are excelled by each other in their several capacities. For superiority is usually expressed in three words, wɛgoxn, ágxù, and éžovoía, excellency, impery, and power.' The king is supreme to the bishop in impery; the bishop hath an excellency, viz. of spiritual ministration, which Christ hath not concredited to the king; but in power, both king and bishop have it distinctly in several capacities; the king'in potentiâ gladii,' the bishop in potestate clavium.' The sword and the keys are the emblems of their distinct power. Something like this is in the third epistle of St. Clement, translated by Ruffinus: "Quid enim in præsenti sæculo prophetâ gloriosius, pontifice clarius, rege sublimius?"king, and priest, and prophet, are, in their several excellencies, the highest powers under Heaven.' In this sense, it is easy to understand those expressions often used in antiquity, which might seem to make entrenchment upon the sacredness of royal prerogatives; were not both the piety and sense of the church sufficiently clear in the issues of her humblest obedience. And this is the sense of St. Ignatius, that holy martyr and disciple of the apostles: "Diaconi, et reliquus clerus, unà cum populo universo, militibus, principibus, et Cæsare, ipsi episcopo pareant:" "Let the deacons and all the clergy, and all the people, the soldiers, the princes, and Cæsar himself, obey the bishop." This is it which St. Ambrose said: "Sublimitas episcopalis nullis poterit comparationibus adæquari. Si regum fulgori compares, et principum diademati, erit inferius," &c. This also was acknowledged by the great Constantine, that most blessed prince: "Deus vos constituit sacerdotes, et potestatem vobis dedit, de nobis quoque judicandi, et ideo nos à vobis rectè judicamur. Vos autem non potestis ab hominibus judicari,” viz. ' sæcularibus,' and 'in causis simplicis religionis.' So that good emperor, in his oration to the Nicene fathers. It was a famous contestation that St. Ambrose had with Auxentius, the Arian, pretending the emperor's command to him, to deliver up some certain churches in his diocese to the Arians. His answer was, that palaces belonged to the emperor, but churches to the bishop'; and so they did by all 4 Epist. ad Philadelph. • Lib. x. Eccles. Hist, c. 2. r Lib. de Dignit. Sacerd. c. 2. the laws of Christendom. The like was in the case of St. Athanasius and Constantius the emperor, exactly the same per omnia,' as it is related by Ruffinus'. St. Ambrose, sending his deacon to the emperor, to desire him to go forth of the cancelli, in his church at Milan,-shows that then the powers were so distinct, that they made no entrenchment upon each other. It was no greater power, but a more considerable act, and higher exercise, the forbidding the communion to Theodosius, till he had, by repentance, washed 'out the blood that stuck upon him ever since the massacre at Thessalonica". It was a wonderful concurrence of piety in the emperor, and resolution and authority in the bishop. But he was not the first that did it; for Philip, the emperor, was also guided by the pastoral rod, and the severity of the bishop." De hoc traditum est nobis, quòd Christianus fuerit, et in die paschæ, i. e. in ipsis vigiliis, cùm interesse voluerit, et communicare mysteriis, ab episcopo loci non priùs esse permissum, nisi confiteretur peccata, et inter pœnitentes staret, nec ullo modo sibi copiam mysteriorum futuram nisi, priùs per pœnitentiam culpas, quæ de eo ferebantur plurimæ, deluisset:" "The bishop of the place would not let him communicate, till he had washed away his sins by repentance." And the emperor did so. "Ferunt igitur libenter eum quod a sacerdote imperatum fuerat, suscepisse :" "He did it willingly, undertaking the impositions laid upon him by the bishop*. I doubt not but all the world believes the dispensation of the sacraments entirely to belong to ecclesiastical ministry. It was St. Chrysostom's command to his presbyters, to reject all wicked persons from the holy communion. "If he be a captain, a consul, or a crowned king, that cometh unworthily, forbid him, and keep him off; thy power is greater than his. If thou darest not remove him, tell it me, I will not suffer it "," &c. And had there never been more error in the managing church-censures than in the foregoing instances, the church might have exercised censures, and all the parts of power that Christ gave her, without either scandal or danger to herself or her penitents. But when in t Lib. x. Eccles. Hist. c. 19. u Theodor. lib. v. c. 18. y Homil. 83. in Matt. xxvi. the very censure of excommunication, there is a new ingredient put, a great proportion of secular inconveniences and human interest, when excommunications, as in the apostles' times they were deliverings over to Satan, so now shall be deliverings over to a foreign enemy or the people's rage; as then to be buffeted, so now to be deposed, or disinterested in the allegiance of subjects; in these cases, excommunication being nothing like that which Christ authorized, and no way co-operating toward the end of its institution, but to an end of private designs and rebellious interest, bishops have no power of such censures, nor is it lawful to inflict them, things remaining in that consistence and capacity. And thus is that famous saying to be understood, reported, by St. Thomas, to be St. Austin's, but is indeed found in the ordinary gloss upon Matt. xiii. "Princeps et multitudo non est excommunicanda:" "A prince or a commonwealth are not to be excommunicate z." Thus I have given a short account of the persons and causes, of which bishops, according to catholic practice, did and might take cognizance. This use only I make of it. Although Christ hath given great authority to his church, in order to the regiment of souls, such a power, 66 quæ nullis poterit comparationibus adæquari," yet it hath its limits, and a proper cognizance, viz. things spiritual, and the emergencies, and consequents from those things which Christianity hath introduced 'de novo,' and superadded, as things totally disparate from the precise interest of the commonwealth ; and this I the rather noted, to show how those men would mend themselves that cry down the tyranny, as they list to call it, of episcopacy, and yet call for the presbytery. "For the presbytery does challenge cognizance of all causes whatsoever, which are either sins directly or by reduction: all crimes which, by the law of God, deserve death a." "There they bring in murders, treasons, witchcrafts, felonies. Then the minor faults they bring in under the title of scandalous and offensive.' Nayquodvis peccatum,' saith Snecanus, In 3. Partis Supplem. q. 22. a. 5. Vide Aug. Ep. 75. et Gratian. Dist. 24. q. 2. c. Si habet, sed ibi princeps' non inseritur, sed tantùm in glossâ ordinaria. a Vide the book of Order of Excommun. in Scotland, and the Hist. of Scotland. Admonit. 2. p. 46. Knox's Exhortation to England. to which if we add this consideration, that they believe every action of any man to have in it the malignity of a damnable sin,' there is nothing in the world, good or bad, vicious or suspicious, scandalous or criminal, true or imaginary, real actions or personal; in all which, and in all contestations and complaints, one party is delinquent, either by false accusation or real injury; but they comprehend in their vast gripe, and then they have power to nullify, all courts and judicatories, besides their own; and being, for this their cognizance they pretend Divine institution, there shall be no causes imperfect in their consistory, no appeal from them, but they shall hear and determine with final resolution, and it will be sin, and therefore punishable, to complain of injustice and illegality. If this be confronted but with the pretences of episcopacy, and the modesty of their several demands, and the reasonableness and divinity of each vindication examined, I suppose, were there nothing but prudential motives to be put into the balance, to weigh down this question, the cause would soon be determined; and the little finger of presbytery, not only in its exemplary and tried practices, but in its dogmatical pretensions, is heavier than the loins, nay, than the whole body of episcopacy; but it seldom happens otherwise, but that they who usurp a power prove tyrants in the execution, whereas the issues of a lawful power are fair and moderate. SECTION XXXVII. Forbidding Presbyters to officiate without Episcopal License. BUT I must proceed to the more particular instances of episcopal jurisdiction. The whole power of ministration, both of the word and sacraments, was in the bishop by prime authority, and in the presbyters by commission and delegation, insomuch that they might not exercise any ordinary ministration without license from the bishop. They had power and capacity by their order to preach, to minister, to offer, to reconcile, and to baptize. They were, indeed, acts of order, but that they might not, by the law of the church, exercise any of these acts without license from the bishop, that is an act or issue of jurisdiction, and shows the superiority of the bishop over his presbyters, by the practice of Christendom. Οὐκ St. Ignatius hath done very good offices in all the parts of this question, and here also he brings in succour. ἐξόν ἐστι χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου οὔτε βαπτίζειν, οὔτε προσφέρειν, οὔτε θυσίαν προσκομίζειν, οὔτε δοχὴν ἐπιτελεῖν· “ It is not lawful without the bishop," viz. without his leave, " either to baptize, or to offer sacrifice, or to make oblation, or to keep feasts of charity" and a little before, speaking of the blessed eucharist, and its ministration, and having premised a general interdict for doing any thing without the bishop's consent, Ἐκείνη δὲ βεβαία εὐχαριστία ἡγείσθω, ἡ ὑπὸ τὸν ἐπίσκοπον οὖσα, ἢ ᾧ ἂν AŬTÒS ÉTITGÉ↓ņ. "But let that eucharist," saith he, "be held αὐτὸς ἐπιτρέψῃ· valid, which is celebrated under the bishop, or under him to whom the bishop shall permit." I do not here dispute the matter of right, and whether or no the presbyters might' de jure' do any offices without episcopal license, but whether or no, de facto,' it was permitted them in the primitive church? This is sufficient to show to what issue the reduction of episcopacy to a primitive consistence will drive; and if I mistake not, it is at least a very probable determination of the question of right too. For who will imagine that bishops should at the first, in the calenture of their infant devotion, in the new spring of Christianity, in the times of persecution, in all the public disadvantages of state and fortune, when they anchored only upon the shore of a holy conscience, that then they should have thoughts ambitious, encroaching, of usurpation and advantages, of purpose to divest their brethren of an authority entrusted them by Christ; and then, too, when all the advantage of their honour did only set them upon a hill, to feel a stronger blast of persecution, and was not, as since it hath been, attested with secular assistance and fair arguments of honour, but was only in a mere spiritual estimate, and ten thousand real disadvantages. This will not be supposed either of wise or holy men. But however, 'valeat quantum valere potest.' The question is now of matter of fact; and if a Epist. ad Smyrn. |