Judgment and Opinions of the Persons concerned in these Instances And yet if this Point were gained it would not suffice for our Adversaries purpose For it is farther considerable sixthly That the Instances here collected rise no higher than the Fourth Century and extend no farther than the Greek Church and therefore cannot pretend to argue the Sense of the Catholick Church nor of those Ages which are most to be regarded not onely for their Antiquity but their Integrity also Suppose therefore we should so far gratifie our Adversaries as to give them leave to believe that all was proved that is so much as offered at in this Collection and proved as solidly and as pertinently to their Cause as themselves can either pretend or wish This would certainly be a great Favour indeed the uttermost they can hope for with regard to this Collection yet still they must not pretend by this Collection to one single Instance that may signifie the sense of the Western Church or consequently of the Catholick Church in any one Age Still we are left a liberty for any thing is said here to challenge the Doctrine of the Church as signified by her behaviour at the first and ancientest Instances of Schism as making for us And this we can do with greater Certainty and Evidence than our Adversaries can pretend to in their more Modern Cases 16. We can say that even in the Age of St. Cyprian which is the ancientest we know of that an Antibishop was set up against a Bishop in the same See it is 1st very notorious that they then owned no such Power of the secular Magistrate to deprive Bishops of their purely spiritual Power and that the Church as a Society distinct from the State subsisted on their not owning it even as to a Deprivation of their particular Districts and Jurisdictions It is notorious and as notorious as any one Tradirion of the Catholick Church in those Ages not excepting that of the Canon of the New Testament it self that Christians then and not only then but in all the former Persecutions that had been from the times of the Apostles to that very Age did own themselves bound to adhere to their Bishops when it was notorious withal that those Bishops were set up and maintained against the Consent of the Civil Magistrate It is as notorious also that this adherence of theirs was not only Matter of Fact which is all our Adversaries pretend here but a Duty owned by them as obliging in Conscience and as the result of Principles This appears not only by the unquestionable Sincerity of the Christians of those Ages who were generously influenced by no Considerations but those of Conscience not only by their suffering those severe Penances imposed on them in order to their recovering the Bishop's Communion even when the Magistrate was against him which no other Considerations could recommend but only those of Conscience but from the Principles themselves insisted on in the Reasonings of St. Cyprian Such were these That all hopes of pardon of Sin of the Holy Ghost of Eternal Life on performance of Duty were confined to the visible Communion of the Church that their visible Communion with the Church could not appear but by their visible Communion with the Bishop as the Head of that Church and the Principle of its Vnity that who that Bishop was to whom any particular Person owed his Duty was not then any otherwise distinguishable but by the visible Districts in which themselves lived and to which he was therefore supposed to have a Title whether the Magistrate would or no. It is also as notorious that these Reasonings were not then the sense of private Persons but the received sense of Christians in general and indeed Fundamental to that Catholick Communion which was then maintained where-ever there were Christians Not only every particular Christian of a Diocess did thus assure himself of his Right to Ecclesiastical Privileges by his Communion with the Bishop of that particular District but he was intitled also to Communion with all the other Bishops of the World and consequently with the Catholick Church in general by the communicatory Letters of the Bishop of his own particular District For it was by the mutual Obligation all Bishops of the World had to ratifie the Acts of particular Districts that he who was admitted a Member of one Church was intitled to the Communion of all and that he who was excluded from one was excluded from others also because no other Bishop could justifie his reception of a Christian of another Jurisdiction to his own Communion if he had not the communicatory Letters of his own Bishop Thus it appears that the Obligation even of particular Districts without consent of the Magistrate was then Catholick Doctrine Whence it plainly follows that this Lay-deprivation which is all that can be pretended in the case of our present Bishops is in the Principles of the Catholick Church of St. Cyprian's Age a perfect Nullity and consequently that in regard to Conscience at least our present Bishops are still Bishops and Bishops of those particular Districts as much as ever and the Obligations of the Clergy and Laity in those Districts as obliging to them now as ever 17. This therefore being so that our present Bishops are by the Principles of St. Cyprian's Age as obliging Bishops in Conscience to the Clergy and Laity of their respective Jurisdictions it will thence be as notorious 2dly that the Antibishops of those same Jurisdictions are by the same Principles to be taken for no Bishops at all It is plain that Novatian was disowned as soon as ever it appeared that Cornelius was canonically settled in Fabian's Chair before him and disowned universally so universally that whoever did not disown him was for that very reason disowned himself This is as clear as any particular mentioned in our Adversaries Collection But we do not satisfie our selves with that It is also further as notorious that he was disowned by Principles obliging them in Conscience to disown him and those again not private Opinions but Principles also Fundamental to the Correspondence then maintained in the whole Catholick Church as the other were that we mentioned under the former Head It was then a Principle that Secundus was Nullus which will as much invalidate the Consecrations of the present Antibishops as it did that of Novatian This is a Principle so universally acknowledged wherever 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 2 d can never be thought obliging but by supposing the Invalidity of the 1 st So also in all Monarchichal Districts none can suppose an Antimonarch'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
Letters could be hoped for whilst they continued in Communion with him 20. And then 5thly It is also as notorious on the same Principles of St. Cyprian's Age that such Schism from the visible Communion of the Catholick Church was also supposed to deprive the Person so divided of all the invisible Benefits of Church Communion God was supposed obliged to ratifie in Heaven what was done by those whom he authorized to represent him on Earth He avenged the Contempts of his Ministers and would not be a Father to those who would not own his Church for their Mother by paying her a Filial respect They were not to expect any pardon of their Sins They could not hope for the Holy Ghost who dissolved the Vnity of the Spirit They were uncapable of the Crown of Martyrdome whatever they suffered in the state of Separation This is the result of many of St. Cyprian's Discourses on this Argument And indeed it is very agreeable with the Design of God that they who cut themselves off from the Peculium should by their doing so lose all their pretensions to the Rights and Privileges of it Not only so but that they should also incur all the Mischiefs to which they were supposed liable who had lost their Right of being Members of the peculiar People Accordingly as they believed all Persons at their first admission into the Church to be turned from Darkness to Light and from the Power of Satan unto God so upon their leaving the Church or their being cast out of it by the judicial Act of their Superiours they were supposed to return into the state of Heathens to lose the Protection of those good Spirits who minister only to the Heirs of Salvation and again to relapse into their former condition of Darkness and being consequently obnoxious to be infested by the Devil and his Powers of Darkness And that this was so appeared by several ordinary Experiments in those earlier Ages not only of the Apostles but that also of St. Cyprian who has many Examples of it in his Book de Lapsis And this confinement of the Spiritual Privileges of the peculiar People to the External Communion of the Church as it was Fundamental to their Discipline so it was rational consequently to their other Principles God was not thought obliged to confer those Privileges but by the Act of those whom himself had authorized to oblige him But Dividers were supposed not to belong to that Body to which the Promises were made and ambitious Intruders into other Men's Offices could not in any Equity pretend to have their Acts ratified by God from whom they could not be supposed to receive any Authority when they did not receive it by the Rules and Orders of the Society established by him These things were then believed and believed universally Indeed nothing but an universal Belief of them would have maintained that Discipline which was then observed in the Church could have obliged them generally to suffer as they did then the severest Inflictions from the Magistrate rather than incurr the much more feared Displeasure of their Ecclesiastical Superiours When we are also of the same Mind and alike influenced by Principles and Regard to Conscience then indeed and then alone we may pretend to be a Posterity not degenerous from the great Examples of those glorious Ancestors Then it will not be in the Power of Acts of Parliament to drive us from our Principles and bring a Scandal on our Religion Then where our Bishops follow Christ we shall follow them and it will not be in the Power of the Worldly Magistrate or the Gates of Hell it self to prevail against our Church and to dissolve the Vnion between us Then Magistrates themselves will be more wary of involving Consciences on occasion of their little Worldly Politicks at least they will not pretend Religion and the Religion of that very Church which suffers by them for doing so May we live at length to see that happy day However it will hence appear how impossible it will be to excuse our Adversaries present Case from Schism if it be tried by that Antiquity which we do indeed profess to imitate and alledge 21. Now in this Case I am discoursing of I have purposely selected the Instances of St. Cyprian's Age rather than any other not only because they are the ancientest indeed the first we know of of one Bishop's invading another's Chair not vacant but because we have withal in him the most distinct account of the Sense of the Church in his Age of such Facts and of the Principles on which they proceeded in condemning them He had occasion given him to be so distinct by two Schisms one of his own Church in Carthage where Felicissimus was set up against himself another that I have principally insisted on of Novatian set up against Cornelius in Rome On these Occasions he has written one just Discourse besides several Epistles But these Principles were not singular and proper to that Age they descended lower and are insisted on by Optatus and St. Augustine in their Disputes with the Donatists whenever they dispute the Question of their Schism without relation to their particular Opinions 22. And now what can our Adversaries gain though we should grant them all they can ask concerning their Collection till they be able to disarm us of these earlier Authorities neither mentioned nor perhaps so much as thought of by their Author Till they do so we have all the Advantages against them that our Cause does need or we desire They give us a bare Collection of Facts without any other Evidence of the Principles on which they were transacted than the Facts themselves We give them here a contrary Fact of Persons of unquestionable Sincerity to Principles and not only so but the Principles themselves on which they proceeded acknowledged by the Persons themselves They give us Facts of the Greek Church only We give them one wherein the sense of the whole Catholick Church appeared not of the Greeks alone but of the Latines also They give us those of Modern of Barbarous of Divided Ages wherein the great Bodies of the Eastern and Western Churches were divided in Communion the Eastern Churches particularly within which their Instances are confined into Nestorians and several subdivided Sects of Eutychians who yet if they had been more unanimous were otherwise no very competent Witnesses of Apostolical Tradition not only in regard of their Age but their Corruptness their Vnskilfulness their Credulity We here have given them the sense of the Church in an Age wherein her Testimony is every way unexceptionable wherein she had certain means of knowing the Truth and withal valued it as it deserved Even there we find the Principles now mentioned universally received and universally received as the grounds of that universal Catholick Communion which she had received by an uninterrupted Tradition from the Apostles to that very Time Even there I say we
restore the old Terms which may be done without any thing that can properly be called Concession These things if they will grant us we shall all return into their Communion with Joy and they vvill also have reason to partake in our Joy for our having vindicated their sacred Rights against future Encroachments But the least we can ask or they can grant is to gratifie us in the matter of our present Dispute That they vvill not invade nor maintain injurious Possessions that they vvill not by doing so cut themselves off by their ovvn Act from Communion with us The End of the Second PART The CANONS in the Baroccian Manuscript omitted by Mr. Hody 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 31 Canon of the holy Apostles instead of the 32. If any Presbyter contemning his own Bishop shall hold a separate Meeting and erect an opposite Altar having nothing wherewith to charge the Bp. in Matters of Piety and Justice let him be deposed as an ambitious Affector of Government for he is an Vsurper So also as many of the Clergy as shalt join with him shall be deposed and the Laicks excommunicated but all this after the 1st 2d and 3d Admonition of the Bishop 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 6 th Canon of the Synod of Gangra If any Man hold a private Meeting out of the Church and despising the Church shall presume to perform the Offices of the Church the officiating Presbyter not being thereunto licensed by the Bishop let him be anathema 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 5 th Canon of the Synod of Antioch If any Presbyter or Deacon despising his own Bp. hath withdrawn himself from the Church and set up an Altar in a private Meeting and shall disobey the Admonitions of the Bp. and will not be persuaded by him nor submit to him exhorting him again and again he is absolutely to be deposed and ought no longer to he treated as a curable Person neither as one who can retain his Honor and if he shall persevere to make Tumults and Disturbances in the Church he is to be turned over as a seditious Person to the secular Power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 15 th Canon of the same Synod If any Bishop accused of any Crimes be condemned by all the Bishops of the Province who have all with one accord denounced the same Sentence against him such a one by no means ought to be judged again by others but the concordâ—nt Sentence of the Provincial Bishops ought to remain firm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 10 th Canon of the Synod of Carthage If any Presbyter being puffed up against his own Bp. shall make a Schism let him be anathema 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The 13 th Can. of the Synod of Constantinople The Devil having sown the Seeds of heretical Tares in the Church of Christ and seeing them cut up by the Sword of the Spirit hath betaken to himself a new way and method viz. to divide the Church by the Madness of Schismaticks But the holy Synod being also willing to obviate this Strategem of his has decreed as follows If any Presbyter or Deacon under pretence of accusing his own Bp. of any Crimes shall presume to withdraw from his Communion and not mention 〈…〉 in the holy Prayers of the Liturgy Clergymen not excusable for appearing in a Cause so destructive of the Interest of Religion in general and of their own Function in particular without Reasons very evident and convincing The Author of this Manuscript too low to pass for an Evidence of the Facts mentioned by him He knew nothing of the later part of the History of Nicetas Choniates relating to Constantinople Which yet he must have known as a publick Officer of the Church of Cp. if he had liv'd near him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 25. Anastas de Jejux Deipar p. 435. Tom. 3. Coteler Mon. Gr. Eccl. fol. 243. fol. 212 225 230. The use of the publick Ecclesiastical Rhâ—tor This Office very antient in the Church of Cp. perhaps from the first Foundation of it by Constantine the Great L. V. c. 22. Vid. etiam Sozom. l. 7. c. 19. L. VII c. 36. L. VII c. 37. This Discourse seems to have been written by the Ecclesiastical Rhetor of the Church of Cp. then in Office when the Schism happened that occasioned it Not by Nicephorus Callisius Coteler Nâ—t ad 3 Vol. Mon. Gr. Eccl. p. 645. Niceph. H. E. xvi 19 20 25 26 32. Ibid. 35. Ad finèm Cap. 1. L. 1. Nicephorâ— This Author no competent Witness of the Matters mentioned by him Our Adversaries way of Reasoning in this Case is neither conscientious not prudent See the instances produced by the Author of the Vnreasonableness of a New Separation upon the Account of the Oaths 1. Non-adherence to unjustly deprived Bishops will signify nothing to our present Case unless the Persons who did not adhere to them did believe them unjustly depriv'd 2. Nor unless they did believe them invalidly deprived that is by an incompetent Judicatory as well as unjustly 3. Nor unless the Bishops so deprived did insist on their Right and challenge Duty as ours do 4. Nor unless such Non-adherence was thought justifiable by Principles and with regard to Conscience 5. Nor is it easie to gather Principles from Non-actions Such are not chalenging Right on the Bishops part or not adhering to them on the Subjects part 6. Nor do the Instances here produced prove the Sense of the Catholick Church but of the Greek especially of the Constantinopolitane Church Nor even of that Church in the first and earliest Ages The Doctrine of the Catholick Church in the earliest Ages may for what appears from this Collection be on our side and indeed is so 1st The whole Church then owned noâ— Power in the secular Magistrate for depriving Bishops as to Spirituals not even as to their particular Districts Thence it follows 2dly that Antibiâ—hops consecrated in Districts no other way 〈◊〉 than by the Power of the secular Magistrate are by the Principles of that earliest Catholick Church no Bishops at all but divided from the Church * Epist. 57. ad Antonianum in the Oxon Edition of St. Cyprian And 3dly that all who profess themselves one with Antibishops so divided from the Church were in consequence to the same Principles themselves divided also St. Cypr. Epist. 43 Edit Oxon. And 4thly that all who were United with Novatian and by consequence divided from the Church of the Roman District were in the Discipline of that early Age looked upon as themselves divided also from the Catholick Church And 5ly that all who were on these Principles thought divided from the visible communion of the Catholick Church were also on the same Principles thought deprived of all the Invisible benefits of Church Communion Vid. St. Cyp. de
A VINDICATION OF THE Deprived Bishops c. PART I. Shewing That though the Instances collected in the Baroccian MS had been pertinent to the Editors Design yet that would not have been sufficient for Obtaining their Cause 1. THat the Laity should be favourable to Mistakes derogatory to the sacred Power cannot be thought strange in an Age wherein they generally use so little diligence to inform themselve or to receive Information from those who are qualified to inform them concerning the Rights of the Clergy Their own Interests are alone sufficient to make them partial in affairs of this nature though they were more sincerely influenced by Considerations of Religion than we generally find them but that Clergymen should also â—avour them in Encroachments on their own Function that they should professedly patronise Doctrines tending to lessen the Esteem of that greatest and most valuable of all Authorities wherewith God has honoured and instrusted none but them that they should make it depend on the pleasure of the Magistrate which was designed for greater and more noble Ends than the Magistracy it self that they should put it in his power to destroy the very being of the Church as a Society by a secular Deprivation that they should not onely own but teach That none are obliged to adhere to themselves in such a Case wherein the Magistrate is against them no not so much as in regard of Conscience that they should by this means make the greatest and most momentous Concerns for Souls subordinate to worldly carnal Politicks and the far less weighty Interests of worldly Prosperity and of particular Societies that they should hereby make it least capable of subsisting under a Persecution which was the Case most obvious in the view of our B. Saviour and his Apostles and therefore most particularly provided for if they took care for any thing beyond their own time These things I say would not be very credible if they were not very notorious One would think none who valued the general good of Religion and the Catholick Church and the Souls of Mankind before the temporal Prosperity of any particular State and it is hard to conceive how any good Man can doe otherwise could even wish such Opinions true though his Wish alone were sufficient to make them so How then is it agreeable that Clergymen of all Men should be the most favourable and zealous Advocates for such Opinions so manifestly destructive of those greatest Interests which they of all men ought best to understand and to be most zealously concerned for How is it agreeable that they of all men cannot be content to let the Memory of ill Precedents dye but that they must allarm us with future Fears of having them acted again by not only abetting but also justifying them How is it agreeable that they should do this in a Prospect such as ours is of a Laity so little concerned for the good of Religion and the Church when even they who have any Principles have such lax ones and so very little obliging them even in Conscience to venture any thing for any particular Communion That their preferring their worldly Concerns depending on the Pleasure of the Magistrate before the greater Concerns of Souls and Eternity is the true Cause of it is not to be believed while there are any Reasons that might induce them to it Yet little Reasons cannot in Equity excuse when the Consequences ought to be so very valuable on that very account of Mens being either good or religious But this advantage our Adversaries have that their Cause is like to suffer nothing by ill Management when it is in the hands of such able Advocates Let us therefore see whether all they say will amount to Reason and to Reason sufficient to excuse them 2. They pretend and pretend with great Confidence That nothing can justifie our Adherence to even unjustly deprived Bishops if the Successors be not Hereticks That this is so they appeal to an antient Greek MS. of Instances collected to their hands before any prospect of our present Case They pretend from this Collection that neither the Bishops themselves who were unjustly deprived made any Separation nor any Subjects of such Bishops on account of any obligation of Conscience to adhere to them Hence they collect that these things being the sense of the antient Church as often as any such Instances appeared ought also to be our sense who profess a Veneration for Antiquity And were these things so as they pretend they would perhaps be considerable to excuse the Practice of our present Adversaries But all these things are justly questionable and far from that Evidence which their Cause requires and themselves pretend to All they say is resolved into this MS. and this will do nothing for their purpose The Author whoever he was is much too young to be admitted as a Witness of most of the Facts enumerated by him especially considering we have Authours of the earlier times to speak for themselves Nay he has not pretended to be a Witness on his own Credit He has been particularly carefull to tell us his Authors most of which are extant to this very day As therefore his Credit is nothing for things so much earlier than his own Age so neither is there any need we should depend on his Credit when we can have immediate recourse to his original Authors themselves It is called an antient MS. and yet pretended no elder than the 13th Century But sure the ingenious English Prefacer cannot think Antiquity of so low a date as that is to be that Antiquity which we profess to imitate or pretend to alleadge Yet neither can he prove his Author a competent Witness even for that low Antiquity All that appears from his quoting Nicetas Choniates is onely this That he could not be elder than that Century in which the Author lived who was quoted by him But neither doth it thence follow that he lived in the same Age nor can it thence be determined how long he lived after him This mention of Nicetas will bring him down below the Year 1205. where Nicetas ends his History Nicetas himself lived some while after But our Author refers to his History as an Authority as being elder than the Traditions of the Age he lived in He neither pretends to remember the things for which he quotes him nor to have received any Informations concerning them from the relation of any old Men who could remember them But where Nicetas fails him he shews himself perfectly ignorant of the Affairs of that Age which was concerned in the History written by Nicetas Nicetas mentions no Successor in the See of Constantinople between Cosmas Atticus and Theodosius Our Author therefore takes Theodosius for Cosmas's immediate Successor Nicetas does not mention the Synods nor the Abdications that were in the Cases of the Patriarchs deposed in the time of Isaacius Angelus therefore our Author supposes there were none Nicetas
mentions the Opposition but not the Schisms that fell out in the two Settlements of Dositheus therefore our Author takes it for granted that there were none and reasons accordingly upon that Supposition These things plainly shew that our Author did not write within any near Memory of the History written by Nicetas and therefore must be considerably later than the beginning even of the XIIIth Century 3. It will farther add to the Probability of this Observation if it be considered that our Author was a Constantinopolitane and in such a Station in the Church of Constantinople as that he could not have needed the Information of written Monuments for the Affairs of the Church of Constantinople that had been within the reach of a near Tradition This has already been observed by the English Prefacer Mr. B. and observed from hence that our Author derives the Orders of the Church he was concerned for from former Bishops of Constantinople But for this perhaps it might have been sufficient that he had been of any part of the Constantinopolitane Jurisdiction at least of a Church which owned the Patriarch of Constantinople for their more immediate Metropolitane I therefore add another Argument that will not be so easily evaded Our Author speaking of the Synodicon says it was read in the Church as every body knew This was particularly true of the particular Church of Constantinople There it was that the Tomus Vnionis that part of the Synodicon to which our Author refers was made as Anastasius Caesareensis assures us And therefore there it was that it was ordered to be read every July annually The Union it self particularly concerned breaches which had been before between Constantinopolitane Patriarchs and was therefore most proper to be read in the Patriarchal Church I add farther that the Author seems to have a constant fixed relation to that particular Church as an Officer of it and such and Officer as that it was his particular Duty to be conversant in the Histories belonging to it The subject Matter of this Discourse is Historical And the address of is not to Readers but Auditors This plainly shews that it was spoken And of these spoken Historical Discourses we have many Instances in this very same Baroccian MS. We have here the larger Epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of the Arian Philostorgius which is here said to have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We have also several Collections of History ascribed to Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus in the same form of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Theodoret of Theodorus Lector This form therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to have been opposed to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the address to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is also to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Both together seem to imply that it was rather a Speech designed for Auditors than a Writing for Readers That is that it was not committed to writing by the Author himself but by the Author only spoken it was taken from his Mouth and committed to writing by the Auditors I think there can be little reason to doubt but that the address of this Discourse to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is exactly answerable to this other form in the Works inscribed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If so then we may reasonably judge that our Author whoever he was was in the same Office in the Church of Constantinople wherein Photius and Nicephorus were when they also pronounced and dictated the Works which are so inscribed to them and that his Office was as theirs was particularly to enquire into Ecclesiastical History and to instruct his Auditors in it As for what Mr. B collects from this address That the Tract it self was a Homily methinks the whole nature of the Subject might have sufficed to convince him He might as well have conjectured all the Collections out of Eusebius Socrates Sozomen c. to have been Homilies because they are also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But this I believe that worthy Person was not aware of who does not seem himself to have perused the MS. 4. Perhaps these Expressions may afford us some not improbable Conjectures concerning the Nature and Design of all these Historical Collections particularly Mr. Hody may be pleased to remember what himself has very well observed in his Premonition to Malela He has there observed a multitude of Historians called Rhetors and Sophists whence he well infers that those very Titles seem to have had some relation to their very Faculty of being Historians He observes farther that there was a Rhetor appropriated to the service of particular Churches Such was the Rhetor of Aenus joyned with the Ecdicus or Defensor of the same Church And it is indeed probable that all those Historians who are called Rhetors and Sophists were called so from their bearing that Office in some particular Church He has observed farther That in the Service of these Churches there were Bodies of these Rhetors and among them one who presided over the rest as Samuel over the Prophets called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Magister as that Name was in those Ages applied to Presidents of the Palatine Offices also and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answerable also to the Secular Campidoctores in Vegetius and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These Ecclesiastical Rhetors seem to have been one part of the Clergy that were maintained by the Revenues of the Foundation mentioned frequently in the Imperial Constitutions particularly designed for this purpose of studying Ecclesiastical History The young Men therefore designed for this study were obliged to be Auditors of the Principal Rhetor who was a kind of a publick Professor of Ecclesiastical History The use of this study for the Service of the Church was to search into Precedents when any Act of publick Discipline required it and very probably into Canons also when the Case was resolvible by written Canons Both are made use of in this Discourse though the Editor has omitted all the Canons Thus this Ecclesiastical History was consulted for both Laws both the written ones and the unwritten ones which were nothing else but allowed Practice This Profession therefore being found so useful for the Service of the Church care was taken that there might always be an Ecclesiastical Nursery that might continually afford Candidates qualified to supply the Chair as often as a vacancy should fall That was by obliging the Master to a constant Duty in his Function for the Instruction of his young Students And the Duty was either to take a received Historian and to abbreviate him or to collect a multitude of Instances in a particular Case when he was consulted thereby to let the young Students understand the design of their Historical Studies But all was by word of Mouth and by way of Dictates to be committed to writing by the Auditors themselves This was the easiest way for multiplying Copies before Printing was invented And withal it
out before Application can be made to our present Case which are not yet in the least attempted It must first appear not onely that the Deprivation was indeed unjust but that the Church who deserted them and adhered to the Intruders did also think it so Yet this will hardly be made out particularly in the Case of St. Chrysostome I believe they can give no Instances of any who thought him unjustly deprived but they were Joannites and therefore separated from the Communion of his Deprivers 11. It must appear farther secondly That they thought him invalidly deprived as well as unjustly That they know very well is Our Sense of the present Case on which we lay the Stress of our Cause not onely that our Bishops are deprived for what our Laws in the true sense of the Legislators did never intend should be a Crime but also that they are deprived by a Power that can no way pretend to a Right of Spiritual Deprivation that is purely by a Lay-power without the least pretence of Ecclesiastical Censures This therefore they ought to prove That even in Case of a purely Lay-deprivation those Eastern Churches did not think fit to assert their Spiritual Liberties against the Encroachments of the Secular Magistrate But that seems more than ever their Author undertook I believe than his Cause required I am sure several of his Instances did suppose Synodical Deprivations yet if they cannot shew this all they say is utterly impertinent to our present Dispute For we our selves may say and say agreeably to our own Principles as much as their own Author says and perhaps as much as he intended if he had been living to make Application to our particular Case We do no more say than he that the Injustice of a Sentence does null or invalidate it when otherwise the Authority by which it is pronounced is valid and obliging Nor do we say that Subjects are even in Conscience free to adhere to their Bishop when the Authority by which he is deprived has not onely a Right to conclude them but to conclude him also Yet all this is consistent with the Liberty allowed by this Author of withdrawing Communion from an Heretick The Reason is this because even the Canons of the Church to go no farther now allow Subjects this Liberty to judge of their Bishop's Faith by a private Judgment of Discretion and with reference to their own particular Act of Communicating as has been shewn by their own Author himself in the latter part of his Tract ommitted by Mr. Hody 12. Yet this is not all that had been requisite for their Reasoning in this Case It ought also to appear thirdly That the Church thought her self at Liberty to deny her Adherence to an unjustly deprived Bishop even when he insisted on his own Right and challenged her Duty from her This is the actual Case of our present Bishops and of this also their whole Collection does not afford one single Example Yet this is the onely Case wherein her not adhering to him can by any Art of equal Interpretation be taken to signifie that she did not think such Adherence his due even in regard to Conscience otherwise the Non-payment of Debts alone does by no means imply a belief that they are not due It is certain the Person to whom they are due may remit them if he please and his not challenging them is often taken for an Argument that he does remit them at least that he does not challenge Payment now It is therefore no more an Argument in such a Case that the Church does not think such a Duty of Adherence to such a Bishop really due than that the Bishop himself does not think it so For it is as consistent in them with an acknowledgment of Right to defer the Payment till it be demanded as it is consistent with the Bishop's owning it for his Right that he does not as yet think fit to demand it But our Author pretends that by his Collection of Instances it appears no Bishop ever challenged his Right if the Person substituted in his own place were not an Heretick So indeed he says but thence it does by no means follow that they had no Right because they did not challenge it Nor can it be thence gathered but that it may be prudent as well as just for Successors to insist on their Right though Predecessors who thought it just did yet not think it prudent to insist on theirs The Change of Circumstances may make so great a Variety in the Case it self If it be only a Personal Injury the Mischief the Church may suffer by the Person 's defending his Right may be more than what she may suffer by permitting a single Act of Injustice to go unredressed But in our Case our Adversaries very well know the Injury is more than personal They know the old Doctrines of our Church are involved in the Injustice that is offered them They may also know that this New Doctrine of the Validity of Lay deprivations with regard to Spirituals is of intolerable mischievous consequence as granting to the Laity Principles by which they may ruine us when they please and that this pernicious Doctrine cannot well be opposed in this Case but by our Bishops insisting on their Rights And they cannot shew but when Doctrines of such consequence were concerned the Bishops not onely did but were also commended for insisting on their Rights Indeed where such Doctrines were concerned the Antients would have called the Adversaries Hereticks and in that case this Author himself allows that Bishops may judge it to be for the publick Good of the Church that they challenge their private Rights Yet after all our Author's Pretensions in his Title his Examples give a small account of the Sense of the injured Bishops themselves concerning their own Case but principally pretend to tell us what others thought concerning it How then can our Adversaries pretend to persuade our present Bishops to wave their Right upon account of this Collection of Precedents where St. Chrysostom is expresly excepted in the very Title notwithstanding what is pretended from Palladius and where withall there are so few examples observed in the Discourse it self of any who did so before them 13. Yet to let them see how far this Way of Reasoning is from proving the thing our Adversaries are concerned for we may venture to give not grant what they neither have proved nor can prove from the Instances here alleadged that the Churches had deserted their unjustly and invalidly deprived Bishops and deserted them even whilst they insisted on their Right I yet deny farther That from the naked Matters of Fact they can any way conclude even the Judgments of those Churches whom we may for a while suppose to have done what our Adversaries wish they had done For in order to the proving the Judgment of such Churches it will be farther requisite fourthly That what they did they did
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 though 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 practiced 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 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 18. But this is not all It is further as notorious 3dly 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 suppos'd to be divided Nor was this reason more evident than universally aknowledged in the Discipline of that Age. All such Vniters 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 19. 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 received 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 by their own Act. Especially according to St. Cyprian's Principles who makes every Bishop in his own District supreme and accountable to none but God and therefore obnoxious to no superiour Jurisdiction And by this means it also appeared to have been more than a private Opinion in that Age when even no Bishop could be permitted in the Communion of his Brethren if he dissented from them in this particular Thus to make application to our present Case all the Bishops will be involved who Communicate either with the Principal Schismaticks or the Schismatical Consecrators And this will also take in by the same Principles all Communicants with such Bishops For when the Bishop was refused Communion the effect of such refusal was that none should thence forwards expect to be received to the Communion of those who had refused him on his Communicatory Letters and no other Communicatory
find them received where nothing could have been received universally that had been an Innovation In so short a time it was hard to bring in Variations from the Primitive Rule and harder yet that all the Churches could have been unanimous in them if they had been Variations as Tertullian reasons in his Prescriptions especially when there was no Vniversal Authority received over the whole Catholick Church that could induce them to it From the Time of Trajan the Succession of our Saviour's Family failed in the Church of Jerusalem to which all 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 expresly 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 Dictricts 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 Let them therefore make their uttermost advantage of those Instances which our Adversaries call Precedents in later Ages This is however plain If they be not found inconsistent with these earlier Instances they can make nothing for their purpose If they be yet none can doubt but that later Deviations how numerous soever are to be over-ruled and concluded by the Precedents of these first and earliest Instances not so much as mentioned by their Author 23. Yet after all though we should admit that this Author had been successfull in all that he has attempted we may yet justifie our adherence to the deprived Bishops and our Separation from their opposite Altars and justifie it too by the Doctrine of their own Author For 7thly Even he permits a Separation where Orthodoxy is concerned and expresly excepts this Case from the number of those which he pretends to confute An Heretical Bishop he calls a false Bishop a false Teacher and tells us that they who separate from such do not divide the Vnity of the Church by Schism but endeavour to free the Church from Schisms and Divisions These are his own Words in the Conclusion of his Discourse I easily foresee this Charge will seem new and surprizing to our Adversaries and yet I cannot see how they can secure themselves against it St. Augustine observes that Schisms generally end in Heresie That is the natural consequence of defending it as our Adversaries do by Principles A single Act of Vndutifulness to Superiors will in course pass away with those who are guilty of it so that Posterity will not be concerned in it But when it is defended by Principles it turns into false Doctrine and Doctrine of that pernicious Consequence that the Church is obliged to take notice of it as she will be faithful to her Trust in securing her Body from the like Divisions for the future Thus the Donatists took the first occasion for their Schism from the pretended personal Faults of Caecilian and his Ordainers This whilst it was a particular Case went no farther than that particular Schism But when it turned into a general Doctrine that personal Faults were sufficient to justifie Separation then it laid a Foundation of frequent Schisms as often as any Criminals got into Places of Trust and either Evidence was wanting or themselves too powerful to be contested with Then it concerned Ecclesiastical Governours to condemn this Doctrine that encouraged even Men of Conscience to divide designedly and frequently And when that Doctrine was thus condemned by the Church and was notwithstanding maintained by the Donatists as a Principle on which they subsisted as an opposite Communion it then became a Character of a Party to maintain it and from that time forward the Donatists were reckoned among Hereticks as well as Schismaticks For this was the true Notion of Heresie in those Ages as contradistinct from Schism Both of them supposed a Division of Communion or tended to it But that Division was called Schism which only broke the Political Vnion of the Society without any difference of Principles as when Thieves or Robbers transgress their Duties without any pretence of Principles authorizing them to do so So whilst Resentment alone was the reason that made Subjects separate from the Communion of their Ecclesiastical Governours or whilst Ambition alone made any to invade the Office of his Bishop and to erect an opposite Communion this was Schism properly so called as contradistinct from Heresie But when the Schism is patronized by Doctrines and justified as well done and consistently with Conscience such Divisions besides their being Schismatical were Heretical also in the sense of the Ancients and such Doctrines as Characteristical of a distinct Communion were properly called Heresies On this account the same Doctrine of the Original Identity of Bishops and Presbyters was no Heresie in St. Hierome who notwithstanding kept Communion with the Bishops of the Jurisdictions he lived in and yet was Heresie in Aâ—erius when upon account of that pretended Identity he presumed to pay no more Duty to the Bishops of the respective Jurisdictions than he would have done to single Presbyters This is the most agreeable account of the Heresies not only in Philastrius but in other more judicious Collectors of Catalogues of Heresies And it is very agreeable with the Notion of that Term among the Philosophers from whom the Christians derived it All Notions that were proper and characteristical to particular Schools among them made Heresies not those which were received in Common among them Answerably whereunto those Differences only of Opinion made Heresies in the Church which were the Notes of different Communions not those which went no farther than Speculation 24. I am very well aware how surprizing this will be to those who upon Popular Opinions have been used to believe no Opinion Heresie that was not against Fundamentals But if they will for a while lay aside their Prejudices they will possibly find this as slightly grounded as many other Popular Opinions are The very distinction between Fundamentals and Non-Fundamentals is not that I know of ever taken notice of by the Primitive Christians either in the same
or in equivalent Terms And if a Person will needs make a breach on account of an Opinion it rather aggravates than diminishes his Guilt that the Opinion is of little consequence His own Will is more concerned in it that is his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he is therefore more a Heretick and as Hereticks were more self-condemned Tit. 3.2 if even in his own Opinion the Matter for which he separates be not of any considerable Importance Even a Truth and a Truth that has great Evidenct of its being so may make a Heresie if it be no way conducive nor disadvantageous to the good of Souls and yet the Person who maintains it will by no means endure Communion with those who are of another Mind He might have more pretence of Zeal though mistaken if the Mistake on the Church's side did indeed concern Souls and seemed at least of dangerous consequence to them When he has not even that to pretend for himself who can impute his breaking on such accounts to any other Original than an assuming Imperiousness of Temper and a love of Contention which we generally acknowledge to be the principal Ingredients of Heresie Certain it is that such a breach for Opinions though true yet of no consequence is highly culpable and destructive to that Vnity which Christ designed for his Church and the more culpable for that very reason that the Opinion is of little consequence Yet it cannot properly be called Schism which is only a breach like those which fall out frequently in secular Affairs when Men fall into Parties on account of a Temper ungovernable or ambitious without any proper difference of Opinion and Doctrine And it being no Schism what can we call it in the Discipline of the Church if it be not Heresie 25. These Opinions therefore which are not otherwise Heretical on account of the Nature of the Opinions themselves do then begin to be Heretical when they begin to be characteristical of distinct Communions And that they do not only when Men designedly separate from others on that very account because they are not of the same Opinions but also when they venture on such Practices on account of their singular Opinions wherein others cannot communicate with them for that very reason because they cannot join with them in those their singular Opinions Then plainly the differing in such Opinions makes a difference of Communion unavoidable and therefore the Opinions themselves in such a Case as this is are Signals of different Communions which will come under the charge of Heresie as contradistinct from Schism in the Notion now described of the Primitive Church Thus had St. Hierome proceeded as far as Aerius in the Practice of his Opinion concerning the Original Identity of Bishops and Presbyters and had thereupon broken himself off from his Duty to the Bishop of the Diocese and by that means either made or countenanced a Schism which he had never countenanced but on account of this Doctrine of his which he held in Common with the Aërians that Doctrine had then been Heresie in him as well as the Aërians So also Opinions do then begin to be Treasonable when they are actually productive of Treasonable Actions Thus Latitudinarian Opinions in the Church do always weaken or dissolve the Obligation in Conscience to maintain the Church as a Society in a time of Persecution from the Civil Magistrate yet till that Case fall out and when Interest lyes on the Church's side they often still keep one Communion who are for such Opinions and may continue in it while there are any other Inducements to keep them in it besides those of Conscience Only it may perhaps be fit to be considered whether it be prudent to trust such Persons with the Management of the Government of the Church who have no Obligation of Principles or Conscience to maintain it as an independent Society or to suffer for it that is indeed who are never likely to maintain it in that very Case which was most in our Saviour's and the Apostles vâ—ew that is of a Persecution But when they actually divide that Communion which they were never obliged in Conscience to maintain if they took the utmost liberty their Latitudinarian Principles would afford them and when their lax Principles are the very grounds of their dividing the Communion without any remorse of Conscience for doing so when they are hereby emboldned to do those things which inevitably cause a breach from those who cannot follow them in these very Principles This is the Case wherein these Principles are Characters of a distinct Communion and therefore by the Reasoning now mentioned become Heretical Especially the Principles being withal false not only in the Opinion of those from whom they have divided themselves but also of our earliest purest Ancestors even those of the Apostolical Age it self 26. Yet I deny not but that in this Case of Heresie there is also regard to be had to the momentousness of the Opinion it self Whoever sets up or abets a Communion opposite to that of the Church on account of Opinions is as I have shewn in the Judgment of the Primitive Church an Heretick and is the more not the less so if the Opinions be also frivolous But for such Opinions the Church would never have driven him out of her own Communion if himself had been pleased to have continued in it Her Judiciary Censures ought noâ—doubt to be confined to Opinions Fundamental and of great Importance especially if an internal Assent be required and that under pain of Excommunication Yet let not our Adversaries flatter themselves as if they were secure from the charge even of this Notion of Heresie as it signifies an erring even in Fundamentals also I know very well Men have hitherto considered the Church rather as a Sect than as a Society and have therefore usually had no regard to the Doctrines Fundamental to it as a Society if they did not withal concern it as a Sect and Antecedently to its being a Society But there seems very little Reason for their doing so if they will be pleased impartially to reflect on it It is very true its Notion as a Sect is antecedent to its being a Society because it is a Society into which Men find themselves obliged to enter by the Doctrines they must be supposed to believe if they own it as a Sect. But even thence it appears that the Doctrines which concern it as a Sect do withal make it necessary it should be a Society These two Considerations therefore are by no means to be separated Nay it hence appears that the Doctrines constituting it as a Sect do also by a near and unavoidable and evident Consequence make it a Society Thus therefore the Fundamentals of its being a Society will be included in that System of Doctrines which concern it as a Sect. And then what Matter is it that one of these Notions is antecedent and the other consequent
Thus much at least will follow that there is no subverting it as a Society without subverting it also as a Sect because those very Doctrines which make it a Sect do also consequently oblige it to be a Society For my part I believe those Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation which all who believe any Fundamentals proper to the Christian Religion as revealed by God do reckon among Fundamentals not to have been revealed for Speculation only but purposely to oblige Men to unite in it as a Society The Vnity in Trinity which is the principal thing insisted on in the Doctrine of the Trinity as revealed in the Scripture was purposely to let Men see the Extent of the Mystical Vnion to which they were intitled by the External Vnion with the visible Church that by partaking in the Orthodox Communion the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentioned by St. John they had also a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the Father and the Son 1. John 1.3 For it was manifest they must also partake of the Spirit because he who had not the Spirit of Christ was none of his It was therefore supposed that by partaking of the Trinity we are made one Mystically and that by being united visibly to the Church we are intitled to that Mystical Vnion So whoever is united visibly to the Church is thereby if he be not wanting to himself in due Conditions united also Mystically to the Trinity and that whoever is divided externally from the Church is thereby also disâ—united from this Communion and Vnion with the Trinity And what more prevailing Inducements could be thought of to oblige Men to keep in a Society So also the design of the Incarnation was by Christ's taking upon him our Body and our Flesh to make us also one Body and one Flesh with him thereby to entitle our Bodies to a Resurrection but then our being one Body and one Flesh with him depended on our being Members of the Church which is called his Body his Flesh his Bones We were to be baptized into this one Body and become one Body by partaking of one Bread Which plainly shew that all the benefits of the Incarnation are derived to us by our partaking of the Sacraments and therefore by our adhering inseparably to them who alone are authorized by God to administer them Thus plain it is that those very Fundamentals of our revealed Religion as revealed are revealed and designed for this purpose of making the Church a Society How can therefore our Adversaries make these Doctrines Fundamental if this be not Fundamental also that the Church was by God designed to be a Society 27. This at least is certain that we are intituled to all the Benefits of our Religion by our owning the Church not only as a Sect but as a Society also and that though we believe all its Doctrines as it is a Sect yet if we be divided from it as a Society that Belief alone will not secure us a Title to any of the Benefits of our Religion Excommunicates however Orthodox in their Opinions were never suppos'd in the Discipline of the Church to have any actual Title to the Benefits of Religion if they persisted wilfully in that state of Excommunication The same I have already observed concerning the Case of Schismaticks on the Principles of the early Age of St. Cyprian Hence therefore it appears that this Notion of the Church as a Society whatever it be in it self is at least Fundamental as to us in order to our partaking of any of the Benefits of Religion That is indeed it is Fundamental to all intents and purposes that we can think worthy our Enquiry Without this the other Notions if any be will never be beneficial to us So that whatever those other Notions may be in order of Reasoning yet this Notion of the Church as a Society must be Fundamental to them in order to their being beneficial that is as far as we have any reason to concern our selves for them These things ought certainly to be taken for Fundamental as to the Discipline and Censures of the Church She ought certainly to be most concerned for those things that are most influential on the Interests of Souls and those are so whose Belief is most beneficial and their Dis-belief most hurtful to those most valuable Interests I cannot therefore see why she should not think Doctrines of this kind Fundamental and reckon them among those Fundamentals on which she ought to lay out her principal Care If therefore she ought to excommunicate for any Errors at all certainly she ought in the first place to do it for Errors so destructive of all Obligation to her Communion it self and of her Authority of Excommunicating that is indeed so destructive to all that power she has either for the preservation of Truth or the prohibition of Error in general And if she ought not to inflict her Censures at least these highest of them for any Errors but those which are Fundamental it will plainly follow that Errors of this kind must be reckoned for Fundamental ones Our Adversaries would have Errors in Fundamentals punished and punished as a Spiritual Crime by a purely Spiritual Authority but they do not in the mean time seem to be aware how Fundamental this very Notion of the Church as a distinct and spiritual Soceity is to its having any Authority or Power to punish so much as spiritually All they can do as a Sect is only to reason with Hereticks concerning their Errors and all the means to reduce them are those reasons which can no farther prevail with them than as they may seem convictive in the Judgment of the Hereticks themselves But on that account they stand on even Terms with the Hereticks whose Reasons ought likewise to take place with the Ecclesiasticks so far as they also are in Conscience convinced by them A true Authority and a Power of punishing refractory Persons by excluding from Communion do Fundamentally suppose a spiritual Society over which they are to exercise this Authority and from which Delinquents are to be excluded by spiritual Censures and Excommunications How can they therefore avoid reckoning those Errors from being Fundamental ones as punishable by a spiritual Authority which ruine Fundamentally that very Authority by which such Errors are to be punished which destroy the Society on which that Authority is grounded Fundamentally 28. If hâ—râ—fore Errors that destroy the very Being of the Church as a Society be Fundamental I cannot for my part fore-see how our Adversaries can exâ—uâ—e their Anti bishops and all that own them 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 Conscience If it should prove otherwise the Clergy and Laity of those some 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 oblâ—ge 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 as ever For it is impossible that those anteceâ—ent Obligations in Conscience to adhere to their spiritual Superiors can be dis-annulled 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 expresly forbids it And if so how can spiritual Governors 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 abett it least of all lay an Obligation on God to ratifie such Acts of Authority as must be supposed no better than Vsurpations 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 Countreys but they must have expected Magistrates who could pretend to the same Right as well as Deâ—ius 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 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 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 29. If there be degrees of Fundamentals I should think the Fundamentals concerning the Church as a Society to be of the greatest consequence and therefore Fundamental in the Highest degree The Church is indeed obliged to keep the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These are the Expressions by which our Adversaries themsâ—lves I believe conceive the Articles themselves call Fundamental to be signified But she is obliged to keep them as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a Trust committed to her How so by avoiding Disputings by stopping the mouths of Hereticks by rebuking them with all Authority bâ— rejecting and avoiding not their Doctrines only but their Persons also when they prove incorrigible Now these things plainly suppose Governors investâ—d with spiritual Authority and a Communion from whence incurable Hereticks are to be rejected So that in order to the keeping these oâ—her Fundamentals the Church as a Society is supposed antecedently as a Condition that alonâ— can qualifie her for having such a Trust committed to hâ—r This Noâ—ion therefore as antecedent must be Fundamental to those other Fundamentals and therefore Fundamental in a higher sense than those things
can be whose security is superstructed upon it And accordingly the Damage to the Publick in subverting these Notions of the Church as a Society iâ— proportionably greater than that which follows from the denial of other particular Articles which are commonly taken for Fundamental He that denies one of the other Articles may yet believe all the rest and zealously defend them and that by Principles too â—gainst all other Hereticks But he that denies the Church as a Society invested with a spiritual Authority does as effâ—ctually contribute to the ruine of all the other Fundamentals at once as he does to the ruine of a Hâ—use who subvers the Foundations of it It brings in impunity for Heresie â—n general and suffers Hereticks still to hope as well in their separate Sects as if they were in 〈…〉 Communion Iâ— lâ—aves them destitute of even any Presumptions that might oblige them â—o judge in Favour of the Church's Doctrine as the safest Error if it should prove one It does by this meanâ— reduce the trial of the Cause to the Reasons themselves and their native Evidence and putâ— it in the Power of assuming Men to pretend greater Evidence than either they have or they really believe And thingâ— being reduced to his pass it is more God's Providence than the security of Principles that hinders any Heretick who disputes any one of the other Articles from questioning all the rest 30. I am sorry our Adversaries Case affords Maâ—ter for so heavy Accusations But they may by this time understand how naturally the Cause affords it if we will judge impartially as we must do if we will judge either solidly or justly if we will judge as no doubt the Righteous Judge of all the World will at the Day of the General Judgment And what can our late Brethren either of the Clergy or Laity say for bringing things to this melancholy Prospect Neither is the Chaâ—ge â—light to which they have made themselves obnoxious by this Unhappy Schism nor is the Evidence slight by which this Charge may be â—roved against them And yet they have wholly been the Aggressors in â—his whole Affair We are exactly where we were exactly where they left us So little can they pretend that we have contributed to this Division We hold the same Doctrines that we did that themselves did formerly We adhere to the same Bishops themselves have owned for Bishops till now Nor are we otherwise divided from them than as they have divided themselves by erecting New Altars against the Altars themselves have hitherto acknowledged Lovers of Unity would be as much grieved for Breaches in the Mystical Body as living Members when by any violence they are divided fâ—om the Body Natuâ—al The litâ—le concern the Harlot shewed for the controverted Infant was to Solomon an Argument that she was not the Mother of it And how comes it to pass they can divide themselves from us with so little remorse if ever they were living Members of our common Mystical Body Do they not tempt us to reason as St. John did thaâ— they never were ours by Principles when they can so easily leave us Have they lost all Reverence for their so lately celebrated Fathers Have they lost all Brotherly Love and Compassion to their Brethren And all for no other Crime than Constancy to our Common Principles And can they still pretend a Zeal to our Common Religion for doing so These they will say are our Opinions But Lovers of Unity would be afflicted for Violations of it whoever were the Occasions of it Lovers of Unity would not willingly grieve their Brethren much less would they do that which even in the Opinions of their Brethren might occasion a Breach of Unity if there were otherwise no great Necessity for doing it Least of all would they do it when they knew those Principâ—es to be Principles of Conscience anâ— of a Conscience firm and stedfast to the true Publick Spiritual Interests of the Church So far they must be from accepting Promotions when they must be purchased at so dear a Rate as that of a Publick Schism But I wish these Opinions of ours were no more than Private Opinions I hâ—s now appâ—ared that they were the sense of the whoâ—e Catholick Church in those Agâ—s which all ought to reverence who will pretend to Reformation and which is to be the Standard of Catholick Unity Yet let them regard us as little as they please methinks at least they should have some regard to the Publick Inâ—erests even of their own Church And yet both the Intruders and their Consecrators proceed on those Principles that put it in the Power of a Popish or Schismatical Prince to dissolve it when they please They cannot justifie what they do without supposing a Vacancy in the Sees to which the new Promotions are made nor can they suppose such a Vacancy without allowing the validity of a State deprivaâ—ion even with regard to Conscience Suppose therefore a Popish Prince with a Popish Parliament should turn their Principles against themselves and deprive all our Bishops with one Act of State I cannot see what these Fathers can pretend to secure their Chuâ—ch as a Society and as a Communion in opposition to them They must then no longer pretend to Dioceses in England They must not pretend to any obligation of their Protestant Clergy and Laity to stand by them even in Conscience They must therefore never pretend to Communions â—n those Dioceses which are plainly Exercises of spiritual Authority in them Nor can they then justifie or even excuse any Assemblies for Religion when forbidden by the Civil Magistrate who is only supposed by these Principles to have also the Right to that spiritual Authority by which alone they can be justified And are these the ways to secure our Religion against Popery No open Persecutions whatsoever can ever ruine us so effâ—ctually as these Doctrines will if ever we receive them Doctrines of our own will break our Union among our selves more than any of our Adversaries open Violences 31. Thus I have shewn that our Author 's Reasoning is not concluding for our Adversaries purpose though his Matters of Fact had been as pertinent â—s our Adversaries conceive them to be I now proceed to the Examination of the Matter of Fact themselves and shall endeavour to shew that even they are not pertinent to our Adversaries Case A VINDICATION OF THE Deprived Bishops c. PART II. Shewing That the Instances collected in the Anonymous Baroccian MS. are indeed not pertinent to the Editors Design for vindicating the Validity of the Deprivation of Spiritual Power by a Lay-Authority 1. THE Use that our Adversaries make of this Collection of Instances which they call Precedents is to shew that our present Bishops are obliged to acquiesce in their unjust Deprivation and that their present Clergy and People are not obliged to stand by them if they think fit to insist on their Right and
decisive to our purpose and such as our Adversaries can by no means stand by It is there decreed that if any Presbyter or Deacon shall dare to fall away from his Bishop before a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Conciliary Judgment of his Case nay before a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Judgment alone was not sufficient unless it proceeded to a definitive Sentence If I say such a Person either leave his Bishop's Communion or leave his Name out of the Diptychs and do not mention it in the Ecclesiastical Offices he is to be deprived of all his sacerdotal Office Not onely so but all that follow him if they have any sacerdotal Office are to be deprived as well as he if they be Laymen they are to be exmunicated till they quit the Communion of the Schismaticks and return to that of their own Bishop No other Sentence or Deprivation is here allowed of to excuse a Separation but a Synodical one till that be had the Fathers who made this Canon look on all the Separation that is made as no better than Schism And is not this exactly our deprived Father's Case What Synod can our Adversaries pretend that has I do not say sentenced but so much as judicially heard them What then can they say that by the Doctrine of this Canon may excuse their present Separation from being schismatical Will they say they are guilty of no Separation But erecting another Altar opposite to the Altar of their own Bishop is Separation not onely by the Doctrine of the Cath. Church of St. Cyprian's Age but even of their own Author himself So it appears from the Canons of the Apostles and of the Council of Antioch here produced by him which use this very Expression of Erecting Altar against Altar And it is notorious that all who have used this Phrase have ever included this Case of setting up a Bishop against a Bishop within the same Jurisdiction The very first occasion of using it was taken from a Case exactly parallel among the Jews that of setting up a High Priest against another High Priest within the same Peculium So also by the Doctrine of the same Canons produced here it is schismatical to omit mentioning the Bishop's Name in the Ecclesiastical Diptychs The Design of those Commemorations in the Diptychs was plainly to own them as Bishops of those particular Districts Thus Cyril of Alexandria argues against Atticus that the receiving St. Chrysostome's Name again into the Diptychs would be an owning him a Bishop who had been deprived of his Bishoprick and consequently a reversing the Sentence of Deprivation that had been pronounced against him Thus it appears that it was the same thing to receive a Bishop's Name into the Diptychs of a particular Diocese as to own him for a Bishop of that Diocese and to leave his Name out of the Diptychs of a particular Diocese was also the same thing as thence-forward to disown his Episcopal Relation to that particular Diocese And accordingly with us who have not now that Custome of Ecclesiastical Diptychs owning Men for Bishops of such Dioceses is the same thing as receiving their Names into the Diptychs and disowning them for Bishops of those Dioceses will also be the same as excluding them out of the Diocesan Diptychs Particularly the Case of those Clergy in the deprived Dioceses will fall under the purview of that Canon who omit the deprived Bishops and mention the Intruders in those Prayers where it is customary to mention their diocesane Ordinary And now what can our Titulars say for themselves upon the Principles of this their so celebrated Author Do they own the deprived Bishops to have still a Title in Conscience to their Dioceses How can they then at the same time pretend themselves to have a Title also and that in Conscience How can they in Conscience justifie their Invasion of those Thrones to which others are acknowledg'd to have a Right in Conscience Do they therefore to make way for their own Right deny that of their Predecessors But their very doing so forfeits all the Rights they can pretend not only to the Dioceses but their other sacerdotal Offices by the Doctrine of this Canon till they can prove what in our Case they cannot so much as pretend that their Predecessors have had a compleat Conciliary Hearing and a Conciliary Deprivation This Canon therefore reaches the Titulars themselves and not onely them but the Clergy also of the respective Dioceses who shall own or follow them they are also liable to the very same Sentence of Deprivation The Laity also of the same Dioceses that shall own them are to be excommunicated and not received again till they disown all Communion with our Titulars who are here called Schismaticks This will take in all their whole Bodies at least in the deprived Dioceses 9. The next Canon of that same Synod here produced goes farther yet and takes in the Case of all the other Bishops who shall be guilty of the like Undutifulness to their Metropolitane in leaving his Communion or not mentioning his Name out of the Diptychs in the Liâ—urgical Offices And this Canon also is as express as the former in assigning the Case wherein such Omissions and Defections are allowed as justifiable No other Judgment is allowed as competent in this matter but that of a Synod the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as here again the Fathers express it If any Bishop do fail in his Duty to his Metropolitane before it he is by this Canon to be deprived And what can our late Fathers say for themselves if they were to be tried by this Canon they can as yet no more pretend a synodical Deprivation of their Metropolitane than of their other Brethren yet they have taken upon them to disown him as well as their otherwise equal Brethren They have taken upon them to meet in a Convocation without his Presidency or Permission and would no doubt have acted in Matters of great Importance to the Church if they could have agreed among themselves This was a direct Invasion of his Right by the Nicenâ— Canon which makes the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Ratification of what is to be done in such Assemblies to be the Prerogative of the Metropolitane yet this they did before they could pretend so much as a Lay-Deprivation They have since proceeded farther and made new schismatical Bishops not onely without his Leave but against his Will This is also expresly against the Nicene Canon which allows not even a Majority of the Provincial Synod to doe it without the Metropolitane's Consent for one though the Bishop so made had not been schismatical Yet they have not stopped here they have presumed to set up his own Dean against him they who have sacredly promised Subjection to him as his Suffragans him who was under the same canonical Obligations and Promises too as an immediate Member of his Diocese And I need not tell him how
his own And it must have been a wonderfull chance if any Scribbles of a Librarian could have light on so fit a place and so apposite to the precedent design of another Author who thought not of them He that can believe it may next believe the Epicuraean Hypothests That the World was made by such a casual Concurrence of undesigning Atoms All that is pretended to the contraâ—â— is only that this Collection of Canons follows the Summary subjoined to the former Collection But this is too conjectural a Proof to be opposed to the Evidences now mentioned yet How do they know but that this very Summary is the Author 's own It is in as large a Hand as the rest of the Discourse itself it is not in red Letters as the like Summary is in the Fragment of Philippus Sideâ—es in this same MS. where it was added by the Librarian And it is not unusual for Authors to add Arguments and Abstracts of their own Works so did Pliny to his Natural History so did Gellius to his Noctes Attioae so has the Anonymous Chronologer under Alexander Severus so has Gildas and Nennius in the later and more barbarous Ages and What should make the Librarian think that fit to be done in another Man's Work that might not also make the Author himself think so too But for our present purpose I am not concerned whether this Summary was drawn up by the Author or the Librarian if the Librarian thought fit to insert it into the Text as plainly he has done this was the properest Place for it before any other part of the Discourse intervened that was upon another Argument not of Facts but Canons 11. Thus I have shewn that our Author was neither obliged by the Occasion of his Writing nor could consequently to his own Principles design to give us a Collection of Precedents for withdrawing Obedience on a Lay-Deprivation or for a Cession in a Person so invalidly deprived And now methinks this might excuse me from descending to a particular Examination of the Facts produced by him which our Adversaries are pleased to call Precedents For what if in the History of so many Centuries as are here accounted for there might be found some Instances wherein Christian Emperours were partial in favour to themselves and chalenged more Power than did really belong to them And what if Christian Bishops for Peace sake submitted not waving the Right but bearing the Injury What and if the Clergy and Laity did sometimes as they do now fail in their Duty of adhering to them It is yet sufficient for our present purpose that this was no design'd Collection of such pretended Precedents that therefore if any of these Facts should prove so that was beside the Meaning of the Author that his Authority ought not to be concerned for them that neither his Judgment nor the Judgment of the Eastern Churches can ever recommend such Facts for Precedents which were so disagreeable to their Rules and Canons If therefore our Adversaries will make Precedents of those Facts which were condemned by this Author by the Doctrine of those very Churches where they were committed this is plainly reasoning otherwise than they can justifie by any Authority For what Authority can it be that they will insist on for making such Facts pass for Precedents Is it that of the Eastern Church But her Doctrine will not allow our Adversaries to disown our deprived Bishops or to set up Antibishops against them on account of such Lay-Deprivations Is it the Authority of this Collector But he owns these Doctrines for the Doctrines of his own Church which are so inconsistent with our Adversaries Practices Or Is it lastly the Authority of the Princes themselves who were concerned in the Facts here enumerated But it is certain Princes doe many things which they never do so much as pretend to justifie by Principles And yet it is withall certain that no other Facts but such avowed ones ought in reason to pass for Precedents and for knowing what they do avowedly justifie no better Expedient can be found than to appeal to the Doctrine of the Church that was owned and protected by them which they took for the Guide of their Consciences Thus it will come to pass that if any of the Facts here mentioned should prove for our Adversaries purpose yet seeing they could not be well done as to the Consciences of the Persons concerned our Adversaries must not presume them well done but prove them so independently on the Persons before they can make Precedents of them and reason from them as Authorities and then what will they gain by this celebrated Collection when it will leave them to the Tryal of the Merit of their Cause as much as ever 12. However to gratifie them as far as we may let us now descend to Particulars The first is that of Meletius who was set up in the Throne of Antioch while Eustathius his Predecessor was yet living yet he was owned as Bishop of Antioch by St. Basil and St. Chrysostome But Eustathius was deposed by a Synod perhaps of Bishops secretly favouring Arius but not as yet declared an opposite Communion The Synod indeed charged him with Sabellianism but it was no otherwise than as they who favoured Arianism used to charge the Catholicks in general nor did the Catholicks understand it otherwise The chief Pretence of depriving was a Crime of Life False indeed it was but of that the Synod was to judge though they judged corruptly His onely Remedy had been to have appealed to another Synod but that he did not think fit to try Yet till he did so the Throne was fairly vacated and he could pretend no Right in Opposition to Meletius who was also set up by an Ecclesiastical Authority The Canons of Antioch made after his Deprivation but before the Translation of Meletius and urged afterwards against St. Chrysostome and since received into the Codes and Canons of the Vniversal Church allowed him no Remedy but that of another Synod and that a more numerous one than that which had deprived him Had he so much as attempted it otherwise he had been cut off by that same Canon not onely from all hopes of Restitution but from being admitted to a Tryal of the Merits of his Cause I will not now call in question his being alive after Meletius was set up because it is expresly attested by Socrates and Sozomen and among others by Nicephorus in his MS. Catalogue of Patriarchs especially so remarkable Passages in History depending on it that of the Banishment not onely 〈◊〉 â—imself but of Evagrius whom he had consecrated Bishop of 〈…〉 by the Emperour Valens This had been enough for our purpose though the synodical Deprivation had not been chargeable against him that he lay hid even after the liberty he had of returning from his Exile by the Edict of Julian that he did not appear to chalenge his Right that they of Antioch did
not know that he was in being to chalenge it This had made the Throne itself a Derelictum this made Meletius a Possessor bonae Fidei and sufficiently excused all who paid Duty to him Undoubtedly Lucifer Calaritanus who set up Paulinus in opposition to Meletius whose return from Exile was then expected would never have done it if he had any thoughts or hopes of the Return of Eustathius Eustathius was not onely as orthodox as Meletiuâ— himself but was free from the Charge brought against Meletius that of an Arian Ordination Meletius therefore being thus secured against the Title of Eustathius nothing could then be pretended against him but his receiving his Power from Arians But their Heresie was 〈◊〉 so manifest when he was broughâ—â—nto Antioch by them all that 〈◊〉 required from him was to subscribe the Creed of Selencia drawn up Sept. 27. 359. the year before he was translated to Antioch and that expresly condemned the Anomaeans and laid aside both Words that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as unscriptural Nor did the Catholicks so much insist on the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where they could otherwise be satisfied that no ill sense was intended in avoiding it This was the onely Reason that could make any orthodox Person join with the Arians in bringing him to Antioch who otherwise owned no Communion with them when they once declared themselves And as soon as they who brought him to Antioch owned themselves Anomaeans as they did soon after Meletius never prevaricated but protested openly against them And why should that be made an Exception against him that he was made Bishop by them who after they had made him so declared themselves Arians This was looked on as a rigour in Lucifer by his Fellow â—onfessor Eusebius Vercellensis and Athanasius and the generality of the Catholick Church And if he was guilty of no incapacitating Heresie at his first coming in if he owned the Catholick Faith publickly before the Consecration of Paulinus and had been a Confessour for it if even those who gave him his Orders had not yet declared themselves Arians nor a distinct Communion when they gave them what Reason could there be to question his Title before Paulinus was set up against him If there was none the other Consecration being into a fâ—ll See must have been schismatical Thus we see how agreeable it was to the Canons and Discipline of the Church that St. Basil and St. Chrysostome should own the Communion of Meletius in opposition to Paulinus It does not appear that ever they did so in opposition to Eustathius Yet even in this Case it is observable that all those Catholicks who never from the beginning communicated with Meletius and who joined with Lucifer and Paulinus 〈◊〉 him owned other Reasons besides Heresie sufficient to justifie theâ—â— â—â—â—paration from him They did not they could not charge him with that after 〈◊〉 had publickly declared for the Nicene Faith they never charged him as we can our present Intruders with Injury to any other Person whom they supposed to have a better Title to his Throne neither to his Predecessor Eustathius nor much less to Paulinus who was consecrated after him The onely thing they charged him with was the Original Invalidity which they supposed in his Consecration by those who afterwards declared themselves for Arianism And could they believe a lawfull Power necessary to confer a Title and not as necessary to take it away Rather Laws are favourable to Possessours and require more to take away an Office than to keep one in Possession whom they find so They therefore who were so difficultly reconciled to Meletius's being Bishop purely on account of the original Want of Authority in them who made him so must by the same parity of Reasoning much more have disliked the Deprivation of our present Bishops on account of 〈◊〉 Want of Authority as to spirituals and to Conscience in them who have deprived them However 〈◊〉 a clear Instance against our Adversaries and against the Collector himself of Catholicks who owned and owned by Principles that Orthodoxy alone without a good Title was not sufficient to excuse communicating with him whose Title was thought deficient For this was their Opinion concerning this Case of Meletius that he was indeed orthodox onely having an original Defect in his Title they thought themselves on this very acccount obliged to forbear his Communion How could they then have thought it safe to communicate with Bishops ordainâ—â— into Seeâ— not otherwise vacated than by an originally invalid Lay-Deprivation of their Predecessors 13. The next Case is 〈◊〉 of St. Chrysostome It is indeed the first in the Summary subjoined to it probably because it was the first in the Church of Constantinople for the use of which this Collection was originally designed Or perhaps rather because that other Case of Meletius was produced onely as another Evidence of the Opinion of the same St. Chrysostome This is the Case which the Author is largest upon as deserving the particular consideration mentioned in the Introduction to it The reason I have now given because it seems to have been most of all insisted on by the Arsenians as most apposite to the Instance for which they were concerned But 1. This Deprivation was synodical and by two different Synods the former that ad Quercum that deprived Saint Chrysostome for not pleading but questioning their Jurisdiction upon an Appeal the other that of the following year which denied him the Liberty of Pleading upon the 〈◊〉 of Antioch for coming in again not without a Synod but by one 〈◊〉 they pretended less numerous than that which had deprived him formerly So far is this from our present Case And 2. Even as to the abetting this holy Person 's Case as to the Inâ—ury done him by an otherwise competent Authority far the greater part of the Church was concerned against the Design of this Collector if to the Eastern Joannites 〈◊〉 the unanimous Consent of all the Western Churches They separâ—â—ed from the Communion of his Deprivers notwithstanding their ackâ—â—wledged Orthodoxy and that not onely while Saint Chrysostome was living but after his Death also till an honourable amends was made to his Memory This how clear soever it was against our Author's general Remark in his Preface and elsewhere yet he neither denies nor pretends to answer aâ— if he were conscious to himself he could not do it Onely he prevents a farther consequence drawn from it by the Arsenians for unravelling all the Orders derived in a Succession from the â—njurious Intruders after the Person was dead who had been injured by the 〈◊〉 This also is none of our 〈◊〉 wherein the injured Bishops are 〈◊〉 yet even concerning that very Case he words his Observation â—o as to own that they might if they pleased have called in Question â—he present Orders derived from the Intruders He says indeed that the Church did
Lector and Theophanes tell us expresly It was indeed by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Bishops then in Town whose Authority though it was questioned for the greatest Affairs as appears in the 4th Action of the Council of Chalcedon and the Dispute of Maximus with Pyrrhus yet was often made use of in such occasions as these and was by the Canons of the Church sufficient and obliging till a greater number of Bishops could be persuaded to restore him Till he could get such a Number to do it it was the Duty of Euphemius to acquiess in the Deprivation and to communicate with his Successor and it will be our present Bishops Duty also to doe so when this can be proved to be their Case And indeed I know no other Evidence of his communicating with his Successor but that he did not set up a Communion against him 16. In the Case of Macedonius the Emperour's Rage did somewhat precipitate him he had him forcibly seized and sent immediately into Banishment without so much as the Formality of a Tryal The rather so because he feared the People would not endure it such a Zeal they had for Macedonius and the Cause defended by him Afterwards he bethought himself and got an Assembly that did his business for him They took upon them at the same time the Persons of Witnesses and Accusers and deprived him absent and in exile and when they had done so they notifie the Sentence to him by Bishops and a Presbyter of Cyzicus So Theophanes tells the Story No doubt it must have been a Synod that proceeded after the receiv'd way of Synods in notifying their Sentence by ecclesiastical Persons However our Author says that he communicated with his Intruder Timotheus So he might possibly interpret Macedonius's Exile and submitting to it as he seems to have done that of Euphemius in relation to the Case of Macedonius In this case certainly it neither could have been true nor could he have any good Testimony for him to believe it so When the Bishops came to notifie the Sentence to him Macedonius asked them whether they owned the Council of Chalcedon And when they durst not answer him positively he asked again Whether if the Sabbatians and Macedonians had brought him the like Sentence they would think him obliged to acquiesce in it Is not this a plain Exception against their Authority as Hereticks for not receiving that Council and a Protestation against their Sentence as null and invalid and a disowning any Obligation in Conscience to submit to it And what needed Timotheus to fly into that Rage against the Name and Memory of Macedonius if what our Author says had been true that Macedonius owned any Communion with him Why should this same Timotheus refuse to officiate in any sacred Place till he had first defaced the Pictures if he found any of Macedonius Why should he prosecute Julianus only for being his Friend How came it to pass that when the Emperor sent forth his Edict for subscribing the Condemnation of Macedonius together with the Synodical Letters concerning the Consecration of Timotheus the more constant Adherers to the Council of Chalcedon would subscribe neither of them and even the weaker would not subscribe the Deprivation of Macedonius which notwithstanding in consequence subverted the Succession of Timotheus Why should Timotheus bring up the use of the Nicene Creed more frequently than Macedonius had done purposely to draw odium upon Macedonius if there had been Communion between them as our Author would persuade us What needed then all those Persecutions and Violences against the followers of Macedonius but only to force them to the Communion of Timotheus Why did Juliana as an Assertor of the Council of Chalcedon refuse the Communion of Timotheus if it was not manifest that the difference was such as broke Communion Why should the Praefect of the Studite Monks refuse to receive Consecration from him who had condemned the Council of Chalcedon if it had not been notorious that he had condemned the Council and was therefore an Heretick and of another Communion from them who owned that Council in defence of which Macedonius had been banished He did indeed to please them Anathemize those who had Anathematized that Council but when the Emperor expostulated with him concerning it he pretended to mean his Anathematism against those who received the Council So true he was to his Heresie One would admire whence it was that our Author came by that good Opinion he had of this Timotheus as if he also had been a Catholick and the 3d Catholick Bishop of Constantinople who had been deprived by Anastasius Neither of these things were true nor affirmed by I believe any one good Historian Our MS. Catalogue of Patriarchs by Nicephorus Callistus has either Marginal or Interlineal Censures of the Patriarchs whether Orthodox or Heretical in all likelihood according to the received Opinions of the Time and Church where these Observations were made There in an interlineal Note over the place where he speaks of Timotheus we find him called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is of no great consequence to our purpose whether this Note was from Nicephorus himself or some Constantinopolitane Librarian either way it will shew the received Opinion of the Modern Constantinopolitanes So also in the Iambicks concerning the Patriarchs published before the I Volume of the Byzantine Historians Timotheus is with some Indignation called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which we see how unworthily our present Rhetor expressed himself on this occasion even with reference to the sense of his own Church The only occasion of his Mistakes that I can think of is that he injudiciously followed the Authorities of Flavian of Antioch and Elias of Jerusalem as related by Cyrillus Scythopolitanus his Author and a very good one in these Matters That Author says indeed that those two Patriarchs assented to the Synodical Letters for Timotheus though they would not to the other Letters that came with them concerning the deprivation of Macedonius This I suppose gave him occasion for his good Opinion of Timotheus that those great Men afterwards such Sufferers in the same Cause as yet rejected not his synodical Letters Our Author was very well aware that if they owned the Communion of an Heretical Successor their Examples must have been faulty and could not be pleaded as Precedents by his own Principles and it seems he was not aware how notorious it was that this was indeed the Case of Timotheus But their Behaviour herein was exactly the same with the Behaviour of those whom Theophanes censures as weak so far he is from our Author's Opinion in making it exemplary And it is plain Macedonius and Timotheus differed not only as Rivals of the same See but also as Heads of different Communions How then was it reconcilable to any Principles to own Timotheus without disowning Macedonius Only the receiving Timotheus might as for
him He intimates the contrary when he calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Shifts and Artifices of Evasion to serve a present Turn so little Reasoning there is from such Men's Facts as these where there is nothing more than the bare Facts themselves to recommend them for Precedents No Facts can certainly be allowed for Precedents that are not agreeable to Principles and how can we presume Facts to be agreeable to Principles meerly because they are theirs who are known so frequently and so easily to vary from the Principles themselves profess and own for Principles We see they corresponded with so notorious a Heretick as Timotheus which is more than ever our Author 's own Principles would have allowed them rather than hazard their Places Why should we then wonder if they had corresponded with Schismaticks even such as themselves took for such Why should our Author presume such correspondence allowable because allowed by them who did so many things not allowable even by their own Principles I do not willingly detract from the Merits of these Excellent Persons for what they did afterwards but there is no reason that their Repentance at last should commend the Prevarications they were guilty of before and make them pass for Precedents 18. Besides these our Author produces another Example in the same Reign that of Elias himself He also was at length deprived and John was set up against him yet both of them were owned by Theodosius and Sabas They owned John for their Bishop and yet the compassion they had for Elias's Case appear'd by the visit they made him in his Exile Accordingly our Author appeals to the Dyptichs of the Church which mention both of them with Honour and Respect The Expulsion of Elias from his See to his place of Exile was managed immediately with that violence which was ordinarily used by the Empâ—ror Anastasius in most of his undertakings Olympus did it with a Guard of Soldiers yet certainly the Emperor's sending a Copy of Elias's Dissembling Letter to be shewn at the doing of it was not without a particular design Had he thought his own Authority sufficient for it his own satisfaction alone had been sufficient and so Assuming and Imperious a Temper as his was would not have condescended to give others an account of his proceedings especially where withal there was no form of a Judicial Process where these Letters might have been produced as Legal Evidence I need not produce the many Testimonies of that Age as well as others concerning the Incompetency of his Secular Power for a Spiritual Deprivation The actings of this Emperour himself do sufficiently shew that himself was sensible how little his Lay-Authority would signifie in such a case as this was without a Synod What made him else take that pains to assemble the Synod of Sidon purposely with a design of Deposing Flavianus and Elias What made him in such a Rage when by their prevaricating Letters they had eluded that Synod What made him after he had driven away Macedonius from Constantinople by plain force afterwards to order a Synodical Judgment and Censure of his Case but that himself did not before that second Judgment as Theophanes observes look upon him as Deprived even when he was in his Exile But by this sending the Letter of Elias he seem'd only to execute the Synod's Judgment concerning him which had certainly Deprived him if he had not eluded them by that Letter His Exposing therefore that Letter seems to have been to shew that he was not now the person whom the Synod continued in their Communion but that person rather whom they had designed to Condemn and Deprive Thus he might very well believe this present Act to be only an Execution of that Synod's design and so not chargeable with any Invasion on the Sacred Authority I am not now concerned to justifie this reasoning as Solid and Concluding it is sufficent at present to observe how probable it is that it was at least the reasoning of Anastasius That alone will sufficiently overthrow the Consequences from it as a Precedent to invade the Sacred Power It thence appears that without this Interpretative Application of the Synod's design the Fact had not been justifiable even by the sentiments of him that did it How then can it be pleaded as a Precedent It shews withal that with this Interpretative Application here was a Synodical Deprivation which might validly deprive Elias of his Right in the Opinion of those who judged the Interpretation reasonable 19. But whether the Deprivation was valid or not no doubt Elias by his own Cession might ratifie that Ordination of John which otherwise had been invalid and unobliging And this Cession might be known by his not-challenging his Right and by his not-taking it ill at their hands who owned his Rival for their Patriarch and by the Friendly behaviour of his Rival to him in continuing his Name in the Ecclesiastical Dyptichs if he was not afterwards restored but then continued as our Author supposes Otherwise this form in the Jerusalem Dyptichs mentioned by our Author of wishing the Memory of Elias and John perpetual like that in the Tomus Vnionis in Constantinople seems rather as if it were brought in after their deaths to accommodate some differences that might have been formerly between Parties that had been made on their Accounts Indeed I know no mention of any express Cession in any Good Author unless we may be allowed to conjecture it from some such Reasonings as those now mentioned But what if we should grant them that he yielded his Right to John This single instance will not suffice to justifie the Author's Vniversal Observation that it never was insisted on by any where the Successor was not an Heretick it will not suffice to shew that he thought himself oblig'd to it by Principles who in many other things acted so disagreeable to Principles It will not thence appear that he did do it out of fear when by challenging his Right and by perswading his People to withdraw from the Communion of his Successor intruded by the Emperor he must have provoked him who was so easily provoked to new Severities against him Indeed he could not expect Duty from his own Subjects who had countenanced so many Intruders even Timotheus the Heretick and approved so many Revoltings of Subjects in the injurious deprivations of his Brethren And can our Adversaries with any reason make these Actions pass for Precedents to which he was necessitated by the consequence of his own past Behaviour and the Exigency of his Cause I am sure he had no great reason to think his Flock secure under the Conduct of so Fickle a Successor John had departed from his Principle when it was not his fear but only his Ambition that could induce him to it in order to his getting into the place had promised both to anathâ—matize the Council of Chalcedon and to Communicate with Severus And that he did
not stand to his promise the reason was manifest he feared that if he had done so that his Clergy and his People would not stand by him Still it does not seem to have been his Conscience that kept him right but his Ambition That very soon appeared when afterwards he was imprisoned for this Violation of his former promise He then as easily repeats the promise as he had formerly broken it only he pretended that he might not seem to perform it unwillingly it was fit he should first be set at liberty When he had thus wheedled the Praefect and got his Guard of Monks about him that he no longer feared him he then does as the Monks not as the Praefect would have him and anathematizes Severus and Sotericus and all who would not receive the Council of Chalcedon Then he frightens away the Emperor 's Prefect and the fam'd Sabas and Theodosius with their ten thousand Monks were as active as any in it If these Mens actions were counted exemplary then yet I am sure they would not have been thought so in the first and purest Ages of our Christian Religion Well might Cyrillus call them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But Christianity was too far degenerated when these were counted Titles of Honour in such pretenders to Mortification and Renouncers of the World Our present Holy Fathers have more of the Primitive Spirit of Christianity than to think themselves oblig'd to follow such Examples 20. Our Author now directs from the Throne of Constantinople to that of Jerusalem and from the time of Anastasius to that of Great Athanasius so it should seem this Example occured to his memory He tells us therefore that when Athanasius was Condemned in the Synod of Tyre he fled to Maximus of Jerusalem and was by him restored by a Synod conven'd by him where he Decreed for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and repealed the Synod of Tyre This the Author says provoked the Bishop of Caesarea against him He must mean Acacius the Ring-leader of the Arian Faction in those parts Acacius then he says gathers a Synod against Maximus and deprives him and sets up Cyril against him who at that time professed Arianism Afterwards Cyril declares for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and then Maximus and he was reconciled and owned the same Communion So our Author But very little of this story is true even as to matter of Fact and yet if it had been all so it is nothing to our Adversaries purpose Very little of it is true as to matter of Fact First at the Synod of Tyre it is certain Athanasius did not fly to Jerusalem but to Constantinople to make his Case known to the Emperor himself It had been at that time in vain to have had recourse to Maximus who in that very Synod of Tyre had given his Suffrage against him He did indeed see his Error afterwards but it was many years first Athanasius was condemned in the Synod of Tyre in the year 335. But the time when Maximus convened his Synod and declared for Athanasius was in the year 350. when at the Interposition of the Emperor Constans Athanasius was released from his Banishment Then Maximus did indeed declare for him and that Synodically But all that we can find Acacius did against him was to upbraid him with his inconsistency and by his contrary Vote in the Synod of Tyre Socrates indeed does elsewhere imply That when Cyril was brought to the Throne of Jerusalem Maximus was driven from it and he is I believe the only ancient Author near those times that does so much as imply it Theodoret is very express in making Cyril's Succession after the death of Maximus so also is St. Jerome who lived nearer the remembrance of that Fact than Socrates himself He tells us That before the Arians would admit Cyril to the place they obliged him first to renounce his Orders of Presbyter which he had received from Maximus and that when he was in Heraclius also who had been taken by Maximus himself for his Successor was by Cyril also obliged to degrade himself to the Order of Presbyter We have in the same See of Jerusalem a very ancient instance of a Bishop who brought in his Successor So Eusebius tells us Narcissus did Alexander a Bishop of Cappadocia who also adds that that Election was ratified by a Divine Testimony But who can believe that Maximus would have brought in a Successor if himself had been deposed and dispossessed Who can think he would have actually have made him Bishop if himself had not been so actually The whole occasion of the mistake seems to have been not that Maximus himself was removed to make way for Cyril but rather Heraclius who had been substituted by Maximus For this was indeed a case sometimes questioned in the Discipline of the Church whether a Bishop might be allowed to Substitute his own Successor The Records of the Church of Jerusalem are in these times very intricate and difficult When Cyril himself was banished by the Arians we have the Names of three persons who filled his See in the interval before he was restored Among them there is one Heraclius possibly this very person who took the advantage of Cyril's Deprivation for recovering his Right which was conferred on him by Maximus And as to the dispute concerning the Priviledges of their Sees Theodoret who gives us the most distinct account of this matter tells us it was started in the time of Cyril who was deprived after by Acacius among other causes for this also of maintaining the Priviledges of his own See It is very true Jerusalem though it had the Title of a Patriarchal See yet had no Patriarchal Jurisdiction till the Council of Chalcedon but was subject to the Metropolitane of Caesarea Even the Council of Nice which owned it for Patriarchal did notwithstanding reserve to Caesarea the Priviledge of being the Metrapolitane But the Honour of Maximus's Age and of his having been a Confessor in the Persecution which in that Age was very great made no doubt the Adversaries of his Cause have notwithstanding a great veneration for his Person These reasons ceased in Cyril who was at first set up by Arian Interest and with him his Competitors of the same Faction did therefore think they might be more bold Accordingly then it was that those Controversies fell among the Arians concerning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which broke them in pieces among themselves as Epiphanius assures us who lived in the nearest memory of them of any Author now extant that mentions them And Eutychius one of the principal Rivals of Cyril in these disputes had been a Disciple of Maximonas so Epiphâ—nius calls Maximus the Predecessor of Cyril and therefore seems to have had a great veneration for his Memory and was therefore unlikely to have started this dispute in his time In that dispute Cyril was so far from acknowledging any Superiority in the Bishop of Caesarea that it
the same time he protested not to abdicate but only to give way to the fury of the Rabble But his leaving the Omophorion behind him not out of forgetfulness but design was in truth as much an Interpretative abdication of his Office in the Sense and Practice of that Age as it was a deprivation of any Palatine Office when the Emperor sent for the Zona or Cingulum which was then the Ensign of such Offices And so it was plain Pyrrhus foresaw it would be understood when he thought to elude that Interpretation of it by this Declaration of his design in it So it was understood in the case of Eutychius when his Omophorion was not taken from him that his Right was providentially contintued to him So that it was a Protestation against Fact and therefore null in it self when he made use of this Symbol of Surrendry notwithstanding to pretend that he did not surrender In all likelihood he designed to be understood to have surrendered when he did it to gratifie them who were for having him deprived of his Office and who were therefore inclinable thus to understand what should be done to gratifie themselves And thus in all probability he hoped to avoid too severe a scrutiny into the Murder of the Emperor then charged upon him when he thus prevented a Synodical Trial by a seeming voluntary Surrendry And with what ingenuity could he disown what he knew would and what he desired should be understood to be his meaning At least this was sufficient for them to presume his Place vacant and to fill it up without a formal Sentence against him However when the Heresie is once condemned and it is withal notorious that the persons own the Heresie our Author himself requires no act of Authority to justifie a Separation Nor could he think Hereticks unjustly dealt with in having Canonical Censures pronounced against them nor to be qualified for Communion with their Successors without renouncing their Heresies which none of these did but Pyrrhus who notwithstanding returned to his Vomit Nor would he ever make the Actions of Hereticks argumentative as Precedents The Action therefore that he reasons from here is only that of their Catholick Successor George and the sixth General Synod of Constantinople who did not scruple the Orders of so many of his Heretical Predecessors But this is as I said a question wherein we are not concerned 25. The next Example is of Callinicus deprived or rather driven from his Throne by Justinian Rhinotmetus who set up Cyrus the Recluse in his stead Yet neither did Callinicus as our Author reports separate from the Communion of Cyrus nor did the Church ever question the Ordinations that were made in the time of the supposed Usurper Here I confess no Synod appears by which Callinicus was deprived But what need was there of a Synod to deprive a Rebel Bishop who had forfeited his Life to his Master for assisting his Enemies Leontius and his Fautor and exciting the People to dethrone him The Emperor took away his sight and sent him to Rome as King Solomon did Abiathar to Anatoth when he might justly have taken away his Life nor can it be imagined that such a Bishop would stand upon his Right to his See who had none to his Life and whose ignominious blindness justly incurred did in a great measure disable him from the exercise of his Office and render him base and conâ—emptible to his Flock If we never read that any of the Greek Emperors who were so served by their Enemies ever offâ—red to resume the Throne but acquiesced under their misfortune we have reason to presume that a guilty Bishop so served by his Sovereign would never after pretend to his Chair but quit all manner of claim to it by Cession or Resignation and then it is no wonder if haâ—ing divested himself he did not refuse to communicate with his Successor Cyrus and that the Church did not question Cyrus's Ordinations when they had no reason for it But whether Callinicus did or did not refuse Communion with Cyrus is uncertain none of the Historians say any thing of it and I have shewed that our Author asserts things precariously and often speaks more than he can prove 26. The next Collection is of a Succession of Iconoclast Patriarchs whom this Author takes for Hereticks from the time of Germanus to the second Nicene Council that is for the space of fifty six years according to his computation He begins his account from the expulsion of Germanus in the year 730. and the second Nicene Counâ—il was in the year 787. So his account will hold reckoning only the interval but leaving out the extreams In this space he obserâ—es that the Orders must generally have been derived from Iconoclasts So that even the Orders of Tarasius and his Brethren who acted in that Council must generally have been affected by them Yet so far was that Council from scrupling such Orders that they admitted the Orders even of those who were to be Iconoclasts when they could pevail with them to renounce what they called their Heresie This also plainly concerns not us but the Question disputed by this Author with the Arsenians nor are we concerned for the Deprivation of Germanus though it was not Synodical There was no need it should have been so for he expresly abdicated perhaps unwillingly But that cannot prejudice the validity of the thing when done Multitudes of such Resignations there have been both of Princes and Bishops the validity whereof was never questioned by Men of the severest Principles especially where the unwillingness was not total but such as was consistent with conditional willingness Such a willingness I mean as Men rather chose than they would abide the Consequences which were otherwise to be expected in case they should prove refractory This none that I know of allows to be sufficient in Conscience to absolve a Man from an obligation he has brought upon himself in such a case of unwilling if I might call it voluntariness And this was manifestly the case of our Germanus He thereby freed himself from any farther trouble from the Emperor 27. The next Case concerning Theodorus and Plato with their Monks withdrawing from the Communion of two Patriarchs has no relation to our case though it was very opposite to that of the Arsenians which occasioned the Discourse No doubt the Author's design herein was to let the Monks see that they medled with what did not belong to them when they took upon them for matters of Discipline to separate from the Diocesane Communion to which they were related This Plaâ—o and Theodorus with their Saccudiote and Studite Disciples were guilty of when they presumed to separate from their two Patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus for keeping Joseph in their Communion who had married Constantine the Emperor to the Nun Theodote when he had forced his Empress Mary into a Nunnery Accordingly they were condemned for
it in a Synod of Bishops and Abbats when they made their second separation from Nicephorus and driven from their Monasteries and the City as Theophanes tells us though our Author mention nothing it The Bishops therefore forced them to recant all the Invectives they had used against the Patriarchs not that they thereby intended to defend Joseph but to assert their own Authority as the only competent one in Affairs relating to Communion against these Monastical Invasions St. Ambrose told the Great Theodosius that his Purple did not entitle him to the Priesthood which yet was not more true of the Purple than of the Cowl Thither therefore relates what our Author observes from the Patriarch Methodius that if Theodorus had not recanted he had not been received to Communion He observes farther from the Testament of the same Methodius probably in imitation of the Testament of Nazianzene that he prescribed that whenever the Studites were received as Penitents they should only be received to Communion not to their Sacerdotal Dignity So in the Synodicon drawn upon the occasion of these Schisms and ordered as our Author observes thenceforward to be read in Churches those Invectives against the Patriarchs are not only recanted but anathematized Nay Theodorus was therein declared not to have done well in his Separation and that the Schism was on his part whatever was the occasion of it And the reason is given exactly agreeable to the Principles of Ignatius and St. Cyprian that Tarasius and Nicephorus were the Church Whence it plainly followed that Theodorus and his followers cast themselves out of the Church by their being divided from their Patriarchs This very Synodicon is mentioned in some fragments of this Work of Nicon here referred to and in a Discourse of Anastasius Caesareensis both published by Coâ—elerius And Anastasius is very particular in distinguishing it from the Nomocanon He tells us that it consisted only of three Synods two relating to Faith and the third to Marriages probably all of them relating to this case And thus we understand why our Author excepts only the case of Heresie wherein it might be lawfull to separate from the Bishop He speaks of persons subject to Episcopal Jurisdiction acting by themselves without a Bishop to head them for so did Plato and Theodorus with their Monks And so nothing but Heresie could excuse their Separation from their Ordinary by the Principles of the Catholick Church for the guilt of Schism will wholly be imputable to such Subjects who separate from their Ordinary for any other cause but Heresie 28 And to this Case agree exactly the Canons omitted by Mr. Hody They also speak of Monks and Laity separating from their respective Ordinary without any Episcopal Authority So the Synod called AB expresly by which we understand that the Presbyters and Deacons mentioned in the former Canons in reference to the Case here particularly designed were understood of Monks and such persons destitute of Episcopal Authority And very probably these Encroachments of the Monks on the Sacerdotal Authority were the real occasion for the Synod AB to make that Canon The Monks of Constantinople were at that time admitted into most debates where Religion was concerned We have seen that they made a part in the Synodi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against Eutychius in the time of the Great Justinian and now in the time of Nicephorus against the Schismatical Studites We see they had a part in the electing their Bishop by the opposition Theophanes tells us this same Theodorus with his Studites made in the Election of this same Nicephorus We see they were consulted by Michael Curopolates concerning his War against the Bulgarians and that they over ruled him against his own inclinations on account of the concern Religion was supposed to have in that Affair Nor was it amiss that nothing should be done without the consent at least of so great and so numerous bodies of persons devoted to the service of Religon And this consideration it was that brought the Mitred Abbats also in the West into their Synods and into their Parliaments But then this only gave them in the Original design of it a Power of interposing and interceding like that of the Tribunes among the Romans not of invading the Sacred Sacerdotal Power but among the Romans this Power of interceding being granted first incouraged the Tribunes afterwards to aspire farther to give Laws even to the Senators themselves So it succeeded with these Monks the devotedness of their State made them to be looked on somewhat above the ordinary Laity and some Sacerdotal Acts were indulged them for the Government of their own Members but no doubt at first with the consent of their Ordinaries to whom they were at first all subject Thus they had Power of suspending their own Monks from the Communion Then they challenged the Power of Consignation in the Bishops absence this was done first in Egypt as Hilary the Deacon observes in the Commentaries which go under the Name of St. Ambrose There were the most numerous bodies of Monks most remote from Bishops and therefore the most inclinable to these Sacerdotal Encroachments Thus we see there was occasion for asserting the Sacerdotal Rights against them in the times of the Patriarchs Nicephorus and Methodius For so far the Schism of these Studites continued as appears from the Observations our Author has made from the Writings of Methodius It is also plain that the Monks were the greatest part in the Schism of the Arsenians principally regarded by our Author So it appears from several passages in Georgius Pachymeres He tells us that many of the Monks and Laity divided and kept their separate Assemblies And the Emperor Michael in his Oration against the Schismaticks describes them so as that we cannot doubt but that the Monks were they who were principally intended by him He says they were such as by their course of life had been inured to Corners and Secrecies that they were cloathed in Sackcloth So Joseph in his Oration to Germanus where he perswades him to resign represents the Monks as the principal Adversaries with whom he had to deal on this occasion And the Names mentioned in this Cause are generally either of Monks or Nuns Such were Hiacinthus and Ignatius Rhodius and Martha and Nostogonissa and the Pantepoplene Monks so called from their Monastery were the most violent against Joseph and those who sided with him And now we understand that they were not any Latitudinarian dwindling notions of Schism such as our Adversaries fancy that made our Author allow of no cause but Heresie to justifie a separation These were perfectly unknown even to that lower Antiquity in which our Author lived The Persons he had to deal with were such as had no Bishop to head them Aâ—senius himself was dead now for some years before our Author made this Collection and he hath substituted no Successor nor was there any Bishop of
the Party to make one if even that might have been reconcilable with any Rules of Ecclesiastical Discipline And Joseph also was dead at least had expresly abdicated before Georgius Cyprius was set up in whose time we suppose our Author to have written So that neither of the Schismaticks had Bishops to head them And then I shall easily grant and grant upon the Principles of St. Cyprian and the Church of his Time that in a Case of Separation of Subjects from Bishops the Charge of Schism can never lie against the Bishop directly indirectly it may as an Vnion with a rightfull Bishop does make the Accusation of Schism chargeable against another Bishop unjustly pretending to the same Jurisdiction Or as the onely Bishop of a particular District if he cut himself off from the Episcopal Collegium does thereby make it impossible for them to hold Communion with him who would hold Communion with the whole Catholick Church and with the Episcopal College But where there were no Bishops with whom they could maintain Communion whilst divided from the Communion of the Bishop of their particular District there no Charge of Schism could be brought against such a Bishop neither directly nor indirectly And therefore the onely pretence such Dividers can have for defending themselves and laying the blame on the Bishop must be not by charging him with Schism but Heresie Thus our Author may be rightly understood to allow no excuse for Separation in the Persons with whom he had to deal but onely that of their Bishop's being a Heretick 29. And now our Author's Sense being rightly explained we are so far from being concerned in what he says as that indeed we need no other Principles but his to charge our Adversaries with the Schism of the present Separation Whilst we have Bishops and those unexceptionable to head us we can wave the Charge of Heresie and yet insist upon that of Schism against our present Intruders But I cannot for my Life foresee what the Clergy and Laity of the deprived Diocesses can say for themselves for deserting their Bishops whose Title was formerly owned by themselves by this their Author's Principles What is the Heresie they can charge their Bishops with Yet that is the onely Cause here allowed them to excuse their Separation and it is indeed the onely Charge that can be brought by Subjects against their Incumbent directly As for an indirect Charge in favour of other Bishops our Adversaries Case is exactly the same with that of the Studites or Arsenians and they cannot pretend to it They have no other Bishops to whom they can plead an Obligation against their old Incumbents It is plain their antecedent Obligation lies in favour of their deprived Fathers They cannot deny them to have had once a good Right to their Duty and they can give no reason allowable by their Author how they might lose it neither that of notorious Heresie nor the other of Synodical Deprivation They cannot deny but their new Invaders found the Diocesses possessed by just Acknowledgments of Right in their Predecessors and those acknowledgments ratified by Vows of Canonical Obedience in the Clergy and of the Duty incumbent on them as Members of such owned Societies in the Laity also Thus it cannot be difficult to determine where the Duty is still rather obliging that the indirect charge of Schism lies against the Intruders for erecting Altars against Altars already possessed not against the Possessors who were put in vacuam possessionem as the Law calls it by an unquestionable lawful Authority Will they therefore pretend the greater obligation lying on them to own the Episcopal College than to own any particular Bishop This they might have pretended if any Synodical Deprivation of persons Authorized to Act in Synods had gone before That might indeed have cut off the Incumbents from their Vnion with the Episcopal College and continued the Invaders in their Vnion with the same College and so have obliged all as they are bound to prefer their Vnion with the College before their Vnion with any particular Bishop to withdraw from the Communion of the Incumbents Now even this very charge lies in favour of our Brethren and against our Adversaries Our deprived Fathers must still be supposed to retain their Vnion with the College till there be some Act of the College to deprive them And so the Invaders of their jurisdictions must by their doing so not only divide themselves from the Bishops whose Right is invaded by them but from the whole Episcopal College also This would have appeared clearly as to Fact if the old practice of Communicatory Letters had still been observed The Invaders could not have been received to Communion by any other Bishop of the whole World without the Communicatory Letters of the Incumbent not Synodically deprived and if any particular Bishop had done otherwise even that Bishop had by his doing so cut himself off from his Vnion with the whole Episcopal College Thus we see how this Precedent of condemning these Encroachments of the Studite Monks does not in any wise affect Vs but our Adversaries 30. Our Author next observes that for 26 years together during the Reigns of Leo Armenus Michael Traulus and Theophilus till Theodora managed Affairs during her young Son Michâ—el's minority the Patriarchs were all Iconoclasts His account no doubt begins from the year 815. and the second of Leo Armenus wherein Theodotus Melissenus the first Iconaclast Patriarch was brought in upon the expulsion of Nicephorus And it ends with the expulsion of Joannes or Jannes as they call him for his conjuring practices by Theodora in the year 842. in the beginning of her Administration of Affairs That space was not full 27 years for Theodotus Melissenus was brought in April the 1st and John was expelled not long after the 30th of January on which Theophilus died The design of this Observation is only to take notice how it would affect the Constantinopolitane Succession long before the times of Arsenius and Joseph if even such deriving Orders from Hereticks were rigorously enquired into for such the Iconâ—clasts were esteemed by our Author But this is not the Question for which we are concerned at present 31. His next Example is therefore in the Case of Ignatius and Photius But to judge exactly how far either of them had Right our Author should have distinguished the times and the several degrees by which this Dispute proceeded The first Deprivation therefore of Ignatius I take to have been on November 23. 858. precisely And here was indeed no Synod though I know the Synodicon published by Pappus and Justellus pretends one But Pope Nicholas in his 10th Ep. where he gives an account of his Roman Synod owns nothing in the Deprivation of Ignatius but the Violence and Terror of the Emperor plainly therein reflecting on the Vncanonicalness of it Again his words in his Ep. 13. to Ignatius himself are these ab Imperials Potentia absque
time of these Synods or Meetings rather of the same Synod will best appear from the time of the arrival of the Popes Legates The Letters Pope Nicholas sent with his Legates going to Constantinople bear date Septemb. 25. Indict 9. So it must have been the latter end of the year 860. before those Legates could finish their journey And when they had reached Constantinople they were 100 days there before they could be prevailed on to ratifie the Deposition of Ignatius so contrary to the instructions they had received from him that sent them This must necessarily bring it to the beginning of the year 861. before the 18th of March Nicholas had received the news of their prevaricating and wrote again what he thought fit upon that occasion But when the Suffrages of a Council were once gained what Arts soever they were that were used to gain them Photius had then some appearance of Right till Ignatius could relieve himself by Another and a Greater Council That was a lawful way allowed him of recovering it by the very Canons However Photius could in the mean time plead this Canon hence produced by our Author in favour of himself which before he could not that none ought to separate from himself thus Synodically settled nor to joyn with Ignatius thus Synodically condemned till himself were condemned and Ignatius resettled by a greater and more numerous Synod And to add the greater Authority to their own Synod they boasted of the same numbers that was in the Council of Nice as Pope Nicholas observes in his Answer to them This was a plausible Artifice â—o the Superstition of that Age. 33. Pope Nicholas therefore no doubt made all the interest he cou'd to get a Synod that he might oppose to this Synod of Photius He knew his Authority alone would never be admitted for it without a Synod and such a Synod as the Canons required And though he allowed no Superstition for the number yet the Antiochian Canon which by this time obtained in both the Eastern and Western Churches required that the Synod that must restore Ignatius must at least be more numerous than the Synod that deprived him No Synod therefore could serve his purpose but such a one as must have had more than 318 Bishops This I suppose made it some time before he could condemn Photius or restore Ignatius with such a Synod Anastasius tells us it was in the 11th Indiction That must have been either in the end of the year 862. or the beginning of the year 863 Till then at least how good soever his Title was yet the guilt of Schism had been imputable to Ignatius if he had made a Separation or intruded himself into his own Throne before a Synod had restored him Nay by the Antiochian Canon he had forfeited all pretensions of having the Merit of his Cause considered if he had challenged any Duty from his Clergy and People before a Council had restored him But when Pope Nicholâ—s had restored him in the Roman Synod and deprived and anathematized Photius with them who lookâ—d upon that Restitution as an Act of Superiour Authority Ignatius wâ—s then restored to his full Right and Photius was deprived even of that Right â—o which a Canonical settled possession had intitled him And from that time forward if Ignatius had â—â—â—â—enged the Obedience of his Clergy and Laity and withdrawn them from the Obedience of Photius the guilt of the Schism had notwithstanding not been imputable to him but â—hotius But these Principles do not even in that Agâ— seem to have been the sense of any more than the concerned part of the Western Church The Council of Constantinople when they decreed that Constantinople should be next to Rome did never seem to â—nderstand it of pâ—oper jurisdiction but only of Precedency in place Afterwards â—he Council of Chalcedon decreed equal Priviledges to the same Sâ—e because it had an Emperor and a Consul and a Senate which were no more consistent with a subordinate jurisdiction in the Bishops than in the Emperors the Consuls and the â—enates None ever pretended at that time â—hat the Emperors the Consâ—ls and the Senates of new Rome were properly subject to the Emperors Consuls and Senates of old Rome in regaâ—d of jurisdiction And the Canon concerning Appeals made in that same Council oâ— Chalcedon waâ— uttâ—rly inconsistent with any such jurisdiction that allows to recourse for such Appeals beyond the See of Constantinople I know very well Pope Leo's Legates disowned both these Canons and so have the Latine Collectors generally who reckon no more than 27 Canons as made in that Council But the 16th Action of the Council shewed that they were the genuine sense of the Council and at least of the Eastern Empire and the Eastern Churches And so it descended down to the times of Ignatius and Photius of which we are discoursing By the judgment therefore of the Eastern Bishops of those times who were the most competent Judges of that Eastern Dispute and by the other Canons of the Church which required that Judgments concerning matters of Fact such as this was should be decided in the same place where the matter of Fact had happened the Synod by which Ignatius was to be relieved must have been another and that a greater Synod in the same Constantinople and till he could get such a Synod on his side himself had been responsible for the Schism that must have followed on his claiming his Right Nay the Antiochian Canon made him forfeit his Right if he claimed it in such a way as this was And it is plain by the Pope's Letters to the Emperor Michael that the Emperor did not allow the Pope's Authority in this Case nor do we find that Ignatius made any stir upon it till he was restored Conciliarly in the same place where he had been deprived This seems therefore to have been the state of that Dispute if Nicholas proceeded by way of proper Jurisdiction if he had proceeded on the Principles of the Primitive Church on the supposition of Equality then he could no otherwise have obliged the Eastern Bishops than as the Bishops or Provinces that sided with him were more numerous than those that were against them For this is all that had been reasonable in that case that where Peace was absolutely necessary and yet could not be had without Cession on one part there it was also necessary that the smaller part should rather yield to the greatest But whether Empire had more Bishops or Provinces is needless now to determine The rather because it does not seem to have been thought on or insisted on in the Disputes of that Age. It is sufficient for our purposes that in the sense of the Eastern Bishops and by the Rules of the Eastern Discipline which Ignatius was to stand by this Roman Synod was no competent Authority and therefore left both him and Photius in the same condition wherein it found them
But in this whole Dispute the Emperor's Authority is never urged but that of the Synods that appeared on the one side or the other And the Roman Synod was so little regarded by Photius and the Bishops of his Party that they also condemned Pope Nicholas This was in the latter end of the Reign of his Patron Michael after Basilius Macedo was now made Caesar that is after the 26th of May 867. 34. In the latter end of that same Year Sept. 24. Michael was murdered This Photius upbraided Basilius with and excommunicated him for it This makes Basilius immediately dispossess him We are told that he did it the very next day after his Succession However the Emperour himself did not look on his own dispossessing him of the Patriarchal Palace as any Decision of the Question concerning his Right The worst Interpretation we can make of it is that he followed his own Resentment in the Case as several Authors say he did or that he followed the Precedents of Anastasius Dicorus and the great Justinian who as we have seen first deprived their Patriarchs before they judicially condemned them This could hardly have been made a Precedent by him if he himself had not been under a present and a great Resentment if he had not followed them in their Passion as well as in the Fact that proceeded from it It becomes us rather to put the best Interpretation we can on the Facts of those who are deceased whose Lives did otherwise not make them obnoxious to have the worst things presumed concerning them The rather in this case because there was another Reason as consistent with the Design of Basilius and much more agreeable with his Honour Ignatius when he was before the Synod of Photius pleaded that he ought to be restored to his Possession before he could be obliged to answer to a synodical Judgment This Plea therefore being canonical ought to have been admitted by the Synod that deprived him the putting him therefore into a present Possession even before a new synodical Tryall was no more than what ought to have been done by the Synod itself and their proceeding irregularly could not therefore prejudge against the Canons that required it nor hinder the putting it in practice as soon as the violence was over that occasioned the Violation of those Canons Yet it was so to be understood as not to prejudge any thing concerning the Merit of the Cause Otherwise instead of doing Ignatius a Kindness it had done him a Prejudice by the Rules of Discipline then received in the Eastern Church he had thereby made himself really obnoxious to the Apostolical Canon which Photius had no colour to charge him with before That Canon was then received in the Eastern Church and made it a new Cause of Deprivation if any Bishop did forcibly intrude himself into a present Possession by the assistance of the Secular Power So far that Eastern Church whose sense our Adversaries pretend to gather from these instances was from acknowledging the lawfulness of Bishops obtruded by the Secular Power that with them it rather prejudiced a good that advantaged a suspicious Title This by the way it were well our Adversaries would think of how it affects the Case of our present intruders The rather because it does not only deprive them of the benefit of this argument from these Eastern Precedents but may also be urged against them wherever these Canons have been received as these first fifty have been generally in most even of our Western Collections However that the Emperor did not look upon his own actings as decisive in this Case appears from hence that he ordered both Parties to send their Legates to the Pope to inform him throughly of the matter of Fact and that withall he convened a pretended General Council for a final decision of the Dispute I rather suspect that he ascribed more to the determination of Pope Nicholas than either the Doctrines of his own Church or his own Preingagements would fairly allow of and that he might therefore look on his own putting Ignatius in Possession as an executing the Decree of the Roman Council Plainly he did more herein than several of his own Party did like First he preferred the Judgment of a foreign Italian before that of a Domestick Council This was what was opposed not only by his Predecessor Michael but also by his Successors in the Eastern Church to this very day nay what himself after repealed in the Synod of Photius in the year 879. Then he preferred that elder Synod of Nicholas in the year 863. before the later Synod of Photius that third of his against Pope Nicholas and his Synod as the two former had been against Ignatius which had been celebrated in the very year wherein himself succeeded that is in the year 867. between the 26th of May whereon Basile was made Caesar and Septemb. the 24th whereon Michael was murdered He seemed to obviate this by calling this other Synod which now passes for the Eighth General Council with the Latines as if it had been to repeal that later Constantinopolitane Council Synodically This was in the year 869. but no liberty was reserved for a fair hearing of things in this Council Ignatius had before that immediately upon his return into his place done all that ought to have been reserved for the Synod if any fair dealing had been intended he had deposed and excommunicated his Rival Not only so but he had nulled the Orders of those who had been ordained by him and excommunicated those who had communicated with him Nay the Bishops were all obliged before hand to stand to the decisions of the Pope's Council which it appears in the very beginning of this they neither thought consistent with the Honour of their own Church nor were they willing to be concluded by if the Emperor would give them liberty And Photius was immediately before any Conciliary hearing condemned and anathemetized and Ignatius owned before any Repeal of the later Council of Photius Thus this unfair way of promoting even a good Title did rather injure than advantage it The rather because Basile had in all likelihood obliged himself but a little before to maintain that Synod of Photius Photius pretended Basil's Subscription to his own Synod and his Adversaries themselves confess he did so and do not disprove what he pretended And we know it was generally received in those times that what was subscribed by the Augusti was subscribed by the Caesars also Here therefore I doubt we can hardly be able to excuse this Prince from a transport of resentment perhaps not even Ignatius himself that made them do things so little for the Honour of their own Church and in Favour of a foreign Power rather than fail of compassing their ends I doubt it was their consciousness of their weakness at home that put them upon these straits The Cause was within a little while after carried against them by the
Mothers Marriage which made immediately the breach between his Father and the Patriarch Not only so Nicholas also Christened him so that as yet he was in Possession of the Patriarchal Throne This it seems he condescended to on condition the Marriage should not go on However within three days after Thomas a Presbyter performed the Solemnity and was thereupon Excommunicated by the Patriarch Constantine was Christened on the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our Epiphany Jan. 6. So his Mother Zoes Marriage was on the 9th of the same January That immediately caused the breach and from that time forward the Emperor formed his Party for depriving the Patriarch And Cedrenus tells us that they did it on the beginning of February The anonymous Continuator of Theophanes and Leo Grammaticus are more particular yet in fixing it to the first day of that Month. These are more to be regarded than Baronius's Author Joannes Curopalates who would have it to have been on the beginning of January Constantine was Crowned on Pentecost and then Euthymius officiated thence is appears that Nicholas was dispossessed before Pentecost But Constantine could not have been Baptized nor Crowned before the year 906. At his Uncle Alexander's death he was seven years old as we are assured by the Continuator of Theophanes and by Leo Grammaticus the best Authors of those times Alexander died on June the 6th the first day of the week and the first Indiction as the same Authors tell us These Notes shew it could not have been the year 912. as Baronius would have it but that it must have been on the year following 913. So also it is agreed that he was thirteen years old when his Father-in-Law Romanus Lacapenus got to be joyned in the Government with him This appears by Leo Grammaticus to have been in that year wherein the Feast of the Annunciation March the 25th fell on the 5th day of the week which must have been on the year 919. The same appears from the death of Constantine in the year of the World 6468. Indict 3. Novemb. 9. All these Notes concur in the year 959. not in the year 960. wherein it is placed by Baronius This was in the 54th year of his Reign or Life for there is no great difference between them And this number is made up of the three several Periods of his Reign 13 wherein he Reigned with his Father and Vncle and Mother 26 wherein Romanus was joyned with him and 15 more after the Deposition of Romanus These numbers reckoned backward from the year now mentioned can go no farther than the year 906. wherein therefore Nicholas must have been deprived Nicholas himself tells us that it was in the Pontificate of Sergius which is not by any means reconcilable with the Chronology of Baronius This by the way for the time of this Example 40. However it does not appear that Leo acted herein only by his Secular Authority If there be any heed to be given to Eutychius he tells us of something like a Synod that sided with the Emperor against the Patriarch He says the Emperor had with him Legates from the Patriarchal Sees to whom were joyned several of the Bishops then in Constantinople who were for his Marriage These were somewhat more than the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And whether they were enough or no to secure the Emperor and his Priest from the Censure of the Patriarch and for continuing them in Communion yet certainly they had been sufficient according to the Customs of those Ages for the Deprivation of a Patriarch if there had not been particular reasons to suspect whether in a Question so much disputed among the Bishops as that was the Majority would think themselves obliged to be concluded by them And it was upon their joyning with the Emperor that as Eutychius tells us the Deprivation followed though Eutychius be not indeed express in telling us whether they were particularly concerned in the Deprivation But neither have we reason to doubt but that the Emperor would rather choose to deprive him Synodically than otherwise if for no other reason at least for this that he might therefore clear himself from the odium of making himself a Judge in his own Cause The rather so because we know he endeavoured to transact the Dispute amicably and with due deference to the Ecclesiastical Authority which shews him unwilling to use his Power if he could have avoided it and because withall he had a Synod ready convened who were likely enough to second him in it For why should we suspect them unwilling to concur in the Deprivation when they had concurred in allowing the Marriage that had occasioned it And there are circumstances which confirm the likelihood of a Synodical Deprivation independently on the Authority of Eutychius Nicholas himself owns the concurrence of Pope Sergius's Legates against him who were for dispencing with the Marriage It seems therefore that Leo had sent for them before the Marriage and the breach occasioned by it otherwise they could not have reached Constantinople before the Deprivation of Nicholas Thus therefore it is certain that at that time there were present the Legates of at least one of the Patriarchal Sees And why should we suspect but that in a Controversy of so great importance when he sent for the Legates of one of the Patriarchal Sees he sent for all the rest But so it was those Legates could only undertake for the sense of those Patriarchal Jurisdictions that were represented by them It is by no means likely that he would neglect the fifth Patriarchal Church to which himself was particularly related In all probability the same time that he sent for the Legates of the Foreign Patriarchs he ordered matters so that upon their arrival they should be met by a Synod of Bishops of his own Dominions that so he might have the sense if not of his own Patriarch at least of his own Patriarchal Church This made an appearance of the Whole Church and of a General Council when he could pretend to the sense of all the Patriarchates and is withall certain that he endeavoured to draw the Bishops of his own Dominions to his Party and that his endeavours were successfull with many of them And this difference of Opinion that was between them was that which occasioned the following Schism Then withall we know that he charged the Patriarch with a Crime as the ground of the Deprivation that was of Lying and Perjury Probably in the agreements made between them before the breach to which it is probable that the Parties concerned had Sworn that the preteâ—ded Violation of those Oaths was that which the Emperor charged with Perjury Thus as there was a Judicatory so we see likely materials to ground a judicial Process And why should we doubt but that as he made this Synod Judge of the Marriage it self so that he also allowed them to pass their judgment on this Canonical Accusation So little
times that gives any distinct account of that Reign but our Author Nicetas Choniates Thus we do indeed know as much as our Author and no more for Nicetas is slighter in these matters than they deserved In the Deprivation of Basilius Camaterus he tells us the charge laid against him was that he had suffered Women who had been made Nuns against their Wills to resume their Secular Habit and to return to their Secular way of living This was an Ecclesiastical Crime and therefore proper for an Ecclesiastical Tribunal And the next instance of Nicetas Muâ—tanes who was cast out meerly for his Old Age without any Accusaâ—ion and yet against his Will seems to imply that Bazilius had Accusation which Nicetas had not This Accusation if it had any thing peculiar in it from that which was used in the Case of Nicetas must have been such wherein the Emperor did not judge as he did in the Case of Nicetas And what Judicatory then can we suppose it to have been before whom it was brought if not a Council However Nicetas will our Adversaries say was deprived by a Lay Power without any Accusation at least before any other Judge besides the Emperor himself Suppose it was so yet that will not prejudice the Right of his next Successor nor make him Schismatical nor warrant any Separation even by our Principles Before he came in the See was validly vacated if not by the Deprivation yet by the Cession however involuntary that followed upon it That he did at length Surrender we have the express Testimony of the Author of the Catalogue of Patriarchs that is subjoyned to the Jus Graeco-Romanum Thus the third of the Patriarchs under the Emperor was brought in by a good Authority The Question then can only be whether his Place was as fairly vacated for his Successor as his Predecessor's had been for him And indeed it was so and by the same way not of a Conciliary Deprivation but of a voluntary Surrendry So we read in our MS. Catalogue of Patriarchs by Nicephorus Callistus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So the Author of the Catalogue in the Jus Greco-Romanum assures us where we read expresly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The last Case is that of Dositheus and here the Emperor shewed a piece of Art that did not very much become him Balsamon the famous Canonist was at that time Patriarch of Antioch Him therefore Isaacius consults as a person whose Authority was like to go far in influencing the Bishops and the Question he proposes to him was that which has so frequently been controverted in the Greek Church concerning Translations And to incline Balsamon to be favourable in the Case he makes him believe that his design was to translate the Canonist himself from Antioch to Constantinople whether this influenced him or not is uncertain However the event was such as the Emperor desired that the Patriarch gave his opinion in favour of Translation We plainly see hereby that the Emperor did not pretend absolute Power but only the execution of the Canons When therefore he had thus gained his point he immediately orders the Translation not of Balsamon from Antioch but of his Favourite Dositheus from Jerusalem to Constantinople The Bishops finding how they were imposed on make head against him as a Person for whom they never intended the favour of a Dispensation But he got Possession of the Throne though he held it only for nine days then he was cast out again by the Schism that followed upon it of the Arch-Bishops and Clergy from him So our MS. Nicephorus Callistus in his Catalogue expresly Here we see a withdrawing of Communion from a person who wanted a good Title without any pretence of any Heresie maintained by him But the Emperor was very much bent on having Dositheus in that Employment and at last prevails but not by our modern way of using his force but by the Consent of so many of the Bishops as were sufficient to make a Synod in favour of him This perhaps our Author might not know because his Author Nicephorus had nothing of it However we have as good Authority for it as our Adversaries can pretend from their Author's silence in it Our Author of the Catalogue of the Patriarchs subjoyned to the Jus Graeco-Romanum is very plain and full in it and he was perhaps a little elder than their anonymous for he concludes his Catalogue with the first Patriarchate of Joseph in the Reign of Michael Palaeologus However Dositheus did not enjoy the place long Some few years are mentioned in the Catalogue with the Jus Orientale but the number was not legible there The Greek Catalogue in the first Volume of the Byzantine Historians is something more particular and tells us of two years With the help of this information we may possibly gather a more distinct account out of our Manuscript Catalogue of Nicephorus which had otherwise not been so easily intelligible that it was not two full years for so Nicephorus in his Catalogue has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the number of the months and days are wanting which must have made up near another year But by that time Nicephorus says the Schism was risen to that height that he was the second time deprived and finding his former Throne of Jerusalem filled he abdicated both Thrones as well that to which as that from which he had been Translated Thus it again appears in an instance so near our Author's Age that there was a Schism in this case where notwithstanding our Author's reasonings does necessarily oblige him to suppose there was none by which we may easily perceive how unaccurate his Informations were even in matters so â—ear his own memory He seems to have known no more of this whole affair than what his still extant Author Nicetas Choniates told him and he did noâ— think fit to take notice of the Schisms that occasioned both these Deprivations of Dositheus Yet even Nicetas mentions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 separate Assemblies Here was plainly a Schism not on the pretence of any objected Heresie but on account of an original defect of Title They reckoned the Emperor's Translation as nothing and the Church's consent to it as nothing because the Question had been proposed insidiously All that Balsamon and the Bishops influenced by him had granted was that in general the Canons of the Church aganst Translations were dispensible where the Church was pleased with the Person so far as to think that he particularly deserved a Dispensation with her general Rules only the Application of the Canon to Dositheus was the Emperor's Act which we see was not allowed him by them who made the Separation Had the Translation been valid and by a sufficiently obliging Power their Duty had necessarily followed upon it and they could not have been at liberty even in Conscience to dispute it after a Synod had consented to it and after a Possession with two years settlement
But by the Schism we have reason to believe that the numbers of the Synod that consented were less than of those who had never consented from the beginning otherwise they had been concluded by the Synodical Act. Or else the only reason that could be for excepting against the Synodical Suffrages must have been that the Emperor's Authority was thought too influential on those publick Meetings Every way it appears how little the Secular Power was regarded even in those late times of Isaacius Angelus when his Authority tho' seconded by a Synod for applying the Dispensation to Dositheus was not thought sufficient to oblige an absent Majority dissenting from them even with regard to Conscience when even in such a Case as this the Cause was at last over-ruled by those that separated and carried for them This plainly shews how little these practices of Isaacius were approved of by the generality of the best Judges of his own time when they durst express their thoughts concerning them with any freedom It was in all likelihood the unpopularness of these Invasions of the Liberties of the Church that gave his Brother Alexis a great advantage against him which ended in his Deprivation Even Nicetas himself from whom our Author takes these things does not mention them without a severe Censure How then could our Author reason from them as Precedents How could he pretend the Authority of Nicetas for a reasoning so different from the Sentiments of Nicetas 46. It was therefore no such admirable matter if it had been true if there had been no Separation between these five Patriarchs of this Reign succeeding each other in so short a time It is not true that they were deprived purely at the Emperor's pleasure It is not true that their Places were invalidly vacated All of thâ—m were either deprived Synodically or abdicated There is no need to dispute how unjustly or corruptly the Synods proceeded in depriving them nor how unwilling themselves were in their Abdication Even an unjust Synodical Sentence was by the Canons sufficient to vacate their Places till they could be remedied in another and a greater Synod which none of them ever had And even an involuntary Abdication if Formally and Canonically made was sufficient to cut them off from any pretensions to their former Rights They had therefore in these cases no pretence left to vindicate their Rights by a Separation or to question the validity of the Acts of Successors who were brought into Sees so validly vacated And why should it be thought so admirable that they did not make disturbances where they had by the Canons no tolerable pretence to do so Why should they be thought Precedents for our present Holy Fathers who are neither deprived Conciliarâ—y nor have made any even involuntary Abdication 47. Thus upon the whole it has appeared that our Author's Instances as they were never designed so neither do they make for our Adversaries purpose Our Adversaries pretend that unjustly deprived Bishops never vindicated their Rights by a Separation And we confess we cannot make the contrary Observation that unjust Possessoâ—s were always so modest and so resigned to the Church's Peace as willingly to surrender the Vsurpations Will they therefore make them Precedents in this particular So indeed they may if they can have the Consciences if they can find in their Hearts to do so But are they not in the mean time ashamed to tell us that good Bishops have been willing to part with their Rights rathâ—r than they would break Communion when their own Fathers will rather break Communion than make Restitution It were easie here to retort all Mr. Hody's Exhortations upon his own Intruders I am sure he can give no Arguments why good Men ought to surrender Rights for Peace sake but what will proceed more cogently for surrendering Vsurpations But we have many new Topicks that we can justly use to his Fathers which he cannot pretend to use to ours We have the Right and Duty which was owing from his to ours before the encroachment and which his own reasoning does not pretend not to be owing still We have their 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 We have the dreadful imprecations implied in all such Oaths as an obligation for performance Methinks our adversary Bishops should tremble at the consequence if God should no otherwise help them than as they have performed their Duties to their respective Ordinaries and their Metropolitane Their great Plea of the Publick Good we can beter pretend than they if they will allow that the Eternal interests of Souls and of Religion are more to be valued in a Publick Account than Worldly Politicks And this is methinks a concession for which we need not be beholen to any who own themselves Christians And certainly it is more for the publick good of the Church that Subordinations should be preserved than that any particular person should be made a Bishop by offering violence to them It is more for the publick good of Religion that the Glorious Passive Doctrines of the Church should be maintained in opposition to Worldly Interests than that they should seem prostituted to serve them It is more for the publick good of Religion that the Credit of the Clergy should be maintained than that they should enjoy the benefits of Worldly Protection It is more for the publick good of Religion that the Independency of that Sacred Function on the State should be asserted by challenging their Rights than that by yielding them the Lay-Power should be owned to have any Power of depriving us of the comfort of Sacraments in a time of Persecution It were easie also to shew that the Doctrines and Practices in defence of which our Holy Fathers have incurred this Deprivation are more for the Interest even of the State even of the Civil Magistracy than those which are likely to obtain upon their Cession Even the State cannot subsist without Obligations of Conscience and the Sacredness of Oaths and these 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 encourage the frequency of ill Titles and frequent Subversions of the Fundamental Constitutions and all the Publick Miseries that must follow on such Changes especially in a Settlement where all the care has been taken that was possible to preserve it by obligations of Conscience And certainly Mr. Hody will not say that our invalidly deprived Fathers are obliged to submit to the wrong that is done them where there are not publick considerations that may make amends for the private injuries But if Mr. Hody will needs live rather by Precedents than Rules yet where will he find
Unitate Eccl. Ep. 49. Edit Ox. Ep. 52.54.55 †These Doctrines of the Catholick Church in St. Cyprian's Age were also Doctrines of the Catholick Church in the Age of Optatus and St. Augustine * Till our Adversaries can disarm us of the advantage we have from the Doctrine of the Catholick Church signified on occasion of these earliest Instances of Schism in St. Cyprian's Age their Authors Collection of later Instances were it never so pertinent to their purpose can do them no Service 7ly This Author himself allows a Separation in Case of Heresie And with that our Adversaries are chargeable 1st as they do not only separate but justifie their Separation by Principles Separation on account of Opinions is by so much the less excusable if the Opinions be not Fundamental Such Opinions then begin to â—e Heretical when they cause an actual Separation as the Latitudinarian Opinions do now in our Adversaries 2. Even as Heâ—â—sie signâ—fies an error in Fundamentals The Church's being a Society is a fundamental Doctrine It is at least fundamental aâ— to us and as to all Benefit we can pretend to by being Members of the Church The Intruders cannot be defended to be valid Bishops but by Principles fundamentally destructive of the Church as a Sâ—ciety distinct from the State in a time of Persecution This sort of Errors fundamental in the highest degree Our Adversaries are wholly the Cause of this late Breach and have shewn themselves neither kind to us nor careful of themselves in it 1 Joh. 2.19 Transition The Vse out Adversaries make of this Collection is in all likelihood very different from the Design of the Author The Design of the Author of this Discourse is to be known from the Occasion of his writing it The Schism which occasioned this Discourse seems to have been that between the Arsenians and Josephians in the Reign of Michael Palaeologus Niceph. Gregor Lib. 4. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Gregor lib. 4. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gregor lib. 5. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gregor lib. 5. Gregor lib. 6. Niceph. Gregor Lib. 7. This Case of Arsenius is very like that of St. Chrysostome which our Author thought principally to deserve Consideration The Arsenians also gave our Author occasion to observe that past Invalidities in Ordinations did not use to be insisted on rigorously * So 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. 15. of the Synod under Photius here produced in the later part of this Discourse under the Title of AB 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is an Accusation to a Synod The Translator does not seem to have understood the Importance of this Phrase neither in his Latine nor English Version nor the Annotatour on the English The Latine Translation seems to imply that Severianus and Acacius personally appeared before Pope Innocent which no History owns them to have done The English that they were called in question by him which if meant juridically could not be true when he after exercised no Censure on them either of Condemnation or Absolution The Annotatour understands it of Discovery but what needed that when the Fact itself was notorious The Notion of Accusation solves all So also in the N. T. Acts 24.1 and 25.2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to accuse or inforâ— against which is a proper Authority for this purpose because most of the Ecclesiastical Terms were designedly taken from the Scriptures * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gregor lib. 7. p. 183. There was also in this Schism an occasion for the Author to add his Exception of Heresie and his Limitations of that exception * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gregor lib. 5. This Case did not oblige our Author to justifie the Validity of a Lay-Deprivation Nay our Author could not justifie the Validity of a Lay-Deprivation if he would be true to the Canons here produced by himself but omitted by the Editors For Presbyters to disown their Bishop not synodically deprived is by the Doctrine of these Canons Schismatical (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. 13. Synod A B. (b) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. (d) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. So it is also by the same Canons for Suffragan Bishops to disown their Metropolitane without the like Synodical Deprivation * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. 14. ib. This unpublish'd Appendiz asserted to the Author This Collection therefore can be no Authority for our Adversaries neither as to the Sense of the Author nor of the Church he was concerned for The Case of Meletius in Antioch * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Socr. l. 1. c. 24. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soz. l. 2. c. 19. * See the Creed in Socr. l. 2. c. 40. * So Socrates concerning the Meletians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib. 2. c. 44. So elsewhere Paulinus the Rival of Meletius pleads against him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 L. 5. c. 5. Of St. Chrysostome in Constantinople Of Flavianus Ep. 42. in Edit Pasch. Quesnel Ep. 43. Quesnel Ep. 45 Quesnel Ep 47. Quesnel Act. Concil Chalced. Evag. l. 2. c. 11. Nicephor Eccl. Hist. xiv 47 Zonar In the time of Anastasius Dicorus 1. The Instance of Euphemius * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theod. Lect. L. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theophanes 2. Of Macedonius Theoph. Niceph E. H. xvi 26 Theod. Lect. 2. Niceph. xvi 26 Theoph. Theod. Lect. l. 2. Theoph. Theoph. Theod. Lect. l. 2. Theoph. Theoph. Euphemius Macedonius Flavianus and Elias were so untrue to Principles that it â—s not easie to gather from their Facts what even themselves thought agreeable to Principles Evagr. III. 31 Theoph. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theoph. Vit. Sab. n. 52. Ib. 52. Ib. 56. The Deprivation of Elias Bishop of Jerusalem in the same Reign how Synodical Elias was in reason obliged to yield to John though not on the Account of his Orthodoxy Cyrillus Vit. Sab N. 56. Maximus Bishop of Jerusalem was in all likelihood not deprived by Acacius Bishop of Caesarea Soc. II. 38 Theod. II. 26 in Chron. Euseb. coâ—tin Epiph. Hâ—r LXXIII Phot. Cod. 258. The Life of Athanasius no good Authority The Dâ—privation of Maximus if true had not been for our Adversaries Purpose because Synodical The Case of Eutychius under Justinian Eustath Vit. Eutych ap Sur. Apr. 6. * Episcoporum Principum Eustath * Sed Vir Sanctus Episcopis Principibus qui Consessus mandato nuncium attulerâ—nt Ad quem inquit accediâ—is quem me vocatis Illi veritate coacti responderunt ad Dominum Nostrum Patrem Quibus ipse rursum Quis est inquit iste Dominus Pater vester Venimus inquiunt tanquam occultis quibus dam verberibus vapularent ad Patriarcham Nostrum Dominum Eutychium Patriarcha Ego inquit ille Patriarchâ— Dei Gratiâ sum nec à me quisquam hominum tollet hanc Dignitatem Quis est ille quem meo in loco
bring our Author's time within a Century after those times of Isaacius Angelus So the first remarkable Schism that fell within that distance will most probably be the occasion of this Work and the Ecclesiastical Rhetor then in Office the Author of it But of this more hereafter 7. I confess I was once of the mind that Nicephorus Callistus was the Author of it My reason was that which is mentioned by Mr. Hody that his Name is made use of in most of the Works contained in this Volume either in the Titles or in the Tables and that both before and after this of which we are at present discoursing This made me think that the whole Volume was intended for a Collection of Pieces wherein he was some way concerned and that his Name was intended for the Title here if the Illuminator had performed his Office in adding a Title to it But upon more thorough consideration I have I confess altered my Opinion I observe this Tract is in a hand extremely different from the other hands of the whole Volume It is withall contrived within a quire proper to itself and the latter end in a little smaller hand that it might come within that compass Thence it appears that it was written singly not to be connected with a following Vacancy where there might have been room for what remained but to be bound up with other things already written Accordingly what follows begins abruptly as if the former quire had been purposely left out to make room for this insertion These are Tokens that it was not at first designed as a part of this particular Collection Then it begins so near the top of the Page that one would suspect no Title was intended but that the Author's Name was purposely omitted And indeed no Author's Name seems to have been mentioned in the Copies from whence Cotelerius intended to have published it Withall I doubt that Nicephorus Callistus who wrote when Andronicus was now grown old in the Empire might have been somewhat of the latest to have been the Author of it Besides there are considerable Differences between our Author and Nicephorus Mr. Hody has observed one if the Interposition of Leontius between the Inthronings of Dositheus be not rather some Disorder of our Copy of Nicephorus's Catalogue of Patriarchs There are also several other Differences Our Author calls the first of the Patriarchs deposed by Anastasius Dicorus Euthymius and that as often as he mentions him both in the Tract itself and the Summary as several others had done before him Nicephorus calls him rightly Euphemius both in his MS. Catalogue and in his Ecclesiastical History Our Author takes no notice that Timotheus the next Successor but one to Euphemius was a Heretick but Nicephorus does in his Catalogue of Patriarchs if the inserted Censures of the Patriarchs be his There he is called in an interlineary Note 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 However in his History he takes notice of his Fickleness that he sometimes approved and again openly condemned the Synod of Chalcedon This was sufficient to hinder him from arguing that his orthodoxy was the reason why his Communion was owned notwithstanding his Usurpation So also from the remaining Contents of the 23d Book of Nicephorus Callistus it appears that Nicephorus owned that there were Schisms in the time of Leo Sapiens under the Patriarchate of Stephen the Emperor's Brother and of Nicolaus Mysticus and Euthymius though it seems our Authour knew nothing of them 8. Thus much therefore we have gained That in Matters of so great Antiquity as are here debated this Author's Word alone is by no means competent to be depended on as an Authority Hence it will follow farther that we may now very justly put the Stress of our Cause upon examining the Merit of the things themselves without any relation to the Author And if we can shew that his Way of Reasoning is not concluding though the Matters of Fact produced by him were as pertinent to our present Case as our Adversaries are concerned they should be and also that his Matters of Fact are far from being such as they suppose them I cannot foresee what our Adversaries can in reason desire more for shewing how little reason they have to be so confident on account of what is said by this Author 9. First therefore as to the Reasoning itself how much soever it be insisted on by our late Brethren in our present Disputes yet neither is it such as would be thought fit to be regarded by Men of Conscience nor safe to be trusted by Men of Prudence and Skill in the Art of Reasoning They pretend to have amassed 18 Instances of Bishops who did not think fit to insist on their Right or were not seconded by their Subjects if they did so when they were not deprived on account of Heresie out of the History of 900 Years Whether they did well or not in it is not here so much as attempted to be proved only it is presumed to be well done barely because 't was done in so many Instances and no publick opposition made against it But if Matters of Fact so nakedly mentioned must be urged for Precedents it will be impossible to make any thing of this way of Arguing from History What History is there that in a Succession of 900 Years does not afford Examples against Examples And how can it be understood which are rather to be followed as Examples if no more be considered concerning them but barely this that they were Examples How easie were it for an Historian by this Way of Reasoning to justifie as our Brethren do the wickedest things that can be They prove it lawful to break Oaths from the Example of King Stephen which I believe they will hardly find one antient Historian who does excuse it from the Charge of Perjury I am sure they may find several who charge it as expresly as we do with that very Imputation And can we not in the same scope of Time produce 18 Instances of successfull Wickednesses of Murther Adultery Sacrilege c. committed by potent Persons whom it was no way safe to contradict at least where there are no Memorials of Opposition transmitted to Posterity Can any Man of Conscience think it fit that 18 Instances on one side in such a space of Time should be the Rule of his Conscience Or can any wise Man think himself obliged to defend whatever may be patronized by such a number of Instances 10. The Design of this Way of Arguing is no doubt to prove the Sense and Approbation at least of those Churches where these Instances passed without Contradiction but it is manifest that many more things are requisite for proving that besides naked Matter of Fact What if in the Instances here mentioned the Churches did not adhere to unjustly-deprived Bishops when the Intruders were not Hereticks Yet many more things must be requisite to be made