The proceedings of this assembly were
accompanied by lamentable unfairness and violence. Eutyches was
acquitted, and restored by this council[122]; and his accusers were
condemned and persecuted; Flavianus, Archbishop of Constantinople, who
had summoned the preceding council, being even scourged and exiled. In
his distress that patriarch sought the good offices of Leo, Bishop of
Rome, who espoused his cause, but who failed nevertheless of inducing
Theodosius to convene a General Council. His successor Marcian, however,
consented; and in the year 451 the Council of Chalcedon was convened,
first meeting at Nice, and by adjournment being removed to Chalcedon. In
this council all the proceedings as well of the Council of
Constantinople as of Ephesus, were rehearsed at length; and from a close
examination of the proceedings of those three councils, only one
inference seems deducible, namely, that the invocation and worship of
saints and of the Virgin Mary had not then obtained that place in the
Christian {321} Church, which the Church of Rome now assigns to it; a
place, however, which the Church of England, among other branches of the
Catholic Church, maintains that it has usurped, and cannot, without a
sacrifice of the only sound principle of religious worship, be suffered
to retain.
[Footnote 122: The sentiments of Eutyches, even as they are
recorded by the party who charged him with heresy, seem to imply
so much of soundness in his principles, and of moderation in his
maintenance of those principles, that one must feel sorrow on
finding such a man maintaining error at any time.
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