The legend on which the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is founded professes to trace the tradition to Juvenal, Archbishop of Jerusalem, when he was sojourning in Constantinople for the purpose of attending the General Council of Chalcedon. To the Emperor and Empress, who presided at that council, Juvenal is said to have communicated the tradition, as received in Palestine, of the miraculous taking up of Mary's body into heaven. This circumstance seems, as we have already intimated, of itself, to require us to examine the records of that Council, with the view of ascertaining whether any traces may be found confirmatory of the tradition, or otherwise; and since that Council cannot be regarded as an insulated assembly, but as a continuation rather or resumption of the preceding minor Councils of Constantinople and Ephesus, we must briefly refer to the occasion and nature generally of that succession of Christian synods. I am not aware that in the previous Councils any thing had transpired {319} which could be brought as evidence on the subject of our inquiry. The questions which had disturbed the peace of Christendom, and which were agitated in these Councils, inseparable from a repeated mention of the Virgin Mary's name, afforded an opportunity at every turn for an expression of the sentiments of those who composed the Councils, and of all connected with them, including the Bishop of Rome himself, towards her. It would be altogether foreign from the purpose of this address to enter in any way at large upon the character and history of those or the preceding Councils, yet a few words seem necessary, to enable us to judge of the nature and weight of the evidence borne by them on the question immediately before us.