ECUMENICAL or GENERAL COUNCIL is an assembly which represents the body of the universal church. The Romanists reckon eighteen of these; Bullinger, in his Treatise De Conciliis, six; and Dr. Prideaux, seven: but Bishop Beveridge has increased the number to eight, which, he says, includes all the general councils that have ever been held since the time of the first Christian emperor. They are as follow: The council of Nice, held in the reign of Constantine the Great, on account of the heresy of Arius; the council of Constantinople, called under the reign and by the command of Theodosius the Great, for nearly the same purpose as the former; the council of Ephesus, convened by Theodosius the younger at the suit of Nestorius; the council of Chalcedon, held in the reign of Martinus, which approved of the Eutychian heresy; the second council of Constantinople, assembled by the Emperor Justinian, which condemned the three chapters taken out of the book of Theodorus of Mopsuestia (having first decided that it was lawful to anathematise the dead), and also, according to some, the errors of Origen concerning the Tri-
Counsel. nity, a plurality of worlds, and the pre-existence of souls; the third council of Constantinople, held by command of Constantius Pogonatus, the emperor, in which were received the definitions of the five first general councils, and particularly that against Origen and Theodorus of Mopsuestia; the second Nicene council; and the fourth council of Constantinople, assembled when Louis II. was emperor of the West. There are several collections of the canons or decrees of councils. The most extensive and valuable is that of Hardouin, entitled Conciliorum Collectio Regia maxima, edita a JOANNE HARDUINO, Soc. Iesu, Parisiis, ex typographia regia. 1715, 12 vols. folio.