chalcedon; and the Maronites, the other party of the same Church, are monuments of the heresy-making work of the fifth Council.

The Coptic Church was also separated from the rest of the East by the decrees of Chalcedon, and in its daughter, the Abyssinian Church, these controversies about the nature of Christ, fruitful only in mischief, still exist. No Councils have helped towards the reunion of East and West, and all who accept the authority of the seventh Council must exclude from their fellowship the whole Protestant world.

Dr. Michaud's book has received less attention in England than it deserves. But for his acceptance of the seventh Council he would have had the full sympathy of English High Churchmen. But he has reduced them to the dilemma of accepting the seventh or giving up the first six, and they retort on him that in accepting the seventh he commits himself to the idol worship of the Church of Rome.

We would counsel Dr. Michaud again to look in the face the simple facts of Christianity. He will find that many questions, especially such as those which occupied the first General Councils, are still open for further investigation; that many things which he regards as dogmas or authoritative doctrines are mere opinions; and, moreover, that there has been no such thing as Catholicity of dogma or worship since St. Paul anathematized the Judaizers in Galatia, or withstood Peter at Antioch, because he was to be blamed. The necessary unity with the necessary variety must have some better basis than the authority of the first seven General Councils.

JOHN HUNT.

ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA.

ELI

I.

LIZABETH STUART, sometime Queen of Bohemia, and still titular Queen of Hearts; daughter of James I., and Anne of Denmark; grand-daughter of Mary Queen of Scots, fourth in descent from Margaret Tudor; sister of Prince Henry, and of Charles I.; wife of the Winterkönig; mother of the Princes Rupert and Maurice, and of the Electress Sophia; friend of Lord Craven—is the Princess who took the blood royal of England and of Scotland to Germany, where it became blended with that of the Guelphs; the result being that Elizabeth's descendants, Stuarts on the spindle side, succeeded to the throne of England, after the last Stuart King had been deprived of the Crown, and after his two daughters had died without leaving issue.

A direct descendant of this mixed strain of royal blood now wears the Crown of Britain. "The sovereign qualification was restored to the realm (at the accession of the house of Hanover) in its highest purity through the descendants of the Guelphs, passing back through the house of Este to connect themselves with some of the illustrious Roman Gentes. The new dynasty was, indeed, by centuries older in history than the Plantagenets." (Burton.) Elizabeth Stuart was born in Falkland Palace, 19th August, 1596; she died 13th February, 1662, in Leicester House, London.

Between birth and death, this descendant and ancestress