On the Futility of Councils

For my part, if I am to write the truth, my inclination is to avoid all assemblies of bishops, because I have never seen any council come to a good end, nor turn out to be a solution of evils. On the contrary, it usually increases them. You always find there love of contention and love of power (I hope you will not think me a bore, for writing like this), which beggar description; and, while sitting in judgement on others, a man might well be convicted of ill-doing himself long before he should put down the ill-doings of his opponents. So I retired into myself; and came to the conclusion that the only security for one's soul lies in keeping quiet. . . .

Gregory the Theologian (Epistle 130) to Procopius, excusing his absence from a council called by Theodosius I to meet in Constantinople in 382
Translated by B. J. Kidd, edited by J. Stevenson