But still there was a difficulty yet remaining, about the person of Christ: for as Christ’s being one person did not destroy the distinction of his two natures, it became a very important and warm controversy, whether Christ had any more than one will, as he was but one person in two natures? or, whether he had not two wills, agreeable to his two distinct natures, united in one person? This occasioned the calling the sixth general council, who determined it for the two wills; in which, according to my poor judgment, they were very wrong. And had I had the honour to have been of this venerable assembly, I would have completed the mystery, by decreeing, that as Christ had but one person, he could have but one personal will; but however, that as he had two natures, he must also have two natural wills. I beg my reader’s pardon for thus presuming to offer my own judgment, in opposition to the decree of the holy fathers; but at the same time I cannot help smiling at the thought of two or three hundred venerable bishops and fathers thus trifling in council, and solemnly playing at questions and commands, to puzzle others, and divert themselves. Were it not for the fatal consequences that attended their decisions, I should look on them as “Bishops in masquerade,” met together only to ridicule the order, or to set the people a laughing at so awkward a mixture of gravity and folly. Surely the reverend clergy of those days had but little to do amongst their flocks, or but little regard to the nature and end of their office. Had they been faithful to their character instead of “doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof came envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness, “they would have” consented to, and taught wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the doctrine which is according to godliness. But this was not the temper of the times. It would have been indeed more tolerable, had the clergy confined their quarrels to themselves, and quarrelled only about speculative doctrines and harmless contradictions. But to interest the whole christian world in these contentions, and to excite furious persecutions for the support of doctrines and practices, even opposite to the nature, and destructive of the very end of christianity, is equally monstrous and astonishing. And yet this is the case of the seventh general council, who decreed the adoration of the Virgin Mary, of angels and of saints, of relicts, of images and pictures, and who thereby obscured the dignity, and corrupted the simplicity of the christian worship and doctrine. This the venerable fathers of that council did, and pronounced anathemas against all who would not come into their idolatrous practices, and excited the civil power to oppress and destroy them. [Illustration]