Chapter 20. Of General Councils, of Their Power, Authority,
and Causes of Their Convention

As we do not rashly damn that which godly men, assembled together in general councils, lawfully gathered, have proponed unto us; so without just examination dare we not receive whatsoever is obtruded unto men under the name of general councils. For plain it is, as they were men, so have some of them manifestly erred, and that in matters of great weight and importance.¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰Gal. 2:11-14. So far then as the council proves the determination and commandment that it gives by the plain word of God, so far do we reverence and embrace the same. But if men, under the name of a council, pretend to forge unto us new articles of our faith, or to make constitutions repugning to the word of God, then utterly we must refuse the same as the doctrine of devils, which draws our souls from the voice of our only God to follow the doctrines and constitutions of men.¹⁴¹¹⁴¹1 Tim. 4:1-3; Col. 2:18-23.

The cause, then, why general councils convened, was neither to make any perpetual law (which God before had not made), nor yet to forge new articles of our belief, neither to give the word of God authority ­ much less to make that to be his word, or yet the true interpretation of the same, which was not before by his holy will expressed in his word.¹⁴²¹⁴²Acts 15:1, etc. But the cause of councils (we mean of such as merit the name of councils), was partly for confutation of heresies, and for giving public confession of their faith to the posterity following: which both they did by the authority of God's written word, and not by any opinion or prerogative that they could not err, by reason of their general assembly. And this we judge to have been the chief cause of general councils. The other was for good policy and order to be constituted and observed in the kirk, in which (as in the house of God)¹⁴³¹⁴³1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 3:2. it becomes all things to be done decently and into order.¹⁴⁴¹⁴⁴1 Cor. 14:40. Not that we think that any policy, and one order in ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places: for as ceremonies (such as men have devised) are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed, when they rather foster superstition than that they edify the kirk using the same.