PREFACE.

Ar a time like the present, when a regard for Church principles is happily reviving amongst us, and leading many of the Laity as well as the Clergy to interest themselves in the study of Christian antiquities, it seems desirable to present to English readers the most important documents of the Ancient Church in their own language, and with such annotations as may be necessary for the understanding of the various matters contained in them.

The first place amongst these documents, both as regards interest and importance, is justly to be assigned to those which are contained in the present collection, and which come to us with the authority of the Universal Church, whilst it was still outwardly one and undivided. These documents are naturally to be divided into two classes; the Definitions or Decrees respecting the faith established by the Ecumenical Councils, and the Canons of ecclesiastical discipline enacted or confirmed by them.

As regards the former class of documents, they b

are to be considered as the authoritative teaching of the Church upon the subjects to which they relate, and as such they have a well-founded claim to being received by all her members. Without pretending to carry the exemption of General Councils from possible error further than the Church of England carries it in the twenty-first Article, still no reasonable or reflecting man can hesitate to acknowledge, that at least considerable authority is to be ascribed to such assemblies of the Church. It is indeed hardly conceivable that a truly General Council, assembled lawfully, and deliberating freely, and the decisions of which have been received and ratified by the consent of the whole Church, should err in matters of faith. The number of Councils however which come up to the above description is very small, in fact there are not more than six which can be accounted truly Ecumenical, viz. those of Nice, A. D. 325; Constantinople, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451; and the second and third of Constantinople, 553 and 680. Some theologians are disposed to acknowledge only the four first of these as distinctly Ecumenical, considering the fifth and sixth as supplemental to the third and fourth, but in the more common enumeration all the six are accounted distinct and Ecumenical.

The Definitions of Faith published by these Councils have been always received by the Church