is the commission: and, "Let the elders of the church pray over the sick man; and, if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him ;"* that is the effect of his power and his ministry. But concerning this, some few things are to be considered. 1. It is the office of the presbyters and ministers of religion to declare public criminals and scandalous persons to be such, that, when the leprosy is declared, the flock may avoid the infection; and then the man is excommunicate, when the people are warned to avoid the danger of the man, or the reproach of the crime, to withdraw from his society, and not to bid him God speed, not to eat and celebrate synaxes and church-meetings with such who are declared criminal and dangerous. And therefore excommunication is, in a very great part, the act of the congregation and communities of the faithful: and St. Paul said to the church of the Corinthians,† that they had inflicted the evil upon the incestuous person, that is, by excommunicating him: all the acts of which are, as they are subjected in the people, acts of caution and liberty: but no more acts of direct, proper power or jurisdiction, than it was, when the scholars of Simon Magus left his chair, and went to hear St. Peter: but as they are actions of the rulers of the church, so they are declarative, ministerial, and effective too by moral casualty, that is, by persuasion and discourse, by argument and prayer, by homily and material representment, by reasonableness of order, and the superinduced necessities of men; though not by any real change of state as to the person, nor by diminution of his right, or violence to his condition. 2. He that baptizes, and he that ministers the holy sacrament, or he that prays, does holy offices of great advantage; but in these also, just as in the former, he exercises no jurisdiction or pre-eminence after the manner of secular authority; and the same is also true, if he should deny them. He that refuseth to baptize an indisposed person, hath, by the consent of all men, no power or jurisdiction over the unbaptized man: and he, that, for the like reason, refuseth to give him the communion, preserves the sacredness of the mysteries, and does charity to the undisposed man, to deny that to him, which will do him mischief; and this is an act of separation, just as it is † 1 Cor. v. 5. 12, 13. 2 Cor. ii. 6. * James v. 14, 15. for a friend or physician to deny water to an hydropic person, or Italian wines to a hectic fever; or as if Cato should deny to salute Bibulus, or the censor of manners to do countenance to a wanton and vicious person. And though this thing was expressed by words of power, such as separation, abstention, excommunication, deposition; yet these words we understand by the thing itself, which was notorious and evident to be matter of prudence, security, and a free, unconstrained discipline: and they passed into power by consent and voluntary submission; having the same effect of constraint, fear, and authority, which we see in secular jurisdiction; not because ecclesiastical discipline hath a natural proper coercion as lay-tribunals have, but because men have submitted to it, and are bound to do so upon the interest of two or three Christian graces. 3. In pursuance of this caution and provision, the church superinduced times and manners of abstention, and expressions of sorrow, and canonical punishments, which they tied the delinquent people to suffer, before they would admit them to the holy table of the Lord. For the criminal having obliged himself by his sin, and the church having declared it, when she could take notice of it, he is bound to repent, to make him capable of pardon with God; and to prove that he is penitent, he is to do such actions, which the church, in the virtue and pursuance of repentance, shall accept as a testimony of it, sufficient to inform her : for as she could not bind at all (in this sense) till the crime was public, though the man had bound himself in secret; so neither can she set him free, till the repentance be as public as the sin, or so as she can note it and approve it. Though the man be free, as to God, by his internal act; yet, as the publication of the sin was accidental to it, and the churchcensure consequent to it, so is the publication of repentance and consequent absolution extrinsical to the pardon, but accidentally and in the present circumstances necessary. This was the same that the Jews did (though in other instances and expressions,) and do to this day to their prevaricating people; and the Essenes in their assemblies, and private colleges of scholars, and public universities. For all these being assemblies of voluntary persons, and such as seek for advantage, are bound to make an artificial authority in their superiors, and so to secure order and government by their own obedience and voluntary subordination, which is not essential and of proper jurisdiction in the superior; and the band of it, is not any coercive power, but the denying to communicate such benefits, which they seek in that communion and fellowship. 4. These, I say, were introduced in the special manners and instances by positive authority, and have not a Divine authority commanding them; but there is a Divine power, that verifies them, and makes these separations effectual and formidable: for because they are declarative and ministerial in the spiritual man, and suppose a delinquency and demerit in the other, and a sin against God, our blessed Saviour hath declared, that, "what they bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven;" that is, in plain signification, the same sins and sinners, which the clergy condemn in the face of their assemblies, the same are condemned in heaven before the face of God, and for the same reason too. God's law hath sentenced it, and these are the preachers and publishers of his law, by which they stand condemned; and these laws are they, that condemn the sin, or acquit the penitent, there and here; whatsoever they bind here, shall be bound there; that is, the sentence of God at the day of judgment shall sentence the same men, whom the church does rightly sentence here. It is spoken in the future, it shall be bound in heaven; not that the sinner is first bound there, or first absolved there; but because all binding and loosing in the interval is, imperfect and relative to the day of judgment, the day of the great sentence, therefore it is set down in the time to come, and says this only, the clergy are tied by the word and laws of God to condemn such sins and sinners; and that you may not think it ineffective, because after such sentence the man lives, and grows rich, or remains in health and power; therefore be sure, it shall be verified in the day of judg ment. This is hugely agreeable with the words of our Lord, and certain in reason for that the minister does nothing to the final alteration of the state of the man's soul by way of sentence, is demonstratively certain, because he cannot bind a man, but such as hath bound himself, and who is bound in heaven by his sin before his sentence in the church as also because the binding of the church is merely accidental, and upon publication only; and when the man repents, he is absolved before God, before the sentence of the church, upon his contrition and dereliction only; and if he were not, the church could not absolve him. The consequent of which evident truth is this, that whatsoever impositions the church-officers impose upon the criminal, they are to avoid scandal, to testify repentance, and to exercise it, to instruct the people, to make them fear, to represent the act of God, and the secret and the true state of the sinner; and although they are not essentially necessary to our pardon, yet they are become necessary, when the church hath seized upon the sinner, by public notice of the crime: necessary (I say) for the removing the scandal, and giving testimony of our contrition, and for the receiving all that comfort, which he needs, and can derive from the promises of pardon as they are published by him, that is commanded to preach them to all them that repent. And therefore although it cannot be necessary as to the obtaining pardon, that the priest should in private absolve a sick man from his private sins, and there is no loosing, where there was no precedent binding, and he, that was only bound before God, can before him only be loosed: yet as to confess sins to any Christian in private may have many good ends, and to confess them to a clergyman may have many more; so to hear God's sentence at the mouth of the minister, pardon pronounced by God's ambassador, is of huge comfort to them, that cannot otherwise be comforted, and whose infirmity needs it; and therefore it were very fit it were not neglected in the days of our fear and danger, of our infirmities and sorrow. 5. The execution of this ministry being an act of prudence and charity, and therefore relative to changing circumstances, it hath been, and in many cases may, and in some must be, rescinded and altered. The time of separation may be lengthened and shortened, the condition made lighter or heavier, and for the same offence the clergyman is deposed, but yet admitted to the communion, for which one of the people, who hath no office to lose, is denied the benefit of communicating; and this sometimes when he might lawfully receive it; and a private man is separate, when a multitude or a prince is not, cannot, ought not; and, at last, when the case of sickness and danger of death did occur, they admitted all men that desired it; sometimes without scruple or difficulty, sometimes with some little restraint in great or insolent cases (as in the case of apos tacy, in which the council of Arles denied absolution, unless they received and gave public satisfaction by acts of repentance; and some other councils, denied, at any time, to do it to such persons) according as seemed fitting to the present necessities of the church. All which particulais declare it to be no part of a Divine commandment, that any man should be denied to receive the communion, if he desires it, and if he be in any probable capacity of receiving it. : 6. Since the separation was an act of liberty and a direct negative, it follows that the restitution was a mere doing that which they refused formerly, and to give the holy communion was the formality of absolution, and all the instrument and the whole matter of reconcilement; the taking off the punishment is the pardoning of the sin for this without the other is but a word; and if this be done, I care not, whether any thing be said or no. Vinum Dominicum ministratoris gratia est, is also true in this sense; to give the chalice and cup is the grace and indulgence of the minister and when that is done, the man hath obtained the peace of the church; and to do that is all the absolution the church can give. And they were vain disputes, which were commenced, some few ages since, concerning the forms of absolution, whether they were indicative or optative, by way of declaration or by way of sentence: for, at first they had no forms at all,.but they said a prayer, and, after the manner of the Jews, laid hands upon the penitent, when they prayed over him, and so admitted him to the holy communion; for since the church had no power over her children, but of excommunicating and denying them to attend upon holy offices and ministries respectively, neither could they have any absolution, but to admit them thither, from whence formerly they were forbidden : whatsoever ceremony or forms did signify, this was super-induced and arbitrary, alterable and accidental; it had variety, but no necessity. 7. The practice consequent to this, is, that if the penitent be bound by the positive censures of the church, he is to be reconciled upon those conditions, which the laws of the church tie him to, in case he can perform them: if he cannot, he can no longer be prejudiced by the censure of the church, which had no relation but to the people, with whom the dying man is no longer to converse. For whatsoever re |