Bishop of Jerusalem was likewise acephalous, or without chief, according to the seventh canon of the Nicene Council, and he retained, the ancient honour of his see.
Thus Leo was right to pronounce in favour of respect for canons; but he was wrong in placing disciplinary canons in the same rank with dogmatic definitions. In fact, the first may be modified when grave reasons demand it, nay, should be modified, sometimes, in the letter, if it be desired to preserve them in spirit; while definitions of faith should never be modified as to the letter, much less as to the spirit.
The canons of the first œcumenical councils throw incontestably strong light upon the prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome. They are the complement to each other. The twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon contains nothing less than the doctrine we defend, even though the opposition of the West, in the person of the Bishop of Rome, should strip it of its œcumenical character as certain theologians maintain; for it is well to notice that St. Leo did not protest against it as opposed to the divine and universal authority of the see of Rome, for which he only claimed an ecclesiastical primacy, but simply because it infringed upon the sixth canon of Nicea, in bringing down the Bishop of Alexandria to the third rank of the episcopate, and the Bishop of Antioch to the fourth.
It is, therefore, incontestable that at that period the Bishop of Rome did not possess universal authority in the Church by divine right.
This is still more evident, from the part that the bishops of Rome took in the councils. One fact is certain, that they did not convoke the first four œcumenical councils, that they did not preside over them, that they did not confirm them.
We will prove this for each of the Councils.
Here is what Eusebius relates of the convocation, pre-
