The first of these, under the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, was summoned at Nicea near Constantinople because Constantinople had become the capital of the Empire.
It met to discuss and define the full doctrine of Our Lord’s Divinity, and to reject the heretical theses connected with it.
The function of getting into communication by travel and by letter supported and was called into being by the supreme principle of Unity; The idea that the Church was one, its doctrine one, its authority one, stood out vividly in the minds of all its members.
From the beginning, dissent was not tolerated; unity was of the essence of the thing, and in connection with this there was present at first more vaguely, later with greater definition, the conception of primacy.
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