National COUNCIL, is an assembly of the prelates of nation under their primate or patriarch.
Oecumenical or General COUNCIL, is an assembly which represents the whole body of the universal church. The Romanists reckon eighteen of them; Bullinger, in his treatise de conciliis, six; Dr. Prideaux, seven; and Bishop Beveridge has increased the number to eight, which, he says, are all the general councils which have ever been held since the time of the first Christian emperor. They are as follows: 1. The council of Nice, held in the reign of Constantine the Great, on account of the heresy of Arians. 2. The council of Constantinople, called under the reign and by the command of Theodosius the Great, for much the same end that the former council was summoned. 3. The council of Ephesus, convened by Theodosius the younger at the suit of Nestorius. 4. The council of Chalcedon, held in the reign of Martinus, which approved of the Eutychian heresy. 5. The second council of Constantinople, assembled by the emperor Justinian, condemned the three chapters taken out of the book of Theodosius of Mopsuestia, having first decided that it was lawful to anathematize the dead. Some authors tell us, that they likewise condemned the several errors of Origen about the Trinity, the plurality of worlds, and pre-existence of souls. 6. The third council of Constantinople, held by the command of Constantius Pogonatus the emperor, in which they received the definitions of the five first general councils, and particularly that against Origen and Theodosius of Mopsuestia. 7. The second Nicene council. 8. The fourth council of Constantinople, assembled when Louis II. was emperor of the West. The regulations which they made are contained in twenty-seven canons, the heads of which are set down by M. du Pin, to whom the reader is referred.