Church or spiritual city wherein Christians are incorporated into one Body is not only the Church of one place or Country wherein all the Members may Embody and Associate under the same Governors as the Church of Rome Alexandria or Antioch But the collection of all particular Christian Societys or the whole number of independant Churches Existing in all times and diffused through all places For all these our Saviour has ordained to be one Society or Spiritual Body Of them he speaks or of all that do or shall believe on him when he prays to his Father that they all may be one Joh. 17. 11. 20. 21. And of them St Paul speaks when he says both of Jews and Gentiles distributed into so many distinct Churches that by the Cross of Christ they are all reconciled to God in one Body Eph. 2. 16. And when he says of Baptism which being duly received in any Church makes a man free of all other Christian Churches that by one spirit we are all baptized into one body whether we be Jews or Gentiles 1 Cor. 12. 13. And of the Unity of this Church or Collection of all Believers do those Scriptures speak which represent all that are in Heaven and all that are in Earth as one whole Family Eph. 3. 15. As one House-hold 1 Tim. 3. 15. and Gal. 6. 10. or as one City Heb. 12. 22. Whence accordingly all who are at any time in this world are said to have their Citizenship or Corporation in Heaven Phil. 3. 20. And all who are admitted into Christs Church here to be Fâ—llow-Citizens with the Saints and Domesticks with Prophets and Apostles and with all others who are gone to God before Eph. 2. 19. What is the one Body saith St Chrysostom on the words of St. Paul there is one Body 'T is all believers of every place saith he both those who now are and who formerly have been and who hereafter shall be And as to the Union of these Spiritual bodys or societies both the Members of each particular Church must keep Unity or make one society with their own Church And every particular and independant Church with its Members must keep Unity and make one society with all other particular and independant Churches The Members keep Unity with their own Church by due dependance and subjection or by keeping subject and dependant on their own Lawful Bishops And one particular Church keeps Unity with all other independant and sister Churches by Fraternal Communion or the Communion of Saints in the Holy Catholick Church profess'd in the Creed that is by their readiness to Unite with their Religious Assemblies to own their Members and to ratify their Church Acts as if they were their own or had been sped by themselves And this way of fraternal communion as well as the other of keeping under the same visible Governors by due dependance and subjection is a way to Unite them not only as a Sect who all hold and profess the same Doctrines and Opinions but also as a Society or as one Body For by this bond of fraternal communion they stand obliged not only to Unity of Doctrine as men of the same sect but to unity as of internal so of external society and incorporation as fellow citizens For such are the obligations of receiving mutually each others Member as their own free denizens of admitting of their baptismal claims and Church Priviledges of Ratifying of their church-Church-Acts and Censures of Associating with their Church services and Assemblies and of standing together as one body and brotherhood for the same common Tenets and Religious interests as if they were incorporated under the same External Heads or were the members of the same particular Church And this is to unite them in the great things of society particularly of a spiritual society which lyes mightily in communion in spiritual acts and offices And accordingly Uniting in the same Sacraments which are the Highest Acts of Church Communion is set out for a way of Uniting all in one body or corporation We being many are one body by being all partakers of that one bread 1 Cor. 10. 17. And we are all baptized into one body 1 Cor. 12. 13. So that all Christian Churches who under one common Father as Domesticks or under one Lord and King as Fellow-citizens are incorporated upon one Charter or New-covenant to live by the same Laws and out of the same Hopes and in enjoyment of the same Church-rights and Priviledges and have one common Form of Incorporation to Naturalize or Enfranchise them thereinto viz. One Baptism are to transact as one society by keeping up one fraternal Communion among themselves Now both this Union of subjection towards their own Church and its Lawful Heads and of fraternal communion towards all other equal and independant Churches all good Christians are bound to keep up unless some obstacles happen in either which are of force to put a bar thereto or give discharge thereof And such obstacles either in our own Bishops or in other equal and independant Churches are Heresy when once openly profess'd by them Or their fixing unlawful Terms of Communion puting sinful things into their sacred offices or not allowing any to Communicate with them without believing or professing some false Doctrine or partaking with them in some evil worship or thing Or Tyrannical Usupation on their Brethrens Libertys not admitting other Churches to their Communion unless they will give up their own rights and freedoms and become their Subjects When such exceptions lye against any Bishops or against any Churches they have lost their claims of union But all Church-Members are bound I conceive by all the numerous and earnest commands of keeping Unity to continue subject to their Lawful Bishops as all Churches are by the same to keep up Communion with other Churches if they cannot produce any such just obstacles in bar thereof Now Schism is a sinful breach of this union of Church Society Either in the Members of any particular Church when they unjustly break off their subjection and dependance upon their own Church Or in any Particular Churches when they unduly break off Fraternal Communion with other Churches denying to Assemble with them or Communicating with such as stand Excommunicated by or have made a Schism from them First One Great way of Schism is in respect of Particular Members when against the Gospel duty and Commands of Unity they unduely throw off their subjection and dependance upon their own Bishops and break off from the Unity of their own Church One way of Uniteing Societies or Bodys of Men is by uniteing them under the same Heads They are all one Body and Members one of another as keeping under and being United to the same Head and Governor Thus of the Association of Man and Wife which is the Original Society and makes a Family which is the ground work of all other Societies it is said that they two
Teachers which he gave as Gifts for the edifying or compacting and building up all Christians into this Body of Christ v. 8. 11 12. To these Pastors the Spirit has given different Offices Rom. 12. 4. One having the Office of ministring another of teaching another of ruling v. 6 7 8. Or different Administrations 1 Cor. 12 5. setting some in the Church in the station of Apostles some of Teachers some of Governments v. 28. placing some in higher some in lower stations according to the measure of that Grace or Office the Word Grace being often used to express Ministerial Powers which he saw fit to commit to them Eph. 4. 7. 11. But all those different Offices are set for keeping all Christians in one Body Rom. 12. 4. 5. and all the Diversity of Ministries is to continue them the Body of Christ and to cement the Members who are many into one Body 1 Cor. 12. 27 28. v. 12. 20. and all the variety of Gifts i. e. of Offices v. 11. or distributions of higher or lower stations are for edifying or laying together the Members into this Body and for preserving the Unity thereof Eph. 4. 4 8 12. The Head of this Body is Jesus Christ himself And from Christ the Head all the Body is knit together says St. Paul by those joynts and bands which minister neurishment i. e. by the Pastors who are set to feed it Col. 2. 19. From Christ the Head says he again the whole Body is fitly joyn'd and compacted together by those joynts which make supplies according to their measure or according to their several stations in the work of the Ministry Eph. 4. 15 16. And on account of this use of their uniting all Christians under Christ the Head into this one Body or all the several Societies of Christians into one Church when this one Church is compared to a Natural Body they are represented as the Joynts and as the Bands or Ligaments which unite and compact the Members as they are by St. Paul in these places And thus it was in the Opinion of the Ancient Church who placed the Unity of all Churches in the Unity and Accord of all the Bishops thereof The Catholick Church which is one saith St. Cyprian is cemented or coupled together by the glue or joynt accord of its Bishops adhering mutually to one another All faithful People are joyn'd together into the solid Unity of one Body by the glue of this Concord And to fall from this Concord and separate from the College of Bishops is to separate from the Bond of the Church as he elsewhere says To keep up this Unity in the whole Church they believed all BISHOPS strictly obliged to keep Unity among themselves We Bishops who preside in the Church ought above all Men to keep firmly united that we may maintain the Episcopate it self one and undivided They looked upon the Bishops of all the several independant Churches to be as so many Members of one great Fraternity or College Optatus calls them the College of Bishops And before him St. Cyprian styles them the College and Corporation of Priests and calls all other Bishops his Collegues Particular Bishopricks are all Members one of another and all together as he says are to make but one Great Episcopate And among this Multitude of Bishops as there is but one Church so there is but one Chair And as three Persons in the sacred Trinity make up but one God wherein the power of all three is one and undivided So doth all the great Diversity of Prelates make up but one Priesthood says Symmachus Now this Unity the Bishops and Pastors keep up among several Churches not by the Subjection of all other Bishops to some one or more set up above all the rest Particularly not by the paramount Authority and Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome which is neither to be found in Scripture nor is agreeable to the Accounts thereof nor to the Belief and Practice of the Primitive Church nor to the Universal Diffusedness designed for Christs Church under all the Divisions of Kingdoms and Interruptions of secular Accord and Correspondence here on Earth But by maintaining Fraternal Concord and Communion among themselves They cement into one Episcopate concordi mâ—merositate by their Concord under this Numerosity as we are told by St. Cyprian They are bound or coupled into one body by the glue of mutual Concord as he says again Which Ecclesiastical Concord and Fraternal Communion lyes in owning each other and all the Christians of their several Churches as Brethren and Members and in ratifying the great Acts of Society pass'd among them as if they had been pass'd among themselves And in having this Communion not Arbitrary and Discretionary which may be fixt at will upon their own terms and either kept up or rejected as they please But a Communion kept on out of bounden Duty and by Rules being to give account to Christ the chief Bishop for the breach thereof To this it is requisite that they profess the same true Faith and Christian Worship This is the Foundation of all other Communion among them The one Body being made up of those who hold to the one Faith Eph. 4. 4. and the Communion in this Body being required between those who communicate in this one Faith and Worship as shall be shewn more fully afterwards And among all Orthodox Bishops and Churches who profess the true Christian Faith and Worship the Rules of Communion and Correspondence required by Christ for keeping up this Unity of his Body are such as these 1. That all Orthodox Bishops and Churches receive each others Members as if they were their own Members All the Members of Christ's Church are Fellow-Citizens or enfranchised Denizens wheresoever they come and upon any new Change of Place or Christian Country have no need of a new Naturalization They ought to find a home in all Churches and may claim their Baptismal Priviledges or the benefits of the Christian Coporation or Society and can not justly be repulsed or denyed the same as being free of the whole Body For Baptism which makes them Members by the institution of Christ incorporates them all not only into those several Churches or Congregations where they receive it but into the whole Body or Fraternity We are all baptized whether we be Jews or Gentiles into one Body says St. Paul 1 Cor. 12. 13. And accordingly no Church must exclude them as Strangers or Forreigners but own and receive them as Fellow-citizens as Members as Domesticks as Brethren and of the same Family with themselves And this is necessary to maintain that Brotherhood which Christ has constituted among all his Members every Christian being Brother to another so that Brother is usually put to signifie a Christian in the Holy Scripture They must also own and receive their Orders when they have been lawfully call'd
him know that he thereby makes a Schism in the Church which Christ is for having kept one And whether he be Bishop Priest c. he shall be the same to us as Andronicus himself is If any shall communicate wîth one out of communion he himself shall be shut out of communion say the Apostolical Canons If any Bishop or Presbyter receive to communion those who are deservedly cast out of the Church for their crimes he shall be lyable to like Punishments says the Council of Carthage And if any Bishop Priest or other of the Clergy appear to communicate with Persons out of communion the shall also stand excommunicate himself as one who confounds the Canons and Order of the Church say the Fathers in the Synod of Antioch The Reason of all this is because Christians as I said and as the African Fathers observe though dispersed over the most distant Places and Countries are but one Society and though multiplyed into the greatest Number of Assemblies yet all these make but one Body We ought to signifie to each other what is acted in any of our Churches says Alexander Bishop of Alexandria in his Synodical Epistle to all Churches upon his Deposition of Arius and his Adherents that whether one Member or Church suffer or rejoyce all the other Members or Churches may suffer or rejoyce with it or give mutual support and confirm each others Acts and Sentences And this because the Catholick Church is but one Body and we are commanded in the Holy Scriptures to keep up therein the bond of Uaanimity and Peace And Synosius threatning the Receivers of those whom he and his Church had put under Excommunication taxes them therein as I have observed for making a Schism in the Church which Christ is for having kept one The several Orthodox and Regular Churches of Christendom are all Members one of another And from that Communion which ought to be among Members of the same Body what belongs to one belongs to all and what is broke off from one is broke off from all The Canon says Balsamon speaking of the 2d Canon of the Council of Antioch which forbids the communicating of other Churches with those who communicate not with their own Church says all Temples and Oratories wheresoever they are make but one Church And therefore if any Person is cast out of the Church and regularly shut out of the Temples and Oratories of the Orthodox in one Country he ought to be shut out of the Temples and Oratories of all and not to be received to communion by the Clergy of other Countries And like Regard all particular Churches are bound to have to each others Reconciliation and Re-union of Members as to their separation and exclusion of them As in binding so also in loosing our Lord ratifies the Acts of his Officers and Vice gerents in all Churches Whatsoever you shall loose or remit on Earth the same shall be loosed or remitted in Heaven Mat. 18. 18. Jo. 20. 23. And in relaxing or remitting censures as well as in laying of them upon Offenders among their respective Charges Orthodox Bishops act in the Person of Christ as St. Paul says 2 Cor. 2. 10. or as Judices vice Christi Judges that sit in Christs place as St. Cyprian notes of them Till their own Bishop has received them or a Synod has cleared them no other Bishop must receive them to communion says the Canon of Antioch before cited And after he has once received them into his Communion no other Bishops must reject them from theirs They are then re-united again to the Body and are Brethren and Members and as such must be admitted to the Communion of Saints by all other Orthodox Members of the same Body and Brotherhood in all places And thus again they are Schismaticks and break that Unity of one Body which Christ has appointed among all Churches who unduly receive and associate with any other Orthodox and Lawful Churches Schismaticks or Excommunicates If they would keep one with all Orthodox Churches as they must look upon all who are duly united to them as united to themselves so must they look upon all who are duly seperated and broke off from them as seperated and broke off from themselves And to do otherwise is to break this one Communion which is to bind all Orthodox Christians into one Body and to make a Schism in the Catholick Church And in further care and provision for the maintenance of this Catholick Accord and Communion among all Churches by the Ancient Rule of the Church all Orthodox Bishops and Churches were to keep up an Intercourse by communicatory Letters Since the Catholick Church is but one Body and we are commanded in Scripture to keep up the Bond of Unanimity and Peace therein the consequence hereof is that we write or signifie to each other what is transacted in any of our Churches that all the rest as Members may bear their part in the same says Alexander Bishop of Alexandria in his Synodical Epistle which I cited before And Siricius of Rome and together with him the whole World is united in one Communion and Society with us by the Intercourse of communicatory Letters says Optatus of the Church of Africk as it stood divided from the Donatists By these Letters an Account was given to other Churches of any Bishops Advancement when he was Ordained Bishop of his Church or of his own Faith to shew that he and his Church were Orthodox and so duly qualified for Union with other Orthodox Churches and fit to be owned as Members of the Body and admitted as Partners in the Communion of Saints And of their own Members or Ministers their Schismaticks or Excommunicates that among all who should come to them from thence other Churches might know whom they were to receive and whom they were to reject as either of the same or of a different Body with themselves And also of any other church-Church-Acts or Concerns wherein they could either claim the ratification or desired the concurrence or needed the aid council or support or could bear the burdens help the wants or congratulate the well-fare or prosperity of one another Now as to these communicatory Letters certifying each others Members or Ministers Schismaticks or Excommunicates c. the Catholick Rule of the Ancient Church was That no Strangers or Forreigners should be admitted to the Communion of any Church without them If they who came were Clergy-men they were to bring commendatory Letters testifying their Orders Or if Laity pacifical and communicatory declaring they were in Communion with their own Churches No Stranger or Forreigner shall be received without pacifical Letters say the Council of Antioch And no foreign Bishops Priests or Deacons shall be received without commendatory Letters say the Canons of the Apostles If there come any strange or unknown Clergy let them not by any means be any where received
Souls endangered by such Salvo's it was the Duty of true Prophets and Priests among them and would be so in all other places on like occasions by their preaching and Ministrations to keep up sound knowledge among the People in these Points yea tho' such preaching and ministrations made a Breach between them and those defecting Teachers And it was the Peoples duty to follow any among them who would teach them better when they could have such Teachers as they had in our Blessed Lord and his Apostles Whatever Allowance under the favour of Necessity men may have to keep on with such of which Plea of necessity I shall say more hereafter yet where there is choice of others more Orthodox they are no longer tyed to such Pastors as openly and obstinately preach up damnable practices to disgrace Religion and endanger Souls Bear they may for a time in hopes of Reformation and because it is easier to prevent than to patch up Breaches wise Lovers both of Peace and Truth would not be hasty in coming to extreamities But if still they will persist and go on in such pernicious Ways and Doctrines good People and Pastors may withdraw themselves from their Communion as St. Paul says in the places already cited And the Reasons of breaking off on such defections from necessary points either of faith or practice are still more urgent if there is no Liberty left in any Churches for other Pastors to stand up ministerially or exercise their Ministry in defence of those necessary points whilst they continue with and adhere to them For then the Concealment and Suppression of necessary Truths is made a condition of Communion and other Pastors if they will hold on with them must suffer that good thing which has been committed to their Trust to be extinguish'd without standing up according to their duty and solemn undertaking to minister the same Which will make it necessary for all who will choose to stand by Christ and his Truths rather than by such his Apostatizing Servants and Corrupters thereof to depart from them When therefore the Bishops and Pastors of any Church fall off from ministring necessary Christian Doctrine or Worship and especially when they come to allow their Communion to none who will go on administring the same they thereby loosen the bands of Union and break that spiritual dependance and relation which the People and other inferiour Pastors ought to have upon them They are no longer the true Joynts to compact the Members nor the Head of Unity to keep together the Body of the Church And thus it was at the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth with the Popish Bishops whose corrupt Worship and Doctrine yea and rigorous exaction of complyance with both from all who expected to hold Communion with them had set their Churches at liberty to go off from them as I formerly observed and to seek more Orthodox Bishops in their room And so it would be in the case of other Bishops especially of those who espouse a Schism and communicate with Anti-Bishops in opposition to the true Bishops if they fall from ministring necessary Christian Truths whether of Faith or of Moral Doctrine and Worship as in the fore-mentioned Cases And when the Church is thus loosed of its dependance on their Persons by the defection of such erring Bishops It may be free to unite it self to other Orthodox Bishops Either to receive such an one for its own local Bishop as was done at the Reformation by substituting Orthodox and Reformed Bishops into the Sees of Popish Bishops Or till it can have that by receiving the Benefit of Episcopal and Priestly Acts from any other Orthodox Bishops and Clery as they can be met with It may fetch all Orthodox Ministrations and spiritual Functions from other places when it cannot have them from an Orthodox Pastor or in the Unity of the Church at home This it may do says St. Cyprian in this Case As well as the Mariners when their own Port is sanded or otherwise insecure may pass it by and put in at another Or as well as the Travellers when their own Inn is beset with Thieves may take up their Lodging at another which is more safe And as the People of such defecting Bishops and Pastors may seek out and unite themselves to others for all necessary Ministrations so may those other Orthodox Bishops and Clergy who are sought to be free to receive and supply them This is plain of both because the Church whereof the one are Members and the other are Bishops or Priests is a Catholick Church For being Catholick its Baptisms and Ordinations are Catholick and make as the one Christians so the other Bishops and Priests that must be owned for such over all the Christian Church and not only in some limited Parts or Districts thereof And betwixt the Members of this Catholick Church there is to be a Communion of Saints so that the one may receive as Members and the other administer all spiritual Acts and Functions as Pastors as there is opportunity and as need requires When the Orthodox Members of such defecting Pastors come to them considering the Catholicism of the Church tho' never so far remote in place they must own them as their Brethren and professing the Communion of Saints they must receive them to their Communion When shuning the Rocks in their own defecting Church they seek a more safe harbour in theirs 't is their part to receive them with a prompt humanity and to give them such reception as was given to him who had faln among Thieves in the Gospel not only to let them in but to take all due and needful care of them saith St. Cyprian Yea and as Christian Bishops they are to look upon this Reception and these Ministrations as one part of their Episcopal Charge For they are Bishops of the Catholick Church as well as of their own Sees and have relation to the whole Church as well as to their own Diocess The Administration he has received is not only for his own Flock but for the Church in common says St. Ignatius of the Bishop of Philadelphia And Christ has committed to you not only your own but the Universal Church says Eleutherius to the Gallicane Bishops And though as being more especially Bishops of that place they have more particular Obligation to look after their own Flocks Yet as Catholick Bishops they must be concerned for the whole Church and look on it or any destitute parts thereof as their own as occasion requires It behoves us all to extend our Care and watch over the Body of the whole Church whose Members are disposed through each of the varicus Provinces say the Presbyters and Deacons of Rome to Cyprian on his informing them of the Deposition of Privatus Lambesitanus the Heretick And unum Gregem pascimus though we be many Pastors yet we are to look upon all as one Flock says St.
the Church For when they fill'd all places they would be met with in all places and intermix in all dealings And then not to have any Company or Dealings with such they must needs go out of the World which St. Paul gives as one Reason of Relaxation and Allowance in this Case 1 Cor. 5. 10. So that continuing still to shun Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Communion with such Makers of Schisms especially for the setting up of a sinful Worship and Unchristian Doctrines and Practices is so far from being a defection from the Apostolical and Primitive Charity that it is a keeping up to it and is only a retaining of their first Love which ought in all times faithfully to be kept on in all true Churches Now as to the Persons whom this will affect and whose Communion by this Rule is to be shuned in such Cases it barrs this Communion with those who set up and make the Anti-Bishops or who side and take part with them 1. It affects the Electors who chose the Men and their Ordainers and Consecrators who laid hands on them For these give Heads to the New Bodies and create the Schism Others may seditiously call for it or come in to it when once 't is form'd but their part is to give it a Head which formally constitutes and sets it up so that they are Principals therein 2. And those who own subjection and dependance on these Anti-Bishops in opposition to their Old Ones and as Members unite and incorporate under them Thus it is among the Pastors by whom their Authority is received and who thereby all break off from the rightful Bishop to whom in all their Ministrations they ought to keep subject and dependant The Rule of Communion for Priests and Deacons towards their Bishop is to do all Publick Ministrations according to his Allowance and Consent Let the Presbyters or Deacons do nothing without the Consent of the Bishop say the Apostolical Canons and the Council of Laodicea afterwards for 't is the Bishop to whose Trust the Lords People is committed and from whom an Account of their Souls will be required And If any will be for having the Offices of the Church without the Concurrence of a fitting Presbyter who officiates according to the Bishops approbation and allowance let him be Anathema says the Council of Gangra And If any Clergy celebrate Divine Offices in private Oratories or baptize not according to the Mind and Allowance of the Bishop but besides or contrariant to it let them incur Deposition say the Council in Trullo and the Council of Constantinople The Church is settled upon the Bishops and every Act of the Church â—ught to be governed by them saith St. Cyprian Let none do any of those things which concern the Church or publick Service without the Bishop says St. Ignatins that Holy Martyr and Contemporary of the Apostles But let that he reputed a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by those who keep under him or which is administer'd with his Leave And that a due Baptism which is with his consent or approbation 'T is necessary says he that ye should do nothing without the Bishop like as also ye do The Spirit adds he in another place hath preached this saying Do nothing without the Bishop Love Unity fly Divisions And they who continue to call him Bishop but yet do all things without him I think are not men of good Conscience because they do not celebrate their solemn Assemblies according to Christs Precept And to like purpose Tertullian St. Jerome and others And this way of administring all Offices with his approbation and allowance St. Ignatius declares is the way for them to keep Unity with their Bishops For says he as our Lord doth nothing without his Father being united to him not acting without him either by himself or by his Apostles So neither do you any thing without your Bishop and his Presbyters But when the Priests and Deacons of a Diocess turn over from their rightful Bishop to the Anti-Bishop they live in a slagrant Breach of these Rules of Communion They do all their Ministrations then without their Bishop putting in some things into Divine offices and putting out others and observing Days and other things belonging to their Ministrations not only without but quite against his consent and approbation and altogether by the Authority and jurisdiction of another who is set up against him Which is to separate as far as they can from him who ought to be their Principle of Union and to minister in a state of full and Flaming Schism And thus it is also in the Assemblies over which those Rightful Bishops ought to Preside or in the Churches of their own Dâ—oceses If they would keep in the state of Unity they should keep united to their Rightful Bishops who are the Heads of Union to their several Flocks and should stick to them and the Clergy of their Communion for Divine Offices Where their Bishop appears there let the multitude be with them Like as where Jesus Christ goes there the Catholick Church goes too says St. Ignatius But if they break away from all Dependance on them and from all recourse to their ministrations to Depend on the Anti-Bishops and to resort to theirs that makes them all Schismaticks For all these Assemblies of People and Pastors make the Schismatical Bodys whereof the Anti-Bishops are the Heads As the Bishops set up for the Schismatical Heads So the Pastors and People who turn over to them and assemble under them come in to be their Schismatical Members They Form themselves into one Church by erecting an Ecclesiastical Union and Communion among themselves And this is a Schismatical Church as Consisting all of a Party of Members broke off from their True Heads or lawful Bishops 3. Further it may also affect other Bishops and Churches who will take their Part and Communicate with them For Catholick Unity is to be preserved in the Church i. e. Unity and Communion is to be kept up among all Churches And this is by Rules of Accord and Correspondence which give the same Church Acts or matters the same effects in all places Of which Rules I have before discoursed more at large And these Rules will keep up Catholick Unity and the Communion of Saints between all Bishops and Churches since this way they all Communicate or all in Common refuse to do it with the same Persons And therefore if any Bishop of one Church would side and have Communion with Anti-Bishops or with the Schismaticks or Hereticks of other Churches He thereby broke the Rules of Union as well as they and became involved in Schism like one of them For he was as much obliged as others in care of maintaining Unity to keep off from the Communion of such Schismaticks Yea in care of Catholick Unity and Communion to keep off from the Communion of those who make
those who had been Ordained by them Besides all this instead of Anti-bishops being absolutely null and in reality no Bishops to heal and compose the differences of a miserably harassed and divided Church on such Competitions it has been sometimes agreed that whichsoever of them were the Right on the death of either the Survivor should be owned and the Church should have no other Bishop and so all the Ordinations and Episcopal Acts therein should pass through his hands and stand on his Authority whilst he lived Thus it was at Antioch where the Church was divided into Two Parts 〈◊〉 for the cause of the Faith which was common to them both but of the Bishops as Socrates says some owning and adhering to Meleâ—ius and others to Paulinus For to heal and close this lamentable Schism it was agreed which Sozomen calls an admirable Counsel and expedient that on the death of either the survivor should hold the See alone for his Life without being confronted and opposed by the Ordination of any other Person To prevent which an Oath was exacted of all in that Church who seemed to stand fairest for the Episcopate and of Flavianus among the rest that on the death of either of the Bishops they would not be Ordain'd Bishop of Antioch whilst the other survived Which Agreement and Oath being afterwards broke by Flavianus when on the death of Meletius he was Ordained Bishop against Paulinus cost him so much trouble and difficulty as he found to get himself received for the Bishop thereof both in Egypt Arabia and Cyprus and at Rome and among the Western Bishops afterwards Thus though Men in a Schism did ill in Ordaining others yet were not those Ordinations null in themselves but really conferred the powers of Orders which the Persons might exercise if the Church pleased And when once the Persons were reconciled and had satisfied the Church for their Schism they have often been allow'd to officiate in Virtue of that Ordination without being Ordained over again by the greatest Councils and through the early and later Ages of the Church And this shews that their Ordinations were not null in themselves For if such Persons had never received any Spiritual powers in their Ordinations they had none to exercise And had the Church been of this perswasion it would never have admitted them to exercise those POWERS which it believed were never Conferred on them But though these Men even after they had faln into a Schism or others who were Ordained therein had Orders yet was it in the power of the Church to deny them the Ministerial Exercise of their Orders Men must have the Communion of the Church as well as Orders before they can exercise their Orders and minister to the Faithful in any Religious Assemblies And though their Schism doth not utterly devest or exclude them from the Powers of Orders yet it doth from the Communion of the Church without which the Faithful who are not to seek but to shun the Ministrations of Schismaticks and Excommunicate persons must not partake with them in any Exercise of Orders And to this Communion after once they have justly lost and faln from it they are to be restored again in Degree more or less and to be received to the Communion either only of Lay-members or else of Clergy and to officiate according to their former Honors as the Church pleaseth And as to this Admission and Allowance to exercise their Orders in its Communion the Church has acted variously according as it saw cause When Ordinations have been made against the Rules of Unity though the Offenders thereby received Orders yet in care of these Rules and to assert and keep up Discipline it has at some times denyed as well as at other times granted its Communion to them for their Exercise of the same Where it judged that Rigor expedient on their submission it would receive them to communicate as Lay-men But they should not be allow'd the Priviledges nor permitted to act and officiate as Bishops and Priests in her Communion nor should other Churches receive them and joyn with them as such till moreover satisfaction had been first given to those Rules of Unity in Ordinations which had been broken in theirs And this it has done not only in case of this great Rule of not Ordaining a Bishop into a full Church but also in case of other Rules which are of less Account than it is Thus of Ordination into a Church already vacant if it is made without the Metropolitanes consent the Council of Nice and afterwards the Council of Antioch Deâ—rce That the Church shall not receive such an one for a Bishop And of Ordinations at large without declaring the appropriate Church or Place wherein the Person Ordained is to officiate the Council of Chalcedon decrees that they shall be invalid Not to mention or insist also on the Council of Nice's rejecting of the Anti-bishops Ordained by the Schismatick Meletius till they were confirmed by a more holy imposition of hands as their Synodical Epistle says because there was an incapacity more than ordinary for giving Orders not only to Anti-bishops but to any others in his Case which because it may be of use in this Argument I shall give an Account of Meletius was Bishop of Lycus in Egypt under the See of Alexandria and as Epiphanius relates was next in dignity and power to Peter the Bishop of Alexandria himself And he with his Adherents broke off from the Unity of the Church and set up a Schism separating from Peter the Bishop of Alexandria and assembling for Prayers and other Divine Offices by themselves and Ordaining opposite Bishops Priests and Deacons for the erection of opposite Churches in several places as Eleutheropolis Gaza and Aelia as Epiphanius says And these separate erections of Churches and opposite Ordinations he made after he had been justly deposed by Peter in a Synod as we are assured by Athanasius who had the best Opportunities to understand the Truth of these Matters and the most cause to inquire into them and also by Socrates afterwards And that too among other Crimes for his having faln in the Persecution to deny the Faith and to sacrifice to Idols Which Crimes when any Bishop or Clergy were once convicted of by the great Rule of Church-Discipline they were never afterwards to exercise any Clerical Powers or to officiate as Bishops and Clergy but upon their Reconciliation were to be received only to Lay-Communion After such Falls says St. Cyprian 't is in vain for any to seek to usurp the Episcopacy since 't is manifest such Men can neither preside in the Church of Christ nor ought to offer Sacrifice to God Chiefly since it has been Decreed by Cornelius and by Us and by all the Bishops of the whole World concerning them that after such Offence they may be admitted to Penance and the Peace of the Church but must stand
says they have them if they will use them and the Acts of Orders are not Nullities which are done by them There is no Question now to be made saith he and it has been a thing discussed considered and established through the whole World that they who are broken off from the Unity of the Church do for all that retain both their Baptism and their Orders or Power of Baptizing When correcting the Error of their Schism they are received to the Unity and Peace of the Church if it seem needful or expedient to have them bear their former Offices their Prelates are not to be Ordain'd again but as their former Baptism so their former Ordination remains intire in them For their Fault lay in their Schism which is corrected by their being settled anem in the peace of Uâ—ity not in the holy institutions either of Bapism or Orders which wheresoever they are really are of validity Yea and when on such reception to the Communion of the Church it seems expedient not to admit them to the administration of their former Orders yet even there adds he is not the power of Orders withdrawn from them but remains still lodged in them Which also may appear from hence because on their Reconciliation they are not made to stand among the Penitents as other Offenders among the people are and there to receive penance and absolution by imposition of hands Which is omitted towards them not because it would be an injury to their persons Schism being as Criminal if not more Criminal in them than it is in others but because it would be an injury to their Orders which Orders therefore must be still inherent in them at that time to give them that Exemption For no person in Holy Orders as Bishops Priests and Deacons was lyable or ever made to do penance by the ancient Rules and Discipline of the Church And before them St. Cyprian and the Africanes of his Age together with Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocea carryed the effect of Schism so far as quite to set asi e all Ministerial Acts of Schismaticks And on that Account they equally null'd both their Ordinations and their Baptisms The powers of Baptizing and Ordaining and of doing other Ministerial Acts are powers of the Holy Ghost And by Schism in their Account the Schismaticks fell from the Grace of the Holy Ghost and having lost it themselves were no longer empowered to confer it on others either in Baptism or Ordination being thence forward as to these powers as meer Lay-men as St. Basil recites their Opinion But this St. Basil thinks was a straining things too far and others of Asia as he says were altogether of another Opinion So in his Canonical Epistle which was received into the Code of the Universal Church by the sixth Council in Trullo he admits those Ministerial Acts and Baptisms when done by Bishops or by others of their Ordination in a Schism Yea and even Cyprian and those Africanes who were for nulling these Acts and Baptisms of Scismaticks seem to have been for this only in regard to their own Communion or by denying Communion to them in their own Churches in way of asserting Discipline and Canons but not to have thought them naturally and essentially null in themselves And this I think is plain from hence Because though in care to keep up Discipline they null'd these Acts as to their own Communion in the case of any of their own Members Yet they declare that if any other Churches admit them they will not break Communion with them on account thereof We judge none nor will exclude any from our Communion who shall be of another Opinion says St. Cyprian at the Head of the Council of Carthage when they made this Determination And again in another Council when they writ to Stephen of Rome to concur with them in rejecting not only the Baptism but the Ordination of Men in Heresie or Schism and in receiving them when they returned to the Church only to lay-Lay-communion They declare that if any of their Brethren who have imbihed another Opinion are still for sticking to their former Sentiments they are not forcing any nor for breaking Communion with those who are for preserving that Bond of Concord and Peace which ought to be upheld in the College of Bishops So that if any Persons of such Baptism or Ordination came to them with Communicatory Letters from any other Bishops they would admit them to all Acts whether of Lay or Clerical Communion in Carthage and Africk which they had been admitted to at home the denyal whereof as I shewed before had been to break Communion with other Churches which they disclaim And if they would admit them to communicate thus with them in their Churches they could not think either their Baptisms or Ordinations null in themselves For the Communion professed in the Creed is a Communion of Saints or Christians who are listed or made Christians by Baptism and Clergy-men by Ordinaetion and there is no admission of Un-baptized Persons to those Acts which are proper to the Faithful or of Un-ordained Persons to those Priviledges and Functions which are peculiar to the Clergy in the Church 〈◊〉 Christ. But against all this it may be Objected that there it to be but one Bishop at once in a Church as St. Cyprian alledges and as the great Council of Nice afterwards provides and that the Bishop in the Church is the Principle of Unity And that the admission of the Ordination of Anti-bishops will be against the Nature of the Spiritual Monarchy the Nature of Monarchy not admitting of two at once And as the Throne can hold but one so the Electors where the Monarchy goes by Election can chuse but one who being once chosen they can elect no more nor can confer the same powers on any other till the Throne becomes vacant again But as to the Bishops being the principle of Unity that respects the Peoples Duty of holding Communion with him his being the Principle of Unity to the Church binding the Church to depend on him and incorporate under him and to communicate with him And as to this the Members who are already subject to a rightful Bishop are not to admit of a second Bishop That is if such an one is set up they are not to unite themselves to him and turn over to his Communion as I think may sufficiently appear from what I have above discoursed on that Point but are to stand off from him as from one that makes a Schism And thus every Church as a Spiritual Monarchy is not to be possessed by two at once since all must adhere to one And though the second who is set up in opposition be a Bishop yet he is not their Bishop nor may any of them break off from their rightful Head to joyn in his Communion But though the Anti-bishop in any
are not only set up but justified 1. In some particular Cases especially of general Concern CHAP. IV. More of the Cases wherein Faithful Bishops and Ministers are bound to stick to their Pastoral Powers and Ministrations THey are still more bound to this Ministration when 2. This Justification of immoral Practices is by eluding and vacating of moral Precepts opposite thereto by Doctrinal Salvo's Instances of these Salvo's How they vacate the respective moral Precepts Such Salvo's make a Change in moral Doctrine though Men still own the Duties under their general Names The Duty of Pastors to defend and bear up moral Duties against such Salvo's by their Ministrations shewn at large And this when such corrupt Salvo's are only the Doctrines of the Pastors not the Determinations of the Church They are more strictly obliged thereto if the immoral Practices justified by such Salvo's are 1. extreamly Scandaelous to Religion 2. Generally Preach'd up by Seducers Or 3. Come strongly recommended to carnal Passions and Interests chiefly if driven on by general Persecutions CHAP. V. Of the Obligations to actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases THese deduced from their Office and Characters as they relate 1. To God and stand in Place 1. Of his Messengers 2. Of his Ministers and Ambassadors The various Obligations laid on them thereto by this 3. Of his Co-workers 2. As they relate to Religion as they are Ministers and Stewards of its Word and Mysteries The Obligations arising hence CHAP. VI. More of the Obligations to actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases 3. AS they relate to the Souls of Men and are set over the Church 1. As Watch-men 2. As Overseers 3. As Guides or Leaders 4. As Pastors or Shepheards 5. As Doctors or standing Teachers of the Church As Lights of the World and the Salt of the Earth Their Obligations to such exercise in the foresaid Cases from all the foresaid Characters Different Degrees in this Obligation A Spirit of Love and Zeal to Christ and his Church which stand not upon strict Terms the Spring and Principle of this Exercise How this clears the Duty of deprived Bishops and Clergy as to this Exercise on such Revolutions Answerable to this Obligation of the Pastors to afford such Ministrations at such Times is the Peoples Obligation to adhere to them and attend on them for Participation thereof PART II. Of Deprivations by Civil States or Ecclesiastical Synods CHAP. I. Of the Force of State Deprivations in the foresaid Cases THE Plea of a Deprivation of State represented in Bar of their Ministrations in the foresaid Cases Concerning which 1. This is to be press'd only under a supposed Legal and Rightful State 2. It s Deprivation is no conscionable Discharge from their Spiritual Ministrations in the foresaid Cases This is meant only of pure Spiritual Ministrations Not 3. of any Temporal Accessions and Inforcements of those Ministrations over which the State has Power because it conferr'd them As also over some other Powers belonging to the Church whilst it kept separate which it gives up to the State during its Incorporation with it These it gives up 1. with a Salvo to the Interests of Religion and of Souls 2. Only whilst it continues protected not when the State puts True Religion under Persecution CHAP. II. Of the Kings Ecclesiastical Supremacy Received and Asserted by our Church It lies not in his being invested with or having a Sovereign Disposal of the Powers of Orders But 1. in retaining his civil Power over all Persons whether Lay-Men or Ecclesiasticks In Virtue of this civil Power over the Persons of Ecclesiasticks he can command them faithfully to discharge their Spiritual Functions 2. In the Subordination of Ecclesiastical Courts and Causes wherein Ecclesiasticks are content to act subordinately on the Score of their secular Mixtures and Jurisdictions And in holding all this 3. in Opposition and Bar of all other Earthly Dependance especially of all Forreign Iurisdiction and Appeals This Supremacy excludes not Spiritual Ministrations of deprived Clergy in the foresaid Cases This may be collected from their Adversaries Concessions CHAP. III. Remarques on the Preceeding Account of the Force of State Deprivations and Instances of Deprivations alledg'd to the contrary considered and cleared up THE preceeding Account of the Force of State Deprivations is not 1. To deny the civil Power the Cognizance of Bishops and Ministers in civil Matters Nor any Iust Power over Ecclesiasticks 2. Nor to set the Church above the State as the Papal Usurpations pretend to do Nor to mistake or overlook the Condition of an incorporate Church The Deprivation of Abiathar by Solomon considered and cleared As also the frequent Depositions of the Jewish High Priests by the Roman Governours And of the Greek Patriarchs by the Turks And of the Popish Bishops by a Commission of State pursuant to an Act of Parliament in Queen Mary's Days CHAP. IV. Of Deprivations by Synods in the foresaid Cases DEprivation of Bishops most fit and pr per for Synods Their Deprivation no Discharge from Ministrations in the foresaid Cases as shown by reasons And by the Practice of the Church This is meant when Synods deprive for the cause of the Truth not of other mere Personal â—rimes where the Injured must acquiesce till relieved by regular Sentence â—hat regard is to be had to the Decisions of Synods in these Cases PART III. Of SCHISM CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Shism And of the Schism of particular Members from their own Church in throwing off Subjection and Dependance on their own Bishops OF the Union of a Society which Schism breaks One way of Uniting Societies is by Uniting them under the same Heads These in Church Societies are the Bishops Union of particular Members to their own Church is in Keeping Subject and Dependant on their own Lawful Bishops And their Schism lies in breaking off from them especially in seting up Opposite or Anti-Bishops against them So 1. in such Oppositions the Anti-Bishop and his Adherents make the Schism if the former Bishop was Orthodox and is still Rightful Bishop of the Church Of George the Cappadocian and Athanasius 2. The Unity of the Church doth not go with the greatest Numbers What distinguisheth Meetings in the Unity of the Church from Schismatical Conventicles Schismaticks too oft the more Numerous Party Much less doth it go with Places of Assemblies 3. Therefore in pressing Ecclesiastical Unity Men must be press'd to keep United to their own Orthodox Rightful Bishop not to any Opposite Bishop The Gospel Precepts of Love and Peace c. all on this Side and not to be urged the other way Such a Schism not to be cared by the Recessions of the Suffering Bishops in the foresaid Cases CHAP. II. Of the Schism of particular Churches from other Sister Churches by rejecting Fraternal Communion therewith UNity of one Body to be kept up among all particular Churches This is chiefly by the Union and Accord
of the respective Bishops and Pastors thereof All Orthodox Bishops and Churches keep this up 1. By Receiving each others Members as if they were their own Members 2. And in like sort by refusing each others Schismaticks And Excommunicates And admitting each others Reconciliation and Re-union of Members Of Communicatory Letters fox those Purposes CHAP. III. Of just Grounds to break off Communion Particularly of making impious and unlawful Things or unrighteous Usurpations and Incroachments the Terms of their Communion JUst Ground to break off Communion from any Churches 1. When they put impious or unlawful Things into their Sacred Offices Reasons hereof Faith and Worship spoke of as the great Ligaments which Bind us to any Church 2. More still if they admit none to Communion in the good Parts unless they particularly concur in the corrupt ones too 2. A Second Ground is if they make unrighteous Usurpations the Condition of their Communion CHAP. IV. Heresie a just Ground to break off Communion CHrists first end was to Publish a Religion Next to Incorporate â—â— into a Church or Society for the Profession of it Christian Doctrine the Foundation of Church Society and Unity So we are not Bound to Associate or Unite with any longer than they keep to this Doctrine but are discharged by their Heresie And on the Evidence of the Fact it self before Synodical Sentence This Liberty 1. For the People and Clergy towards their own local Guides and Bishops 2. For Clergy and People of one Church towards those of another And on Defections from grand and necessary Doctrines of Practice as well as of Faith Chiefly when the Ministerial Defence of either is no longer allow'd in their Communion Being thus set loose from their own Erring Bishops and Clergy they are free to Unite with others who are Orthodox And those others are free to receive them Canonical Rules against intermedling in others Diocess c. no hindrance thereto Rules of Unity not pleadable by such Defectors for vniting with them The Guilt of making the Schism lies on the Defectors Should their Brethren come over that would not Cure but make the Breach from the Catholick Church wider CHAP. V. Of the Communion of good Christians or with whom they are to joyn in Divine Offices under a Schism THeir Obligations to stick to their Orthodox Rightful Bishops and to stand off from the Anti-Bishops and their Adherents in the foremention'd Cases As reta â—â—â—ing their Baptism they may own the Schismaticks as Brethren but as being in a Schism they must stand off from their Communion A great Sence of the Obligations to shuâ— the Communion of Schismeticks and corrupt Teachers in the first Times This was most when Charity was at the hight This will bar Communion 1. with the Electors and Ordainers of such Anti-Bishops 2. With their Clergy and People or the Assemblies of their Diocess 3. With other Bishops and Churches who take their part and communicate with them 4. With the Bishops of a Province who turn over to an Anti-Primate or opposite Metropolitane Of Provincial Union and the Rules for Maintenance thereof 5. When Curch Divisions are made for opposite Ways of Worship and Tenets Men will Unite with such as are of their own Mind and hold Communion with those who are for the same way of necessary Worship and Tenets with themselves CHAP. VI. Of Ordinations of Anti-Bishops which tho' always Schismatical are not always Nullities OF St. Cyprians saying the Anti-Bishop is not Secundus but Nullus That Anti-Bishops are real Bishops and their Ordinations are not Null in themselves but were admitted in the Novatians by the Council of Nice In the Donatists by the Roman and African Councils The same shown in several other Cases Tho' Men have Orders yet they cannot exercise the same in Assemblies of the Faithful without the Communion of the Church Such Offenders Received sometimes to Clerical sometimes only to Lay-Communion as the Church saw Cause The Case of the Anti-Bishops ordain'd by the Schismatick Meletius Ecclesiastical Laws and Discipline asserted or abated in such Receptions as was judged most expedent for the Church The Donatists made Schism to take away the Powers of Orders and are opposed therein by St. Austin How St. Cyprian and the Africanes of his Age seem to have done the same which St. Basil disliked in them Altho' their Nulling the Ministerial Acts of Schismaticks seems to be only in the Way of Asserting Discipline and Canons by denying Communion to them in their Churches not that they thought them Null in themselves How the Admission of Ordination of Anti-Bishops Consists with the Bishops being the Principle of Unity and is not against the Nature of the Spiritual Monarchy A Difference as to this between Secular and Spiritual Monarchies And of Local Limitations in conserring Orders CHAP. VII Of the Excusableness of the Peoples receiving Ministerial Offices from Men in Schism rather than live without any at all THis wants the Malignity of Schism The Excusableness thereof shewn 1. From the Nature and Importance of the things themselves Where of the great Importance of Publick VVorship or of Communion in Ministerial Offices 2. From the Abatements God himself has been willing to make on such Necessity in other like Duties 2. From the Practice of Gods People under the greatest Schisms This Necessity being thought to Legitimate it 1. Among the Ten Tribes whose Ministrations were all in a Shism 2. VVith the Schismatical Novatians in the height of the Arian Persecution 3. In the Schismatical Extirpation of Episcopacy among us in the great Rebellion 4. Under the Schism of Forreign Churches where the Protestants have no Bishops Of the Abatements the Church has made where it had great Reason in the Point of Shunning the Communion of Schismaticks and Excommunicate Persons especially before they were Sentenced by the Church The same Equitably Applicable to this Case How both a due Sence of the Criminallness of Schism and Exercise of publick VVorship is provided for by this Means CHAP. VIII Of Communicating in like Necessity where there are some Prayers Sinful in the Matter of them To concur or go along in any unrighteous Petition or Thanksgiving is most Unrighteous and Prophane Of mixt Prayers where the Mixtures are Idolatrous c. Or where some Immoral Petitions are added to a Service not exceptionable on any other Accounts Of Bearing such Immoral Mixtures whilst they do not particularly concur therein but express Dissent from the same and resorting still to the Assemblyes where they are used in Care of â—â—eping Peace and Union Of Bearing the same for the Necessity of having some Ministerial Offices in want of other Opportunityes Mere Presence at such Immoral Addâ—tions no interpretative Profession of Concurrence thereâ—n Chiefly if Dissent be shewn by some external Sign Of these Concessions of favour and ease All highly concern'd to take the Right way in the Points here Debated Unsofe should they take the wrong to trust to the Plea
so not in a state of Persecution when the secular Power sets it self to root out the Church and all Church-Powers and Ministrations Whereas these Powers were given to the Church bearing Christ's Cross and labouring under Persecutions and to continue in it always even to the end of the World under whatever circumstances as well when secularly Oppressed as when Protected Accordingly these spiritual Powers were held on by the Apostles when the secular Rulers declared against their Apostolical Authority and forbid them to Preach any more iâ— the Name of Jesus And by the Bishops and Clergy in all the succeeding Persecutions For all Persecutions of the Church were Persecutions of all Church Administrations and of Bishops and Priests in a more especial manner who were chief Actors and at the Head thereof Yea especiall Edicts and Prosecutions were made against them for being vested with these Authorities as the Title of St. Cyprian 's Proscription was for being Episcopus Christianorum or a Christian Bishop which Authorities therefore would no longer have belonged to them could a Persecuting Power have deprived or bereaved them thereof And this retaining their spiritual Powers will be allowed by their Adversaries who acknowledge that the deprivation of State is no Degradation to divest them of their Character or spiritual Powers conferr'd in Orders but only a debaring them of exercise thereof in their Dominions and in way of an incorporate Church under State Encouragements So that if they do exercise their Ministry there will be no want of Spiritual Powers to render their Acts Nullities or of no effect and validity before Christ. But only want of secular Benefices and enforcements to them and of submission as they alledge to the secular Power or of secular Obedience And having still their Episcopal and Ministerial Powers 't is next to be considered whether they stand bound to exercise and make use thereof 'T is not to be brought into this Question what is to be done herein on Worldly Arguments as they stand deprived of their Livelihoods and way of Maintenance how hard soever this may fall either upon themselves or their Families Which however it may abate or excuse especially to compassionate Natures yet is no justification of things that are otherwise unjustifiable on principles of Religion and Conscience But what is to be done on conscionable Arguments that are to rule their Determinations as Christians especially as Divines or that they may faithfully discharge their duty What is to be done by spiritually minded and mortified Men who are raised above this World and prefer God and Religion before themselves Nor is the Dispute Whether the Ministerial Powers be such a burthen that Men must be always pressing and obtruding the exercise thereof without any regard to the wants of the Place or the needs of the Church Necessity is laid upon me and woe be to me if I preach not the Gospel was spoke in the want of true Preachers when the Harvest was Great but the Labourers were Few It spoke a necessity introduced not merely by the Power of Orders but also by the circumstances of Times and Persons when the exercise thereof was necessary in want of Preachers for the use of the Church But in plenty of true Preachers there would not have been the same necessity nor would they have been bound to this exercise in place where there was no need of their Gifts but the same were exercised by others In this surplusage of Supplies for Church-uses and necessities the Spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets and their Powers must either be exercised or forborn and suspended as makes most for Order and Edification and the Peace of the Church But this exercise the deprived Bishops and Clergy are bound to in Duty and Conscience at such times If there is a need of their Ministrations then to provide for Religion and the Souls of Men or to prevent Men from being nursed up in destructive Ways as Immoral Practices and Immoral Worship and Devotions must be confessed to be To clear this it may not be amiss to consider First What Immoralities come in by a wrong payment of Allegiance to corrupt Religion and to endanger Souls Secondly What Provision good and faithful Pastors ought to make against such Dangers and Corruptions by the exercise of their Ministry First I shall briefly consider what Immoralities come in by a wrong Payment of Allegiance to corrupt Religion and to endanger Souls Whether this is actually the case of any Kingdom and the Allegiance required of them by their New Governors be directed and paid wrong I do not here discuss That makes another dispute viz. about the Right to the Crown contested betwixt the two Competitors in those Countries and the Lawfulness or Unlawfulness of the New Oaths of Allegiance consequent thereupon which is exacted on such changes And this it is no part of the design of these Papers to argue or meddle with But when this really is the case in any Revolution as in this World God knows it is too often or among those Subjects who believe this is their case and that their Allegiance is call'd for to the Wrong against the Right Person Such as these are the Immoralities that will every-where corrupt Religion and endanger Souls whilst such wrong Payment lasts and which should be thought to do so among them viz. Then all that time whilst they are violently transferring their Allegiance from him to whom it still Remains rightfully due would Men in the general Practice of those Nations be wickedly disobeying and forceably resisting Gods Authority or the Father of the Fifth Commandment which extends to civil as well as natural Parents Then would they all that while be most openly and horribly breaking through all former Oaths of Allegiance Then would all who have promised and pay their Allegiance to drive out their ejected Prince out of any part of his Right or to keep him out thereof be actors of bare faced Iniquity and heinously unrighteous coveting and invading their Neighbours Goods And all force used against him or any other Persons for their adhering to his Cause would in Gods Account be oppression and unjust Violence all Spoils and Seisures of their Goods would be Thefts and Robberies and all shedding of their Blood all Cries and Clamours for it or rejoycing in it would be horrible Murders which not only they who acted but they who Wish'd or Prayed for or gave Thanks for when accomplished would be Guilty of All which are most dangerous and destructive ways and amount to a general Breach of Gods Commandments and to an open wast of Moral Honesty and Justice And all these would be the Dangers to Mens Souls in any Kingdom were the Translation of Allegiance such an unrighteous Perversion really and in it self Or they would be met with like Pastoral Provisions as if they were so Dangerous should the deprived Pastors believe and apprehend it to be such
to make Provisions The Work of Ministers and Pastors lies in Feeding of the Churches This Feeding of Ministers is Feeding them with Religious Offices and Ministrations These the People are to partake in but the Pastors are to Provide and Administer them And this as Religion and the Souls of Men stand in need thereof And they always need a Provision of such Ministrations both of the Word of Prayers and Sacraments as may Edifie but not Pervert and Purge but not Pollute those that seek to communicate therein Therefore it lies upon them I conceive to provide and supply the Churches First With an Holy or Sinless and Unpolluted Worship and such as may recommend the Worshippers to God and is fit to be accepted There is nothing that the Souls of Men may seem to need more than such an Holy Worship For the Worship of God is that whereby in an Especial manner they are to serve and please him whereby they must seek to expiate and attone him after any Offences which they have committed against him whereby they can gain his Favour and Aid it not only being the great means of their procuring but also an establish'd Way of his Conveying and Deriving down to the Souls of his Servants those Spiritual Graces and Blessings which they need and long for The Ministrations of Worship are the Ministrations of the Spirit to Minister and afford Grace to those who duly seek it and so will be owned of 〈◊〉 Necessity to all who see what need they have of the Divine Grace and Bounty And since the Worship of God is to stand them in so much Stead they have need enough to have it Pure and Pleasing that the Medicine be not turned into Poyson that it do not affront and provoke God instead of gaining and appeasing him and stop Blessings instead of bringing them down There is nothing also that Religion lies more in The Worship of God is the most Direct and Immediate Act and the most express and open Profession of Religion It is a Service both Solemnly and Professedly Performed in the Presence and immediately to the Person of God And being so directly and immediately concern'd with it in Person he is more nicely Tender of any Prophanation or Wrong to him therein 'T is particularly in matters of his Worship that he declares himself a Jealous God in the Second Commandement When Sin and Wickedness is sent up to him there his own Person is immediately struck at Instead of being Served and Honoured he is Aspersed and Blasphemed by it For such an Unholy Worship Asperses and Slanders him as if he were an Unholy God 'T is a Profession to serve and gain him by wicked Ways which represents him as taking Pleasure in ill Things and being ready to Patronize them fixing upon him our own Violences and making him appear as bad as we our selves are And this is a most horrible Prophanation and Blasphemously foul Aspersion thrown upon the purest of all Beings It is a turning Piety into Prophaneness and our very Prayers into Libels and Reproaches So that if Men would have their Worship truly Religious or such as may truly Represent and Honour God not Disgrace and Bolye him they must take care above all things to preserve it free from all Prophane Matter and Sinful Mixtures As the Worship is of an Holy God so must what is Offer'd to him be an Holy Worship Holiness becomes his House and more especially his Service His Servants must put up Holy Prayers and not have their Prayers turn'd into Sin or their Sins presented to God therein which would turn Prayers into an Abomination And this is True of all sorts of Sins either Idolatry and Superstition or Immeralities The needs of Religion and of the Church require that Worship and Devotions be kept free from both and that neither of them mix and incorporate therewith Immoral Prayers as well as Idolatrous Ones are a Blasphemous Libel upon God and an utter Prophanation and Prostitution of Worship and Devotion they turn Prayer into an Abomination and call down a Curse instead of a Blessing And thus it was in the Heathen Devotions which were not only Idolatrous as being paid to False Gods but too often Immoral and Impure as being paid to Vicious and Dishonest Deities Mercury by their account was addicted to Theft Venus to Whoredom Bacchus to Revelling and Drunkenness as others were to other Immoralities And setting up such Immoral Deities no wonder they should be found paying them Immoral Services and together with their Idolatrous Sacrifices offering up also Immoral Services as Uncleanness Drunkenness and Revellings in their Temples And these Immoralities in Lasciviousness and Excess of Wine as well as the Mis-applications of Worship therein were the most Odious Prophanation and Blasphemous Reproach of God and made them Abominable Idolatries as St. Peter says 1. Pet. 4. 3. These Immoralities whilst they find a place only in Practise if persisted in stop the Acceptance of Devotions And so God told the Iews by his Prophet Amos that till he saw a Course of Judgment and Righteousness he should hate and despise their Feast Days and not Smell in their Solomn Assemblies nor accept their Burnt Offerings or Peace-Offerings nor hear their Hymns and Songs of Praise Amos 5. 21 22 23 24. And the same he declares to them by Isaiah Is. 1. 11 to v. 18. and by Ieremiah Jer. 6. 6 20. And if they have such Fatal Effects when presented to him only in Practice what will they have when presented to him in Solomn Worship and Prayers which makes the Prophanation thereof so much more Staring and Audacious and the Provocation abundantly more Hainous Now these Sinless Prayers free from Immorality as well as from Idolatry which Religion and the Souls of Men stand in such need of it must be the Care of Pastors to provide and Supply them with As Ministers of Prayers they must see that such be administred to them Yea as God himself is Jealous of his Honour in these Services So must they as his Substitutes and Representatives be Iealous for him to mantain and preserve Purity therein And that to invite Honest and Sincere Tempers to resort to Prayers and Divine Service as well as to prevent their contracting Guilt and Prophaning God instead of Pleasing him when they are met there For wicked and unrighteous Prayers extreamly disturb Righteous Petitioners and drive away truly Plous and Devout Minds making them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is in the Septuagint on the Pollutions of the Sacrifices by Ely's Sons that is To forhear the Service of God and to abhor the Offering of the Lord 1 Sam. 2. 17 24. I do not say there is the same need of affording the People of God this pure Worship free from the Company of Immoral Practisers The Congregation of Worshippers or Church of God in this World is like to be a Mixture of Persons or as a Field wherein Tares will grow mixt
advanced for Practices against any of his Commandments The Pharisees had invented many doctrinal Salvo's to justifie Men in the Breach of moral Duties and to vacate several of Gods Holy Commandments Thus they dealt by the Breach of Oaths which they cleared by several arbitrary Limitations and nice Distinctions of their own about the Obligation of them or Mens becoming Debtors i. e. bound by them Mat. 23. 16 18. And by the Denial of Relief or Help to Parents which they said was discharged of the Obligation laid by the Fifth Commandment and free from Sin if it was salved by the Vow Corban i. e. if they had made a Vow before that they would never Relieve them Mat. 15. 4. 5. 6. Thus Frustrating the Commandments of God as he tells them and making them of none effect through their undermining Salvo's and Traditions Mat. 15. 6. and Mark 7. 9 13. Not to mention their Limiting the Obligation of all Righteousness to external Acts or other ways of their exempting many Offences forbid by their own Law as well as by that of the Blessed Iesus But when the Ministers of Christ met with these Salvo's it was their Part not to suffer them but to rescue moral Precepts from being corrupted and Mens Consciences and Practices from being insnared by them They were to beware of the Leaven of the Pharisees in these and other Points not only as private Christians to beware of imbibing it themselves but. as Pastors of suffering others to be tainted or corrupted therewith When by these and such like Glosses the Lawyers had taken away the Key of Knowledge and shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against Men as our Lord saith they as Ministers of that Kingdom were to unlock and open it to them and to make these Duties which were the Paths thereof plane for all who were sincerely desirous to walk in them They that are made Pastors and put in Station to be Great in the Kingdom of Heaven must both do the some themselves and teach others to observe even the least of Christs Commandments when others not only transgress them in their own Practice but teach Men to transgress them Mat. 15. 19. St. Paul afterwards speaks of False Apostles who corrupted the VVord of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that adulterated it as Vintners do their VVines by corrupt Mixtures blending their own Arbitrary Salvo's and Conceits therewith or Mixing their own Doctrines with Gods as St. Chrysostom comments 2 Cor. 2. 17. Who handled the VVord of God deceitfully 2. Cor. 4. 2. And spoke Lies in Hypocrisie pretending them consistent with or sometimes promotive of Duty and Piety 1 Tim. 4. 2. And perverted the Gospel of Christ Gal. 1. 17. But when the true Ministers met with any of these corrupt Infusions and Adulterations of Christian Doctrines instead of Treacherously conniving at these Adulterations they were by a purer and more sincere Ministration to cure and teach Men better They were to make full Proof of their Ministry in Preaching the VVord and to reprove and rebuke all that was contrary to it among those that would heap to themselves Teachers of Errors and Adulterations of the Truth according to their own Lusts 2 Tim. 4. 2 3 5. When others fell to speak Lies in Hypocrisie they were not to neglect the Gift that was in them that is their Pastoral Power and Function but to stir it up and put the Brethren in Remembrance of the pure and saving Christian Truths and Duties that they may discharge the part of Good Ministers of Iesus Christ 1 Tim. 4. 2. 6. 14. When Vain Tâ—lkers and Deceivers started up Teaching Things they ought not for Filt by Lucres sake they were call'd upon not only to hold fast the Faithful VVord as they had been taught and to keep to it themselves but also by Sound Doctrine to exhort and teach others and to convince and stop the Mouths of Gain-Sayers Tit. 1. 9 10. 11. Thus are the Faithful Ministers of Christ obliged to Feed the Church with the pure Administration of Moral or other Gospel Duties when the False Guides by doctrinal Salvo's and undermining Propositions are shewing Men how they may securely Vacate and Transgress them They are not to connive at such Corruptions and Adulterations of moral Precepts but to cry out and warn against them Nor to smother and keep up the real and injured Duties but to Preach and Minister them out to those Souls who are like to perish through their Ignorance and Breach thereof And this as they will answer Gods repeated Calls and Injunctions or approve themselves True and Faithful to their Ministerial Trusts To neglect it or fail therein would be Treachery and Falseness to that Sacred Doctrine which had been deposited with them and to those Souls which had been committed to them And this Ministration they are bound to tho' these corrupt Salvo's are only the Doctrines of the Pastors and Teachers as those foremention'd Salvo's of the False Prophets and of the Pharisees too I suppose were among the Jews and are not yet made the Determinations of the Church 'T is not enough on such Justification of Immoral Practices or advancement of Immoral Salvo's by the Guides of Souls to say the Church hath not altered its Articles nor justified nor salved the ill things so by any Synodical Confession For 't is a call to them for their Ministration if these things are done by the Churchmen Their Ministration is to provide against the dangers of Souls And they are allways endangered by damnable Practices whosoever teach them whether their particular Guides or whole Synods But particular Guides are the Directors which the generality of Men have for their Consciences and Practices So that the Consciences and Practices of the generality are endangered when they fall generally to teach them the Breach of Moral Duties by corrupt Salvo's And then true Guides are to warn them of these Dangers VVhen Speakers of perverse things shall arise from among themselves the Pastors are bid to take heed to their Flocks and to feed them with the VVord of Truth and Righteousness Act. 20. 28 30. And instead of abating this Obligation it will add to it if amidst all this Prevarication of the Church Men by such corrupt Salvo's the Church it self continues right in these Points and says the same it did in its publick Acts and Articles For then in these Ministrations those Faithful Pastors have as the Authority of Truth so also the Authority of their own Church on their Side Therein they only minister out among the Members what their own Church teaches and show themselves as Faithful Ministers of Christ in standing up for his Truths So Faithful Ministers of their own Church in standing up for its Doctrines As to the Point of separation from the Church I Grant that true Ministers must not separate from a Church for any Doctrines if the Church it self holds and maintains them tho' the
Churchmen should generally and shamefully defect from them But this Ministration of those deserted Doctrines is not to separate from it but to stick Firm and Constant to it yea and to keep it up still as a Visible Body for all its true Members to Adhere to And I hope true and faithful Ministers of a Church may stand by it in maintenance and ministration of the Truths and Laws of God tho' that continue on a Breach and keep them at a distance from those Revolting Pastors who have defected and seperated themselves from both The foresaid Justification of Immoral Practices in such particular Cases and maintainance thereof by Doctrinal Salvo's will make the Consciences of Transgressors Easy and in Rest at Sin They will by this Means see no Breach of Duty in what they do nor danger of Punishment for doing it They are taught in these Cases to call Evil Good and to put Darkness for Light whereto such Heavy Woes are denounced by the Prophet and so under the greatest Load and Danger of Sin and Guilt think themselves Safe and Innocent This God calls Speaking Peace to the wicked or to those who should have no Peace but Terror and Indignation in their present Evil Ways And Sewing Pillows to bolster up Evil Doers to make them Easy and at Rest in their Unrighteousness And Strengthning the Hands of the VVicked making them bold and forward in their Ungodly Courses and barring their Repentance and Return from their Wickedness by leaving in them no Conscience of Guilt no Relentings or Remorse for their going on therein Now all this is a direct Ministration to destroy Souls And whilst False Prophets and Devouring VVolves are ministring Lies for their Destruction it is evidently and highly Incumbent on true and faithful Pastors who are set to Save Souls to minister the word of Truth for their Salvation Accordingly amidst all these Preachers of Peace and Strengthners of Evil Doers God tells the Prophets of Israel that they should not like Subtile Foxes have studied only how to slip aside and shun danger by silently Conniving at these Doings But ought to have gone up into the Gaps and have made up the Hedges Seeing they were publick Ministers deputed by God to act for him and for the good of Souls their part had been to stand in his Counsel and to have caused his People to hear his Words and thereby to have turned them from the Evil of their Doings When the People run thus to do Evil in such Cases without any Sence of Guilt or by calling Evil Good they heap up Sin and Death to themselves and know it not and so Perish for want of Knowledge But the Priests Lips must keep up Knowledge among the People and they must have the Knowledge of the Law at his Mouth Mal. 2. 7. And if my People are destrayed for lack of Knowledge because thou hast rejected Knowledge and the Communication thereof to my People I will also reject thee that thou shalt be no Priest to me saith God Hos. 4. 6. Such is the Obligation incumbent on true Pastors to Minister moral Truths when immoral Practises are justified in particular Cases and all the moral Duties opposite thereto are vacated and taken off by undermining Propositions and Doctrinal Salvo's And they are still more strictly obliged to this Ministration if the Practises justified by such Salvo's are 1. In immoralities of Great and general ill Fame and in things extreamly Scandalous to Religion All gross Violations of common Honesty and Justice and Breach of Faith especially when confirmed by Solemn Oaths and renouncing of Duty and Subjection to Superiours more particularly to Patents and Princes and such others are immoralities that all Sober Men think they ought to account Scandalous and of highest Reproach For the Duties transgressed thereby are generally known to be of greatest Importance for keeping up Society and for securing the Comforts of humane Life Which therefore all Mankind that feel such need of Society and would find Comfort in Life cry up and utterly decry the Breaches of them So that these Immoralities are sure to bring the most general Infamy upon any thing that is Guilty of them yea and upon Religion it self should it ever be found or represented as allowing or giving Countenance thereto Now the Ministers of Religion are to be especially careful to preserve its good Name and to keep up an honourable Opinion and Reverence for it among Men. He has nothing of the Ministerial Care or of a Ministerial Spirit who is careless and unconcern'd how ill and irreverently Men think of Religion Indeed if they would keep Religion if self up in the World they must keep up this Reverence and good Opinion of it For if once Mankind come to think ill or despicably of it they are never like to trouble themselves much therewith nor to Labour after much thereof And if they would preserve Religion reputable and secure of Mens Reverence and honourable Opinion they must watchfully keep all those things out of it which deservedly loose and lessen Mens good Opinion They must have a jealous Care to preserve it pure not admitting or justifying any thing that in the common Sense of Mankind is Infamous or of bad Name And therefore if any such things as all the foremention'd immoralities are in an High-Degree offer to creep in or if Satans Ministers are Busie to introduce them they must Oppose and Minister against them with all their Might and presently disclaim and purge them out that Religion may be clear of them They must Watch as far as they are able to keep them out of the Practice of Men least from such Practice of its Professors the Lookers on should Harbour a Presumption or Suspition as if Religion had some Toleration or Allowance for them Let Servants count their own Masters worthy of all Honour and Let Wives be keepers at Home and obedient to their own Husbands c. that the Word of God and his Doctrine be not Blasphemed faith St. Paul directing Timothy and Titus in that Pastoral and Ministerial Care which they should have of the Church But when these ill and infamous things appear not only in Practice but in Doctrines and come not as the blamed and prevaricating Acts of Professors but as Justified and Preached up by their Guides and Leaders Then Religion is more directly and planely brought in and the true Ministers thereof are more highly obliged to oppose them in its behalf to prevent its incurring any Scandal or Reproach thereby Or 2 If they are generally Preached up by Seducers and Men are every where Taught and perswaded to them Instead of giving any Discharge to those few Faithful Ministers that remain at such times the general falling away and Corruption of others adds to their Obligation For God and these moral Truths then have more need of their Ministration And they can have no Pretence left of puting off this Service to other
Which made them more sensible of the advantage of having these powers quietly and uncontestedly lodged in their own Hands These it might safely part withall during the incorporation as retaining still what it could not part with viz a Power of standing by all Necessary Points of worship and Doctrine and of doing what is necessary for the Souls of Men and as being also fitted all the time in the main with what is needful in Point of Discipline And its parting with them was in way of Compromise and Bargain as a grateful Return for the benefits and priviledges of its Enfranchisement and Incorporation or on consideration of its enjoying a Freedom not only of exercising spiritual ministrations but of exercising them in the way of an incorporate Church viz. in holding Benefices and in being back'd therein by secular Jurisdiction Laws and Priviledges And whilst these benefits of Incorporation are held on in favour of the Truth the cession of the Church in these Points is to be held on too and not to be resumed back again Protected and incorporate Bishops and Pastors must be content to claim Episcopal and Pastoral powers under the recessions and limitations of an incorporate Church Thus our Articles and Canons receive and assert the Ecclesiastical Supremacy of our Kings which contains the foresaid Church-Recessions And denounce Excommunication ipso Facto to those that Deny any part of our King 's Legal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Causes or his having the same Authority therein as the Godly Kings had among the Jews or Christian Emperors had in the Primitive Church And accordingly in our Form of Ordaining Bishops they profess to think themselves call'd to this Ministration according to the Will of Jesus Christ and the Order of this Realm and promise to censure and punish the unquiet and disobedient within their Diocesses according to such Authority as they have by God's Word and as to them shall be committed by the Ordinance of this Realm But now all this giving up these or the like powers to the State for the sake of this Incorporation and in way of bargain and compromise or other abridgement of its own ministrations is 1. With a Salvo to the Interests of Religion and of the Souls of Men. They cannot give away any thing to make themselves wanting in any necessary service unto them nor part with their powers of ministring to Souls to build and nurse them up in pure Worship Doctrin and Practice These Powers are a Sacred Depositum which if they imbezzle or yield up in complyance they are false to God and to mens Souls and thereby betray both them and their own Holy Fâ—â—ction And their Acts also are nullities wherein they offer or promise to do the same For they are Acts against an antecedent Obligation which are wicked in the making as Herods Oath was to gratifie Herodias in the Baptists Death and the Jews Conspiracy and Oath to kill St. Paul But they are null as to the Obligation of performance as is agreed in the case of all contracts and promises to do unlawful things or things evil or forbidden in themselves They can neither discharge themselves I say nor receive any discharge from Princes of exercising these Powers where Christ requires they should exercise them for the Service of Religion of Souls as I have shewn he doth in the fore mentioned cases In Stewards it is required that they be found faithful in dispensing out these Ministrations as he orders not in suppressing them contrary to Order 1 Cor. 4 2. Necessity is laid upon me and woe be to me is here the Scripture denunciation if they preach not the Gospel or fail trustily to discharge that Ministry they have undertaken 1 Cor. 9. 16. No earthly Powers by confering on them the benefits of Incorporation get any Authority over Christs Ministers to discharge them of Ministring to their Master in these matters For this would be to give the civil power which ought to keep under Christ a power over him It would turn them from Nursing Fathers who by giving it a civil enfranchisement undertake to protect the true Religion into devouring Wolves who seek to make a prey of it It is expresly declared against by the Apostles who appeal to the common sense of mankind Whether they are not bound to obey God rather than men Act. 4. 19. 20. And would leave no ministrations of true Gospel Worship and Doctrin under any Christian state which should fall from any necessary parts thereof and begin to persecute them as the Arian Emperors did in the Persecutions they rais'd against the Orthodox and as Popish Princes did in like violences used by them at any time against our Protestant Brethren or Ancestors Than which nothing can be worse calculated for any Church of God but especially for the Christian Church which is to continue a Church in persecution and to bear up Christian Worship and Doctrin by due ministrations of both when any powers of this World fall from protecting most violently to bear them down And this in all times has been the Opinion and Practice of God's faithful Ministers when the State which by Incorporation should have back'd and strengthned them therein fell to discharge and bar them of their ministrations in these cases Thus God's Faithful Prophets and Ministers did in the Jewish Church who approved themselves glorious Confessors and Martyrs in administring God's Word and true Worship when the State fell to break in upon them and instead of backing and protecting them in those ministrations according to the purport of incorporation fell violently to discharge and drive them from officiating any longer therein Thus likewise Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria Paulus of Constantinople and other Bishops did in the Arian Persecution The civil State had then received the Church into it self endowed it with civil Edicts and enfranchisements And the deprivation and ejection of these Bishops out of their Churches particularly of the Great Athanasius was with State-Concurrence and for State-Causes or Pretences Among other Articles Athanasius was charged with Contumacy against the Emperour in refusing to appear upon his Edict at the Synod of Caesarea And with a Treasonable Design to stop the yearly Transport of Corn from Alexandria to Constantinople on which suggestion he was banish'd to Tryers by Constantine Not to mention the Accusation of his having impos'd on the Aegyptians a Tribute of Linnen Cloath and having conspired with one Philumenus against the Emperour and having Treasonably corresponded with the Traytor Magnentius and usurped the Imperial Prerogative by holding the Festival Dedication of the great Church of Alexandria without the Emperours Warrant and the like And his Deposition and Gregories and Georges Advancement to his See by Synods were seconded by Acts of State having the Approbation and Justification of the Emperors and the Assistance of Prefects as well as the ‖ Imperial Letters violently forcing one out of the
offices and dutys as to their Rooms Spiritual doth appertain And Queen Elizabeths injunctions disclaim all challenging of any Authority and Power of Ministry of Divine Service in the Church by Vertue of the Supremacy And the 37th Article of Religion declares That thereby we give not our Princes the ministring either of God's Word or of the Sacraments And the Statute of Queen Elizabeth says The Oath of Supremacy shall be taken and expounded in such form as is set forth in the Queens Admonition annexed to her Injunctions They are the Ministers of God in their Dominions as St. Paul says But that is as Kings not as Priests So that the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Matters doth not imply the Power of the Keys which the King has not says Mr. Mason And by the Supremacy we do not attribute to the King the power of the Keys or Ecclesiastical Censures as Bishop Andrews observes We never gave our Kings the power of the Keys or any part of either the Key of Order or the Key of Jurisdiction purely spiritual says Bishop Bramhall And this bounding of their Claims and Pretences of Power is suitable to what we find among those Godly Jewish Kings and Christian Emperors to whom our Churches Articles and Canons about Supremacy refer As to the Jews it appertaineth not unto thee O Uzziah to burn incense unto the Lord but to the Priests that are consecrated thereto say the Priests to King Uzziah when he would assume to himself the Priests Office for which God miraculously smote him with a Leprosie upon the place 2 Chron. 26. 16 18 19 20. And the Lord hath chosen you to stand before him to serve and minister unto him and to burn incense says King Hezekiah to the Levites 2 Chron. 29. 11. And the like appears of the godly Christian Emperors who were told by their Holy Bishops and profess'd of themselves That they were no Priests and that their power of Empire did not swallow up the Sacerdotal powers God hath intrusted the Affairs of the Kingdom in your hands but those of the Church in ours And as we may not lawfully take upon us to act as Kings so neither have you Authority O Emperor to burn incense or usurp the Priests Office said the Great Hosius in his Epistle to the Emperor Constantius To you it appertains externally to punish but to us to judge and determine what is Heretical and impious say Elusius and Sylvanus and the other Bishops to the same Constantius The Royal Purple makes men Emperors but it doth not make them Priests says St. Ambrose to the Emperor Theodosius As Christians and Godly Emperors they used their Imperial Power and Soveraignty about Church-Matters But that was not privative to deny the Pastors of the Church or to bereave them of their Power but Cumulative to add the Imperial Power which was of another kind to the Spiritual thereby to back their Acts and to make them bind the faster Thus when they sent Count Candidianus to the Great Council of Ephesus the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian declare in their Letter to the Council That it was to keep good Order and to see fair Debates but with Orders not to intermeddle in determining Questions of Faith and Ecclesiastical Matters which say they is lawful only for the Bishops And when the Emperor Marcian came in person at the passing the Definitions of the Great Council of Chalcedon it was not as he tells them in his Speech to the Council to make Demonstration of his own Power therein but to give greater firmness to what they had done in the Exercise of theirs Which he doth by Ratifying the same by secular Penalties as by Banishment of Citizens Disbanding of Souldiers and Deposition of Clery and by other Punishments after the Determinations of the Council had been read and the Bishops had owned and subscribed the same before him When the Imperial Purple came to confirm a Pastoral Act it gave a new Authority to that which had Authority in it self before or as Justinian speaks in his Confirmation of the Episcopal Sentence or Anathemaon Zoaras which says he having a validity from it self or Authenticalness of its own the Crown makes yet more valid or of more Authority by adding to it a secular Penalty The Episcopal or Spiritual Authority is by too many unjustly slighted and therefore the Secular Authority is both humbly call'd in and piously comes in to its help since those irreligious Contemners of the Spiritual Power will stand more in awe of the Secular Coming in by their Secular Authority to help and back the Church in those things wherein men would otherwise contemn the Authority of the Bishops as the Fathers express it in the Council of Carthage So that the Imperial Power even whilst employ'd about Church-Ministrations all the time supposes but doth not swallow up the Pastoral Powers nor doth its Ecclesiastical Supremacy lye nor was ever thought so to do either by our Church or by those Times whereto it refers in their being vested with or having a soveraign Disposal of the Powers of Orders But 2. Secondly it lyes 1. First In retaining their civil Power over all Persons whether Lay-men or Ecclesiasticks The Civil State was first in Being and men were Subjects of the State when Christianity came to be proposed to them and planted among them The Church is in the Common-wealth not the Common-wealth in the Church as Optatus says And when men became Members or Ministers of the Church they did not thereby cease to be Subjects of the State or owe ever the less Duty unto it Let every Soul be subject unto the Higher Power is meant of Ecclesiasticks as well as others It takes in all tho' an Apostle tho' an Evangelist tho' a Prophet or whosoever else as St. Chrysostom notes And therefore Princes may lay their civil Commands and inflict their civil Punishments upon Ecclesiasticks as well as upon their other Subjects They may put them under Fines or Imprisonments or banish them out of their Dominions or any parts thereof as Claudius did the Jews from Rome or as Domitian did St. John into Patmos where he wrote his Revelations and as Constantius and Valence did the Orthodox Bishops in the Arian Persecutions And true Pastors are bound to submit to this like as other Subjects are either from Heathen or Heretical Emperors and even in hard and unjust Cases as in the foresaid Instances And if any under sentence of Banishment inflicted on certain Persons not on the whole Cause return into his own Country without Leave of the civil Power if being caught he suffer for it he dies not as a Christian but as a Malefactor says St. Cyprian So that Bishops and Ministers are no exempt Persons but are to own their Kings as their civil Soveraigns and are as much bound to pay Obedience to their civil Laws and are
Naming of Bishops Conveneing them in Synods Ratifying of Canâ—ns Dispensing with them and the like after once a rightful state breaks the incorporation and puts the true Church from state-protection and endowments into a state of persecution For then the Church and State are divided again as they were in the days of the Ancient Canons and so they may be free as Bishops then were to exercise those powers by the Rule of those Canons as they can and as in prudence they shall see cause But whilst the protection and incorporation holds for the sake whereof it laid down its claim to those powers and suffer'd them to become the States-Prerogatives the Bishops and Ministers are not to pretend to them And so whilst the Church enjoys such incorporation our own Church by its Articles and Canons disclaims the exercise of these powers by it self and confirms them to the Crown as I formerly observed Thus are the Recognitions which Ecclesiasticks ought to make of the Supremacy of Princes and all the Regard they ought to bear to the incorporation of the Church fairly consistent with their Faithful discharge of their Spiritual Ministrations after the State has deprived them in the foresaid Cases They stand bound to Christ there to exercise the same by manifold obligations as I have shewn And no deprivations of Princes though they be Soveraign Governors of all their Subjects and have endowed and incorporated the Chuch can disable or discharge them from it And from this state of these matters it may be easy to clear and take off the Force of those instances which are brought of state-deprivations without the concurrence of Ecclesiastical Synods and to shew they are of no force in the foresaid Cases The instances chiefly insisted on are the Deposition of Abiathar by Solomon and the frequent sometimes Annual depositions of their High-Priests by the Romans when Judea fell into their Hands the depositions of the Patriarks of the Greek Church by the Turks and the deprivation of Queen Maries Popish Bishops by a commission of State pursuant to an Act of Parliament without a Synod at the beginning of the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth 1. First as for Abiathar whom for conspiring with Adonijah Solomon is said to have thrust out from being Priest unto the Lord 1 King 2. 27. it doth not appear that Solomon did remove him from the dignity and office of High Priest but only from the exercise thereof For after this sentence was passed upon Abiathar and after Joab the General also his complice and conspirator had been sentenced and suffer'd death and Benajah was made General in his place 1 King 1. 28. 34 35 Abiathar is still reckon'd as Partner with Zadock in the High-Priest-hood 1 King 4. For so in the reckoning up of Solomons Officers when Benajah the Son of Jehojadah was over the Host 't is added and Zadock and Abiathar were the Priests v. 4. And as for the debarring him the Exercise of his High-Priests Office that was the natural and inseparable consequent of his Banishment from Jerusalem to Anathoth for his Life For the exercise of that Office was local and fixed to Jerusalem and the Temple In the Temple were all the Priests tyed to officiate whose Ministrations he was to direct and in that was the Holy of Holies whereinto once a year he himself in Person and he alone was to enter and offer the Blood of Expiation and there was the Mercy Seat before which he was to stand with the Urim and Thummim to consult God upon occasion The Exercise of which Ministrations with others required his Personal Residence and could not be discharged by him living in another place So that the banishing him from Jerusalem by mere natural consequent without need of spiritual Jurisdiction excluded him from the Exercise of the High-Priests-Office And this Banishment Solomon inflicted on him as his civil Soveraign for his Trayterous Conspiracy with Adonijah and on like Cause any other lawful Soveraign may do the same And without doubt he not only consented to this Amotion but was thankful for it and that instead of being sent to Anathoth he was not sent out of the World as by Law his Fact deserved So that Abiathar had nothing to contest in his Case nor any mind to do it being justly lyable to suffer so much more at the hand of the civil Power than it was pleased to inflict on him And then as for Zadock who held the High-Priesthood in his Room and whilst he was living that doth not appear to have been by a New Creation For before this extrusion of Abiathar he had been created Partner Vicar or Suffragan with him in the High-Priests Office in Davids time Thus in the reckoning up of Davids Officers they are put together as filling this place Sheva was Scribe and Zadock and Abiathar were the Priests 2 Sam. 20. 25. And hast thou not there with thee Zadock and Abiathar the Priests says David to Hushai when in his flight from Absalom he sent him back into the City to defeat the Council of Achitophel 2 Sam. 15. 35. chap. 17. 15. And in carrying back the Ark into the City David gives command to Zadock the Priest about it 2 Sam. 15. 25 27. and the Text adds Zadock therefore and Abiathar carryed the Ark of God again to Jerusalem joyning them as Partners in this great Act of the Pontifical Charge v. 29. He also commits to Zadock the Priest the anointing and proclamation of Solomon which was another Act thereof 1 King 1. 32 34 38 39. And this is plainly asserted by Josephus who says That Zadock was first created High-priest in the Reign of David And therefore on Abiathars exclusion by Solomon that Zadock only came in to have the High-priesthood and to act therein alone He was then Sagan or Suffragan and Vicar to Abiathar as Grotius and Vatablus conceive When Abiathar therefore by his Banishment for Life in just Punishment of his Treason was incapacitated for any further Exercise of his High-priests-office on such debarring of his Pontifical Exercise there was no new Ordination of another into his Place But Zadock who had been created his Partner in the Priesthood before on his Partners Loss of this Exercise was to exercise the whole himself So that the Authority of a Deprivation of State to unmake one and to make another to be a Bishop in their dominions during his Life is ill-fetch'd from this Instance For neither doth Abiathar plainly appear to have been despoyled of the Honour of the High-priesthood tho' by Banishment for Life he was of the Exercise thereof by Solomon Nor Zadock to have been first advanced and created High-Priest by him but to have been Ordained thereto by the spiritual Powers of the Sanhedrim to whom that Ordination and Investiture did belong in Davids Time Besides 2. Secondly in these alledged State-deprivations of the Jewish High-priests either of Abiathar by Solomon or after they
not for Anti-christian Corruptions And had they really been what they thought as they were not but quite contrary it had been their duty to go on in their Pastoral Cures and Ministrations with Persecutions for all their deprivations And so we our selves should have thought at least we all seem as if we should if by Gods Providence the civil State had gone on to deprive our reformed Bishops for sticking to the worship and doctrines of the Reformation and had set up Popish Bishops in their Places Notwithstanding which I suppose both our faithful Prelates and People instead of silently acquiescing would have gone on ministring and communicating in the reformed worship and doctrine of this Church But whatever they thought of these things or how consonant or disagreeing soever their Actings were to their own Apprehensions in this case it suffices for justification of our Reformed Bishops advancement to their Sees without their being deprived by competent and lawful Synods which is objected as a thing most exceptionable therein and as seeming most to deviate from Ecclesiastical Rule that in reality they were not Orthodox And that for this want of Orthodoxy without any need of recourse to the Authority of mere State Deprivations to take off people from a spiritual Adherence and Communion with their Bishops the People before they could have a Synodical Deprivation were loose from them and at liberty to unite themselves to the Orthodox Reformers in their Room CHAP. IV. Of Deprivations by Synods in the foresaid Cases ANd thus I think it may sufficiently appear how the manifold obligations which are shewn above to lye on Faithful Bishops and Ministers not to suppress but to exercise their spiritual ministrations in the foresaid Cases are not set aside or barr'd by any inhibition or deprivation though of the most Lawful Civil State They will do it with more ease and worldly encouragement when the State tolerates and much more when it fortifies and furthers them therein But they are not at liberty to give it off but must go on exercising the same when it is more troublesome and when the State gain-says and puts them under persecution for so doing And thus it is where the State will Act apart and proceed without a Synod in depriving Bishops and in discharging the Ecclesiastical Communion and dependance of the people Spiritually related and united to them But Deprivation of Bishops who are Spiritual Powers is more ordinarily by a Synod of Bishops who are a Spiritual Judicature Great Reason there is for the Deprivation of Bishops to proceed in this course The Civil-State indeed comes in by Reason of Civil Accessions and Endowments which strengthen and encourage the spiritual ministrations But these Civil Accessions are but Accessaries and Appendages and their spiritual powers are the Principal in their Ministrations and in Church Communion and dependance on them And therefore the removing of their ministrations and of the Communion and dependance of the Church thereupon is never so fitly and fully attempted as by spiritual judicatures who being spiritual persons have more directly to do with Church Communion and spiritual powers And accordingly this has still been the course of the most Pious Princes who have reserved the deliberations about Religion and Church matters and the Depositions of Bishops which so closely affects Church Communion to Convocations and Synods of Bishops and â—lergy And when these proceed to sentence it more directly affects the concerned parties Church Communion and Church Governors being more directly under the Church-mens Cognizance and not only indirectly and by the by as it may ingage the deprived persons when not bound to it otherwise to yield and acquiesce in voluntary complyance for civil interests But suppose a Concurrence of both these powers and that the deprivation of the Rightful State is confirmed by Synodical Concurrence Yet I observe in the last place that this Deprivation by Synods is not sufficient to bar or discharge Bishops or Ministers from the foresaid Exercise of their Spiritual Ministrations in the above mention'd Cases Bishops and Metropolitanes are not more subject and dependant on Synods than Presbyters and people are on their Bishops Our Lord himself and his Holy Apostles having appointed Bishops in his Church and call'd for our subjection and obedience to them But this submission of Priests and people to their Bishops is with a Salvo to their Holy Religion and its Articles and Interests And if any Bishops go against the Truths or Laws of Christ or against the interests of Souls and of True Religion we are not to follow them or to depend on them therein To stick to any necessary Christian Doctrines Worship or Practices Christs Faithful people and Ministers must break even with their own Bishops holding even them Anathema as St. Paul directs when they would lead them contrary to the Doctrine of the Apostles as I noted before and shall shew more fully afterwards And so must they with any other Bishops or Number and Synods of Bishops in like Case All Exercise and Administration of Church Authority and Jurisdiction is tyed to Rules Not only to Rules of the Churches own making or Ecclesiastical Canons but above all and in the first place to the Rules laid down by Christ himself And all the validity of Church Acts in way of external judicature in Synods or otherwise is so far as they go by them or do nothing against them Thus it is in Decreeing Rites and Ceremonies or Determining Controversies of Faith wherein though the Church has Authority yet is it thus limited and has no Authority as our Church Declares to ordain any thing contrary to Gods word Even general Councils are bounded by this Limitation and things ordained by them say the Thirty Nine Articles again as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that are taken out of Holy Scriptures And thus it is also in Matter of Censures or Ecclesiastical Sentences judicially past therein upon persons whether Laicks or Ecclesiasticks We in the Exercise of our Apostolical Power can do nothing against the Truth or in punishing and Censuring any for Faithful observance thereof but all our Power is for the Truth and to be exercised in its behalf by punishing and not sparing not those who stand to but those who defect from it 2 Cor. 13. 8. When the Church speaks to us in External Judicatures we must hear it as our Lord orders But we must hear it speaking under Christ never against him So that if it Excommunicates any for sticking firm to any part of his Holy Religion with whom for that very adherence sake he requires his Faithful Followers to hold Communion Or if it deprives or discharge any Ministers from Administring the same in any case where he has charged them to keep on that ministration Its power here is set up against him and its Acts have no Power to bind those who are concerned in them
Thus it is when it sha Excommunicate any for adhereing to any necessary Christian Doctrines Worship or Practices For all who would hold to Christ must Neglect such Censures and though any Church or Synod throws such persons out of its Communion they are joyfully to well come and receive them into theirs For when our Lord Arthorizes and gives validity to Church Censures saying they shall be bound in Heaven and bidding us look on all who will not hear the Church as Heathâ—ns and Publicans He limits this validity to those censures which pass upon men not for any parts of righteousness but for real offences If thy Brother Trespass against thee and will not hear thee tell it unto the Church So that some real offence or Trespass must still be the ground of the process Mat. 18. 15. 17. It must be for not hearing the Church when it calls us to his Truths and Precepts not when it sets up to carry us from them For there if it use censures it acts of it self and not by his Commission It opens or shuts by an Erring Key and must not expect that what is so bound or loosed on earth shall be Ratifyed in Heaven By such perverse Censures the Church only deprives it self of the Communion of Faithful Christians but doth not deprive them of Communion with Christ or with one another The unjust Excommunications of the Jewish Sinhedrim when they cast Christs Disciples out of their Synagogues only estranged or cut off themselves says Photius but brought those Disciples so much nearer to their Lord and Master And so now says he when the imitators of the Jews Excommunicate the Followers of the Apostles they thereby only Conjoyn and Unite them the more to those Divine Apostles to whom they are more closely and exactly knit both in Faith and Life by the Communion of sufferings But they miserably cut off themselves both from their Doctrine and from our Orthodox Faith And therefore instead of bemoaning themselves under such Excommunications and seeking to have them take off by Complying with the Church our Blessed Saviour fortifies his â—râ—â— followers against them and bids them not only patiently to rest under tâ—em but triumphaâ—â—ly to re oyce therein They shall put you out â— the 〈◊〉 ues says he to â—â—em and Cautions them not be offended thereat when it should happen or not to fall off from him or his ways to recover the Liberty of the Sâ—nagogues again Joh. 16. 1. 2. When they shall seperate you from their company by Excommunications and Anathema's and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the Son of Mans sake rejoyce ye in that day and leap for joy for behold Great is your Reward in Heaven for in the like manner did their Fathers unto the Prophets Luk. 6. 22 23. And thus the Holy Apostles and Faithful Adherers to Gods Truth and Worship and good Christian Practices did in all times when for such Adherence they fell under the Anathema's of Synods or the Excommunication of Churches during the Papal or any other former or later Persecutions They joyfully received such sentences and always owned one another and held Communion in Adherence to Gods word and ways among themselves when they were cast out of the communion of such corrupt and Apostatizing Synods or Churches And 't is the same when it shall deprive or discharge any Faithful Bishops and Ministers from supporting such necessary Doctrines worship and practices by their Ministrations as Christ requires For then notwithstanding such deprivations and discharge by Churches and Synods CHRIST'S Faithful Ministers must hold on Ministring and his faithful People must hold on Communicating and Adhereing to them therein Thus as our LORD Notes their Fathers had Separated and cast out the Old Prophets from Prophesying in their Company or Assemblies Who still went on Preaching and Ministring the Word which they were sent out to publish And thus the Sanhedrim that great Synod of the Jewish Church discharged the Apostles from Ministring Christianity or Preaching any more in Christs Name who told them they could by no means desist thereupon but must hold on their Ministration being to Ovey God rather than men Act. 4. 18 19 20. Thus also several Synods Deprived Athanasius and the other Orthodox Bishops who were the stout Asserters and Maintainers of the Divinity of our Lord against the Arians Such was the Synod of Tyre And such also was the Synod of Antioch whose Deprivations of Athanasius and the other Orthodox Bishops were a Blow made at the Nicene Faith though their Canons being good and according to Primitive Usage were by Orthodox Councils afterwards taken into the Book of Ecclesiastical Canons out of which several of them are repeated verbatim in the great Council of Chalcedon and are there among the Canons of others Synods taken in to be Canons of the Universal Church And such likewise were the deprivations of other Synods assembled in that Cause afterwards Now under these Synodical deprivations the great Business of those suffering Bishops was to shew that whatever other Immoralities or Personal Crimes were pretended against them as several were most impudently pretended against all Ground and Reason yet in reality and truth their deprivations were for the Cause of the Faith or for their firmness in maintaining the Divinity and Consubstantiality of Christ with the Father This Athanasius and Paulus plead for themselves teaching That their Depositions were not for any other Cause but for the subversion of the Orthodox Faith as is related by Socrates and Sozomen And what they made appear to the Emperor Constans was That they suffered not for the Crimes or ill Lives they were accused of as the sentence of Deposition did contain but for their thinking and teaching differently from the Synods their Dâ—posers about the Faith And when it was once clear to any Persons or Churches that they were deprived for the cause of the Faith they were not hindred by any Authority of external Judicature in the Synods their deposers but readily received and communicated with them as Christs true Bishops still in those places For notwithstanding these Synodical Deprivations Athanasius was all the while own'd and adher'd to by the Faithful Aegyptians as Paulus also was by the Faithful Constantinopolitanes And when they came to Rome on their giving full satisfaction in this Point Julius the Bishop of Rome received them to Communion Hearing the Cause of each says Sozomen and finding them all to agree in the Nicene Faith which he saw undermined and struck at by their Deprivers he received them to Communion as being of the same Belief with himself This Reception of Athanasius and others who stood deprived by the Synods of Tyre and Antioch c. to his Communion was before the Synod of Rome wherein the Orientals should have justified their Proceedings had acquitted and received them For before the Synod was held at Rome in
a Schism from other Catholick Bishops as if they made it from himself And if still he will Communicate and joyn himself to them he violates Unity and joyns in a Schism as any other Man would do who should do the same And being found in the Schism with them he would have been treated as they were and have fallen from the Communion of all other Orthodox and Catholick Bishops whose Rule was to refuse and shun the Communion of Schismaticks and of their adherents and partakers Communicating with men out of Communion he himself would be put out of Communion as the aforecited Councils say And thus it was with Marcianus Bishop of Arles when he fell to Communicate and joyn himself to Novatian who was set up as a Schismatical Anti-Bishop against Cornelius the Rightful and Canonical Bishop of Rome Thereby says St. Cyprian he himself became separate from our Communion and from the Fraternity of Catholick Bishops because Novatian was so to whom he joyned himself The Bishops met in Council in Africk answering him when he sought their Communion that not one of them could communicate with him since he had set up Altar against Altar at Rome and made a Schism from Cornelius who before was Legally Ordained the Bishop of that Church 4. Besides for surer maintenance of Union and to compact several Churches together into a closer dependance there are other Heads of Union among the Bishops themselves Such are Metropolitanes and Primates as Titus I conceive was left by St. Paul at Crete where he was to ordain Elders or Bishops in every City and Timothy at Ephesus where he is Directed how he shall exercise jurisdiction and receive accusations against Bishops which Metropolitanes and Primates are to Unite and incorporate many Bishops and their Dioceses into one Province or several Provinces by their Concurrence into one National Church And such an Head of Union the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury is among the Bishops in the English Church And the Ecclesiastical Union to be kept up among us is a Provincial yea a National Union We are to stand united by our Articles and Homilies Liturgy and Canons And these unite not only the Christians of each Diocess or District to their respective Bishops as so many Diocesan Churches but likewise the Bishops and People of all Diocesses into the Provinces of Canterbury and York and those two Provinces into one National Church Accordingly those Articles and Homilies Liturgy and Canons which are the Rules of keeping Unity among us are Provincial and National Acts pass'd by concurrence of Convocations of both Provinces where the Bishops and Clergy meet in Union with and dependance on their respective Metropolitanes who are the respective Heads thereof Now in care of Unity and the Communion of Saints the respective Bishops of each Province or Country are to keep dependant and united to their Metropolitanes The Bishops of every Nation ought to know him who is their Primate and to account him as their Head say the Apostolical Canons It behoves every Man to know his own proper measure say the Fathers in the Council of Constantinople and that neither a Presbyter contemn his own Bishop nor a Bishop contemn his own Metropolitane And bating the case of Heresie if any Bishop on pretence of other personal Crimes shall depart from the Communion of his Metropolitane before Synodical Sentence pass'd upon him he is guilty of Schism and though there is nothing else against him the Holy Synod decrees him to incur a Deposition And so strict was this dependance upon the Alexandrian Patriark or Metropolitane of Egypt binding them in all things to wait for his Sentence to do nothing without him nor beside or against his Approbation that on the deposition of their Metropolitane Dioscorus in the Council of Chaliedon the Egyptian Bishops pray they may not be compell'd to subscribe Pope Leo 's Epistles before they had a New Metropolitane to head them and accordingly their subscription was respitted by the Council till they should have got one And for maintenance of this Union of several Diocesses into one Province by a joynt-dependance of the several Bishops on their Metropolitane and adherence to him it has been the great Rule of the Catholick Church that none shall be made a Bishop of the Province without him In Consecration of Bishops the validity of all that is done shall be reserved to the Metropolitane says the great Council of Nice and if any one is Ordained a Bishop without his consent it determines and calls it a thing altogether manifest that he ought to be no Bishop It has likewise been another Rule thereof for the same purpose that no Synods for the common Concern of the Province be held without them The Metropolitanes being to summon the Bishops of the Province and it not being lawful for any to make Synods of themselves without them who have the Metropoles committed to them as the Council of Antioch declares Yea that no matters of common concern to the Church in any Country or Nation be transacted without him The Bishops of every Country and Nation being in duty bound to own him who is the chief among them c. and to do nothing that looks beyond their own Precincts or Diocesses or referring to the common state of the Church without his sentence as is Ordained in the Apostolical Canons and repeated in the Council of Antioch And the more firmly to secure this regard and dependance which for maintenance of this Provincial Union is due from Bishops to their Metroplitanes they make solemn Oath at their Ordination to pay all due Riverence and Obedience to him as in our own Office of Consecration And as there is this Provincial and National Union of Churches which is thus secured by the dependance of Bishops on their Meropolitanes so may there be National and Provincial Schisms or Breaches thereof And such there are when Bishops and their Clergy and People break off from their Metropolitane not falling or receding from his Ecclesiastical Authority over them and create to themselves an opposite Primate whom they set up against him For then they will make ordinations and hold Provincial or National Synods and dispatch matters of common or National concern without him so breaking all the Rules Provincial or National Union and dividing themselves from their Head as he is call'd in the Apostolical Canons And when once an Anti-Primate or Metropolitane is made the Head of a Schism it spreads it into all Dioceses which will own him and profess to bear Canonical Obedience and Subjection or adhere to him So that in such a Schism all Dioceses of the Province come in who do not disclaim the Schismatical Head and stand off from him 5. Lastly when there is not only a setting up of Schismatical and opposite Heads but moreover this is done in opposition to pure worship and Doctrine and to support unchristian
removed from the Honour of the Priesthood and Clerical Orders Accordingly Basilides the Bishop after he had denyed and cursed Christ was very thankful as he says and looked upon it as a great Favour to him that he could be received to communicate as a Lay-man And likewise Trophimus the Bishop when he had sacrificed to Idols was admitted as he tells Antotianus only to communicate as a Lay-man not to usurp the Priests Office any more as some malicious persons had inform'd him which made Antonianus complain of the same to Cyprian as a Violation of this known Rule of Discipline And in Vertue of this being the known and received Rule of the Church the Donatists sought to invalidate and overthrow the Ordination of Caecilian against whom they had set up their Anti-bishop Majorinus at Carthage pretending that Caecilians Ordainers particularly Faelix of Aptisng had been Traditors in the precedeing Persecution or had faln from Christ and deliver'd up their Bibles to be burnt by their persecutors Which Charge had it been true as it was false would have been received and owned for a just Exception on both sides And the Catholicks would have rejected Caecilian till he could make out some better Ordination as well as the Council of Nice did these Egyptian Anti-bishops that had no better Ordainer than Meletius who stood guilty of the like Offence But it was rejected in Caecilians Case as being a malicious Forgery the Donatists thereby impudently laying their own Crimes on others hoping that would hinder men from inquiring after the same in themselves Indeed as Epiphanius relates this Matter Meletius made this Schism and Ordained these Anti-bishops not after he had sacrificed to Idols and had been Synodically condemned by Peter for the same but whilst he as well as Peter was a stout Confessor for the Faith against Idols and in his Zeal for the Discipline of the Church against Peters easiness in admitting the Lapsers who sought to them whilst they were together in Prison for the peace of the Church But Athanasius who was nearer to this Transaction and who after some others was chosen to suâ—ceed Peter in the same Church is more like to understand the Truth of this Affair than Epiphanius was Whom Baronius and Petavius look upon as mislead into this account by some false Acts or Histories of the Meletians who dealt injuriously with Peter and the Catholicks in Egypt like as the Donatists did with Caecilian and those Catholicks in Africk on whom they labour'd to fix the Crime of being Traditors whereof the Catholicks were free but they themselves were notoriously guilty Thus though their Orders were valid in themselves without which they could have been received at no time yet have they not always availed to Claim and obtain the Churches Communion without which the persons could not be received by the Faithful to exercise the same And this has been when the Church saw fit and expedient to insist upon the Rules of Unity in Ordinations and more vigorously to assert Ecclesiastical Law and Discipline And this it might assert or relax as it saw Cause Ecclesiastical Law and Discipline is not a Rule of indispensible Obligation to the Church but such as it may and oft-times has receded from on great reason and necessity What Rules the Church makes the Church may alter and go off from in particular Cases as need shall require and as may best serve those ends for which it made them Accordingly Rules of Discipline have not been one and the same in all Ages For to omit others the ancient Councils asserted the free Election of Bishops nominated here by the Prince to the Bishops of the Province And for bid the Translation of Bishops from poorer to richer Sees And the Attendance of Bishops about Courts of Princes the Council of Antioch confirmed afterwards at Chalcedon and in Trullo forbidding them to go to the Emperor without the approbation and Letters of the Metropolitane And excluded both Bishops and Clergy from intermealing and incumbring themselves with Secular Trusts and Administrations All which are otherwise in these latter Ages And such Rules of Discipline as have been observed more strictly have not had one equal and uniform Tenor of Observation but have been sometimes remitted and sometimes exacted and stood upon as the Church was driven thereto by prudential Reason Thus it has been with the Canons or Rules of Discipline about Ordinations Which as the Church has sometimes insisted on as I noted to vacate the Ordinations which any Bishops made against them I mean to deny the Persons its Communion without which whatever powers of Orders they had received they could not be received in any Assemblies of the Faithful to exercise the same So were they at other times relaxed and over-ruled by the necessities of the Church and the Persons on their reconciliation admitted to officiate in vertue of such Orders as I think may abundantly appear by the fore-cited instances And this very Reason is given for it by the African Fathers in the Synod of Carthage when they admit of the Ordinations of the Donatists which the Transmarine or Italian Synod had rejected telling Pope Anastasius that this Reception of them to the same Orders was for the great necessity of Africk for a †better provision for Catholick Unity and for the benefit and peace of the Church These instances and proofs I think may be sufficient to shew that Anti-bishops and others of their Ordination have Orders though being in a Schism the Faithful ought not to joyn with them in their use thereof Their Schism makes them Sinners in receiving and in using their Orders and shuts out others from communicating therewith But it doth not utterly destroy and null their Orders nor must it be said I conceive that by such sinful Ordination they receive nothing or that whatever they had formerly received they lose by falling into Schism so as that thenceforward they have no Orders nor are Bishops or Priests at all The Donatists indeed as St. Austin reports asserted this and taught that by breaking off from the Church though men did not lose the Baptism which they had received before yet they lost their Orders or the Authority and Power of Baptizing And on pretence thereof they re-baptized those who since the Breach had been baptized by any of the Catholick Clergy As to which he owns that whilst they continue in their Schism they sin in exercising their Orders They do not do right saith he in giving Baptism to others whilst they themselves are broken off from the Church And it is to their own destruction so long as they have not the Charity of Union The having Baptism themselves and confering it on others are both pernicious whilst they continue out of the Bond of Peace But though they ought not to use these powers till they have amended their Schism yet as he
Church can not oblige or hold all the Members thereof to himself as the principle of Unity yet may he have all that is of the essence of Episcopacy For to be an Head of Union in the Church is not of the essence of a Bishop It may be separate from the Episcopal powers as it is in all Bishops falling into Heresie or Schism For they are no longer Heads of Union since none are bound to follow them but all are to break Communion with them But yet they are Bishops still and do not thereby fall from the powers of Ordination nor on their Re-union to the Church need to be Ordained again 'T is true one main use of Episcopacy is to be a means of Unity But yet it is not so for this use as to be nnll or cease when it misses or fails thereof Even as Baptism or the Eucharist are for Unity We being all baptized into one Body and being one Body as partaking all of one Bread as the Apostle says But yet they do not always cease or fail of their effects when administred in breach thereof and Baptism as was held by the ancient Church and as we all hold now is still valid though performed by Schismaticks When they miss of this they have other uses As the Sacraments besides keeping Unity among the Members enter and ratifie the Covenant of Grace And Episcopacy besides the use of keeping the Church one and unbroken is for administration of the Word of Prayers and Sacraments and for Ordaining others to do the same And though all these ought to be exercised in the Unity of the Church and 't is a great Sin when 't is otherwise yet such sinful Exercises are no Nullities as if the Persons had no powers or as if the Administrations had no effect at all In the State Monarchy I grant that the Regal Powers and this use of their being a principle of State-Unity are more closely and constantly connected And that as he who has the Regal Powers is the principle of State-Union so he who is no such principle and to whom the People are not bound to unite has truly no Regal Authority or Powers And in Elective Kingdoms if whilst the Throne is full the Electors whose power of choosing is only in Vacancies pretend to choose another they really confer no Regal power nor make a King but an Usurper This is because secular powers are more limited to Territories and Precincts and because no King can be a King at large but must only be a King of such or such a Place or Countries But in the Spiritual Monarchy 't is otherwise For the Collation and Reception of the Episcopal Powers is not with precise Limitation to such a particular place or Diocess but indefinite or with respect to the Church at large Or expressed as it is in our Form of Ordination by receiving of the Holy Ghost for the Office of a Bishop for the Church of God Which makes any person not a meer Local but a Catholick Bishop or one vested with Episcopal powers and under no want of inherent Authority to exercise Episcopal Acts if as a Conscientious Lover of Unity he be not otherwise restrained by Rules of maintaining Unity and Order in any part of the World The first Bishops being chosen from among the first Converts were first vested with powers and then by gathering more Profelites were to get Subjects and inlarge Territories being Ordain'd Bishops of those who should afterwards believe as St. Clement says And the Holy Apostles who stood vested with all the Episcopal powers were not tyed to any place but by Christs Commission were left equally and indefinitely to the whole Church And till the great Council of Chalcedon which was held about the Year of Christ 451. were the Periodeutai or Circuitors so called as Zonoras observes because they were to go about hither and thither to keep the Faithful in their Duty not having any fixt Place or Chair of their own At the Synod of Laodicea about the Year of Christ 36â— 't is left to these Periodeutas to supply the want of Fixt Bishops in those places and Countries that were not thought considerable enough to have a Bishop fixed among them And afterwards at the time of the Council of Chalcedon mention is again made of them As of one Balentius whom being a scandalous Liver Ibaâ— is accused in the Council to have Ordained Presbyter and Periodeutes And of one Alexander who in the same Council is styled the most Reverend Presbyter and Periodeutes This great Council of Chalcedon indeed forbids any Presbyter or Deacon to be Ordain'd absolutely or at large i. e. without having and declaring the appropriate place or seat wherein he is to officiate and vacates the Ordinations which shall be made otherwise And the same has been done since by the Canons of other Councils forbidding any to be Ordain'd sine Titulo without a Title to some certain Place or Benefice But these Local Limitations or Appropriations of place in giving Orders come not in for the necessity and essence of Ordination And therefore some are excepted therein and allowed still to be Ordain'd without them whose Ordinations are notwithstanding as valid as theirs who are Ordain'd with them Thus Fellows and Chaplains of Colleges and Masters of Arts who have been able to live five years of themselves in the Universities c. are excepted by our own Canon and they who have Patrimony and Provision of Maintenance of their own other ways are excepted by the Canon of the Council of Lateran And if such Limitation of place were of the essence of Ordination they could be but once placed as they are once Ordain'd and not remove from place to place without a new Ordination But they were brought in for a prudent provision to keep the Clergy from being burthensome or to prevent more entring into Orders than are requisite for the Churches Needs or can live upon its maintenance as appears by the Canons themselves Moreover Bishops when for this purpose and for maintenance of Unity and Order they are tyed up to places in their Administrations besides the local relation of Bishops of such a place who are to have a more special regard for their own proper Division they stand also as I have already shewed under another relation of Cathalik Bishops or of Bishops of the Church at large who as there is need of it and as occasion is offered are to have a general inspection and regard too for all the rest The collection of all Churches as St. Cyprian says is but one Episcopate and those many People who are fed and inspected by so many Pastors make all but one Flock Whereof particular Dividends are so intrusted to every single Bishop as to make them stand obliged and accountable not only for their own rata pars that is their proper share or division but as Partners in