it not only provoked the division in the Church, but has perpetuated and strengthened it by the pertinacity with which it has maintained what was the direct cause of it.
To this first cause we must add the successive changes which it has introduced in orthodox doctrine and the œcumenical rules of discipline. The history of its innovations would be long. From the institution of the autocracy to the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception, how many changes! how many important modifications! We may write this sad history in a special work. At this time it will suffice to consider the most serious innovation which it has permitted itself, namely, the addition which it has made to the Creed; for that addition, together with the Papal autocracy, was the direct cause of the division which still exists between the Eastern and Western churches.
It has been sought to trace the discussion respecting the procession of the Holy Spirit to remote antiquity. We will not follow the learned upon this ground, but will simply show that it was in the eighth century that it first assumed any importance.[1]
Two Spanish Bishops, Felix d'Urgel and Elipand of Toledo, taught that Christ was the adopted Son of God, and not his Word, coëssential with the Father. Their errour called forth unanimous complaints in the West, particularly in France, whose kings then possessed the northern part of Spain. The defenders of orthodoxy thought they had found an excellent weapon against adoptivism when they decided that the Son is so thoroughly one in substance with the Father, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him as well as from the Father.
- ↑ It seems certain that the addition to the Creed was made by a council of Toledo in 633, and was confirmed by another held in the same city in 653. N. Alexander, Hist. Eccl. Dissert, xxvii. in Sæcul. iv. maintains that it was admitted in the Council of Toledo In 589, but it has been proved that the acts of the council were altered in this particular.
