In refuting heretics, the Fathers of the Church constantly appeal to the definitions of ecumenical councils as to a secure standard of faith. For example:
a)
St. Gregory the Great: “I confess that I accept and venerate the
four councils even as the four books of the Gospel.” (“Epist. ad Joannem
Constantinop.”; P.L., 77, 478) At that time there had been but four ecumenical
councils, and St. Gregory accepts them as of equal importance with the Gospels.
b)
St. Cyril of Alexandria: “When the Fathers (of the council) issued
canons of sincere and irreproachable faith, they were directed by the Holy
Spirit, that they might not depart from the truth. In fact, as Christ the
Saviour testifies, it was not they who spoke, but the Spirit of God the father
who spoke in them.” (“Epist. ad Monachos Aegypti”; P.G., 77, 15)
c)
St. Athanasius: “The word of the Lord, which came through the ecumenical
Synod of Nicaea, abides forever.” (“Epist.
ad Episcopos Afros”; P.G., 26, 1031)
d)
Pope Hormisdas: “Those who hold to the constitutions of the Fathers and
cherish those foundations of faith, do not depart from the things which they
defined by the impelling power of the Holy Spirit.” (“Epist. ad Epiphanium Hiersol.”
; P.L., 53, 519)
Source:
E.
Sylvester Berry, The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise
(Frederick County, Md.: Mount Saint Mary's Seminary, 1955; repr., Eugene,
Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 263, images from Migne added
Another translation of the work from Gregory the Great reads thusly:
I confess that I receive and revere,
like the four books of the holy Gospel, four Councils, to wit: That of Nicaea,
in which the perverse doctrine of Arius is destroyed; that of Constantinople,
also in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is overthrown; the first also
at Ephesus, in which the impiety of Nestorius is judged; and that too of
Chalcedon, in which the wickedness of Eutyches and Dioscurus is reproved. These
Councils I embrace with full devotion and I keep to them with fullest approval;
for on them as on a cornerstone rises the structure of the holy faith, and
whoever does not hold fast to their solidarity, whatever else his life and conduct
may be, even if he is seen to be a stone, still, he lies outside the building.
The fifth Council too, I equally venerate, in which a letter said to be of
Ibas, full of error, is reproved. . . . But all persons that the aforesaid
Councils reject, I reject; those whom they venerate, I embrace; because, since
those Councils were shaped by universal consent, anyone who presumes either to
loose whom they bind or to bind whom they loose overthrows not them but
himself. Whoever, therefore, deems otherwise, let him be anathema. (The
Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 vols. [trans. William A. Jurgens;
Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1979], 3:309)
