of their Spiritual Authority and where Subjects are also absolved from their Obligations in Conscience to obey them And this is also a dissolving the Catholick Church as to such as live in such Dominions and as to any Benefits they can derive from the Catholick Church also For Subjects of particular Districts are no otherwise received into the Catholick Church than as they derive a Right to Communion with all the Churches in the World by their being admitted Members of the Churches of their particular Districts And they are also deprived of their Right of Catholick Communion when they are Excommunicated by the lawful Authority of their particular Districts I cannot therefore see how our Adversaries can excuse themselves herein from Erring fundamentally if the Church's being a Society be admitted for a Fundamental CHAP. VI. Arguments and Objections against this Doctrine from Instances of Fact and Publick Good answered AGAINST this truly Catholick Doctrine two things were opposed by the Adversaries The one a Collection of Eighteen Instances of Bishops who being deprived and not for Heresie did not insist on their Right or were not seconded by their Subjects in the History of 900. Years Which way of Reasoning he shews is neither Conscientious nor Prudent For if Matters of Fact so nakedly related without Evidence of the Principles on which they were acted be urged as Precedents barely because done and no Opposition against them it will be impossible to make any thing of such arguing from History For what History is there that in a Succession of 900. Years does not afford Examples against Examples And how easie were it for an Historian by this way of Reasoning to justifie the Wickedest things that can be § 9. And in this case are divers circumstances which not appearing in any of the Instances make them insignificant § 10-14 Nor do the Instances produced prove the Sense of the Catholick Church but only of the Greek and especially of Constantinople nor even of that Church in the first and earliest Ages § 15. but most of modern barbarous and divided Ages § 22. and in different cases Part 2. § 1. and the Deprivations either by Synods or disagreeable to the Canons of that very Church § 8 9 11. and no such Power so much as pretended by the Lay-Magistrate § 3. but the Emperors indeavouring to obtain their Wills by Authority of Synods or by gross Violence murdering disabling or banishing the Incumbents The other their great Plea of the Publick Good § 47. which he well retorts upon them That the Eternal Interests of Souls and of Religion are more to be valued in a Publick Account than Worldly Politicks That it is more the Publick Good of the Church and of Religion that Subordinations be preserved than that any particular Person be made a Bishop by offering Violence to them That the Glorious Passive Doctrines of the Church be maintained in opposition to Worldly Interests than seem prostituted to serve them That the Credit of the Clergy be maintained than that they enjoy the Benefits of Worldly Protection And that the Independency of that Sacred Function on the State be asserted by challenging the Right than that by yielding the Lay-Power should be owned to have any Power of Depriving us of the Comfort of Sacraments in a time of Persecution And that this is more for the Interest of the State even of the Civil Magistracy than what is like to obtain upon the Cession Even the State cannot subsist without Obligations of Conscience and the Sacredness of Oaths * This hath respect to with he said before of the Sacred Vows of Canonical Obedience for securing that Right and Duty where no Worldly Power can force them to it which no other Power in the World can dispence with but that for whose Interest they were imposed and the dreadful Imprecations implied in them as an Obligation for Performance which can signifie nothing for the Security of any future Government if they must signifie nothing for the time past It is not for the Interest of the Publick to secure ill Titles in their Possession and thereby to incourage the Frequency of ill Titles and frequent Subversions of the Fundamental Constitutions and all the Publick Miseries that must follow on such changes But these things are more largely treated and very solidly in the Defence of the Vindication upon a farther occasion For the Adversaries being so home pressed with this that they had little to reply were forced to seek for new Arguments And first without any Answer to his Argument and granting the Proposition of the Invalidity of Lay-Deprivation the Lawfulness of Submission in the Ecclesiastical Subjects to Intruders is only insisted on and only from other Later Facts and pretence of Peace and Tranquility of the Church To which it is replied that such Submission is Sinful by the Law of God makes the Subjects Accomplices in the Injustice and moreover in the Clergy on account of their Oaths of canonical Obedience c. and That turning the Dispute to later Facts draws it from a short and decisive to a tedious and litigious Issue with which there is no reason to comply And concerning the Case of Abiathar he shews That the Fact is not commended in the Scripture as a Precedent That the Magistrate could not by the Doctrine of that Age have any direct Power over the Priesthood That in the Apostle's Age the Priesthood was expressly owned to be far more Honourable than the Magistracy it self and That Solomon's Act was only of Force and what God had threatned against the House of Eli Nor was Abiathar then the High-Priest properly so called but Zadoc c. Moreover That Christian Bishops are properly Priests and the Gospel Priesthood more noble than that of Abiathar and that these Principles and Inferences were admitted in the Apostolick Age c. by Clemens Romanus c. But the Principal Pretence of all is proposed by another Author That tho' the Argument holds where the State are Infidels and so the Church and State distinct Bodies yet not so where the State professes the Christian Religion And That the Benefits of Protection of Honor and Profit of Security and of Assistance which the Church receives from the State require in Gratitude a compensation To which is replied That more is required for such a Power than meerly being Christian which gives no Title to any Spiritual Authority That the same Persons may be of distinct Societies That the Church's Obligations are more necessary for the Subsisting of the State than those she receives from the State for hers That the Benefits also received from her by the State are greater than what she receives from it That a Pious Magistrate would not desire such a Recompence if she could grant it But it is not in the Power of Ecclesiastical Governours to make such Contract Nor is it agreeable to the Mind of God that the Church should so incorporate with the State To which
particular Churches paid a Deference From the Time of Hadrian there could be no pretence for that Church above others when it consisted not of Jews but Greeks and Romans What was there therefore that could make them unanimous in Variations and Variations of such Importance as this had been They had then no General Councils And the absolute Supremacy of particular Bishops in their proper Districts is by none maintained more expressly and more zealously than by St. Cyprian with particular regard to all other Powers that in later times have pretended to oblige Bishops that is to Councils and the Bishop of Rome This Catholick Communion grounded on the common Interest of all the Bishops to have all their Acts of Discipline in their particular Districts ratified over the whole World might have brought in other things that were consequential to these common Interests But there was nothing antecedent that can be imagined that could have brought in this Catholick Communion of those times among such a multitude of absolute and independent Societies as the Churches were then if it had not been brought in from their very first Originals And yet these Notions we were speaking of were Fundamental to that Catholick Communion it self as managed in those earlier Ages CHAP. V. That Intruders or Anti-Bishops by Lay-Authority cannot be defended but by Principles fundamentally destructive of the Church as a Society distinct from the State in time of Persecution IF those Errors that destroy the very Being of the Church as a Society be Fundamental I cannot for my part see how such Anti-Bishops and all that own them can be excused by Principles from Erring fundamentally Their being Bishops supposes such Doctrines as if they be once admitted make it impossible for the Church to subsist as a Spiritual Society whenever the State is pleased to persecute it They cannot possibly be supposed Bishops of those Dioceses to which they are consecrated till it first be supposed that their Predecessors are validly deprived and consequently that the Sees are vacant in Gonscience If it should prove otherwise the Clergy and Laity of those same Jurisdictions will still be obliged in Conscience as much as ever to adhere to their Canonical Bishops till they be Canonically deprived and to disown such Intruders as are put over them not only without any Canonical Procedure but without any Authority also that can oblige in Conscience The only Principle therefore on which they can pretend that their Rival Bishops have lost their Right as to Conscience must be the Power that even the Lay-Magistrate has to deprive Bishops even with regard to Conscience If therefore they will defend their Schism by Principles it will be necessary that they defend this Principle also without which it is not possible that it should ever be defended They have no Ecclesiastical Judicatory Just or Unjust that they can so much as pretend in this Case And the defending this is that which will increase their Guilt and will add to their charge of Schism the aggravation of Heresie also For in order to the asserting such a Right as this to the Secular Magistrate it will be necessary to assert that the Authority of the Church even as to Spirituals is in Conscience the Right of the Civil Magistrate If it should not be so then the Subjects of the respective Dioceses may still be at liberty in Conscience to adhere to their deprived Bishops And if they may they must because then all their former Obligations in Conscience will still hold as obliging in Conscience to it is impossible that those antecedent Obligations in Conscience to adhere to their spiritual Superiors can be dis-anulled or diminished by a Power that can pretend no Right in such Matters with regard to Conscience But if we grant this Power to the Magistrate this will perfectly overthrow the Church as a Society distinct from the State and perfectly disable it to subsist as a Society in a time of Persecution For when the Magistrate persecutes it it cannot then subsist as a Society without a Government and a Government obliging in Conscience and not derived from the persecuting Magistrate But if the Right of that spiritual Government be in Conscience the Magistrate's Right it must be an invading the Magistrate's Right to pretend to it when he expressly forbids it And if so how can spiritual Governours in such a Case pretend to it How can they pretend to a Right that is none of their own consistently with Conscience How can their pretending to it with ill Consciences oblige their Subjects to adhere to them on account of Conscience Nay how can it even excuse them in Conscience for not adhering rather to him whose Right it is supposed to be and that even in Conscience No Necessity whatsoever can excuse a Sin much less lay an Obligation in Conscience on Subjects to abet it least of all lay an Obligation on God to ratifie such Acts of Authority as must be supposed no better than Usurpations And yet all Acts of Ecclesiastical Authority in a time of Persecution can signifie nothing if they be not such as may oblige in Conscience and such as God as well as Men is obliged to ratifie Thus it had been Sin in the Romans to set up Cornelius as plainly they did not only without the Consent but against the Will of Decius It had been Sin in him and not in him only but in all the Bishops of his Age to pretend to any Districts in the Roman Empire It had been Sin in them to exercise Authority in Districts not belonging to them Thus the Church had been perfectly dissolved as a Society at least within the Roman Empire unless we can suppose a Notion of a Society without Governours without Districts without any lawful Exercises of Authority And yet the Bishops of those Ages never thought themselves obliged in Conscience to go out of the Roman Empire to retrieve the Power which is pretended to belong to them as Bishops of the Catholick Church And very probably it had signified nothing to have done so They could have gone into no civilized inhabited Countries but they must have expected Magistrates who could pretend to the same Right as well as Decius and who were as much disposed as he to use their Right to the Prejudice of the Christian Religion What therefore would our Adversaries have advised the Christians of those Ages to have preserved themselves in a Society Would they have had them retired into unoccupied Wildernesses But how could they make Societies there where there were no Numbers of Subjects requisite to make a Society Plainly therefore the Catholick Church had then been dissolved as Societies if these New Principles had been maintained in those earlier Ages And these same Principles do still put it as evidently in the Power of the Civil Magistrate to dissolve the Church as a Society within his own Dominions For how can a Church continue a Society where Bishops are in Conscience deprived
former Head It was then a Principle that * Epist 55. ad Antonianum Edit Oxen Cypr. Secundus was Nullus which will as much invalidate the Consecrations of the present Anti-Bishops as it did that of Novatian This is a Principle so universally acknowledged where-ever there can be but one that it needs no Authorities to recommend it No Man can convey the same thing twice and therefore if there be two Bonds for the same thing to several Persons the second can never be thought obliging but by supposing the Invalidity of the first So also in all Monarchical Districts none can suppose an Anti-Monarch's Title good till he has shewn that the first Monarch's Title is not so Thus this Principle needed no Authority and yet it had all the Authority of the whole Catholick Church of that Age. The whole Collegium of Catholick Bishops that is St. Cyprian's Term gave their communicatory Letters not to Novatian but Cornelius and received none to their own Communion on the communicatory Letters of Novatian but only on those of Cornelius And that upon this same common Principle that Cornelius being once validly Bishop of Rome Novatian could never be a Bishop of that same District without the Death or Cession or Deprivation of Cornelius and that supposing him no Bishop of that Place to which he was consecrated he could be no Bishop at all So far they were then from our late Fancy of a Bishop of the Catholick Church without a particular District Had they thought so they might have ratified Novatian's Acts as a Bishop because he had received his Power from Bishops tho' not as Bishop of Rome Comparing the Catholick Church to a Fanum or Temple he was Profanus as not being in the Temple nor having a Right to enter into it Comparing it to the House in which the Passover was to be eaten by the Jews he was Foris not in that House in which alone the Passover was to be eaten These were the Notions of St. Cyprian and were by him and his Colleagues understood of the Catholick Church in general when they all supposed Novatian out of the Catholick in general by being out of that particular Church of Rome of which he had formerly been a Member Just as in ordinary Excommunications they also always supposed that he who was by any Act of obliging Authority deprived of his Right to his own particular Church had also lost his Right thereby to all the particular Churches in the World And they also supposed Novatian to have cast himself out of his own Body by assuming to himself the Name of a Head of that Body which already had a Head and could have no more than one And these Notions and this Language of St. Cyprian were supposed and owned universally by the whole Body of the Catholick Bishops of his Time when they acted consequently to them and took them for the Measures by which they either granted or refused their own Communion Nor is it to be thought strange that these Notions should be received and received universally not as the Opinions of private Persons but as the publick Doctrine and Fundamental to the Catholick Communion as practised not only in that early Age of St. Cyprian but as derived from the Apostles themselves and the very first Originals of Christianity For these were not as private Opinions usually were only the result of private Reasonings they were received as the Fundamentals of Christianity which were not as new Revelations generally were ... from the like Notions received among the Jews and among them received not as private Opinions but as publick Doctrines and Fundamental to the then practised Sacrifical Communion of the then peculiar People and only thence deduced as other things also are in the Reasonings of the New Testament to the Case of the new Mystical Peculium and their new Mystical Sacrifices The Language of erecting Altar against Altar in St. Cyprian is derived from the like earlier Language received among the Jews * V. Discourse of one Altar c. Edit Lond. 1683. 80. concerning the Samaritan Altar of Manasses against the Jerusalem Altar of Jaddus that is of a High Priest against a High Priest when God had appointed but one High Priest in the whole World and him only at Jerusalem And it is also plain that the Body of the Jews did look on such Schismatical High Priests and all their Communicants as cut off from the Body of their Peculium and consequently from all their publick Sacrifices and all the Privileges consequent to them Why should we therefore think it strange that the Apostolical Christians should have the like Opinion of them who set up themselves as opposite Heads of their Mystical Sacrifices But this is not all It is further as notorious 3dly St. Cyp. Epist 43. Edit Oxon. that all who any way professed themselves one with Novatian were for that very Reason of their doing so taken for divided from the Catholick Church as well as he was with whom they were united Here also the reason was very evident that he who professed and by publick Profession made himself one with a Person divided must by the same Analogy of Interpretation profess himself divided and by that very Profession actually divide himself also by making himself one with the Person supposed to be divided Nor was this reason more evident than universally acknowledged in the Discipline of that Age. All such Uniters with the Schismatick were refused to be admitted to Communion not by particular Bishops only as the Case would have been if the Opinion had been singular but by all the Bishops of one Communion in the World Not only so But it is also as notorious 4thly from the Practice and Discipline of that Age that all whom they looked upon as united with Novatian they consequently looked on as divided from themselves To be sure in the first place those who had any hand in his pretended Consecration which were principally and particularly reflected on by Cornelius in his Epistle to Fabius of Antioch Nor would his People be receiv'd to Communion by any Catholick Bishop on the communicatory Letters of Novatian and they could expect none from Cornelius whilst they were divided from him Thus all his Subjects came to be involved as well as himself But that which was highest of all was that even Bishops were supposed to have divided themselves from their Brethren if they communicated with him that is if according to the custom of that Age they either gave communicatory Letters to him or receiv'd any to their own Communion on the like communicatory Letters receiv'd from him This appear'd plainly in the Case of Martian of Arles who was on this very account denied the communicatory Letters of his Brethren and would no doubt have appeared also in the Case of Fabius of Antioch if he had proceeded so far And this does plainly suppose that such Bishops also had cut themselves off from Catholick Communion