the faith, and carried multitudes with them. Nevertheless the fathers of the Nicene Council did not forsake or compromise the truth, nor think it inopportune to declare it. S. Athanasius was reproached for dividing the Christian world for an iota. But that iota has, under God, saved the faith of the ever-blessed Trinity. The faith of the Christian world rests at this day upon the definition of Nicæa.
So again, after the Council of Ephesus, thirty bishops followed the Nestorian heresy. The fathers of that Council foresaw the danger, but they knew that no danger was to be compared with the danger of betraying the truth. They defined the doctrine of faith as to the unity of the One Person in two natures, and on that definition the doctrine of the incarnation has rested immutably to this day.
After the Council of Chalcedon the Monophysites separated themselves from Catholic unity.
Will any reasonable man say that the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite heresies were the consequence of the Councils of Nicæa, Ephesus, and Chalcedon?
But lastly, at the Council of Trent, the motives of human prudence and the pleadings of natural charity must have been very powerful on the side of endeavouring to win and to conciliate. Whole nations were on the brink of separation. But an Œcumenical
