tures and the writings of the church to be burnt. This command was prosecuted with great rigour and fierceness, and many Christians to avoid the storm delivered up their Bibles to the scorn and fury of their enemies. Hence they were styled traditores; (of whom there is frequent mention in Optatus and St. Augustine.) Otherwhiles Christians became guilty of idolatry by actual sacrificing, or worshipping idols. These were called thurificati, from their burning incense upon the altars of the heathen deities, and were the grossest and vilest sort of idolaters. Others again fell into this sin by basely corrupting the heathen magistrate, and purchasing a warrant of security from him to exempt them from the penalty of the law, and the necessity of sacrificing and denying Christ. These were called libellatici, of whom we shall speak more afterwards.

Secondly, What penalties and punishments were inflicted upon delinquent persons; and they could be no other than such as were agreeable to the nature and constitution of the church, which, as it transacts only in spiritual matters, so it could inflict no other than spiritual censures and chastisements. It is true indeed that in the first age especially, the apostles had a power to inflict bodily punishments upon offenders, which they sometimes made use of upon great occasions: as St. Peter did towards Ananias and Sapphira, striking them dead upon the place for their notorious cozenage and gross hypocrisy; and St. Paul punished Elymas with blindness for his perverse and malicious opposition of the Gospel. This doubtless he pri2 Ib. xiii. 11.

1 Acts, v. 5, 10.

marily intends by his delivering over persons unto satan; and questionless the main design of the divine providence in affording this extraordinary gift was to supply the defect of civil and co-active power, of which the church was then wholly des titute. How long this miraculous power lasted in the church I know not, or whether at all beyond the apostles' age. The common and standing penalty they made use of was excommunication or suspension from communion with the church; the cutting off and casting out an offending person as a rotten and infected member, till by repentance and wholesome discipline he was cured and restored, and then he was re-admitted into churchsociety, and to a participation of the ordinances and privileges of Christianity.

This way of punishing by excommunication was not originally instituted by our Lord or his apostles, but had been anciently practised both amongst Jews and Gentiles. It was commonly practised by the Druids, (as Cæsar who lived amongst them informs us,) who, when any of the people became irregular and disorderly, presently suspended them from their sacrifices; and the persons thus suspended were accounted in the number of the most impious and execrable persons. All men stood off from them, shunned their company and converse as an infection and a plague: they had no benefit of law, nor any honour or respect shown to them; and of all punishments this they accounted most extreme and severe.' So far he; giving an account of this discipline amongst the ancient Gauls. In the Jewish church nothing was more familiar; their

1 De Bell. Gall. lib. vi. p. 135.

71

three famous degrees of excommunication niddui, cherem, now shammatha, are so commonly known, that it were impertinent to insist upon them. From the usage of the Jewish it was amongst other rites adopted into the Christian church, practised by the apostles, and the churches founded by them, (whereof we have instances in the New Testament,) but brought to greater perfection in succeeding times. It is variously expressed by the ancient writers, though much to the same purpose. Such persons are said abstineri, to be kept back, a word much used by Cyprian, and the synod of Illiberis; apopìɛσlaι, to be separated, or be separated from the body of Christ, as St. Augustin oft expresses it; Ékkóπteσdaɩ tñs κοινωνίας παντάπασιν, to be wholly cut of from communion, as it is in the apostolic canons; and sometimes ῥίπτεσθαι ἐκ τῆς ἐκκλησίας, as the Laodicean synod calls it, to be thrown out of the church; to be anathematized, and without the communion and pale of the church, as the Fathers of the council of Gangra have it.3

1

This suspension and the penance that accompanied it was greater or less, longer or shorter, according to the nature of the crime; sometimes two, three, ten, fifteen, twenty or thirty years, and sometimes for the whole life; nay, in some cases it was not taken off at death, but persons were left to the judgment of God, without any testimony of their reconciliation to the church. Herein the severity was mitigated, not only by private bishops, but by the great council of Nice, which ordained

1 Can. 28.

2 Ib.
Epist. ad Armen. Episc. præfix. Conc. Gangr.

3

VOL. II.

K

that penitent persons should not be denied the communion at the hour of death. If the person offending happened to be in orders, he forfeited his ministry; and though upon his repentance he was restored to communion, yet it was only as a layperson, never recovering the honour and dignity of his office. This St. Basil' tells us was an ancient canon and practice of the church, and accordingly ordains, that a deacon guilty of fornication should be deposed from his office, and being thrust down into the rank of the laity, should in that quality be admitted to communion.

Indeed they strove by all ways imaginable to discourage sin, never thinking the curb strong enough, so they might but keep persons within the bounds of order and regularity; insomuch that by some the string was stretched too far, and all pardon denied to them that had sinned. This uncomfortable doctrine was if not first coined, yet mainly vended by the Novatian party. For Novatus, St. Cyprian's presbyter, being suspended by him for his vile enormities fled over to Rome, and there joined himself to Novatian, a presbyter of that church, (these two names are frequently confounded by the Greek writers,) who ambitiously sought to make himself bishop, and to thrust out Cornelius newly elected into that see. Not being able to compass his design, between them they started this amongst other heretical opinions, that the lapsed, who through fear of suffering had fallen in the time of persecution, were not to be admitted to repentance; and that though they

1 Epist Can. ad Amphil Can. iii. p. 22. Vid. Zonar, et Balsam. in Can. x. Cone. Nicen.; Cyprian. Epist. 52 and 68; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 43.

should never so oft confess their sins, and never so sincerely forsake them, yet there was no hope of salvation for them; at leastwise (for so I incline to understand them) that it was not in the power of the church to absolve or give them any hopes of pardon, leaving them to the judgment of God: styling themselves (and not only as Balsamon affirms, ironically styled by others) by the name of cathari, the pure and undefiled party.' But they were herein presently condemned by a synod of sixty bishops, and more than as many presbyters and deacons gathered at Rome; and the decree consented to and published by the rest of the bishops in their several provinces; concluding that Novatus and his party, and all that had subscribed to his most inhuman and merciless opinion, should be cast out of the church; and that the brethren who in this sad calamity had fallen from their profession, should be healed and restored by the arts and methods of repentance. Which brings us to consider,

2

Thirdly, How and in what manner offenders were dealt with, both as to their suspension and penance, and as to their absolution. This affair was usually managed after this order;—at their public assemblies (as we find in Tertullian,) amongst other parts, of their holy exercises, there were exhortations, reproofs, and a divine censure; for the judgment is given with great weight, as amongst those that are sure that God beholds what they do; and this is one of the highest præludiums and forerunners of the judgment to come, when the delinquent

'Euseb. ubi supr. p. 242; Epiphan. Hæres. 59, contr. Catharos, p. 214. 2 In Can. 8, Conc. Nicen.