all the Acts of the Council to be read over as their Master Celestine had given them in command which being done they by the Sovereign Authority of St. Peter and his Successors in the Apostolick See give validity to the Sentence without which state of the Papal Veult Le Roy it could have had no effect But the Council were glad of their Concurrence to ballance it against the opposition of John of Antioch and upon it they write a second Letter to the Emperor informing him of the agreement both of the Eastern and Western Church in the Sentence against Nestorius and request him not to credit thâ— Letters that after the sentence of tâ—e Catholick Church so fully declared in Council were threatned to be sent abroad by some Men thaâ— preferr'd their friendship to Nestorius before the Peace of the Church After this Cyril and Memnon move the Council to call John of Antioch to account for the injury that he had done to them in their Deposition and to the whole Council in controuling its sentence Upon this they send some of their number to cite John to appear but by the favor of Candidianus he has his Guards as well as Nestorâ—us and by them the Bishops are affronted and repulst and finally refusing to appear he and his Associates are condemned and deposed and their deposition certified to the Emperor and Pope Celestine But the Schismaticks had the Courtiers to back them and therefore are so far from submitting to the Sentence of the Council that they both defie that and depose the Council it self and send their Complaints to the Emperor of the violent courses used against them as if they were in continual danger of their Lives and ply the Courtiers with dismal stories of barbarous usage beg them by all the motives of Humanity to rescue them from their dismal condition But their complaints to the Emperor being vouch't by Candidianus the Emperor sends Letters to the Council by Palladius to null all their Acts for which the Schismaticks you may be sure return their letter of humble thanks applauding the Wisdom and Goodness of his Imperial Majesty But the Council finding hereby that the Emperor had been abused with false tales write to him by Palladius to assure his Majesty of the truth of those Acts that they had sent him and whereas Candidianus had given him other Information out of his friendship to Nestorius they assure him that he was altogether ignorant of the Proceedings of the Council and had not so much as ever seen the Books in which their Acts were enter'd That the Bishops who join'd with Nestorius were either such as had been already deposed or such as knew themselves obnoxious to the Discipline of the Church and so must have been deposed though they had continued with the Council And as for their complaints of Violence they were so far from truth that all the Guards attended Nestorius and his Party that Irenaeus broke into the Council in a tumultuary way and with Military force to the great danger of their Lives and humbly petition his Majesty that five of the Council might attend him to give him farther Information in the presence of Candidianus Upon this Irenaeus who was a Courtier that accompanied Candidianus to the Council out of meer zeal for Nestorius is posted away to Constantinople by the schismatical Party with fresh Certificates of the wild and disorderly behavior of Cyril and Memnon Neither was he remiss in his Embassy and so improved their Tales by word of Mouth that though he had been prevented by Messengers from the Council who came three days before him and had pâ—epossest the greatest part of the People and stagger'd the Emperor himselâ— yet he so satisfied him with his Relation of the whole Matter that he confirm'd the deposition of Cyril and Memnon as well as Nestorius And sends John his Comes Sacrorum another favourer of Nestorius to see it put in execution who finding the City in a Tumult about those three Persons he commits them all to prison and then takes upon him to preâ—ch Peace and Reconciliation to the Bishops and censures them very severely for being so implacable in their Quarrels as he is pleased to call their resolution for the Orthodox Faith and the Discipline of the Church And setting aside the cause of truth in the case it was an unpardonable Affront to the Discipline of the Church that when the Controversie had been determin'd and the Hereticks deposed by the sentence of so great a Council this unlearned Courtier should presume to set aside their Authority and as if they stood upon equal ground after the sentence of the Church was pass't advise both Parties to shake hands and be friends and because the Bishops scorn'd to put such a childish slur upon their own Authority and the discipline of the Church as to admit Offenders to communion without Canonical satisfaction call them implacable Prelates But now the Council finding that both the Emperor and themselves had been abused in that the Letter of the Nestorians to the Emperor about the deposition of Cyril and Memnon was written in the name of the Council and the Emperors Letter to confirm their deposition as well as that of Nestorius was directed both to the Council and the Conventicle as if they had been but one body of Men they write two Letters to him to inform him of the Imposture but they are intercepted by the Courtiers who still persist to lay all the blame of all these heats and disorders upon the Council it self In which Office Count John was most busie at his return home thinking himself affronted by the Council when they would not prostitute the sacred Discipline of the Church to his illiterate device of Peace and Comprehension But the Council having no return from the Emperor to their Letters and suspecting their suppression they write to the Clergy of Constantinople to inform the Emperor by Address of all the Abuses that were put upon his Majesty and the Council But this falls short for the next Letter that we have is from the Clergy of Constantinople to the Council complaining of the want of Correspondence all Passages both by Sea and Land being blockt up and declaring that they were ready to do any service that the Council would be pleased to command them By which the Council perceive that the first came not to their lands and therefore send a second to the same effect that came safe and upon it they petition the Emperor and inform hâ—m of the true state of the whole Matter and the Emperor being puzled with al these cross Stories orders Commissioners from both Parties to repair to Constantinople that he might understand the real Truth of the Controversy Eight Commissioners are sent on each side and the Legates of the Council are commanded in their Instructions to insist upon the deposition of Nestorius and nothing else as the Article of Peace And the Legates from
we have by sad experience found a long and fatal Schism till the Divine Providence cured the wound by your Majesties Care and Power speaking to Justinian and therefore great Sir in the name of God persevere in so good a work that has been accepted with the joy of the whole Christian World and blot not out its glory by deserting it c. And that is the natural and inevitable Event of all trimming tricks that instead of reconciling Parties as 't is pretended it only lets them loose to worry one another And withal first adds to the insolence of that Party that had been tyed up the contempt of that Authority that restrain'd it and then kindles the rage and indignation of the other Party that had gained the upper-hand and lastly that which is worst of all it makes breaches for new Divisions And so it hap'ned here Peter Mongus having by this device got possession of his Bishoprick he endeavours to trim and comply with both Parties and by it incurs the hatred of both loosing his own without winning the other And they communicating neither with the Catholicks nor with their own Bishop became a new Sect called Acephali i. e. Men without an Head so natural is it for all shufflings in Government to end in Anarchy and Confusion It was this wise way of quacking to cure the wounds of the Church by Irenicum Plaisters and comprehensive Weapon-salves that brought the breach between the Eastern and Western Churches to an incurable Eresipulus or Fire of Contention over the Face of the Christian Church For Petrus Moggus being by that means received by Acacius not only to Catholick Communion but advanced to a Top-Bishoprick contrary not only to the ancient Canons but to the late Decree of the Council of Calcedon Acacius is upon it call'd to account by Pope Simplicius and persisting in his Treachery is excommunicated in a Council at Rome and that laid the ground of all those Contests that followed after upon the Acacian Schism as the Romanists stile it to the final Separation of both Churches And what else can be expected from such a daubing Cement of Peace to unite men in the same Communion as leaves them under all their differences and contrarieties of Opinion a contradiction in the nature of the thing for if they are in good earnest they will pursue their differences if they are not indulgence is needless and they are to be reclaim'd another way but whether they are or are not if they are allowed their liberty every man will be of his own mind and an enemy to every man that is not and the result of all is that how much soever they dissent among themselves they shall be forced to counterfeit an agreement but dissembling is no Tye. And therefore after such devices the next thing that we always hear of is that the breach is made much wider And thus here beside the Contest between Acacius and Simplicius Petrus Moggus falls out with both and instead of taking the Catholicks into his comprehensive Embrace in a short time finding they would not quit their Principles and the Council of Calcedon raises a severe Persecution against them and peremptorily refuses all Communion to all that adhere to the Council and upon it the Church of Alexandria continued in a State of Schism through a long Succession of Bishops into the next Century till the Pacisicators again fell out among themselves and subdivided into new and fiercer Factions and Animosities And not only that Church to which the healing Henoticon was particularly directed but the whole Catholick Church was every where dissolved into irreconcileable Wars and Confusions But as sad as the event of the Henoticon proved there is one pleasant Passage to be observed about it that whereas before there were but two Factions in the Church i. e. for and against the Council of Calcedon this created a third call'd the Haesitantes or Neuters that were neither for nor against the Council and as both Parties hated these more than they did one another as Traitors to both so they again under pretence of indifferency and moderation requited them with all the violence of Persecution and when they had got the Emperor Anastasius a serious Prince into their hands they stir'd him up to prosecute both the extreme Parties with a more than ordinary severity as we shall see more at large when we come to his Reign But first let us take a view of the particular Mischiefs that it soon produced under Zeno himself who too after all his trimming was forced at last to turn Persecutor By whom the Henoticon was contrived it is not easie to determine with any certainty I know it is generally laid upon Acacius but I suspect that Report to have been raised by his Enemies at Rome only to blast his Reputation But though there is no clear Evidence that it was his contrivance yet it is undeniable that he gave it too great acceptance and by that means gave too just advantage to the Bishops of Rome to insult over him For though their private Design was to beat down the growing greatness of the See of Constantinople yet he deserved the utmost severity that they could use against him by betraying the Discipline and Authority of the Christian Church so dishonorably as to receive such Persons into its Communion that had been cast out of it by no less Judgment than the Sentence of a General Council and that upon no better Warrant than a Mandate from Court And that I take to be the Shop in which the wise Contrivance was forged between the Courtiers out of an Itch to be tampering with Church-work and the outed Eutychians either to recover their Preferments or usurp other Mens and through the whole sequel of the Story we shall find the old Eusebian Game playing over again But whoever was the Author of it it was cunningly enough contrived to impose upon the World and serve the Eutychian Cause without owning it The best copy of it is the Greek in Evagrius The Latin Version in Liberatus is false and barbarous perverting the sense for want of sufficient skill in both Languages It establisht the Nicene Faith as own'd by the following Councils it condemn'd both Nestorius and Eutyches by name and though it says nothing of the Council of Calcedon it self it establisht the Faith of the Council but without regard to its Authority and the Emperor himself declares That as for his own part he imbraced the Council of Calcedon though he would not have it imposed upon the Catholick Church So that at the bottom the whole design of the Project was only to take off the Authority of that Council and then the Eutychians were at liberty to play their Game and drive their own Bargains and so the Markets were soon set up in the greatest Sees and the chief Chapmen were Peter Moggus at Alexandria and Peter â—ullo at Antioch Upon the death of Timotheus Aelurus who
that great and enormous difficulty that has so long puzled us to make out how this Council should be so received in the Church among the General Councils without the Popes Authority But whether the Recantation were spurious or genuine and that is still in the dark it will not salve the business for if it were genuine it is only a confession of his old Wickedness and that he was managed in it by the Devil after he sat in St. Peter's Chair but what the real Devil was that tempted him is too evident from his shifting sides as his Interest lay Though the greatest demonstration of it is his Plea that he had hitherto erred for want of information and right understanding of the Controversie whereas it is too notorious from the whole progress of it that no Man could be better acquainted with it than himself and whoever reads his Judicatum upon it at the conference at his first coming to Constantinople and his Constitutum sent to the Council seven years after will never of all Excuses allow that of ignorance If it be spurious then if the Apology were good for any thing 't is lost And I must confess it seems somewhat incredible to me that so publick an Instrument concerning so great an Affair should be altogether unknown to his immediate Successors that were so deeply ingaged in the Controversie against the Schismaticks especially Pelagius the second and Gregory the Great who never produced its Authority against them but most of all Gregory who transmitted the Acts of the Council to Queen Theodelinda But though the writing be forged it is plain enough that he actually complied as Eustathius a Cotemporary Writer affirms in the life of Eutychius and Liberatus broadly suggests when he says that Vigilius suffer'd much in the Cause though he were not crown'd which was then the proper Phrase for Apostasie But that he was received into the Emperor's Favor appears from the Imperial Grant of certain Priviledges to the Citizens of Rome that was sent by Vigilius to endear him to the City though in his return home he dyed of the Stone in Sicily and is succeeded by Pelagius the first who though he had been banisht by Justinian whilst he was Apâ—crisiary at Constantinople to Vigilius upon account of his zeal in defence of the tria Capitula yet before he is admitted to the Papacy he both owns the Authority of the Council of Calcedon and condemns the Capitula and after incites Narses then Governor of Italy to reduce the Schismaticks of Venice and Istria by the Secular Power and the same was done by all his Successors till the Schism dyed So that in short it was not the Pope that determin'd the Council but the Council that determin'd the Pope and if it was confirm'd by Vigilius as that does not make the Council good so it is only another proof of the shuffling dishonesty of the Man If it were not confirm'd by him but by his Successors and that was the only Plea in its behalf before De Marca's discovery then it is not the Pope that makes or unmakes a General Council for if so then this was none because rejected by the present Pope Vigilius and yet it was one by the approbation of his Successors Though when all is done the Notion of a General Council is but a Notion for there was never any such thing in reality and all those that bear that name were more properly Councils of the Eastern Empire there being very few Western Bishops present at them And they were only call'd General Councils in opposition to Provincial and ought rather to have been stil'd Imperial as summon'd by the Emperor himself whereas other lesser Councils were summon'd by the Bishops themselves And that places this Council in the same rank with the other four because it was summon'd out of all parts of the Empire and not confin'd to Provinces and Diocesses as the Metropolitical or Patriarchal Councils were But that the Summons of the Bishop of Rome was necessary to the calling of a General Council and his confirmation of their Decrees necessary to their Validity is one great branch of the Papal Usurpation as I hope in its due place to prove at large against Petrus de Marca But to proceed in the business of this present Council all Parties concern'd in it labor to clear themselves of all blame and lay all the burthen of these Disorders upon other Mens shoulders but though it may seem a severe yet it is an impartial Judgment that they were all too faulty As for the Emperor 's own part it is evident that the publication of his Imperial Edict was an illegal act because against the Authority of a Council owned by himself though had he understood it so he would never have done it but he was perswaded that it was no reflection upon the Council it self because it was no contradiction to any of their own direct Decrees but only concern'd the Opinions of some private Persons that the Council thought not fit to condemn at that time though seeing what use the Eutychians made of it he supposed it now useful to the settlement of the Church without any Affront to the Council it being only to change Counsels with change of Affairs This was all the Emperor's meaning and it could have done no great mischief had it not been abused by the craft of Theodorus and his Acephali who perswaded him that it could be no abatement to the Authority of the Council and yet when it was done used it as an Argument to subvert it And then as for those that fought so furiously as the Africans did for the honor of the Council against the tria Capitula though the honor of the Council was remotely concernâ—d in it yet because it was not so apprehended or intended by the Emperor they might and ought in duty to have complyed with his Royal Pleasure only adding a Sa vo to the honor of the Council that had been easily granted and that would have disappointed the craft of the Eâ—tychians and caught them in a snare of their own setting and they must either have own'd the Council or put off their Vizard So that which side soever was in the right they were all in the wrong when they made a Schism in the Church about it for the thing was not Tanti in it self as to warrant the breach of Catholick Communion Though at last the bottom of all these unhappy Quarrels was founded in St. Cyril's over-doing Anathema's against Nestorianism that yet he endeavour'd to impose upon the Catholick Church as so many Articles of Faith Which because Theodoret and Ibas supposed to be too hard an Imposition the Eutychians took advantage of to represent them as Favourers of the Nestorian Heresie though it is plain from the tenour of all their Writings that they were as little guilty of that as Cyril himself but were cautious of spoiling the Cause by too much niceness of Speculation and
Religion and Loyalty The Second Part. OR THE History of the Concurrence of the Imperial and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in the Government of the Church from the Beginning of the Reign of Jovian to the End of the Reign of Justinian By SAMUEL PARKER D.D. Arch-Deacon of Canterbury LONDON Printed for John Baker at the Three Pigeons in St. Paul's Church-yard MDCLXXXV TO THE READER THE Church of England having acknowledged and declared His Majestie 's Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical to be of the same Nature and Extent with that Authority that the Christian Emperors claim'd and exercised in the Primitive Church I deem'd it no unuseful piece of Service to my King and Country to inform my self and my Fellow-Subjects out of the Records of those times of our true Duty to the Royal Supremacy And to this end I have drawn up as exact a Chart as my little Skill could reach of the Primitive Practice of the Three first Centuries after the Empire became Christian. Neither have I only Surveyed and coasted the general History but have sounded every part of it and not only described the safe Passages and right Chanels through which the abler Pilots steer'd their Courses but the Shallows the Gulfs the Rocks and the Sands upon which the less Skilful or less Fortunate Shipwrackt their Governments Neither have I presumed to make any Political Remarks of my own but have only observed the Natural and Historical Events of Matters of Fact And by the Experience of 300 years in which all Experiments were tryed we are fully instructed in all the right and all the wrong Measures of Government in the Christian Church In the Reigns of the great Constantine Jovian Gratian Theodosius the Great Arcadius Honorius Theodosius the younger Marcian Leo Justin and Justinian are exemplified the Natural good Effects of abetting the Power of the Church by good Laws and their effectual Execution In the Reigns of Julian and Valentinian we may observe the inevitable Mischiefs of Toleration and Liberty of Conscience In the Reigns of Constantius and Valens but especially of Zeno and Anastasius are to be seen the fatal and bloody Consequences of pretended Moderation or as we phrase it comprehension that indeed unites all Parties but then it is like a Whirlpool into one common Gulf of Ruin and Confusion This is the short account of this Undertaking and the Historical Events of things being withal so very Natural they will of themselves amount to a fair Demonstration of the Necessity of Discipline in the Church and Penal Laws in the State All that I can ensure for the Performance is its Truth and Integrity I have faithfully and impartially perused all the most Material and Original Records both of Church and State and out of them and them alone have Collected the ensuing History and if that prove true and for that I stand bound the Conclusion that I aim at will make it self The CONTENTS SEct. I. The State of the Church under Jovian The Hypocrisie both of the Eusebians to recover their Bishopricks and of the Acacians to preserve theirs in owning the Nicene Faith page 1. § II. Of Valentinian his Edict for Liberty of Conscience The struglings of the Eusebians against the Acacians Their Councils at Lampsacus and Tyana to that end They are defeated by the juglings of the Acacians The dishonest craft of the two Leaders Eudoxius in the East and Auxentius in the West p. 7. § III. The Persecution of St. Basil by the Eudoxians his discourse with the Prefect Modestus Dear to the Emperor Valens Valens himself no Arian but abused by the Eudoxians the deplorable State of the Eastern Church at that time under their Oppressions St. Basil's misfortune in receiving Eustathius of Sebasta to communion The death of St. Athanasius The Heresie of Apollinaris how suppressed p. 27. § IV. The Election of St. Ambrose to the See of Milan The death of Valentinian the mischiefs he brought upon the Empire by his principle of Liberty of Conscience Themistius the Philosopher's Address to Valens in behalf of the Orthodox The Emperor Gratian's Rescripts and effectual Proceedings against Hereticks His restitution of the Discipline of the Church The bounds of the Imperial and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction briefly stated The great Schism at Antioch occasion'd by Julian's toleration p. 35. § V. The singular care of Theodosius the Great to settle the Church and Orthodox Faith Vindicated in his Institution of the Communicatory Bishops He summons the general Council at Constantinople and confirms all their Decrees by several Imperial Rescripts Wisely forbids all Disputes about Religion Assists the young Valentinian against the Tyrum Maximus and prevails with him to reverse his severe Rescript against the Catholicks p. 55. § VI. Valentinian made the first open breach upon the Power of the Church in taking to himself the Power of Judicature in Matters of Faith St. Ambrose his Sufferings upon that account His Embassy to Maximus his Wisdom and Courage Maximus his Conquest of Italy and overthrow by Theodosius The Stars raised by the Hereticks at Constantinople in the Emperor's absence The method of lying People into Tumults His effectual enacting and executing Laws against them settles the Church in Peace p. 66. § VII His Laws made without the concurrence of the Church for reforming the Abuses of Widows and Deaconesses the disorders of Monks and the Abuse of Church-Sanctuary p. 81. § VIII His Laws without the same concurrence against Manichees Apostates Pagans and in behalf of the Jews p. 89. § IX Of the Council of Aquileia Of the Schism at Rome between Damasus and Ursicinus Of the Schism at Alexandria between Peter and Lucius Of the Schism at Antioch between Paulinus and Flavianus p. 98. § X. The unparallell'd Immorality of the Priscillian Heresie The Prosecution of them by Ithacius justified against Mr. B. they were executed as Malefactors and Traitors not as Hereticks St. Martin's great indiscretion in interceding for them p. 124. § XI The praise of Theodosius against the Calumnies of Zosimns The Laws of his Son Arcadius against the Hereticks p. 152. § XII His Laws of Privilege to the Catholicks The several Laws of Tuition The Law of civil Decision in the Church by Arbitration The Laws against Appeals from the Church to the civil Power p. 167. § XIII His Laws of Reformation of Discipline Against the tumults of Monks the abuse of Sanctuary against the Johannites against Apostates In behalf of the Jews The Laws of Honorius against and for the Jews The Laws of both Emperors under the Title de Paganis p. 180. § XIV The history and design of the Theodosian Code Theodosius his own Novels Of the Parabolani of Alexandria The famous Law concerning the Churches of â—lâ—yricum explain'd together with his other Laws and the Laws of Valentinian the third p. 198. § XV. The History and Acts of the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius and Imperial ratification of the Decreeâ—â—f the Church by Marcian p. 225. § XVI The
there be in the Church than to take away the very Being of the Church by distinguishing between the sacred Function which they grant to be the proper office of the Church and the Power over sacred things which they annex intirely to the Civil Power by which distinction they leave the Governors of the Church no other Power than to administer the Offices of Religion without any Power of punishing Offenders against the Laws of Religion and then they have none at all for there can be no power without a Power of inflicting Penalties And there lyes the true distinguishing point between these two Jurisdictions not in the Matters about which their Power is imployed but in the Penalties by which it is inforced Thus to be short and give one example for all whereas Justinian leaves to the Church the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sins committed against the Ecclesiastical Order by the Clergy and to the State the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Sins against the Laws of the State This division is so far from being true that both Powers are equally concern'd in both Crimes for if any Clergy-man disturb the Government as the Donatists did by a Contest about a Canon of the Church then though it were an Ecclesiastical sin it concern'd the Civil Government to check the Mischief by the proper Penalties of Sedition as Honorius drove them into banishment and thereby restored the long interrupted Peace of the Empire And on the other hand if any Clergy-Man let him be never so regular to the Laws and Rules of the Church shall in a state-Faction ingage in a Rebellion against his Soveraign that is properly a Political sin the Church is bound to inflict such Penalties upon him as are denounced by the Laws of their Religion against all Traitors and Rebels i. e. to cast him out of their Society and the capacity of Salvation And that is the only difference in the case that when the King cuts a Traitor off for this life the Church cuts him off â—or the next and so it is in all other Crimes where the Prince punishes for breach of the Laws of the Land the Church punishes proportionably for breach of the Laws of Religion And as by the Laws of the Land the Penalty is proportionable to the Crime so is it by the Laws of the Church for as some Offences are Capital and some only Penal in the State so in the Church some are punisht by Penance some by utter excision or cutting off from the Kingdom of Heaven which is the same thing in its kind as cutting off life in this World So that the same Crimes are so far from belonging to different Judicatures that all belong to both the only difference is that one punishes here and the other hereafter And now this one observation of the difference of Penalties in the same cause being supposed which cannot be be avoided without destroying or intrenching upon the Rights of Church or State the bounds of Jurisdiction are evident enough without splitting of Causes and it is easy enough to understand how the same Causes belong to both Jurisdictions from their different ends without setting any restraint to either Power And thus having in this short digression as briefly as I could secured this point of the Controversy which is the main Hinge upon which depends the disingenuous Contention of both the extreme Parties both Papal and Erastian I now return to the course of the History which was broke off at the year 376. At which time the Huns breaking into the Eastern Empire and Valens being extremely distrest by them and the Goths at the same time St. Jerom and Crosius say that he repented of his former severity and upon it recall'd the Orthodox Bishops from banishment but Socrates only says and that much more probably that being otherwise imployed he desisted and so the banisht Bishops particularly Peter of Alexandria had opportunity of returning home And that I doubt was all notwithstanding St. Jerom's lavish story of his Repentance which good Father partly by his boldness partly by his eagerness has occasion'd the greatest Mistakes in the story of the Church and therefore when he is a single witness his Testimony is not to be regarded in any Matter of Fact unless when he speaks of his own knowledg for he was an honest Man and would not lye yet he was so very hot-headed that it often betrayed him into false-hoods and therefore his single Authority ought not to be trusted unless in Matters of his own knowledg And by relying upon it and that contrary to the testimony of calmer Authors great darkness has been brought upon the Records of the Church and has particularly blemisht Baronius his Annals who has very often followed his Authority not only without but against all other Authors and by it run himself into a great many Mistakes against the best Records of the Church And this I take to be one though no material one that Valens repented of his Persecution and callâ—d back the banisht Bishops for which there is no proof but only his saying so and they that followed his Authority otherwise we do not find that they were solemnly recall'd till Gratian came into the East after his death when indeed all the Historians agree that they were restored In the Year 377 a Council was held at Antioch for preventing or rather curing a Schism in that Church that was first created by Julian's spiteful and treacherous toleration to all Sects for by that means 3 Bishops had been set up in one Church Meletius who was first an Acacian but afterwards revolting to the Nicene Faith Euzoius was put in his place by the Acacian Faction and Paulinus set up by that hot Man Lucifer Calaritanus who would accept of none of Meletius his repentance in opposition to both With Meletius the Arian Converts communicated with Paulinus the old Orthodox because Paulinus himself had ever been so and as for Euzoius he presided over the Acacian Party But he dying about this time a Controversy arose who should be the true and proper Bishop of the Place in which not only the People of the City made Parties but the Bishops of other Churches St. Basil was zealous for Meletius Pope Damasus for Paulinus so that it became a Controversy between the East and West But at last this expedient was found out that both during their lives should keep their own shares but when ever one of them dyed the surviver should govern the whole Church and that the Schism might not be perpetuated an Oath was administred to six of the eldest Presbyters of that Church who were the only Candidates for the Election to submit to the Decree and this for the present ended the Quarrel And yet when after this Meletius dyed Flavianus one of the six Presbyters that had sworn never to invade the Bishoprick whilst either of the present Bishops survived violently thrusts himself into the See and
sets up a Schism against Paulinus to the great and long disturbance of the Church as we shall afterward see though Theodoret either out of a picque to Paulinus or partiality to Flavianus relates the whole Matter so awkerdly as not only to pervert but apparently to falsifie the whole Story § V. In the Year 379 is the great Theodosius taken into a partnership of the Government who by his Wisdom settled all the distractions of the Eastern-Empire and by his courage recovered the Western when it was lost At first he is left to the Government of the East as being at that time by the folly of Valens and the wickedness of the Eunuchs and Eudoxians much the most troublesom and therefore in the next year after his being settled in the Government he takes care for the settlement of Religion and for that end is himself baptised by Acholius Bishop of Thessalonica that at that time belong'd to the Eastern Empire and as the first fruits of his sacramental Vow he immediately set out and that probably at the good Bishop's motion that famous or as it is commonly stiled Golden Rescript de fide Catholicâ to the divided People of Constantinople commanding the universal Reception of the old Orthodox Faith ut secundum Apostolicam disciplinam evangelicamque doctrinam Patris et Filii et Spiritâ—s sancti unam Deitatem sub parili Majestate sub piâ Trinitate credamus that we believe one God-head of the Father Son and Holy Ghost all of equal Majesty in the holy Trinity according to the Doctrin of the Apostles and Evangelists And as for all that refused this Faith of what Faction and Denomination soever they were all adjudged Hereticks and the Laws against them put in force And soon after this the great Church of Constantinople is by his command taken from the Hereticks who had in one shape or other kept possession of it full forty years and deliver'd up to the Catholicks And this was seconded by another Rescript in the year following to the Proconsul of Asia that had been all along infested with the most numerous swarms of Hereticks in which he strictly commands all Churches to be taken away from all Bishops and Priests that refused to subscribe the Nicene Faith and for better security further Orders that no Man should be admitted to any Church but such as were approved by a certain Committee of Orthodox Bishops appointed by himself for that purpose Here I must confess that I once thought this Law an invasion upon the Rights of the Church by confounding the old bounds of Provinces and destroying the Prerogatives of Metropolitans because they were chosen without regard to either but having now traced its history more accurately by comparing the Imperial Laws with the Records of the Church and indeed it is impossible to gain a full knowledg of either without a competent knowledg of both and so considering the time and occasion of enacting it it plainly clears it self from any such ill suspicion For first if it were made before the Council of Constantinople as some will have it it was then but a temporary Provision till a better settlement could be made by the approaching Council and therefore if it had been an intrenchment upon the Church it was not design'd to be perpetual but was taken up as the best expedient that the necessity of the Times would admit and all necessity is its own dispensation But if it were enacted after the Council and if its Date be not mistaken and so it was for the Council sat in May June July and this bears date August then it is only a confirmation of the Decree of the Church that had settled the Nicene Faith But which soever it was this institution of the Communicatory Bishops was no alteration either of the bounds or the Rules of Discipline for the Ecclesiastical Government of Provinces under Metropolitans stood as before but it was only a Rule to his own Officers not to deliver up Churches to any that did not bring Certificates from some of these Bishops but when they brought them they were to be admitted after the usual manner if Presbyters by the Bishop and his Synod of Presbyters if Bishops by the Metropolitan and his Synod of Bishops Neither can any thing be inferr'd for equalling Diocesan Bishops or preferring them above Metropolitans by Nectarius his being made the first Man in the Instrument for it was no matter of power but of trust the Emperor chose them not with any regard to their Authority but from his knowledg of their Integrity in the Orthodox Faith and therefore being best acquainted with Nectarius the Bishop of his own City and his old Favourite he naturally named him in the first place and the rest probably by the information of others This is all that I can find intended by this Emperor 's erecting this Committee of Communicatory Bishops it was to guide himself and his Officers not to determine the Church And now are we come to the great Council of Constantinople whose main business it was to settle the Nicene Faith and anathematise the Arian Heresy and all the Sects that had been spawn'd out of it but because the Macedonians had as we have seen above so often own'd the Nicene Faith and particularly in the Council at Lampsacus the good Emperor in hopes to bring them over summon'd them to the Council 36 in number but it seems they were at that time in a sullen fit and would not be prevail'd upon to stand to their former subscriptions and so depart the Council But the Fathers proceed and in the first place vote the Nicene Faith unalterable condemn all the several dissenters from it by name make some Canons useful for the present settlement of the Church and give an account of their proceedings to his Imperial Majesty in these words That meeting at Constantinople in obedience to his Summons they had preserved Peace among themselves confirm'd the Nicene Faith anathematised all Heresies that had been raised against it enacted divers Canons for the due settlement of the discipline of the Church they now request his Majesty that he would be pleased to ratifie the Decrees of the Council that as they were call'd together by his Imperial Letters so he would be pleased to give an effectual conclusion to their Decrees That was the true state of the Church under his wise reign as it was under Constantines to summon them to Council by his own Authority and leave them to the liberty of their own determinations and then if he pleased to inforce them by his own Imperial Laws and Penalties And that he did to purpose for beside the former Law of Communicatory Bishops that was most probably publisht at this time he enacted another injoining the Nicene Faith forbidding publick Assemblies to all that would not subscribe it condemning the Photinians Arians Eunomians by name and commanding all Churches within the Empire to be
there is Evidence of such a Custom yet there is none of such a Word and therefore I think there is no need of any such far-fetcht Curiosity when the words are so intelligible in their natural sense against the Court-Eunuchs that had been all along the Patrons of this Faction and so were to be restrain'd by this Law of forfeiture of Estates being generally Men of great Wealth No says Gothofred that was only under Constantius yes say I they first set up their Trade of Simony under him but continued it in all following Reigns and did all that Mischief that was brought upon the Church under this Emperor's Predecessor Valens and therefore for preventing this Disorder for the time to come in these great Courtiers he forbids them to act at all for these Hereticks under the great Penalty of Confiscation of their whole Estate Or rather it is most probable that Eunuch was become a Proverbial Nick-name to the whole Party for the Trade between the Court Eunuchs and the Eunomians was so notorious under Valens that it might in just derision be named the Eunuchean Sect. This is I fancy the most easie sense of the words In the same year he puts out another Rescript to restrain the Meetings of all sorts of Hereticks in the City or Suburbs of Constantinople Gothofred conjectures that the Suburbs are here added because Eunomius being expell'd the City kept his Conventicles there as Sozomen informs us but that is one of Sozomen's Mistakes for he was not at that time banisht from Constantinople but Calcedon But his Conjectures why all sorts of Heresies and Errors ar◠here named is more probable because at that time the Eunomians themselves were broke into several Factions and Animosities though this is not singular to this Law but all the Laws of this Emperor run in the same comprehensive stile to prevent all Shifts and Evasions In the years 392 and 394 to all the former Edicts and Penalties he publishes his Rescripts against all Ordination by Hereticks under a severe Pecuniary Mulct upon the Persons both Ordaining and Ordain'd The same Law that his Son Honorius at first executed against the Donatists as we have seen in the History of that Schism The last Law that he made about these Matters was to abrogate the 17th Law that disabled the Eunomians from making Wills and as he often as well as all other Emperors varied his Laws upon Reasons of State so he had now some particular Reason that induced him to reverse this and what that was is not to be known but by Conjecture he was then departing to the War against Eugenius and so was willing to leave all People as easie and peaceable as he could especially the Courtiers if the Law referr'd to them or the whole Party whom its severity had made Malecontents And therefore this Indulgence was in a short time after taken away by his Son Arcadius this Emperor dying in his return home and before he could reverse it But the most usual reason of their altering their Rescripts were the various Tempers of their Ministers of State The former Laws were enacted when Tatianus was Praefectus Praetorio a Vigorous and an Active and an experienced Man that prosecuted them with all severity But this was made when Rufinus succeeded to the Office who being at his first entrance upon it more wary though otherwise of a bold Temper advised the Suspension of that severe Law for those nice times and as soon as they were over again advised its execution And thus this great Prince broke the heart of the Faction by abetting the Sentence of the Church against them with vigorous Laws And that had been sooner done had they been more vigorously executed by his Judges and Officers whose Neglect or Connivance was the reason of his so often renewing the same Law And there indeed generally lyes the greatest Miscarriages of all Governments And of this his Son Honorius was so convinced both by his Father's and his own Experience that he made all his Laws effectual by annexing severe Penalties upon their non-execution § VII But beside these Laws to back these new Decrees of the Church against Hereticks and Heresies he enacted others by his own Authority to rescue the Ancient rules of Discipline that were grown obsolete by the abuses and corruptions of time And first he reduces the Order of Deaconesses to their Primitive Institution commanding in pursuance of the rule of the Apostles and Practice of the Primitive Church that none be admitted into that Order under the Age of Sixty and that too with several Limitations that she appoint Curators or Trustees for her Children that she carry away with her none of the Plate or Jewels of the Family and that she bequeath nothing by Will to the Church Clergy or Poor though the particular occasion of this Law was that wicked Fact that Sozomen reports to have been committed at this time by a Deacon of the Church of Constantinople with one of the Deaconesses of the same Church who had probably setled her personal Estate upon him not for the Churches Service but her own And in the same Rescript commands That all Women who shave their Hair upon pretence of Religion be cast out of the Church which was done not only in pursuance of the rule of the Apostle and the Canons of the Church particularly the Council of Gangra that was then taken into the Codex of the Laws Ecclesiastical but of the Law of Nature it self to prevent the Confusion of Sexes the distinction being chiefly preserved by this Custom This Rescript was publisht in July but in September following the Clause disabling Deaconesses to dispose of their Moveables by Will to Pious and Charitable Uses is reverst provided the Will be made in time of Health and not upon their Death-beds when they might be too apt to be imposed upon by Superstition and the Frauds of Priests At the first Law Baronius takes fire as if it were a violent restraint of Devotion to God and Charity to the Poor and an Abridgement of the Priviledges of Holy Church which therefore he says was soon cancel'd by the Advice of St. Ambrose that great Assertor of Ecclesiastical Liberty But that St. Ambrose had any hand in reversing it we have no Authority of any Historian that I know of but the Cardinal himself But beside by his leave such restraining Laws are requisite nay necessary in all Commonwealths for there is nothing so Prodigal as Superstition and wherever there is Religion that will creep into great numbers of the People and therefore it concerns the Government every where to take care that Families and the Publick be not defrauded by Prodigal Zeal or under pretence of Devotion And this abuse was so early that when Constantine the Great made a Law to the Citizens of Rome to enable all Persons whatsoever to give by Will to the Church not only what Legacies but what Lands they pleased
were shelter'd against the Laws and honest Men cheated of their Rights for I do not find any case in which it was at this time excepted but only Treason and therefore it was often requisite to give check to its Licentiousness as Theodosius here does in the Christian Church and Tiberius was forced to do as to the Heathen Asyla § VIII But beside these Laws made to abet the Laws of the Church he made divers relating to Matters of Religion which though they concern'd the Church concern'd the State more and therefore by vertue of that Authority that he enjoyed as a Soveraign Prince antecedently to the Institution of Christianity he made these Laws meerly by his own Imperial Authority without consulting the Church for the Security of the Empire And among these the most remarkable were the Laws against the Manichees who thô they pretended to the Name of Christians under that pretence warranted the Practice of all manner of Wickedness and Debauchery and therefore were prosecuted by the Emperors of all Principles as the common Enemies of the Peace of Mankind but most severely by this Great and Wise Prince Though before him Valentinian the Elder when he allowed Liberty to all other Sects Christiâ—â—s Jews and Heathens by which he embroil'd and endanger'd the Empire enacted against their Meetings with all manner of severity as a debaucht sort of People not to be endured in humane Society Or as Theodosius the younger expresses it in his Rescript against all sorts of Hereticks in which the Manichees are named in the last place with this particular severe Character Et qui ad imam usque scelerum nequitiam pervenerunt Manichaei as the very dregs of all Wickedness And therefore they are from time to time outlawed by Theodosius from all civil Rights and as for their Religion they are thrust down into the Catalogue of Apostates from the Christian Faith and reckoned in the same rank with Jews and Heathens and that was a Civility to Men that were Apostates from humane Nature Now as to such Laws as these it is evident that the Soveraign Power is enabled to enact them in both Capacities both as a Sovereign and as a Christian Sovereign and therefore because it belong'd to him to punish all Principles and Practices of Debauchery antecedently to his Christianity he for that reason proceeded against them without any consulting with the Church and that is the apparent reason why the Laws of the Empire against this debaucht Sect of Men are enacted purely by the Imperial Authority whereas all their Laws concerning Matters of Christian Faith or Discipline still warrant themselves by the Judgment and Advice of the Church But beside these Laws against these humane Beasts he enacted divers other Laws against Apostates Pagans and Jews by his own Imperial Authority His first Rescript against Apostates to Paganism was published in the year 381 and it was the first that was ever publisht against them For under Constantine and Constantius vast numbers of Heathens turn'd or pretended to turn Christians for a very obvious reason as too much appears through the whole train of the Story And the same Men under Julian turn'd Heathens again and so had the Liberty to continue under Valentinian the Moderate so that this was the first Emperor that had occasion to give check to the Sin of Apostacy And indeed he alone had Power to do it at that time for when they turn'd Apostates they were out of the Churches reach because the utmost Punishment that the Church can inflict is to cast them out of its Communion which is here done by the Crime it self And therefore such rank Offenders are only obnoxious to the Civil Powers for which reason Christian Princes were usually the more severe in their Penalties against them and here the Penalty is as the Lawyers Phrase it Intestability or disabling the Offenders from the Power of making a Will which was under that Government in a great measure to outlaw them or as it is express't in the next Law ut sint absque Jure Romano to deprive them of the Roman Rights and Liberties of which this was the greatest branch For in the Roman Empire there was no settled Inheritance of Estates but every man disposed of his own as he pleased by Will so that to deprive him of this Power was in a great measure to dispossess him of the Power over his own Estate And that was the proper Proportion of the Penalty to the Crime that whoever cast himself out of the Christian Church should be cast out of the Christian Empire too In the year 383 he publishes another Rescript against Apostates and in that distinguishes between Catechumenes and Christians baptized and limits the Penalty of the former Law to the latter sort of Offenders because they alone were properly to be accounted Christians whereas the Catechumenes were not as yet admitted into the Society of the Christian Church but were only Candidates for it and so they could not in any sense be term'd Apostates from the Church who were really never of it And at the same time that Theodosius publisht this Rescript in the East Valentinian publisht another in the West against all sorts of Apostates not only to Paganism but Manicheism and Judaism Which he reinforced in the year 391 limiting the meaning of the Law to the Christians baptized after the example of Theodosius by whom he was entirely govern'd in all things who indeed was so grateful to the Prince that advanced him to the royal Dignity that whil'st he lived he was a kind and tender Father to his Son but as he mitigated the Law by restraining its extent so he enhanced its severity by doubling its Penalties deposing the Apostate from all Honours and Dignities as well as depriving him of the Power over his own Estate and this without any hopes of Restitution upon Repentance Sed nec unquam in statum pristinum revertentur non flagitium morum obliterabitur poenitentiâ neque umbrâ aliquâ exquisitae defâ—nsionis aut Muniminiâ— obducetur But to return to Theodosius at the same time that he restrain'd Apostacy by his own Imperial Authority without any concurrence of the Power of the Church so did he by the same Power make severe Laws against Paganism it self His first Law against their Sacrifices bears date the same year and Gothofred thinks it the first that was made since the time of Constantius which is the Interval of 25 years and yet he could not be ignorant that even Valentinian the Elder made a severe Law against their Night Sacrifices and therefore I suppose the Learned Lawyers meaning is that this was the first Law that was made in all this time against all Heathen Worship in general and so it was for there is no other beside that particular Law of Valentinian against the Night Sacrifices And though Gratian shewed not a little displeasure at Rome against their
with the Recommendation of Damasus the great Bishop of Rome and is restor'd with universal joy of the People and Lucius forced to fly for help to the Emperor and his Court-Patrons then at Constantinople that was at that time little better than Besieged and before the Emperor had any leisure to mind his Complaints he by his own rashness came to his Unfortunate end of being Burnt by the Enemy in a Cottage where he had taken shelter in his Flight And so from this time Lucius continued in Exile at Constantinople till Demophilus the Arian Bishop that succeeded Eudoxius in that See and all his Party among whom Lucius is particularly named were turn'd out of the City by Theodosius the Great in the year 380. At which time Peter dies and Timotheus succeeds him for Lucius now having but small hopes left of recovering his Bishoprick under such an Orthodox Emperor made no attempt for it And now comes the great Council of Constantinople where the Nicene Faith is establisht for ever and in pursuance of it an Imperial Law made to take away all Churches through the Empire from the Hereticks of all Denominations For which the Council of Aquileia soon after sitting in the West send him the foremention'd Letter of thanks farther imploring his assistance for the Settlement of the Church and this of Alexandria in particular where the present Bishop was overwhelm'd with inveterate Schisms and Dissentions In order to which they move his Majesty that he would be pleased to call a Council at Alexandria particularly to determine who of the Hereticks should be received to the Communion of the Church and upon what terms which they thought in such a vast number of Offenders too invidious a work for the Bishop to undertake by his own Authority What followed upon it I know not For the Rescript of this Emperor to the Praefect Optatus to give Timotheus full Power of Judicature in Ecclesiastical Causes and to be assistant to him is apparently forged for there was no such Praefect as Optatus at that time as well as all the other Laws under the Subdititious Title De Episcopali Judicio the unanswerable proofs of it may be seen in Gothofred's Extravagans But probably without any farther care things settled of themselves under so wise a Reign for Timotheus sat peaceably in his See to his dying day without any disturbance that we read of from his Enemies When they saw the Church defended by such an Emperor they were content to sit still for Men are not wont to make their Attempts where they have no hope of Success But still we see by the whole progress of this Alexandrian Schism that the Disorders of the Church proceeded not from it self but the Dishonesty of the Court Eunuchs The last great Schism of that Age that the Council of Aquileia mentions in their Letter to the Emperor was that at Antioch which began sooner and lasted longer than either of the other How the matter was composed between Paulinus and Meletius we have seen above that upon the Death of one of them the Surviver should have the Government of the whole Church But upon the Death of Meletius Flavianus sets up against Paulinus and his own Oath too for he had abjured the Bishoprick as long as either of them should live And he makes so many Friends as to keep it till the great Council of Constantinople and have it confirm'd to him by the Authority of the Council where the Business was transacted by a Seditious Party with such disorderly Heats and Tumults as almost put the great Gregory Nazianzen out of love with Councils whose angry words upon a particular occasion against the abuse of some in his time are peevishly and absurdly applied by our Innovators against the use of Councils in general The Ecclesiastical Abridger almost runs mad for joy of his Satyrical Expressions and though as an Orator the good Father represented his Complaints and Invectives bigger than the life for that is the use of that sort of Eloquence R. B. has pretty well improved it with a scurvy Translation and made it look more like railing than handsom Satyr But what would you have of a meer Abridger of Binius poor Man he never looks into the secret of the Story and the connexion of things but he finds in Binius that such a Council was held such a year and out of him he gives a crude Epitome season'd with some malicious Reflections against the Bishops and so has done But alas if he had but had any insight into the Series of the Story and understood the Mystery of the Eusebian Faction by whom all these Disturbances were raised in the Church it would have spoil'd the Malice of all the Abridgment For whereas his whole design is to load the whole Body of Bishops with the Miscarriages of the Church in all Ages it is evident all along that the Body of the Bishops labour'd against all those Miscarriages that he has ignorantly and maliciously charged upon them and that all those Disorders committed in the Church from the time of Constantine to the time of this present Council were the Acts and Contrivances of some wicked men that crept into the Church by Simony and Court-favour and were enabled to do all that mischief that they did in it in spite of the Opposition of the Good Bishops by the Power of the Eunuchs So that all these Disorders were so far from being the Acts of the Ecclesiastical Power that they were the meer effects of its Oppression And such were these very Men that labour'd to raise this Tumult in the Council as is evident from Nazianzen's own account of them and that in short is this He at first earnestly endeavour'd to perswade them to acquiesce in the former Agreement and to have but a little-Patience in that Paulinus was a very old Man had one foot in the Grave and could not long stand in their way upon the other But he is hiss't down by the factious Party as a Betrayer of the Supreme Prerogative of the Eastern Church that they said ought to be preferr'd above the Western because our Saviour was Born in that part of the Empire For that was the pretence of their Zeal in this foul Matter that Paulinus had been ordain'd by Lucifer Calaritanus a Western Bishop which they will needs have to be a dishonourable Intrusion upon the Eastern Church and therefore in despite to that Usurpation they will set up Flavianus and by their noise and clamour tire the old Bishops into a complyance but Gregory Nazianzen quits the Council through meer indignation and seeing how things were like to go and what troubles he was like to encounter in that great See he soon after resigns his Bishoprick of Constantinople Of which the Faction make their advantage of playing over their old Game for creating a Division between the Eastern and Western Church An Artifice as we have seen first started by Eusebius of
Nicomedia and ever after kept on foot by the Faction For the Western Church had been all along true and faithful to the Orthodox Faith and happy in a succession of Orthodox Emperors and therefore the Easterling Merchants that hitherto made a trade of their Religion and changed their Faith with their Interest greedily seized all Opportunities of breaking with the West where the Faith was fixt and settled because such a settlement would break the Court-Exchange for Preferments upon every Turn of Affairs And such Eceboliuses were the Bishops that raised and promoted this disorder They had ever changed their Faith with the Times and as they had bought their Bishopricks of the Courtiers under Constantius and Valens so were they resolved to keep them under Theodosius And therefore finding his Resolution to stand by the Nicene Faith they readily vote with the Council for its establishment but to prevent the establishment of the Church they start this new and unseasonable Controversie about the Ordination of Paulinus to keep up the division between the East and West Their wrigling and changing of Faith and their buying and selling of Preferments is admirably described by Gregory himself in the Poem of his own Life upon his resignation from whence I have chiefly collected this whole Story You are welcome Chap-Men how often soever you may have barter'd your Faith now 't is high Fair-time let no Man depart without a good penny-worth And now let R. B. here set his Presbyterian hand as his custom is to point out this Character of this prophane Faction against all the good Catholick Bishops with his cold Exclamation Are not these lamentable descriptions of the Bishops of those happy Times and excellent Councils But no multiplying-Glass like Malice unless perhaps Ignorance Upon this Hinge all along turn'd this Controversy it was not kept up by any zeal for the Arian Heresie but the Heresie it self was only pretended to keep up divisions in the Church and by that means a good Exchange was kept up at Court for the sale of Church-Preferments upon every turn of Times And so here upon Gregory's Resignation every Man hoped for a good penny-worth but the Courtiers were grown too cunning and it being so valuable a prize instead of sharing with the Church-men by Simony seize the Bishoprick for themselves Nectarius an unlearned Man but a great Courtier I know not by what art but I am sure by too much interposition of the Emperor being against all the Canons of the Church hoisted into it And it is the great blemish of that Princes reign though it may perhaps be some excuse that he stretcht a point to serve a Friend But the Western Church is startled at these irregular Proceedings and upon them Pope Damasus a resolute Man and one of the first that valued himself upon the great Authority of the Apostolick See moves the Emperors Gratian and Theodosius to grant a General Council at Rome for the better settlement of things But the Eastern Bishops baulk their appearance upon pretence that they cannot be so long absent from their Flocks having been assembled the year before at Constantinople and therefore send only their Legates with a Copy of the Acts of the Council With which the Council at Rome were so 〈◊〉 satisfied 〈◊〉 with very little 〈…〉 adjudged the See of Antioch to Paulinus alone and yet forbore to denounce the sentence of Deposition against Flavianus for fear the Faction should take the advantage that they watcht for to break off Communion with them In order to which it is probable that they raised the Bishop of Constantinople to so great an height of dignity as to take place and precedency next to the Bishop of Rome who upon the account of the Grandeur of the Imperial City had all along held the greatest esteem in the Christian Church And by vertue of this Decree of the Council at Rome Paulinus takes and keeps possession of his Bishoprick to his dying day and is succeeded in it by Evagrius Of the legality of his Succession against the claim of Flavianus see St. Ambrose his 78 th Epistle that runs parallel so luckily with Theodoret's partial story as to discover all its particular flaws and dawbings For says Theodoret after this they would never let Flavianus be at quiet but tired the Emperor with Complaints against him till he undertook his defence himself and by it so satisfied the Western Bishops that they promised reconciliation to him upon which he sent his Legates to treat the Peace which was at last agreed on in the time of Innocent the first But according to St. Ambrose his account who was an Actor in the business the Story runs thus The Emperor upon the Complaint of Siricius that succeeded Damasus against Flavianus refers the Cause to a Council at Capua but Flavianus refuses to appear and moves for an Eastern Synod But the Bishops at the Council being aware of this old device of dividing between East and West immediately vote Communion with all Bishops of the Eastern Church that own'd the Nicene Faith of whatsoever side in this Controversy to cut off that old pretence of Schism upon which Flavianus relyed Upon it he peremptorily refuses all appearance and upon that they refer it to Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria and the Egyptian Bishops but he shuns the reference and takes shelter at Court. Upon which the good Father thus expostulates Frustra ergo tantorum sacerdotum fusus labor Iterum ad hujus seculi Judicia revertendum Iterum ad Rescripta Iterum vexabuntur Sacerdotes senes transfretabunt maria Iterum invalidi corpore patriam peregrino mutabunt solo Iterum sacrosancta Altaria deserentur ut in longinquum proficiscamur Iterum pauperum turbae Episcoporum quibus ante onerosum paupertas non erat externae opis egentes compellentur inopiam gemere aut certè victum inopum itineris usurpare Interea solus exlex Flavianus ut illi videtur non venit quando omnes convenimus But soon after this Evagrius dyes and Flavianus bestirs himself that no Successor should be chosen but yet for all that the People would not be reconciled to him And St. Chrysostom coming at this time to the Throne of Constantinople he prevails with Theophilus of Alexandria to join with him in an Ambassy to Rome to reconcile Flavianus to the Western Church and by that means to remove those heart-burnings that were kept up between the Eastern and Western Bishops upon that account Which was done with some success for it abates the Schism though it does not end it And so things stood till the death of Flavianus in the year 404 who is succeeded by Porphyrius a Bishop of the Court-mould of as bad a Character and as true an Huckster as ever was bred up in the shop of the Nicomedian Eusebius He procured both the banishment of his Competitor and his own Ordination by money and when he had once got into his See
he govern'd by force of Arms and gets an Imperial Rescript from the young Emperor Arcadius commanding the Bishops to communicate with him upon pain of deposition And this became a profitable Fair at Court many of the Eastern Bishops rather choosing to be deposed than to defile their Consciences by allowing Communion with so vile a Man But at length the Wretch dyes in the 408. And Alexander is unanimously chosen who put an end to the Schism that had lasted 45 years And thus we see from whence almost all the Schisms and Disorders of the Church proceeded meerly from the Ambition of ill Church-men supported against the Churches Authority by the Power of the Court This was the great Plague of the Church after the Emperors became Christian and we shall find all along that the Church was either opprest or protected according as the Emperor himself watched against this abuse of his Courtiers And to defend the Church from it was in all Ages the highest Act of the Imperial Protection And this we have here seen at large by the example of this great Princes reign who was himself careful of the Churcâ—â—â— Liâ—erties and as far as he could 〈…〉 sâ—ffer'd no Court-merchandise in it And yet many Enormities were committed and that even in the great Council of Constantinople it self in the case of Flavianus but that was by reason of ill Men that were got into the Church by this ill practice under his Predecessors Valens and Constantius § X. The last remarkable transaction that I shall take notice of in this reign was the Heresy of the Priscillianists and the concurrence of the Powers both of Church and State for its suppression For though the Emperor Theodosius was not concern'd in it yet it being upon the Stage in the time of his Reign I shall take it into the Story of his time The matter of Fact is described with most accuracy by Sulpitius Severus who lived at the same time though he lived not long enough to see the end of the Heresie for he concludes his history with the four hundredth year of our Lord in the time of Honorius whereas this blasphemous Heresie was not utterly rooted out till some time after And setting aside his gross defect of judgment and his excess of partiality on the wrong side which yet is so enormous that it cannot impose upon any Readers understanding unless such an one as Mr. B 's is perverted by rank malice the Heresie is so described both by himself and divers others of the Ancients as shews the necessity of suppressing it not only by the Civil Magistrate but the Civil Sword For by all accounts of it it was no better than a meer Cento of all the Blasphemies of the Gnosticks and the Manichees together with some new secret and obscure Sacraments among themselves and the religious practice of all sorts of Villainy and Dishonesty That is the compendium of it as it is set down by St. Austin The Priscillianists that were founded by Priscillian in Spain held chiefly the Opinions of the Gnosticks and the Manichees though they drew together the dregs of all Heresies as into a common sink of uncleanness and for the concealing of their horrible brutishness among themselves have set up this among their Principles Swear or forswear but be sure not to betray the Secret Or as St. Jerom adds to the Character that as they devoted themselves wholly to Lust so in their unclean Embraces they were wont to sing this Stanza of the Prince of Poets Tum Pater omnipotens faecundis imbribus aether Conjugis in gremium latè descendit et omnes Magnus alit magno commixtus corpore foetus The very lake of Sodom and I might add of Geneva too they as well as their Masters the Gnosticks and Manichees being branded by all the Ancients for the Atheistical Principle of Fatality This Heresie was first brought out of Egypt into Spain by one Marcus and by him Priscillian a Man of a sharp Wit but infinite Vanity was poison'd who by his eloquence and neatness of address soon disperst the contagion over all Spain and especially among the Female sex who as Sulpitius expresses it being always greedy of Novelties of unsettled Principles and of wanton Fancies flockt after him in whole sholes of Proselytes And it took with that success that the Plague got among the Bishops themselves Instantius and Salvianus both Bishops being seduced into the Party and initiated into the Secret which being discover'd by Adigynus Bishop of Corduba to Ithacius Bishop of Emerita he with Idacius prosecuted them with all severity not only by ecclesiastical Process but before the Civil Magistrate as they supposed to nip the mischief in the bud but as the Historian thinks with too much fury or with more zeal than discretion by which he sayes they were rather exasperated than reclaimed But for my part I cannot understand how men of such lewd and despâ—rate principles that destroy the natural modesty and the common faith of mankind can ever be pursued with too much violence Such men as these are not proceeded against as Heretiques in the Faith but as Apostates from humane Nature as Thieves Robbers Cut-Throats and Banditi that declare open hostility to the Peace of the World But the Historian was led into his soft-natur'd Opinion by the Authority of St. Martin a weak and unlearned man of great devotion but very little understanding who interceded with great zeal to save the Lives of the Malefactors and if he had begg'd them of the Government as an Act of Mercy it might not have been altogether unbecoming the tenderness of a Religious man but when he required it as a duty of his Superiours to keep hands off from such vile Offenders he only shewed the pertness of his humour and the weakness of his Understanding But first of all they are proceeded against by the Censure of the Church in the Council of Caesar Augusta i. e. Caragosa the Metropolis of Aragon in Spain in the Year 380 in which the Bishops are deposed and the Lay-men excommunicated and the Sentence signified to all foreign Churches to prevent their receiving them into Communion And withal several Canons are enacted against the particular customs and practices of the Heretiques As first That Women be not permitted to preach in Publique as Agape one of the first of the Sect a wanton and immodest Woman had done and others after her Example and this priviledge no doubt was the great Lure that drew the talking Sex so thick into the Faction The next Canon is made against fasting on the Festivals of the Church and that cross-grain'd temper was common to all the Fanatique Heretiques in all Ages to do every thing in contradiction to the establisht Laws and known Customs of the Church as we have seen above by the Canons of the Council of Gangra against the Eutactans or Eustathians The next Canon is to anathematise
they were exempted by Law And in the year 399 the same Law is repeated with a pecuniary Mulct not only upon the Offender that commits the Crime but upon the Judg that connives at it And in the same year another Rescript is publisht to refer Ecclesiastical Causes to the Ecclesiastical judgment but contentious about Civil Rights to the Secular Courts And there are many more Laws of the same strein in the Imperial Code the meaning whereof is not wholly to limit the Judgment of all Ecclesiastical Causes to the Church and of all Civil Causes to the Secular Courts because most Causes as I have shewn above appertain to both But their plain intention is that Causes purely Ecclesiastical or Offences against the Canons Rubricks and Orders of the Church for the preservation of Peace and Decency or Offences against the Rule of Faith shall be judged by the Church alone and as for civil Controversies they are to receive their decision only from Civil Courts For the final power of Decision is all the Authority that can be used in that case but though the Church has none of that yet it has a Power to judg of the same Actions as far as they concern the Laws of their Religion or as Theodosius the younger expresses it Christianam sanctitatem And though when one Man stands convict of having defrauded another they have not Power to right the Person wronged or to inforce a Restitution yet they have a Power to pass sentence upon the injury as a breach of the Christian Law and that sentence will have its effect So that though they have not a Civil Authority in Civil Causes yet they have an Ecclesiastical that is distinguisht not by the Matter but the Penalty of the Law But the true and proper meaning of these Laws is best understood by the occasion upon which they were enacted and the occasion of this was that the Emperors had impowr'd Bishops to decide Controversies by arbitration and the consent of Parties which they in process of time challenge as their right and derive their Authority for it from Apostolical Law as was done by the African Fathers at this time petitioning the Emperor That if any Persons will choose to have their Controversies decided by the Church according to Apostolical Law and one Party shall appeal from the Award that the Priest who was the Judg shall not be cited to the temporal Courts by him to give in any account or testimony of the proceedings To which Petition the Emperor returns this Law as a just denyal though that neither does nor can take away their Power of Ecclesiastical Censures that they received from our Saviour but of civil Decision that was granted them by the favor and indulgence of Princes and when once they pretended to an higher Commission for it it was but time to clip their pretences But in the year 400 he publisht a very remarkable Rescript in defence of the true power and discipline of the Church against all Appeals from their Sentence even to the Imperial Throne it self Whoever shall be deposed from his Office in the Church by a Synod of Bishops if he shall presume against the modesty of the Church and the Peace of the Empire to resume that Office to himself from which he is deposed he shall according to the Law of Gratian of blessed Memory be banisht an hundred Miles from the City that he infested for it is but fit that he should be banisht their Assemblies who is cut off from their Society And be it farther enacted by the force of this Law That no such Persons apply themselves to our Secretaries to procure our Rescripts in their behalf and if they shall by stealth obtain any all Rescripts granted to such Persons as are deposed from their Priesthood are hereby declared null and void And lastly let such Persons upon whose favor they relie take notice that they shall not escape the punishment due to such as shall undertake the protection of such Men as are already cast by the judgment of God This Law of stopping all Appeals from the Church was of all others most necessary for the preservation of discipline in it and therefore it was always with greatest care establisht by the Canons against all Invasions and observed with the greatest tenderness by all the wisest Emperors And we have seen through the whole series of this History that from the very time that Princes took upon them the protection of the Church the only thing that debaucht and defeated the Efficacy of its Discipline was Church-mens taking sanctuary at Court against the Authority of their Superiors And the mischiefs of this abuse having been so often experienced it was but high time to take it quite away insomuch that the Emperor was pleased to tye up his own hands from untying any sentence of the Church As for the occasion of this Law there are many conjectures about it but I think the most probable is that of Gothofred that it was made at the Petition of the African Fathers who were actually sitting at that time to restore the ancient and effectual discipline of the Church and reform the Abuses and Corruptions that were crept or were creeping into it and so among others implore the Emperor that he would be pleased to stop all ways of appeal to Persons that stood legally condemn'd by the sentence of the Church and to injoin this to all his Officers as they word it interpositâ poenâ damni pecuniae atque honoris And this Petition the Emperor grants with that frankness as to take away this abused Power of Appeals not only from his Judges but himself and damn their Authority by this Rescript once for all and for ever In the year 401 he exempts those of the Clergy that were forced to trade to get a Lively-hood from the payment of all Customs the same Law that was made by Constantius in the year 343. So that it seems the Church was not as yet indowed with sufficient Revenues to maintain it self when some of the Clergy were forced to traffick for bread Thô they were afterward forbidden all manner of Trade by Valentinan the third when it seems the Church was grown rich enough to subsist upon its own stock In the year 407 he not only confirms all the ancient Priviledges and Immunities of the Clergy but he grants them a new sort of Tuition viz. Secular Advocates for the management of all their Secular Affairs but lest by this means the Church should be cheated by these Trustees the Bishops of the Province are required to survey their Accounts This Law was made at the Petition of the African Fathers in the fourth Council of Africa and is extant in their Code Canon 97. And it was done for this end that the Clergy might not be forced to appear in Law-Courts and leave their Functions to follow Law-Suits And this is the first time that Lay-men were taken
into the concerns of the Church and that not to intermeddle with any thing of its discipline and jurisdiction but only as their Stewards and Solicitors And this Emperor was so kind to them as to follow this Rescript with another commanding that the Advocates of the Church should be put to no delays in the Common-Law-Courts but admitted to Audience at their first appearance In the year 412 he recites the particular Priviledges granted to the Clergy and commands all his Officers to keep them inviolable upon pain of perpetual Banishment The Priviledges he enumerates are these six 1 Exemption from Offices 2 From repairing of High-ways 3 From extraordinary Taxes 4 From building of Bridges 5 From maintaining the publick Carriages 6 From the Gold-Contribution which was a particular Tax imposed at that time In short they were excused from all Payments but their Canonical Tribute the rate of which was known and customary For their Lands were never exempt from Taxes and the proportion that they paid was call'd the Canonical Contribution and whatever Officer demanded more than their standing rate he was by this Rescript banisht for ever as a sacrilegious Person In the same year he publishes another Rescript forbidding the accusation of Clergy-men before any Judg but the Bishops and if any Person of what degree and quality soever shall bring an Indictment against them and be not able to make it good he shall be branded with publick Infamy as the Person accused must have been if found guilty This Rescript notwithstanding its general words that the Clergy ought to be accused before the Bishops and not else where the Lawyers will have to be understood of Ecclesiastical and not Civil Crimes but this proceeds from their common Prejudice that I have noted above that only Ecclesiastical Offences fall under the Judicature of the Church but Civil and Political Crimes are restrain'd to the cognisance of the State whereas both are punishable by both with those different Penalties that are proper to the different Jurisdictions And as for this Law in particular it cannot be understood of any other but Civil Crimes and this is evidently proved by those very Arguments that are alledged by Gothofred himself to appropriate it to Ecclesiastical Miscarriages First that they are such Crimes as are punisht by the shame of Deposition and therefore most properly Civil Crimes for there were very few Ecclesiastical Offences so great as to deserve so high a Punishment and those few that did so as in the case of Schism and Heresy were always appropriated to the Ecclesiastical Judicature before this Rescript and therefore not by it And this appears more pregnantly from his second reason the cause of enacting this Law viz. that Lay-men and even Persons of the greatest Quality being apt upon slite provocations to bear spite to the Clergy would be apt enough to way-lay their Reputation with popular defamations and false reports So that the apparent design of the Law was to prevent these scandalous Informations before the Secular Judges and restrain them from so much as taking them till they had been first examin'd by the Ecclesiastical Judicature And in the last place this is still more evident from the particular occasion of this Law that Heros a worthy Man Bishop of Arles had been thrust out by Constantius a great Court-Officer there and afterwards Emperor for six Months upon a tumultuary Accusation and Patroclus an infamous Person placed in his stead and therefore to prevent the like Disorders for the time to come it was but seasonable to enact this Law to restrain Secular Governors from receiving accusations against the Clergy till they have been first heard by the Provincial Synod So that this Law does not exempt the criminal Actions of the Clergy from the Civil Courts as Gothofred imagines when he objects that it is against the Jus Commune but only limits the exercise of their Jurisdiction viz. that they neither receive nor proceed in such Causes till the Judgment of the Church had been pass't upon them and after that they were at liberty to punish them according to Law This is the fairest and most ingenuous sense that I can make of this Law These are the chief Laws of these Emperors in the Church the Penal Laws against the Hereticks and the Laws of Priviledg to the Catholicks § XIII But beside these there were divers others enacted either to abet the Discipline of the Church by removing Abuses that were crept in upon its ancient Constitutions or by backing its present Decrees with the Imperial Authority Or else to set in order such Matters of Religion that though they related to the Church were yet without its Jurisdiction i. e. those Laws that concern Jews Heathens and Apostates in all which they followed the example of their Royal Father Theodosius And first they take care of the due and regular Ordination of the Clergy Constantine the Great had been forced to forbid his Officers both Civil and Military to be admitted into Holy Orders and the same Decree was frequently renewed by his Successors with alterations and limitations as the Prince thought most convenient for the present time that the State might not be defrauded or indamaged by too much bounty to the Church and when Men flockt so fast into it it was but requisite to lock its doors upon such as were already useful to the Common-Wealth Which Constantine did with a peremptory and universal Law but Valentinian the first with this limitation That any Person who had an Office in the State might be admitted into the Church so that he provided an able Person to supply his former Office But before this time the Priviledg of Clergy had taken place and the Bishop was impowr'd to redeem any Criminal from Justice or Debtor from Goal if he judged him qualified for doing Service in the Church that was grown into such an abuse that the Monks took them away by force and tumult to the hindrance of Publick Justice and the subversion of private Mens rights For when they were once enter'd into a Monastery or into Orders their Crimes were cancel'd and their Debts paid to redress which abuse Arcadius enacts a severe Law in the year 398 as his Father Theodosius had done before him against these violent interpositions of the Monks and threatens the Bishops that if any such Riots were made by the Monks under their Jurisdictions and not punisht by them the fault should lye at their Doors and commands them for the time to come that whenever they wanted Clerks they should take them from the Colledges of Monks if they found them clear of all Debts both Publick and Private otherwise as they ought not to have been admitted into the Monasteries so he now commands that they shall not be admâ—tted into Orders And this Law was but agreeable to the Constitution of things in those Times when the Monasteries as now our Universities were the proper Seminaries
they took away their lawful Gains His next forbids all contumelious language in publick against their Patriarchs His third commands all his Governors of Provinces to protect them and their Synagogues from all violence of the People His fourth restores and confirms to the Patriarchs and Clergy the Priviledg of Exemption à Muneribus curialibus from Publick Offices that had been granted by former Emperors Constantine Constantius Valentinian and Valens but had been since taken away by Gratian and Valentinian the younger In his fifth Law he renews the same together with an addition of all those Priviledges that had been granted by his Royal Father To which may be added his Grant to them impowring them to determine all their Law-suits by the arbitration of their Patriarchs if both Parties consented to it enacted the same year in which he granted the same Power to Christian Bishops But as indulgent as Arcadius was to them in the East they were at first treated ruggedly enough by Honorius in the West who first of all forbid the payment of the Crown-gold to the Patriarch of the Jews and his Apostles i. e. his Assessors where he resided and the Collectors of it in the several Provinces This Tribute had been ever paid from the destruction of Jerusalem though it is now intercepted by Honorius with expressions of high displeasure He calls it a cheat and the Patriarch a Thief and orders his Apostles to be punisht by his Judges as Pick-pockets But all this was done more out of spite to his Brother Arcadius than to the Jews for the two Brothers had first by the instigation of Rufinus and afterward of Eutropius Consul this year conceived a mortal hatred against each other and therefore because the Patriarch of the Jews resided in the Eastern Empire under the Government of Arcadius Honorius thought it unworthy his Majesty as he declares in his Rescript to suffer one of his Brothers Subjects to exercise so high a Power over his Subjects as to impose Taxes and Tributes upon them And for the same reason when Arcadius granted the Jewish Clergy exemption from all Offices in the year 398 Honorius forbids the execution of that Law within his Dominions as prejudicial to his Government and commands them and all Men of whatsoever condition to undergo their share of the publick Burthens And therefore five years after viz. in the year 404 when the Brothers were reconciled Honorius in token of his Reconciliation cancels this Rescript and restores them to this and all the other Priviledges that had been granted them by any of his Predecessors and from this time forward he was the most indulgent of all the Emperors to the Jews But his next Law is of a peculiar Nature against a certain new Sect of Jews that he calls Caelicolae in the year 409 commanding them because they pretended to be Christians to join Communion with the Catholick Church within a years time otherwise to be obnoxious to all the Laws against Hereticks and forbids them making any Converts for the time to come as they would not incur the guilt of High-Treason Now what these Caelicolae were or why so named 't is difficult to find because we no where meet with any mention of them but in this Emperor's time nor any description of them but in this Rescript unless once in St. Austin as Gothofred observes and though it is found in Justinian in the Law of Constantius against the Jews yet as he observes it must have been foisted in afterward from this Law because we hear of no such Sect any where else till this time and Honorius never mentions them but with the Title of a new up-start Sect. And as for the other two Laws in which they occurr viz. 43 d and 44 th de Haereticis he only names them in the rout of other Hereticks and therefore all that can be guessed at them is from this Law where they are described to be pretenders to Christianity but Jews in reality So that they seem'd to have been a sort of Mongrel Christians such as the Nazarites were of old confounding both Religions together and observing the Sacraments of both i. e. they were both circumcised as Jews and baptised as Christians being such another hotch-potch out of both Religions as was afterward made by Mahumetanism But how the name of Caelicolae came to be appropriated to them I cannot find the least foot-step for a probable conjecture How the Name came to be in former Times given to the Jewish Nation in general I am pretty well satisfied viz. not allowing any Images and Representations of the Deity they were Sarcastically represented by the heathen Poets as if they had address't all their Devotions to the Clouds and Sky But how it came to be appropriated to this particular Sect as distinct from the other Jews I believe is scarce capable of a guess there being no other Record of them than what I have mention'd in which we only find the Name but no reason of it and as the Sect began so it ended under this Reign for we hear no more of it whether it sunk by its own absurdity or the severity of the Law against it His next Rescript to the Jews in the year 412 is a confirmation of all their ancient Priviledges in the free use of their Sabboths their Synagogues their Festivals and all the other Rites of their Religion Of the same nature and to the same purpose is his third Law under the Title de feriis and the eighth under the Title de Executoribus and were no doubt but one and the same Law at first as divers others were though afterwards torn into several Parcels to reduce them to their proper heads by the Collectors of the Code There remains but one Law more of this Emperor under this Title enacted in the year 416 and that is to redress that common abuse of counterfeit Converts to Christianity from among the Jews only to avoid their Crimes and their Debts commanding all his Governors to seek out all such Impostors in all Places and for the honor of Christianity to turn them out of the Church and return them back to their own Religion And this was done at the request of the Jewish Governors to whom the Rescript is directed thereby to give them Authority to demand the execution of it of his Officers in his name Which was a much higher favor than if he had sent his Rescript immediately to the Officers themselves because by this means the execution of this Law was put into the Jews own hands To all which Laws we may add one more under the next Title ne Christianum Mancipium Judaeus habeat that is very singular and shews this Emperor's great kindness to the Jews and that is to give them the liberty of keeping Christian Slaves and Servants which was forbidden by all the Emperors both before and after him and for that reason it
is I suppose that Trebonian has wholly left it out of the Justinian Collection Under the Title de Paganis there are three Laws of Arcadius viz. 13 14 16 and five of Honorius 15 17 18 19 20. The first Law of Arcadius was enacted at his first coming to the Empire in the year 395 and was only a Ratification of all his Royal Father's Laws both against Pagans and Hereticks with very severe comminations upon his Officers that neglected their speedy and vigorous Execution no less than death it self in supercapitali supplicio judicamus Officia i. e. Officiales coercenda quae statuta neglexerint By a second Rescript in the year following all Priviledges whatsoever heretofore granted to the Heathen Priests are utterly abolisht And by a Rescript in the year 399 all their Temples still remaining in Villages in the Province of Syria Phaenice are commanded to be pull'd down but not without Tumult many of the Monks who were usually most busie at that Work being wounded and slain by the Country People In the same year Honorius takes away their Sacrifices and Temples in France and Spain but so as to preserve their publick Ornaments after the example of his Father Theodosius in the eighth Law of this Title And in the same year also he being petition'd by the African Fathers in their fifth Council to remove all the Relicks of Idolatry that as he had already taken away their Sacrifices so he would be pleased to abolish their publick Festivals quae ab errore Gentili attracta sunt i. e. that were Customs at first derived from the old Heathenism to this he returns a peremptory denyal That though it was his Royal Pleasure that the prophane Rites should be taken away yet he would not have the People deprived of their Solemnities of mirth according to ancient and immemorial Custom And whereas the same Fathers moved that the Heathen Temples still remaining in Villages and more remote Parts of the Country might be destroyed the Emperor denies that too the Idols he will have removed but not the Buildings themselves demolisht But in the year 408 the Emperor is of another mind being inflamed to it by a particular Provocation For Stilicâ—o being slain that year both the Heathens and the Donatists as we have seen in their History grow insolent and give out that all the Laws that had been enacted against them were only Stilico's without the Emperor's Consent which being signifiâ—d to the Emperor by the African Fathers with a repetition of their former Requests he upon it grants all that they ask and more and nothing less will serve his turn than the utter extirpation of Paganism Upon it he takes away all their Revenues and settles them upon his Army destroys their Images and their Altars turns their publick Temples to other publick Uses commands the private Chappels to be demolisht by the Owners takes away the solemn Festivals and imposes the execution of this Law upon his Officers under the Penalty of a very severe Fine His last Rescript was enacted in the year 415 in which he permits the Heathen Games yearly exhibited by the Priests in their Metropoles or great Cities upon condition that the Priests return home to their own Habitations as soon as the Solemnity is ended Secondly he sequesters all Revenues belonging to the Temples to his own and to the Churches use Thirdly he removes all their Heathen Images from the Baths and all other publick Places And lastly he inflicts Capital Punishments upon the Ring-leaders in their Sacrifices and superstitious Processions And thus by these several Penal Laws under these several Titles and against these several Factions he so settled the Peace of the Church and Empire that though he lived ten years after for he died not till the year 425 he had no necessity of making any more news Laws about these old Matters for when things are once settled in their right Method the World jogs on in good order of its own accord So that it was really this reign that vanquisht all the inveterate disorders of the Church that utterly rooted out the Schism of the Donatists and broke the heart of the Heresie of the Arians for it was at this time that it received its fatal blow though afterward it made some weak Essays and fainting gaspings to recover life Neither do I remember that after this time he had occasion of making any other Laws about Ecclesiastical Matters but one Law of Discipline in the year 420 to recover the obsolete force of an Ecclesiastical Canon strictly forbidding all Clergy-men to cohabit with any Women unless their own Mothers Sisters or Daughters and commanding all that had been married before they entred into Orders to retain their Wives after it The first part of which Law was made in pursuance of the Nicene Canon that had been frequently renewed both by the Ecclesiastical and Civil Law by reason of a common Abuse that was crept into the Church that Men professing Caelibacy took Women into their Houses commonly call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 beloved Sisters to minister to their necessities and join with them in their Devotions by which odd kind of liberty they brought great and just Scandal upon the Church and for that reason we meet with continual Complaints in all the Ancients against them The other part of the Law against the Clergies divorce upon pretence of stricter Sanctity is taken from the sixth Apostolical Canon so that it is evident from this Law that the Caelibacy of the Clergy was not at this time injoin'd though afterward it crept into the Church by insensible degrees till it was at length imposed rather by the Authority of Custom than Law § XIV But the management of the Civil Policy of this Reign in Church-Matters as happy as it was it was not so happy as the Ecclesiastical Government that runs parallel with it was deplorable For in this very Period of time hap'ned such a fatal Revolution in the Church like those great Deluges and Conflagrations that Plato dreams of by which old Worlds are destroyed and new ones made as swept away the whole frame of the ancient Church and swallowed up all its power in the exorbitant Usurpation of one Bishop For now it was that the old Constitution of the Catholick Church as it had stood from the time of our Saviour and his Apostles divided into Provincial Jurisdictions and those again uniâ—ed into a Catholick Communion with an equality of Power among themselves was gulft up in the unlimited and universal Supremacy of one single Bishop over all This was first challenged by Innocent the first who began to reign in the year 402 and was ever after eagerly pursued by his Successors at which great change of things it might be convenient to make a stand and take a sad view of the dismal Ruins under which the Primitive Church with all its liberties lay buried for many Ages But as it
is too great a Work for this place so being a Matter purely Ecclesiastical and wholly transacted within the Church it self it would not be very proper For the design of this Work is to give an account of those Transactions of the Church in which the State was concern'd and thereby to exemplifie the exercise of the Civil Jurisdiction within it without invading the Churches own original Authority And therefore this Matter being wholly transacted within the Church without any interposition of the State it belongs not to this Argument and for that reason I shall at present wave it not forgetting that I am under an Obligation to Baronius of an hunting match for the painted Haâ—râ— In the mean time I proceed And as for the Laws of Theodosius they are to be divided into two Parts those that were enacted before the compiling of the Theodosian Code that are taken into the body of the Code it self under their several Titles and those that were made after it that are annext as an Appendix under the name of Novells The Code was composed in the year 438 and the 30 th year of his Reign out of the Rescripts of Christian Princes of both Empires from Constantine the Great to that time containing the Records of 127 years from the year of our Lord 312 to the year 438 taking in the Laws of 16 Princes Constantine and his three Sons Julian Jovian Valentinian Valens Gratian Valentinian the younger Theodosius the Great Arcadius Honorius Theodosius the Younger and his contemporary Emperors Constantius and Valentinian the third It was drawn up by eight Commissioners chosen out of his chief Officers and Ministers of State whose Names are recorded in the Emperor 's Novel for ratifying the whole Code His design was to make the Law more easie certain and intelligible for the time to come That Men may not wait for formidable Answers as it were of a profound Oracle from the formal superciliousness and falsly pretended Learning of the Lawyers when it is made so easie to understand how a Deed of Gift is to be drawn up what way an Inheritance ought to be sued for how a conveyance is to be made what Debts are certain or uncertain all which are drawn out of obscurity and placed in the light by this work of our Sacred Majesty And indeed this Reformation of Laws when they grow numerous intricate and perplexing is one of the noblest acts of Government for all Laws in process of time naturally degenerate into so much niceness and curiosity as to be of no use at last than only to defeat the very end for which they were instituted at first viz. the security of Mens Rights and Properties And when they are come to that pass as to perplex and involve rather than fix and clear their Titles they are then nothing but snare cheat and vexation which of all Governments is incomparably the most intollerable The most heavy Arbitrary Government is much more easie to the Subject than legal Oppression for when Men oppress without Law they are usually restrain'd within some bounds by Modesty because then the whole blame of it must light upon themselves but when they have Law or pretence of Law to abet their Oppressions then is the Abuse both boundless and shameless and how barbarously soever the poor People may be opprest the Law must bear the blame of all whilst the Oppressor runs away with all the profit And therefore it is but a weak distinction that is vulgarly made between Arbitrary Government and Government by Law for either may or may not be arbitrary as they are executed A Government without Law may tye it self to the Rules of Justice and a Government by Law may turn all the Laws into fraud and oppression and when they do so they are guarded and fortified in their Tyranny by the Law So that whereas there are two sorts of Arbitrary Government one without Law another with it the case of the first is very hard and deplorable when Men have no security from the Government for their Rights beside its own good Will But the case of the second is intollerable both because it takes off the grand restraints of modesty and discretion which all Men are under that have no other rule to justify their Actions beside the Justice and Equity of the Actions themselves and withal because it leaves Men at liberty under the shelter and formality of Law to do all the dishonest things in the World with confidence and a good grace And therefore the wisest Princes in all Ages have not been more careful to make good Laws for the security of the Subjects Rights than to see to their fair and easie execution For when Suits are made tedious difficult and chargeable and Men are generally forced to pay more for Justice than Justice is worth the Law serves no other end than to rob them of their Rights and when my neighbor has taken away one half of my Estate if I will seek to right my self by Law I must spend the other so that if I get the Victory and that is uncertain I get nothing if I lose it I am utterly undone The removing of this great Abuse which length of time had brought upon the Imperial Law was the Emperor's great design in this magnificent Work which though it have its defects is yet an excellent and useful body of Laws and has met with great acceptance in all Ages and civilized Nations And even the barbarous People themselves when they vanquisht the Empire submitted to its Laws as we shall particularly see in the Laws of the Goths and Franks I have here dropt in this short account of the Theodosian Code both because it came in my way under this Emperor's reign and because every Reader might understand the great Authority of this Book upon which we relye so much through this whole discourse But now I proceed to his own particular Laws His first in the Title de Episcopis in the year 416 was made for the regulation of the Parabolani of Alexandria a sort of Monks that practised Physick especially in times of the Plague or other contagious Diseases therein laying aside all regard to their own safety whence they had the name of Parabolani i. e. desperate or fearless Men hence in St. Paul's description of Epaphroditus his great Zeal for the Gospel he tells the Philippians among other Praises that for the sake of Christ he had been near unto death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neglecting his own life or as an old Latin Interpreter renders it parabolatus est animam suam he parabolated his own life Now these Men taking upon themselves such a popular piece of Charity they as it naturally falls out in such Cases grew insolent and became very troublesom to the Government raised Tumults thrust themselves into Publick Affairs and will have all things govern'd by their own Will and Pleasure Upon this the Alexandrians Petition the Emperor to
restrain their outrage and he for a remedy against the Mischief for the time to come makes a Law consisting of these seven heads First to forbid their intermedling with any Proceedings in the Emperor's Courts Secondly to reduce them to the number of 500. Thirdly to enact that none should be capable of admission into the Order but poor Men. Fourthly that they should be chosen by the Citizens And Fifthly approved and confirm'd by the Governor Sixthly that they refrain from all Publick Meetings and Courts of Justice unless as they are forced to appear as Parties And lastly that as vacant Places fell for the time to come they should be fill'd up by the Governor The occasion and history of this Law is described at large by Socrates There had been an old grudg between Orestes the Prefect and Cyril the Bishop of Alexandria because as the Prefect thought the Bishop's great Power in that City seem'd to abate of and check with the Authority of the Emperor 's Vice-Roys and because he knew that Cyril watcht his Government but it hapned once that whilst the Governor was present at a Publick Shew to prevent a Tumult of the Jews there were present several of Cyril's Friends and among the rest one Hierax a zealous School-Master who was seised and punisht for a Spy upon this St. Cyril threatens the Jews and upon his threatnings their Rabble enter into a Conspiracy to destroy the Christians and in the Night raise an out-cry that one of their Churches was on fire and as the Christians run from all Parts to quench it they with Protestant Flails murther them in the Tumult upon which Cyril the next day turn'd them all out of Town and the People plunder'd their Goods This fretted Orestes to the heart so that though Cyril used all means of reconciliation with him he vowed an eternal and implacable Enmity Upon this Animosity the Monks of Nitria as the Historian has it but whatever they were they must by the circumstances of Time and Place be the same Men that this Law calls Parabolani make Tumults in the Streets affront and assault the Prefect in his Chariot and one of them breaks his head with a stone who being taken is wrackt to death by him but honorably buried by Cyril Upon which complaint is made to the Emperor from both sides but he takes his Governors part and for that end makes this Law to put these Ecclesiastical Men under his Government who had hitherto been subject to no Authority but the Bishop's Though 16 or 17 Months after being again reconciled to Cyril he puts them wholly under his Jurisdiction restores the Power of Election and Substitution into his hands and increases their number to six hundred His next Law enacted in the year 421 relates only to the Churches of Illyricum We command that all Innovation ceasing the ancient Canons and Customs that have hitherto prevail'd be observed through all the Provinces of Illyricum and if any Doubt or any Controversie arise it shall be determin'd by the Synod of Bishops but not without consulting the most reverend Arch-Bishop of Constantinople that ought to enjoy the Prerogative of old Rome There is no one piece of Antiquity that has been more canvassed and controverted than this Law among learned Men and yet to this day it lyes undiscover'd in the dark and no wonder whilst the Records of it lay buried in Rubbish It were tedious to recite the several Conjectures of Photius Baronius Perron de Marca Blondell Gothofred and divers others because they are all but meer Guesses without any bottom to support them But since their time the Records have been brought to light by the learned Holstenius who first publisht them to the World out of a Vatican Manuscript in the year 1662. And they agree so punctually with all the Records of that time as by it setting aside the Authority of the Manuscript it self to justifie and in reality demonstrate their own Credit Now the short of the Story is this That the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople were at that time contending for Supremacy of Jurisdiction and Illyricum being situated in the Confines of both Empires was naturally the Seat of War For though all Illyricum had in former times belonged to the Western Empire yet it was divided by Theodosius the Great and one half of it laid to the Eastern and upon that the Bishop of Constantinople claims Jurisdiction over it Constantinople then pretending to the same Prerogative in the East that Rome enjoyed in the West This pretence was set up immediately after the Council of Constantinople that only gave it preheminence of honour next to old Rome and that they fairly construed Equality of Jurisdiction whereas on the other side the Romanists challenged Supremacy of Power over those Churches by prescription from the time of Innocent the first who had set up the Bishop of Theâ—saloniâ—â— as his Legate over all Illyricum and to justifie his Innovation pleads Prescription from Damasus but that is according to the constant Custom of the Man rank Forgery when Damasus never in the least pretended to any such Power but only kept up Correspondence with Acholius Bishop of Thessalonica as the chief Metropolitan in those parts without any Intimation of any such Relation between them But Rufus who was then Bishop of Thessalonica having received such a Supremacy of Power from his Master Innocent was faithful to his Masters Interest and so continued till the very time of this Rescript and fighting it out manfully against the Usurpation of the Constantinopilitans Now the point of War as it was managed by the Bishop of Constantinople was this that Illyricum ought to be wholy governed by its own Synod of Bishops But as by Rome that the Bishop of Thessalonica ought to have and exercise a Supremacy of Jurisdiction over them And so it stood at the time of this Rescript Boniface the first then Bishop of Rome in the year 419 which was but two years before the date of the Rescript commending his Courage and great Service to the Apostolick See and this Victory was so great that as Boniface himself attests the greatest part of the Illyrican Bishops came over to his side But Atticus then Bishop of Constantinople more a Lawyer then a Divine and therefore chiefly governed and over-ruled the Church by Imperial Authority who had bafled an Excommunication of Pope Innocent with the Emperors Rescript and by it seised a Jurisdiction over the Province of Hellespont as I have elsewhere shewn finding Illyricum in danger to be lost procures this crafty Rescript from the Emperor against Rufus and under pretence of asserting the Laws and Liberties of the Church by preserving the Supreme Power of Provincial Synods takes the Supremacy of all to himself in that nothing was to be done or concluded by them without his consent And here the confidence of these men is very remarkable in pleading Antiquity on both sides notwithstanding the
troubled with any of the old Schisms and Heresies Though it was assaulted with new ones and so it must be as long as the Taint of Vanity is left in Humane Nature but as fast as it sprung up they were cut off by the same Method of Government So that by the reiterated experiments of so many Emperors here Recorded in this Code we find the true Efficacy of Penal Laws against all the extravagant wantonness of Schism and Singularity Under the Title de Haereticis there are ten Laws of Theodosius the Younger beside two other under the Title of Ne sanctum Baptisma iteretur and three of Valentinian the Third but they are only Recapitulations of former Laws to glean up the small scatterings that were left of the Ancient Schisms and Heresies The most remarkable of them all is the 65th Law by Theodosius in the year 428 that is an Epitome of all the former Laws by which he sweeps away at once 23 Sects by enjoyning the Execution of the former Laws against them upon the Judges under the same Penalty that the Law inflicts upon the Offenders Quae omnia ita custodiri decernimus ut nulli Judicum liceat delatum ad se crimen minori aut nulli coercitioni mandare nisi ipse id pati velit quod aliis dissimulando concesserit Under the Title de Apostatis there is only one Law of Valentinian to tye the Punishment of Intestability upon Apostates with more severity in the year 426 to which may be added the like Law against the Jews under that Title under which are extant seven more of Theodosius the Younger the first is very particular forbidding the Jews upon their great Festival of Aman to burn the Holy Cross in shew of their Contempt of the Christian Religion For that had been their Custom ever since their deliverance by Hester from the Conspiracy of Haman to Celebrate that day with extraordinary extravagance of Joy and Mirth and among other Customary Solemnities they were wont to burn the Effigies of Haman and his Gallows with mighty Triumph and Acclamation But it seems they had at this time changed the Gallows for a Cross thereby to reflect Contempt upon our Saviour and his Religion And for that very reason are they forbid that Custom under Penalty of forfeiting all their other Liberties The following Laws under this Title viz. l. 21 22 25 26 27. were only enacted to defend them and their Synagogues from the violence of the Rabble only the 27 th is made to restrain the Insolence of Gamaliel the Patriarch in the year 415 upon which followed the dissolution of that Office among the Jews For four years after in the year 419 he publisht a Rescript the last under that Title commanding the Jewish Governors to refund all the Crown-Gold that they had collected since the abolition of their Patriarchs and withal commanding all his own Officers for the time to come to collect the same Tribute for the use of his own Exchequer And so ended the succession of Jewish Patriarchs that had continued from their dispersion to this very day by what accident 't is uncertain but it was probably occasion'd by the great Misdemeanors of Patriarch Gamaliel who as we find by the 22 d Law had highly abused the Emperor's favor to the Oppression of the Christians themselves To these Laws may be added two more under the next Title ne Christianum Mancipium Judaeus habeat forbidding Jews to keep Christian Slaves upon pain of death Under the Title de Paganis there are only five Laws of Theodosius to renew the Laws in force against them upon supposition that there are any Pagans remaining in the Empire as it is expressed in his second Law Paganos qui supersunt quanquam jam nullos esse credamus promulgatarum legum jamdudum praescripta compescant And thus was this body of Imperial Laws finisht and consign'd that has ever since been the Standard of Law to most parts of the Christian World and from it we are fully instructed in the proper method of curing Schisms and Heresies viz. by abetting the Discipline of the Church with Penal Laws effectually executed upon the Offenders This after all the Experiments that were tryed by several Emperors was found the only proper Remedy against all the Distempers of the Church as Theodosius himself observes in his third Novel concerning all sorts of Dissenters Quos si ad sanitatem mentis egregiae lege medicâ revocare conemur severitatis culpam ipsi praestabunt qui durae frontis obstinato piaculo locum veniae non relinquunt If we endeavor to reduce these Men by sharp Physick to sobriety of Mind they themselves must bear the blame as well as the Punishment of our Severity that by their wicked obstinacy stop up all Avenues of Mercy or Pardon That is the true state of the Case there is alwayes a natural stubbornness mixt with Schism and nothing but smart can cure it And this is the thing that makes it so necessary to add Penal Laws to the Discipline of the Church thereby to stanch that peevishness that without it will naturally fly out into all the follies and wildness of humane Nature And all Princes that either out of their own natural Curiosity to try the experiment or being forced by the necessity of the times have taken off the Penal Laws or suspended their execution have soon been convinced of their mistake by the fatal Consequences that it has brought upon their Government As for the Laws that were enacted by these Emperors after the sealing of the Code and for that reason call'd Novels or new Laws there are two of Theodosius and three of Valentinian The first of Theodosius is only a revival of his own 56 th Law de Haereticis commanding the execution of all Laws against Jews Heathens and Hereticks His next Law takes away all manner of exemptions from Publick Taxes and among others those granted to the Clergy by his Predecessors which the Emperor excuses by the pressing difficulty of the present time though it is evident that granting or withdrawing such favors are meer Acts of the Prerogative Royal. The third Law placed in the Novels of Theodosius belongs not to him but to Valentinian the third directed to his Prefect in France and is of a peculiar Nature from all the other Laws in the whole Code being indeed not so properly an Imperial as a Papal Rescript and extorted by the Importunity of an assuming Pope to justifie his own Proceedings There had been an old Contest between the Bishops of Arles and Vienna for the Metropolitical Superiority for though it had always belong'd to Vienna yet Patroclus a very ill Man getting into the Bishoprick of Arles by Court-tampering usurps it to himself and is backt in it by Pope Zosimus with the pretended Authority of ancient Canons But this is contradicted by his two next Successors Boniface and Celestine upon the very same Plea of
dear to him but the Truth of God and that as for Nestorius though he had received many injuries from him he was so far from bearing him any ill Will that what he did was out of kindness to him only to put him upon clearing himself from those errors in the Faith that were vulgarly and he hoped falsly charged upon him which if he would be pleased to do himself should be very glad of his Friendship But the Quarrel advances whil'st Anastasius pretending Peace undertakes to prove in a Discourse before the Clergy of Constantinople that Cyril in his Book against him was at last of the same Opinion with himself Upon this Cyril writes to them to convict him of manifest leasing and impudence and upon that the Clergy of Constantinople draw up a Schedule to parallel the Assertions of Nestorius with the Doctrines of Paulus Samâ—satenus as the Father of this Heresie from whence Suidas and from him Baronius rashly suppose him to have descended of his Off-spring and when they had so done they by common consent publish it in their Churches which could not but be an unpardonable Provocation to his Proud and Violent Spirit and indeed it was a just ground of displeasure against them it being a false and unjust Charge against their own Bishop But Cyril finding by his furious temper that he was not to be reclaimed endeavours to engage all the Bishops of the most eminent Churches against him and first he writes to Celestine the great Bishop of Rome to inform him of the whole matter and beg his Assistance and Advice Celestine immediately takes very high offence at Nestorius Condemns him in Council and by the Authority of the Apostolick See deposes him if he repent not within 10 days and writes to John of Antioch Rufus of Thessalonica Juvâ—nal of Jerusalem and Flavianus of Philippi to desire their Concurrence to his Sentence And no doubt he took the Complaint so much the more greedily as being glad of any opportunity to take down the Proud and Aspiring Prelates of that See of whom he had too much reason to be jealous at that time when they had made several Attempts to mount the Throne of the Imperial City above the Apostolical Chair it self But now Nestorius perceiving the Clouds to gather and that a Storm was like to overtake him by Cyril's Activity he follows him with his Letters to Celestine though pretended to be written upon another occasion viz. Concerning the Pelagian Bishops that had been cast out of the Western Church for their Heresie but were then at Constantinople filling all Peoples Ears with Complaints of their unjust Sentence and daily soliciting both the Emperor and himself for restitution and therefore desires to let him know their Crime that he may rid both his Royal Master and himself from their Importunity After this his own Controversie is brought in as it were by way of Postscript to prevent false Reports against him and soon after he sends him larger discourses in his own Justification Upon which he returns him a very stately and supercilious Answer as if he were particularly pleased in insulting over a Bishop of Constantinople cutting him off from the Communion of the Catholick Church allowing him only 10 days from the time of the Receipt of the Instrument to redeem himself from the Fatal Decree by a publick and open Repentance And as for the Cause of the Pelagians he rates him very smartly for giving them any Countenance or Entertainment and reflects suspicious of that Heresie upon him for his presuming to interpose in their behalf however it is not time for him to intercede for others but to take speedy care of himself This being done he certifies his Sentence to the Clergy and People of Constantinople letting them know that if Nestorius did not recant within 10 days they should no longer own him for their Bishop And the same thing is done by his several Epistles to the forementioned Bishops all which is seconded by Cyril who was glad to fortifie himself with the Authority of the Apostolick See and therefore he sends by the same Messenger that first brought Celestine's Letter to himself a particular account to them and to Acacius of Beraea of all the fair means that had been used for reclaiming Nestorius before they proceeded to this severity who all agree with him against Nestorius as it is evident by Acacius his Answer to it this he particularly assures him for himself and John of Antioch who upon it writes a very kind and prudent Letter to his old Friend Nestorius conjuring him by all the Tyes of Friendship not to disturb his own and the Churches Peace by contending about a word whilest himself professed to own the sense of it And withal tells him that if he would suffer himself to be perswaded to disclaim the Controversie it would be so far from the dishonour of a Recantation that it would be an eminent Act of Wisdom and Greatness of Mind to forego Contentions and his own Opinions that were not necessary to the Faith for the Peace of the Church and this he writes as the unanimous sence of divers Bishops that were his Friends This Letter might probably have made some impression upon his great Spirit had not Cyril spoyled all by his own over eagerness for now finding himself so well back't he would not be satisfied with the meer quitting his opinion but he must be obliged to anathematise it too and accordingly tenders him 12 Anathema's to subscribe which though they were Theological Verities were I think too nice to be imposed as Articles of Faith and necessary conditions of the Peace of the Church And I am withal very apt to think that if this new Imposition had not made the breach wider it might have been made up for both Nestorius and Anastasius seem'd by this time not to have been very fond of their Cause if they could any way have quitted it with honour But this new Imposition of Cyril so enflames his Cholerick Nature that he now forgets all Temper and encounters Anathema's with Anathema's and throws himself into an utter incapacity of Reconciliation upon the Terms of Pope Celestine and that which is worse it gave him the advantage and reputation of a Party for John of Antioch was so offended at their rigour that it made him side with Nestorius against Cyril and it was this that enflamed the Zeal of Theodoret who as appears by his Epistles to Sporadius and Irenaeus was before and after this time no Friend to the opinions of Nestorius but an irreconcileable Enemy to Cyril and his Anathema's and therefore though he were one of those Bishops that had subscribed John of Antioch's Epistle to Nestorius he could never after brook this Imposition of Cyril But now Nestorius having gained this advantage by this over Pursuit rallies with greater fierceness and rages with greater Cruelty then ever especially against his own
Nestorians finding themselves every where excluded the Church by this Union spread abroad reports that Cyril had imbraced the Nestorian Faith and Letters are forged in his name condemning the Council of Ephesus and some new fanatick Hereticks plead his Authority for their own foolish Novelties And some over zealous Men of his own Party accuse him of too much complyance with the Hereticks and this cost Cyril some trouble and time to clear himself as well from the jealousie of his Friends as from the spite of his Enemies And so was the Catholick Church at length restored to Peace and Unity and as Cyril relates most of the Nestorians repenting of their Heresie were upon their submission restored to the Catholick Communion And to perfect the work Pope Sixtus writes to both the Bishops to commend them both for his white Boys quia ad beatum Apostolum Petrum fraternitas universa convenit And thus the Emperor having at last compast the Restitution of the Churches Peace for its lasting security he enacts a Rescript in the year 435 to root the Nestorian Heresie out of all his Dominions But why no sooner says Gothofred Because says he the Emperor might suppose that the Hereticks had been reclaimed by the sentence of the Council but now finding that they continued to spread abroad their Books and Opinions he thought it high time to stop the mischief by this severe Rescript This may be true though it is meer guess but if this learned Man had observed the contest between Cyril and John of Antioch and that it was 2 or 3 years after the Council before the Emperor could gain John and his Eastern Bishops intirely from the Party of Nestorius he would have found a very good reason why this Rescript was not sooner publisht viz. because till then Affairs were not ripe for it and if it had been publisht before this strong Party had been taken off it might have tempted them to join with the Heresie in good earnest But now when they had declared against it and Nestorius his own small Party was left alone it was seasonable to prevent its growth by the Execution of this smart Law and it did the work effectually for though for a time the Ghost of the Heresie skulkt up and down in other shapes and other languages yet it could never after get so much courage or confidence as to appear in its own form in publick The Rescript consists of three Parts First it commands That the followers of Nestorius should be call'd by no other name than the nick-name of Simonians from Simon Magus as if he were the Author of their Sect as Constantine the Great named the Arians Porphyrians Secondly that all his Books and all other Books whatsoever contrary to the Decrees of the Ephesine Council should be brought in and publickly burnt Thirdly that they should be debarr'd of all Meeting Places either in Publick or Private with the Penalty of Proscription of Goods upon all Offenders against any branch of this Law And because after this some Men publisht the same Opinions in new obscure and ambiguous Terms and indeavor'd to revive them under the Authority of some of the Ancients particularly Theodorus Mopsuestenus and Diodorus Tarsensis in their Writings against Eunomius and Apollinaris he publishes another Rescript in the year 448 against all such Attempts under the same Penalties The execution of both which Rescripts being injoined in good earnest by the Praetorian Praefects upon their Judges and Under-Officers soon did their own work And thus ended the Council and the Heresie together And things might have been much sooner and much more easily setled had they not been perplexed partly by the over-eagerness of Cyril in imposing his Anathema's as Articles of Faith which made John of Antioch and his Party fly off so that he was forced to quit that imposition before they could be reconciled But chiefly by the dishonesty of the Courtiers who took part with the Hereticks against the Authority of the Church and abused the Emperor with false tales and reports but otherwise all the proceedings in this Matter were fair and regular the Controversie was determin'd by the judgment of the Church and the judgment of the Church abetted by the Power of the Empire and that is the true and proper concurrence of both Jurisdictions in framing Ecclesiastical Laws § XVI The Nestorian Heresie being broke and vanquisht by the Authority of the Ephesine Council and the assistance of the Imperial Power the Church injoyed Peace for the space of eighteen years and govern'd it self by its own Provincial Synods without the need of any concurrence from the Civil State till the fiery Zeal of Abbot Eutyches an over-driving stickler against Nestorius broke out in new Combustions who out of too fierce and eager opposition to the exploded Heresie as it usually happens to Men of furious Tempers runs headlong into the contrary extreme So that whereas Nestorius held that the Divinity and Humanity in our Saviour were two distinct Persons as well as Natures he teaches that though they were two distinct Natures before the Incarnation yet after it they were blended into one And for this dull and absurd Metaphysicks of a thick-skull'd Monk or as Pope Leo calls it Error qui de imperitià magis quà m de versutiâ natus est not a whimsey of subtilty but dullness must the Christian World be set in Flames and Ashes rather then part with the honour of the deep Invention so that it brought much more perplexing trouble and disturbance to the Christian Church then the Nestorian Dream For though that was not overcome without great difficulty through the Treachery of the Eunuchs and the Courtiers yet Theodosius being now grown old and desirous of ease he submitted to their Power especially the Eunuch Chrysaphius who as he was his particular Favourite so was he Eutyches his particular Friend and he so managed the Emperor as Eusebius did Constantius and Eudoxius Valens that instead of assisting the Church with his Imperial Power he opprest and opposed it From whence it was that during all his Reign it could never cope with this Heresie though by the good providence of God it was effectually vanquish't under his Successor Marcian who came to the Crown both by the Marriage of Pulcheria Sister of Theodosius and the Choice of the Senate and the Army one of the greatest Princes in the Imperial Succession and the man that next to Constantine and Theodosius might have deserved the Sir-name of Great A Prince of great Conduct Courage Prudence and Piety a Lover of Justice and Honesty a strict observer of the Laws of the Church and the Empire and who by his wise management left all things in such a quiet posture as perhaps no other Reign can equal when the Successor came in not by Inheritance but Election And therefore I shall give the most exact account that I can of the Ecclesiastical Transactions of his Reign
things are carried with Tumult and Violence by Dioscorus of Alexandria Juvenal of Jerusalem Thalassius of Caesarea and Barsumas a debauch't Abbot who was particularly summoned by the Emperor and his Vote made equal with the Bishops contrary both to the Canons and the Custom of the Church as appears by the Subscriptions to the late Council of Constantinople under Flavianus against Eutyches Action the 7th where the Bishops subscribe in this Form IN Bishop subscribe as Judge and the Abbots in this only IN Presbyter and Abbot subscribe the Condemnation And beside all these Irregularities Count Elpidius who was sent by the Emperor to preside and keep good order favouring Eutyches out of Complyance with Chrysaphius took the Judgment of the Council to himself so as to hinder all Canonical Proceedings and that soon run the whole matter into Tumult and Confusion Barsumas and his Monks breaking into the Council beating some imprisoning others and forcing others to subscribe a Blank for Eutyches his Absolution and so Eutyches is absolved Flavianus and Eusebius of Dorilaeum Condemned and imprisoned too together with the Popes Legates only Hilarus escaping by Flight And to confirm all these unpriestly and unchristian Enormities Chrysaphius procures an Imperial Rescript which we shall find afterwards reverst by the Emperor Marcian But within three days after the Scuffle Flavianus dies in Goal of the Wounds given him by Barsumas and his Mirmidons and to him succeeds Anatolius though he cannot pass at Rome without absolute submission to Pope Leo his Epistles and the Catholick Church as if they were the same thing But Dioscorus having carried things with so high an hand and bold success returns home flusht and drunk with Victory and in one of his Fits excommunicates Pope Leo himself But the only effect of all these disorders and disturbances in the Church at that time was the advancement of the Papal Greatness for as this Pope never failed to exert his Power to the utmost so every success raised his Throne to a greater height and he so managed this advantage as to bring the design of the Papal Supremacy as it was laid by Innocent the First to its full perfection For though the Title of Head of the Universal Church was not gain'd till Boniface the Third yet Pope Leo went away with the Power and as will appear by the Event exercised a real Supremacy over the Catholick Church For being informed of these wild disorders he immediately calls a Council and writes to the Emperor to Conjure him by the Holy Trinity and as he will answer it at the Divine Tribunal to null all the Acts of that Prophane Council and by Vertue of an Appeal that Flavianus made to himself before his death demands a General Council to be held in Italy And this he seconds with another to his Sister Pulcheria begging her intercession with the Emperor And the Emperor Valentinian with his Mother Placidia and his Queen Eudoxia hapning to visit Rome at that time Leo so plyes them with ruful Stories of the late Ephesine Persecution that he dissolves the Women into Tears and engages all their Zeal to intercede with Theodosius for an Italian Council and this they all do out of that dutiful respect to the Supremacy of St. Peter to whom Leo tells them that our Saviour and all Antiquity had ever given the Sacerdotii Principatus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they express it in their several Epistles But the Emperor was so prepossest by his Eunuchs and his Zeal against Nestorius that no importunity could prevail upon him the thing being already Canonically determined as he replyes to the Empress in answer to her Letrer of Intercession and by an Imperial Rescript ratifies the deposition of Flavianus as guilty of the Nestorian Heresie and justifies all the Proceedings against him at Ephesus but if we may relye upon the Crude Reports of Nicephorus and some later Writers which I never do he repented before his death and sent Chrysaphius into Banishment however that was no publick satisfaction was made to the Church till after his death when Marcian reverst all the Acts of the Council together with the Rescript of Theodosius by which it was confirmed restored the banish'd Bishops and removed the Body of Flavianus to Constantinople and for the complete settlement of the Church summoned a Council of 630 Bishops in the Year 451 first at Nice and afterward at the request of the Fathers at Calcedon For these being sensible of the Abuses that had been put upon the Church by the Imperial Delegates in several Councils they were desirous that the Emperor himself might if there hap'ned any Contest about their Proceedings interpose by his own immediate Authority he being then detein'd by urgent Affairs of State at Constantinople and Calcedon being no more then a Miles distance on the other side the Thracian Bosphorus And by this putting themselves into his Imperial Majesties own Protection they in a great measure secured the Liberties of the Church and rescued it from the long continued Abuses of the Court-Debauchees insomuch that though the Emperor sent many of his Chief Officers of State to manage and moderate in Council yet they never presumed to conclude any thing till himself was present at the 6th Session But the Council being met at the Emperor's Summons Pope Leo sends his Legates and his Letters in which he is pleased to take notice of his Majesties particular Respect to the Apostolick See in that he did not Summon but only invite him to the Council when he was not obliged to appear in Person or as Hilarus one of his Delegates afterwards pleads in the Council it self that it was without Precedent and against all Prescription for a Pope of Rome to appear in Council But his Holiness not being obliged to execute the Office of Supremacy in Person he sends his Legates or Curates as his Representatives to preside over and manage the Council And the Council being opened Paschasinus that was the Fore-man of the Ambassy moves in his Masters name the Bishop of Rome the head of all Churches that Dioscorus of Alexandria may be call'd to the Bar and not suffer'd to sit as Judg in Council otherwise himself and his Brethren were commanded by their Commission to remonstrate Here the Judges require his Accusation To this Lucentius another Legate replys That his Crime was too evident in that he had presumed to assume to himself the Authority of a Judg and pass't sentence not only without but against the judgment of the Apostolick See which as it never ought to be done so it never had been done and for this reason he is not admitted to sit upon the Bench but is turn'd down to the Bar and his Indictment is exhibited by Eusebius of Dorilaeum But its Prosecution was at present superseded by Theodoret's appearing in Council that occasion'd a Tumult of the Egyptian Illyrican and Palestine Bishop against him and the Eastern Pontick
rational discourse of the true use of Councils and their Authoritative determinations in the Christian Church It is not say they to make new Doctrines of Faith but to protect the old Truths against the wantonness of Innovators so that if all men would be content with the Ancient Faith it would be needless for the Church to make any new Declarations but when men leave the old Track of Religion to loose themselves in their own new contrived Labyrinths and corrupt the plain and simple Truth with over nice and curious Inventions it is then necessary for the Church to stop their Vanity by its Authoritative Declaration of the Truth it self Not as if there were something defective in the Faith and the Church were always adding to it but to make such wholesome Provisions as it judges most convenient against all Innovated Doctrines And this they exemplifie by â—ll the Decrees of the several Councils against the Prophane Novelties of Arius Pâ—â—tinus Macedonius and Nestorius and shew that they were only Fences to guard and defend the simplicity of the Ancient Faith against the petulâ—nt Assaulâ—s of these several Hereticks and that they declare to be the ground of their present determination against Eutyches that it was only a Declaration of the old Truth against a new Heresie And much more to this purpose and it is the true State of the Authority of Councils to make Decrees to stop the vanities and singularities of Innovators and when they are made they become obligatory by their own Authority and nothing can hinder or take off their Obligation but an apparent contrariety to the Divine Law So that it neither concerns nor becomes the Subject to make a strict and Philosophical search after the truth of the Decree it is enough to him that it is not apparently false In all other Cases the Authority of the Church is sufficient to justifie his Obedience before God by whose Providence they were placed under their Government And the want of this just Civility to Superiors has in all Ages been the true Original of all disturbances in the Christian Church And this was the sence of the Emperor himself who immâ—dâ—ately upon the Receipt of this Report from the Fathers publishes an Edict to the talking Citizens of Constantinople forbidâ—ing all farther disputations about the Christian Faith in that all Controversies were now determined by the Authority of the Council against which he says it were prophaneness and sacriledge for any man to presume to set up his own Opinion and no less madness then to grâ—pe after more Light at noon day and therefore after this clear discovery of the â—ruth whoever will not acquiesce in it but makes farther Enquiry he can neither seek nor find any thing but falshood And for this reason all farther disputes are peremptorily forbidden as an insolent and intolerable affront to the Sacred Authority of the Council and this is enacted under the forementioned Penalties that he declared in the 6th Session for the Confirmation of their Exposition of Faith Deposition of the Clergy Disbanding of Souldiers and Banishment of Citizens And this was afterward alledged as a proper instance by Facundus Hermianensis to the Emperor Justinian against the condemnation of the tria capitula after they had been tryed and acquitted by the Council of Calcedon with this remark upon it The Emperor Marcian judged it no less than Prophaneness and Sacriledg to review the Sacerdotal Judgment and therefore that being once pass't it was an end of all Controversie Here behold a Prince indeed a true Father of the Common-Wealth and a true Son of the Church that does not dictate but follow Ecclesiastical Decrees declaring by his Edict That whoever after the settlement of the truth shall pretend to make any farther inquiry can seek for nothing but Error For this saying forever blessed be his Memory all the World over who not only recover'd the sinking Empire but also restored lasting Peace to the poor distracted Church This Edict was reinforced by a second a Month after and Copies of it sent to all the several Praefecti-praetorio for its more effectual Execution And they are both revived in a third Rescript published the year following in which this Heresie and all the ways of propagating it are supprest by all the punishments against all other Heretiques So that it is in reality a neat Compendium of all the Laws under the Title de Haereticis in the Theodosian Code And because the bastard Council of Ephesus under Dioscorus in which Flavianus Eusebius Theodoret and many other Catholick Bishops were condemn'd had been ratified by a Rescript of Theodosius he here cancels its full force as to all the Sufferers that were surviving And because the Eutychian Itch was got among the Monks of Jerusalem and Alexandria to the raising of botches and tumults especially at Jerusalem by the disorderly behavior of one Theodosius who made himself Bishop of the place the Emperor and Empress write to them to desist at their farther peril But it seems some were stubborn and irreclaimable and no sort of Men so obstinate as those that live remote from the Conversation of the World and therefore in the year 455 the Emperor renews his former Rescript particularly to be put in Execution at Alexandria where the Heresie most reign'd and that is the last time that he appear'd against them And thus in four years time by protecting the Church in its due Authority and by abetting their Decrees with Penal Laws and by seeing his own Laws put in effectual Execution he put an end to this powerful and prevailing Heresie though it had gain'd both the Eunuchs and the Empire to its side § XVII And thus this great Prince this pattern of Government to all his Successors as Evagrius stiles him having settled all things both in Church and State two years after dyes and is succeeded in the year 457 by Leo who was chosen by the unanimous Vote both of the Senate and the Army a Prince says Nicephorus that would have carried the Election in the most flourishing times of the old Common-Wealth when only worth gave right and title to Preferm%nt a Man of that strict and severe Vertue that he must have been chosen Augustus by the Cato's themselves But as great a Man as he was he found it an hard task to keep things in that good order in which they were left by his Predecessor For no sooner came the news of Marcian's death to Alexandria that Metropolis of Sedition but a few of the Eutychian Party among whom were only two Bishops accompanied with the City-rabble make Timotheus Aelurus their Bishop and most inhumanely murther Proterius at Divine service who had been chosen to that See by the Bishops of the Province upon the deposition of Dioscorus and not content with his blood they treat the dead body with all the circumstances of rudeness and barbarity Upon this Complaints are carried to the Emperor by both Parties
with Petitions on one side for abrogating and on the other for confirming the Council of Calcedon The Emperor considering of the Matter refers it to the Judgment of the Church and being unwilling to put the poor aged Bishops to the tedium of long Journeys for assembling in Council he takes a more compendious but no less effectual course directing his Letters to all the Metropolitans of the Christian Church within the Empire requiring their impartial Judgment of both Controversies without fear or favor or ill-will having only the fear of God before their Eyes and as they would one day answer it to the divine Majesty viz. the Ordination of Timotheus Aelâ—rus and the ratification of the Council of Calcedon And this brought forth that famous volume of Encyclical Epistles that make up the third part of the Council of Calcedon and that are so often and so much commended by the Ancients Liberatus Facundus Hermianensis Evagrius Victor Tunonensis and Cassiodorus at whose perswasion as himself informs us Epiphanius a learned Man translated them into the Latin Tongue and that is the only Copy of them that is now extant An excellent Collection it is of Ecclesiastical Antiquity and a true representation of the ancient Unity and Communion of the Catholick Church without the formality of a general Council The Authority of the determination is the same consisting in the Concord of Bishops and the Resolution it self much more easie and expedient For it required much time and expence to assemble Councils it put infirm old Men to long and tedious Journeys it rob'd most Churches for a time of their Guides by the absence of their leading Prelates whereas by this way of Encyclical Correspondence the dispatch was equally speedy and effectual For the Result of all their Answers was the approbation of the Synod of Calcedon and the deposition of Timotheus there being but one Dissenter and he but half an one and that was Amphilochius Bishop of Sida who at first disallowed the Council of Calcedon but earnestly pâ—â—ss't the deposition of Timotheus thô witâ—â—n a little time he was brought to subscribe the Council as Eulogius Bishop of Alexandria reports who withal says that there were no less than one thousand six hundred subscriptions return'd to the Emperor which if true it is a much greater number than all the four General Councils put together amount to Upon this transaction the Remarque of Facundus is very smart and acute Behold here the true Liberty of the Church in those days when the most Christian King did not overâ—aw the Priests of God with his temporal Power but on the contrary arm'd and warn'd them against all such fear by the over-ruling fear of God Neither did he suggest any thing of his own thoughts lest it should be suspected that their Answer was suited to his Royal Will and this he did not only out of respect to the Discipline of the Christian Church but because he very well knew that no forced Decrees were of any Authority in themselves for when a Sentence is forced it is not his Sentence by whom it is pronounced And the cause that carries it gains nothing by it but the advantage lies on the side of the Party condemn'd for it is evident that he was not at liberty to judg aright whose Judgment is forced for a forced Judgment is none at all And therefore this Emperor of blessed Memory preserved the Peace of the Church because he would not presume to establish any Doctrins by his own Authority and usurp that Power that is proper to the Priesthood alone Whereas had he prescribed to the Council and they meerly lacquied to his instructions it is evident that one Lay-man that was no competent Judg of those Matters really pass't the judgment and not those who were the only proper Judges of the Cause And withal he very well understood that forced Councils never came to any good effect as the Council of Ariminum under Constantius and the false Council of Ephesus under Dioscorus And therefore though himself could have pass't a right sentence yet he would not because he would not render the Sentence of the Church suspected and by that means evacuate its Authority But as the whole Eastern Church agreed in this business so no Man was more active not to say more imperious in it than Pope Leo who was ever for carrying all things through with an high hand and having raised himself to the height of Authority resolved to keep it up For it was no small point of Grandeur that he gain'd when he procured that his own private Epistle should be imposed upon the Catholick Church and made equal with the Decrees of General Councils But that which advanced him to the top-round of Power was his signal Victory over Constantinople and the Eastern Bishops when he forced them to eat and reverse their 28 th Canon made Anatolius submit and beg his pardon brought the Emperor Marcian himself almost upon his Knees and forced him to renounce his own Imperial Rescript thô made in favor of his own Imperial City This great success could not but swell his mind that was already but too great of it self and thereupon he takes the supreme and indeed single management of all things into his own hands And when no Man no not the Emperor himself dares withstand his Commands so severe and peremptory were they that for a good time he kept the Eutychian Cause sufficiently low and humble And to say the truth setting aside his by-design of advancing the Grandeur of his own See he acted nothing that was not only warrantable but justly praise-worthy For when once a Controversie is decided by the Authority of the Church no Christian Bishop can be too vigorous in his proceedings against all thâ—t refuse submission to the Decree Here Peace and Government lye at stake as well as Truth and unless they are preserved the Church is lost and the Society dissolved into meer Tumult and Confusion Whilst Controversies are on foot and have not received the Judgment of the Church we may allow Men to be moderate or eager in their Disputes about them according to the variety of their apprehensions or natural Tempers But after the Church has interposed its Authority there all moderation is at best but Treachery and the Reverence due to its commands will call forth every honest Mans utmost zeal in its defence And that was the case here that the Eutychians moved for a review by a new Council No says Pope Leo that were to offer an Affront to the Authority of the Church in the great Council of Calcedon and instead of putting an end to Schisms and Contentions to make them perpetual for the humor and pleasure of every peevish talker Nam cum nihil sit convenientius fidei defendendae quà m his quae per omnia instruente spiritu sancto irreprehensibiliter definita sunt inhaerere ipsi videbimur bene statuta convellere et
Autoritates quas Ecclesia Vniversalis amplexa est ad arbitrium haereticae petitionis infringere atque ita nullum colligendis ecclesiis modum ponere sed datâ licentiâ rebellandi dilatare magis quam sopire certamina For when the most proper means for securing the Faith is that we acquiesce in those things that are legally settled by the direction of the Holy Ghost otherwise we shall but destroy what is already well settled and affront that Authority that has been own'd by the Catholick Church for the humor of every petulant Heretick and so shall have no means left to preserve the Churches Peace but opening a gap to all rebellion we shall rather propagate than quel Contentions and so concludes ' that when a thing is once determin'd by the Authority of the Universal Church Quis est nisi aut Antichristus aut Diabolus qui pulsare audeat inexpugnabilem firmitatem qui in malitiâ suâ inconvertibilis perseverans per vasa irae et suae apta fallaciae falso diligentiae nomine dum veritatem se mentitur inquirere mendacia desiderat seminare Who but these great Enemies to Christianity the Devil and Antichrist would dare to shake the settled foundation who presevering stubborn in his Malice by his Vessels of Wrath that are apt Tools for his Craft under a false pretence of a greater diligence whilst he counterfeits to search after truth sows his Tares And therefore when the Hereticks only mâ—ved for a conference and the Emperor being inclined to a request as he thought so easie No says Pope Leo this is as great an Affront to the Calcedon Fathers as to grant them a new Council Evidenter agnoscitis quod magnis haereticorum audetur iâ—sidiis ut inter Eutychetis Dioscorique discipulos et eum quem Aposâ—olica sedes direxerit diligentior tanquam nâ—hil ante fuerit definitum tractatus habeatur et quod totius mundi Catholici Sacerdotes in sanctâ Calcedonensi Synodo probant gaudentque firmatum in injuriam etiam sacratissimi Concilii Nicaeni efficiatur infiâ—mum Your Majesty cannot but observe the crafty attempts of Hereticks that there should be a farther Debate between the Hereticks and us as if there had been nothing already determin'd and the settlement made by the Holy Council of Calcedon to the great joy of the Catholick Church all the World over should be slited to a dishonorable reflection upon the Council of Nice it self And whereas the Emperor desired him to send Commissioners he offers to send them not to dispute with the Hereticks that he scorns but to put the Sentence of the Church in effectual execution against them Which was accordingly done and Timotheus Aelurus was deposed banisht and imprison'd and when he petition'd for leave to come to Constantinople there to make a publick declaration against the Eutychian Heresie to this Pope Leo says No again for though that may set him right as to his Faith yet it can never wash away the guilt of his wicked and bloody Actions the Absolution whereof requires some other expiation than fair Confessions and therefore he enjoins Gennadius then Bishop of Constantinople not so much as to admit him into his presence at his peril as he had not long before school'd his Predecessor Anatolius for being too remiss against the Hereticks and suffering one Atticus a Presbyter publickly to dispute the Eutychian Controversie after the determination of the great Council The sum of all is that the matter was already decided by the Authority of the Church and after that there remains no liberty of Dispute And therefore instead of indulging that he advises the Emperor to exert his Imperial Power in defence of the Faith and that when the Church had done its part in declaring it it was now his duty to maintain it against the Assaults of restless Spirits Cùm enim Clementiam tuam Dominus tantâ Sacramenti Illuminatione ditaverit debes incunctanter advertere Regiam Potestatem tibi non solùm ad Mundi regimen sed maximè ad Ecclesiae praesidium esse collatam ut ausus nefarios comprimendo et quae bene sunt statuta defendas et veram pacem his quae sunt turbata restituas c. Seeing your Majesty is by the Grace of God endued with so good an Understanding you ought out of hand to consider that Your Royal Power was given you from above not only for the Government of the Empire but chiefly for the Protection of the Church that by suppressing seditious Attempts you may defend what is already establisht and restore Peace where things are in disorder That is the true state of the use of Regal Power in the Government of the Church to protect and assist it in the free exercise of its own legislative Authority not to assume and annex it to the Imperial Crown It would be an endless thing to transcribe all the Passages to the same purpose out of the several Returns made to the Emperor from the Eastern Bishops they all move upon this one hinge that what was determin'd by the Church was Sacred Law and therefore no review or farther dispute of the Resolution of the Calcedon Council And thus was this stubborn Controversie laid and the Church settled in Peace and Unity all this Emperor's Reign But beside these Laws of Discipline to enforce the Authority of the Church he made divers other Laws in behalf of the Church that were meer acts of his Royal Grace and Favor bestowing several Priviledges and Immunities upon Churches and Church-men Thus he granted the right of Sanctuary to all Religious houses so as to punish its violation with no less Penalty than Death Another Law he enacted to forbid all Plays and prophane Sports on Holy-days and to protect Men from Law-suits Arrests and Vexations at times dedicated to the Service of God upon pain of forfeiture of Estate And a third Law to forbid all but Christians to plead in Courts a fourth against the Sacriledg of Simony and a fifth to exempt the Clergy from being forced to appear before Secular Courts beside a great many other Priviledges granted to particular Churches § XVIII But he dying after he had Reigned 17 Years and 6 Months in the Year 474 his Son-in-Law Zeno unhappily succeeds to the great loss both of Church and State a man altogether unfit for Government being not only a weak a careless and a dissolute Prince but one that affected to expose himself to the contempt of the World by making his Follies and Debaucheries publick esteeming it a poor and sneaking thing to conceal his wickedness but brave and Prince-like to be wicked in sight of the Sun And consequent to this strange folly he was a shameless Oppressor of his Subjects robbing and defrauding them and wherever he could by any indirect shifts seizing any thing into his hands and no wonder when Millions of Worlds are not sufficient to defray the Charges of an unbounded Luxury These practices
so turned the hearts of his Subjects against him as to encourage Basiliscus his Uncle in Law to invade his Empire in which distress he was so deserted that without being able to make any defence or resistance he had no Remedy but to betake himself to flight and lie concealed in his own Country of Isauria And so the whole Empire was left as a naked prey to the Tyrant and being an apparent Usurper he was forced to take cross measures to his Predecessors and in pursuance of his design recalls Timotheus Aelurus from Banishment and by his advice and perswasion issues forth an Encyclical Epistle to the whole Christian World to Anathematise the Novelties as he stiles them of the Council of Calcedon and is not ashamed to warrant his illegal Proceedings by the example of Constantine the Great and Theodosius the younger Imperial Constitutions he might have found enough to ratifie the Sentence of the Church but for an Emperor to pass an Anathema by his own meer Authority upon any Opinion much more against a solemn Decree of the Church was a rudeness and presumption without Precedent as well as Law and no man that was not a Clown as well as a Tyrant would ever have attempted it But as prophane a piece of Buffoonry as it was it is own'd by the Eutychian Faction in a Council at Ephesus and that too under the prophane Title of a Divine and Apostolical Epistle But it is as vehemently opposed by Acacius and his Monks of Constantinople till the People tumultuate in defence of their Bishop against the Tyrant so as to force him to quit the City who in revenge takes away all the Priviledges of the Church and City But being informed of Zeno's marching from Isauria in the Head of an Army he begs pardon and to appease Acacius and the Clergy of the City he publishes his Antencyclical Epistles as they are call'd to reverse and cancel the former and restore the Authority of the Council of Calcedon And what will not Usurpers do to keep possession but all in vain for at Zeno's approach to the City he is utterly deserted and deposed with more ease then he had usurped is put to death at Acusus or Cucusus in Cappadocia and his Encyclical Epistle cancell'd and burnt Upon this the very same Bishops of the Eutychian or rather the then thriving Party that had subscribed it at the late Cabal or Conventicle at Ephesus and there declared it to be their own voluntary Act without any force or compulsion are now most forward to write to Acacius to condemn it and protest before God and the World that what they had done was forced upon them against their own Judgments And thus were things wheel'd about into the same posture in which Leo had left them but this poor dâ—ssolute Prince had not skill to make use of any advantage and instead of fixing upon the same Foundation of that settlement that was layed to his hands blows it up and for his own ease as he dream't and for the satisfaction of all Parties publishes by the contrivance of Petrus Moggus and his Eutychian Friends at Court and some say of Acacius himself an healing Instrument of Union or Comprehension commonly known by the name of Henoticon designed to please all Parties and couch't in such comprehensive and ambiguous terms that they might all challenge it to themselves against each other viz. Setting up the Nicene Faith as the only condition of Church-Communion and thereby tacitly but effectually condemning the Council of Calcedon without taking any notice of it So weak was this Prince as to flatter himself that this slender Artifice was a Cement strong enough to repair all the Breaches in the Christian Church when it really served no Bodies turn but Petrus Moggus and his Eutychians for he having a strong Inclination to the rich Bishoprick of Alexandria of which he could not be capable till the terms of Conformity that were settled by the Council of Calcedon were taken off which being done by this slite the Church Doors were again left open to the Eutychian Hereticks and all things reduced to the same disorder and confusion that they were in before they were setled by the Authority of the Church And so Facundus here argues upon it with his usual acuteness Who can endure the Arbitrary Proceedings of the Emperor Zeno to Enact in Contempt of the Divine Authority of the Church in which Action his precipitate Power did not consider what it ought to do but what it was able to do neither did he understand that confusion never makes Unity For if Unity be to be compast not by the Conversion of Hereticks but mixing their Contagion with the Communion of the Church why are the Acephali alone and not all the other Parties of Hereticks received into the Church without renouncing their errors and submitting to the Churches Sentence against them But the Emperor when he invites them to return to the Communion of the Church he gives them the Title of Orthodox But this becomes the wisdom and circumspection of that man that can be so insipid as to think of invading the Office of the Priests He calls them Orthodox when at the same time he confesses them to be separate from the Communion of the Church If they continue Orthodox after their separation to what purpose does he exhort them to return to their Mother the Church But he would have them unite Communions But he understands not that there can be but one Communion And if they are not of one Communion with the Church they are of none at all I pray for what advantage should they return to the Church when they are of the Orthodox Communion without it But what an abuse of Secular Power is this and worse then all the rest that the Holy Catholick Church and those that preside over it should every where be obliged to believe only as he believes as if the Faith of all Churches depended only upon his pleasure and it were not lawful for any man to believe any thing than as the Emperor commands It were much better that he would contain himself with in his own Limits then to transgress them to the ruine of many without the gain of any For we know that even Mechanicks have their Shops and Ware-houses proper to their own Trade We never hear the Anvil beating or the Fire glowing in the Weavers Work-house nor the Tailor taking measure of the height and proportion of Buildings because they very well know that those things belong to those that are instructed in those Trades What is the Divine Law only to be despised and prophaned so as not to need its proper Schools for instruction but that every man should pretend to understand it without any competent Education in it In short the only effect of all these disorderly Proceedings is that these Violators of the Churches Peace divide among themselves as well as from the Church as in this particular Case
poison'd himself upon Zeno's recovering the Empire Peter Moggus was chosen his Successor by the Eutychian Faction but is deposed by the Emperor 's own Command and Timotheus Salophasiolus their Lawful Bishop is restored This Timotheus was chosen to the See of Alexandria upon the deposition of Timotheus Aelurus by the Emperor Leo was ejected by Basiliscus restored by Zeno and after 23 years from the date of his Election dyes And his keeping that See so long did not a little contribute to the Disorders of that Church he being a softly and unactive Man that would never put the Discipline of the Church nor the Imperial Laws in execution against the Hereticks and though Complaints of his remisness were carried to the Emperor and though the Emperor sent him particular Orders to break up their Conventicles he could not be prevail'd upon to act but instead of that suffer'd himself to be prevail'd with upon pretence of Peace and reconciling to put Dioscorus himself into the Dyptichs and by this gentleness he became very popular among the factious Alexandrians insomuch that as he at any time passed through the Streets the Rabble were wont to salute him with this out-cry viz. That though we cannot communicate with thee yet we cannot but love thee And the silly Man was so charmed with this childish Rattle that he parted with his Episcopal Authority to purchase it and by this means it was that the Faction grew so great in that City And certain it is that the Courtiers of Popularity are of all Men most unfit for Government in the Church they will certainly betray their Trust and their Duty to the applause of the People But upon his death in the year 482 the Clergy of Alexandria elect Joannes Talaia who is rejected by the Emperor's Command and who but Petrus Moggus put in his stead This the Historians say was done by the instigation of Acacius out of a private picque against Talaia for neglecting to send Synodical Epistles according to custom to signifie his election to him as he had done to the other great Sees But however outed he was upon pretence of enormous Crimes Perjury and Simony in that he had obliged himself under Oath never to accept of that Bishoprick and yet for all that had purchased it with Money as Evagrius reports from Zacharias Rhetor the Eutychian Historian And Liberatus says that he was Treasurer of the Church of Alexandria and out of the Churches Treasure purchased the Bishoprick of Count Illus at that time a powerful Man at Court It is certain that that was the occasion of the miscarriage of his Synodical Letters to Acacius they being inclosed in others directed to his Patron Illus who hapning to be absent at that time as far as Antioch the Messenger thought himself obliged to continue his Journey forward for the safe delivery of his Letters in which Interval of time Acacius being a very proud man was pleased to conceive his Jealousy against Joannes Talaia and procure his deposition upon the fore-mention'd Articles and then treats with Petrus Moggus and his Court-Patrons and receives him to communion upon his acceptance of the Emperor's instrument of Union but that was to please the Emperour for in private he obliged him to receive the faith and authority of the Council of Calcedon as himself like a time-rigling Knave as the Historian calls him declares over and over in his Apologetical Epistle to Acacius to vindicate himself from the calumny of his having contrary to his Faith renounced the Council And the same shuffling Arts are observed of him by Liberatus that he prevaricated with both Parties pretending to Acacius to communicate with the Synod and to the Alexandrians to defy it And the Emperour Zeno himself assures Pope Foelix that he was not admitted to his Bishoprick but upon his owning the Council of Calcedon in an Epistle extant in Liberatus But when the wicked man had gain'd his point he forswears all his subscriptions anathematises the Council and Leo's Epistle blots Proterius and Salophasiolus out of the Dypticks and puts in Dioscorus and Timotheus Aelurus And now here do we find by vertue of this Imperial Instrument of Union the whole Christian World involved in a Civil Warr one Party asserting the Council of Calcedon another anathematising it a third despising both and trampling upon all the Discipline of the Church in defence of a Court-irregularity But the quarrel run highest between the two powerful Bishops of Rome and Constantinople for Acacius Bishop of Constantinople having the Court and the Emperour to back him bids defyance not only to the Pope but to the Catholique Church and all its Laws For though himself was the first man that had appear'd against Petrus Moggus and convicted him of manifest Heresy and certified his conviction to Pope Simplicius yet now without any due satisfaction receives him not only to Communion but prefers him to one of the highest dignities in the Christian Church And thô after all these obliging streins of Courtesie Moggus discover'd his obstinacy by anathematising the Council and changing the Dypticks Acacius winks hard and will not see it but stands by him to the last drop of blood calls all the Power of the Court into his assistance to support him against the Discipline and Authority of the Church slites he admonitions of the greatest Bishops in it Imprisons their Legates defies their Sentence lives and dyes excommunicate and all this for a Man that himself could not but know to be a sâ—ubborn Heretick The full account of all these transactions beside the Relations of the Historians Liberatus and Evagrius is to be seen in the Letters of Pope Simplicius and Foelix the Breviculus Histâ—riae Eutychianistarum and the Acts produced in the Cause of Acacius at the Council at Rome all which are printed together in their proper place and order of time in Labbe's Councils The first correspondence about this matter against Petrus Moggus was as I have already intimated opened by Acacius himself in his Epistle to Simplicius informing him that upon the death of Timotheus Aelurus one Petrus Moggus an excommunicate Person being a Thief and a Son of Darkness had at midnight stoln into the Throne of Alexandria having only one Companion to attend him by which Act of madness he made himself obnoxious to greater Punishments than had been hitherto pronounced against him but however he was defeated of his Design for Timotheus Salophasiolus being restored to his Throne this foolish thief durst never shew his head more In answer to this Simplicius returns divers congratulatory Letters not only to Acacius but the Emperor Zeno exhorting him to banish Moggus out of the City But in the next Letters he complains of the neglect of his Advice and suspects warping and luke warmness in Acacius and the next news we hear is that upon the death of Timotheus Petrus Moggus is by the power of Acacius advanced
to the See of Alexandria Of which when Simplicius sends him Letters of Complaint one after another he would never vouchsafe him any Answer and so Simplicius dying the â—udgels are immediately taken up by his Successor Foelix the 3 d and the first Act of his Government is to call a Council in which a Synodical Letter of Admonition is written to Acacius chiding him for his sullenness to Simplicius charging him with Pride and ill-manners towards the Apostolick See advising him to use his Interest with the Emperor to rectifie the late Misdemeanors at Alexandria in the election of Moggus otherwise he must be thought an Apostate from his own Principles and a Renegado to the Hereticks for not to proceed against wicked Men when it is in a Man's power to curb them is to give them protection and he incurs suspicion of secret friendship who gives over his opposition to a manifest impiety And in tâ—e same Council another long and pathetical Letter is drawn up to the Emperor and sent by the same Legates Vitalis and Micenus conjuring him to keep fast to his old Principles against the Hereticks and gauling him in the same Dilemma in which they had involved Acacius viz. That if he stood firm to the Council of Calcedon he must renounce the Hereticks and therefore if he did not oppose them he protected them against the Council and that was manifest opposing it But the Emperor was big with his new Project of comprehension and was deaf to all advice against it and Acacius being secure of him he slites Foelix his Letters imprisons his Legates and draws them in to join Communion with himself and Moggus Upon the news whereof another Council is immediately summon'd at Rome where the sentence of Deposition and Excommunication is denounced against him But he being warm and safe at Court slites the force of all Ecclesiastical Discipline and requites Foelix in his own coin striking his name out of the Dypticks and persisted in the exercise of his own Function to his dying day which was 4 years after the Sentence that was decreed in the year 484 and he dyed in the year 488. This was the effect of this shrewd Instrument of Comprehension in these three head Churches of Rome Constantinople and Alexandria nothing less than a total breach of Communion and one of the fiecrest Schisms that ever befel the Christian Church and though the Peace between them was patcht up about 34 years after by the Power and Activity of Pope Hormisdas yet they were never heartily reconcil'd to this very day As for Acacius it is a dispute what he was some indict him of Heresie or Church-treason others only of high Misdemeanors though as for my own part after all streins of Candor I cannot but think him guilty of both or I fear something worse the want of a serious sense of Religion To free him from the high charge of Heresie it is pleaded that he never in the least own'd the Eutychian Faith that he ever declared against it that he was never charged with it by the Ancients and that in the Sentence against him at Rome where all his Crimâ—s were strictly enough enumerated this is no Article against him But yet for all this I see not how he can be absolved from it for in the Eye of the Law and indeed the common sense of the World all Communâ—on with Hereticks is and ought to be judged Heresie as in all Civil Laws all consulting with Traitors is deem'd Treason For it concerns not the Government to fish out every Man's Opinion or motive of his Practice that can judg only by overt-acts and then to communicate with Hereticks is Heresie and to consult with Traitors Treason But much more in this particular Case in which all Communion with the Hereticks had been Canonically declared Heresie by the Church in the great Council of Calcedon and without it the sentence of the Church had been of no force for that can reach no farther than their outward Communion So that after all the Henoticon was so far from compromising the Controversies as it pretended and I believe design'd that it only reverst and contradicted the Decree of the Church and by an Imperial Rescript declared that to be no Heresie that had been judged so by the Council and that I take it is plain bidding defyance to it and its Authority As for the other Crimes charged upon him they are enormous enough his very friendship with such ill Men as Moggus and Fullo shews he had but very little sense of Honesty or indeed of Reputation otherwise he would have loath'd and defyed Men of such rank Practices But the leading Sin that betray'd him into all his other Miscarriages was his Pride and Ambition and to gratifie that it is plain that he stuck not to subvert all the Discipline of the Christian Church For finding the Emperor Zeno fond of his Henoticon he at least frankly complyed with it to the subversion of the first and fundamental Law of all Church-Communion in receiving Hereticks into it without Canonical Repentance and Satisfaction And this is suggested in the Decree of the Council at Rome against him that he preferr'd the Emperor's favor above his own Faith and then it is no matter to what Religion such perfidious Men pretend when it is too apparent that they have really none at all And the case of the Church at this time was much the same as it was under the Reigns of Constantius and Valens ill Men got into the Court and from thence crept into the Church and to gain Preferments for themselves flatter'd the Prince into an exorbitant use of his Power against the true and regular Discipline of it And that would at once give them interest at Court and make vacancies in the Church for themselves and this weak Prince was so drunkenly fond of this little Project that he would throw away the best Preferments in the Church upon any Parasite that would but seem to hugg his fondling-Ape by which means great numbers of very bad Men came into the best Churches But one of the greatest Instances of it is the great Church of Antioch we have already seen the other three leading Churches brought into a Civil War among themselves but here it came to blows and cutting of Throats that I shall very briefly describe as another observable Example of the good Effects of this gracious Instrument of Accommodation Petrus Fullo a Monk had been expell'd his Monastery for the Eutychian Heresie in the time of the Emperor Leo flies to Calcedon and being a talkative Man is soon driven thence for the same Cause and so takes shelter at Constantinople and there insinuates himself into the favor of the Princess Ariadne and by her recommends himself to the Patronage of her husband Zeno and having gain'd that he endeavors to dis-place Martyrius Bishop of Antioch Zeno being then Governor of the Place but Martyrius making his Application to the
Emperor Leo he is restored and an Edict publisht against the tumults of Monks But the Monks so little regard the Emperor's Authority that upon it they increase their fury against the good Bishop till at length he being quite tired out quits his Bishoprick into which Petrus Fullo immediately leaps and is as soon thrust out by the Emperor but is restored by Basiliscus and again displaced by Zeno excommunicated by Acacius and Stephanus chosen to the See who being barbarously murther'd another Stephanus is chosen and contrary to the Canons consecrated by Acacius at Constantinople and Petrus Fullo the Author of all these Dis-orders is banisht into Pontus and Stephanus dying Calendio succeeds with the same illegal Consecration but falling into dis-favor with Acacius partly for siding with Pope Foelix against himself and Petrus Moggus and partly for being too stiff for the Council of Calcedon he procures his ejectment by Imperial Power upon an Accusation of Treason and Petrus Fullo after all these turns is placed by Acacius his own Interest in that great See And thus we see both the old Trade of Ejectments and Sequestrations return'd by prostituting the Discipline and Authority of the Christian Church to the Power of Court-Favourites and the whole World shatter'd into numberless Schisms and Heresies For when once the Authority of the Church and the Law is trodden down there is no other effectual stop aganst the rovings of fancy and wantonness and it is certain that men who differ in Opinion will never agree as long as they have liberty to differ And thus was it here when this unskilful Prince had once broken up the Pale of the Church as it was fixt by the Council of Calcedon and fenced by his Predecessors he could never after restrain the People from running into all the wild Conceits that Frenzy and Madness could blow into their Heads And whereas he only design'd to unite the Eutychians to the Communion of the Church he divided the Communion of the Church into a thousand new Factions The Acephali Severiani Theopaschitae Currupticolae Phantasiastae Agnóetae Tritheitae beside the horrible fewds between the Scythian and Acaemetan Monks The Acephali began at Alexandria being Eutychians that separated from Moggus uyon his owning the Council of Calcedon out of these were spawn'd the Severiani at Antioch so call'd from Severus who had ravish't that See and made himself Captain of the Acephali by Anathematising the Council but of him we shall give an Account under the next Reign as under the Reign of Justinian they sub-divided into the Factions of the Gaianitae and Theodosiani and the Heresie being transplanted by Jacobus Syrus into Armenia thence came the Jacobitae The Theopaschitae were the Disciples of Petrus Fullo who to the Eutychian Heresie added that the Divinity in our blessed Saviour was Crucified and Buried The Corrupticolae were the followers of Severus at Alexandria after his Banishment from Antioch affirming our Saviours Body liable to decay and therefore to have been really repair'd by nourishment but this was opposed by Julianus of Halicarnassus a Bishop of the same Party and flying to Alexandria for the same Cause who affirm'd that our Saviour never took any sustenance but only seemed so to do and therefore were called Phantasiastae and between these two the Rabble of the City were disputed into Tumults and Out-rages And out of the Corrupticolae sprang the Agnoitae that from the Corruptibility of our Saviours Body were pleased to infer some ignorance in his Soul The Tritheitae were the followers of Philoponus who was so far transported in the heat of disputation as to assert three distinct Natures peculiar to each Person in the Holy Trinity and one common to them all to which he was betrayed by his Aristotelian Philosophy of which he was an extravagant Admirer that teaches that there is one and the same general humane nature really common to all men and another particular nature appropriated to each individual And thus when all the Lords People were permitted the liberty of Prophesying every man took up his own Parable and believed his own Dream the Ass as well as the Prophet till the Church was shatter'd into so many chips and fragments that it was never after reunited as we shall see by the Progress of these Mischiefs that I have here only briefly represented And thus this luxurious Prince having ruined the Church by so many years licentiousness only because his laziness would not be at the pains to see it governed after he had Reign'd 18 years dies of a Debauch § XIX Zeno being dead Ariadne bestows both her self and the Crown upon Anastasius a small Officer about the Court and at his first coming to the Crown he was forced by Euphenius Bishop of Constantinople to declare for the Council of Calcedon For the Bishop suspecting his Religion refused to Crown him till he had made a publick profession of his Christian Faith which he registred and laid up in the Archives of his Church as a Testimony against him if he should ever relapse to the Haesitantes as he afterward did and turn'd a vehement Persecutor in pursuance of moderation banishing any man either for owning or disowning the Council of Calcedon But of that afterwards for at first having got the Crown Imperial upon his Head he endeavours to make himself popular and for that end in the first place he takes off that heavy and scandalous Tax called the Chrysargyrum It was a Tax by Poll not only upon Men Women and Children but upon all Beasts and Cattle both of profit and pleasure even to Dogs and Cats This was by immemorial Custom though Zosimus is pleased to impute its Contrivance to Constantine the Great collected every fourth year and being a Customary Impost without any Formality of Law to warrant it it was no doubt with severity enough exacted by the Officers not so much for the profit of the Crown as their own And this made it extreme heavy to the Subject but that which made it Scandalous was its being a Rent-Charge upon the Stews and publick Houses of Debauchery granting as Evagrius describes it a Licence to all their wickedness upon a certain Rate of Excise And for that reason it was commonly called Aurum paenosum the Syntax or Commutation Money which being so offensive to the People and so foul in it self as seeming to grant a Liberty to all manner of wickedness upon the reserve of a Pension to the Government upon that account as it was a just so was it a plausible Action in this Emperor to contrive its Abrogation And he did it with that Art and Diligence as to destroy not only the Exchequer-Records but the Collectors Books For counterfeiting a Repentance of his Folly in parting with so fair a Revenue he Summons in all the Collectors to bring in their Court-Rolls for retrieving a new Register out of them this they greedily comply with in hopes to recover their several Offices in the
Collection which being done he consumes all their Books in a publick Bone-fire to prevent his Successors from ever recovering any of its Memoires and so ended this barbarous Imposition unbecoming as the Historian observes not only any Christian but any Heathen Common-wealth But soon finding this too great a retrenchment of his Revenue in Money he is forced to supply it another way as heavy upon the Subject That whereas the Provinces had hitherto paid their Tribute in kind he exacts it by way of Composition in Money and whereas hitherto it had been managed by the Magistrates of Cities who used their Neighbours kindly he farm'd it out to his Collectors and they to be sure would loose nothing that was to be got but setting aside their oppression it proved a very great oppression in it self to the poor Farmers for though they might have plenty enough of Corn and Cattel to spare yet they had scarcity enough of Money and for that very reason out of meer humanity and compassion this way of Taxing had been often forbidden by divers of the preceding Emperors As for the State of the Church under his Reign it gives us a true Character of the Conequences of Comprehension as it is described by Evagrius That being excessively desirous of Peace he would permit no Innovation and labour'd all manner of ways that the Church should every where remain without disturbance and that all his Subjects should enjoy perfect Peace without brawling and contention And for that end the Council of Calcedon was in those days neither openly abetted nor rejected But every Bishop followed his own conceit some stickling with all their might for all the determinations of the Council not allowing the alteration of the least Syllable in its Decrees and refusing with the greatest disdain to communicate with any that rejected any part of it others on the contrary did not only reject but anathematised the Council and all that adhered to it others again cryed up Zeno's Henoticon and though these two Parties differed among themselves about the Eutychian Controversie yet both Parties agreed against the Council some being seduced by the Imperial Letters others by the pretence of Peace So that all the Churches in the Christian World were rent into numberless Schisms and Factions and the Communion of the Bishops shattered all in pieces Hence arose infinite Quarrels between the Eastern Western and African Churches the Eastern refusing Communion with the Western and African and they on the other side denying them the same Civility And not only so but the business was carried on to an higher degree of folly for none of them agreed among themselves the Eastern Bishops breaking Communion at home neither did the Western and African Bishops though they both joyn'd against the Eastern communicate themselves or with any other Forraign Churches whatsoever All which the Emperor perceiving he deposed all Innovating Bishops all that stuck to the Council and all that Anathematised it and so cast Euphenius and after him Macedonius out of the See of Constantinople and Flavianus out of the See of Antioch A goodly Account this of the natural effects of this wise Project of Peace and Moderation to set all the World in a flame without redress till at last the Peace-maker himself is forced to quit his own pretence grows angry and violent in proceeding against all that refuse to comply with his own Will and it is a very obvious observation of this sort of men that when they are disappointed in their Project they grow moody and sullen and are of all others the most revengeful and implacable to all that differ from them And as for these dire effects of love and meekness no Man need to wonder at them because the design it self is no better than casting away all manner of Discipline and Government without which all Societies soon fall into War and Anarchy Neither do these Mischiefs end in the Church but they break out into Tumults and Rebellions in the Common-Wealth as we shall see anon in the Rebellion of Vitalian But though all Christendom were actually in Arms the Fight was hottest and the Contest run highest at Rome and Constantinople between Euphemianus and Gelasius who though they agreed in the Orthodox Faith could never be reconcil'd in the point of Discipline concerning Acacius and those Bishops that communicated with the Eutychian Hereticks after they were condemn'd by the Council Gelasius will listen to no terms of Reconciliation till the Acacian Schismaticks are thrown out of the Dyptichs and Euphemianus on the contrary importunes him to condescend from the strictness of Discipline for the sake of Peace and Unity and assures him that his Severity could have no other effect in the Eastern Church but to make the breach wider But for all that Gelasius stops his Ears at all motions of condescension and by vertue of the Authority of St. Peter will abate nothing of the settled Discipline of the Church upon any account or pretence whatsoever And therefore advises him as he hoped ever to recover the favor of the Apostolick See to anathematise Acacius as well as Eutyches And to the same purpose he writes to Faustus Ambassador to Theodorick King of the Goths and at that time Master of Rome and Italy then residing at Constantinople upon a treaty of Peace between his Master and the Emperor Though in it he all along betrays his great concern to be more for the Grandeur of his own See than the Discipline of the Catholick Church However Faustus labors to the utmost of his Power to gratifie his Holiness but all in vain for they are resolved at Constantinople never to deliver up a Bishop of their own much less so stout a Champion as Acacius to the ambition of Rome And even the Emperor himself storms at him for his unyielding obstinacy upon which his Majesty is accosted with a Letter in a very high stile demanding his Obedience to the Apostolick See discoursing at large the pre-eminence of the Pontifical Power above the Regal And this he follows with a Circular Epistle directed to the Bishops of Dardania wherein he magnifies the Sovereign Authority of his own See above the whole Catholick Church in such high streins as were indeed nothing less than an open challenge of an absolute Monarchy over it And therefore Acacius dying in Rebellion against his Highnesses Predecessors neither himself nor any that communicate with him ought to be received into Grace and Favor And in the same lofty language he directs his Mandate to the Eastern Bishops upon the same Argument And not content with this he issues out his Proclamation to the whole Christian World to declare the validity of the Sentence against Acacius and his Accomplices To him succeeds Anastasius in the Papacy who though stiff enough sinks much below the height and rigor of his Predecessor and condescends to send his Legates and tender an humble Address to the Emperor for Peace
adjourns its examination till the return of the Legates In the mean time there being then a famous Society of African Bishops in Sardinia that were banisht their own Country by Thrasamond King of the Vandalls a zealous Arian and at that time Master of Africa to these the Monks apply themselves and present them a Confession of their Faith wherein declaring to the height against the Pelagian Heresie they thereby ensnare their Affections who had been the greatest Champions against it in so much that Fulgentius himself writes an Apology in their behalf But upon the return of the Legates the Monks knowing that they were none of their friends they hang upâ—â— their Remonstrance in the most publick Places of the City to raise Sedition among the People and so betake themselves to flight Of their unruly behaviour at Rome Hormisdas has given an account in his Letter to Possessor an African Bishop that they were a sort of vain proud petulant Men that under shews of mortification kept up the height of Pride and Insolence and were swoln to that degree of Arrogance that they would have the whole Christian World to truckle to their imperious dictates and instead of obedience that ought to be the peculiar glory of Monasteries set up obstinacy and stubbornness c. this Letter is answer'd by Maxentius whose Works are extant in the Bibliotheca Patrum where his great Holiness is treated with rudeness enough At Thessalonica one of the Pope's own Legates was murther'd in a Tumult in defence of their intruding Bishop Dorotheus At Jerusalem John an Eutychian had by the help of Severus of Antioch thrust out Elyas and usurpt the Chair to himself but the Times being chang'd so is his Faith and he becomes a zealous defender of the Council against the Hereticks and upon it is very acceptable to the People who sue to the Emperor for the pardon of all his former Misdemeanors without any farther process or solemnity of Discipline And in the same manner are popular Addresses and Petitions brought from all parts in behalf of their Bishops that had been of the Acacian Faction who by the Terms of the Concordate between the Pope and the Emperor were all Condemned Men to keep those that were dead in the Dyptichs and those that were living in their Sees in short that Peace may be settled without too much triumph over the condescending Party This so perplexes the Emperor that he refers it wholy to Pope Hormisdas who was now grown to that Authority in the Christian Church that he alone transacted all things in it And therefore to him the Emperor dispatches his Ambassadors to soften him to the mâ—ldest terms of Peace for fear of Tumults if he should stand upon too much severity And to prepare him for it his Majesty Petitions his Holiness by Letter that he would be satisfied with the Execution of the Names of Acacius Petrus Moggus Timotheus Aelurus Dioscorus and Petrus Fullo but as for all others that dyed in the Schism to let them pass in silence And as for the Cause of the Scythian Monks that was by this time spread over all the Eastern Church he proposes that they may be indulged the Liberty of their Opinion because though it might be too curious yet it was harmless and agreeable to the Orthodox Faith This motion is seconded by several Letters from Justinian who indeed governed all and by others from a Council at Constantinople and by others from Epiphanius Bishop of the City But Hormisdas is inflexible will yield nothing to their importunity and let the Event be what it will and let the People rebel if they will nothing of the Discipline of the Church can be abated And to receive Schismaticks into its Communion instead of reconciling Parties it will only expose its Authority to contempt or as he expresses it in his Letter to Epiphanius Nosti frater Charissime quae ecclesiasticam servent vincula concordiam quae nos ab Haereticorum tueantur insidiis per quae etiam Canonum custodiatur Auctoritas His in robore suo omni circumspectione servatis remedia sperantibus conferantur And writing to the Emperor he begs that his Majesty would not think him more austere than his Predecessors for standing upon higher terms they insisting only upon the name of Acacius and assures him that it is not stubbornness but the sad experience of those grievous Scandals that had followed upon the unhappy rupture that made him the more severe At the beginning of the Schism there might have been room for some condescension but the mischiefs that have followed by so long and stubborn a continuance of it especially their affront to the great Council of Calcedon cannot be pardoned or expiated without some publick satisfaction But yet that he may not be too hard-hearted he leaves it to the Conscience and Discretion of Epiphanius to receive such as he believes true Penitents or seduced out of Ignorance and Simplicity but so as to oblige him to return all their Libels of Confession to himself at Rome And as for the Cause of the Scythian Monks he will by no means admit their Proposition because of its Novelty and when the same thing was less ambiguously expressed by the Scriptures and the Ancients as that the Son of God suffered in the Flesh he would allow of no new Phrases that would but give occasion to new disputes and farther divisions Haec si quemadmedum a Patribus constituta sunt servent credant non definita transcendant à quo tramite qui decliâ—ant ipsi sibi nebulam dubitationis offundunt And therefore he will have all men acquiesce in the definition of the Council and for the same reason though he will not directly condemn the Proposition of Heresie yet he damns it as a needless a peevish and an over curious Novelty And here the Modern Writers of the Church of Rome are at a great loss how to reconcile this Sentence of Horm sâ—â—as with that of Pope John the Second who expresly anathematised the Acaemetan Monks for denying it and voucht it for an Article of the Christian Faith and constant Tradition of the Christian Church But the present Historian Natalis Alexander thinks he clears the difficulty by proving against Baronius that Hormisdas did not condemn the Scythian Monks of Heresie and therefore though John the Second past that Sentence upon the contrary Opinion it was no contradiction The observation is good but the Evasion bad for Baronius as his manner is here stretches beyond his Records when he endeavours to draw them into the List of Hereticks and yet for all that the Contradiction is as palpable as if their Sentence had been for Heresie For when one Pope shall Condemn a Proposition as a needless and prophane Novelty and another shall abet it as a constant Tradition of the Christian Church and so much an Article of Faith as to anathematise all that oppose it is I think a contradiction too tough to be reconciled
concerning Discipline His Laws concerning Faith are far from being numerous only three of his Predecessors and three of his own and all in pursuance of the Decrees and Definitions of the Church and those of his own are not so properly Laws as Confessions and Declarations of his own Faith sent to some Christian Bishops for their satisfaction and are nothing else than an owning or ratification of the four General Councils by whose Authority as he declares the Apostolical Faith was conveyed down through all Ages to his own time and for that reason he receives both the Nicene Faith because it was deliver'd down from the Apostles and the several Expositions of it by the following Councils Not as if that had been defective in perspicuity but because the Enemies of the truth had endeavor'd to subvert it some one and some another way therefore it was necessary for the Church in the following Councils to explain and defend its truth by Testimonies of Scripture and to anathematise all the Authors of prophane Novelties And for this very reason he lets all his Subjects know that there is no living for any Man within his Dominions that does not submit to the Authority of these Councils In all which he expresses so much Civility and Respect to the Jurisdiction of the Church that there is not an higher declaration of it in all the Imperial Laws so free is he in this matter from that imputation so confidently charged upon him by the Italians as Alemannus expresses it ad Religionis dogmata definienda ecclesiasticasque sanciendas leges effusa licentia a bold and saucy tampering with the Christian Faith which he was so far from ever attempting that no Prince ever declared more vehemently against that sacrilegious abuse of the Imperial Authority In the three following Titles de Sacrosanctis Ecclesiis de Episcopis et Clericis de Episcopali Audientiâ all the Laws enacted by himself are only so many Charters of Priviledg to the Church that express an high sense of Piety and Devotion and are withal contrived with so much prudence that whoever would go about to find fault with them must lay aside his Understanding as well as his Integrity And yet these are all the Laws of his own enacting in the Code for under all the following Titles he has only collected the Laws of his Predecessors without adding any of his own In his Novels as mighty and Ecclesiastical Legislator as he is taken to be his Laws of Religion are not so very numerous and those that are only revive Ecclesiastical Canons or Ecclesiastical Customs but are no new Institutions And any attempt of that kind was so far from finding any entertainment in his thoughts that he ever shun'd it with all manner of tenderness and declares upon all occasions that his Laws only wait as he is pleased to express himself upon the Canons of the Church The first Novel upon this Argument is the Third Enacted Anno 535 in the 9th Year of his Reign where he Enacts that in all Cathedral Churches the Clergy be stinted to a certain number but I hope no man can be so weak as to think that this was never Enacted before that time The next is the 5th de Monachis in which he only keeps the Monks to the Rules of their Institution but makes no new Rules of his own The 6th regulates the other Clergy according to the Canons of the Fathers as he declares in the Preface to it and there occurs nothing in it but what had been often commanded both by the Ecclesiastical and Imperial Law The 7th forbids all Alienations of the Goods of the Church The 9th gives the Church the Priviledge of prescribing for one hundred Years whereas the Plea of Possession against all other Prescription was limited to 30 and this he presents as a Religious Oblation to Almighty God These were all publish't in the same Year In the 11th he raises the place of his birth to the honour of an Arch-Bishoprick or Patriarchate to which he subjects Six Provinces that had hitherto belonged to the Arch-Bishop of Thessalonica and justifies his Power of doing it because the dignity of the Church naturally followed that of the State and therefore his Imperial Majesty having establisht a new Civil Prefecture in that City that gave it a new Prerogative in the Church for as in former times when the Prefecture of Illyricum was fixt at Sirmium then the Episcopal Primacy resided there but when afterward those Parts were invaded and laid wast by Attila King of the Huns Appennius the Prefect was forced to retire to Thessalonica the Archiepiscopal Dignity followed him thither Et Thessalonicensis Episcopus non suâ Authoritate sed sub umbrâ praefecturae meruit aliquam praerogativam i. e. And the Bishop of Thessalonica obtained the Prerogative not by Vertue of his own Authority but under the shelter of the Civil Prefecture And therefore the Emperor having instituted a new praefectus praetorio in his own City upon the Recovery of that part of the Empire that had been lost it was but fit and decent that upon that occasion it should be made an Archiepiscopal See And to it he subjected all Dacia and Pannonia Dacia then containing Transilvania Valachia and Moldavia Pannonia the lower Hungary the upper Austria Carinthia and Carniola as they are now divided And this being done he obtains of Pope Vigilius to grant the new Arch-Bishop his Legantine Dignity in those Provinces But here Baronius storms and says he extorted it by force and cruelty after the great falling out about the tria Capitula and that it was not honest to rob other Churches to enrich and advance his own But his passion has run him into a continued Train of mistakes For first the Grant of Vigilius was made at his first coming to the See as appears by Justinian's 131 st Novel in which it is mentioned that bears date in the Year 541 whereas there was no Quarrel between the Pope and the Emperor till after Vigilius his Journey to Constantinople which was not till the Year 547 neither did he suffer any force till the Year 551 as Baronius himself very well knows who has placed the Story of that Persecution in the History of that Year Neither secondly did the Pope grant the Metropolitical Dignity but only the Legantine Power the first was stablisht before by the Emperor and more then that an Archiepiscopal or Patriarchal Supremacy for at that time those words were synonymous to express the new Jurisdiction above Metropolitans Nor Thirdly were the Ancient and Original Rights of Thessalonica defrauded but only that part of the Empire that was newly Recovered and formerly belonged to Sirmium was settled in its Ancient State under the Metropolis of Justiniana But lastly the Cardinal has little reason to complain of robbing Peter to pay Paul if he would but reflect upon the Actions of the Popes about that time who with Force and Arbitrary Power both against
contains nothing new in it The 132 d is against the Conventicles of Hereticks of all Herds The 133 d reduces Monks to the observation of the Laws of the Church and the Rules of their Order The 137 th reâ—ulates Ordinations of the Clergy by the â—anons The 146 th is an indulgence of Liberty to the Jews and these are all the Laws enacted by this Emperor about Religion for those few that follow were made by his Successor Justin though they are placed under this Princes name by mistake Now I pray what is there in all this that is not warrantable in a Prince What is there that is not highly praise-worthy What is there that is not warranted by Precedents of his Predecessors unless it be this That he exceeded them all in his care and kindness to the Church What then can be the meaning of those ungrateful Men who requite him with nothing but Calumnies and unkind reflections for being too busie in Church-Matters unless it be this That they care not that Princes should inspect and observe the Neglects and Disorders of the Clergy I am sure Baronius betrays great dis-ingenuity in loading him so heavily as he has done when yet at the same time he is forced to excuse him first from the necessity of the times for recovering the Discipline of the Church for the Canons having lain neglected all the time of Zeno Basiliscus and Anastasius that obliged him to be the more active to recover their Authority and if he were so why does the Cardinal charge him with pragmaticalness against the Power of the Church Secondly from Justinian's own declaration that runs through all his Laws that he does not take upon himself the Authority of enacting Ecclesiastical Laws but of abetting them and putting them in executioâ— by secular Penalties a fault that would be very commendable in all Princes But some distance after the great Cardinal so far forgets his displeasure against this great Emperor that upon his sending an Ambassy to Pope John the second against the Acaemetan Monks he writes a Panegyrick upon his decent and regular Proceedings in the Church in that he always acted by the Authority of his Bishops with the consent of the Pope Adeo ut nihil his sanctius rectiusque perfici potuerit ab Orthodoxo Imperatore qui Catholicae fidei patrocinium studio indefesso susceperit And beside this he might have remembred what himself says in the year following ought never to be forgot Pope Agapetus his high Commendation of the Emperor's acting in Church-Matters in his Epistle to the Emperor Firmamus laudamus amplectimur non quia Laicis Auctoritatem praedicationis admittimus sed quia studium fidei vestrae Patrum nostrorum regulis conveniens confirmamus atque roboramus Another excuse he has made that with him out-weighs all the rest that he was under the Government of a wicked Woman kneadâ—d up of no less than six she-Devils Eve Dalilah and Herodias Alecto Megaera and Tisiphone and there is not one Lady in all his story if she be out of his favor that he does not compound of some or all of these Ingredients And concludes that he might have been the greatest Prince that ever swayed Scepter had it not been for this Penelope or six-fold Devil who made it her business to cross and controul him in all his Designs and unravel as fast as he could wind up in all his great Under-takings So true is that of the Preacher It is better to dwell with a Lyon or a Dragon than with a wicked Woman § XXIII And thus having vindicated his Laws from the Cavils of these ungratful Men I come now to vindicate his Person and his Actions from their more disingenuous Aspersions And here lies the main ground of the Quarrel against him not his medling too much with Church-Matters but with Church-Men He would not suffer himself as some of his Predecessors did to be outhufft by the Papal Insolence but brought Vigilius one of the proudest of them all to complyance and submission and that is a Crime never to be forgiven And for want of better or rather worse Information against him they are content to take up with a scandalous Libel i. e. Procopius's Anecdota Baronius was grieved to the heart that he could not find it because from thence he says it would appear what the Humor what the Wisdom what the Piety of Justinian was when his sauciness against Ecclesiasticks was such as no good or pious Prince could be guilty of But Alemannus a Convert from the poor Greek Church and one of the Cardinals Successors as he proudly intitles himself in the Office of Apostolical Librarian chancing it seems to light upon it as he was brushing the old Manuscripts in the Vatican is transported with joy and is all on fire to oblige holy Church with the publication of so useful a Work that the World might now see what manner of Man this same Justinian was who treated a Bishop so rudely as he did the good Pope Vigilius and not only so but he has helpt out the original Copy in his Latin Translation and what Procopius relates only as a flying Report he makes bold to set down as a known and certain truth And among many other strong strains of disingenuity he has been so injudicious as to undertake to make out the truth of this Libel by Procopius his own History that was publisht to the World in Justinian's own time approved of by himself and the Author advanced for it to the highest Preferments in the Empire Now that Man that will seriously go about to prove a Panegyrick to be a Satyr only shews that he is a little too much in good earnest But before I prove the false-hood of these Slanders it will be convenient to shew the occasion of raising them and that was the great heats in the Controversie about the tria capitula in which the Emperor created to himself a great number of Enemies by his zeal and resolution on that side that he unhappily took to I shall therefore first set down the progress of that Story that was the only false step of his Reign but so unluckily made that he could never wholly recover himself again before I ingage the Librarian and his supposed Author This Emperor then having appear'd so zealously in behalf of the Orthodox Faith having declared so severely against all Hereticks by several Edicts and particularly publisht a Rescript against the singularities of Origen upon complaint of the Palestine Monks set on by Pelagius the Popes Legate at the Court of Constantinople in spite to Theodorus Bishop of Caesarea his Rival in Court-favor but a great Admirer of Origen having appointed a Conference at Constantinople in the year 533 to reconcile the Acephali to the Church and the Council of Calcedon in which he expresses a very high Passion for the resettlement of Peace and Unity Having been so bold as to consent to the deposition of Anthimus Bishop
of Constantinople and the Queens Favourite at the instigation of Pope Agapetus for suspicion of the Eutychian Heresie and after that to confirm the Decree of the Council under Mennas against him by adding Banishment to his Deposition And being now upon a design of publishing a Rescript against the Acephali in behalf of the Council of Calcedon upon this Theodorus a friend to Eutyches as well as Origen having insinuated himself into the Court by the Empress and being endeared to the Emperor by his great Officiousness partly to be revenged of Pelagius for the Affront to his Master Origen and partly to divert the good Emperor from his Design against the Acephali craftily perswades him that he might spare his Pains and reconcile them to the Council at a cheaper rate If three Offensive things were taken out of its Acts i. e. if the Writings of Theodorus Mopsuestenus Master to Nestorius if the Epistle of Ibas Bishop of Edessa to Maris Persa and if the Book of Theodoret against Cyrâ—l's Anathema's might be condemn'd of Heresie though they had been absolved by the Council The Motion was plausible to the Emperor and he thought it a very easie Method to reconcile all Parties only by suppressing the Writings of two or three private Men so that the Authority of the Decrees of the Council it self stood unshaken as before for though the Council did not condemn yet it did not commend but onâ—y acquit them and therefore it was not directly concern'd in their suppression And Theodorus finding that by this Device he had decoyed the Emperor into his snare that he might secure him from a Relapse prevails with him in the absence of his Rival Pelagius who was then at Rome to publish an Edict of Condemnation by his own Authority but drawn up as Facundus Hermianensis tells the Emperor not by himself but Theodorus and his Accomplices that so having once publickly appear'd in the Cause that would be an obligation upon him to persevere in it against all opposition otherwise he understood the gentleness of his Temper so well that when he saw the Mischiefs and Inconveniences that follow'd upon it he would quit the Cause and leave them in the lurch to answer for their Affront to the Council of Calcedon And the better to secure themselves the Edict was as craftily composed as it was contrived All the Councils were confirm'd all the Heresies of all denominations condemn'd only in the tail of all these three particular Authors were apocryphised And that the good Emperor's design was meerly Peace and Concord is very observable from the conclusion of all Si quis igitur post ejusmodi rectam confessionem et haereticorum condemnationem salvo manente pio intellectu de nominibus vel syllabis vel dictionibus contendens separat se à sanctâ Dei Ecclesiâ tanquam non in rebus sed in solis nominibus et dictionibus positâ nobis pietate talis utpote dissensionibus gaudens rationem pro semetipso et pro deceptis et decipiendis ab eo reddet magno Deo et Salvatori nostro Jesu Christo in die Judicii By which it is evident that the Emperor accepted the Model after the security and settlement of the Christian Faith against all sorts of Hereticks as the only remedy expedient at that time against contention and curiosity without any design against the Council of Calcedon or any other determinations of the Church but on the contrary rather with a religious and intire submission to their Decrees and for this reason it is approved and subscribed though not without reluctancy by all the four Eastern Patriarchs and most eminent Prelates of the Eastern Church Whereas on the other side the Western and African Bishops concluded it a direct reflection upon the Wisdom and Authority of the Council it self to condemn those Writings of Heresie that it had upon a fair Trial acquitted And thus by this unhappy Legerdemain of that false and jugling Man Theodorus under which the Emperor suspected no ill Design instead of finishing the settlement of the Church after so fair a progress that he had made in it for it was he that govern'd and manag'd all things in his Unkle Justin's reign he brings all things back into the same Tumult and Confusion into which they were brought by the Henoticon It was but a slite and a very remote breach as one would think upon the Churches Authority yet it broke down all Bounds of Discipline and Government that it seems is a thing so tender that it can endure no tampering and unless it be made sacred and inviolable it loses all its force And so this great Emperor after this slite Wound in a matter in which it was so little concern'd could scarce make it up again by the Authority of a General Council Though I must confess that the occasion of raising the Quarrel so high was the turbulent spirit of Pope Vigilius who as he was guilty of all other Wickedness exceeded in Pride as appears not only from the Historian but the Sentence of Excommunication against him by Pope Silverius in the time of that Popes banishment Quippe qui nequissimi spiritûs audaciâ ambitionis phrenesin concipiens in illius Apostolici Medici cui animas ligandi solvendique collata et concessa potestas est versaris contumeliam novumque scelus erroris in Apostolicâ sede rursus niteris inducere et in morem Simonis cujus discipulum te ostendis operibus datâ pecuniâ meque repulso qui favente Domino tribus jam jugiter emensis temporibus ei praesideo tempora mea niteris invadere That by the instigation of the Devil being mad with pride he rebell'd against St. Peter and his Authority committing a new and unheard of sin in the Apostolick See it self and following the example of Simon Magus whose Disciple he shewed himself to be by his works by purchasing my Bishoprick with Mony and expelling me out of it for these three years And if we may believe the angry Africans he bought the Apostolick See of the Empress Theodora whose Creature he was and procur'd the banishment of Pope Silverius by forging treasonable Letters to the Goths in his name and when Justinian suspecting some Abuse recall'd him home this wicked Man caused him to be murther'd by two of his own Servants So that it is a just Character that is given of him by Baronius himself Cedit huic Novati Impietas Pertinacia Vrsicini Laurentii Praesumptio ac denique aliorum omnium schismaticorum Antistitum superbia artogantia atque facinerosa temeritas c He out-stript Novatus in wickedness Vrsicinus in stubbornness Laurentius in impudence and all Schismaticks that ever were in pride insolence and presumption But however by a train of wickedness mounting himself into the Apostolick See according to his Simoniacal Articles with Theodora he enters into league with the Henotical Bishops sends an Encyclical Letter to them extant in Liberatus to assure them that
the Court by great shews of Mortification succeeds He was a Man that of all things defyed all ambitious thoughts and designs of Preferment and yet was perpetually dreaming that he should one day be the great Bishop of Constantinople and by vertue of his own real dreams and one pretended by the Emperor who knew him to be zealous in his Cause and withal very manageable he is advanced to that high dignity And so it is that none gallop so fast to Preferment in the Church as those that creep to it And after his Instalment the first thing he does is to submit himself to Vigilius and so does Apollinaris of Alexandria upon the death of Zoilus whose Bishoprick he had usurpt and thus are Hypocrites and ill-Men always on the right side But Vigilius finding himself Master of the field and having forced all his Enemies even the Emperor himself to submit is resolved to shew his Authoâ—ity And in the first place he contends with the Emperor about the place of the Council one will have it in the East and the other in the West but at last they agree upon Constantinople upon condition that an equal number of Eastern and Western Bishops be summon'd But before the Council meets the Emperor desires the Pope to give his own Opinion and that was an hard task to put him upon declaring himself and therefore he desires to be excused but the Emperor presses so importunately upon him as to provoke his Choler and to be revenged he turns cross-grain'd and so affronts his tria capitula and when the Council meets is sick and sullen refuses to join with them and no Courtship either of the Council or the Emperor himself can draw him to any compliance but on the contrary he commands the Council not to presume to determine any thing till he had declared his own Judgment And that he does at large in an Instrument sent to the Emperor that he calls his Constitutum in which though he condemns and confutes the Writings themselves yet he will allow no sentence against the Persons because they dyed in the Communion of the Catholick Church and had been absolved by the Council of Calcedon and at last concludes with this peremptory threatning His igitur à nobis cum omni undique cautelà atque diligentiâ propter servandam inviolabilem reverentiam praedictarum Synodorum et earundem venerabilia constituta dispositis statuimus et decernimus nulli ad ordines et dignitates ecclesiasticas pertinenti licere quicquam contrarium his quae praesenti asseruimus vel statuimus constituto de saepe dictis tribus capitulis aut conscribere vel proferr aut componere vel docere aut aliquam post praesentem definitionem movere ulteriùs quaestionem c. But the Council regard neither him nor his threatnings and so condemn the tria Capitula and to expose him for an egregious Prevaricator publish to the World his own several Declarations against them Upon which Baronius has a very pleasant observation that this they were forced to because they knew their Decree would be of no force without the Authority of the Pope What Inferences will not Zeal and Partiality make when they produced his own testimony against himself to convict him of manifest prevarication to conclude that this was done out of dutiful respect to his Authority by which if they had regarded it they stood all at this very time deposed from their Holy Orders But things being carried so disorderly on all sides the Council came to nothing and the Emperor after he had once made a breach upon the Authority of the Church could never heal it again for the Hereticks instead of being reconciled made advantage of it against the Authority of the Church it self as Leontius a Writer of that Age informs us who argued thus upon it aut boni scilicet erant aut mali si boni curâ—anathematizatis Si mali cur à Synodo recepti sunt And as for the Catholicks some were for an expedient of Peace against the Authority of the Council and others for the Authority of the Council against trimming for Peace But the Emperor having proceeded so far in the business is now resolved to carry it through his own way and all that will not comply are deposed and banisht and this lights chiefly upon the Illyrican and African Bishops but they were soon reduced by the Emperor's severity whereas the Bishops in the Western Empire that was then under the Franks set up a form'd Schism especially in the Parts about Venice and Istria that lasted for many years and cost both the Church and the Empire a long train of trouble and vexation But as for Pope Vigilius when he saw there was no way of escape but by compliance though he loved his Will too much yet he loved his Bishoprick much more therefore after all his stubbornness he comes in and fairly subscribes and approves the Decree of the Council But here the Roman Writers are again at a great loss to salve his Reputation but I think it would be more for their own to let him alone For before he was in lawful possession of St. Peter's Chair they own him to have been a Villain and withal confess that he got into it by Simony Sacriledg and Murther But that being done out of duty and gratitude to his Patroness Theodora he beats down the Council of Calcedon but seeing the Emperor resolute in his Design he turns a fury on that side and publishes his Judicatum to damn the tria Capitula and then in a little time suspends his own Sentence till the meeting of the Council when the Council meets he contradicts them in his Constitutum But because he saw the Emperor in good earnest against him and the African Bishops beginning to scowr out of their Bishopricks he fairly comes in and renounces the Constitutum yet after all these turns of prevarication since the time of his sitting in St. Peter's Chair we must have him to be a very honest Man notwithstanding that he all the while stands guilty of the same Impieties that he did before In my Opinion they would much better consult the honor of St. Peter's Chair by confessing him so ill a Man that even his sitting in that could not mend him or rather that he never had legal Possession of it but was all his life-time a meer Usurper for by the Canons a Man that comes into a Bishoprick by Simony renders himself uncapable of it forever So that if they would leave him under his own disgrace it would be no dishonor to St. Peter's Chair but when they are at such mighty pains to prove that it was not defilâ—d by his sitting in it it leaves wise Men under a suspition that some indecent uncleanness was left behind But however the discovery of his last Conversion which was first brought to light by Petrus de Marca and was dated within six Months after the rising of the Council clears
not to say a greater only to avoid envy a Benefactor to Mankind as any Prince in the whole Succession He delivered Christendom from the Incursions of the Barbarians and when he found it not so properly invaded as besieged and in a great measure possest by them he not only subdued them all to the Empire but which was a much greater work to Civility and the Christian Faith and by that means he left the Peace of the World much better secured and its manners much more improved then they were before His next Improvement of the Creation were his numberless and prodigious Buildings by which he lest the World more habitable then he found it neither do I speak meerly of that vast number of great Cities that he built but of his great care to make Commerce easie and pleasant and remove the difficulties of travelling by building Bridges making High-ways founding Publick-houses for the reception of Strangers in all convenient places in these kind of works he was so munificent in all places that he might not improperly be stiled the Founder of the Roman Empire that as it were turned those vast Dominions into one City A Third Benefit to Posterity is his excellent Body of Laws and Rules of Government gathered out of the Records of that wise State for about 1300 Years A work so glorious in it self that it had been often attempted by the greatest men not only those of the more ancient Common-wealth but of the most polite and emproved Age it entertain'd the ambitious thoughts both of Caesar and Cicero But in vain so great a work was preserved for the glory of Justinian and though if we consider the remote Antiquity of the Laws the seeming inconsistency among themselves and the immense bulk of Books and Records in so long a Tract of time the undertaking must have seem'd an impossible thing to any other man yet he pursued it with that diligence as to bring the greatest work that was ever undertaken to perfection in a little time Now for all these good Deeds that he has done to all Posterity I think no man that pretends to any thing of gratitude or ingenuity can excuse himself from the obligation of doing honour but much more right to his Memory But beside all this his Cause is become the Controversie of all Christendom because the Power that he challenged and exercised in the Christian Church for which he is so much condemned by the Court of Rome is one of the inseparable Branches of Soveraignty and was always challenged by all Christian Emperors so that if the Princes of Christendom should suffer themselves to be stript of it they are thereby outed of one half of their Empire And the true rise of the Court of Romes displeasure against him was not upon the account of any of his own Actions but a late Contest viz. The Famous Quarrel between Paul the 5th and the State of Venice as Eusebius has very well observed about these three Articles 1. The Power of the Civil Magistrate to judge the Clergy in Criminal Causes 2. The Decree of the Senate to prohibit the erecting of new Churches or Religious Houses without the Consent of the State 3. Their Statute of Mortmain against settling Lands upon the Church without the same Consent How high this Quarrel run is vulgarly known but it was so managed by the Learned Men that appeared in behalf of the Senate as to refer its whole decision to the Justinian Law whereas the Pope on the contrary challenged a Superiority over all Laws and would submit to no Rule but his own Authority Now the reason why the Venetian Advocates insisted so stubbornly upon the Justinian Code was not only for the advantage of those several Precedents that we have seen above to warrant the proceedings of the State in the several matters of the present Controversie but chiefly because the Code of the Canons of the Universal Church were taken into the Justinian Code and made part of the Imperial Law and if they could but bring the Pope any way under the Canons that would carry their Cause for it not only proved in behalf of the State that the power of prohibiting Ecclesiastical Laws to be imposed upon their Subjects without their Consent was a right challenged by all Christian Princes but own'd by the Church in the General Councils it being the known Custom of the Fathers to send their Decrees to their Imperial Majesties for Approbation before they presumed to publish them to the World or impose them upon the Church This is the Argument insisted upon by Jacobus Leschasserius a Learned Civilian at Paris in his Apology in behalf of the Senate who recommends the Justinian Code as the Bull-wark of the Liberties of Christendom And this little Treatise first gave the hint to Christophorus Justellus to publish the Code of the Canons of the Universal Church Now when the Court of Rome had for so many Ages been used to an absolute and unlimited Authority it could not but gawl and fret their proud Spirits to hear of being brought into subjection to Imperial Laws and for that reason they set themselves with all the Arts of Malice to beat down the Credit and Reputation of the Justinian Code till at length from his Laws they proceeded to vent their Revenge upon his Person and that was the thing that gave so much joy and transport to Alemannus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that now the World might see what kind of man this Justinian was who was so prophane as to take upon him a power of medling with Sacred Things and controuling Popes themselves But the indignity of so base a design soon provoked Learned Men to expose it to the World with that scorn that it deserved The first that appeared in the Cause that I know of was a Learned Man of our own Nation in the Year 1626 viz. Dr. Rive Advocate to his late Majesty a Gentleman equally eminent both for Learning and Loyalty in a little but a very ingenious Treatise upon the Argument Entituled Imperatoris Justiniani desensio adversus Alemannum The Book which is great pity is hard to be procured neither indeed had the Learned Author the advantage of some considerable Records that are now brought to light and though he was a Learned Man not only in his own Profession but all other Polite Learning yet I find that he was not so well acquainted with the Records of the Church as to be able to state that matter aright And therefore he is altogether mistaken in that part of his defence especially as to the Controversie of the tria Capitula but he followed the common opinion as it was stated by the Romanists against the Africans as I think all Writers have done to this very day But otherwise he has with great eloquence and strength of reason cleared the reputation of this great Prince from all their dull and dirty aspersions and Convicted the whole design of
deliver'd up to the Orthodox Bishops or such as kept close to the Nicene Faith The Rescript is a plain Epitome both of the Creed and Canons of the Council and for the most part exprest in the very same words And because when the Churches were taken from the Hereticks they attempted to build new ones he seconds it with another to forbid that under pain of Confiscation Upon this the Hereticks meet in private Conventicles or assemble Multitudes together in the Streets and Fields which occasions two Laws in the year 383 to forbid all manner of Meetings in all Places whatsoever to restrain wandring Bishops from preaching or ordaining successors in the Heresy and the Execution of these Laws is injoin'd the Governors of Provinces upon pain of Deposition from their places But because the Hereticks were ferretted out of all other Places and took sanctuary in the great City of Constantinople he publishes another Rescript the year following requiring the Magistrates to make a diligent search to find out their lurking holes and so we hear no more of them till the year 388 when all these Laws against them were contracted into one Rescript the Emperor being provoked to renew the execution of his old Laws by their sawcy behaviour upon any cessation against them But now leaving the Eastern parts to go to the assistance of Valentinian the younger against the Tyrant Maximus who had driven him out of his Empire in the West he chooses Tatianus a Man eminent for Courage Wisdom and Conduct to be his Praefectus Praetorio in his absence and when he comes into Macedonia where he meets the distressed young Emperor and finding himself ingaged in a dangerous War on his behalf for the better security of the Peace sends him a new sort of Rescript strictly commanding him that he suffer no disputes about Religion and if any shall dare to do it that he punish their presumption with just severity A Law that has been found so useful and necessary to the publick Peace that it has been from time to time renewed by wise Princes in all Ages He himself was forced four years after to impose it upon the Egyptians and Alexandrians under pain of deportation and no wonder when they have been remarked in all Ages and by all Authors as the most contentious and quarrelsom People in the World and particularly at that time great Tumults were raised by the Anthropomorphite Monks It was afterward renewed by the great and wise Emperor Marcian inserted into the Laws of the Vice-Goths the Capitulars of Charles the Great and the Additions of his Son Lewis And this they did not only for the security of the publick Peace but for the honor and reverence of Religion For it cannot but bring that into great contempt to see it bandied up and down in popular Tumults and Seditions and therefore in the Primitive modest Times they indeavour'd to keep Matters of dispute and controversy from the notice of the People and distinguisht between the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things fit to be preached and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 notions fit to be conceal'd And it was the familiar form of Expression in their Sermons when they came to any controversial point to break off suddainly with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but this the learned know Gregory Nazianzen has an excellent Sermon upon the Subject fit for our own conceited and capricious Times in which the good Father is so popishly affected as to recommend to his disputing Citezens of Constantinople ignorance above curiosity But this wise Emperor having settled things in as good a posture as he could in the East prevails at the same time with the young Valentinian who by the instigation of his Mother Justina had been a great Patron of the Hereticks to publish the same severe Rescript against them in the West that himself at his first coming to the Empire had enacted in the East and to cancel the former Law that he had two years before made in their behalf viz. that we grant liberty of publick Assemblies to all those that believe according to that Faith that in the time of Constantius was agreed upon at Ariminum by all the Bishops of the Roman World and let those Men know that presume that themselves alone ought to have liberty that if they shall attempt any disturbance against this our Command they shall stand guilty of High-Treason and pay for it with their blood This is a very high Act in behalf of all the Hereticks for by the Faith agreed upon at Ariminum is to be understood the cheat that Valens and his Party put upon the Council that comprehended all the different Parties whatsoever And yet that is the Faith that is here confirm'd to last forever and whoever shall publickly oppose any that publickly promote it shall forfeit his head This came from the furious zeal of Justina who prosecuted it with the same zeal and outrage wherewith she had procured it and it was so highly displeasing to Benevolus the Emperor 's Secretary that he chose rather to lose his Office and the Offer of much greater Preferments than so much as transcribe it And this was the Rescript that brought so much trouble to St. Ambrose when he refused to deliver up his Church to the Arians and indeed it was particularly aimed at him And the first Mover of all the Mischief was one Auxentius a Scythian that had a great mind to that wealthy Bishoprick but partly because the Name of Auxentius was hateful to the People of that City and partly because he was infamous for many Villanies in his own Country he took upon him the name of Mercurinâ—s But this whole business being a very remarkable transaction and of very great consequence to my Argument I shall set it down with the greater Nicety that we may not only see the outward Actions themselves but the inward Springs and Motives of the Court-Intrigues § VI. And first of all Auxentius challenges St. Ambrose to a dispute before the Emperor then only a Catechumen but the Bishop disdains the Motion that when the Faith had been so fairly determin'd by so many Councils he should prostitute the divine Authority of the Church by referring it to a secular Judicature but chiefly by making a Catechumen supreme Judg of the Faith But Dalmatius the Tribune is sent by the Emperor to command his appearance upon which advising with some Bishops that were then present with him he returns his Answer in writing in which with equal courage and modesty he reproves him for medling with things that did not originally belong to his Judicature and so proceeds to state the Power of the Emperors in Ecclesiastical Matters from the practice of his Predecessors And it was then but time to be hot in the Cause this being the first open breach that was made upon the Church for though Constantius had often done it underhand or rather unadvisedly
yet what he did was by the pretended Authority of Councils but this is the first time that any Prince challeng'd a Power to judg of Faith by his Imperial Authority And as it hapned it was as good a season as the Experiment could have been tryed in when the Tryal fell upon such a Man as St. Ambrose a Man of infinite Courage and Integrity and he has distill'd the very Spirit of both into his Reply the short of it is this Sir I hope I return you a sufficient Answer though I come not to Court upon the Errand that I am sent for neither let any Man judg me contumacious when I only maintain what your Father of blessed Memory was not only wont to say in discourse but to enact by Law That in Causes of Faith or Ecclesiastical Discipline he alone ought to be Judg who is qualified for it by Right and Office He would have Bishops judg of Bishops nay if a Bishop were guilty of Crimes of any other nature he was pleased to refer them also to the Ecclesiastical Judicature But when I beseech you Gracious Sir did you ever hear that Lay-men made themselves Judges of a Bishop in a Cause of Faith No Sir I cannot crouch to so mean a Flattery as to forget my Sacerdotal Trust that I should part with it to any other when God has committed it to my Charge If a Bishop is to be taught by a Laick let the Laick preach too Believe me Sir it is certain both from the Holy Scriptures and the practice of the whole Church that in matters of Faith Bishops are to guide Emperors and not Emperors Bishops Execute if you please your late bloudy Law upon me Ambrose is not so much worth that for the sake of his own poor self he should prostitute not only his own Priest-hood but the dignity of all the Bishops If there be any Controversy of Faith know that it is their business to decide it as was done under the great Constantine who prescribed nothing to the Bishops but left them to their own liberty of Judgment and the same was the practice under his Son Constantius thô what was well begun was afterward perverted For the Bishops agreed upon an Orthodox Faith whil'st some few would have the thing determin'd at Court whereby they at last imposed upon the Bishops who as soon as they understood the cheat recall'd their Sentence and ratified the Nicene Faith This has a peculiar reference to the Council of Ariminum In short Sir if Auxentius desire a Council though it is by no means fit that so many Bishops should be put to so much trouble by the petulancy of one Man who though he were an Angel from Heaven ought not to be regarded if he oppose the Peace of the Church whenever a Council is call'd I shall not absent my self This is the sum of his resolute Answer as far as it concerns my Argument where we see that the Power of Judicature in Matters of Faith was always own'd to be an unalienable Right in the Governors of the Church and was never challenged by any Emperor before this young Prince who was boisterously thrust upoâ— it by the importunity of a furious Woman and her Scythian Priest And they having now begun the Work resolve to go through with open force and for that end procure a Law for the ejectment of Catholick Bishops out of their Churches under Penalty of Death to all those that refuse to resign them and for the first execution of it send a Party to seize St. Ambrose and take possession of his Church But the People defend the Doors The Officers command him in the Emperor's Name to deliver up his Church and the Goods of it At this the People are afraid that he will comply No says he fear not that I cannot forsake my Flock and deliver it up to the Guardianship of a Woolf. If they will dispossess me by force they may carry away my Body but not my Mind I am ready to submit to any thing that the Imperial Power can inflict but as long as I can I must and will discharge the duty of my Priestly Office Why then are you troubled I will never willingly forsake you if I am forced I must not resist I can mourn and weep and pray my Tears are Arms against the Goths these are our Priestly Weapons any other way I neither ought nor can resist And as for delivering up the Goods of the Church he tells the Officers Gentlemen if the Emperor be pleased to command any thing that is my own I would freely present him wiâ—h it but I can take away nothing out of the House of God nor give that away which was only intrusted with me to keep And being often prest to a voluntary resignation this was his constant and peremptory Answer and withal boldly advising the Emperor to beware what he did in seizing the Goods of God and invading the Rights of the Church And thus things stood three whole days St. Ambrose would not deliver up his Church nor the Emperor durst not take it by force And when the Courtiers perswaded him to go in Person and turn him out he replyed I thank you for that for if Ambrose should command you to deliver me up bound into his hands you would obey him and therefore for fear of farther mischief he was forced to desist though by his proceeding so far he brought great disgrace upon himself in so much that the Tyrant Maximus wrote a smart Letter to him to upbraid him with the folly and dishonor of his Attempt it is very well written but sâ—mm'd up in this one short saying Periculosè mihi crede divina tentantur Believe me it is a dangerous thing but to touch the Ark. But this was done in order to his Invasion of Italy to ingage the Orthodox on his side as if he had taken up Arms to vindicate their Cause for the Rescript of Valentinian reacht not St. Ambrose alone but all Churches under the Emperor's Jurisdiction as appears not only by the Rescript it self but by the Tyrants Epistle Audivi enim novis Clementiae tuae Edictis Ecclesiis Catholicis vim illatam fuisse obsideri in Basilicis sacerdotes mulctam esse propositam paenam capitis adjectam et legem sanctissimam sub Nomine nescio cujus legis everti I am informed that by some new Edicts of your Grace force has been offer'd to the Catholick Churches that the Priests have been besieged in their Cathedrals that the punishment annext to the Law is no less than pain of Death and that the most religious Law of the Empire is destroyed under pretence of I know not what new Law of your own And so the next news we hear of the Tyrant is his declaration of open War by which the young unadvised Emperor being in a great distress supplicates St. Ambrose to undertake an Ambassy to disswade the Tyrant from his Design which he frankly and readily