councils could not be an ultimate court of authority, they became
ancillary in the questions of dogma.^160
But the question of the authority of councils the Reformers could not
so easily set aside. Councils had proven themselves tremendous vehicles
of reform, and none of the Reformers would have questioned the first
four Ecumenical councils.^161 But like so many other issues, diverse
opinions on the relative utility and authority of councils existed among
all the Reformers. The equivocal opinions on councils can best be
illustrated by comparing the opinion of Calvin with that of Luther. For
Calvin, councils could err, and the decision of a council was no guarantee
of the truth. But the determination of the meaning of Holy Scripture
Calvin believed should be left in the hands of a council.
We willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the
best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened,
where the doctrine at issue may be examined. Such a definition,
upon which the pastors of the church in common, invoking Christ’s
Spirit, agree, will have much more weight than if each one, having
conceived it separately at home, should teach it to the people, or if
a few private individuals should compose it .... And the very feeling
of piety so instruct us that, if anyone disturb the church with a
strange doctrine, and the matter reach the point that there is danger
of greater dissension, the churches should first assemble, examine
the question put, and finally after due discussion, bring forth a
definition derived from Scripture which would remove all doubt
from the people and stop the mouths of wicked and greedy men
from daring to go any further.
Thus, when Arius rose up, the Council of Nicaea was summoned.
By its authority it both crushed the wicked efforts of that ungodly
man, restoring peace to those churches which he had troubled, and
asserted the eternal deity of Christ against his sacrilegious
teaching.^16298 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^160) On the Leipzig Disputation, see Daniel Oliver, The Trial of Luther, trans. John
Tonkin (St Louis, 1971, 1978), pp. 93–103. Luther’s ill-formed defense of one of Hus’s
propositions by which Eck trapped him, that there was but one, holy, Catholic Church and
that it was identified solely with the elect – a notion Hus garnered from Wyclif – Luther
subsequently denied.
(^161) Beginning with Nicaea in 325 and ending with Chalcedon in 451. Jewel himself
openly defended the first four, and even asserted the necessary validity of the fifth, though
he never really comments upon it. Jewel asserts an un-Romanized Church in the first 600
years of its history, and this is the parameter in which his debates with Harding occur, and
thus the fifth council, during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, would fall within these
parameters. Doctrinally the fifth Ecumenical council forms largely an appendix to the
fourth.
(^162) John T. McNeill, ed., The Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Ford
Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, 1950), pp. 1176–77. ‘Nos certe libenter concedimus, siquo de
dogmate incidat disceptatio, nullum esse nec melius nec certius remedium, quam si
verorum Episcoporum synodus conveniat, ubi controversum dogma excutiatur. Multo
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